: John Woodroffe
: Hymns to the Goddess
: FilRougeViceversa
: 9783985945894
: 1
: CHF 2.70
:
: Spiritualität
: English
: 150
: Wasserzeichen
: PC/MAC/eReader/Tablet
: ePUB
She is seen as one and as many: as it were, but one moon reflected in countless waters.She exists, too, in all animals and inorganic things, since the universe, with all its beauties, is, as the Dev Pura says, but a part of Her. All this diversity of form is but the infinite manifestations of the flowering beauty of the one Supreme Life--a doctrine which is nowhere else taught with greater wealth of illustration than in the kta stras and Tantras. The great Bharga in the bright sun, and all Devat, and, indeed, all life and being are worshipful, and are worshipped, but only as Her manifestations. And he who worships them otherwise is, in the words of the great Devbhgavata, 'like unto a man who, with the light of a clear lamp in his hands, yet falls into some waterless and terrible well.' It is customary nowadays to decry external worship, but those who do so presume too much. The ladder of ascent can only be scaled by those who have trod all, including its lowest, rungs. The aktirahasya summarises the stages of progress in a short verse, thus: 'A mortal who worships by ceremonies, by images, by mind, by identification, by knowing the self, attains kaivalya.' Before brahma-bhva can be attained the sdhaka must have passed from pjbhva through hymns and prayer to dhyna-bhva. The highest worship for which the sdhaka is qualified (adhikri) only after external worship, and that internal form known as sdhra is described as nirdhra. Therein Pure Intelligence is the Supreme akti who is worshipped as the Very Self, the Witness freed of the glamour of the manifold universe. By one's own direct experience of Mahevar as the Self, She is, with reverence, made the object of that worship which leads to liberation.

Sir John George Woodroffe, also known by his pseudonym Arthur Avalon, was a British Orientalist whose extensive and complex published works on the Tantras, and other Hindu traditions, stimulated a wide-ranging interest in Hindu philosophy and yoga.

INTRODUCTION


SANĀTANA BRAHMAN is called sakala when with Prakṛti, as It is niṣkala when thought of as without Prakṛti (prakṛteranya), for kalā is Prakṛti. 1 To say, however, that Śakti exists in or with, the Brahman is an accommodation to human thought and speech, for the Brahman and Śakti are in fact one. Śakti is eternal (anādirūpā), and Brahmarūpā, and both nirguṇā and saguṇā. 2 She, the Goddess (Devī), is the caitanyarūpiṇi devī who manifests all bhūta; the ānandarūpiṇi devī by whom the Brahman, who She is, manifests Itself, 3 and who, to use the words of the Śāradātilaka, pervades the universe as does oil the sesamum seed."Sa aikṣata," of which Śruti speaks, was itself a manifestation of Śakti, the paramāpūrvanirvāṇaśakti, or Brahman, as Śakti.


From the paraśaktimaya issued nāda, and from nāda, bindu 4. The state of subtle body known as kāmakalā is the mūla of mantra, and is meant when the Devī is spoken of as mūlamantrātmikā. 1 The Parambindu is represented as a circle the centre of which is the Brahmapada, wherein are Prakṛti-puruṣa; the circumference of which is encircling māyā. It is in the crescent of nirvāṇakalā the seventeenth, which is again in that of amākalā the sixteenth, digit of the moon circle (candramaṇḍala), situate above the sun-circle (sūryamaṇdala), the Guru and the Hamsah in the pericarp of the 1,000 petalled lotus (sahasrārapadma). The bindu is symbolically described as being like a grain of gram (canaka), which under its encircling sheath contains a divided seed--Prakṛti-puruṣa or Śakti-Śiva. 2


It is known as the Śabda Brahman. 3 A polarization then takes place in paraśaktimaya. The Devī becomes unmukhi. Her face is turned to Śiva. There is an unfolding which bursts the encircling shell. 4 The devatāparaśaktimaya exists in the threefold aspect of bindu, bīja, and nāda, the last being in relation to the two former. An indistinct sound then arises 5 (avyaktātmāravobhavat). Nāda, as Rāghava Bhatta 6 says, exists in three states, for in it are the three guṇas. The Śabda Brahman manifests Itself in the threefold energies, Jnāna, Ichhā, and Kriyā Śakti. 7 For, as the Vāmakeśvara Tantra says, the Devī Tripurā is threefold, as Brahmā, Viṣṇu, and Īśa. Paraśiva exists as a septenary under the forms of Śambhu, Śadāśiva, Īśāna, Rudra, Viṣṇu, and Brahmā. The last five are the Mahāpreta, four of whom form the support, and the fifth the seat, of the bed on which the Devī is united with Paramaśiva in the room of cintāmaṇi stone on the jewelled island clad with clumps of kadamba, and heavenly trees set in the ocean of ambrosia. 1


Śakti is both māyā and mūlaprakṛti, whose substance is the three guṇas, representing nature as