What is sri vidhya?

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What is Sri Vidya?

By Swami Veda Bharati

 

Om. Sri.

 

What is Sri Vidya? I shall try to answer this question the only way

it can be answered, in a very roundabout way. For, defining is

confining. We need to rise beyond the realm of our definitions. It is

like the new trend in the computer science known as the fuzzy logic.

If you can appreciate fuzzy logic or the theory of chaos, then you

would somewhat understand what it means to rise beyond mere apparent

definitions and becoming all-conclusive, where the order is not quite

as easily visible, quite as simply discernable as it is in the well-

defined axioms or axiomatic logic based on S is P, S is not P. It is

not so in Sri Vidya, the science of Sri, God's science of the

universe.

 

The concept of Sri forms the entire Hindu-buddhist civilization,

directly or indirectly, quite often in small segments and powers.

However, even in this area of ancient civilizations, with the

exception of, say, one in half a billion people, no one really

understands what Sri Vidya is because learning Sri Vidya is not like

mastering any of the sciences, it is mastering one's own self. It is

God's science of the universe, God's science of self-knowledge, that

very self-knowledge where God within us also knows Herself.

 

One of the countries where the word Sri is very popular is the Bali

Island of Indonesia. The ancient Indian Rishis, sages, founders of

sciences, they through whom many sciences were revealed, crossed the

seas, and established what is now an ancient civilization. In Bali

you would often hear of Bhu Devi or Sri Devi. Bhu Devi means the

deity which is the earth. And then Sri Devi, the mother deity of

prosperity, no, not prosperity, no, growth, no; ah-- I'll play the

modern anthropologist: fertility, now you've got it right! But you

haven't. You see, to understand the ancient Eastern sciences, one

would have to learn to forget some of the popular definitions given

in high circles of learned people in modern systems. Until you can

step out of that, you cannot move from the reductionist sciences and

schools towards the holistic sciences and schools. It's a question of

redefining yourself. And by redefining yourself you will redefine

that which your self knows, wishes to know, will know and the seed of

that knowledge as well as the substratum of that which we wish to

know, or do know, since all these modes of knowing occur within the

self. This is one of the very basic principles of Sri Vidya.

 

Talking of the Sri Devi, in every rice field in Bali there is a small

shrine to Sri Devi by whose presence the rice grows. Well, obviously

it's a fertility cult, so say the experts from the Western

civilization which is all-knowing, and knows all about what people

think and feel everywhere and how they work out things in a most

unscientific way with all these superstitious beliefs such as that

some goddess makes the rice grow. Now, for each village there are

priests who perform the appropriate rites. There's a chief priest for

the whole of Bali Island, who, by his own method of internal

coordination, sets up the entire agricultural policy: when the people

of different areas should plant, when they should irrigate the

fields, when they should reap the crop. In comes the World Bank and

the International Monetary Fund and all the great scientists of the

world who want to pull these backward people out of their

unscientific, superstitious views and institute studies of

agricultural patterns and how the agriculture may be improved. As

they have done in many, many societies, destroying the entire

established fabric and ensuring almost the extinction of a vast

diversity of living things through their 'scientific' methods. A few

exceptional people are wise and it occurred to them to do a computer

model of what would be the best way to really coordinate the planting

and the irrigation and the reaping of crops in the right time in all

different areas and topographies of the island. It turned out that

the models thus prepared coincided with exactly what the chief

priests of Sri Devi have been doing in guiding the entire country in

matters of agriculture for the last ten or twenty centuries. Leave

well alone; the scientists concluded. For details see Stephan

Lansing's book, Priests and Programmers: Technologies of Power in the

Engineered Landscape of Bali (Princeton University Press, 1991).

 

It is heartening to see that for a change someone took the trouble of

trying to comprehend the ways of those who have understood some

sciences intrinsically, who know to plan the agriculture of an entire

country by intuitive methods. Not guess work, please. Intuition is

not guess work. We also need to correct the trend both in the East

and West, of equating intuition with guess work. Sri Vidya is the

science of intuitive mastery of exact sciences.

 

The way we write Mr., Mrs., Ms., Miss, in the Western countries, the

common term used in the communication in India is, for a man, Sriman;

for a woman, Srimati; for Ms., Su-Shu and so forth. The Queen of

Thailand, Sirikit is actually the sanskrit work Srikirti, the glory

of Sri. So all the 850,000,000 Indians carry the title Sri, Sriman,

Srimati, Su-Sri: one endowed with Sri. A title originally in ancient

times reserved for those who were initiated into Sri Vidya, they in

whom God's glory of the universe has made a home, those who are

endowed with knowledge, empowered with the energy and the intuition

of mother Sri. The basic text of Sri Vidya says: one who knows mother

Sri can never be orphaned. In the rituals and ceremonies in the

Indian tradition, when one sips the holy water they say, Mayi Shrih

Shrayatam: may Sri dwell in me. The word for refuge is Ashraya: to be

one as Sri. "May many come taking refuge in me, may I seek refuge in

none"--is the prayer of those who wish to have this capacity to give

refuge. This capacity is Sri. You might translate Sri Vidya as the

science of capacities, the science of potentialities.

 

One of the first principles in Sri Vidya is that your individual self

cannot be separated from the universal principles. In studying

universal principles of any science, you must first be studying

yourself. And the application of those principles must first be

directed towards yourself so that you cannot study physics or

chemistry without first studying yourself. This would make no sense

to an average student of physics and chemistry, but, what about

biochemistry? You see there a relationship between what you consider

to be your individual self, mere body, and the constituents of the

world. At least you see the connection between what is happening in

you and what is happening in the test tube. Without understanding

that link there can be neither biochemistry nor pharmacology. Sri-

Vidya is thus a science of connections. The connections are realized

not through writing research papers on them. But through processes of

concentration, contemplation, meditation one achieves an assimilation

of the universe and oneself.

 

We said above that Sri Vidya is God's science of the universe. Here I

reiterate what has often been taught in lectures on Sri Vidya. God's

energy, capacity, potentiality is three-fold; iccha, jñana, kriya.

These are the three shaktis: iccha-shakti, jñana shakti, kriya-

shakti, respectively the energy called will, knowledge, and action.

In that which you know to be self; in that which you know the self

that is God; in that which you know to be the universe that is God,

that is in God. In God that is the universe, God that is in the

universe, God that is in you, God that is you. These sentences must

not be taken in a sequence, for if you depend on sequence of

thoughts, then you will never reach that knowledge which in the yoga

sutras is called a-krama, knowledge without sequence, simultaneous;

flash of lightning, of truth; as knowledge in which these principles

are not studied in a logical sequence, through an intellectual

process but all of them flash as one.--(See Yoga-sutras III. 54)

 

When this, God's science of creation, maintenance and dissolution,

through his power called will, knowledge and action, is absorbed,

assimilated, is fully realized by the yogi he is then the master of

Sri Vidya. Even these words are sequential, for the language fails

here. Sri Vidya is the science of energy fields of the metaphysical

universe. The energy fields that are non-sentient and the energy

fields that are sentient; the energy fields that know themselves to

be, the sentient ones, and the energy fields that do not know

themselves to be or whose degree of knowing is somewhat reduced. When

these energy fields are seen as parts of a single assimilated whole,

then you begin to understand Sri Vidya, and that the microcosm and

the macrocosm; the pinda and brahmanda; the shape and form on one

hand and linga, that is your subtle body, your operative self, and

the egg of God, the ovum that is the universe: all these are

inseparable.

 

The Newsweek, one of the bibles of the modern world, on May 4, 1992,

starts an article titled "God's Handwriting," with these

words: "There is no dearth of creation myths, from Easter Island's

bird-god that laid the world egg to the Old Testament's six days of

Genesis." Actually, this concept of the universe as an egg is very

basic to the Indian tradition of cosmology. Often the form of the

linga, the sign of the presence of light that is worshipped in the

temples of India, is somewhat oval; it represents the

 

 

 

1. For a deeper understanding of the Yoga-Sutras, it is recommended

to study: 1) The Commentary by Hariharananda Aranya, S.U.N.Y. Press.

2) The Commentary by Usharbudh Arya, Himalayan Publishers, and 3)

instruction cassettes available from Rishikesh Foundation, P.O. Box

279, Clarence, NY 14031.

 

universe expanding within an oval space. If you take away the

physical body of a human being, what remains is the oval of light.

 

Sri Vidya begins where quantum physics ends. The contemporary

philosophers of science have reached a cul de sac, and do not seem to

know where to go from there because they are presented with enigmas,

the gigantic, vast and majestic koans, the mysteries of the universe

in a jyotir-bindu, a pinpoint of light that is infinitesimal.

Infinitesimal because the space has not yet been created, therefore

it has no location because locations are in space. So the question of

where this pinpoint of light was or is, is like a question of what

happens to a soul after death, where does it go? Well, where does it

go? Where is there to go? You talk of the soul as if it were

something confined to spaces and times, so you speak of after death

and before birth and the soul going away someplace as though it has a

passport to galaxies or something. It's an n/a question: not

applicable.

 

Yet because we are so conditioned to going in space, we cannot

imagine a condition wherein space has not yet been created. So with

regard to where the pinpoint of light is or was, that some say,

explodes into a big bang, this question of where does not arise,

because if the universe has not yet been created, no space has been

created. Now, here, please, I'm not trying to establish points of

compromise between modern science and the ancient traditions. I'm

speaking purely and simply in ancient terminologies.

 

Jyotir-bindu, the pinpoint of light, explodes, expands; for this very

pinpoint of light is also the nada-bindu, the pinpoint of sound.

 

Another word for the pinpoint of light is tejo-bindu. Among the

Upanishads there are four upanishads whose names have the word bindu

in them. Elsewhere, I have given the etymology of the word bindu:

that which one must burst through; that which must explode; that

which must burst; and that, I repeat, which one must burst through.

That is the meaning of the word point, which is cognate to or is

derived from the word bindu. The word bindu is derived from the verb

root bhid or bhind, to burst, to break through. It means to explode

like the explosion of an atom so that we may burst through the atomic

particle and come to the next dimension of energy.

 

I was saying that there are four Upanishads that have the word bindu

in their titles. Brahma-bindu Upanishad, or Upanishad of Brahman as

bindu or bindu of Brahman; Brahman as the point. The great

transcendental being as the point. Then the Tejo-bindu Upanishad, the

point of light Upanishad. Then the Nada-bindu Upanishad, the point of

sound Upanishad. Then the Dhyana-bindu Upanishad, Upanishad of the

meditation that is the point. Get the point?

 

Now once again, you are not to take these phrases, the point of

light, the point of sound, light as point, sound as point, meditation

as point, or the point of meditation, brahman as point or the point

of brahman, in sequence. Until you can abolish sequences, you will

see no relationship, and without that abolition of sequences, you

will not understand the central point, that bindu around which the

Sri Yantra is built.

 

So, that jyotir-bindu, the pinpoint of light, that point that is the

light, is also nada-bindu, the pinpoint of sound. Hence, the big bang

from the pinpoint of light. In the tradition we are taught that nada

and jyoti, the sound and light, are one. The light produces the

sound, sound produces the light. And in my little book of Blessings I

have said: may you see the light that sound produces as it travels

through space; may you hear the sound that light creates as it

travels through space. So we may see the explosion of light, and of

sound, explosion of what later comes to be known as matter in space,

is one and the same. Now, the ancient tantric system says that it is

actually the space itself that is identical with the sound, that is

identical with light, and these ripples and wrinkles that occur in

space become the winds of the universe.

 

I have here another article from the magazine called Asia Week, which

is Asia's equivalent of Newsweek and Time published from Singapore

and Hong Kong. Dated May 8, 1992. I wish I had the original articles

from scientific journals to refer to, but this will do quite nicely.

The title of the article is "Ripples in the Wind." It says on Page

26: "Every culture has its creation myths. Unless you can see it

through a telescope, it's a myth. But you cannot see that pinpoint of

light which the present theorists are saying exploded into the

universe and if you cannot see, it must be a myth, too." Now, where

do you draw the line between reality and myth? Anyway, the article

goes on: "Every culture has its creation myths. The ancient Tibetans

believed that in the beginning there was a vast emptiness without

cause and without end. From it arose faint ripples of wind that after

aeons grew stronger and eventually formed the world. Modern science

has its own creation myth, which it calls the Big Bang Theory. Like

the Tibetan legend, it holds that the universe was a vast emptiness.

Then, about 15 billion years ago, a cataclysmic explosion sent matter

shooting in all directions, eventually creating the planets and

stars. Of course, most scientists would be appalled to hear the Big

Bang described as a myth. To them, it's a legitimate theory, but

dressed by observation, calculation and the whole penopula of

scientific thought.

 

"Now they are excited by the discovery of "ripples" of matter. They

say it confirms the theory and helps explain the foundation of stars

and galaxies. These huge ripples as described by a scientist

as 'wispy clouds of matter' were apparently set in motion by the big

bang and have been moving outwards ever since. The scientists are

justifiably proud that their sophisticated and expensive instruments

have allowed them to record echoes of these ripples across billions

of light years of space, and their conclusion -- doesn't seem much

different from that of the ancient Tibetans." Hooray for the editor.

I couldn't have said it better.

 

Now, so far, so good. But not quite so good. The question is not only

concerning the origin of the universe and its expansion, but also the

question of consciousness. Now where does consciousness come from?

Can we produce consciousness in some research lab? And once again,

until we can take the holistic, assimilationistic point of view, we

will not be able to answer this question. The Tantra, which is an

expansion of Sri Vidya, believes that the original energy dwelling in

the first pinpoint of light, is a conscious one. Sri Vidya and all

Tantra believes it to be that force which is consciousness. It is not

that somewhere in the process of expansion, when all the chemicals

have formed that these chemicals then interact and thereby produce

something called consciousness. In fact, the process of creation is

the process of reduction of consciousness. It is not an evolutionary

process, it is a devolutionary process. And since the process of

creation is the process of devolution, the process of reduction of

force, therefore, it has the inbuilt entropy, the well-known

principle in modern science. Everything moving toward the principle

called antaka, the principle of dissolution.

 

One of the questions in the modern philosophy of science is whether

this universe is going to keep on expanding? What is going to happen

with it? Where is it expanding into? In this context the concept of

emptiness is one of the most important philosophical principles. It

is the same principle, shunya, which the Buddhists call the ultimate

reality. It is the same from which the Indian civilization derived

the concept of zero, for which the common word used nowadays in

Indian schools is still shunya. And I shall not belabor the point

that I have made elsewhere that this shunya is not simply a void. It

is that void which voids all voids. Shunya is the ultimate reality,

is that void that voids all voids.

 

So, just as the question as to where this pinpoint of light was is

meaningless, because the word where means in what point of space and

the space hadn't yet been created. The same applies to the question:

into what is the universe expanding, where is it going. They are also

meaningless, because where the universe is not, there is no such

where, nor there. As for it to be something called "there," there

would have to be some relationships of times and places and points.

Even in elementary philosophy, such a question doesn't arise. It is

by expanding that the universe creates space, not that it expands

into some empty space. The ancient Indian philosophy of physics,

called Vaisheshika, speaks of akuñchana and prasarana, contraction

and expansion as interlinked principles. The Sanskrit texts

discussing the attraction of gravity and the basic principles

involved in it, also discussed this question of attraction and

contraction, the centripetal and centrifugal forces as well. They

also arrived at the conclusion at that time that the minutest atomic

particle would have to be simply a point in space, bindu, the point

in the centre...

 

We are discussing here bindu, the point in the centre of the Sri

Yantra, the point from which the expansion occurs, and into which the

circle contracts again. From my meagre understanding of the

principles of tantra, I would like to venture a proposal to the

modern philosophers of science, that they stop being unidirectional.

The idea should be abandoned that expansion is occurring into some

empty space the presence of which, something called space, outside

the universe has not been established. We need to understand that the

winds in space (vayu) that were spoken of by the ancient sages, need

to be looked at much more closely. Once again, light and sound are

one, sound and light exists before creation and after the final

entropy (dissolution) is invalid, for the space is the first creation

and the last one to dissolve. Until space is created, the question of

where does not arise. The space is a location for light, and sound.

The ancient texts say akasha-deshah shabdah, the location of sound is

space. One of the words for space is akasha, that which is lit all

over, that which is filled with light, although the space travellers

tell us that it is all dark. Simply because it is dark to our eyes

does not mean that it is not filled with light. If we are all owls,

that is not God's fault.

 

One of the first principles again is that expansion and contraction

in space are an identical process, just as creativity and entropy are

interwoven. The boundaries between evolution and devolution cannot be

determined. They are two sides of the same coin. So, this is silly

notion to ask: if the universe keeps expanding, then what? Are the

atoms and subatomic particles going to move so wide apart that they

are simply going to evaporate? No. The ancient philosophers of Tantra

spoke of light expanding, becoming space; space being filled with

light; everything around us being one with this light, akasha; for

there is no part of space which is not light, which is not energy. In

other words, akasha, space, is a form of energy, the very first form

of energy. If we understand that, only then we can understand what

the present day theory is trying to say: that the processes that are

taking place in the formation of this universe are as though ripples

in space. They are ripples in the vast energy field, called the field

of light, that is akasha.

 

I quote again from the article titled "God's Handwriting" in Newsweek

of May 4, 1992. It says, "But for the truly weird, imagine the Big

Bang. An explosion of space, not in space, a kernel of cosmos

inflating so widely that faster than an eyeblink a blob smaller than

a proton grew as big as today's entire visible universe. This infant

world, developing ripples of energy in the fabric of its space, the

ripples stretching as the universe expanded and creating the

sparkling necklaces of stars and the pinwheels of galaxies that

bedeck the night sky."

 

To quote one of the scientists in Berkley "Announced that they had

discovered primordial wrinkles floating at the very edge of space and

beginning of time. No more than wispy tendrils, they are between 2.9

billion trillion and 59 billion trillion miles across. The most

gigantic and the most ancient structures ever seen." That is why Carl

Sagan has said that the Hindu cosmology comes closest to the modern

Western cosmology. The only difference is that the modern cosmology

still separates fields of consciousness from the expanding fields of

the universe. And that is why it has no bearing on the principles by

which we may live, by which we may order our individual lives, by

which we may worship. And I use the word worship with great

precision. Worship is the attitude which you may worship nature and

the environment as sacred. The consciousness that is in me is not in

me. I am that field called consciousness and so also what you refer

to as nature is a field of that consciousness.

 

This expansion and contraction are not opposite principles. They are

not to be studied or even thought of in sequence. Evolution is

devolution. Creation is dissolution. Creativity is entropy. The

beginning is the end in any loop. And the universe is nothing if not

a loop. There is nothing in the universe that is not a loop, a

chakra, where one does not return to its origins.

 

To put if differently, whenever in nature one follows a direction of

any kind, one must also simultaneously follow in the opposite

direction to reach the distant goal as well as to reach the origins.

To reach the origin is to reach the most distant end. The ultimate

end is the very origin. The origin is the ultimate end. Creation

thereby becomes a process that leads to dissolution, and dissolution

becomes the process which thereby leads to creation. Thus a student

of Sri Vidya, a novice or one proficient in it, ceases to see

negations of anything; he sees positions as negations, negations as

positions. Not as opposite principles, but as a single composite

principle. Wherever he formerly saw opposite principles, he must now

see complementary composite principles. Therefore in a debate as to

whether X is the correct answer or its opposite, the minus-X or non-X

is the correct answer, the answer is in the composite of the X and

the non-X. I do not know if the mathematics has been developed to

follow through on this. I would say perhaps yes. The close

association of the 0 and 1 in the binary system may be an example of

this principles. For, it is the zero that gives value to a digit,

that often ascertains its value. It is in relation to a zero that we

often evaluate a digit.

 

Again, seeing the two opposites in one and the same, the ancient

texts say that from this great expansive self that is the

infinitesimally minute pinpoint of light, from this vast expansive

self, (tasmad va etasmad atmanah), which is the minutest,

infinitesimal pinpoint of light, there arises akasha, the energy that

is space, the light that is space. It is also the location of all

sound. Now on this basis, the ancient philosophers of Vaisheshika

figured out that because of this principle, when something falls

elsewhere, we hear its sound as a ripple, as a wave, over here in our

ears. In that energy, akasha occurs vayu the wind. From that vayu,

comes the fire, the light again, the visible lights of the world, the

fires that burn in the universe, such as in the interiors of the

suns, as well in the gems. Both are considered as a single principle.

Including the lights in between also, the lightnings and the fires we

burn with kindling. Then comes the state of flow, the waters; and

when the flow reaps its opposite principle of inertia, then comes

prithivi, the solid. Then further biological diversity occurs. The

process of dissolution, of course, is the reverse. The inner solids

begin to flow, the flows become fires, the fires become winds,

ripples in space, the space returns to that vast expansive conscious

self which is the infinitesimally minute pinpoint of light, the tejo-

bindu, the nada-bindu.

 

To comprehend this, one must go through the process of dhyana-bindu.

The point that is meditation; the point of concentration on the

principle of consciousness. So once again, the discussion as to

whether the universe is expanding and will keep on expanding and into

what it will keep on expanding, is invalid. The question itself is

untenable. Any argument, only based on that will ultimately be found

to be untenable because while the universe is expanding, it is

contracting. The akuñchana and prasarana that I spoke of earlier from

the Vaisheshika philosophers, are taking place simultaneously. While

it is expanding, it is returning into that pinpoint of light. It is

not that one process is the reverse of the other, but the two, what

appears to us to be two, is a single, composite process.

 

Thus, Sri Vidya begins where the current understanding of quantum

physics ends. It is the science of sciences, the mega-science.

Wherever there is a study of points, lines, configurations, graphs,

charts, it is part of Sri Vidya. Wherever we study forms as fields of

energy, it is Sri Vidya. But it is experienced only with the

assimilation of these principles into our consciousness; not in

intellectual process, but in our very being, in our very essence; so

that our essence is not seen apart from the ever expanding and

contracting universe. Therefore, Sri Vidya cannot be learned as a

series of drawings alone, the drawing of a yantra. It has to be

learned as concentration on the points within.

 

If you take diagrams of the chakras within our personality, and

superimpose them one upon the other, it becomes the internal Sri

Yantra. It is not by drawing on paper that one will learn Sri Yantra.

It is by doing the drawings within. That is why it is such a long

process. The mastery of the points and the expansions and

contractions can take a hundred lifetimes.

 

One one hand, Sri Vidya is a science of internal energy fields, where

all the fields become one composite field. This entire field is drawn

into a single pinpoint of concentration, the point becoming the

centre--not the centre of something--but of itself within itself, as

well as the point from which the expansion occurs. It is at these

points within the centres of the chakras that the forces in the

universe that have been ejected from the original point of light,

meet and merge in us. By entering into those points with our entire

mind and bursting through them like an atomic explosion do we thereby

become one with the expansion in the universe. That is called cosmic

consciousness, the awareness of virat, the vision that Krishna gave

to Arjuna, the vision that Yama granted to Nachiketas.

 

So, the entire science, for example, of the marmas in ayurveda is

part of Sri Vidya. Marmas are the points in the body where a little

pressure can cause an illness or death. Or a healing. Similar are the

points of acupuncture. They are all parts of Sri Vidya.

 

In the Tantras it is said that one cannot learn music without the

study of dance. One cannot learn dance without sculpture. One cannot

learn sculpture without architecture. One cannot learn architecture

without music. One cannot learn music without architecture. One

cannot learn architecture without sculpture. One cannot learn

sculpture without dance. One cannot learn dance without music. For

architecture is forms; it is solid music; music in solids; music

cubed. Music can be seen as graphs; arising and falling of lines and

energies. Make them into three dimensional solids, it becomes

architecture. The body of architecture is dance. The relationship of

dance and architecture is in sculpture. That is why some of the most

profound works of architecture in India were sculpted out of

mountains. One can still visit these two-story, three-story

monasteries simply sculpted out of the mountains without a single

piece of masonry in which the pillars constitute intricate dancing

figures as part of that sculpture.

 

This composite vision of art is part of Sri Vidya. And then one needs

to see the entire universe as architecture and God as the architect.

See the entire universe as music and dance, as we see in the dance of

Shiva. All that is part of Sri Vidya, it is a great, grand vision.

No, not vision. Not imagination. But, the image of reality.

 

Here I do not want to lead you into what again may be dismissed as

superstition. Tell me, how is it that, in all the cultures, the

benefits of so many herbs have been so accurately established? By

what trials, approved by what FDA, did the thousands of herbs of the

Indian pharmacopoeia become defined as suitable or unsuitable for

certain diseases and certain healing processes? I assure you that

that, too, is part of Sri Vidya. In fact, some of the herbs have been

identified as suitable for certain healing only by their shape, their

line drawing, pointing to the similarity of a certain organ. Now that

does not mean that if a leaf looks like a hand then it is good for

healing the hands. One has to go much deeper, one has to observe and

experiment.

 

The shapes of mountains, and their peaks, the apexes of the pyramids,

the spires of the churches, the shikharas of the temples of India,

all of these are line drawings of music, the lines along which the

energy of expansion and contraction flows in the universe.

 

Even the ordinary chessboard is a yantra, part of Sri Yantra. It is a

simplified bhu-pura, the earth-city, the earth as a city in which all

the patterns are taking place, divided into 64 subsquares. So also in

the tradition of yoga we speak of 64 yoginis, which are principles of

establishing relationships between squares and cubes. Establishing

relationships between arithmetical squares and cubes on one hand and

geometric squares and cubes on the other through the process of seed

mathematics is a part of understanding the mathematics of the

universe as architecture. The sanskrit word used also in the current,

modern Indian education system for algebra is bija ganita, seed

mathematics in which signs play a role like that of bija-mantras.

 

So, into how many areas can we enter, altogether, simultaneously, and

see the relationships? How is it that without the aid of the computer

in the ancient times one could figure out the number of rice grains?

One of the origins of the chessboard, is that a king offered to the

priest/mathematician as much rice as he wanted. The priest said: "Oh,

one grain of rice on one square of the chessboard, then double that

one on the second square, then double that on the third square, and

so on." The king could not fulfill the demand because the figure

reaches more than the amount of rice that can cover the whole earth.

Or even more than all the number of atoms in the universe. The game

of chess has more possible moves than all the atoms in the whole

universe. How were these calculations made? On a square board,

divided into 64, what is the relation between the four corners of the

square and the figure 64?

 

When you begin to see these relationships, then you immediately begin

to drop the relationships, because relationships are between two.

Until the number two is dropped, the unity will not be established.

Without that unity, the merger of consciousness into the pinpoint of

light will not occur. Until one sees it all into that single pinpoint

of light you will not understand that the universe actually is not

even expansion of the pinpoint of light, but rather replication, the

same point occurring again and again and again. The same one point.

And the point, having occurred so many times, having replicated

itself, identical to the very original pinpoint, becomes a light,

becomes a ray, becomes a line, becomes a ripple, becomes a figure.

 

In drawing the Sri Yantra within the human body also we go through

the same process that we understand in the drawing of Sri Yantra on a

wooden, copper, silver or golden squared board. The downward

expansion, the upward expansion. Contraction of forces into a point.

Expansion of forces from the point.

 

The 61-point exercise known to the practicing meditators, for

instance, simply delineates the periphery of the bhu-pura, of the

city that is the earth, the earth that is the city, which is the

body, in this particular case. And when you will see the

relationships among those 61 points, how many lines can one draw from

one point to the other 60 points? How can one connect those 61

points? Then the sadhaka is amazed at what fields of energy are

dancing within us. When one uses any of those 61 points as an entry

point into the linga, the subtle body, one finds that the awareness

will have to pass through certain central points, and from there

expand, to permeate the whole body. Here is a theory of personality

based on experiential epistemology that is yoga.

 

In preparing the personality to be seen by oneself as a Sri Yantra,

so that one may see the universe as a Sri Yantra, so that one can

understand these line drawings, one goes through the process of bhuta-

shuddhi, purification of the constituents of personality. And when

total purification is completed the personality becomes a Sri Yantra.

 

In drawing the internal Sri Yantra, one may take a chakra and may be

taught to draw its bhu-pura first, the boundary, the ramparts of this

citadel, of this particular city. Then he finds the entry point; then

find where the energy flows meet, and then swim along those flows of

energies coming to the central point. Or one may start from the point

and expand outwards to the ramparts, to the bhu-pura. Or one may see

the two processes as a singular process in a single instant. That is

why the phrase that the article I just read to you from Newsweek

touched me: "faster than an eyeblink." It said, "A kernel of cosmos

inflating so widely that, faster than an eyeblink, a blob smaller

than a proton grew as big as today's entire visible universe." I have

in my lectures on meditations from the Tantras spoken on unmesha and

nimesha. Now remember that the eyeblink is a measure of time in all

the Indo-aryan or Indo-European systems. Augenblick is a measure of

time in German, augenblickje in Dutch. The time it takes for the eye

to blink. In the blink of an eye. In the shortest possible moment.

The idea is derived from the unmesha and the nimesha. Unmesha, out-

blinking the eye. Nimesha, in-blinking the eye. This opening and

closing of eyelids.

 

yasonmesha-nimeshabhyam jagatah pralayodayau;

 

tam shakti-chakra-vidhava-prabhavam shankaram stumah

 

We adore Him,

 

The creator of Harmony and Peace,

 

The Origin of the diverse glories of the whirls (chakras) of energy,

 

The One by whose outblinking and inblinking

 

the creation and dissolution of the universe occur.

 

 

 

I. 1 in Spanda-nirnaya of Kshemaraja

 

2. A record cassette of the process of bhuta-shuddhi by Dr. Rajmani

Tigunait is available at the Himalayan Institute.

 

This is from one of the texts of Kashmir Shiva philosophy that

developed from the seventh century to the seventeenth century A.D.

and reigned supreme during that time. These texts, all say that

unmesha is nimesha; nimesha is unmesha. Out-blinking is in-blinking;

in-blinking is out-blinking. Opening the chakra means closing the

chakra. Drawing the chakra-world to its most central point is the

goal of such concentration. It is practiced so that what others call

expansion is understood to be expending, debilitating of energies in

pursuit of sensual desires. The sense thoughts and sense emotions

must cease and the principle of the conservation of energy be

followed, for the energy to be drawn to that central point from which

it ripples out as spanda, as a spontaneous vibration at all times.

 

Just as in the practice of internal concentrations in Sri Vidya, so

also in learning to draw the Sri Yantra there are two processes among

others. Drawing from the bhu-pura, from the ramparts, inwards. From

the ramparts inward to the central point, to the palace of the great

Mother. The opposite way, from the inner point outwards.

 

One of the branches of Sri Vidya is surya-vijñana, the solar science.

The solar science establishes a connection between the rays of the

mind and the rays that solidify to become forms. As a child I read an

article on surya-vijñana, on the solar science, in the yoga issue of

the well-known Hindi magazine known as Kalyana. The article was by

the then most famous scholar of Tantra, Gopinath Kaviraj. After fifty

years I found the book again in my library and I was surprised how

much of it I remembered. Because the article triggered something in

me as a child and ever since then I kept longing to meet a master who

would show me the solar rays of the mind.

 

If it were simply a matter of sitting down and drawing a diagram,

well, anybody can draw diagrams. I can draw a straight line, more or

less! I'm still learning to draw the line, learning to understand a

little of the triangles; how the triangles merge into the points and

how the points expand into triangles. The lines of energy that go

from one of the 61 points to all the other 60 and how they interlink:

I have quite yet to envision fully. My own perception is that one

cannot learn these sciences without 24-hour concentration. Take, for

example, the demonstrations of surya-vijñana, the solar science. The

writer of that article spoke of his guru who said that everything in

the universe is rays of energy. The mind also is a ray of energy or,

rays of energy emanate from the mind, and one connects these rays of

energy to produce any form. The Tantras say, sarvam sarvatmakam:

Everything is everything. Gold is lead, lead is oxygen, oxygen is

hydrogen, hydrogen is uranium. For, essentially, in their energy

essence, they are all one; it is only a matter of manipulating the

energies. The ancient alchemists of the West or the masters of al

kimia believed it to be so. "Al," which is the definitive article in

arabic, "kimia" from which the English word chemistry is derived.

Masters of al-kimia in the arabic civilization and the masters of

rasayana in India all spoke of the fire within everything. They

stated that if we can learn to manipulate the fire within everything

we can change anything into anything.

 

So, the master of solar science could, within the view of his

disciples, produce first a shimmer in the air. The shimmer becomes

delineated, the lines become form and there is a lotus flower. It was

demonstrated thus. Or look at it differently. We have spoken of light

and sound as one. My master Swami Rama speaks of the experiments they

made in the caves: spreading sandalwood powder on a square board and

producing sound vibrations in its presence by reciting a seed-mantra

in an appropriate notation of sound and music. They thereby simply

produced a Sri Yantra design in the sandalwood powder. Now, who among

us has such concentration of mind to produce the like result. We

don't even understand what we mean by rays of the mind, let alone

transmit them, and then have them connect with the rays which

solidify as forms.

 

Many cities in India have been built around Sri Yantra. There is a

book titled Hindu Temple by the famous scholar, late Stella

Kramrisch. It's a classic. A reading of this book would explain how

some of the great architectural wonders are built around partial

application of the Sri Yantra principle. So are the pyramids. When a

yantra takes a three-dimensional form, that form is then called a

meru. The meru is the central mountain of the universe. Since the

entry into the interior cave of personality for meditation was one

and the same principle as of finding a cave in a mountain for

meditation, the projection of this two-fold principle of entry into

the cave then became architecture. When you enter a temple or a

cathedral, you are entering the cave in the mountain, the cave of the

heart, the cave of the skull. Hence sometimes we refer to the skull

as a dome.

 

There are at least three cities in India named after Sri. The capital

of Kashmir, Sri Nagar. Another Sri Nagar is in the Garhwal Mountains,

which we pass when we go to the great shrines for pilgrimage. And,

one of the old cities where New Delhi--the capital of India--is

situated has an area even now known as Siri. Alas, time passed and

people stop being part of the energy field; they cease to identify

with the energy field of the city. The locations of the Sri Yantras

are lost. All kinds of dissentions among the people occur because the

field is destroyed; or it is warped by their dissentions.

 

One of the dimensions of Sri Vidya is to honor the Shakti principle

in living human beings, especially the recognition of this mother

Shakti principle in women. For women to see themselves as shakti, as

sacred energy, and for men to see women as embodiment, incarnation of

shakti. Shakti, the sacred energy of consciousness having become

flesh. What it means is brahmacharya, the practice of celibacy. Not

practice of celibacy as a psychologically-damaging suppression but an

assimilation of upward and inward energy. One who is initiated into

Sri Vidya at one time or another will slowly, naturally become

celibate because the habit of expending the energy of svadhishthana

chakra will be changed into expanding, that is contracting. Closing

the outward gates and opening the inward flood gates. In fact, one of

the symptoms of the opening of the second centre of consciousness is

natural celibacy. Synonymous with opening of the sixth centre. The

two are almost identical. So long as there remains in man a desire

for woman, in woman a desire for man, as principles exterior to them,

no celibacy can occur. It can only be a suppression and not a

solitude of serenity.

 

In certain Shakti temples in India once a month on the full moon the

worship of Sri in the form of a living lady is performed. She sits on

a seat of honor and receives the worship. The reader would

say, "What? I worship a human being, a lady?" It is not the worship

of a human being. I change the direction here a little. Sometimes

when I pay my respects to my master or address him the word that has

popped out of my mouth involuntarily has been 'mataji,' a respectful

way of addressing one's mother. The first time it occurred I

said, "Oh, excuse me, Swamiji," apologizing for my mistake. But he

said, "Oh, no, quite correct." Because one may worship the mother

principle even in a male body. People who have difficulty in seeing

the Mother Principle in women will have further difficulty in

understanding this form of the worship of God.

 

It cannot be understood intellectually. Either it occurs as an

assimilated internal principle or it doesn't occur at all. I have

observed that when such worship of the live Sri is performed, the

person in whom the Sri at that time is invoked and resides, changes.

A deification occurs. If Christ can be present in a piece of bread,

why can't shakti be present in a living woman? And be honored and

worshipped.

 

One might object: I do not want to deify a human being. But who am I

to deify a human being? Deifying means 'making into a deva, making

into divine.' It is not the worshipper who makes him divine. It is

not the worshipper who causes the consubstantiation or

transubstiation in the host to occur. It is the Grace that does it.

The person becomes deified by an internal presence. From that moment

the person has no personal name, no personal form. The worship is not

offered to the person of that name, shape and form but to the divine

principle that becomes manifest. I have seen that change occur. You

can see the stance; you can see the entire body undergo a

transformation; you can see the eyes and you know then that you are

not in the presence of a person. That some internal universal beauty

named Mother Lalita has come and taken abode to receive the

worshippers' offering. We call Her Tripura-sundari. Tri means three.

Pura means polis. Sundari beauty. The three Miss Universe! The Beauty

of the three universes. She comes and dwells there. It is the same as

the primary force of consciousness, as the lightning of all beings.

Sometimes this lightning becomes Shiva, or it becomes Shakti, and

emanates from you. You embrace your emanation and you say you have

married. This divine marriage into which a Christian monk enters, is

the same marriage which is the marriage of Shiva and Shakti, which is

the marriage of Krishna and Radha, which is the marriage of Rama and

Seeta, which is the marriage of you and your lightning.

 

In this interplay of the potent and the potency, the potent and the

potency become one. Hence the very first verse of Saundarya-lahari

celebrates the potent one joined by the potency.

 

In this internal marriage of the potent and the potency, the entire

dance of the universe takes place. The earth in the first chakra, the

waters in the second, the fires in the third, the winds in the

fourth, the space, akasha, in the fifth one; the mind in the sixth.

The Lord and the Lady in eternal embrace in the seventh. All presided

over by the great Sri or Lalita, the Principle of eternal beauty. Not

the beauty of forms but that principle, which dwelling within shapes

and forms, beautifies them from within, giving them balances,

harmonies and proportions. These emanating and reabsorbing forms

constantly interact in the Sri Yantra form of 43 triangles. Four

upward triangles, five downward triangles and konas, angles, take

shape. I have spoken of the process of five-fold devolution, space to

winds, to fires, to flows, to forms. These have their correspondences

in the five chakras. The Verse 14 of the Saundarya-lahari says that

the earth principle dwelling in the first centre has 56 rays

emanating; the flow principle in the second centre has 52 rays; the

ripples of winds principle dwelling in the heart centre has 54 rays;

the throat centre containing the akasha, the principle of sound and

space and their unity, has 72 rays; and the dwelling place of the

mind, the ajña chakra, has 64 rays emanating from it. "Above all of

these rays are thy two brilliant feet, Oh Mother"--says the verse.

 

So the question arises: where do I go from here? You contemplate

these principles. You create time for the contemplation of the

principles. Learn to change your vision of the relationships in the

universe. Vision, and sentiment, concerning the relationship between

men and women.

 

An average Nobel prize-winning philosopher of science even would be

hard-put to see these connections. He would say that it is a

hodgepodge of linguistic confusions. Now what is the relationship

between sub-atomic particles and expanding of the universe with the

worship of a woman in a temple, good God! He is likely to dismiss the

entire thinking process. I wish there could be a conference between

Western scientists and Eastern scientists. We could provide at least

theories to answer some of the problems in modern philosophy of

science. We could show how the consciousness dwelling in a pinpoint

of light within my heart centre is the same as the pinpoint of the

light of consciousness which exploded in a big bang and became the

mahanada, the megasound.

 

Stated above, there are two ways of looking at the Sri Yantra or at

any of the chakras within ourselves. Entering from the ramparts of

the earth city, the fortress built on the earth city, and then going

to occupy the central squares of the chessboard. Or expanding from

there outwards. The one and the other are not two processes but one.

That the expansion of the universe and its contraction and

dissolution into the central point of light is one and the same. So

that ultimately the two major systems of drawing the Sri Yantra also

must be assimilated. When they are assimilated, that is called the

samayachara. Where the guru's mind and the disciple's mind become

inseparable, the individual mind and the universal mind cannot be

delineated as separate, and the entire mind of the universe becomes

your mind--is called samayachara. I wish that we could elaborate on

these in a dialogue with the present-day philosophers of science.

 

Now again, to the question as to "Where do I go from Here?" Take time

for contemplation. Memorizing the whole of Saundarya-lahari and

reading a very poetic translation of it is not going to do it. There

is a very beautiful poetic translation of it by W. Norman Brown, a

very senior American sanskrit scholar who left his body some years

ago. But that will show you nothing. Contemplate. Deepen the

practice. Try to bring your meditation to a point. Your determination

to know should be just that, but no effort on your part is going to

open the portals of the bhu-pura, of the ramparts of the earth city.

That will happen only by grace, only by grace, "whomsoever he shall

choose, shall find"--says the Upanishad. You keep knocking, yes, but

there must be an element of self surrender and a decision in you that

you want to prepare yourself as much as possible. When your mind is

ready, there is no reason whatsoever that a master of Sri Vidya will

not introduce you to what you can grasp, learn, master. If you have

been given one verse of Saundarya-lahari to practice, then practice

it.

 

Keep looking for the central point within, that is the point from

which the universe is created, to which the universe is returning. It

is the point within your centre to which the universe is returning

through its expansion. It is this very point whose expansion is the

entire Sri Yantra, the yantras of all your chakras superimposed upon

one another, a single stem passing through them, becoming the

thousand-petaled sheltering tree in your skull. Even those thousand

petals must be dropped. There remains only a vertical line and that

vertical line contracts and becomes a point again. This constant

evolution-devolution, expansion-contraction, the merger in the unity

of centripetal and centrifugal, this expanding and expending goes on

constantly as a single process. Understand it. Observe it within.

Integrate it and remain true to your practice. Whatever you are

prepared for will definitely come to you.

 

 

 

3. To prepare for a study of Sri Vidya it is recommended to study the

following cassette courses of Usharbudh Arya:

 

1) Kundalini and Chakras,

 

2) Gayatri and Chakras,

 

3) Meditation from Tantras

 

available from Rishikesh Foundation, P.O. Box 279, Clarence, NY 14031.

[Guest guest]

, "omnagarajan" <omnagarajan> wrote:

> What is Sri Vidya?

> By Swami Veda Bharati

>

 

When you are quoting from a www site, it is better to give the URL of

the site and probably request the readers to go there and read it. If

I am not mistaken -- this article was referred to in the list

sometime in the past.

 

Just a suggestion.

 

 

Ravi