Only by practically touching the truth itself can liberation, bliss and the highest consciousness be won
>
> More than a decade later today, October 7, 2006 it is obvious that
> both Arwinder and Kash are talking about the "Beauty of the three-
> great-cities, penetrating without and within, (that) is
> resplendent, non-dual, self-subsisting." Only the Great Primordial
> Mother Shri Lalita Devi has the power to manifest this
> unfathomable Truth as She continues to ascend and penetrate into
> human consciousness.
>
> i wrote this post after downloading and listening to the recitation
> of Shri Lalata Sahasranama. It is available free of charge at:
> http://www.vedamantram.com/ Enjoy this beautiful Tamil recitation
> of the splendour and glory of Her praises in Silence.
>
> "The supreme divinity, Lalita, is one's own blissful Self." "She
> alone is Atman. Other than Her is untruth, non-self." - Always
> remember these priceless Truths daily for the rest of your lives
> and you are assured of moksa and immortality! What else is Self-
> realization other than realizing that Lalita is one's own blissful
> Self? And once She is realized within to be one's own blissful Self
> everything else is indeed untruth, non-self.
>
> Jai Shri Ganapathi,
>
>
> jagbir
>
"The supreme divinity, Lalita, is one's own blissful Self." -
Bhavana Upanishad 1.27
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/adishakti_sahaja_yoga/message/6781
"The expression, Shaktism is derived from the word "Shakti." The
word Shakti means "Power" both latent and manifest. When
personalised it means the Devi of Power; she is Devaa. The Devi
Shakti is the power aspect of the supreme spirit. The doctrines and
ritual of Shaktism are contained in a special branch of the holy
Scriptures of India, called Tantra Shastra, which acknowledges the
authority of the great Veda. "Veda" means the God inspired word
which has from the oldest times been the foundation of Indian
spiritual thought and culture; but it is not confined to what is
called the four Vedas. They are but parts of it and based on the one
Veda--for 'Vak' or 'Logos' is one.
Shaktism is an eminently practical religion. Practically the whole
content of its scriptures consists in rules and ritual by which the
higher realisation of the spiritual truth may be gained. This way of
personal spiritual attainment, or Yoga, which is known to all Indian
religions, is called in Shaktism, Sadhana. Very often the remark can
be found in the Tantrik texts that by merely pondering about the
husks of words nothing is done, i.e., mere book-knowledge is useless-
-but that only by practically touching the truth itself can
liberation, bliss and the highest consciousness be won.
This truth, to which Shaktism is devoted with all its energy, is
represented by the conception of the goddess Shakti. Such a
conception, that truth unveils itself spiritually in a female
aspect, can only be grasped with difficulty by the European mind.
The European mind is not accustomed to see differences between male
and female in the spiritual world, and finds them only as far as
physical sexual differences can still be discerned. But the idea of
a female quality of the spirit has always been known to the deeper
minds of humanity and stretches through the whole inner history of
culture. Leaving aside the cults of aboriginal tribes, animism,
etc., there may be mentioned, in addition to the Goddess Shakti of
Indian culture, the conception of Isis in the Egyptian religion, of
the figure Kwannon in China, the idea of Eve in Babylonian times and
many others leading up to that connected with the Madonna of the
Roman Catholic Church. Certainly there are very interesting and
important differences in all these great conception; but it would go
too far here to treat of this special subject. It is mentioned only
to show that female spirituality has always played an important role
in human thought.
The Goddess Shakti is the "power" which pervades the whole of the
universe, and from which the Universe has emanated. There is nothing
within the manifest world which is not Shakti in its essence. The
manifest world is mind and matter, that is to say, all that we call
our thought, will, imagination, etc. is mind, and all the realm of
nature is matter. She--in her highest aspect--is pure spirit or pure
consciousness -- as such she is called Chit-Shakti -- but her nature
and essence become apparent also in all that we are aware of through
our senses. So She is matter--substance too--and as such She is called Maya-Shakti. Here is no antagonism between the
spiritual and the natural sides of the universe, since she is both
of them."
Dr. Hans Koester
The Indian Religion of the Goddess Shakti
"In the primordial mysteries, the Feminine — whose nature we have
attempted to discern in the symbols and functions of its elementary
and transformative character — assumes a creative role and so
becomes the determining factor in early human culture. Whereas the
instinctual mysteries revolve around the central elements of the
life of woman — birth, menstruation, conception, pregnancy,
sexuality, climacteric, and death — the primordial mysteries project
a psychic symbolism upon the real world and so transform it.
The mysteries of the feminine may be divided into mysteries of
preservation, formation, nourishment, and transformation. . . At all
stages of the primordial mysteries it is the central symbol of their
realization. . . . The woman is the natural nourishing principle and
hence mistress of everything that implies nourishment. . . . Thus
the transformative character of the Feminine rises from the natural
to the spiritual plane. The culture-bringing primordial mysteries
ultimate in a spiritual reality that completes the mystery
character of the Feminine."
Erich Neumann, The Great Mother
"Shakti is the hidden power that turns matter into life. She is the
divine spark, the flow of God's love.
Anyone who is connected with spirit has Shakti, which manifests in
five ways that the God Herself manifests. (For the sake of
simplicity I will use the word God and apply feminine pronouns
whenever I have the goddess Shakti in mind.) As described in the
ancient Shiva Sutras — "teaching about Shiva" — these are five
powers:
Chitta Shakti: the awareness of God
Ananda Shakti: the bliss of God
Icha Shakti: the desire or intention to unite with God
Gyana Shakti: knowledge of God
Kriya Shakti: action directed toward God
If the voice of God spoke to you, Her powers would be conveyed in
simple, universal phrases:
Chitta Shakti: "I am."
Ananda Shakti: "I am blissful."
Icha Shakti: "I will" or "I intend."
Gyana Shakti: "I know."
Kriya Shakti: "I act."
If a child came to me and asked, "How did God make me?" these five
things would be my answer, because this is how God made Herself, or
at least made Herself known to us, and at each stage of giving birth
a new exclamation of discovery emerged. First She experienced
Herself as existence ("I am!"), then creative joy ("I am
blissful!"), pulsing desire ("I will!"), cosmic mind ("I know!"),
and finally the shaping force that molds all things ("I act!).
Because none of these except "I am" had ever existed before, each
came as a revelation.
All of these qualities have universal application . . . These five
powers form a cascade, spilling like water from unmanifest spirit to
the material world. Tagore employed almost the same analogy when he
poetically asked, "Where is this fountain that throws out these
flowers in such a ceaseless outbreak of ecstasy?" In one beautiful
line he states the mystery precisely. What is the origin of the
infinite display of nature's abundance? The flowers are outside, but
the fountain is inside, in divine essence. To realize this you must
become that fountain; you must have the assurance that the flow of
life can gush through your being at full force. This state of
connection is supreme existence. When you join the cosmic dance, the
powers of God as creator-mother fully infuse you."
Deepak Chopra, The Path of Love
"There are many indications now that women are beginning to get in
touch with their own fundamental nature in ways that have been
forbidden to them by patriarchal traditions, set up as the only
acceptable moral system several thousand years ago, which have kept
our civilization in thrall to a philosophy that derogates the
feminine and natural world. The remote, transcendent deity
postulated by Western culture has proved enormously violent in
all "his" incarnation from the warlike Old Testament Yahweh to the
familiar Christian deity of crusades, inquisitions, witch hunts, and
battlefield invocations the world over. Now there is a fast-
spreading tendency among women to reject this deity. Studies of the
doleful history of Western religious sexism have made it clear that
the God created in man's image has promoted more male cruelty toward
women than any other single cause."
Barbara G. Walker, Feminism and the Future
"The West is exiled of the Goddess — her features are unknown to us,
guessed at, hoped for, rejected as aberration, feared as monstrous
or deformed. We in the West are haunted by the loss of our Mother.
Our mother country is a place many have never visited, though it is
endlessly projected as a golden matriarchy, or paradise, but though
the house of the Goddess is in disrepair after so many centuries of
neglect, some have begun the work of restoration while others have
already moved back in and are renovating from within. . .
Sophia is the great lost Goddess who has remained intransigently
within orthodox spiritualities. She is veiled, blackened, denigrated
and ignored most of the time: or else she is exalted, hymned and
pedestalled as an allegorical abstraction of female divinity. She is
allowed to be a messenger, a mediator, a helper, a handmaid; she is
rarely allowed the privilege of being seen to be in charge, fully
self-possessed and creatively operative.
Sophia is the Goddess for our time. By discovering her, we will
discover ourselves and our real response to the idea of a Divine
Feminine principle. When that idea is triggered in common
consciousness, we will begin to see an upsurge of creative
spirituality which will sweep aside the outworn dogmas and unlivable
spiritual scenarios which many currently inhabit. When Sophia walks
among us again, the temple of each heart will be inspirited for she
will be able to make her home among us properly; up to now, she has
been sleeping rough in just about every spirituality you can
name. . . .
Yet the Goddess of Wisdom is not a newcomer to our phenomenal world,
so how is it we have failed to notice her? The Western world has
been so busy about its affairs that only a few unusual people have
had time to comment on her existence. When they have talked or
written about her, it has been in such overblown esoteric language
that few had taken notice. Wisdom trades under impossible titles:
Mother of the Philosophers, the Eternal Feminine, Queen of Good
Counsel and other such nominations do not inspire confidence. . . .
Frequently reduced to God’s secretary, who nevertheless still
supplies all the efficiency of the divine office, she is from all
time, the treasury of creation, the mistress of compassion.
When we speak of God, no one asks, ‘which God do you mean?’ as they
do when we speak of the Goddess. The West no longer speaks the
language of the Goddess, because the concept has been almost totally
erased from consciousness, although many are trying to remember it.
Our ancestors were very young when they were taken from the cradle
and it is now difficult for us, their descendants, to speak or think
of a feminine deity without the unease of someone in a foreign
country. We have been raised to think of Deity as masculine and
therefore a goddess is a shocking idea. But we do not speak here of
a goddess, rather of the Goddess, and we speak it boldly and with
growing confidence, because we find we like the taste of the idea.
When did we make up this idea? some ask. We didn’t invent this
Goddess. She was always there, from the beginning, we tell them.
Somehow, humanity left home and forgot its mother. Perhaps our
ancestors took her for granted so much that they lost touch? Well,
our generation wants to come back home now and be part of the family
in a more loving way, because the West has still got a lot of
growing up to do and the Goddess has a lot to teach us.
What or who is the Goddess then? Deity is like colourless light,
which can be endlessly refractured through different prisms to
create different colours. As the poet William Blake said: ‘All
deities reside in the human breast.’ The images and metaphors which
we use to describe deity often reflect the kind of society and
culture within which we have grown up. After two thousand years of
masculine images, the time of Goddess reclamation has arrived. The
Goddess is just as much Deity as Jesus, or Allah, or Jehovah. She
does not choose to appear under one monolithic shape, however. Each
person has a physical mother; similarly, the freedom of the Divine
Feminine to manifest in ways appropriate to each individual has
meant that she has many appearances.
The re-emergence of the Divine feminine — the Goddess — in the
twentieth century has begun to break down the conceptual barriers
erected by orthodox religion and social conservatism. For the first
time in two millennia, the idea of a Goddess as the central pivot of
creation is finding a welcome response. The reasons are not
difficult to seek: our technological world with its pollution and
imbalanced ecology has brought our planet face to face with its own
mortality; our insistence on the transcendence of Deity and the
desacralization of the body and the evidence of the senses threatens
to exile us from our planet.
The Goddess appears as a corrective to this world problems on many
levels. In past ages she has been venerated as the World-Soul or
spirit of the planet as well as Mother of the Earth. Her wisdom
offers a better quality of life, based on balanced nurturing of both
body and spirit, as well as satisfaction of the psyche. But we live
in a world in which the Goddess does not exist, for a vast majority
of people. They have no concept of a Deity as feminine. As Bede
Griffiths has recently written: ‘The feminine aspect of God as
immanent in creation, pervading and penetrating all things, though
found in the Book of Wisdom, has almost been forgotten . . . The
Asian religions with their clear recognition of the feminine aspect
of God and of the power of God, the divine shakti permeating the
universe, may help us to get a more balanced view of the created
process. Today we are beginning to discover that the earth is a
living being, a Mother who nourishes us and of whose body we are
members.’ . . .
Significantly, the major mystics of all faiths have perceived Sophia
as the bridge between everyday life and the world of the eternal,
often entering into deep accord with her purpose. But though such
mystics as the medieval Abbeses Hildegard of Bingen or the Sufi, Ibn
Arabi, are hardly considered to be ‘Goddess-worshippers’ in the
feminist sense, they nevertheless show that the channels of the
Divine Feminine have been kept open and mediated upon by many so-
called patriarchal faiths."
Caitlín Matthews, Sophia: Goddess of Wisdom
(C. Matthews, Sophia: Goddess of Wisdom, The Aquarian Press, 1992, p. 5-9.)
"The supreme divinity, Lalita, is one's own blissful Self."
~Bhavana Upanishad 1.27
"This primeval power is Tripura,
The supreme sovereign, Tripura;
Goddess great with ear-rings adorned
In sphere of fire abiding."
~Tripura Tapini Upanishad 1.9
"She alone is Atman. Other than Her is untruth, non-self. Hence is
She Brahman-Consciousness, free from (even) a tinge of being and non-
being. She is the Science of Consciousness, non-dual Brahman
Consciousness, a wave of Being-Consciousness-Bliss. The Beauty of
the three-great-cities, penetrating without and within, is
resplendent, non-dual, self-subsisting. What is, is pure Being; what
shines is pure Consciousness; what is dear is Bliss. So here is the
Maha-Tripura-Sundari who assumes all forms. You and I and all the
world and all divinities and all besides are the Maha-Tripura-
Sundari. The sole Truth is the thing named `the Beautiful'. It is
the non-dual, integral, supreme Brahman."
~Bahvricha Upanishad 1.5
------------------------------
Mahavakyas, or Great Sayings, of the Upanishads
Prepared by Jayaram Srinivasan
Prajnanam Brahma - Consciousness is Brahman
(Aitareya Upanishad 3.3, of Rg Veda)
Ayam Atma Brahma - This Self is Brahman
(Mandukya Upanishad 1.2, of Atharva Veda)
Tat Tvam Asi - Thou art that
(Chandogya Upanishad 6.8.7, of Sama Veda, Kaivalya Upanishad)
Aham Brahmasmi - I am Brahman
(Brhadaranyaka Upanishad 1.4.10, of Yajur Veda, Mahanarayana
Upanishad)
------------------------------
Prajnanam Brahma - Consciousness is Brahman
(Aitareya Upanishad 3.3, of Rg Veda)
Other Translations: Brahman is pure consciousness; Brahman is
knowing; Brahman is intelligence
In the sentence, `Prajnanam Brahma' or Consciousness is Brahman, a
definition of Reality is given. The best definition of Brahman
would be to give expression to its supra-essential essence, and not
to describe it with reference to accidental attributes, such as
creatorship etc. That which is ultimately responsible for all our
sensory activities, as seeing, hearing, etc., is Consciousness.
Though Consciousness does not directly see or hear, it is impossible
to have these sensory operations without it. Hence it should be
considered as the final meaning of our mental and physical
activities. Brahman is that which is Absolute, fills all space, is
complete in itself, to which there is no second, and which is
continuously present in everything, from the creator down to the
lowest of matter. It, being everywhere, is also in each and every
individual. This is the meaning of Prajnanam Brahma occurring in
the Aitareya Upanishad.**
------------------------------
Ayam Atma Brahma - This Self is Brahman
(Mandukya Upanishad 1.2, of Atharva Veda)
Other Translations: Brahman is this Self; This Self is Brahma
The Mahavakya, `Ayam Atma Brahma' or `This Self is Brahman,' occurs
in the Mandukya Upanishad. `Ayam' means `this,' and here `thisness'
refers to the self-luminous and non-mediate nature of the Self,
which is internal to everything, from the Ahamkara or ego down to
the physical body. This Self is Brahman, which is the substance out
of which all things are really made. That which is everywhere, is
also within us, and what is within us is everywhere. This is
called `Brahman,' because it is plenum, fills all space, expands
into all existence, and is vast beyond all measure of perception or
knowledge. On account of self-luminosity, non-relativity and
universality, Atman and Brahman are the same. This identification
of the Self with Absolute is not any act of bringing together two
differing natures, but is an affirmation that absoluteness or
universality includes everything, and there is nothing outside it.**
------------------------------
Tat Tvam Asi - Thou art that
(Chandogya Upanishad 6.8.7, of Sama Veda, Kaivalya Upanishad)
Other Translations: That is how you are; That art thou
In the Chandogya Upanishad occurs the Mahavakya, `Tat Tvam Asi'
or `That thou art.' Sage Uddalaka mentions this nine times, while
instructing his disciple Svetaketu in the nature of Reality. That
which is one alone without a second, without name and form, and
which existed before creation, as well as after creation, as pure
Existence alone, is what is referred to as Tat or That, in this
sentence. The term Tvam stands for that which is in the innermost
recesses of the student or the aspirant, but which is transcendent
to the intellect, mind, senses, etc., and is the real 'I' of the
student addressed in the teaching. The union of Tat and Tvam is by
the term Asi or are. That Reality is remote is a misconception,
which is removed by the instruction that it is within one's own
self. The erroneous notion that the Self is limited is dispelled by
the instruction that it is the same as Reality.**
------------------------------
Aham Brahmasmi - I am Brahman.
(Brhadaranyaka Upanishad 1.4.10, of Yajur Veda, Mahanarayana
Upanishad)
In the sentence, `Aham Brahmasmi,' or I am Brahman, the `I' is that
which is the One Witnessing Consciousness, standing apart form even
the intellect, different from the ego-principle, and shining through
every act of thinking, feeling, etc. This Witness-Consciousness,
being the same in all, is universal, and cannot be distinguished
from Brahman, which is the Absolute. Hence the essential `I' which
is full, super-rational and resplendent, should be the same as
Brahman. This is not the identification of the limited
individual `I' with Brahman, but it is the Universal Substratum of
individuality that is asserted to be what it is. The copula `am'
does not signify any empirical relation between two entities, but
affirms the non-duality of essence. This dictum is from the
Brhadaranyaka Upanishad.**
** Excerpted from: Swami Krishnananda, The Philosophy of the
Panchadasi, "Chapter V: Discrimination of the Mahavakyas," The
Divine Life Society, Sivananda Ashram, Rishikesh, India.
http://www.jayarams.com/dharma/mahavakyas.html
------------------------------
AHAM BRAHMA ASMI
Aham Brahma asmi or "I am the Brahman" is one of the corner piller
of the hindu Philosophy.
A crude transilation would be "I am the world" (or I am the creator
of the world"), As there is no world (My world) with out me, I am
the one who creates my world, the good the bd, the relations in it,
the happiness in it the sorrow in it, so I am the god of my world.
Max Muller makes it more explicit when he says: If people conceive
God as a kind of Jupiter, or even as a Jehovah, then the idea can
only be considered blasphemous… But after the Deity had been freed
from its mythological character, the human mind, whether in India or
elsewhere, had once realised the fact, that God was all in all, that
there could be nothing besides God, that there could be one Infinite
only, not two, the conclusion that the human soul also belonged to
God was inevitable.
TAT TWAM ASI
Tat Tvam Asi, a sanskrit sentence, translating variously to "Thou
art that", "That thou art", or "You are that", is one of the four
Mahâvâkyas (Grand Pronouncements) in Hinduism. It originally occurs
in the Chandogya Upanishad. It first occurs in Chandogya 6.8.7, in
the dialogue between Uddâlaka and his son Úvetaketu; it appears at
the end of a section, and is repeated at the end of the subsequent
sections as a refrain. It is generally taken to mean that your soul
or consciousness is wholly or partially the Ultimate Reality. That
is to say, even before the creation of the universe, a unitary,
divine consciousness existed, and that this consciousness is
identical to your deepest self.
Archives of FAQs and Articles on Shakti/Last Judgment/Qiyamah
Homepage
