Source SLP2
.
Source SLP2 is manuscript in the hand of Patrick Misson.
It is undated, probably from 1972.


PAGES 1 TO 30 - SLP2 deals mainly with the Guru's commentary on Kandukavati.
Mainly dictated by the Guru for presentation at one of the World Conferences for Unitive Understanding, in 1971 or 1972.
Source begins on page 4 with a loose leaf numbered (line) 58, inserted here in the text at the commentary to that line.


CONTENTS


P4 to P30 Kandukavati, from Dasakumaracarita


SLP2 - P4




AUTHORITATIVE SOURCES OF VEDANTA ARE:
The Upanishads,
The Bhagavad Gita,
Sankara,
Kalidasa,
Narayana Guru,
Nataraja Guru.
Structuralism is found explicitly or implicitly in all of these.
Nataraja Guru: "My task in life is this structuralism"


Here we have a structural view of Beauty, which is the subject matter of aesthetics.
Here we have a woman, a dancing girl.
"THE DANCING GIRL IS THE SECRET OF ALL INDIAN SPIRITUALITY": NATARAJA GURU.
There are dancing girls represented on the floor of Mukambika Devi temple.


A WOMAN IS A COMPLETE PSYCHE.


"THE PROPER STUDY OF MANKIND IS WOMAN" : NATARAJA GURU.
BIOLOGICALLY, THE FEMALE IS THE TYPE, THE MALE A VARIATION OF THE TYPE.


ALL AESTHETICS IS EROTIC.


Here, the ideogram of the dancing girl is used to represent Absolute Beauty.
Beneath the linear description, there is a structural secret hidden.
Why bother to find the structure? Because it works.
It is a tool that can explain Aesthetics coherently.
The same applies to the other subjects of this Conference (Education, Ethics, Geo-Politics, etc.)
If we were given a better tool, we would use it, but we have not found one.


Structuralism is found explicitly or implicitly in all the Shastras (authoritative texts) of Vedanta:
In the Mandukya Upanishad it is stated: "Ayam atma chatushpad ":
"I am the four-limbed Absolute".
The structuralism is explicit in the Bhana Darsanam of the Darsana Mala, where the four types of consciousness are referred to as the concrete, subtle, causal and Absolute.
Here, we are applying it because it tells us something about Beauty.


SLP2 - P5


KANDUKAVATI
The ball represents the consciousness of the girl
- she plays with the ball, or the ball plays with her.
Parity, reciprocity, complementarity, compensation and cancellability
are various relationships possible between two factors.


SLP2 - P2


Beauty becomes overwhelming when two beauties meet from different sides and cancel out.
Beauty emerges from the cancellation of two factors.
"Reach out to the beauty that is within you": Nataraja Guru.
This is the attitude of Advaita Vedanta.


SLP2 - P6


Sankara, in the Saundarya Lahari, describes the cancellation of a magenta dawn on the numerator side with the denominator magenta of a lotus, the result being Absolute Beauty.
Beauty could be described as two things saying the same thing from different angles.
If you watch a boy bouncing a ball, the ball jumps and the boy jumps to meet it - the ball bounces like the boy and vice-versa.
This could be described as reciprocity.


SLP2 - P7


Tantra glorifies the beauty inside you by describing it in terms of chakras, mandalas or adharas: these are all points of cancellation on a vertical axis.
Beauty consists of analogies between the beauty felt inside you and the beauty felt outside.
The girl and the ball represent the subject and object of the situation.
The ball represents Eros, known as Ananga, the limbless one, in Sanskrit;
or, more concretely, her lover who is watching her dance.
The girl is the lover playing with the ball, or the ball is her lover playing with the girl.
Finally, the ball is the non-Self and the girl is the Self: subject and object become interchangeable.
This could be considered as the essence of mysticism.


SLP2 - P8


Fill your mind completely with overwhelming Absolute Beauty and you are a mystic.
Inner space and outer space meet and cancel out as do Parvati and Parvata, Shiva and Shakti as verticalized elementals on the vertical axis.
We could keep in mind Bergson's image of a tailor cutting the horizontal piece of cloth and stitching it onto a vertical dummy to make a jacket.
A similar process operates here upon ontological or horizontal beauty factors.


The colour of the Goddess Uma's cheeks are compared to Himalayan sunsets.
Uma is that which is not Shiva, that is, a negative or horizontal beauty factor.
She represents residual beauty distilled from the ontological side of the universe.
She is named Uma when her mother cries out. "O do not ("u-ma") practise penance!" in the Kumarasambhava of Kalidasa.
That is: beauty has to be built up from the negative side and not brought down as in acts of penance.


SLP2 - P10


COMMENTARY
.
Line 1
"Jewelled seat" - The girl is seated on a jewelled throne in the Durga temple.
Her parent's palace from which she has come, and her prospective lover could be imagined as horizontal counterparts in this image which recalls the Devi seated on a couch of Shiva form on a pearly-gem island in VERSE 8 of the Saundarya Lahari, where there is also a mandala-like structure similar to the palace in this line.

Lines 2, 3, 4
"Neither anyone else could see her in the interval of her leaving her seat and entering my heart"
The girl enters her lover's heart, in other words, beauty should be experienced inside.
Objectivity and subjectivity come together in the appreciation of beauty.
The context is eroticism AND ALL APPRECIATION OF BEAUTY AND ALL MYSTICISM IS EROTIC.
What is inside you, verticalized, is outside you horizontalized, the two cancel out as subject and object.
In Vedanta, the tri-basic prejudice of knowledge, knower and known
is cancelled by self-awareness.
This cancellation is instantaneous, and not a progressive development
- thus the girl is seen between the seat and her lover's heart.
Beauty is a wonder, and a wonder bursts into the mind suddenly.
Similarly, the sexual impulse in man is something sudden and violent.


Lines 6, 7
"Is she Lakshmi....is a lotus."
God could be called good, or else he could be called goodness itself.
Similarly, in the Malavikagnimitra of Kalidasa, Malavika is described as "dance itself", by her teacher.
Lakshmi is a predicative goddess, she is "like a lotus"
- a Sanskrit ideogram for beauty
"....while the girl is a lotus (or beauty) itself."



Lines 8, 9, 10 -
"Lakshmi was enjoyed.....fresh and untainted."
She is innocent, like Shakuntala, who is embarrassed by her friend's reference to her breasts.
The innocence of a young girl is the closest you can get to the Absolute,
her eroticism is unconscious, like that of the forest nymphs
"..with startled, gentle, wild-deer eyes." of Verse 18 of the Saundarya Lahari.



Lines 11, 12
"While I was thinking.....curly hair waved"


SLP2 - P13


The intellectual desire for the Absolute is not enough.
The intellectual must cancel out with the emotional.
Her wavy hair on the Numerator side has its denominator counterpart in the tips of her fingers touching the earth.



Lines 13, 14, 15
"Took the ball.....passion."
The ball is the "limbless" Eros (Ananga) and the red patches on a darker ground could represent the black or dark blue from the numerator side, which, combined with the red of the denominator, make the magenta which, in the Saundarya Lahari, represent the cancellation of Absolute Beauty.


SLP2 - P14


Aruna (magenta) and Karuna (compassion)
between them are all the message of the Saundarya Lahari.


Line 17
"Thumb drawn in and delicate fingers spread out"
This suggests again the analogy with a lotus, indicated above.


Line 18
"Back part of the hand"
The hand is now right side up, now upside down, suggesting an alternating or oscillating movement as in a figure-eight.



Line 20
" Unsteady glances like a bunch of flowers full of swarms of bees"
The flickering of the dancing girl's eyes are compared to the movements of bees amongst flowers. The attraction of bees to flowers is constantly used in Sanskrit poetry to represent desire, as in the flowery bow and bumble-bee bowstring of Eros in Verse 6 of the Saundarya Lahari may be called to mind, representing as it does attraction along a horizontal axis with an intermediate zone between.


SLP2 - P16


The analogy of the eyebrows and the bow is found in Verse 47 of the Saundarya Lahari:


"And thus, with eyebrows somewhat arched, with eyes of bee-like beauty below, I do surmise them as making up the bow-string for this bow of the lord of love, held by his other hand, his arm and fist hiding the middle part"


Lines 21, 22, 23
" Striking it....for the motion of the ball"
The law of reciprocity is seen operating here as she strikes it hard or softly as it comes alternately with the right and left hand.
"What is on the right hand must become left, and what is above, below"
She strikes the ball without mercy, the Purushika in Verse 7 of the Saundarya Lahari is the terrible or violent side of a woman - here, the dancer is in the Kali temple - she is also Kali.
(See Max Planck's H - the force which keeps the universe together
- the energy released when an electron jumps out of orbit is a constant)


SLP2 - P17


Lines 29, 30
" She struck...musical leap"
The "musical leap" referred to is a technical term for a dance step involving springing forward ten steps to catch the ball.
This can be contrasted with the step called churnapada or "powder-legs", which describes a rapid motion of the legs as she moves back to catch the ball. This would be gravitational, while the leap was anti-gravitational; the two being positive and negative counterparts on the vertical axis.
The upward leap indicates the active inner agony of meditation, which is as important as its negative counterpart.
Finally, she brings the ball back to its point of departure.


SLP2 - P18


Lines 36, 37
"Cheeks thrilling....through joy."
The lover experiences his hair standing on end, as attributed to the Devi's neck compared to a lotus stalk in the Saundarya Lahari, or even to Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita, as a sign of intense erotic or mystical experience.
The appreciation of beauty involves a participation or identification with it.



Lines 38, 39
" cast a side-glance....first time."
She casts a side-glance at him, moved for the first time by love,
his confidence in Koshadasa grows at that very moment.
A reciprocity or ambivalence is again seen to be operating here.


SLP2 - P19


Lines 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46
"Repelled the bees.....tender sprouts"
Her face is compared to a lotus and her breathing to rays resembling sprigs of flowers.
Horizontally the bees trouble her, vertically she herself is the bees.
An equation is made between herself, like a flower, and the bees which are attracted to her.


SLP2 - P20


Lines 46, 47, 48
"As she moved.....flowery cage" Made shy by the looks of her lover, she makes the ball describe a mandala-like structure in which she hides.
She is alternately attracting and repelling him.



Lines 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54
"When giving....in the clouds"
The ball, flower-like, has described a cage, here it becomes the five flowery arrows of the five senses (see the Saundarya Lahari Verse 6) which she strikes back from within the cage.


While she does this with her hands, however, she makes forked movements with her legs "which indicate the graces of love", a certain ambiguity or hesitation being indicated.
Toenails are compared to arrowheads in the Saundarya Lahari.


SLP2 - P21


The flash of lightning, in which terms mystical experiences or falling in love are both described, reveals the redness of the clouds, as the movement of her legs reveals the erotic element on the negative side.
Eros hides in the Devi's legs, as described in the Saundarya Lahari (Verse 76).
Lightning is a vertical phenomenon forming a parameter uniting positive and negative poles.



Lines 55, 56, 57, 58
" Thus the princess....of her feet"
The girl performs a series of motions which together should express the nine rasas or moods which the dancer is supposed to evoke.
This is also evoked in the Saundarya Lahari .
The rasas, and her movements could form a series of vari-coloured rays extending in a semicircle above the horizon as from a setting sun with its varied colours.


Addendum to P22
In Verse 7 of the Saundarya Lahari we again find close parallels.
Her belt has jewels as well as bells - sound and light alternate or interact like a stroboscope : more light - more sound, or alternatively, less of one, more of the other.
The breasts of the Purushika are like the frontal bulges of a calf elephant on the Numerator,
on the Denominator they are a mother's breasts.
Her bending and stretching makes sinus curves like the elephant's trunk.
Purushika has a bow and arrow, noose and goad.
The whole forms a schematic whole reminiscent of the Sri Chakra
(see S-Lahari, Verse 11).
She alternately urges the elephant (which corresponds to Space, while she is Time) forward with the goad, or restrains it with the noose.
The dancing girl is doing the same with the ball.
She is also doing the same with her lover, glancing at him and retreating into a flowery cage.
The bow of flowers, with its string of bees attracted to the flowers,
is alternately separating when drawn, then coming together when loosed.
She shoots arrows, which is repelling someone, but they are sugar cane and thus sweet or attracting.
Ambivalence is present here.


Line 58, continued -
"Jingled in consonance" (see S-Lahari, Verse 7)
The bells encircling her waist could be envisaged as jingling by ringing one against the other and also as jingling internally with small tongues of metal. This could be seen to be similar to the lotus in the hand of Lakshmi, and the hand of the dancing girl being itself a lotus, as referred to in lines 6 and 7 above.



Line 59
"Her lower lip...or other."
Her smile for no particular reason indicates the element of joy inherent in the Absolute.
There is no such thing as a sad Absolute.


SLP2 - P23


Line 61
"Dishevelled tresses"
Her disordered hair could be a counterpart to the rapid movements of her feet
- filling the hypostatic space above and cancelling that below.



Lines 62, 63
"Jewelled bells struck against each other"
On the horizontal perimeter there is conflict or impenetrability between the bells, they are not self-sufficient.



Lines 64, 65
"Fluttering....posterior"
Her buttocks are projecting horizontally, they are not to be rejected in a picture of all-inclusive beauty.
Their solidity contrasts with the light silk covering them, implying a correspondance with the solid breasts above.


SLP2 - P25


Lines 66, 67
" Now drawn in... now stretched out, now tossed about."
An alternation or fluctuation as in a figure-eight is depicted here;
this might be seen as taking place between the actual and the virtual and between the fields of cosmology and psychology which have to be brought together in the context of Absolute Beauty.

.



Line 68
"Waving ringlets"
Her tenuous hair forms sinus curves above, corresponding to the curves of her legs below.



Lines 69, 70
"ear ornaments"
The curves of her movements are repeated by the two circles of her ear-rings,
not interrupting, but enhancing the other dynamism.
There is soft and erotic flesh on the one hand - precious metals and jewels on the other.



Lines 73, 74
"her mid portion....view"
Absolute truth as represented by the cancellation at her mid-portion,
with the navel at the O point has an ambivalent quality, now visible, now invisible.
A woman's body is to be represented by two cones or triangles meeting with their apexes at the waist which is so thin as to be almost not there.
Reference could be made to the precarious vacuity of the Devi's waist in Verse 79 of the Saundarya Lahari :
"On the point of breaking, equal in state to a tree on a collapsing brook-bank."


Lines 75, 76
"Pearl necklace tossed"
The movement of the necklace is a sinus curve on the vertical axis, as are the earrings on the horizontal axis.
- a similar image is used in Kalidasa's Raghuvamsa ( Ch.6, V12-19), when the Kings make erotic gestures)


SLP2 - P28


Lines 76, 77, 78, 79
" Gentle breeze.....perspiration."
The sprouts of leaves or flowers in her ears correspond to the leafy decoration of her cheeks, as the ear ornaments of the Devi in Verse 59 of the Saundarya Lahari are reflected in her cheeks.
Virtual and actual factors meet here.
The breeze caused by the sprouts is horizontal, drying up or interacting with the perspiration descending down her cheeks, caused by fatigue coming from the negative side, or Alpha point.


SLP2 - P29


Lines 80, 81
"Her tender hands....breasts"
Her breasts protrude horizontally and are covered by her tender hand.
Her modesty is vertical.
Her bulging horizontal breasts are the numerator counterpart of her equally ponderous buttocks.



Lines 81, 82
"Having struck...more than one"
Vertically there is one ball
Horizontally there are many balls between heaven and earth.



Line 86
She bows to the Goddess at the close as at the beginning of her
dance, touching the negative starting point.


SLP2 - P30


Lines 87, 88, 89
She is followed to her residence by her lover's mind and sends back to him an arrow-like glance.



Lines 90, 91, 92, 93
The reciprocal exchange above is repeated, as in the movements of the ball.
Love is vertical, affection is horizontal.