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-worshipers' 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.”
Caitln 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
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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)
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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.**
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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 athis Self is Brahman,' occurs in the Mandukya Upanishad. 'Ayam' means athis,' and here athisness' 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.**
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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, atat Tvam Asi' or athat 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.**
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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
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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 Mahavakyas (Grand Pronouncements) in Hinduism. It originally occurs in the Chandogya Upanishad. It first occurs in Chandogya 6.8.7, in the dialogue between Uddalaka and his son vetaketu; 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.
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