Advaita Vedanta

SAUNDARYA LAHARI

VERSE 24

PLUS AND MINUS COMPENSATION
DOWNWARD NORMALIZATION
THE TRANSCENDENCE OF PHENOMENAL FUNCTIONS IN BRACKETS 

जगत्सूते धाता हरिरवति रुद्रः क्षपयते
तिरस्कुर्व-न्नेतत् स्वमपि वपु-रीश-स्तिरयति ।
सदा पूर्वः सर्वं तदिद मनुगृह्णाति च शिव-
स्तवाज्ञा मलम्ब्य क्षणचलितयो र्भ्रूलतिकयोः

jagat sute dhata harir avati rudrah ksapayate
tiraskurvann etat svam api vapur isas tirayati
sada purvas sarvam tad idam anugrhnati ca sivah
tavajnam alambya ksana calayitor bhrulatikayoh 

Brahma creates the worlds, Vishnu protects, Shiva destroys;
Negating all this and his own body, the Lord fades out,
Thus what results; Shiva who has eternity for prefix (Sadashiva)
He blesses, obeying the orders derived from your instantly vibrating eyebrow-twigs. 

This verse, placed correctly in its epistemological perspective, views the same process as in the previous verse, but from a partially reversed perspective. Here we go from the side of causes to the side of effects. Thus, when we say that Brahma creates, the reasoning process normally travels from the cause or source of creation, which is below, to a higher level where the effects of creation are more pluralistic or multiple. This function of creation, represented by Brahma, can be structurally imagined to be like a tree. When this process of creation has gone far enough, the divided multiplicity of entities creates a horizontal firm ground for human actions and reactions to operate upon, through which individuals could promote themselves further in the vertical scale of values. This is the Vishnu-world of graded value-stratifications, cutting through which at right angles, each man or woman attains to life's fulfilment, according to their desires or deserts. In every sentient being capable of aspiring for spiritual progress one could imagine a vertical parameter cutting through the horizontal sleeping Vishnu-world to the vertical Shiva-world. 

Beyond these Vishnu stratifications of graded life-purposes lies the pinnacle point from which Shiva descends, flame in hand, to burn the various value-cities, so as to bring balance again between creation and its inevitable opposite. Shiva, conceived as the pinnacle of the situation, is not a mere abstraction, but participates in existence through Parvati, with whom he shares his own body as the androgynous god Ardha-nari-isvara (half-woman-god). Their relation here is one of back-to-back double correction, and not one of mere horizontal importance. Thus participating with his own counterpart at the O Point and sharing the horizontality, though only through the magenta of the previous verse, he is here represented as being interested in abolishing even this thinnest of absolute substances. This is what is indicated in the second line where Shiva fades out from the second to the third dimension. As a result, he attains to greater heights of abstraction and generalization where his more exalted condition justifies the term Sadashiva applied to him, rather than just "Shiva" who is an agent that destroys the second-dimensional world. 

If this process of exaltation of Shiva should be accentuated further, even the various value worlds would stand in danger of being abolished altogether, leaving nothing by which the human soul could attain its purpose. Life has to be significant, if nothing else. Any philosophy that does not retain this, as the last residue at least, and deprives life of all its significance or purpose, becomes a philosophy that is empty of consolation and cancels its own raison d'être. Vedanta does not aim at such an ultimate bankruptcy of significance or purposes as might be claimed by other philosophies more thinly speculative, such as lukewarm "maybe, maybe not" attitudes, or systems which do not go beyond paradoxes to purposefulness in life. 

It is to avoid this total bankruptcy of purpose that the "eyebrow-twigs" of the Goddess have the all-important role of saving the situation. She does not show her concern in any overtly gross terms, but Shiva can see from her "instantly vibrating eyebrow-twigs" that she is highly concerned about the possible destruction of all her progeny in the form of created beings. She, in principle, is in charge of all of them, and she cannot deny her own proper function. The world has to go on as it was in the beginning, now and forever, without end. 

The blessing in the fourth line is to be treated as the combined operation of the function of the rays of Shiva and Parvati together, with no element of separation, in keeping with Advaita Vedanta.

ADDITIONAL COMMENTS WITH STRUCTURAL DIAGRAMS RELATED TO THIS VERSE FROM SAUNDARYA LAHARI/NOTES.

Obeying negates.
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Sadashiva (supreme Shiva) is the highest Omega point, but has to be cancelled against the Devi at the Alpha Point.

 

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Sadashiva, after destroying, always obeys the eyebrows of the Devi.
Total negation is denied validity.

(Shiva without the Devi lacks validity. ED)

You cannot say that Brahman (the Absolute) is nothing.

(It has to have content. ED)

Here we have positivity by double assertion.
The function of horizontalising - Rudra (Shiva) coming to destroy things -
Brahma creates them.

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Another version:

 

TRANSLATION
- Brahma creates the world
- Vishnu saves
- Shiva destroys (See Verse1)
- Inverting (??) this also his own body
- The Lord (Ishah) makes all fade out
- The one with eternity for prefix (Sada purvah)
- All of this state (arrived at by the previous line)
- He bestows benediction upon also / Shiva (normal)
- Resorting to Your mandate
- Instantly vibrating (at great frequency)
- Instantly vibrating (at great frequency)
- Of the twin eyebrow-twigs

 

Sadashiva (the supreme Shiva) has a negative function, all the other three have positive functions.
The trinity of the three gods - Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva (in his demiurge aspect as the destroyer) is Vedic, but the negative function of Sadashiva is Vedantic.

 

So, he makes everything disappear and also bestows benediction, because he is beyond good and evil.

 

Shiva is moved to bless the worlds by the vibration of Her eyebrows.
The three functions belong to the phenomenal aspect.

But percepts can be conceptualised, so the degrees of conceptualisation and perceptualisation in the schemas or structures can vary.

Thus here, we put the three functions in the Denominator to avoid two schemas.
The negative side contains the horizontal principles - the zone of ontological richness - while the Numerator is ontologically indigent and teleologically rich.

 

(Editor's Note - the relative positions of Shiva, Vishnu and Brahma in the above structural diagram are as depicted in the original manuscript, but are unusual and probably erroneous - Shiva should be in the place of Vishnu at the top. Below is a revised and almost certainly correct version. ED)

 

 

Ontology is horizontal, teleology is vertical and one eats the other, as with Time and Space.

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Shiva is at the equator, Sada Shiva (The fully positive numerator aspect of Shiva as opposed to his role in the processes of creation, preservation and destruction as a demiurge. ED) at the North Pole.

 

You can have gods at different conceptual levels.

The Absolute as Paramatma (the Supreme Spirit) - Sada Shiva - is impersonal.
As Shiva, he is a god - the normal Absolute - and as Isa (Lord), he is concerned with human affairs.

So, Shiva can be placed at several points on the vertical axis.
Burn the seed, so that it can never sprout - that is Sadashiva.

The eyebrows of the Goddess are at the negative limit
She is the normalizing negative limit.

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Respect and devotion are due in this order: "God, Guru, Father, Mother, martyrs to Truth, those who aid justice": these are all the grades of devotion in this world, as stated in the Darsana Mala of Narayana Guru, Chapter 8, Bhakti Darsanam, Vision of Contemplation, Verse 9 & 10. Parampara Bhakti - a hierarchy of devotion.

 

Verse 9

Towards the Father of the World, to one`s
Spiritual teacher, father, mother,
Towards the Founders of Truth, and
Towards those who walk in the same path;

 

Verse 10

Towards those who put down evil,
And those who do good to all -
What sympathy there is, is devotion here,
While what here belongs to the Self Supreme is the ultimate

 

 

Finally, Sadashiva causes all of this to disappear, his own body included, and also blesses all.

Sadashiva is "Obeying Your orders" - this means he is looking to the Devi for permission to function.

 

He takes orders from the eyebrows -  (The eyebrows are vibrating due to Her compassion - She is almost crying out of sympathy for suffering humanity. ED), so that no function occurs unilaterally.

Shiva and the Devi are something in two perspectives, the relation is interchangeable.

 

Here the value is the same, it is only seen from two perspectives.
Here, no matter how great Shiva becomes, Devi's influence is still there, as the eyebrows.
This is called reconstructing the Absolute.

Double assertion starts with Shiva,
Double negation starts with the Devi.

 

By double assertion we attain the Absolute, but there is the slightest bit left over and this is the benefit of Value.
If there is nothing, then there is nothing to write.
But there is something - value - and that is called Brahman.

Value is the irreducible factor at the core of the Absolute.

 

 

The point is that the only thing that is left is the horizontal
- the Devi's eyebrows and the vertical Sada Shiva.

 

 

 

MATTER FOR MAKING A FILM:

 

THIS IS THE CONVERSE OF THE PREVIOUS VERSE

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1) Reverse the process of Shiva fading out completely, but leaving behind something vaguer than the magenta colour.

 

 

 

2) The control (?) of the Devi on the Numerator is not inoperative, however.

3) The eyebrows vibrate to show everyone in split-second alternations of light and darkness. The three gods must be shown here.

 

4) Bracketing - thus bringing in the phenomenological epoché.

(Some years after the publication of his main work, the Logische Untersuchungen (Logical Investigations; 1900-1901) Husserl made some key conceptual elaborations which led him to assert that in order to study the structure of consciousness, one would have to distinguish between the act of consciousness and the phenomena at which it is directed (the object-in-itself, transcendent to consciousness).

Knowledge of essences would only be possible by "bracketing" all assumptions about the existence of an external world.

He called this procedure epoché.

Husserl then started to concentrate on the ideal, essential structures of consciousness.

The metaphysical problem of establishing what kind of reality we perceive was of little interest to Husserl in spite of his being a transcendental idealist.

Husserl proposed that the world of objects and ways in which we direct ourselves toward and perceive those objects is normally conceived of in what he called the "natural standpoint", which is characterized by a belief that objects materially exist and exhibit properties that we see as emanating from them.

Husserl proposed a radical new phenomenological way of looking at objects by examining how we in our many ways of being intentionally directed toward them, actually "constitute" them (to be distinguished from materially "creating objects or objects" . ED)

 

5) A construction process and reduction process.

6) The pure Absolute remains, but not without the control of the vibrating eyebrow-twigs of the negative principle.

 

METHOD:

First show the horizontal process, see Verses 1, 2, 26 and others.
Show magenta glory circulating; the top is smoke, the bottom is dust.

 

The figure of Brahma comes from the bottom of the globe;
Show the other gods as well, graded in realism to the most horizontal, then fade it back into vague terms, finally attaining a fluorescent glow as the vertical axis,

without gradations between Numerator and Denominator.

 

 

It wants to evaporate, but the eyes of the Devi appear at the Alpha Point; Shiva gives in and does not destroy the globe after all.

So there is a kind of "breathing" between the vertical and horizontal aspects.

 

 

 

Finally the whole globe fades back to magenta colour and then fades out - the balance having been attained between blue and red, after alternation of prominence between them.