SAUNDARYA LAHARI

.
SOURCE G1
From Printed article in "Values" magazine.
"Intimate meditations". (Partly written by the Guru himself - not student notes. Some passages are additions dictated by the Guru. ED)
(Starts in middle of page)


CONTENTS:
.
P1 to P97 - VERSE 1 to VERSE 15


P1- Verse 1


P10- Verse 2


P18- Verse 3


P21- Verse 4


P25- Verse 5


P28- Verse 6


P30- Verse 7


P34- Verse 10, 11


P35- Verse 8


P47- Verses 2-10


P49- Verse 9


P56- Verses 10 and 11


P59- Verse 10


P61- Verse 11


P63- Verse 12


P64- Verse 11 and 12


P67- Verse 11 and 7


P68- Verse 10 and 11


P71- Verse 12


P78- Verse13


P82- Verse 14


P92- Verse 15



SLG1 - P1


VERSE 1

Their paintings, some of which I also saw, were of a non-
representational kind where the human form, when faintly
present, blended with geometric patterns and cancelled out with
them in glorious symmetrical designs of colour and form.
I at once thought of the possibilities of a colour language to serve
as a "Lingua Mystica" proto-linguistically, to explain the verses
of the Saundarya Lahari (the Upsurging Billow of Beauty) of
Sankaracharya, whose cryptic verses had recently intrigued me
highly and lured me towards attempting a structural analysis of
this much misunderstood yet truly Vedantic text, hitherto lost to
the pseudo-scientific esoterics of Tantrism and the Shakti cult of
post-Buddhist decadent India.


Further scrutiny of about forty verses with comparative study of
interpretations by scholars, including the verse translation of
the same by the famous Kumaran Asan, has convinced me that all of
them have fallen short of a truly critical estimate of this
masterpiece. Sankara himself must have thought in terms of a
structuralism then understood, belonging to the Tantra and shaktya
background, whose remnants still persist as remains of past
culture both in Kerala as well as in Bengal at the present day.
This stratum with its precious esoterics has been more or less
overcovered by other debris accumulated and deposited in other
parts of India, where the chequered rule of emperors and kings or
chieftains, with greater or lesser Muslim permeation, has
succeeded in covering up even the outcrops of this stratum.


SLG1 - P2


The Tantra school has its proto-linguistic traditions. The Mother
Goddess is also a favourite in the esoterics of Yoga. Thus we
touch here a rich deposit of ancient wisdom of rare beauty and
quality. Proto-linguistic speculation excels itself here.
Having thus struck upon a rich vein of treasure trove, I have been
directing my interest in scrutinising and analysing some of the
verses structurally. Even the title has been intriguing and
elusive enough to attract my interest. The word "Saundarya-
Lahari" which is the title of these hundred verses in classical
Sanskrit, suggests both the intoxication arising from beauty as
well as a general overwhelming upsurge of the aesthetic sense in
the contemplation of the Absolute Self. This aesthetic
sense, arising out of the Supreme Bliss-Value, is of the essence of
the emotional content of the Absolute. Ethics, aesthetics and
penetrating metaphysical analysis meet here in the upsurging of
the sense of beauty within the contemplative as understood
by Sankara.


In this composition Sankara proves to be fully absolved from the
possible charge as a dry-as -dust philosopher, with which
appellation he is associated in the popular mind because of the
exegetics and logistics in which he indulges in most of his
commentaries.


Although Shakti - Tantrism is the evidently assumed background of
the composition before us, there is unmistakable internal evidence
to suggest that Sankara, the well-known Advaitin, is its author.
His seal can be discovered as imprinted on every verse by the
clear absolutism revealed and by the classical finish of the
verses, as inimitable as in the case of Kalidasa. In order to give
the reader just a foretaste of the delicacies and delights of
this composition from a master philosopher and dialectician, we
translate here the first verse of this series.


If Shiva should, only when united with Shakti,
Get the power to manifest in becoming;
If again, without such, he has no ability even to pulsate,
How then could one of unaccomplished merits
Have the privilege of bowing to or even to praise
One such as You, adored even by Hari, Hara, Virincha and others.


SLG1 - P3


Here we have more than one rhetorical question by which Sankara
fulfils the conventional requirement of adoration of a deity.
As an Advaita Vedantin, his praise has necessarily to refer to no
other high value than the Absolute. The Upanishadic way does not
give primacy to ritualistic or meritorious works for
emancipation. The structural and literary requirements of the
Vedic context are however retained for linguistic purposes
here, as useful for a negative way by default rather than by open
obligation for direct worship or praise of a single goddess or
deity.


The goddess here belongs to the context of Brahman
(the Absolute). This and every other verse of the series, approaches
the advaita by the negative way of omission rather than
recommending adoration of Parvati or Shakti as the followers of
the Tantra school, more properly so called, might do. The Tantra
background, however, is seen here to be taken advantage of and
adapted to serve the requirements of the highly suggestive and
structural language proper to the "Lingua Mystica" of Vedanta.


In the last line, reference is made to the triple gods
Vishnu, Shiva and Brahma who have the functions of
preservation, destruction and creation respectively in the
theological and mythological context of Hinduism. He implies here
that as a devotee in praising the Goddess as the negative
absolute factor coupled with Shiva (who is positive as
counterpart of the negative feminine principle) he is not on the
same footing as the Vedic gods who belong to the context of only
relativistic and meritorious Vedic ritualism.
The schematic analysis of the diagram below will reveal some of
the structural implications applicable to the aesthetic value of
the Absolute when viewed from a negative rather than from a fully
positive perspective.


SLG1 - P4

structure-slg1-p4-v1


Note here that it is the totality that is indirectly adored or
praised. The question of merit does not even arise when the total
Absolute Value is intended here. The manifesting function is
that of the horizontal negative and the pure Absolute itself is
beyond action as it is comprised within pure verticalized
positivity. There is thus only indirect praise of the Absolute
initially at the start of the work, from a negative viewpoint.


SLG1 - P5


(Now follow 5 pages of manuscript)


Word-for-word translation of in the Guru's handwriting.


VERSE 1


WORD FOR WORD
Shivah = Shiva (numerator factor).
Shaktya = with Shakti - the phenomenal factor in the centre of the Absolute.
Yukto-yadi = when united, unified (i.e. when participating
vertically and horizontally with each other).
Bhavati Shaktah = becomes able (Shiva).
Prabhavitum = to realise himself, become fully himself, attain full plenitude.
Nachedevam devah = if likewise this god.
Nakhalu kushalah = is not capable indeed
Spanditumapi = even to oscillate like a straw (?) to or (illegible)
Atah stvam = thus to or for you.
Aradhyam = worthy of worship
Harihara virinchadhibhir api = (illegible)
Prananthum = to adore
Stothum va katham = even to praise, how.
Akritapunya = one who has no merits of good acts.
Prabhavati = become specified.


SLG1 - P6

structure-slg1-p6-v1a


SLG1 - P7


Saundarya means "value", and the highest abstract value is beauty.
Sankara underfocuses on the negative side or the side of Maya.
He talks about beauty, and through Axiology, Methodology and
Epistemology arrives at a description of the Absolute Upsurge of beauty.
Sankara first shows the map with all the gods etc., then wraps
it up by showing the dynamism of the circulation between the
parts. If he uses mythological language, it was only to build up a
structure, the understanding of which reveals the Absolute.
"Do not say that I have believed in all these gods - I have used them
only to praise the Absolute (via ideograms)."
Reciprocity, compensation and cancellability are all operative here.


SLG1 - P8


VERSE 1


TRANSLATION
The god Shiva (as great numerator factor) and Shakti
(horizontalising principle on the negative side)
When united only (or unified) -
(when participating vertically and horizontally with each other).
(Shiva, he) becomes able - (at best participating nominally).
(only when he participates does he become able)
To realise himself (in any specified way), (to become fully himself)
(attaining all plenitude), (only when he participates does he keep from evaporating), (will only be an absurd mathematical figurehead).
If likewise this god is not capable indeed (wave length means horizontal movement).
Even to oscillate (like a straw)- as opposed to vertical movement.
Thus how can for You (devi).
Worthy of worship (by).
Even by Vishnu, Shiva and Brahma (representing the three relativistic functions: preserver, destroyer and creator), but only as demiurges of a base order.
You are not only on the negative side of the vertical axis, but You also touch the finger of Shiva, thus representing the Absolute - and thus being worthy of worship by the three demiurges.


SLG1 - P9


VERSE 1


TRANSLATION
Either to praise or worship You (how?).
One who has no merits of good acts - (I am not a Brahmin or a
learned man), (how can I ever attain to the Absolute beyond all words?).
How can I become a specified personality? -
(Either I must fill it with the content of beauty, via protolanguage).
I am not a priest (Brahmin) who performs meritorious deeds.
How can I praise You? (Vedanta is not just giving alms and going to temples).
I will have to put You into relationship with Shiva, the
Logos or Omega Point. If You are not touching Your husband
(participating vertically) he is just a theoretical, mathematical Omega point.

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SLG1 - P10


VERSE 2

Thaniyamsum pamsum thava charana pankeruha bhavam
Virinchih sanchinvan virachayati lokan avikalam
Vahatyenam saurih kathamapi sahasrena sirasam
Harah samkshudyainam bhajati bhasito dhulana vidhim


TRANSLATION
The fine dust arising out of your lotus feet
The creator (Brahma) gathering up the worlds ordains
The preserver (Vishnu) bears them up somehow by his thousand heads,
And the destroyer (Shiva) having shaken up, accomplishes his ash-wearing rite.


The Goddess here represents the Absolute viewed schematically
under a slight negative perspective. On the vertical parameter
thus revealed at its lower Alpha Point, is to be located, as it
were, at the feet of the Goddess, the creative function of which as
is well known Hindu mythology, the god Brahma seated on a lotus
and with faces representing the four aspects of space, is the
operative principle. All existence is brought into being and
subjected to becoming by the function of Brahma, the creator.
Higher up in the vertical parameter of reference, we have to
locate the sustaining or preserving function which Hindu
mythology attributes to Vishnu. His function is at the meeting
point of the horizontal and vertical structural correlates
representing the noumenal and phenomenal aspects of the Absolute
both as being and becoming at the same time, taking speculation
beyond paradox so as to make it attain the Absolute. The
principle of occasionalism involved herein justifies the use of
the expression "somehow" in the third line of the verse. Vishnu's
function has to be pluralistic as represented by the suggestion
of the thousand heads of the snake on which he reposes in the
eternal present of contemplative sleep.


In Shiva we attain the top conceptual or nominal limit of the
total situation here schematically analysed. Existence here gives
place to thin logical or rational subsistence, merging into the
value world of pure axiological status. Shiva the destroyer is
thus the Omega Point where actualities evaporate into thin
mathematical nothingness of nominalistic though pure Absolute
Value. The thin dust of the feet is subjected to further
refinement as suggested in the last line here, so that it becomes


SLG1 - P10


the ritual ornament smeared lightly on the radiant body of Shiva.
Thus existence, subsistence and value with pluralistic, horizontal
reference are all capable of structural recognition in this verse.
(The schema of the previous verse can be used for this verse also.)


(Printed article ends. Manuscript follows, in various hands. ED).


SLG1-P11

structure-slg1-p11-v1


SLG1 - P12


Now follows word-for-word of VERSE 2 in the Guru's hand .


VERSE 2


WORD FOR WORD
Thaniyamsum pamsum = extremely fine dust.
Ta va charana pankeruha bhavam - Virinchih = arising out of thy lotus feet, Brahma.
Sanchinvan virachayati lokan = makes the worlds.
Avikalam vahati = bears up each from each distinctly
Enam = this (worlds)
Saurih kathamapi = Vishnu somehow.
Sahasrena sirasam = with even his thousand heads.
Harah samkshudya = Rudra having shaken it up, beaten it up as for an omelette.
Enam = this.
Bhajati = serves with it, accomplishes as benefit out of it.
Bhasito dhulana vidhim = the ash-smearing rite.



SLG1 - P13


VERSE 2

The Absolute hides a paradox, if you do not resolve the
paradox, there is no salvation.
Only downright Vedanta can resolve it. First, state the paradox
as clearly as possible:
Absolute negativity is the Goddess (horizontality),
the absolute vertical positive is Shiva.
Without the numerator Omega Point, the paradox cannot be resolved
and yet, Shiva is powerless without Shakti.
Shiva destroys the three cities, i.e. cancels them out.
Shakti attains to Shiva by being loyal to him.
The relationship between Shiva and Shakti is reciprocal, compensatory and cancellable.
They are put together in such a way that paradox is presented.
Where paradox is resolved, the Absolute is revealed.
A Brahmin goes to heaven and enjoys a vacation, but then comes back to earth: this is Vedic.
Vedanta involves a Sannyasin with a begging bowl. (A camel cannot pass through the eye of a needle…)
The first verse has set the paradox and the frame.
The three functions are brought together and then abolished.


SLG1 - P14


VERSE 2


TRANSLATION
Extremely fine dust (pollen)
(arising) (taken by Brahma)
From thy feet (from the lotus of the feet - pollen dust)
Gathering together by Brahma
He creates the (three) worlds
(Brahma creates the many worlds of values, each distinct from the others)
Bears up each from each distinct
(Each has its own vertical axis - impenetrability)
This (some world which is manifested)
He supports with thousand heads (Vishnu)
All these dust-produced worlds
Shiva comes and, having beaten them all together
Accomplishes (serves)the benefit of it (destroys it, and puts the
ashes on his head), (without the destruction, cancelling...(?))
Wearing the ashes (ritual)

structure-slg1-p14-v1


SLG1 - P15


VERSE 2

Christianity - " As it was in the beginning, is now etc...."
They cannot cheat humanity all of the time.
Where is your God that you ask me to worship, where is the description of your God?
What about Copernicus, and Bruno and Galileo?
Jehovah sent a column of light so that Moses could see from earth to heaven.
What did you see? Did you see God? Oh no, you cannot see God
What about the Sistine Chapel? Oh that is just a joke of the Pope´s.


Three gods came in to fill the Absolute, which was empty.
What is the best thing with which to fill it? Absolute Beauty.
The voice that spoke to Moses was empty. What did it mean to the shepherds?
The whole of the Bible is trying to give some content to this voice.
God - "maker of heaven and earth", "as it was in the beginning..." etc.
What is it that is true? They do not tell you.
Please, Bible, tell me something about this God whom I want to worship.
The Book of Job indicates that God is a bad schoolmaster who will not answer questions.
The most difficult gap in the Bible to fill up is the content of God from the earth up.
Is there no cosmology about this God? Will you tell me about God?
NO, NO, NO!


SLG1 - P16


Sankara gives us the whole phenomenal side, which is our side.
He presents the whole picture in terms of left-hand spirals becoming right-hand spirals and on into infinity.
This is the paradox of the phenomenal universe.
If the non-Europeans had had guns early enough, the Bible would have been thrown away -
NO aborigines would have been converted.
Verse 2 consists of three gods, with three functions -
Numerator, Denominator and Middle.
Everything in the world has three stages - birth, life and death.
These are the functions of creation, preservation and dissolution.
Mythology is a growth determined by geography and culture.
Narayana Guru decided not to use mythology, but definitions drawn from everyday examples, to describe the Absolute.
When mythology is used, he refers to all mythology.
TO GO FROM THE KNOWN TO THE UNKNOWN, TO FILL THE ABSOLUTE WITH CONTENT,
HE USES THE BEAUTY OF A WOMAN; THE SLIGHTEST OF COMMON CONCEPTS, ABSTRACTING AND UNIVERSALIZING IT.


"Philosophy is that intelligence by which the landlady can tell if the tenant will pay the rent", B.Russell.


An example is NOT a starting postulate.
You must use either deductive or inductive reasoning.
How to justify Verse 2 within the context of the Absolute?
Brahma comes, takes fine dust from the feet of the Devi and creates three vertical worlds, till it becomes the firm earth that we know.


SLG1 - P16


Begin from the "monde affiné" : .00001, the square root-of-minus-one
etc = the pollen powder used by Brahma to create the universe.
Then comes Vishnu with a 1000 heads - a pluralistic pragmatist.
Vishnu sleeps on a coiled snake, floating on a milk lake.


SLG1 - P17


Vaishnavas (Vishnu-worshippers) give Brahma a secondary status next to Vishnu.
Vishnu represents value-worlds so comfortable that he does not have to work.
From his navel comes a lotus in which is sitting Brahma
Why? Because all gods represent the Absolute.
Then we need the concept of destruction, since no man believes he will die.
Shiva appears in two aspects - operative as a demiurge and also as the mathematical Absolute, a pure concept.
The functioning Shiva as a demiurge is included in the Omega point concept.
These three gods are included in a circle.
Brahma creates, Vishnu sustains, and Shiva destroys:
These are personifications of natural laws that we can see.
Shiva pulverises the whole thing, and then puts the ashes on his forehead
and says: "I am proud to have destroyed."
Why? Because there can be no creation without destruction.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

SLG1 - P18


VERSE 3
Avidyanam antasti mira mihira dvipanagari
Jadanam chaitanya sthabaka makaranda sruti jhari
Daridranam chintamani gunanika janma jaladhau
Nimaghnanam damshtra muraripu varahasya bhavati.


VERSE 3


TRANSLATION
To the uninstructed you are the light-maker,
inner darkness banishing, mid-ocean placed;
To inert ones, the ooze of sweetness within blossoms celestial,
having mind-expanding effect,
While for indigent spirits you become a brood of philosophers' stones,
And for those submerged in birth-cycle ocean the very tusks of that anti-Mura (Vishnu's) boar.


VERSE 3


COMMENTARY:
Four types of votaries are envisaged here with their
corresponding value counterparts. Put together they cancel out as
numerator and denominator of equal function, into the unitive
value represented by the Absolute Mother, apostrophised in this
century of verse.


The content and context of such a negative version of the Absolute are indicated in the first and second verses of this series. Now the axiological counterpart of utility or value for four grades falling within a vertical parameter are indicated in a downward serial gradation of compensatory items meant as the consolation of the contemplation of such an Absolute Value here called the Mother. The structural analysis below will clarify its implications further.

structure-slg1-p19-v3


Explanation of STRUCTURE SLG1 - P19 - V3


Each man represents in himself an aspiration vaguely felt as an
intentional factor of interest.


1 The ignoramus aspires for some light with the Absolute as its source.


2 The indigent or poor man sees it negatively as a treasure of gems which would abolish his
poverty and console him too as a high human value.


3 The pleasure-loving man of inert ways seeks something sweet to drink like the
honey at the core of a flower.


4 The man steeped in imperative or absolute necessity in a very actual or real sense has to have
something like the tusk of a Vishnu's boar to hold him up and prevent him from sinking deeper into the sea of needs that might make him despair.


Conditioned by subjective states, each sees only one aspect of the Absolute.


In this figure (STRUCTURE SLG -P19-V3)
please note the four-fold context of the structure of the Absolute as well as the double force acting on each interest, with equilibrium resulting in the consolation the Wisdom Mother represents.


(Pages 19 and 20 omitted intentionally)

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SLG1 - P21


VERSE 4
Tvadanya panibhyam abhaya varado daivatagnanah
Tvam eka naivasi prakatita varabhityabhinaya
Bhayatiratum datum phalamapi cha vanchasamadhikam
Saranye lokanam tava hi charanavaiva nipunau


VERSE 4


TRANSLATION
Other arms than thine, O sole refuge of the worlds of beings, can confer
Protection or boon; You alone are unique in not thus acting out
Overtly, by gesture, the promise of refuge or boon; what is more,
Your feet are alone expert, indeed, in yielding more than asked for boon.


VERSE 4


COMMENTARY
The Advaita Vedanta of Sankara is based on the method of reasoning where one travels from effects which are pluralistic and positive, to a common subjective cause in terms of one's own
self-consciousness.
Theologically understood, the divinities in any religion, Greek or Hindu, are recognised by their functional or operational overt positive values, which have hedonistic, pluralistic
or essentially hypostatic significance and positively or negatively enter as protection or benefits of worship, devotion or contemplation.
One is granted what one prays for.


As the Absolute Value comprehends all varied flavours or essences conceptually understood through various scriptures of the world, and inclusively covers them all, it is but right to
think of it as the seed at the bottom of a vertical parameter of reference where ontological richness prevails to a maximum degree of intensity at the core of a really experienced sub-consciousness
which is not merely verbose predicative representation.


The elimination of positive effects by way of giving primacy to cause is the negative way of arriving at or attaining the Absolute, which could otherwise be empty of all real content.


The universal concrete attains reality in the most scientific form where the duality of physics is effaced and its paradox vanishes, melted or absorbed into the totality of the homogeneous matrix of the Absolute.
The present series of verses presupposes a slightly negatively tilted perspective as is proper to Vedantic methodology.


SLG1 - P22


VERSE 4


WORD NOTES
Those terms or expressions in the verse such as "other arms", "sole refuge", "worlds of all beings" are meant to underline the contrast between the relative and the absolute and combine such
opposites as boons and protection from fear.


The words "alone", "unique" and "overt" have also to be noted. Absolute generosity is
reflected in the words "more than asked for boon".


The ambivalence or dichotomous implications based on antinomian principles, the ramified sets and double assertion are to be recognised in the pluralistic gods under reference and in "what is more", respectively.
Metalinguistic poetry tallies here with protolinguistic structural imagery.

structure-slg1-p22-v4.


SLG1 - P23


VERSE 4


STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS.
Theological divinities are many. They can protect votaries and confer boons in various pluralistic, relativistic or hedonistic contexts known to non-Vedantic or dualistic scripture.


This involves representing the non-dual Absolute Value that has rich ontological value but only negligible teleological or hypostatic significance in Vedanta.


While the range of the ramified sets of gods or demigods, which are numerous, can grant hedonistic, relativistic or pluralistic benefits or securities, at the bottom of the vertical parameter of all values, rich ontology of real or universally concrete values comprise and comprehend all the
miscellaneous and conceptual values of the hypostatic or axiological intentionalities and expectations.


It is at the existent level that all essences merge into a unique value-factor.


As in the case of atomic structure, the neutrino or neutron is richer in negative content than the electron particle.
Indigence prevails on the plus side. Innate subjectivism is more important than analytic or positive objectivism.


(Now we ignore P24 - irrelevant material)

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SLG1 - P25


VERSE 5


Haristvam aradhya pranata jana saubhagya jananim
Pura nari bhutva puraripum api kshobha manayat
Smaropi tvam natva rati nayanalehyena vapusha
Muninam apyantah prabhavati hi mohaya mahatam.


VERSE 5


WORD-FOR WORD
Hari = Vishnu
Tvam aradya = having adored You
Pranata jana saubhagya jananim = who confers goodness
On worshippers
Pura nari bhutva = once having become a woman
Puraripum api = even that burner of the city (Shiva).
Kshobham anayat = led to agitation
Smaropi = even Eros
Tvam natva = having bowed to You.
Ratinaya lehyena vapusha = with body licked into being by the eye
of Rati (wife of Eros)
Muninam api antah = even within recluses
Prabhavati hi = becomes able to accomplish indeed
Mohaya = to make for confusion of values
Mahatam = to great ones


VERSE 5


TRANSLATION
Once Vishnu having adored You, the bestower of blessings on those who worship You
Taking womanly form, even unto the City-Burner (Shiva) caused agitation
Eros himself with body licked into reality by the glances of Rati, his wife
Even to the minds of great recluses confusion of values brings


VERSE 5


COMMENTARY
When Vishnu as representing the Absolute Reality confers Its stamp of reality on the negativity of the pure Absolute Becoming that constitutes eternal essential existence, he may be said to take himself a female form because femininity has to be negative.


The legendary myth in which Vishnu took such a charming womanly form to confuse even Shiva, reputed to be beyond temptation, supports this.
This Absolute Beauty as a value in women or rather womanhood, sub specie aeternitatis, can be a rival factor to the divinity called Shiva as a member of the trinity of godheads of the theological
pantheon of divinities as Isvaras or Demiurges.


The myth is justified only when Shiva is given a lower status in the context of the full Absolute, which is neutral and impersonal.
In the second half of the verse the reference is to Eros as the personification of earthly love.


He himself is "Ananga", (without limbs).
The actuality of having limbs in appearance is due to the reflected light coming from the eyes of the horizontal negative counterpart of the pure erotic principle as such.


As in modern laser technique, two lights, one reflected and virtual and the other direct, when holographically intensified have to meet to result in the real value of Beauty represented here by the Goddess.


Horizontally reflected lights complement each other at this level. When a pure universally concrete reality representing the absolute beauty of the Goddess thus becomes manifest, it is
suggested, at the end of this verse, that such a beauty will attract even recluses who have won full control over everyday sensuous attractions.


A structural analysis will help to reveal the fourfold factors involved here.


SLG1 - P26

structure-slg1-p26-v5.


VERSE 5


STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS
There are two sets of double corrections to be thought of in terms of normalisation and re-normalisation here.


Beauty as an Absolute Value is the central theme. This beauty could be viewed from two perspectives, which are complementary or reciprocal
counterparts, compensatory and cancellable into the final unity of the value represented by the Absolute as Beauty here.


Vertically, Shiva, as the Burner of the City is the positive counterpart of Vishnu as the normalising factor.


Horizontally the virtuality of Eros has its counterpart in the actualising light of his wife Rati.


There are groups of contemplatives of different sets and sub-sets all around the central value, who benefit spiritually or in actual terms from a contemplation of the Absolute. Shiva as an extremely uncompromising radical and positive principle must have the renormalising factor as its central counterpart which acts as a descending factor or function vis-a-vis this thin mathematical parameter at the Omega Point of the Absolute.


A beautiful damsel in a worldly sense can participate in the Absolute and have a stunning effect on a recluse, even of the status of a Shiva.


Vishnu, as a neutrally placed normalising influence, could be a simple damsel with stunning beauty or viewed theologically as the cosmic principle of preservation.


The circling set of recluses are all aspirants who practice contemplation of various types
that can be fitted into the scheme in endless gradations or variety of sets and sub-set ensembles. The attached structure will help.

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SLG1 - P28


VERSE 6
Dhanuh paushpam maurvi madhu kara mayi pancha visikha
Vasantah samanto malaya marud sayodhana rathah
Tathapi ekah sarvam hima giri sute kam api krpam
Apangat te labdhva jagad idam anange vijayate


VERSE 6


WORD-FOR-WORD
Dhanuh paushpam = the bow made of flowers
Maurvi madhu kara mayi pancha vasikha = the bow-string
With Five-fold flower arrowheads is made up of bumblebees
Vasantah samantantah = the springtide makes the minister
Malaya marud ayodhana rathah = the wafting mountain breeze
Stands for the war chariot
Tathapi ekah sarvam = notwithstanding all these as one
Hima giri sute = o Daughter of the Himalayas
Kam api krpam = whatever mercy
Apangate = from Your side-glance
Labdhva jagad idam anangah = having derived that limbless
god of love (Eros)
Vijayate = he reigns supreme


VERSE 6


TRANSLATION
O Daughter of the snowy peak, just deriving from your glance askance,
Whatsoever grace he could, with flowery bow and bumble-bee bowstring
And five-flowered dart and springtide for messenger, all these as one withal,
Mounting the chariot of the Mountain Breeze, he victoriously reigns, that god of love.


SLG1 - P29


VERSE 6


COMMENTARY
We have first to recognise the components mentioned in this verse as making up the totality of the Absolute feminine principle.


The bow, arrow, the humming bow-string and arrowheads are concrete and harsh counterparts to be viewed in a more structurally subjective and refined context.


The chariot and the minister belong more to the general and plus side of concepts. They are symbolic rather than direct signs.


After fitting these various conceptual and perceptual elements into a total whole, one should think of Eros itself as a total and Absolute Value colouring life itself and giving it a vital complexion.


It is the Negative Absolute implicit in the Goddess praised here for beauty as a supreme value, under whose aegis Eros gets the power to influence human life always and at all places.


He himself substitutes and functions for the Absolute. A structural analysis will help to bring the rigid and subtle aspects of the total erotic situation of the double perspective into proper relief.


SLG1 - P29

structure-slg1-p29-v6


VERSE 6


STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS
The total erotic situation can be schematically represented as the top and bottom half of a circle. The bow of iron when conceptualised becomes flower-tender as a luxury springtime value.


Flowers bring bees and the bumblebee is the conceptual aspect of summer love-feeling in operation.


The five senses and their afferent functional counterparts are represented by five darts that hurt the lovers' hearts subjectively or objectively.


The total controlling factor giving purpose to erotic life as the season of spring and the total more ineffable plus side of the situation is a wind-wafted chariot.


The minister is a person here and now and thus has to take his position on the point where the vertical axis meets the horizontal at the O Point.


Eros himself is an abstraction by the mind and thus he represents an erotic value under the aegis of the Absolute and could be said to radiate his essence of the whole of the conscious situation from
the apex of the plus Omega Point, while the Devi herself, as his counterpart, occupies the rich ontological position of the Alpha Point. Other structural implications ought to be clear.


P30


VERSE 7
Kvanat kanchi dama kari kalabha kumbha stana natas
Parikhina madhye parinata s'arac candra vadana
Dhanur banan pas'am srnim api dadhana karatalaih
Purastad astam nah pura mathitur aho purushika


VERSE 7


TRANSLATION
Let that dominant counter ego-form of the City-Burner
with full moon- like face
Through the jingling of Her waist band, bending by the bosom
Resembling bulges on an elephant's front, very thin at waist,
Appear before us, holding aloft in Her hands, bow with arrow,
noose and goad.


VERSE 7


COMMENTARY
The "Purushika" of the last line is the feminine counterpart of Shiva who is the destroyer of cities. The reference to the jingle of the waistband is to indicate that state of mind induced by sound in which the Goddess of this series of verses is to be meditated upon subjectively, selectively and schematically.


When thus contemplated upon, the full bulging bosom gets a bold contour comparable to the bulges of an elephant's head with which it can push around logs of heavy lumber in a yard.


The picture suggests the positive vital urge. These two bulges, when contemplatively treated psycho-physically as positive value- factors pertaining to the élan vital of the numerator aspect of
the total situation involved and suggested in this verse and reduced to contemplatively visual outlines will also reveal a middle ground linking the positive and negative aspects of the psycho-physical entity here referred to as a slender, emaciated or thin waist band by the weight of the
full, pot-shaped bosoms.


A logarithmic curve can be supposed to be implied here connecting the numerator of a full bosom with the denominator aspect of a face having the brightness of the full moon.
The fact that the face is mentioned after the full breasts as its numerator is no objection because the inversion of value factors is implied here by the principle of double correction and back
to back inversion.


The four items held in the four hands are to be treated as monomarks revealing the functions of word, meaning, restraint and stimulus; which are semantic or semiotic in character.


SLG1 - P31

structure-slg1-p31-v7.


VERSE 7


STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS
At the centre of the schematic structure we have to place the radiant full moon as representing the face.


The thin waist has a double correction and back-to-back inversion in which the positive ego of the City-Burner cancels out the negative existential richness of the full breasts.


A logarithmic curve joins the two halves into a unified whole for purposes of meditation on the Absolute value-factor of sheer Beauty as hypostatic and hierophantic at once.


The beauty of the Goddess represents complementary factors or functions in the context of
word and its meaning. The zero point induced by meditation on the sound of the waistband jingling bells represents the normal white light of Absolute Beauty.


We have put faces at both the Alpha and Omega Points in order to respect the reciprocity and complementarity of the counterparts which could also be considered as cancellable or as compensatory in principle. The whole is to be treated unitively as a normalised value under the aegis of the Absolute under the caption of Beauty as a high human value.


SLG1 - P32


SAUNDARYA LAHARI SCENARIO


VERSE 7
The bulging breasts of the Devi are like the two knobs on the forehead of a young elephant.


She is slim of waist with a face like the autumnal full moon.


Here Sankara is laying the foundation for the schemas. What has the pride of Shiva got to do with all this?
The knobs or protuberances are a kind of pushing of the ego.
They are the hardest and most egoistic part, when compared to the heavy
breasts.


The Omega Point (Shiva) descends, burning the three cities.
The parameter from above is pride.(A woman does not want any reference to the vagina etc..)


The pride of Shiva from above is meeting the pride of the Devi from below.
Why is there reference to the jingling girdle? - this is to mark of the horizontal line.
The breasts have both a numerator and a denominator aspect.
So we have the descending pride of Shiva and the ascending pride of the Devi.
Why is she bent under the weight of the breasts?
The face should be put in the centre.
The elephant means the Numerator side - pride
Heavy means the Denominator - existence.
Bow and arrow mean that She will punish someone, she is not defeated.
The noose means to attract.
The goad is something to prod with.


SLG1 - P33


So Sankara says:
"Let that image stand before me with all of its aspects and
functions, fully self-sufficient with her pride - for the purpose of my meditations".
The beauty of the face is in the centre
Shiva descends to give beauty to the face.
The waist is thin, to indicate the vertical parameter or axis, bent to indicate the sinus curve.
The Numerator and Denominator sides are clearly demarcated by the waist.
"I have rediscovered mystical language": Nataraja Guru
By Herself, She can have heavy breasts - but how can she show the firm proud breasts without meeting the pride of Shiva?


SLG1 - P34


VERSE 10
A streaming flow of nectar - that certain kind of liquid -
between the legs of the Devi - from that centre downwards,
bestowing grace on all it touches.
And thyself resembling the form of a serpent of three and a half coils.


SLG1 - P34


VERSE 11
The angles which etc.etc. - becomes completely schematic.
To clarify some other secret mystical schematismus.
There are no analogies here. Look out now for 44 verses of
schemas. Five triangles with the apex upwards, four down, circles
etc..


SLG1 - P35


VERSE 8
Sudha sindhor madhye sura vitapi vaatis parivrte
Mani dvipe nipovana vati cintamani grhe
Shiva kare mance param Shiva paryanka nilayam
Bhajanti tvam dhanyah katicana cid ananda laharim


TRANSLATION
Some lucky men contemplate thee as the upsurging billow of mental joy
Seated on a couch of Shiva form and having the supreme Shiva for cushion
Placed in a mansion wafted round by perfumed blossoms of Kadamba trees
In a pearly-gem island, mid-ocean placed.


VERSE 8


COMMENTARY
One should imagine several concentric circles and try to place
the supreme value of Absolute Beauty at the very core. One should
then introduce the Shiva principle as having its ontological
counterpart representing the basis of existence on which any
value has to make meaning. Shiva as an Absolute Value has Parama
Shiva (the supreme Shiva) co-existing with him as a value-factor
thinkable both hypostatically and hierophantically with reference
to a vertical parameter traversing the plus and minus levels of
the total situation analogically pictured here. The four-legged
couch lends its existential stability as a value for the goddess
here and the cushion is only a more easy or thinner version of
the same Shiva principle upgraded teleologically.


Beauty is justly placed at the centre of a circle representing the infinite
plenitude of immortal bliss which contemplation of the value
of Absolute Beauty must necessarily bring. The celestial trees
form the most peripheral circle of the island and the core is
surrounded by an inner circle of more ineffable or subtler values
analogous to the perfume of the Kadamba trees (said to be the favourite
of Parvati in Sanskrit traditions, the actual species is of no importance).
The couch must be supposed to have four legs to give it stability
and support and it is suggested that Brahma, Vishnu, Rudra and
Ishvara are the supporting legs. The analogy need not be
stretched so far, but elementals are implied here as vertical
principles supporting the notion of the negative factor of
Absolute Beauty as a value. Brahma and other gods have an
ontological reference besides their hypostatic status in the
Vedic heaven. The pearl-gem island and mansion consisting of
thought suggest subjective consciousness centrally, while
peripherally the celestial trees represent universal concrete
values.

structure-slg1-p36-v8a

structure-slg1-p36-v8b


SLG1 - P37


VERSE 8


STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS
The structural analysis of this verse involves both solid and
plane geometric constructions. Three-dimensional solids with
conics kept in mind and one normal conic section representing
the horizontal reference of workaday realistic value has to be
inserted between two cones placed base to base for purposes of
double reference and correction back to back.
These structural and epistemological features have been
explained at length in various parts of our previous writings.
The colour solid with the Chakras (wheels) with triangles having
apexes upward or downward pointing is an attempt by the Tantra
Shastra to schematise protolinguistically the contemplative
values and existent and subsistent factors involved. Ontology
here counts above teleology, and it is Shiva and Parama Shiva that
have been reduced to the universal concrete status of cushions or
cots. The vertical parameter passing through the centre and
apexes of the two inverted cones is the non-dual correlating
principle integrating physical value factors with metaphysical
ones in the structural totality of the Absolute.
Other implications in this are clarified in the two figures.


SLG1 - P38


VERSE 8
Kalidasa has woven a fabric, showing that the ideal of feminine
beauty emerges out of this quantitative (horizontal) mass called
the Himalayas. Kalidasa has done this with Parvati - daughter of
the Himalayas - providing a consort for Shiva, who is admired by
the Munis.
All of this must be presented in the first twenty minutes of the film.
The Colloquy of the Gods (Uma Haimavati, see Upanishad.)
Through the beauty of a woman - the best way to give content to
the Absolute.
It provides an inspiring standard by which to regulate our lives.
A woman represents the counterpart of man - abstract and
generalise for a woman who worships her husband like a god -
she becomes the Self, he becomes the Non-Self. She is so directly
related to nature that there is a one-to-one correspondance
between the cosmos and the micro-cosmos. (See Kural).


VERSE 8


TRANSLATION
Some lucky men contemplate thee as the upsurging billow of mental joy
Seated on a couch of Shiva-form
(Shiva is reduced to a hierophantic character, i.e. a couch.)


SLG1 - P39


One should imagine several concentric circles having Absolute Beauty
as its central core.
The four legs of the couch lend ontological stability to the Goddess.
The celestial trees represent the peripheral circle of the core (the outer circle).
The couch must have four supporting legs, perhaps
Brahma, Vishnu, etc., representing the elementals.
The pearl-gem island and mansion of thought.


And having the Supreme Shiva for cushion
Placed in a mansion wafted round by the perfumed blossoms of
Kadamba trees
In a pearly-gem island mid nectar-ocean placed


"Chidananda Lahari" = upsurging of mental bliss.
Derive woman from the Himalayas.


SLG1 - P40



Colloquy of the gods.
Nataraja and Parvati
Burning of Kama Deva
Third eye
Ganges as a cooling influence

structure-slg1-p36-v8a

structure-slg1-p36-v8b


The Shiva form and the Supreme Shiva, as couch and cushion, are ontological factors of stable existence which have a one - one correspondence with the hypostatic Shiva and the Supreme Shiva principles.


SLG1 - P41


One should then represent the Shiva principle as having its
ontological counterpart representing the basis of existence on
which any value has to take meaning. Shiva as an Absolute Value
has a Parama Shiva co-existing with Him as a value factor
thinkable both hypostatically and hierophantically, with reference
to a vertical parameter, having thus the plus and minus levels of
the total situation analogically pictured here.
The cushion is only a more easy or shinier value version of the
same Shiva Principle as the couch, upgraded teleologically rather
than ontologically.
Beauty is justly placed at the centre of the circle,
representing the infinite plenitude of immortal bliss which the
contemplation of Absolute Beauty must necessarily bring.
Celestial trees form the outer circle, and the inner is of
ineffable or subtler values analogous to the Kadamba trees,
said to be the favourite of Parvati. It is suggested that
Brahma, Rudra, Vishnu and Ishvara are the supporting legs.
Elementals are implied here as verticalized principles supporting
the notion of the negative factor of Absolute real Beauty as a
value. The pearly-gem island and mansion of thought suggest
subjective consciousness centrally, while perceptually the
celestial trees represent universal concrete values.


SLG1 - P42


(manuscript follows - ED)



VERSE 8
Dravida Sishyu (Dravidian child) and Vidyarthi (wisdom-seeker)
People say that Sankara was the "Dravida Sishyu" only through
the 41st verse.
(Guru explains the background of the Mahabharata war.)
Krishna goes personally to the Pandavas, lends qualitative strength
to the.....
Even today, it is all right to kill a Shudra for repeating the Vedas
of the Aryans.
Sankara says "I am a Dravida Shishyu", and "I am a Vidyarthi"
In VERSE 71 (by drinking the milk of Saraswati).


The change from Ananda Lahari to Saundarya Lahari after Verse 41
is of an epistemological nature. The same subject can be treated
as a Mandala (Ananda Lahari) or realistically as Beauty.


SLG1 - P42
VERSE 8 sets the style for the rest of the verses up to 41.
The Indian philosophical tradition and Mother temples come
as a result of the mixture between Aryan and Dravidians.
Sankara calls himself "Dravida Shishyu" because he is the
follower of a primitive Goddess.
The Mandala structure exists through the first 41 verses.
Sankara incorporates Tantra Shastra, the Vedas, Buddhism, and restates
them all in terms of Vedanta.
Dravida Shishyu and Vidyarthi (the wisdom seeker) worshipping
Saraswati (a revalued Kali), the Goddess of Wisdom, representing
the final stage of the Goddess acceptable to Vedanta.
Narayana Guru also began a Saraswati Temple.


SLG1 - P44


HINDUISM IS A WOMAN
- so a woman's beauty is idealised, as in Sankara.
There were some women in ancient times who came from North
India, were treated as Gurus and had temples made for themselves,
or began Mother temples on the Kerala coast...
(reference to Phumala Bhagavati Temple on Ezhumalai island).
Ezhumalai is the epicentre of this kind of spirituality.
It is a numinous presence, "a magic place".
In VERSE 8, the Mandala of concentric circles begins, going on
through VERSE 40.
How does it happen that there are Sanskrit scholars among the
peasants of Kerala?
It is explainable by the population movement from the North, along the
coast, because there are paddy, coconut, fish and spices there.
They can thrive with no money.
Why does Sankara call himself a Dravidian and a Wisdom-Seeker
- not an orthodox religious man?
There is a great tradition of Sanskrit pundits on the Kerala coast,
by the will of the ordinary coolies.
In VERSE 8 it is called Ananda Lahari
- this is subjective, with Mandalas.
After VERSE 40 it becomes objective, describing the beauty
of the Goddess.
The women had the money when they came down from the North.
They had certain hangers-on to manage their affairs and these men
often became Brahmins.


SLG1 - P45


SCENARIO FOR VERSE 8
The island is a gem at the centre of the ocean. Just show a real
island, with a nice park, within a lake, actually seen. You can show
one or two varieties. Then introduce the romantic element of a
woman living there. Then reduce it into a Taoist painting - first
degree reduction. Then change the lake to a milk ocean, bring in
Vishnu - here there must be some mythological pictures.
Then reduce further so that the island is a beautiful gem seen
from far away, in a milk ocean..
Then reduce still further, playing with colours, finally reduce it
to a Mandala - where it is a drawing, not the outline.
In the studio, show horizontal, vertical and conical cross-sections.
Cross-sections must have a real view and a celestial view = two views.
There is always a lower and a higher version.
The Goddess sits at the lower hierophantic and at the higher
hypostatic levels - again, two conic sections - brings in the cushion.
Then conic sections give way to play with the 1st, 2nd, 3d and 4th
dimensions, finally reducing to a single point of light bursting
and becoming dim, like fireworks.


SLG1 - P46
There is a picture of a yogi meditating and the chakras he sees
must be shown in the form of Mandalas.
To take the viewer to the depths of the meaning, he must see each
of the various steps. This needs a group of artists to be trained
in preparation of these Mandalas. (A studio can be prepared in
San Francisco for the purpose).
With VERSE 8 a review of the Chakras begins.(Begin to memorise
two verses a day, to be recited each morning. In this way the
levels and correlations between the verses may be comprehensively
absorbed.
There must be a professor who understands mathematics and an
Indian swami who understands Vedanta, who will open the book and
read in Sanskrit, devoting not more than one minute to each.
Galaxies - red shift - Universes expanding and contracting
- Big Bang - Genesis - Rigveda 10 etc.
i.e. "In the Beginning" after showing some of these hypotheses,
with some film taken from planetaria.
Then you come to the Himalayas - India - showing (then) a king in
full regalia being worshipped - then fade out to the Himalayas, or
vice-versa.
Then show Vishnu, then Brahma; include some semi-divinities,
showing a logarithmic spiral between the two.
Then we proceed to Shiva as Mahesvara.
Like the Asuras, Kinnaras (the celestial flute-players).
Cosmology according to Eddington and Jeans.
Without the Trimurti (the three gods) you cannot understand.
Then cut to the Himalayas once again.
The Himalayas of the Kumara Sambhava (of Kalidasa): to bring out Parvati;
The last trip was for Shiva.
The first 10 or 12 verses of the Kumara Sambhava will give
stratifications.
Create a world of fairies and divine gods as per Kumara Sambhava.
Finally bring the life of a certain tribe of simple people.
The object will be to create the Devi.


Introduction page: (see Guru) showing scenes from various
villages in India.


Show the Colloquy of the gods - after Kumara Sambhava.
The numerator functions of the gods must be shown.
The gods must be a wonder in the Numerator, finally being filled
to give Saundarya Lahari.


P47


VERSE 2
A double action spiral, back to back, with three zones on the vertical axis.


VERSE 3
A quadrant of value, on the part of four types of people:
The dull-witted, the destitute, those submerged in the world of births, etc.
Each person has one of these three value-worlds.


SLG1 - P48


VERSE 4
Stresses the importance of the feet of the Devi - "I do not care
for all your gods" - The bottom of the vertical axis is important
as the square root of minus-one.


VERSE 5
Eros, as horizontal, is brought in, also virtual beauty, not yet
verticalized.(Read the Puranas and find out where Vishnu took
the form of a woman)


VERSE 6
Ananga (Eros, "the limbless one") = Beauty.
Ananga rules. Although he is a passion, he still rules. (See Othello).
VERSE 7
A picture of the Devi - very slim of waist - a kind of double
structure - the slim waist is to show there is no real existence.
There is only a slim horizontal parameter.
VERSE 8
There is a progressive building up of schemas until we come to
VERSE 8 which is a circle or Mandala. Conics and Mandalas are
introduced.


VERSE 9
"Broken through..." - earth consciousness becomes a flame, breaking
through the various stratifications.
Alpha and Omega are sleeping together - but not in a bedroom.
Kundalini Shakti is bursting through.


VERSE 10
A serpent of three and a half coils - this must be some of the
basic Chakras.


SLG1 - P49


VERSE 9
Mahim muladhare kam api manipure hutavaham
Sthitam svadhisthane hrdi marutam akas'am upari
Mano'pi bhru madhye sakalsm api bhittva kula patham
Sahasrare padme saha rahasi patya viharase



VERSE 9


TRANSLATION
The earth placed in the Muladhara, water in the Manipura,
Fire in the Svadhisthana, air in the heart, with space above
And amid eyebrows placing the mind, and while breaking through
You do sport with your lord secretly in the thousand-petalled lotus.


VERSE 9
COMMENTARY
If one should take a backward glance at the two previous
verses, it will be noticed that there is a progressive use of
structural language. The duplication of the form of the Devi in
VERSE 7, with reference to symbols held in the duplicated four-fold
hands of the Goddess pushed realistic representation to the
very limits of pure structural expression. In the next verse the
conic-sectional version is introduced. In the present verse the
Shad Adhara Chakras or structural units placed serially from
the Alpha to the Omega points of the vertical axis are passed in
review in summary fashion. Of all the elementals, the earth is the
richest factor in terms of ontological reality or existence.
The earth as such in a real workaday sense is not the earth-factor
abstracted and generalised with contemplative intentionality
implied in it. In other words here it is a verticalized version of
earth as prime matter or as the unmoved mover as with Aristotle
that we have to think of. The same holds good for the other
elementals mentioned later in the verse such as water, fire, air
and ether which become thinner in ontology, but richer in
teleological import, both comprised under Absolute Value as a
normalising reference. After fire as an elemental principal, those
higher in the scale, such as air, space and the mind principle tend
to have a conceptual rather than a perceptual status. In his
revaluation, the author seems to omit the names Anahata, Visuddhi
and Ajna which are generally applied to the principles of air, sky
and mind respectively.
All these can be on the two ambivalent limbs of the vertical
side, the numerator being conceptual and the denominator side
perceptual. The thinnest mathematical or mystical value factor
is like a parameter passing through and linking all gradations of value-
units and is conventionally referred to as Sushumna, symmetrically
placed at the middle of the bilateral functional factors called
the two nadis: Ida and Pingala. At each of the Adharas or
stable points or Chakras (structuralised representations as units
placed at different psycho-physical levels) there is to be
imagined a neutralised version of a value-system proper to the
level implied, but any two of them cancel out into a higher third
till the highest in the thousand-petalled lotus called the
Sahasrara is reached. There the cancellation of counterparts
becomes complete and thus the Alpha meets the Omega with parity
between them. The mind being the seat of willing is placed in
between the eyebrows. Each of the Adharas named represents a
stabilisation, like the notes of music made by the frets of a guitar.
Six such are usually named and recognised although it is possible
in principle to add more intermediate stabilised positions.
.

structure-slg1-p50-v9


SLG1 - P51


VERSE 9


STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS
The six Adharas are stable stages or serialised steps of
epistemologically equal status representing existent, subsistent
and value systems. Thus structurally they take positions on a
vertical parameter, each point compensating, reciprocating or
cancelling by neutral absorption. The serial pluralism is only for
schematic purposes without intrinsic difference or gradation.
The lower Chakra absorbs the higher in the ascent that is implied
here. Other later verses will stress further structural
peculiarities. There could be ascent as well as descent and
normalisation at the central points of origin. Numerological
indications are also possible.


SLG1 - P52


VERSE 9
REVIEW OF THE CHAKRAS
Chakras are supposed to begin at the base of the spine - earth is
matter in its purest form, in which the Devi plays a part. When
you shut your eyes in meditation, feel matter at the base of the
spine and light at the top.
To know this axis, and to have everything melt into it, this is the
secret of yogic mystical practice.
The music goes inside the vertical column, at six intermediary
levels, producing variance in octaves (stillness?)(illegible).
It is an axis with two ambivalent limits, matter and consciousness.
It is below what is known and beyond what is known (Upanishad)
There is no sound beyond the upper and lower limits.


The Goddess is flirting with her consort.
You have gone from the ground floor of a building and have passed
through mysticism in an ascending series of stages.
She goes straight to the top, stopping at no intermediary levels.
Although the Chakras are in a serial order, they must be taken as
a trans-finite series of ordinal numbers, 1st, 2nd, 3rd..etc.
These are not distinct or separate - finite or cardinal - they are
to be considered as just a part of a series.


SLG1 - P53


Only five Chakras are mentioned here, there must be six - an error of
the pundit. The Guru will use his intuitive structuralism to place it correctly.
The whole of this is known as the Kula Path - from the heart onwards
it changes from the elemental to the conscious: i.e. the heart (air),
space (ether), and mind.
Interpenetrated, the Kula Path is seen as a unified whole.
The fire has to be placed in the heart.


"You remain secretly sporting with Your lord in the thousand-
petalled lotus.
Having broken through the earth principle of the Muladhara.
The water principle of the Manipura and the fire principle placed in
the Svadhisthana.
In the heart, the air, with space above, as also the mind between
the eyebrows and breaking through these,
Transcending thus the whole Kula Path".
Why did he not use the names of the three upper Chakras?
These are not existential factors but intelligent.
The function of space is to allow anything else to exist within
it without contradiction - Akasha.
Anyway, we approach space by a negative process
- as Sankara, so Einstein.
(See the difference between demi-relativity and real relativity).
Michelson - Morley experiment, Fitzgerald.



SLG1 - P55


The heart - "never killed" the centre of life (intermediary?).
The mind, ether, breath or breeze - both material and immaterial.
But the three existential Chakras have been mentioned, and not the
three conceptual ones. This eliminates the duality between mind
and matter.
This Kula began to thrive as an esoteric doctrine with the fall
of Buddhism.
The Devi here is called Mula Prakrti (root nature), bursting out from the vertical axis.
Horizontally, space is impermeable but as you become verticalized
there is a process of inclusion, as opposed to exclusion.
The physical heart is the centre of vitality, thus air or prana (intermediate)
The heart has a locus, seen vectorially.


VERSE 9


FINAL TRANSLATION.
The earth placed in the Muladhara, water in the Manipura
Fire in the Svadhisthana, air in the heart with space above
And amid eyebrows placing the mind; while breaking through all,
You do sport with your lord secretly in the thousand-petaled lotus.


The Six Chakras:
Muladhara - Earth
Manipura - Water
Swadhisthana - Fire
Anahata - Air
Visuddhi - Ether
Ajna - Mind


SLG1 - P56


DISCUSSION OF THE DEVI, AND OF VERSES 10 AND 11
The Devi has to be understood.
Only in this way can Vedanta be presented in a useful manner.
Vedanta must be able to solve problems, especially marital.
The whole of the universe is composed of two forces, originating
at opposite poles, and meeting in a neutral, central zone, called by
Descartes the zone of occasionalism. Descartes discovered the secrets of
the Upanishads in his meditations.
So the Goddess must become the centre of meditation - thus the
meditation becomes normalised. Only that version of philosophy
which makes real values of the conceptual and the perceptual is
worthwhile.
In order to have a pure conceptual understanding of Brahman, the
Devi must be given positive status. Not only a female, She gets a
real dimension, which finally becomes the Absolute.(See Sankara).
Sankara was fully conversant with the most precious aspects of
Hindu Philosophy. He made no mistakes because his intuition was
right. But you can go still further into the mystical experience
and be completely overwhelmed.
"I do not have mystical trances. I have trances of a mild nature,
and I have certain mild occult or psychic powers. I always get
the book I want."
The Devi is a normalised god - all the other gods are hypostatic.
She is a neutral Goddess.


SLG1 - P57


VERSES 10 AND 11
In these verses there is a kind of emanation (eternal value factor)
from between the legs of the Devi, being sprinkled on the Nadis
(psychic nerves).
The vertical reference of that is as noble as any joy which can
be had through meditation.
By her intentionality, she is blessing (sanctifying) everything in
the universe. (Eidetic intentionality)
There is a transient (horizontal) as well as an immortal (vertical)
dimension in everything.
Whenever there is a ritual, there is a Mantra which goes together
with it. Participation from both sides.
The two legs represent the virtual and the actual.
There is the thinnest of parameters between (the vertical axis)
- like one eye as the sun, the other as the moon.
There is a jingling of bells on the waist of Shiva which sufficiently
represents him in this verse.(See below).


Here there are three functions to the Goddess:
Benediction (sprinkling),
Beauty of face,
Breasts both heavy and proud.


She is bent at the waist by the heaviness of the breasts.
The bend suggests a thin logarithmic spiral at the waist, and the
heavy breasts indicate the denominator aspect. When you get into
the third dimension, you need logarithms.


RE SHIVA:
Destroys the three cities and shows the Absolute is more important.
When Shiva descends on the vertical axis, how do you know he is
there, functioning? By the jingling of the bells on the waistband.
This also indicates that his waist is at the horizontal level.
Thus, in this verse, Shiva is adequately represented as present.
The Devi is only a protolinguistic representation of the Absolute
- on the perceptual side. It lends itself to description.
Brahman is a bright light, incapable of description.



SLG1 - P59


VERSE 10
"Maha" (great) always signifies some universal background of the Absolute.
Aruna(?) (?) Mahasada = totality of the Vedas and Upanishads.
3 1/2 coils because that is half of 7
Breaking through all the Chakras.
Here the snake has 3 1/2 coils, belonging to the perceptual side inside a cavity.
Certain nerve centres have a synergetic function (yawning, sneezing, etc.)
affecting several organs.
Put three synergetic centres on the negative vertical, with a cavity (Muladhara)
at the bottom. There, there is a coil or knot.
This is a source of memory, this is the memory centre.
Kundalini rests there.
This is a description of a nerve centre, with certain lines of facilitation.
Imagine the two legs of the Goddess and there is something
flowing down, sprinkling, blessing the whole world with something
that comes from above.
Place the feet of the Goddess on the horizontal axis.
Then place yourself below, looking up.
The blessing is sprinkling down on the whole world.
Verticalised elementals are pure light.
From the O Point, there is consoling water sprinkled by the Devi.
Kundalini lives in the Muladhara, and wants to go to the Sahasrara,
where it will have a thousand heads.
Time is represented as a snake.
A thousand heads means that man is conquering the horizontal world.


SLG1 - P60


The Kula Path is the vertical ascension of the Kundalini.
Anyway, the water is sprinkled downward.
Amnas Mahasada(Vedic) (?): Amnu (?) means the conceptual side.
The Kundalini is rising up to the moonlight.
Sunlight would be too bright, too horizontal.
After deriving something from this Amnis Maha Sada (? ED),
the snake returns to its "home", the last bone of the vertebral column,
Muladhara: the centre of all nerve force.
It ascends in this way to the horizontal axis, then it can invert its spiral
on the Numerator side, disappearing in nominalism.
So, this downward movement is to the Negative Absolute,
sleeping there and able to rise when it chooses.


SLG1 - P61


VERSE 11
Structure at the negative or normal limit.
Normalised schemas or structuralism.


With five Shiva - maids
Of Shambo the distinct ones
The nine (basic) of prime nature
Of 43 elements
With 8 and 16 petals, 3 circles and 3 lines
Complete (making up a total)
Is thy refuge in angular matured form


This is a Sri Chakra with all of its component parts normalised.
Triangles are relational and represent a certain order.
Space can be represented by a line. All this is to show the
relations within the Absolute.
How can we explain the putting of the Absolute into a structure,
with a certain number of components?
Who asked you to put the Absolute into a structure ?
How can the Absolute have any geometric structure hiding in it?
The human mind is most at home when it can think of a solid,
according to Bergson.
The mind can also think of a concept:
this is why we have Para- and Apara-Brahman. (immanent and transcendent Absolutes)
How do we justify the houses or angles?
You cannot predicate anything about Brahman, so why draw diagrams?
It is a defect of our minds, which either need a geometric solid or a category on which to fix.
There are two kinds of philosophies, algebraic or geometrical.
We have also the algebra of geometry and vice-versa.
This question of making drawings is an epistemological one:
we make schemas to show the relations within Brahman.
There are two fundamental distinctions - Para and Apara.
When geometry and algebra confirm a point, that is final.
(Post - Hilbertian mathematics has to be studied, a mathematical reality is as valid a "thing" as any philosophical point. (A Universal Concrete.)
Abstractions of thought must meet the form of logic.
The relation between forms of thought and forms of logic - there are two proofs to Pythagoras' theorem: one is visual, the other is intellectual - and it is the same thing with Brahman and Absolute
Beauty.
Brahman is an abstraction of the mind, how can we relate it to
Beauty?
Para Vidya and Apara Vidya (immanent and transcendent knowledge)
- one is geometric, one is abstract, like algebra.
We use schemas because the mind needs something to hold onto.
Just to speak of the Absolute is elusive: we want a gooseberry to hold in the hand, something definite.
The Gita says that if you know Samkhya properly, you will also know
Yoga - and vice versa. "He who sees Samkhya and Yoga as the same, he alone sees the truth".
In the Colloquy of the Gods, the same Akasha (Space or Ether) gives up the figure of the Devi.
This is the greatest secret of the Upanishads.


SLG1 - P63


VERSE 12
Ontology is better than Teleology,
or Double Negation is better than Double Assertion.


Women know the Goddess very easily.
Then by tapas (austerities) there are men who try to get the same thing.


VERSE 12


TRANSLATION
Your beauty, which
O maiden of the high peak
In order to weigh ( to estimate the value of Your beauty)
The best among poets (Kavindraha)
(they) imagine (kalpanti) (exercise their fancy)
Somehow or other (kathamapi)
Brahma and others (refers to the Trinity)
(note theory of ensembles)
out of curiosity for seeing (Your beauty)
Heavenly maidens
mentally attain to
by men of austerity
even what is difficult (for them) to attain
the state of union with Shiva


In the matter of attaining unity with Shiva, the maidens are at an advantage

structure-slg1-p63-v12


SLG1 - P64


These Tapasvis (performers of austerities) try to build up a Numerator, but the maids get identification with the denominator Devi simply by their sympathy for Her.
They are able to merge mentally with the vertical axis, at least on the negative side.
To describe the Absolute in terms of the Numerator, one must be a philosopher, it is very difficult.
But it is easy for the maidens to merge into the ontological vertical axis by their sympathy with the Devi.
Vertical beauty is approximated by the poets, but they cannot escape the fact that they are still dealing with the pluralistic world of many (Vedic) gods.


VERSE 11
The Vidyarthi (wisdom-seeker) is outside the picture of concentric ritual circles, he winds up with a mystical experience, while the others partake of the ceremony.
This can receive elaborate treatment, fanfare, etc.
Then all fades out into the Vidyarthi.
This can be given 10 minutes:
A) Architectonic
B) Geometric forms, logarithmic spirals, conic sections etc..


VERSE 12
1) The negative approach of the women is better than the ascetic one.


2) The importance of the gods is minimised here.
The Tapas of the mother is better than the Tapas of Rishikesh (holy city on the Ganges).
It is negative, subject to the laws of nature.
The true Denominator is better than the fake Numerator.
Nine months' pregnancy verticalizes a woman.


3) The reference is to the Daughter of the Himalayas;
show a woman patiently at her home duties.
The idea is that the woman is nearer to God than the man,
even if he is a Muni.
Women can hate themselves - and that is their meditation, they can hate the giving of birth to children and by double negation become like a streak of lightning.
The point is that the negative way of the women is closer to God than the numerator way of the Munis.


4) The damsels are called "divine" because they have to cancel out the numerator gods mentioned in this verse.
This is an epistemological law which Sankara knew.
It is also suggested that the poets try to attain Absolute Beauty somehow or other; but the maidens attain to it.


SLG1 - P65


VERSE 12
(matter as previous page, for the film)
Method: employ an archer - pulling of a bowstring is a negative
action, directed to the base of the spine.
The target is on the numerator side.
Show a scene where the maidens are bathing and dressing the Goddess
in preparation for Shiva.
Sayuja - attaining complete union with the object of worship.
Swans swimming in a pond enter a tube and come out the other end as
lotuses.


SLG1 - P66


After taking a fully structural perspective in the immediately preceding verse and before going into realistic aspects of the same in the next two verses, to be followed by more positively conceived structural perspectives in VERSE 14 and elsewhere in this section which terminates only in VERSE 41.


SLG1 - P67


VERSE 11
CINEMA SCRIPT - SERIALIZATION.


Each structure and verse must be individually viewed,
then dynamically viewed,
then serially viewed.


Structural stills with dynamic animation and explanation,
Then swinging into the text.


1) Still
2) Explanation of still
3) Animation and dynamism


For dynamism: Kali, the negative spirit of the Absolute.
From Kali Natakam, which the Guru must translate.
The stills will be few in number and will be referred to several
times throughout the film to explain.
Ten minutes explanation at the beginning of the film.
Kali Natakam: you cannot have more eroticism than in this dance,
but it is vertical eroticism; it will not hurt anyone.
Then, a Yogi in meditation, with Chakras - a bird flying in the
Numerator and Kundalini in the Denominator.


VERSE 7
The psycho-physical concept of breasts like knobs on the elephant's forehead. Lightning coming from the base of the spine, finally pushing at the breasts as the pride of Shiva.
Then cut to an elephant pushing logs with his forehead.
Now we must begin to serialise the verses.



SLG1 - P68



VERSE 7
Shiva descends, Parvati ascends > fireworks and Chakras.
VERSE 10
Sprinkles holy water to sanctify the world.
The five-petalled lotus becomes closed when she gives her benediction.
All the energies of a woman come from the negative power.
Kulakunda - the Kaulas worshipped the negative absolute
Like the bulb of a lotus flower (the Kulakunda).
This is a bulb- like source of energy for the Devi.
After spraying the horizontal created world,
She causes it to become verticalized like a closing lotus.
The dichotomies (the two ambivalent poles) meet and burst into the universe. Then she sprinkles it (all of the flower blossoms and the sense-interests found in the buds) to halt the horizontal tendencies.
The Kulakunda (bulb or tuber) is where the Devi sleeps.
So the vertical parameter has been supplied in VERSE 8;
then the actual and the virtual are supplied in VERSE 10, and we
have gone to a pure negative Chakra.


SLG1 - P68


VERSE 11
This is a fully geometric structure, he is now describing the Devi in pure mathematical terms.
There are four triangles with their bases above for Shiva and five with base below for the Devi.
Taken all together, there are 44 elements - 9 triangles, 3 circles, 3 lines, the 8 petal lotus, the 16 petal lotus.
.
.

structure-slg1-p68-v11


SLG1 - P69


There seems to be dispute about the proper number here.
The English translation by a Malayali Pundit has innumerable theories.
14+8+16+3+3=44 - Structural factors to be used:
14 OUTSIDE ANGLES
8 LOTUS PETALS
16 LOTUS PETALS
3 OUTSIDE LINES
3 CIRCLES, INCLUDING CENTRE
"Mathematically conceived elements", "Structural loci"
(check VERSE 96 to see if four doors are mentioned)
.

slg1-p69-v11a


VERSE 11


This consists of full Chakras, the most concrete yet.
(Guru's drawing to show that a fully-fledged Chakra has been reached )
The Sanskrit-Malayalam rendering indicates either 43 or 44 structural loci.
This must refer to conics; when they say triangles from opposite directions,
they must mean conics.



SLG1 - P70



CONICS IN VERSES 11 AND 12
The ancient Hindus, who founded Tantra, were not conscious of conics.
How to count these angles?
When they say three circles, letters and magenta; it is plane geometry.
But when they say Kali....
Three concentric circles are peripheral and central only - this is plane geometry.
The Greeks developed conics to a high degree, calculating ellipses, parabolas, charting the paths of stars, etc..
An ellipse must be fitted into a conic section to be defined.
It is a flame or lotus or lightning.
The face or Bindu, is put into place with Shiva.
Then speaks the descending pride of Shiva and the ascending pride
of Parvati.
The bells on Shiva's waist are peripheral and at the outer limit (upper?).
Then the heavy breasts of the Devi, put into a conic section.
(The inside cones do not count (Shiva Kanyas) since there can be an
infinite number of cones in a cone.
Something about which you can make a predication = prinaia (?illegible)
This is the house of the Devi with its 14 exterior angles, etc.
The interior angles are merely Kanyas (maid-servants of the Devi).



SLG1 - P71


VERSE 11
After counting the 5 and 4 triangles, think of them as one, joined in the totality. The house where You reside (your refuge, which you occupy).
The centre is where You reside, the exterior angles represent Your physical house.
Parvati has the function of manifesting the world, while Shiva represents the pure vertical axis.
Thus she cannot represent the final Absolute but is absorbed into it.
These three circles are the girdle of the structure.
With lotus petals and magenta and chromatic colours, coming from the waist of the Devi.
The Indian mind wanted to represent something, but had an incomplete knowledge of solid geometry.


VERSE 12


Your beauty is admired first by women, who appreciate it in such
A way as to outwit the Munis (sages) doing Tapas. These are
the servant-girls of the Devi. By identifying with the beauty of
the Devi, they attain to the Absolute.
When the Devi wants to be beautiful, it is under the aegis of the
Absolute. With the third eye, ashes, and not brushing the hair, she
emulates Shiva.
She is properly purified, and sets an example for the servant-girls.


SLG1 - P72


VERSE 12


TRANSLATION
Daughter of the snow-capped mountains (ultimate source of beauty),
the foremost poets are balked in their attempt to find an equal to
Your beauty, as even celestial damsels, in their eagerness to appreciate it,
mentally attain a status of unity with Girisha (Shiva = "mountain lord");
which is hard for the Munis with all their meditations.


All lyric poetry is an attempt to describe or attain to beauty.
Munis try to meditate on it. But the servant girls have access to the mansion, and so they identify with and appreciate it.
They are already in the vertical axis, participating in the value of the beauty of the Devi.
There is the question of Virinchi (see translation of this word) which is
indicated in the translation as Brahma, the Creator, and hence creative poet.
But the Guru finds it to mean that the poets are the creators of the gods.
The gods are both the causes of poetry and the effects of poetry.
"In order to determine Your value, the great poets are, somehow or other, creating, by their fancy, a shape, somehow or other to Thy absolute beauty".
That is, they bring out something as existing.


SLG1 - P73


They are giving shape to something, but to what?
To the three gods, according to the Guru.
In their intention to create something, they are producing
something - but the translators do not seem to know what it is
that is produced.


1) The girls are superior to the poets and Munis, because they are in direct contact with the Devi, and are female.
2) But the poets are not women and can enter into the spirit of the coquetry only indirectly.
3) The girls see that the Devi loves Shiva and they emulate her, thus approaching Girisha.
In trying to attain or describe the beauty of the Devi, the poets manage somehow or other to produce the three gods, Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva: conceptual entities which exist by the fancy of the Vedic poets.
The poets are restricted to the numerator side, indulging in poetic fancies, and so they produce numerator gods instead of the Devi.


SLG1 - P74


(Printed matter from "Values" follows.)


VERSE 12
Tvadiyam saundaryam tuhina-giri-kanye tulayitum
Kavindrah kalpante katham api Virinchi-prabhrtaya
Yad alokautsukyad amara-lalana yanti manasa
Tapobhir dush-prapam api Girish-sayujya padavim.


VERSE 12
WORD-FOR-WORD
Tvadiyam saundaryam = your beauty
Tuhina-giri-kanye = o maiden of the high peak
Tulayitum = in order to estimate (the value of Your beauty)
Kavindrah = the best among poets
Kalpante = they imagine (exercise their fancy)
Katham api = somehow or other
Virinchi prabhrtaya = Virinchi and others
Yad-alokaut-sukyad = out of curiosity for seeing which
Amara lalanah = heavenly maidens
Yanti manasa = mentally attain to
Tapobhir = by men of austerity (renunciation)
Dush prapam api = even what is difficult (for them to attain)
Girisha-sayujya-padavim = the state of union with Shiva


VERSE 12 TRANSLATION
O daughter of the high peak, to estimate the equal of your beauty,
The best among poets, exercising their fancy; somehow created
Brahma and others
Curious which to see, heavenly damsels mentally attain to,
What is hard even for ascetics, the state of union with Shiva.


VERSE 12
COMMENTARY
After taking a structural perspective in the second to last verse
as well as in the last, and before going into realistic aspects to be
followed by more positively conceived perspectives with VERSE 14
and elsewhere, this section terminates only at VERSE 41, to keep to
the same attitude; i.e. treating Beauty as an inner experience.
Here in the present verse, the value implications as between
various components or limbs, are meant to be brought into relief.
It should be noted that it is nothing other than the value of
Absolute Beauty in the abstract that is the theme here. Beauty in
the abstract is neither wholly schematic nor wholly categorical.
The items of any imaginable category within the scope of
the Absolute have one-to-one correspondance with structural
aspects considered schematically. Both of them could refer to the
Self or the Non-Self at one and the same time and need not be
separated into subjective individuation of the Absolute Self or its
objective individuation, implying introversion or extroversion as
some recent writers belonging to the Analytical School of psychology
seem to suggest.
Terms like" Saguna Brahman" and "Nirguna Brahman",
"Apara Brahman" and "Para Brahman", "Jivatama" "Paramatma",
even "Atma" and "Unatma" are applied to epistemological aspects
of the same Brahman according to the prakarana (chapter) context in
question..
Thus there are other grades and subdivisions of the notion of the
individual or the self, such as: "Pratyagatma", "Sutratma", "Vaishvanara",
"Taijas", etc.etc.
These terms have to be referred correctly to their positions, both
structurally and categorically.
The categories afford the symbols or monomarks while the
structural aspects fix the signs in relation to each. When they
tally, they explain one in the light of the other. We can use such
explanations for the psychological, cosmological or theological
clarifications for ourselves according to need as they arise when
the subject unravels itself verse by verse in the order conceived
by the author himself. To follow the workings of the mind of the
author is the primary task of the critical reader and it is the
claim made here - for the first time perhaps - of following such
a line of critical scrutiny in respect of theses verses whose
meanings have intrigued scholars for over a thousand years.
Now this justifies the other most natural claim that
Sankara as an advaitin could not have been thinking of any other
Godhead or deity whatsoever than the Absolute itself viewed
under the aegis of the one Absolute Value both real and abstract
at once, which is the aesthetic content here alluded to as a
sheer or overpowering sense of beauty. The Upanishads underline
many times that Ananda or joy is to be recognised by intelligent
men as representing the final content of the Absolute (anandam
brahmano vidvan). This does not however exclude the possibility
of the same Brahman being understood under the other two
perspectives of psychology or cosmology.
Ananda, Atma or Brahman are always interchangeable terms of equal dignity.
Brahman could be rich in ontology without it contradicting the
idea of its having a high intensity of value. Brahman is something
Great, Adorable and Existent and these epithets have to be pressed
together into one sheer experience in terms both of understanding
as well as aesthetic sense. What is implied in Sat (Existence) is
to be neutralised by what is implied as different from it in the
term Chit (Subsistence) or what might be suggested by the term
Ananda (Bliss) which necessarily refers to a value judgement.


SLG1 - P76


Whether we call Brahman Sat-Cit-Ananda or describe it as Satyam
(existence), Jnanam (subsistence), Anantam (infinite) as is
sometimes done in Upanishadic texts, each of these terms is
explained by Sankara as having the effect of neutralising or
countering any vestige of perfect unity suggested by any other of
them, so that they add up to a perfect unity of content which melts
or fuses them together into one non-dual Reality, Truth or Value.
The Good, the True and the Beautiful as in western parlance have
to refer to the same Absolute.
It is Absolute Beauty with which we are concerned in the present as
In all the verses of this work. Neither Tripurasundari nor Parvati
need be necessarily presupposed except by way of some latitude or
condescension made to religious-minded or pious upasakas such as
the Saktyas, Samayins or even Kaulins. The Jnani or man of Jnana
(wisdom) is always superior to the man of mere piety or works.
This is stated in the Gita (VII, 16) Sankara would be the last philosopher
to
minimise the efficiency of wisdom by itself for the purpose of
appreciating the aesthetic values that he wishes here to bring
into evidence in a manner consistent with his own philosophy
expounded elsewhere in his writings. No question of upasana
or worship therefore arises here. Those who use this text as a form of
religious observance rather than in terms of understanding, pure
and simple, are likely to miss its best message as intended by
Sankara. The Upanishads boldly assert that a knower of Brahman
can, without any further factor intervening, attain the Absolute:
"Brahmavit apnoti param".
Devotional attitudes or practices such as Yoga or Brahmacharya
are only the lower rungs of a ladder to be discarded when
surmounted. This does not however mean that they have to be left
out of consideration and have no place. When spiritual progress
is so looked upon with all the steps or rungs of the ladder that
must necessarily belong to it, it is thus that even the Upanishads
refer to the Vedas: "Vedah sarvagani satyam ayatana."
The meaning of this verse will become clear to the reader in the
light of what we have just said. It only remains to be put
together so as to tally the structural with the categorical elements
in order to make the meaning emerge to view.
There are the following factors involved:
1) Estimating the beauty-value of the Absolute;
2) The question of describing it in literature;
3) How the appreciation of Beauty is easier from the negative
ontological side of the psyche as represented by heavenly damsels;
4) How it is not so easy through austerities.


SLG1 - P77
Now let the reader scrutinise the text word by word and see that the top
half of the circle is to be filled by values that are hypostatic
and Vedic. The bottom half is to be similarly filled by the
values within easy grasp of the heavenly damsels. Now place the
men of austerities on the right or plus sector above the horizontal
line, and the damsels themselves on the minus left sector.
Appreciation consists of abolishing horizontal as well as the vertical
duality. The total implication thus arrived at will be sufficiently clear to the reader.
Similar verses will be found to have more than just curiosity about
beauty, such as the next one where heavenly damsels are again
referred to, which will have other values more realistic or more
abstract than what is implicit in the curiosity about beauty
here. Beauty can be appreciated as within itself from the
ontological rather than the teleological side. Ascetics represent
the latter. The inter-subjective and trans-physical relationship on a
homogeneous basis should be kept in mind in order to appreciate
the contrast involving the two sets of value appreciations under
reference here.

structure-slg1-p77-v12a.


VERSE 12


STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS:
The above figure taken together with the comments will suffice
for a structural analysis of the content and purpose of this
verse. In an over-all form the intention of the author is to say
that celestial maidens, being vertical minus in status, understand
the value of the Goddess by direct participation, which the
ascetics can only attain indirectly.


SLG1 - P78


VERSE 13
Even a very old man, incapable of any love affairs, if the Devi's
glance has fallen upon him, all of the hundreds of dancing girls
will fall in love with him, with their hair hanging down and their
clothes neglected, their girdles bursting.
In schematic language, this verse wants to say that the Devi, with a
side glance....maidens on her negative side. Then there is an old
pundit, very intelligent. He is able to describe the beauty of the
Devi, because of the side-glance.
(He need not have had the full glance - thus fully absolutist, like Shiva.)
He wants to say that the whole of nature is constituted of a bi-polarity
between the mathematical function and the real, female function.
(They are in hundreds, because the quantity is unimportant.)
SLG1 - P78

structure-slg1-p78-v13.


Mainly a woman's body is constituted to nourish
A) a foetus
B) a baby.
Women still want the mathematical counterpart.
They fall in love with some intelligent principle.
They forget to fix their hair and they forget to cover their breasts.
It is like a flash of lightning - something bursting.
SLG1 - P79
Absolute Beauty becomes absolute to the extent that it is not physical.
Then, the disparity in age between the young girls and the very old man
means that the relationship is pure.
(See Rousseau's "Nouvelle Heloise" where the rich, noble lady
comes running to the tutor.)
How to represent this in the scenario?
First, take care of Rousseau on the screen.
So, hundreds of young girls have their breasts exposed by the
movement of their saris, their hair dishevelled and their waist-bands
bursting, coming in contact with an old man (a log of wood)
who has been glanced at sideways by the Devi. Here the Omega and
Alpha points are attracting one another.
VERSE 14 - all of the chakras are passed in review.
VERSE 15 - shows numerator and denominator values.
VERSE 16 - effect on the lotus-like mind of poets.
VERSE 13
Absolute Beauty is not physical, yet it is overwhelming in its
appeal, transcending sex.
An old, dry man will become attractive to young women - on the
condition that he represents some absolute value within himself.
Then there is a breaking of waist bands and corsets,
Suddenly there is an element of surprise in Absolute Beauty.
The women have abandoned themselves here, forgetting all conventional modesty.


SLG1 - P80


VERSE 13


TRANSLATION
- Towards a man overaged
- Uninteresting to the view
- Inert in respect of sportive ways
- Falling within your regard (in the scope of your regard)
- Follow running
- In hundreds
- Young damsels
- With dishevelled hair
- The pot-like breasts exposed by blown-off clothes
- With their silk garments in neglect


On the objective side, physical beauty is a negligible factor.
By the reflected beauty of the Devi, he is made attractive to women.

structure-slg1-p80-v13a.


This is a question of opposites.


SLG1 - P81


Compare part of the previous verse: here the numerator is stressed.
1) Inner and outer aspects of beauty.
2) Inner beauty is richer than outer beauty.
3) Many denominator beauties are needed to equal one inner beauty
of the numerator.
4) A sudden lightning flash of beauty.
5) Bursting shows the Absolute aspect of love.


VERSE 13


METHOD:
1) Show suddenly love at first sight - some girls fall in love
with the ugly tutor. (See Rousseau's "Nouvelle Heloise".)



SLG1 - P82


VERSE 14


TRANSLATION
Omega Point involving rays and numbers.
- in earth
- 56
- 52
- in water
- in fire
- 62
- 54
- in air
- in the sky
- 72
- in the mind
- thus 64 indeed
- rays (mayuhah)
- even above those
- your
- pair of feet (are placed)

structure-slg1-p82-v14.


This is a numerator schema because it deals with numbers rather
than with visible things.
Each number is divisible by 2, which shows bilateral symmetry and an ambivalence.
Ascent from earth to fire, descent from mind to air.
The resultant 360 gives a total structure, or a structural whole.
The total 360 is four right angles.
The same 360 will also be found in the vertical axis.
The feet can be put at three points.
Here, it is the Absolute seen as an Omega point structure.
A universal elsewhere is implied in the rays of light.
64+72+54=190
62+52+56=170
Sankara is confident of his ability (see later verse) because he knows he is using a structure which meets his descriptions.
Note - "sky" and "ether" are the same word in Sanskrit.
This structure is akin to Pythagoras' tetraktys)


SLG1 - P84


VERSE 14


The earth element, Muladhara, 56,
In water there are 52, Manipura,
Svadhisthana, in fire , 62, Anahata, in air 54,
The 72 of ether, Visuddhi, the 64 of the mind, Ajna;
Thy feet are far beyond, (above) the rays of these.


Instead of saying that she is sporting with Her Lord, the attempt here is to grade all of the chakras with numbers - 56 to 74 and then renormalised to 62.
(These are supposed to correspond to letters of the alphabet.)
1) Girls are able to appreciate the Absolute - V13
2) Feet placed in the Bindhusthana - normalised - think of the feet there in a kind of bright moonlight.
This is a very tricky use of numeralisation and schemas.
It is a renormalisation from the previous verse.
At the central Bindhusthana there is an active principle.
The Numerator is an idea, but the Universal Concrete goes at the bottom.
The burning of the candle is in the middle - at the meeting of the
idea and the concrete.


SLG1 - P85


The generalised candle gets its power to burn from Shiva and
Its substance from the Devi.
The nominal candle is at the Omega Point.
The actual candle burns a single man at a time and a place.
(It can be verticalized by abstraction and generalisation)
A verticalized candle is its reflection;
the physical candle is at the Alpha point.


At the core of your being something is changing (burning) at
every moment. This is the universal concrete man who is eating
something.
Devi - the idea is to provide the numerator to balance the Devi's
denominator.
Narayana Guru talks of Numerator and Denominator, front and back
mirrors - everything is a reflection except Brahman.
He reduces, categorises, schematises, abstracts, and generalises.
Finally you become That; That becomes This.
The world is you, you are the world.
Experience that is inside, and the world that is outside.
When these tally, you have achieved Brahmavidya.
Place yourself at the inside.
The ferryman counts ten people, then crosses over, then counts
nine, and says: "one must be dead". It was himself. (similarly with the number of the chakras).
You can say it (what you see and what you are) but they must tally.
There must be an apperception.
The Darsana Mala contains the essence of Vedanta, it is all there.



SLG1 - P86



VERSE 14
TRANSLATION
Earth - Muladhara - 56
Water - Manipura - 52
Fire - Svadhisthana - 62
Air - Anahata - 54
Ether - Vishuddhi - 72
Mind - Ajna - 64
And the two feet beyond these rays in the Bindhusthana.


Which epistemology allows you to include Mind as a cosmological factor, among the list of elementals?
Mind is included as an universal concrete reference point.
Here the mind is put at the top, descending and interpenetrating matter,
(with earth at the bottom).
They must not be considered as separate or distinct.(Like a blue lotus: the blueness and the lotus are not to be separated.)
Note: the total number equals 360.
Also the elementals may be construed or seen as two sets - one for the Devi, one for Shiva.
Sankara multiplies the Tattvas, etc., by two - because there is duplication.
But a duplication of what? This will be taken up in the next lesson.



SLG1 - P87



Even Socrates could not manage to include the mind in the same
schema with the earth. "I cannot philosophise with mud" (like the
hylozoists).
So the two legs of the Devi are reciprocal. We can allow
Sankara to normalise upward - putting the legs (feet) at the top
instead of the middle..
The Devi is also a nourishing principle - there is a baby inside (denominator) as well as outside (numerator).
The two feet, vertically, come one from above and one from below.
The key word is "rays".
Peripherally they are very colourful, not so colourful at the centre.
The letters of the alphabet finally represent the wisdom of the Vedas.
So the letters are placed in the schema, as the bursting of the Devi
- the vehicles of wisdom.
All of the numbers are duplications.
See the multiplication of VERSE 9. That is the Absolute staring at you.
How do you explain this symmetry, both mathematical and logarithmic?
So these numbers must be seen in terms of duplication.


SLG1 - P88


VERSE 14 and VERSE 9 (relating to numerology)
The most important point in this verse is that she is breaking through the chakras.
"Sporting with Her Lord" means that they are equal, that they are
participating, and absorb one another.
What about the lower stages? Duality cannot be admitted.
See Gautama, Kanada, Kapila, Jaimini, Patanjali and Jaimini.
The Axiology, epistemology and methodology which unites these six
Rishis (wise men) was known to Sankara and further elucidated by Narayana, then expanded by Nataraja in "The Science of the Absolute".
.

structure-slg1-p88-v14a.


This sequence is the relative way to see the ascending relationship:
the intermediary stages should be seen.
What is not clear is how they could meet and sport together.


SLG1 - P88


There are now numerological and alphabetical implications.
(The vowels are close to the centre, the consonants are horizontal.)
There are certain words which are used often in the Mantra diagrams.
So letters are taken and graded structurally - a finalisation of the thought-word to reveal the Absolute in terms of the Devi, both abstract and concrete: her peripheral aspects (in the Tantra).
The Tantris say that the sounds can be correlated with the colour solid. Newton, Steiner and Goethe all had colour schemes.
"Unless people can prove to me that colour is not real....etc"
Colour is a Universal Concrete.
Why should the rainbow be an illusion? c.f. Bergson.
(Light, line and colour, these are the elements of a painting. (See Ruskin.)



SLG1 - P90



VERSE 14
The infinite elsewhere and the infinite here and now.
The two feet of the Goddess (VERSE 9) come one from above and the other from below.
In VERSE 14, all the numbers are divisible by two.
The mayuhas are greater on the Numerator side.
But these numbers are not strict. Different parts of the Upanishads give different numbers. Sankara here is not able to decide on the finalised numbers. (But he is a prodigy, he knows every nook and cranny of the Upanishads.)
After three days meditation on VERSE 14, the Guru has founds some errors in his structuralism. (See Eddington, P57.)
This is manifestation from the conceptual side with the six chakras or mayuhas.
You can fix the Bindhusthana where you like - it can be pushed up to the top. The two feet occupy the centre in any case.
The feet can represent proto- or meta-linguistics.
You can combine the two aspects and arrive at a description of Absolute Beauty.
(Example of the amethyst quartz crystal; smoky on the bottom,
but there is no difference in the beauty of the top or the bottom.)
In the mystical language handed down from Sankara and Kalidasa,
the touch of the Absolute is often given a slight blue or black colour.
In this verse the Devi is lifted to the utmost white-light principle.
The Gita speaks of this light which puts out other lights.
(Eddington and Oppenheimer saw it when at supernovae.)


SLG1 - P91


As regards these numbers, the numerator side is always greater than the denominator.
Narayana says that the experience must be there, then the speculation can coincide with it
Something is burning inside you - something warm and bright which transforms the elementals into concepts - Manas - mind.
These numbers need not trouble us. Put the table of VERSE 9, and examine the symmetry.
(VERSES (?)) : 9, 18, 27, 36, 45, 54, 63, 72, 81, 90.


SLG1 - P92


VERSE 15
Conceptual and perceptual entities are here brought together:
honey, milk, etc., approximating to the numerator aspect of Shiva.
(The Devi wears Shiva's ornaments)
The existential satisfactions coming from the three foods are on
the denominator side.
The crescent is above the Himalayas,
Ganesha is to the left, and Subrahmanya to the right.
The crescent moon is above; there is a dangerous middle ground of forest; then the Devi at the Alpha point. Numerator and denominator cancel.
How could anyone who has once at least seen this vision ever miss tasting the absolute value of these words which describe the Absolute?
(The question is: "Why should the words of a man who has seen this vision not have the sweetness and pleasure of honey, milk and grape-juice?")
The book is numerator, the rosary is denominator;
if you think something right, she will pull you towards her.
The beads are for Herself, for Her introverted meditation.
The book is positive, like the Vedas.
The space between the beads and the book, between ontology (atman)
and concept (Mimamsa) must be filled (eliminated) by the disciple
in his meditation.


SLG1 - P93


Reference by commentator (?)
In the ocean of beauty, with eight arms and three eyes -
four above and four below - as a reflection.
Monomarks - marks which give you the function of certain elements in a mathematical function (equation).
These eight arms (in the example verse from the Malayalam edition)
have the function of monomarks.
A blueprint is a conceptual entity, the house built from it is real,
but depends on the blueprint and its inclusive data.
Exponential mathematics gives you Pythagorean distances
> trigonometry >logarithms > differential calculus.
Eddington first created "E numbers". Fact verified calculation.
Calculate first, verify later.
How eight monomarks? Because there are eight functions.


SLG1 - P93


Concepts - Percepts,
Future - Past
Matter participates in mind, mind in matter.


They participate at the interstices - the hub.
SLG1 - P94


VERSE 15
Subsistential and existential values have to belong together in the same Absolute.
This verse clearly indicates a numerator Saraswati, with crystal-clear (colourless) beads or rosary. Everything about her is white.
This is the Vedic Saraswati - sattva - a pure, numerator factor.
But to this Sankara wants to add something ontologically real - a denominator factor - milk, honey and the essence of grapes: this is the Dravidian touch.
The point here is that the numerator is valueless without the introduction of the denominator factor.

structure-slg1-p94


VERSE 15


TRANSLATION
- Brilliantly clear as the rays of the autumnal moon
- Wearing crown of matted hair, having crescent
- Having hands bearing the boon-bestowing or refuge-giving gestures, rosary of crystal-clear gems and book
- Once
- Having adored that
- You should not be
- In whatsoever manner might be that good men
- Should come to have the pleasing sweetness
- Of honey, milk and grapes
- The array of words


If he knows the Numerator value, to that extent, somehow or other -
he will have the eloquence of flow of words of the sweetness of honey, milk and grapes.
One is the corollary of the other. One implies the other.
One side is the Vedas, one side is experience.
The crescent moon refers to lordship or kingship of the Himalayas,
and of Shiva.
This is the "idea of the holy" - the mysterious.
The Himalayas are like crowns and the crescent moon is particularly
beautiful here.
Saraswati is described here with some of the attributes of Shiva.
What is the value of numerator music to a man who is starving?
She holds a book and rosary, for she is alternately reading and meditating. The other two hands are in the gestures of protection or boon-bestowal.
Any man who adores a two-sided goddess of this type, will somehow or other succeed in having within his reach those words which are like honey, milk or grapes.
If you know the numerator side of Absolute Beauty, the Denominator comes by itself.
In the domain of the word there are the conceptual and the experiential sides. Why should he who knows the numerator value also have the denominator value?
The array of words would have the pleasing sweetness of honey, milk and grapes...
There are two sides which meet in any certitude.


SLG1 - P96


Additional notes on VERSE 15


Value - the gift of sweetness is as good as successful poetry.
Poetry - the art of arranging phraseology.
The presiding deity of the Word (who grants word-power to great poets)
is Saraswati - who is the same as Kali, as understood in the more natural proto-Aryan setting.
Kali is the negative or mute aspect of the Absolute Feminine
Principle, and the mute Bhadra Kali belongs to the negative aspect of the Word.
In the Vedic context, she transcends the horizontal axis and emerges on the numerator side as Saraswati, the benediction and the source of the four Vedas.
Kali, thus upgraded, carries a book, representing the Vedic world.
The first half of this verse refers to the presiding deity of the Word.
Even the beads of the rosary are represented as of a crystalline,
colourless quality.
She is often seen in white, seated on a white lotus, with a vina (stringed instrument).
The two remaining heads are represented as showing gestures of protection and boon-bestowing, with a reciprocity of attraction and repulsion implied. This gesture is called Abhaya, protection; it indicates no alternative but surrender for the devotee.
The image of the Goddess occupies only the numerator aspect here,
per Sankara.
The poets should have not only the concepts, but also the perceptual counterparts, in the form of enjoyable inner experiences.
The creative urge is to be presupposed as a counterpart to the facility with words: thus an alternation between the two cancel out, yielding the overwhelming beauty of the Absolute.
He who sees this principle at once gets the right to be an absolutely gifted poet: whatever he writes will hit the target in the centre.
There is only good and bad poetry.
The poet who has once had this experience - tantamount to prostrating to the Goddess - can make great poetry.


SLG1 - P97


The array of words would be awaiting the poet's command to fall into order.
But not every Goddess can grant this gift - there are secret indications here - - the crescent moon and the crown of matted hair.
This is the secret: the drop-out touch, the absolutist, Vedantic
revaluation; the austerity and renunciation of Shiva, rising above all conventional life.
The crescent moon has a thin, logical status: to signify that
She is as generalised and abstract as Shiva himself, representing his own value at the Omega point.
There is no actual Saraswati to worship: she is an abstracted and generalised principle of the Omega point.
As against this numerator aspect, above the line, think of examples
of ontological experiences: like Krishna saying "I am the sapidity of water" in the Gita - it is a perceptual image raised to the status of the Absolute. Similarly, Sankara here uses honey, milk and grapes to cover by representation all other perceptual enjoyments: touch, etc.
The teaching is that numerator and denominator factors must cancel out; representing two great ensembles: name and form (perceived), of equal epistemological status, so as to be cancelled out mutually into the resultant Absolute Beauty in poetry.
The book held by Saraswati: the world of poetry is intended here.
Also the legend that Kali wrote the secret syllable on the tongue of Kalidasa: Sankara's treatment is reminiscent of this legend.
.