Insight Editions · No. 421
The Garland of Letters
Studies in the Mantra-Sastra
Sir John Woodroffe (Arthur Avalon)
Woodroffe's 1922 theory of sound and mantra: Vak and the Logos, word, meaning and thought, causal sound, natural names, the thirty-six tattvas, Sakti, Nada and Bindu, Kamakala, the fifty letters as Kali's garland, Om, bija-mantras, the six paths, mantra-sadhana and the Gayatri. All thirty-one chapters, every list in full, with critical notes.
A study guide to The Garland of Letters (Varnamala): Studies in the Mantra-Sastra by Sir John Woodroffe (Arthur Avalon), first published by Ganesh and Co., Madras, and Luzac and Co., London (1922). Shared free for personal reading; not for sale and not endorsed by the publishers. Please read and buy the original.
CORE CLAIM
Sound is power because, at its root, sabda is the Causal Stress of Sakti from which mind and matter both unfold. Mantras, and above all bija-mantras, are held to be approximate natural names: sounds of the very forces that make a Devata what it is, which awaken in the one who repeats them under a guru.
SCOPE
All thirty-one chapters in Woodroffe's order, from Vak to Atma-sadhana, with every list in full (four levels of speech, thirty-six tattvas, six kancukas, twelve causal Saktis of Om, the Kalas, fifty letters, six paths and their worlds, bijas letter by letter, the Gayatri word by word), a glossary and a master synthesis: about 58,000 words.
KEY FIGURES
Sir John Woodroffe (Arthur Avalon), his collaborator Atal Behari Ghose, Pramathanatha Mukhopadhyaya, the Srinagar pandit Harabhatta Sastri, Laksmanacarya and Raghava-Bhatta of the Sarada-Tilaka, Abhinavagupta, Bhaskararaya, and the Kamakalavilasa and Netra Tantra.
BEST FOR
Readers who know the outline of Tantra and want the theory of mantra in depth: why sound, letter and meaning are linked, what a bija is meant to do, and how the Gayatri becomes a path of reasoning and meditation, with clear notes where Woodroffe leans on 1920s science or writes as advocate.
How to Use This Edition
The Garland of Letters (Varnamala): Studies in the Mantra-Sastra is Sir John Woodroffe's attempt, made "for the first time", to explain to an English reader why sound is power in the Tantric tradition. It was first published by Ganesh and Co., Madras, and Luzac and Co., London, in 1922, and its preface is dated 22 April 1922 at Konaraka, beside the ruined Sun Temple of Konark in Orissa. Where The Serpent Power maps the body and Shakti and Shakta defends the whole Sakta worldview, this book does one thing in depth: it gives the metaphysics of the Word (Vak, Sabda) and then shows how that metaphysics produces mantra, bija, the alphabet as a goddess's necklace, Om and the Gayatri.
This edition follows Woodroffe's thirty-one chapters in order. For each chapter it gives:
- The core argument: what Woodroffe is establishing and from which texts.
- Every list in full: the four levels of speech, the thirty-six tattvas, the five kancukas, the kalas of each deity, the fifty letters, the six paths (sadadhva), the bija-mantras and what each letter in them means.
- Insight boxes for the subtle point or the cross-link.
- Model boxes that turn a chain of terms into one picture.
- Critical lens boxes where Woodroffe writes as an advocate, leans on the physics of 1920, or where scholarship now reads the material differently.
The Shape of the Book
Woodroffe says in the preface that the book is "practically composed of two parts". The table below adds the third block he describes.
| Block | Chapters | What it establishes |
|---|---|---|
| The Word | I | Vak as the creative power of Brahman; the Vedic, Greek and Christian Logos compared |
| General doctrine of Sabda | II to IX | Word (sabda), meaning (artha) and mental grasp (pratyaya) as three faces of one movement; causal sound (parasabda); sakti as stress; the eternity of sound; language; natural name; Vedic sound |
| Tantric elucidations | X to XXI | The tattvas; Sakti, Nada and Bindu; Maya and the five kancukas; Hamsa; Kamakala; the gross elements and their lords; the causal saktis of Om; the kalas; the fifty letters |
| Om, Kali and the mantra | XXII to XXVII | Om; Kali's necklace of heads; dhvani; sun, moon and fire; bija-mantra; the six paths |
| Practice | XXVIII to XXXI | Mantra-sadhana; the Gayatri; the Gayatri as an exercise in reasoning; Atma-sadhana |
The Preface: Why Mantra Is Not "Jabber"
Woodroffe opens with a Sanskrit warning: "Veda fears the man of little knowledge, since injury may be received from him." He then names his opponents. Some foreigners, failing to understand mantra, jumped to the conclusion that it was "meaningless superstition"; and he heard a distinguished English-educated Indian call it "meaningless jabber". Woodroffe calls this "the familiar argument of the lower mind which says what I cannot understand can have no sense at all".
His own starting assumption, stated plainly, was that India did not contain more fools than other peoples and had produced intelligences equal to any. Men do not continue for ages doing what is meaningless and therefore without result. So behind popular practice there must be a rational principle. He reports that he "was not disappointed": the Mantra-Sastra contains "a profound doctrine, ingeniously though guardedly set forth", worth the study of minds "free from superstition, of metaphysical bent and subtle-seeing (suksmadarsin)".
He gives two reasons the time is right:
- In India the class who joined European critics in misrepresenting their own country's thought is "gradually disappearing", recovering from "the dazzle" of an alien civilisation. He quotes Schiller: hold to your dear native land; there are the strong roots of your strength.
- In the West there is a movement away from materialism towards the view that thought is as real as any object. Its adherents call it "New Thought", but its principles are as old as the Upanisads: all is Cit, feeling-consciousness, and what a man thinks, that he becomes.
How the Book Was Assembled
Woodroffe is open about the sources of the chapters, and the list matters for reading them:
- Chapters II to IX on the general doctrine of sabda owe much to Professor Pramathanatha Mukhopadhyaya, his friend and philosophical collaborator.
- Chapters X to XXI and XXIV were reprinted from the journal Vedanta-Kesari.
- Chapters XXII and XXIII (Om; the Necklace of Kali) appeared in East and West.
- Chapters XXVIII and XXIX (Mantra-sadhana; the Gayatri) came from the Introduction to his Mahanirvana Tantra, now superseded by Shakti and Shakta.
- Chapter XXX was a paper read to the Indian Rationalistic Society at Calcutta.
- Ten of the general papers were delivered in 1919 as Extension Lectures for the National Council of Education, Bengal.
He states that the Tantra-Sastra adopts the Mimamsa doctrine of sabda "with some modifications to meet its doctrine of Sakti". That sentence is the thesis of the whole book.
The Konarak Scene
The preface closes with a scene written at the Sun Temple. A continuous rolling sound comes from the sea two miles off; it reminds him of a hundred Buddhist monks at Pemiongchi monastery in Sikkim rolling out Om from the depths of their bodies. Around him are jasmine, cactus and karavira and kalika flowers; seaward is a waste of land with clumps of ketaki, stretching from the temple of Jagannatha in the south to the Golra jungle in the north, and the surf of the Bay of Bengal.
"The waves as all else are Mantra, for Mantra in its most basal sense is the World viewed as, and in its aspect of, sound." He then states the distinction the book will spend chapters on: natural name in its pure sense (the sound of the constituent forces of a thing) is different from the sounds a thing makes once produced. All sounds and movements form the Garland of Letters worn by the Divine Mother, from whose aspect as Om, the general sound (samanya-spanda) of the first creative movement, every particular sound and thing comes. The letters are the sounds of particular movements, audible as the gross letters that Kali wears round her neck.
He bids farewell, fearing it may be his last visit, to his old friend the Sadhu Jagannatha-Dasa, and quotes the Kapila-Samhita (ch. VI) on the merit of those who see the Sun's body at the great chariot festival. He signs "J.W.".
The preface already contains the book in miniature. Sound is movement; movement is Sakti; the universe is movement; therefore the universe can be rendered as sound. Mantra is the practice that rides this chain backwards, from audible letter to the first general vibration and then to the stillness behind it.
Authorship again. This book is published under Woodroffe's own name, not "Arthur Avalon", and he credits Pramathanatha Mukhopadhyaya (later Swami Pratyagatmananda Saraswati) for the core philosophical chapters. Kathleen Taylor's study of Woodroffe (2001) shows how much of his Sanskrit and philosophical material came through Bengali collaborators. Read "Woodroffe argues" as "Woodroffe, presenting a Bengali Sakta reading he learned with Mukhopadhyaya and others, argues".
The apologetic frame. The preface is openly defensive and nationalist in tone: the "dazzle" of Western civilisation, Schiller on native soil, "New Thought" as a Western rediscovery of Upanisadic truth. This is the voice of an advocate in 1922, writing against missionary and positivist contempt. It shapes what he emphasises (rational principle, metaphysics) and what he downplays (magical and worldly uses of mantra, which the Tantras themselves treat at length).
Key terms: Mantra-Sastra, Agama, sabda, Vak, Cit, natural name, samanya-spanda, Varnamala.
Reflect: Woodroffe assumes that a practice continued for centuries must have a rational principle. Is that a sound argument, or does it prove too much?
Vak, or the Word
Chapter I sets the theme of the whole book. Vak (Latin vox, from the root vac, "to speak") means both the voice and the word it utters, and also the sound of inanimate things, so it has the same sense as sabda. Woodroffe uses it to name the creative power of Brahman itself, compares it with the Logos of Greek and Christian thought, and closes with Sarasvati as the goddess in whom the doctrine is pictured.
The Three Terms and the Three Levels
Three words recur through the book and are fixed here:
- Sabda: sound, word.
- Artha: meaning, or the object meant.
- Pratyaya: mental apprehension, the mind's "going towards" its object.
All things have a threefold sense: supreme (para), subtle (suksma) and gross (sthula). Applied to speech this yields the four levels of Vak, which recur in almost every later chapter:
| Level | What it is | Where it stands |
|---|---|---|
| Para-Vak | The Causal Stress; in terms of pratyaya, the Cosmic Ideation (srsti-kalpana) of Isvara. The Divine "Word" | Supreme, causal |
| Pasyanti-Vak | Vak "actually going forth" as iksana, Seeing: the first producing, manifesting movement | Subtle, at the threshold |
| Madhyama-Vak | The Hiranyagarbha sound; the Matrka state of sabda as it exists in a person before gross utterance | Subtle |
| Vaikhari-Vak | Spoken speech, the letters (varnas), made audible by gross physical sound (dhvani) produced by the vocal organs striking the air through effort (prayatna) | Gross |
He notes that in the Rgveda (V.43.11) Sarasvati is called Paviravi, "daughter of the Lightning", that is of the great Vajra that sustains the worlds, which Sayana glosses as the madhyamika (middle) Vak.
From Stillness to Stress
In the transcendental Brahman (Paramatma, Paramasiva) there is no sabda (asabda), no artha (nirvisaya) and no pratyaya; so there is neither name (nama) nor form (rupa). In this "Infinite Calm" there arises a metaphysical Point of Stress, the Bindu or ghanibhuta-sakti (massed power), which "stirs forth" (prasarati) as the many forces of the universe. This energising is the cause of world-experience with its duality of subject and object, and as Jivatma it is that experience.
This play of Sakti happens in the Ether of Consciousness (Cidakasa) in such a way that Cidakasa is neither effaced nor affected. The resulting state is one of both transcendence and immanence.
Why "creation" is the wrong word
Woodroffe insists that the English word "creation" misleads. In the Christian sense creation:
- Excludes God as material cause: the world is made neither from pre-existing matter nor from God's own substance.
- Involves an absolutely first appearance.
The Indian view is seeming development (parinama): Brahman itself, in the form of its power, goes forth. The universe lasts for a day of Brahma (sthiti). Then, according to some, comes a complete dissolution (mahapralaya); others hold there is no mahapralaya and that some universe always exists, though particular ones vanish. In dissolution the manifest state is held potentially in the undifferentiated Maya-Sakti. Sabdabrahman, an ullasa (outpouring) of Siva, sinks back into the eternal Calm "as the rising wave breaks itself and sinks upon the ocean", or as fountain spray falls into the waters that feed it.
The Word in Other Traditions
Woodroffe surveys the idea that God speaks and the thing appears:
- Hebrew: "God said, let there be Light (Aur), and there was Light (Aur)." The divine word has creative power.
- A further stage introduces an aspect of the Supreme that creates: the Supreme and the Logos, as India has Brahman and Sabdabrahman.
- Greek Logos means, like aparasabda, both thought and the word denoting the object of thought.
- Heraclitus: Logos is the principle underlying the universe.
- The Stoics: the world-soul, the uniting principle of all rational forces.
- Plato: the Logoi are supersensual primal patterns of visible things, which Woodroffe equates with jati (universals).
- Philo of Alexandria fused these with Jewish theology: an intermediate Being, the Logos, between pure Being and the manifold. Ideas mould matter; God first produced the intelligible world of ideas as types (aparajati), as an architect plans a city before building it. The world is the "Megalopolis", which Woodroffe glosses as Brahmanda.
- The Fourth Gospel took up the Philonic Logos and Christianised it: the Logos is a Person existing before creation and himself God, the Logos Endiathetos (immanent divine wisdom) in the world, who "became flesh" (Verbum caro factum est) as Jesus, a purnavatara of God.
"In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God." Woodroffe says: "These are the very words of Veda." He gives the Vedic version in three clauses:
- Prajapatir vai idam asit: in the beginning was Brahman (Prajapati).
- Tasya vag dvitiya asit: with him was Vak, "second" because she is first potentially in him and then issues from him as Sakti.
- Vag vai paramam Brahma: and the Word is Brahman.
He allows that human thought may develop similarly and independently, but also thinks it "not improbable", given India's influence on the West, that Philonic, Neoplatonic and Johannine ideas were partly indebted to India.
Where the parallels break
Accuracy, he says, requires noting the differences:
| Point | Christian Logos | Vedic Vak |
|---|---|---|
| Material cause | God is not the material cause of the world; Christianity is dualism | Brahman is the material cause |
| Personhood | The Logos is a Person in a Trinity | Vak is no person in a Trinity; she is the Mother of the Trimurti, Brahma, Visnu and Rudra |
| Incarnation | Once, in one historic person | In the form of Jiva, Vak is incarnate in all men, beings and things, at all times |
| Deification | Jesus alone was God in human form; others never can become God | Every Jiva may through Veda (spiritual experience) directly realise Brahman, whose power is Vak |
Kama and Vak
The universe is the outcome of the Divine Desire (kama) or Will (iccha). On the physical plane kama includes sexual desire; in the highest sense it is the first creative impulse of the One to be many. Earthly desire and reproduction are limited forms of that impulse, and the Divine Will works continually through individual desire for the continued creation of the world. Woodroffe quotes Parmenides: "He devised Eros first of all the gods", and points to Plato's Symposium.
- The Atharvaveda (IX.2) celebrates Kama as a power superior to all the Devas.
- The Daughter of Kama is Vak, "the Cow which sages call Vak-virat", Vak in the form of the universe.
The Brahmana Texts on Prajapati and Vak
Woodroffe collects the Vedic prose accounts, which share a sexual image of creation:
- Satapatha Brahmana VI.1.1.8: Prajapati willed "May I be many, may I be propagated"; he energised (tapas); Vak was his; she was produced from him and pervaded all. Then "by his mind he united with Vak" (X.6.5.4) and became pregnant.
- Kathaka XII.5 and XXVII.1: Prajapati alone was; Vak was second to him; he united with her; she conceived, went out from him, produced the creatures and re-entered him.
- Pancavimsa Brahmana XX.14.2: Prajapati thought, "let me put forth this Vak; she will traverse and pervade all this".
He reads them together: Brahman or Siva willed to be many, and his Sakti, one with him, issued as his Word. The union of Will and Word was the potency of creation; all things were held undifferentiated in the Great Womb (Mahayoni) of Ambika. At dissolution Sakti re-enters Brahman as Cidrupini (having the form of consciousness), and meanwhile pervades both mind and matter as immanent Spirit.
Vak as Mother of the Vedas
A run of texts makes Vak the source of revelation:
- Brhadaranyaka Upanisad: by that Vak and that Self he created everything: Vedas, metres, sacrifices, creatures.
- Satapatha Brahmana: "First was produced the sacred Vaidik science."
- Mahabharata, Santiparva: Sarasvati as Vak is "Mother of the Vedas"; Bhismaparva: Acyuta (Krsna) produced Sarasvati and the Vedas from his mind; Vanaparva: the Gayatri is the Mother of the Vedas, Gayatri Devi being a form of Vak.
- Taittiriya Brahmana: Vak contains all worlds and was sought with tapas by the mantrakrt seers. Elsewhere (III.39.1) Vak is imperishable, first-born of rta, Mother of the Vedas, navel of immortality.
- Satapatha VII.5.2.21: "Vak is the unborn"; from her Visvakarma produced creatures.
- Rgveda X.125.5: "I (Vak) make him whom I love formidable, him a brahmana, him a rsi, him a sage"; X.71.3: by sacrifice they followed the path of Vak and found her entered into the rsis.
- Brhadaranyaka: "By Vak, O Monarch, the Brahman is known. Vak is the Supreme Brahman."
- Sayana and Madhava in their invocations: Mahesvara is the one "of whom the Vedas are the breathings" and who from the Vedas formed the universe.
So the world is vanmaya, made of Vak, because it is sabdaprabhava, born of sound.
Sankara's Reading
Sankaracarya (on Brahma-sutra I.3.28) takes these texts to mean that creation was preceded by the Word. To square this with the doctrine that the world comes from Brahman, he uses an analogy: a person bent on a goal first calls to mind the word for it, then acts. So before creation the words of Veda were manifest in the Lord's mind, and he then produced their objects. "Uttering Bhuh he created the earth" means the worlds came from the words Bhuh and so on manifest in his mind. Woodroffe adds that "before" and "after" here are vyavaharika (conventional), and human analogies imperfect.
One cause, three faces. In Isvara as causal body, pratyaya, sabda and artha are one. For exposition: his srsti-kalpana is part of the pratyaya he has of his own blissful causal body (including subtle and gross bodies); his parasabda contains all lesser sounds; his artha is the first stressing mass of Prakrti-sakti. Isvara directly apprehends all three bodies, Hiranyagarbha the subtle and gross, Virat the gross only.
Sarasvati as the Picture of the Doctrine
The one cause of speech, of the things speech denotes and of the mind's grasp of them is the Supreme Devi Sarasvati, Mother of Vedas and worlds, appearing as name and form. Her iconography is read point by point:
- The vina she holds denotes all sounds, of which she is mother.
- Her white garments: transparent whiteness is the colour of both akasa and buddhi.
- Her name means "flow" (saras): she is the activity of the unmoving Siva, and the play of dynamic Saktis in and around the rigid Ether, which appeared at creation with the roaring sound "Ham" and stood still as the frame in which everything moves.
- That unwasting Ether is Vajra, the static Brahman manifest; Woodroffe links it to sunya, the void, and to the Tibetan sTong-pa-nyid (sunyata), citing the Demchog Tantra he published as volume VII of Tantrik Texts.
- She rides the Hamsa, which is no material bird but the natural name of breath: Ham on expiration and Sah on inspiration, the pranabija in every breathing being.
- She is Wisdom and Learning, the Mother of Veda.
"Not therefore idly have men worshipped Vak or Sarasvati as the Supreme Power."
The physics of 1920. The "rigid, unwasting, enduring Ether" that "according to Science" has none of matter's imperfections is the luminiferous ether of nineteenth-century physics. Special relativity had already made it unnecessary by 1905, and it plays no role in modern physics. The metaphysical point (a static ground in which dynamic power moves) does not depend on it, but readers should not take Woodroffe's appeals to "Science" in this book as current.
The Logos comparison. Woodroffe's contrast of Vak with the Christian Logos is fair on material causality, but his summary of Christianity ("Jesus alone was God in human form; others never can become God") ignores the Eastern Christian doctrine of theosis and the mystical traditions that speak of deification. His suggestion that Philo and John drew on India is speculative; most historians trace the Logos to Greek philosophy and Hellenistic Judaism.
Key terms: Vak, sabda, artha, pratyaya, Para, Pasyanti, Madhyama, Vaikhari, Bindu, parinama, Sabdabrahman, Vak-virat, Hamsa.
Reflect: Woodroffe says "creation" is the wrong word for what India means. What changes in practice if the world is the Godhead's own power going forth, rather than something made from nothing?
Artha, Pratyaya and Sabda
Chapter II lays the epistemological foundation of the book. The one Consciousness (Cit) becomes, through its power, the duality of subject and object, mind and matter. Woodroffe then defines with care the three terms introduced in Chapter I: artha (object), pratyaya (the mind's grasp of it) and sabda (its sound or name), and shows that they are three effects of one movement. The chapter also states, in passing, the principle on which all Tantric worship rests.
Cit, Sakti and the First Movement
The supreme Consciousness is the "Changeless Principle of all experience". It evolves by its power, which is both Cit-Sakti and Maya-Sakti, into subject and object. In Parasamvit or Saccidananda experience is unitary. Woodroffe refers to Shakti and Shakta for the possible English renderings of Cit; subject to his reservations it may be called "Feeling-Consciousness".
Through Sakti the homogeneous unity becomes the many. The perfect experience, without ceasing to be perfect, involves itself in mind and matter and becomes limited experience. Since all is the one Self, the Self as limited subject sees itself as object, though it does not know this.
Cit in itself is:
- Nispanda: without motion.
- Niskriya: without action.
- Amanah: without mind.
- Asabda: without sound.
Creation begins with an initial vibration (spandana) in the "Cosmic Stuff", in Indian terms saspanda Prakrti-Sakti, power with movement. During dissolution Prakrti is in equilibrated energy (samyavastha), a state of sarupa-parinama (change into the same form). It then moves (virupa-parinama, change into different form). This first cosmic vibration releases the balanced energy, and its approximate sound is the mantra Om.
The Bifurcation into Mind and Matter
So consciousness divides into mind and matter, "a parallelism of common origin". In a person:
- Mind as subject has pratyaya of objects.
- Objects are artha.
- The mind names them by sabda.
In human beings the three are connected but distinct, three manifestations of the one causal stress (spanda). At the level of causal Sakti they are one: sabda = artha = pratyaya = spanda. Isvara's movement is his sound, his object and his thought. Woodroffe warns that even talk of "aspects" (Siva and Sakti, Cit and stress) is our projection; at the absolute level the relation is "an identical equation and not a ratio". In the cosmic causal body the three are one; with the subtle body they diverge in descent, while staying connected.
"The key to that which follows." When One becomes Many, the essential substance (Spirit) of mind and matter stays the same, and the Sakti-elements and motion of both are similar. That is why mind and object have a natural relation. Woodroffe's examples:
- Sight (eye plus manas) and colour are one Atma appearing twice.
- Both the sense of sight and colour are products of Tejas-tanmatra: the indriya is the sattvic part (sattvikamsa) of the uncompounded tanmatra, the object seen is its tamasic part (tamasikamsa).
- In Samkhya and commonly in the Sakta Tantras both come from the same ahamkara.
- The vibration of the object and of the mental vrtti that grasps it are the same, and the natural name of an object is the sound produced by the forces that make it up.
The Principle of All Tantric Upasana
When an object affects the senses and manas attends to it, a modification (vrtti) arises in mind that is an exact counterpart of the object. Woodroffe calls this "a fundamental principle on which all Tantrik Sadhana by way of Upasana rests":
- By worship, meditation or japa of mantras, the mind is actually shaped into the form of the object of worship.
- It is made pure for the time through the purity of its content, the Istadevata.
- By continual practice (abhyasa) the mind becomes full of that object to the exclusion of all else, steady in purity.
- Since mind must always have an object while it exists, the aim of sadhana is to give it a pure one.
You become the shape of what you hold. Mind is plastic stuff that takes the form of its object. Ordinary life fills it with shifting, impure forms. Mantra and image-worship replace those with one form, the deity, held steadily. The deity's form is itself made of the same power as the mind, so the mind is being reshaped into its own source.
What "Material" Means
Everything that is not pure transcendent Spirit (anupahita-Cit) is "material" in Vedanta. Upahita-Cit is Cit associated with mind and matter through a limiting adjunct (upadhi). That upadhi is of two kinds:
| Kind | Synonyms | Scale |
|---|---|---|
| Para | suddha-sattva-pradhana (pure sattva predominant), utkrstopadhi (superior adjunct) | Samasti: collective, cosmic |
| Apara | malina-sattva-pradhana (impure sattva predominant), nikrstopadhi (inferior adjunct) | Vyasti: individual |
Each has three bodies: causal (karana), subtle (suksma), gross (sthula). The upadhi is Sakti as Maya or Prakrti-Sakti in the Advaita sense. Prakrti-Sakti is "material" not as scientific matter but as the subtle material cause, and so all its effects (vikrti) are material too. They divide into two parallel groups:
- Mind (antahkarana) and its outer instruments, the senses (indriya).
- Matter: the five gross elements (pancabhuta), derived from the five tanmatras, which lie below the threshold of ordinary sensation.
What Is Mind
Mind is a manifestation of Sakti as force (power translated to the material plane), and is as much a material (bhautika) substance as matter. Woodroffe's formula: from the creative standpoint, thought is passing thought and matter is lasting thought. Matter is the denser form of the same Prakrti-Sakti.
- In Vedanta mind is bhautika because it is made of the sattvic part of the tanmatras; in Samkhya it comes from ahamkara.
- Vedanta says mind is neither vibhu (all-pervading, partless) nor anu (atomic, partless) but madhyama-parimana: of middle size, limited and divisible into parts. So one part can attend to one thing and another part to another at once, and it spreads or shrinks with the shape of its object.
- It pervades the body in waking (jagrat) and dream (svapna); in deep sleep (susupti) it is withdrawn into the causal body, by one account absorbed into the nadi.
How the Mind Knows
Woodroffe contrasts two schools:
| School | Nature of mind | How knowledge arises |
|---|---|---|
| Nyaya | Mind is atomic (anu) | Mind does not go out or take the shape of the object; jnana is a quality (guna) of Atma produced by contact of manas and Atma |
| Vedanta | Mind is of middle size | Jnana is a transformation (parinama) of the antahkarana |
Vedanta distinguishes two kinds of jnana:
- Jnana-svarupa: knowledge as Brahman's own nature, perfect experience, Cit.
- Jnana-vrtti: knowledge of objects, ordinary limited experience.
On how jnana-vrtti works, some hold that light goes out from the eye (hence the eye is called tejas), and mind going out with it takes the shape of the object. Mind is svaccha, transparent, because it can take any shape. Atma constantly illuminates the mind; when a particular vrtti arises, Atma lights it so it is present to limited consciousness.
True and false knowledge
Right knowledge (prama) is defined as tadvati tat-prakaraka-jnanam: grasping an object according to its true nature, under its own class (jati). The mind perceives both the individual (vyakti) and its class, and the class is not merely subjective but inherent in the thing as its nature (prakara). Seeing a jar, one sees ghatatva, jar-ness. When a rope is taken for a snake, there is mithya-jnana: the rope excites knowledge, but through a defect (dosa) in the perceiver it is grasped under the wrong jati. Right perception is conformity of thought with its object.
What Is Artha
Artha is the mind's content: the "other" the Self as mind perceives, in all the forms (rupa) of the universe. These forms are made of the five bhutas, which are five forms of motion of Prakrti, just as mind is a form of motion of the same substance.
| Bhuta | Tantric figure | Direction of vibration | Function | Sense | Cakra | Bija |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Akasa (ether) | Circle with points marking its openings (chidra), showing its interstitial nature | All directions | Space-giving | Hearing | Visuddha | Ham |
| Vayu (air) | Circle (in this text) | At an angle to the line of the wave (tiryag-gamanasila) | General movement (calanapara) | Touch and feel (not all contact) | Anahata | Yam |
| Tejas (fire) | Triangle | Upwards | Expansion | Sight: colour and form | Manipura | Ram |
| Ap (water) | Crescent | Downwards | Contraction | Taste | Svadhisthana | Vam |
| Prthivi (earth) | Square | "In the middle", where forces balance and matter becomes stationary | Cohesion | Smell | Muladhara | Lam |
To the uninitiated these bijas sound like gibberish; hence the Bengali saying, "What Hayaralava is this?", made from the letters Ha, Ya, Ra, La, Va. Their meaning is explained later under natural name.
The bhutas derive from the tanmatras, beginning with sabda-tanmatra, infra-sensible sound, which by addition of mass becomes akasa, whose quality is sensible sound; akasa generates vayu-tanmatra, from which comes vayu-bhuta, and so on (the mode of derivation is not always stated the same way). Gross matter comes from a subtle form of itself, not sensible to the ear but apprehensible by the yogi: the tanmatras are pratyaksa (directly perceptible) to yogis.
Subtle Objects and the Limit of Knowing
Objects are not limited to what ordinary senses see. Siddhis are "merely extensions of natural faculty". Woodroffe's analogy: the microscope once magnified a few diameters, now thousands; the microphone extends hearing. At each stage more is known. But a point is reached where "seeing" happens through the mind, not the senses. Mind itself is atindriya, beyond the senses, yet a yogi can apprehend another's mind: his mind takes its form and knows its vrttis. So experience grows more subtle and inclusive until supreme experience is reached, where there is neither subject nor object.
Everything can be an object except the Asanga-Brahman, Brahman as it is in itself. It is known by no pramana, not even sabda-pramana (Veda), because it is never an object: it is the nature of the knowing Self. Speech can give only an indication (laksana) of it.
The image one has of an object evoked by a word is pratyaya. Sabda, the third line of descent, is treated in the next chapters.
Mind as matter. Calling mind "as much a material substance as matter" sounds modern, but it means something different from physicalism. For Vedanta both mind and matter are products of Prakrti, and consciousness (Cit) is neither. Modern philosophy of mind would place this view nearer to a dual-aspect or idealist theory than to materialism. Woodroffe's appeal to microscopes also shows his habit of presenting yogic perception as continuous with scientific instruments; that is a claim of the tradition, not a finding of science.
The vayu symbol. Woodroffe here gives the figure of vayu as a circle and of akasa as a circle with points. In The Serpent Power and most Tantric diagrams the vayu mandala is a hexagon (six-pointed star) and akasa a circle. The variation reflects differing sources; readers comparing books should expect it.
Key terms: artha, pratyaya, sabda, spanda, samyavastha, upahita-Cit, samasti, vyasti, madhyama-parimana, jnana-svarupa, jnana-vrtti, prama, jati, tanmatra.
Reflect: If the mind takes the shape of whatever it attends to, what shape has your mind taken most often today?
Asabda and Parasabda
Chapter III restates Indian metaphysics in the language of sound. The transcendent is soundless (asabda); the creative Lord is causal sound (parasabda). Woodroffe then builds the most detailed map in the book's opening part: how sabda, artha and pratyaya look at each cosmic level (Isvara, Hiranyagarbha, Virat) and each individual level (Prajna, Taijasa, Visva), and how the four levels of speech fit onto them.
Changelessness and Change
Indian doctrine turns on two concepts, changelessness and change. They cannot both be predicated of one substance, so the tradition uses the doctrine of aspects:
- Brahman as it is in itself (Brahma-svarupa), or Siva, does not change.
- Brahman as Power (Sakti), from which the world evolves, does change, as Maya.
Put more simply: Brahman produces and exists as the world without loss of its own unchanging unity. How this can be is, like other ultimates, inconceivable. Its truth rests on two facts of experience:
- The daily experience of the world of the many.
- The ecstatic (samadhi) experience of the One.
The Rule of Sound and Motion
The Mantra-Sastra puts the same doctrine in its own terms. Sabda exists only where there is spanda (motion). No spanda, no sabda; if sabda, then spanda. Transcendent Brahman is quiescent, so it is nispanda and asabda. From it, without affecting its changelessness, arises a creative stir or Stress, the work of the active Brahman, Isvara.
| Transcendent | Creative |
|---|---|
| Parabrahman | Isvara |
| Asabda / Nihsabda, soundless | Sabdabrahman / Parasabda, causal sound |
| Nispanda, motionless | Saspanda, with motion, as Maya-Sakti |
Parasabda, Para-Vak and Sabdabrahman are all names for Brahman as the cause of manifested sound.
The Three Bodies of Sound
| Body | Name | How known |
|---|---|---|
| Causal | Parasabda | Isvara |
| Subtle | Sabda-tanmatra: pure natural sound | Hiranyagarbha and yogis who share his experience |
| Gross | Akasa, whose quality is sound, apprehended only through air, whose waves strike the ear; through ear and mind sound is felt | Ordinary perception |
Gross sound is of two kinds:
- Vaidika sound (srauta sabda): approximate natural sound, primary or secondary.
- Laukika sabda: the ordinary speech of average mortals.
Who hears what
Taking "cognizance" as direct apprehension:
| Knower | Kinds of sabda directly apprehended |
|---|---|
| Isvara | All four: parasabda, sabda-tanmatra, srauta sabda, laukika sabda |
| Hiranyagarbha (Sutratma) | The last three |
| Rsis | The last two: srauta and laukika |
| Ordinary people | Laukika only |
So from Parasabda proceed in order sabda-tanmatra, srauta sabda and laukika sabda.
The Cosmic Aspects (Samasti)
Isvara
- Pratyaya: Isvara's consciousness of his own body of bliss (anandamaya), and the cosmic ideation (srsti-kalpana) by which he projects the world.
- Sabda: that srsti-kalpana is the stressing mass of Prakrti or Maya and Avidya-sakti, which is Parasabda / Para-Vak, holding as effects all apara-sabdas: the matrkas, varnas and mantras. The approximate representation of causal sound as a whole, to the rsi's ear, is "Om".
- Not all of Isvara's pratyaya is srsti-kalpana; he keeps the blissful awareness of his causal body even in dissolution.
- Artha: the stressing mass of Prakrti.
- In Isvara the three are one, not merely related as in the lower levels.
Isvara as Isvara evolves the elements: the uncompounded bhutas or tanmatras, indriyas, pranas, antahkarana and gross bhutas. This is bhuta-srsti.
Hiranyagarbha
As Hiranyagarbha he compounds the elements already provided: bhautika-srsti.
- Pratyaya: srsti-kalpana of compounding.
- Sabda: sabda-tanmatra, with its derivative forms.
- Artha: everything except the collective causal body.
Virat
Virat is Cit associated with the created whole, "a natura naturata as it were", in Spinoza's phrase. The Sastra does not really give it creative activity. If we provisionally assign it the compounding of gross elements:
- Pratyaya: its own srsti-kalpana.
- Sabda: all grades of sound, gross and subtle, up to but not including sabda-tanmatra.
- Artha: everything except the collective causal and subtle bodies.
Grades, not boxes
"Subtle" and "gross" are relative. Between sabda-tanmatra and ordinary sounds lies a graded series, all heard by Hiranyagarbha, all but the tanmatra by Virat. The same is true of the body: the annamaya kosa is itself a series (visible cells, microscopic granules, finer corpuscles) and the five kosas are five broad landmarks in an endless gradation, like the seven colours of the rainbow. So instead of three creative forms there are really innumerable creative Cit-saktis; differing counts are no contradiction. The seers, as opposed to the "system-makers", salute him as "the Many-formed" (namaste bahurupaya).
The three cosmic forms correspond to the three states:
| Cosmic form | State | Directly apprehends |
|---|---|---|
| Isvara | Susupti, deep sleep | Causal, subtle and gross |
| Hiranyagarbha | Svapna, dream | Subtle and gross |
| Virat | Jagrat, waking | Gross |
The Individual Aspects (Vyasti)
Prajna, the sleeper
Corresponding to Isvara with Maya is Prajna with Avidya.
- Pratyaya: the individual counterpart, in deep sleep, of Isvara's blissful awareness of his causal body.
- Sabda: parasabda-visesa, the "part" of the causal stress that is this Jiva's causal body. It is no sound to him.
- Artha: the individual causal body, the temporary equilibrium in sleep of the Stress that makes the Jiva.
- All samskaras are latent and all vrttis withdrawn into the karana-deha; the forces of all later processes lie there.
Deep sleep is not God-realisation. Woodroffe corrects "some English writers" who read the Upanisadic statement that the Jiva in dreamless sleep is Brahman as meaning that sleep is the experience of Isvara or the supreme. It is not: Prajna's experience is tied to Avidya, Isvara's is free of it. The comparison is analogy: in sleep duality vanishes, as in Isvara nothing is separate. This is a useful corrective to popular readings of the Mandukya Upanisad.
Taijasa, the dreamer
Corresponding to Hiranyagarbha.
- Pratyaya: experience of the subtle body in dream, pleasurable or painful.
- Sabda: sound not expressed by the vocal organs: the mental image of articulate or inarticulate sound, which in yoga pushes up to the tanmatras.
- Artha: the individual subtle body.
Woodroffe compares the two precisely:
| Hiranyagarbha | Taijasa |
|---|---|
| (a) Experience of cosmic subtle and gross elements | (aa) Experience of the dream (shaped by waking impressions, jagrat-vasanarupa svapna), the individual subtle body, but not quite the waking gross body |
| (b) Srsti-kalpana of compounding elements already evolved by Isvara | (bb) Srsti-kalpana as a compounding activity producing dream forms |
Visva, the waker
Corresponding to Virat.
- Pratyaya: experience of the individual gross body.
- Sabda: gross sound, articulate (varna) or inarticulate (dhvani), from men, animals and natural objects.
- Artha: the gross body and its processes, and its gross environment.
- Its jagrat srsti-kalpana shows as feelings of bodily movement caused by samskara and iccha-sakti.
- As Virat is rather the created (karya) than the creative aspect, so Visva is the karya aspect of the finite centre of consciousness.
Concentric and Separate Circles
Two diagrams. Draw the cosmic triad as three concentric circles: Isvara outermost, Hiranyagarbha inside it, Virat innermost. Because their upadhi is pure sattva (utkrstopadhi), each higher one includes the sabda, artha and pratyaya of the lower.
Draw the individual triad as three separate circles ("practically ejective"). Prajna, Taijasa and Visva have upadhis that are sattvic but impure and coarse (malina), so each is "practically ignorant" of the others' states: the sleeper does not know the dream, the dreamer the waking. Yet causal unity is not lacking: Taijasa's subtle body holds the seeds of waking, and its sound is the subtle form of gross sound.
Dream, Yoga and the Ascent of Sound
The mental image of a sound becomes apparent (pratibhasika) sound in dream; even higher sounds may be heard there. The yogic state is a voluntary refining and deepening of the dream state, which is why dhyana is called yoga-nidra. Perfecting it, one may rise to:
- Sabda-tanmatra.
- In samadhi, parasabda, which is the cosmic susupti.
- Asabda, the Turiya state, from which, regarded as supreme, there is no return.
Sabda-tanmatra as "Absolute Ear"
Sabda-tanmatra, also apancikrta akasa, uncompounded ether, is sound as such: ideal sound, the cognition of sound apart from ear, brain and the media (air, water, earth) that carry it. It is "sound as heard by the Absolute Ear and as uttered by the Absolute Tongue": invariable and apauruseya, not of human origin. Likewise rupa-tanmatra is form as seen by the Absolute Eye. "Absolute Ear" means the power of apprehending sound in itself, free of variation by time, place (plane) and person. The Stress that generates and sustains a thing is the basis of all five tanmatras.
From the gross standpoint, sound is not the quality of akasa alone. To reach the human ear it needs a material medium, air, water or solid; Virat sound assumes the whole material universe.
Summary: The Lord Unmanifest and Manifest
Woodroffe closes with a summary that later chapters assume:
| Unmanifest Lord (Avyakta Isvara) | Manifest Lord (Isvara) |
|---|---|
| Siva-Sakti: Cit predominant; Sakti is Cidrupini | Sakti-Siva: Maya predominant; Sakti takes the form of the universe |
| Nispanda, motionless | Saspanda, with motion |
| Asabda | Manifests as sabda |
| Unmani-Sakti | Samani-Sakti |
There is never Siva without Sakti nor Sakti without Siva, in creation or dissolution.
The manifest Isvara has three forms, each with its own movement:
| Form | Sound | Movement |
|---|---|---|
| Causal: Isvara | Parasabda, Para-Vak, Sabdabrahman | General movement (samanya spanda), whose sound is the Pranava, Om. From Om all other mantras are derived |
| Subtle: Hiranyagarbha | Madhyama-Vak | Special movement (visesa spanda) |
| Gross: Virat | Vaikhari-Vak | Clearly defined movement (spastatara spanda), which in man is articulate speech, the uttered form of mantra |
Everything below Para-Vak is Apara-Vak. The chain of speech runs: Parasabda = Bindu; Pasyanti = iksana, creative thought and action by that Bindu; then the subtle body of sound, tanmatra and matrka; then the gross body, letters (varna) uttered by the vocal organs, built into syllables and words (pada) and sentences (vakya). Mantra as uttered, bija or otherwise, is a form of the gross body of sabda.
The yogic road runs backwards along the map. Waking speech (Visva, Vaikhari) leads by japa into mental sound (Taijasa, Madhyama), into pure sound-as-such (tanmatra), into causal sound (Prajna-Isvara, Para) and finally into soundlessness (Turiya). This is why mantra practice moves from loud to whispered to mental repetition.
Key terms: asabda, parasabda, saspanda, srauta and laukika sabda, Isvara, Hiranyagarbha, Virat, Prajna, Taijasa, Visva, yoga-nidra, Absolute Ear, samanya and visesa spanda.
Reflect: Woodroffe calls dhyana a voluntary deepening of the dream state. Does that match your experience of meditation, or does it feel closer to waking?
Parasabda, Causal Sabda
Chapter IV defines Sabda-brahman precisely. Woodroffe's claim is that the word sabda does not, at its highest, mean sound at all. It means the Causal Stress in Sakti of which audible sound, colour, form and every other sensation are later effects. On the way he explains the Indian method of teaching by widening meanings, which accounts for why the same word (sabda, prana, akasa, Brahman) means different things in different places.
Kinds of Sabda
Sabda, from the root sabd, "to make sound", ordinarily means sound in general: voice, word, speech, language. It is either:
- Lettered sound (varnatmaka-sabda), which has meaning (artha): it denotes things or connotes their attributes and relations.
- Unlettered sound (dhvanyatmaka-sabda), mere dhvani, meaningless "at any rate to us", such as a torrent or thunder. Woodroffe adds "to us" because every sound may have a meaning for Isvara.
Dhvani arises from contact of two things striking; lettered sound likewise from the vocal organs striking the outer air. Sabda exists as four Saktis, Para, Pasyanti, Madhyama and Vaikhari, named in connection with Vak or Sarasvati.
Immanent and Transcendent Sabda
Sabda is either immanent in its manifestation as sound, or transcendent. The immanent is threefold:
| Standpoint | What "sabda" means | Hearer |
|---|---|---|
| (a) Average | Sound of either class as heard by ears of the normal plane | Ordinary people |
| (b) Yogic | Subtle sound, heard by supernormal ears and minds; admits of grades, as some people hear better than others | Yogis of varying attainment |
| (c) Absolute Ear | Pure sound, sabda-tanmatra, apprehended unconditionally | The perfect yogi |
All three are effects (karya). Transcendent sabda is the cause (karana), the creative movement or Causal Stress itself, not a sound to any ear. In the Sastra this is Sabda-brahman, source of all name (nama) and form (rupa); the universe is namarupatmaka.
The Arundhati Method
The word sabda is kept throughout while its meaning enlarges and deepens. Woodroffe says this is how Hindu thought has developed, and gives the teaching rule arundhati-darsana-nyaya. A husband used to show his new wife the tiny star Arundhati, emblem of constant chastity, by first pointing to a big star nearby: "You see this; now look left; next to it, Arundhati." (He adds wryly: "or rather used to show, for is Arundhati sought now?")
So a guru leads a disciple upward in stages. The Taittiriya Upanisad sequence is his model:
- Annam Brahma: Brahman is food, and matter generally.
- Pranah Brahma: Brahman is life.
- Mind (manas) as Brahman. Woodroffe names only four stages but counts five; the missing one is this manomaya stage of the Upanisad, between life and intelligence.
- Vijnanam Brahma: Brahman is intelligence.
- Anandam Brahma: Brahman is bliss, "where at last experience rests".
Woodroffe counts five connotations of "Brahman", each deeper than the last. Most key philosophical terms have grown this way: prana, akasa, vayu each have several meanings, and sabda has the four listed above.
Ambiguity as pedagogy. Woodroffe concedes that "pure logic" may object to one term carrying several senses, but answers that "what life wants is generally not that which pure logic demands", and that the method is true, because Brahman really is all these things as Sakti while transcending them. Those who complain of ambiguity "have not mastered their subject". The practical rule for any reader of Tantric texts: ask at which level a word is being used.
Siva With and Without Parts
Siva has two aspects:
| Niskala, Nirguna | Sakala, Saguna |
|---|---|
| Without parts, without attributes | With parts, with attributes |
| Unmanifest transcendent Supreme | Manifest, immanent creative Lord (Isvara) or Ruling Mother (Isvari) |
| Nispanda | Creative |
| Asabda: neither sabda as effect nor as cause, so no Causal Stress | Sabda-brahman, appearing at creation from Brahman, the equilibrated state of Sakti |
From Sabda-brahman all particular sounds, mantras and others, appear.
What the Sarada-Tilaka says
Woodroffe's key text is Sarada-Tilaka I.12: when kriya-sakti (power of action) predominates in Prakrti, which has the form of Bindu, there arises the supreme Sabda-brahman, cause of sabda and sabdartha (sound and its meaning). Sabda-brahman is in itself avyakta (unmanifest) sabda, cause of manifest sabda, artha and pratyaya, arising from the differentiation of the Supreme Bindu, which is the undifferentiated Siva-Sakti. With that activity Bindu becomes threefold as sabda, artha, pratyaya.
- Avyakta-rava is the principle of sound as such, nada-matra: undifferentiated sound not yet in the form of letters.
- The Pranatosini describes it as Brahman considered as all-pervading sabda, undivided and unmanifest, whose substance is Nada and Bindu, the proximate creative impulse in Parasiva.
- Raghava Bhatta in his commentary on the Sarada-Tilaka calls it "the first outpouring (prathamollasa) of Paramasiva turned towards creation, undivided, unmanifest, made of Nada and Bindu, pervasive, of the nature of Brahman".
Why Call It Sabda-brahman
Saguna Siva causes all sabda, artha and pratyaya. Why then name it after sound? Because the Sastra is here considering the origin of sound. Sruti is impartial:
- Sometimes it says creation is out of sabda (sabda-prabhava), the universe being vanmaya.
- Sometimes out of pratyaya, as creative ideation.
- Sometimes out of artha, the cosmic "stuff", Prakrti-sakti.
The method is to take an effect we know and name the one cause after it. And the sabda aspect matters most because it is as sabda that Brahman is Veda.
The Bell-Jar Argument
Is the sabda of Sabda-brahman then the quality (guna) of akasa? Not in a narrow sense. Woodroffe cites the experiment "which in early days was supposed to demolish all Hindu theories": a ringing bell in a vessel pumped empty of air cannot be heard, though ether remains. If sound were the quality of akasa only, it could not grow, fade, appear and vanish with vayu (air). So:
- Sabda in its full sense is the Causal Stress or spanda inhering in the stressed condition of Cit-Sakti and Maya-Sakti.
- It appears first as sabda-tanmatra to the Absolute Ear.
- Then as more or less subtle sound to the yogic ear, as the fundamental akasa-spanda is adapted through denser media.
- Finally as average human sound, when the spanda is adapted to the human ear through common air.
Air, like the ear, is one of the factors of manifestation. Sabda is the Cosmic Stress in the Primary Ether (saspanda-Sakti), which produces sabda-tanmatra, which evolves into akasa-bhuta, then into vayu and the other tanmatras and bhutas.
These are, in Vedanta, pancikrta (quintupled): each tattva has four parts of its own element and one part of each of the other four. Through bhuta-srsti (Isvara's direct causation, saksat-kartrtva) the elements arise; through bhautika-srsti (Hiranyagarbha's indirect causation) they combine into the gross world, Virat. So one initial Stress runs through the whole chain.
Para- and Apara-Sabda
| Parasabda | Aparasabda |
|---|---|
| Not sound | Sound, subtle and gross |
| A state of agitation (ksobha) in cosmic Sakti when, on the ripening of samskaras, the equilibrium (samyavastha) of Prakrti breaks | Subtle: supersensible to normal mind and senses. Gross: sensible, "what we call in its compounds discrete matter" |
| General movement (samanya-spanda) | Particular sounds and words |
| "The cosmic predisposition to and precondition of creative evolution", corresponding "in some ways to the Logos" | The possibility and substratum become audible as dhvani |
This one stress manifests in man as artha, pratyaya and sabda: in the objects (prameya) that he as knower (pramatr) apprehends, and in the names by which he thinks them, which Pramathanatha Mukhopadhyaya calls "an after-construction in relation to the intuitive experiences of life".
"Asabda jagat is a contradiction in terms": a soundless world cannot exist, because every movement in it is parasabda.
One Stress, Many Senses
The causal stress, striking the ear and mind, produces sound; striking the eye and mind, colour and form; striking other organs, other sensations. Of the five bhutas:
- Akasa and vayu form the formless (amurta) division; akasa is sensed by hearing. Lettered sound is vibration for the ear as name.
- Tejas, ap and prthivi form the form (murta) division, headed by tejas, sensed as form (rupa). Artha is vibration for the eye (physical or mental) as form.
Because the one power rays out in threefold form, sabda, artha and pratyaya have a natural and inseparable relation. And because Vaidika sabda is assumed to be the natural name of its objects, it is held eternal (Chapter VI). Sruti says creation is sabda-purvaka, sabda being its antecedent condition; that cannot mean audible sound, which comes after.
Summary: Three Stages
- The transcendental quiescent condition, immanent though veiled in the others; Sruti describes it negatively as asabdam, asparsam, arupam, without sound, touch or form.
- The cosmic stress, Sabda-brahman: a play of Sakti in Cidakasa that does not efface the first condition. Sabda-brahman is Veda. At the end of a cycle it is wrapped up as potential Maya-sakti; according to some, in mahapralaya only the transcendental condition remains. The human parallel is deep sleep.
- Reproduction of Sabda-brahman, gradually and partially, as countless finite centres of experience of name and form. Forms, sounds and sights vary as the sabdas vary.
The sound representing the primordial functioning of Brahma-sakti is the Mahabija Om, the Pranava: "Om is the one Brahman; its expressive word is the Pranava."
Rescuing the theory from the bell jar. Woodroffe's reply to the vacuum experiment works by redefining sabda as causal stress, so no physical experiment can touch it. That protects the doctrine, but at a cost: the claim stops being one about sound as physics knows it. Readers should notice when the argument shifts between "sound" in the ordinary sense and "sabda" as a metaphysical term for power-in-motion. Classical Nyaya and Mimamsa debated the physical nature of sound with considerable rigour; Woodroffe's account simplifies that debate.
Key terms: varnatmaka and dhvanyatmaka sabda, arundhati-darsana-nyaya, Niskala, Sakala, Sabda-brahman, avyakta-rava, nada-matra, pancikarana, parasabda, aparasabda, ksobha, amurta, murta.
Reflect: Woodroffe's guru teaches by saying "Brahman is this; no, it is that". Have you had a teacher who taught by deliberately revising what they said earlier?
Sakti as Stress
Chapter V gives the book's dynamics. Every cosmic state (creation, maintenance, dissolution), the transcendent Paramasiva and Turiya, and the individual states of waking, dream and sleep are explained by one theory: Sakti as Stress, giving rise to moving forms of herself. Woodroffe credits Pramathanatha Mukhopadhyaya for this and several following chapters.
What Stress Is
Take two things, A and B, attracting each other. The total mutual action is the stress; the actions of A and B are its elements, partials or components. There may be stress among three or four things, and so on, until we reach Universal Stress: an infinite system of correlated forces.
- A particular thing is a partial experience of that infinite system. Mukhopadhyaya calls it a "Fact-section".
- The infinite system is never really made finite by its partials.
- When the stress between two partials touches the threshold of consciousness in one or both, there may be, within limits, a sensation of sound. The stress is sabda; the sound is dhvani. There may be stages between.
It is stress, or sabda, that constitutes a thing. Whether it is followed by audible dhvani depends on:
- The magnitude of its action relative to a percipient.
- The condition of the percipient's organs: the air must vibrate at certain rates, ear and brain must be of a certain kind.
Most things that affect us (earth, sun, moon, stars) make no sound to us.
The Five States as Stress Conditions
Woodroffe treats each state as a different balance of forces:
| State | Condition of stress | Image |
|---|---|---|
| Transcendent (Paramasiva, Turiya, Nirvana) | All stress dissolved. Every force separately zero, so the resultant is zero. Sakti is Cidrupini, Cinmatrarupini, nothing but consciousness. No srsti-kalpana, no artha, asabda | The Niskala state |
| Cosmic deep sleep (samasti susupti) | The only static condition where forces are not separately zero but balance one another: equilibrated energy. Nothing is external to the cosmos, so no outside system need be considered | The gunas in sarupa-parinama |
| Individual deep sleep (vyasti susupti) | Two possible cases (below) | |
| Dream and waking | The equilibrium of the causal body is lost | |
| Creation (srsti) | A system of kinetic stresses | |
| Dissolution (laya) | Kinetic stresses lapse into potential stresses | A strung bow: stress without movement |
The two cases of individual sleep
- The forces making up the individual's state are not each zero but resolve to zero, so the individual causal body is in equilibrium, provided the outer system does not disturb it. The outer system still acts on other individuals: "the world is not asleep because the individual is so."
- The forces resolve to something, but that resultant is exactly counterbalanced by the outer system's action, so the individual stress-system practically vanishes.
In both cases the external system is actively stressing.
The Cosmic Rhythm
The world process runs through srsti, sthiti and laya: from homogeneity (laya) to heterogeneity (srsti and sthiti) and back, "in an unending series of evolution and involution with periods of rest between". The growth of the universe is a pulsing forth of the Bindu, holding all potentially as massive (ghanibhuta) Sakti, and the universe dies back into that source.
Woodroffe qualifies the three-stage picture:
- It is not that creation happens, stops, maintenance follows, then dissolution. Evolution and involution go on even during sthiti: "there is always, for instance, molecular birth and death". Each term names the aspect emphasised.
- In laya the stresses are potential: actual movements cease and the stresses are due to the configuration of positions of the units, determined by their karmas up to the time of laya.
The Riddle of Creation
Isvara's experience, as the ultimate fact, is alogical, so human categories stretched to it produce paralogisms and antinomies. Why should cosmic sleep break, and how does God's will affect it? "Ultimately these questions are unanswerable in all faiths."
What can be said:
- In laya Isvara experiences his causal body. His Absolute "ear", "tongue", "eye", differentiations of his infinite jnana-sakti, are reabsorbed into a massive consciousness of bliss, as partly happens to the Jiva in sleep.
- Kinetic stresses (Sakti Visvarupa, power in the form of the universe) become potential (Sakti Cidrupini). What is patent becomes latent.
- The world becomes "Memory", which at the next creation is "remembered", as a sleeper on waking recalls the previous day.
- The difference: when we sleep, the world continues for others. When Isvara sleeps, things do not remain: they return to causal form or seeds, of whose totality Isvara has massive experience ("I am one, I will be many").
Instant or sequence
Is creation instantaneous or successive? "Probably neither." Time does not apply to creation as a whole; both pictures are vyavaharika (conventional), not paramarthika (ultimate). On that conventional level two views differ:
| Drsti-srsti-vada | Karma-srsti-vada |
|---|---|
| "Creation as seeing": as Isvara thought, so at once the whole world appeared in its subtle and gross stages | The more commonly accepted view |
| Creation is taking place at every moment, not wholly in the past | The tattvas came out gradually, one after another, in a set order (krama) |
| Woodroffe's preference ("to me preferable") | The krama is not time as we know it, which appears at a lower stage: the janma-kala of the Kalavadins, for whom all is time. Mahakala, supreme Time, is Nirguna, Nirvisesa, Nirvikara: Brahman |
Proof of the cosmic cycle
Apart from Sruti, the cycle is claimed to be proved by:
- (a) Induction from observed facts, which all show periodicity.
- (b) The remembrance of rsis and "super-souls" such as Jaigisavya, who are said to recall caturyugas, manvantaras and kalpas.
So the proof is inductive and experimental, not deductive.
From General to Specific
Creation goes from the generic to the specific. The stages, each with its sound:
- Samanya-spanda, general undifferentiated movement: the first sign of laya passing into srsti. For consciousness, the first stage of "Seeing" (iksana), Isvara's cosmic ideation. In the individual, the borderland between deep sleep and dream, when sleep is breaking and dream is about to pass into waking: "a kind of massive undifferentiated state containing potentially all specialities". Its sound is Om.
- Bhuta-srsti by Isvara: the tendency realises itself as the elements. Isvara knows himself as all (sarvatmakatva): as knower of all he is sarvajna, as knower of its varieties sarvavit. Maya is associated with him but does not govern him, so his knowledge does not bind; yet his state, being associated with Maya, is not supreme moksa. He does not think himself their creator. The elements evolved are:
- (a) the apancikrta bhutas or tanmatras;
- (b) their primary compounds: (aa) subtle: antahkarana, indriyas, pranas; (bb) gross: the pancikrta bhutas. Their creation implies their natural names or bijas: from Om come Ham, Yam, Ram, Vam, Lam and others such as Hrim, the Maya-bija or Pranava of the differentiating Sakti. These are specific relative to Om but general relative to what follows.
- Bhautika-srsti by Hiranyagarbha: the secondary compounds, mixing elements into diverse forms, first typal, then variational. These too have natural names. Hiranyagarbha, Lord of Brahmaloka, does think himself a creator: a state of duality in which all things are "his". So Hiranyagarbha, as affected by Maya, is a Jiva.
- Completed sthiti: the actions and reactions of bhutas and bhautikas continue as a system of kinetic stresses, with natural names Woodroffe calls phenomenal sabdas. Some fall within our limits and are audible.
Direct and Received Sound
From the standpoint of apprehension sabdas are of two kinds:
- Saksatkrta: directly apprehended.
- Apta: received from someone who has heard. The ordinary person does not hear "Ram", the natural name of Agni, directly; he is told it by those who have.
| Knower | Direct (saksatkrta) | Received (apta) |
|---|---|---|
| Isvara | All sabdas | None |
| Hiranyagarbha | Bhautika-srsti and sthiti sabdas | Bhuta-srsti and laya sabdas |
| Virat | Sthiti sabdas only | All the rest |
For individuals (Prajna, Taijasa, Visva), whose states exclude one another:
- Prajna has direct but veiled or partial apprehension of his own causal (laya) sabda only, and it is not sound as language to him.
- Taijasa has direct and indirect experience of some subtle sabda.
- Visva (Woodroffe writes "Virat" here) has the same of gross sabdas.
In the last two there is gradation. A scientist with apparatus hears what the ear cannot; a yogi hears more. Had either heard the rise of sap in a tree, that sound would be the direct approximate natural name of that vegetable function. A yogi in satcakra-bheda, as Kundalini energises the six centres in turn, may directly hear the bijas Om, Ham, Yam and the rest. By mounting to higher planes he can have direct experience of any or all sabdas.
The Absolute Ear hears sabda-tanmatra in akasa not through the impact of waves: "it hears movement as movement." In Brahmajnana the yogi becomes Brahman itself, all stress ceases, and there is Peace.
A strung bow. Laya is the bow drawn and held: stress without motion. Srsti is the release: kinetic stress spreading into countless partial "fact-sections", each a thing. Turiya is the bow unstrung: no stress at all. Mantra practice, on this picture, is a way of tuning one's own small system of stresses back along the path the arrow took.
Borrowed mechanics. The language of "stress", "components", "resultants" and "kinetic and potential" is taken from Newtonian mechanics, used analogically. It gives a vivid model, but "forces that are each zero" versus "forces that balance" is a metaphor, not a measurement. Also note that the "proof" of cosmic cycles by the remembered experience of Jaigisavya is testimony internal to the tradition, which Woodroffe calls "experimental"; a modern reader will weigh it differently.
Key terms: stress, Fact-section, dhvani, ghanibhuta Sakti, kinetic and potential stress, drsti-srsti-vada, karma-srsti-vada, Mahakala, samanya-spanda, bhuta-srsti, bhautika-srsti, saksatkrta, apta, Absolute Ear.
Reflect: Woodroffe prefers the view that creation is happening at every moment. What would change in how you see an ordinary morning if that were true?
Eternality of Sabda
Chapter VI asks the question on which the authority of the Veda in the Mimamsa tradition depends: in what sense is sound eternal? Woodroffe's answer is layered. Causal sound (Sabda-brahman) is eternal; the classes (jati) of things and their names are eternal; individual things and proper names are not. Vedic words claim eternity because they claim to be natural names of classes. Along the way he gives a short course in Sanskrit phonetics and a view of animal language.
Two Senses of "Eternal"
"Eternal" may mean "always is":
- (a) Without change: existence uncontradicted in the three times (past, present, future).
- (b) With change.
Change itself is of two kinds:
| Svagata (immanent) change | Taditara (non-immanent) change |
|---|---|
| Change within a single circle A | Circle B adds part of itself to A, changing A |
| Presupposes Advaita | Presupposes Dvaita |
The Three Aspects of Brahman
| Aspect | Eternal how | Change |
|---|---|---|
| (a) Pure Cit (Brahma-svarupa), the Niskala Paramasiva | Always is as such. We may veil or accept it, but it is ever given: "the changeless background of all change" | None |
| (b) Cit-Sakti: Cit immanent in the world. Mukhopadhyaya calls it "Fact" (the All), against "Fact-section" | Always is as such, because the All (purna) never ceases to be all. Sruti: purna remains purna though purna be taken from it | Svagata only, inseparable from Maya-Sakti |
| (c) Maya-Sakti or Prakrti: "Stress" as against the background of Cit | Always is, latent or patent, as kinetic force or tendency | Svagata change of condition |
So "real" and "eternal" must not be confused. In Advaita, the transcendent Brahma-svarupa is both real and eternal, "real" meaning unchanging (kutastha). Maya with its changes is neither real nor unreal, yet it is eternal. "Eternal" includes change of condition.
The three kinds of distinction (bheda)
Finite being is marked by three kinds of difference:
- Svagata (intrinsic): between the leaves and branches of one tree.
- Sajatiya (extrinsic, same kind): between one kind of tree and another.
- Vijatiya (extrinsic, different kind): between a tree and the earth and rocks around it.
Are Particulars Eternal?
The eternal Sabda-brahman manifests at creation and lapses into its ground in laya. The sound of its first movement is the nada or dhvani Om, from which all particular sounds, lettered and unlettered, come.
A given particular (say, the pen I am writing with) is obviously not eternal. But are particulars as such? Woodroffe answers with the doctrine of jati and vyakti:
- A genus or type (jati) never exists without individuals (vyakti).
- Some vyaktis, though not the present ones, are always associated with the jatis, latent or patent.
- In laya the jatis become latent with the vyaktis immediately preceding Prakrti's equilibrium.
| Vyakti-visesa | Vyakti-samanya |
|---|---|
| This given individual | Any or some individual |
| Not eternal | Eternal, veiled or unveiled |
Jatis are eternal and manifest in every creation, and their sabdas are eternal. Each creation is not an exact copy of the last; particulars change while revolving round fixed jatis.
A Jiva's journey across creations
Woodroffe's example: a Jiva may now be a Brahmana; through karma, after death, he may change jati and become a Sudra or a Devata, and so on until the eve of mahapralaya. Suppose he is a Devata then. In pralaya he is veiled together with his jati and all his samskaras, both active (prarabdha) and accumulated (samcita). The resultant of these samskaras determines his birth when Prakrti's equilibrium ends. The journey ends only in Mukti.
Which Words Are Eternal
- A word for this individual is a proper name, non-connotative, and not eternal.
- But apart from a few arbitrary proper names, all words name jatis: classes of things.
- An individual is denoted either by a proper name or a combination of class names ("this paper I am writing on").
- Only approximate natural names, simple or combined, are eternal.
The Veda claims to give the names of class things and class functions that are approximately natural. Granting that claim, these sabdas are nitya. If "gauh" is an approximate natural name, it has existed in every universe and meant the cow. If English "cow" is a variation that arose at some time, place and among some people, then outside those limits it has not existed or meant the animal.
- The ultimate test of a natural name is experimental verification.
- Vedic language has different strata; natural names are of different kinds and degrees.
- Whether other words are eternal depends on how far they are approximate natural names. Apart from tradition, the proof is verification by yoga.
- For variations of natural names, the degree and conditions of variation determine their bond with their objects. "No a priori answer is possible."
Sabda-brahman thinks creatively; his pratyaya is cosmic ideation; its sabda is Om; its artha is the whole universe implicit in the creative impulse Om expresses. From Om came all letters (varna) and sounds (dhvani). These Vaidika varnas are eternal and contain all possibilities of articulate speech in all languages.
The Mechanics of Speech
Woodroffe summarises the physics of the voice from Catchpool's Text-book of Sound:
- Vowels are continuous sounds made by varying the size and shape of the mouth cavity. The voice comes from two cartilaginous plates, the vocal cords, edge to edge at the top of the windpipe; air from the lungs keeps them vibrating, "really a free reed". Muscles vary frequency and pitch.
- Consonants are interruptions of those sounds. They cut vowels short but cannot be sounded without vowels. Hence the vowels are called the Saktis of the consonants.
Letters are classed by place of pronunciation (uccarana): gutturals, labials, dentals and so on. Lips, mouth and throat form a pipe or musical instrument.
The Paninian classes of effort
Panini (see the Siddhanta Kaumudi) and Patanjali's Mahabhasya divide effort (prayatna) in speech into inner and outer.
Inner effort (abhyantara-prayatna), four kinds, by how far the organ touches the place of articulation and whether the mouth is open or closed:
- Sprsta: full contact. The consonants ka to ma (the stops).
- Isat-sprsta: slight contact. Ya, ra, la, va (the semivowels).
- Vivrta: open.
- Samvrta: closed.
Outer effort (bahya-prayatna), eleven kinds:
| No. | Name | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Vivara | Mouth (glottis) open |
| 2 | Samvara | Closed |
| 3 | Svasa | Predominant use of breath |
| 4 | Nada | A humming sound |
| 5 | Ghosa | Ringing (voiced) |
| 6 | Aghosa | The opposite: unvoiced |
| 7 | Alpaprana | Quickly pronounced, little demand on prana (unaspirated) |
| 8 | Mahaprana | The opposite (aspirated) |
| 9 | Udatta | Loud (high) voice |
| 10 | Anudatta | Low voice |
| 11 | Svarita | A mixture of the two |
Letters in the body
The Tantra-Sastra, in satcakra-bheda, indicates parts of the body "touched" in pronouncing letters, meaning those parts take part in the sounding. Va is pronounced from the region of the Muladhara; Ha from between the eyebrows in the Ajna-cakra. The physical side: the vibrating body sends sound waves through air; the rise and fall of pressure at the ear produces the sensation, whose character depends on the waves.
Two maps of the mouth. Panini locates letters by where the tongue and lips touch. The Tantra relocates them by where in the subtle body they resonate. The fifty letters on the petals of the cakras (Chapter XXI and The Serpent Power) are the Tantric extension of grammar into the body.
Animal Language
On the Indian view God evolved man after most other species, so language, intelligence and moral sense, less developed in animals, became fuller in man. Animals are "approaches" to man; the difference is of degree, not kind. So there may be an inchoate lettered sound in higher animals.
Woodroffe adds a careful qualification: "there is no thinking without language" is true only for some kinds of cognition (developed in Chapter VII). Apart from these, man and animals manage without language; only the after-construction on perception needs it.
The Patanjala Darsana discusses transmigration into an animal body. Such a soul carries samskaras (linguistic and others) from human or divine births. Its instinct may then be partly "lapsed intelligence", and its unlettered cries a partly veiled human language.
Conclusion of the Chapter
What is eternal is:
- Sabda as Causal Stress, Sabda-brahman.
- The letters (Vaidika varna) evolved from the primordial dhvani, Om.
- The combinations of those letters that form approximately natural names: the Vaidika sabdas.
"Whether that claim is well-founded is another question which is not here discussed."
An honest suspension. Woodroffe ends by saying he does not argue that the Vedic claim to natural names is true. This matters: much of the following chapters depend on it. His proposed test, "experimental verification by Yoga", is a test only for those who practise and share the tradition's interpretive frame. Historical linguistics, by contrast, shows Vedic Sanskrit as one stage of a changing Indo-European language, with "gauh" cognate with English "cow" through common descent, not one natural and one derived name.
Caste and transmigration. The example of a Jiva moving between Brahmana, Sudra and Devata births assumes caste as a cosmic jati. Woodroffe presents it as doctrine without comment. Modern readers, including many Hindus, separate the metaphysics of karma from the social hierarchy it was used to justify.
Key terms: svagata, taditara, kutastha, sajatiya, vijatiya, jati, vyakti, vyakti-visesa, vyakti-samanya, prarabdha, samcita, nitya, prayatna, sprsta, isat-sprsta, ghosa, mahaprana, udatta, svarita.
Reflect: Woodroffe says "real" and "eternal" mean different things. Can you think of something in your own life that is lasting but not unchanging?
Sabda as Language
Chapter VII examines the claim that "there is no thought without language". Woodroffe's answer is that it holds only in a limited, conventional sense: intuition comes first, words are an "after-construction". He then builds a typology of signs, defines sabda-tanmatra more exactly, and gives a model of sabda, artha and pratyaya as a polar triangle whose language-pole may sit above or below the threshold of consciousness.
Connection Is Not Sequence
Even if there is no thinking without language, that proves only a necessary connection, not that words come first and thoughts after. They may be aspects of one concrete process, and between aspects there is no sequence.
The gun analogy. When a gun is fired, the explosion of the cartridge is the causal stress. It appears to the ear as a report, to the eye as a flash, and as the movement of the object hit. These are co-effects of the explosion. None causes another. Likewise a centre of causal stress in Cit produces several lines of manifestation, sound and object among them.
So when Sruti calls creation sabda-prabhava and sabda-purva, implying sequence, and says "Brahma created the Devatas with the sabda 'Ete'", it means: the causal stress of that creation manifests to his Absolute Ear as the pure form of the sound "Ete", and also as the appearance of the Devatas. The sound does not cause the gods. Sabda here is causal stress or initial spanda, which subjectively is iccha-sakti, will.
Creative Ideation Is Intuitive
The universe is srsti-kalpana. In human terms this ideation is intuitive, not inferential, so it does not involve language, which is one of its products. The proposition "no thought without language" is correct only in a vyavaharika sense, and only if "thinking" means:
- forming concepts or general notions;
- making judgments;
- drawing inferences.
Even in us, perception and ideation are done without language. Mukhopadhyaya's phrase recurs: words are an "after-thought or after-construction in relation to the intuitive experiences of life" (Woodroffe points to his books Approaches to Truth and The Patent Wonder).
Where Language Is Absent
| State | Language |
|---|---|
| Turiya (asabda) | None |
| Susupti (parasabda, causal stress) | None |
| Svapna and Jagrat | Artha and pratyaya imply the possibility of vocal language, but do not always call up their acoustic counterparts |
A child sees and hears almost without language; so does an animal; so do we in part. Most particular objects of perception have no specific names for us while we perceive them, though we may recall the class names later.
Absence of language occurs mainly in:
- Intuitive perception: much seeing and hearing.
- Intuitive ideation: forming a mental image. "I see a tree: close my eyes and see it again in mental image."
But the moment we need to describe, analyse, classify or judge, language is indispensable. I see a thing "and very well see it" without recalling "tree" or "mango tree"; to elaborate the seeing I must remember the name. That is why language is called an after-construction.
A Typology of Signs
Language is "a system of signs either natural or arbitrary, either vocal or non-vocal, by which we describe things and consider the attributes and relations of things". The four marks, taken two at a time, give six combinations:
| Combination | Valid | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Natural-vocal | Yes | Vaidika sabda, including bija-mantras uttered by the vocal organs |
| Natural non-vocal | Yes | Expressive gestures of hand or body to someone who does not know the spoken language |
| Arbitrary-vocal | Yes | An arbitrary meaning given to a group of natural words, as in code words |
| Arbitrary non-vocal | Yes | An arbitrary meaning given to a combination of natural gestures |
| Natural-arbitrary | Rejected: contradictory | |
| Vocal-non-vocal | Rejected: contradictory |
The first four exhaust possible language.
- Some proper names are arbitrary signs: they denote without connoting attributes. Not all proper names are arbitrary.
- Names as such are needed directly for higher mental processes and implicitly for intuitive ones.
- Rapid automatic inferences and habitual actions go on without language, yet when we review them their language accompaniment appears.
Sabda-tanmatra Defined More Exactly
Parasabda is movement or stress in itself, apart from the conditions of its manifestation to particular senses. Hearing capacity varies by degrees; the gradation points to an absolute capacity, the Absolute Ear. The appearance of parasabda to that capacity is sabda-tanmatra. This is still a manifestation, not the stress itself: it is the stress-in-itself appearing to an ideal ear. Each "absolute" sense is "the ideal limit (a mathematical term)" of capacities we have in degree.
So sabda-tanmatra covers more than undifferentiated pure sound. It includes both:
- Samanya (general) sounds, the highest being Om;
- Visesa (special) sounds.
"Sound in itself" does not necessarily mean undifferentiated sound.
The dove in the mango grove. A dove is cooing nearby. I hear it; you may hear it better; a microphone better still. What is that cooing as heard by a perfect capacity of hearing? What is the standard of which you, I and the yogi hear so many variations? The answer is the tanmatra of a particular (visesa) sound. Each thing's sound has an ideal form; we hear degraded versions of it.
Parasabda is not language. Aparasabda, including sabda-tanmatra, is.
Language in Sleep
In individual deep sleep there is intuitive consciousness of veiled ananda (pratyaya); the artha is the temporarily equilibrated causal body; but it does not manifest to the sleeper in language. Yet that artha must have its parasabda.
The individual is a centre linked to others in a cosmic system. Dynamically, his equilibrium in sleep means that the algebraic sum of forces of other centres on him and of his causal body on them is zero; they need not be separately nil. So:
- His slumber is not the slumber of the universe.
- Going to sleep implies an actual stressing attitude of the cosmic system, which is parasabda.
- That parasabda may manifest as sound to other centres: as sabda-tanmatra to the Absolute Ear, as subtle sound to a yogic ear, or as the sleeper's own physical sounds to a gross ear.
- Just as a Devata has a bija-mantra or primary natural name, so does every individual Jiva, corresponding to his causal body, audible in degree to finer ears.
The sleeper sleeps without language, as he may make noises in sleep without knowing it while someone beside him hears.
Cosmic sleep (laya) is the dreamless slumber of Bhagavan or Isvara. With no other centres and no Absolute Ear but his own, his intuitive experience of his causal body is absolutely without language (mauna): "It is silence itself." But parasabda is still there as equilibrated collective causal stress. Language is not the whole of sabda.
The Polar Triangle
Sabda, artha and pratyaya are three poles of a polar triangle:
- Below the transcendent plane the triangle always holds.
- In Isvara the three poles meet at a point: sabda = artha = pratyaya.
- In individual sleep they are not clearly distinguishable.
Language can stand for sabda only where it can be apprehended as sound by some hearing capacity. A name ceases to be a name when the cognitive capacity is absent, but its causal stress remains. In sleep, actual words lapse back into their causal stress; so too in laya. So sabda equals language, actual or possible, in all cases.
In dream and waking, language may stand for sabda with a proviso: the language-pole may be above or below the threshold of normal consciousness. In intuitive processes it is below, "ready to be called up whenever occasion should arise".
The child's development
Woodroffe draws five small diagrams (A = artha, P = pratyaya, S = sabda as language, with a threshold line). They show gradual stages, not fixed steps:
- At first no language beyond rudimentary sounds; artha and pratyaya merge, with no discrimination.
- Artha and pratyaya are more and more discriminated.
- Their language correlate develops and rises above the threshold.
Animals probably remain in the first two stages of the child.
The adult's two modes
| Intuitive processes | Judging, inferring, classifying |
|---|---|
| A and P above the threshold; S below, waiting | A, P and S all above |
Conclusions
- Turiya is undifferentiated: A, S and P severally vanish.
- Susupti (collective or individual) is temporarily equilibrated consciousness: A, S and P exist but their resultant is ineffectual; in the individual they blend and sabda is not language to the subject.
- Svapna and Jagrat are actually stirring consciousness: sabda, artha, pratyaya all present, but in some intuitive processes sabda as language lies below the threshold.
All states must finally be explained by the dynamical theory of Stress or Sakti.
A position that has aged well. The claim that much perception and imagery proceeds without inner speech, with words as an after-construction, is broadly in line with later cognitive science: infants and many animals show rich non-verbal cognition, and inner speech is now studied as one tool of thought among others. Woodroffe's theological extension (every Jiva has a bija-mantra; God's sleep is "silence itself") is a separate claim, not supported by that agreement.
Key terms: after-construction, intuitive perception, intuitive ideation, natural and arbitrary signs, Absolute Ear, ideal limit, samanya and visesa sounds, mauna, polar triangle, threshold.
Reflect: Recall something you saw today. Did you name it while seeing it, or only afterwards?
Natural Name
Chapter VIII is the centre of the book's theory of mantra. A natural name is the sound of the forces that make a thing what it is, as heard by a perfect ear. No human language contains such names in the strict sense; but the bija-mantras claim to be approximate natural names, handed down from seers who heard them. Woodroffe distinguishes five senses of "natural" and gives a twofold experimental test.
Everything Moves, So Everything Sounds
Everything is made of moving material forces. Even what seems stable has all its parts in motion, held together for a time until dissolved. Matter is a relatively stable form of cosmic energy. That is why the world is called Jagat, "that which moves". Only the nispanda Brahman is still.
This movement is apprehended by man as sound, touch and feel, form and colour, taste and smell: its effect on the indriyas and manas, which are themselves in motion, made of the same tanmatras as their objects. All movement is accompanied by sound: movement presented to a subject is grasped by ear and mind as sound, as the eye grasps it as form and colour.
The sense is the mind, not the organ
Woodroffe says "ear and mind" because in Indian thought the indriya is not the physical organ but the faculty of mind working through it. The organ is the usual instrument on the physical plane; its power comes from mind. So:
- A yogi may accomplish by mind alone all that the organs do, "and indeed more".
- A hypnotised subject can perceive without using the usual organs.
- An object is not perceived unless mind attends. The Brhadaranyaka Upanisad: "My mind was elsewhere: I did not hear."
Natural Name Defined
If we could hear the sound produced by the generating stress or constituting forces of the household fire, that sound would be the fire's natural name. If we could hear the forces of sap rising in a tree, that would be the natural name of that function.
Definition. Natural name in its purest sense is the sound produced by the generating stress (Sakti) or constituting forces of a thing, heard not by this or that conditioned ear but by the Supreme and Infinite Ear, which apprehends sound unconditionally, free of time, place (plane) and person.
Consequences:
- Natural language in the highest sense is a language of natural names only. No language below the absolute plane can be such.
- Even Vedic language and the Mahamantra Om are not natural language in this sense.
- To the relative ear a thing has no natural name.
Causal Sound and Stimulated Sound
Two sounds must be kept apart:
| Sound of causal stress | Sound given off under stimulus |
|---|---|
| What constitutes the thing | What the constituted thing emits when acted on |
| Heard by the yogi alone | Heard by the ordinary ear |
| Fire's causal stress: the bija Ram | Fire acting on things produces various crackles |
| Life function as breathing: the prana-bija Hamsa | Various bodily sounds under stimuli |
How Approximate Names Descend
The Sastra speaks of approximate natural names: the sound of causal stress heard by a yogi and transmitted imperfectly, since it is passed on by an imperfect agent as a sound the gross ear can hear. The chain:
- Prajapati hears the causal sound with his Supreme Ear and utters it with his Supreme Tongue to his sadhaka.
- The sadhaka, without the Supreme Ear, hears it a little imperfectly; the primordial sound is somewhat veiled in him.
- By sadhana he either attains the Supreme Ear (and is like Prajapati) or stops short.
- If he stops short, he passes the imperfectly heard sound by his relative tongue to his sisya, who can by yoga verify the archetype or fall short.
So primordial sounds descend to our planes, where:
- (a) the causal sounds of many objects are not represented at all;
- (b) those that are, are represented to suit relative ears and tongues.
Hamsa and Om as examples
- Hamsa: pay attention to breathing and you will find the out-breath has the form of Ha and the in-breath of Sa. You cannot say Ha while breathing in; it is pushed out by the outward breath.
- Om: the creative energising from which the world evolves is an immense sound (nada) to the Supreme Ear, uttered by the Supreme Tongue, which is also nada. No finite ear hears it perfectly. The "Om" that has come down through the Manasaputras (mind-born sons) and a line of gurus, each approximating the pure sound, is practically taken as the approximate natural name of the first creative act. It is an open continuous sound, uninterrupted by any clipping consonant, "vanishing as it were upward in the Nada-bindu" placed on the vowel.
- The same applies to Ham, Yam, Ram, Hamsah and other bijas.
The Five Senses of "Natural"
| No. | Sense | What it is | Example |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Pure natural name | Sound of causal stress, heard by the Supreme Ear, uttered by the Supreme Tongue. None of our sounds are natural in this sense. Known fully only to Prajapati and souls like him; revealed through vakya (scripture), progressively verifiable by the Jiva | The fire's stress as such |
| 2 | Approximate natural name | Causal sound projected onto our planes with limits through the Manasaputras and others; one stratum of Vedic language. The yogi does not hear "Om" as the sound "Om" but as a sound the relative ear can hear as Om: the pure sound represented by its nearest gross equivalent | Om, Ham, Ram |
| 3 | Onomatopoeic name | Variable sounds a thing gives off under external forces, often used to name it. Not causal stress (which may be "reduced to the motions of the electrons"), but practically regarded as natural; found in all languages | "cuckoo", "crow", "crackle", the blown conch |
| 4 | Secondary natural name | Not primary nor onomatopoeic, but evolved from elements of sound that are primarily (approximately) natural; expresses a thing's attributes and relations | Agni, Vahni, Hutasana |
| 5 | Mantric combination | Primary and secondary names combined in such order (krama) and metre or harmony (chandah) that, energising one another, the whole appears as an approximate name of a thing or process | A Vaidik or Tantrik mantra of several words naturally denoting a Devata or function |
Beyond these lies non-natural or artificial name: an arbitrary label, such as some proper names.
Why Secondary Names Are Needed
The one causal stress, striking different senses, gives sound, light and colour, and other sensations. The primary natural sound may best represent a thing as a whole, but it says nothing specific about its touch, colour, taste or smell, which matter practically.
Ram may be the approximate natural name of Agni, but unless we can grip Agni's causal stress itself, it tells us nothing about the attributes and relations we deal with. To ordinary people Ram, Hrim, Aim, Om are unmeaning: hence the talk of mantra as "jabber". Woodroffe's reply is measured: it is unlikely that any body of people in history deliberately occupied themselves with meaningless jabber. "That is not necessarily to say that the theory is correct, but that it is not absurd and without sense as supposed." Now that the Sastra is "nearly lost", mantras said without understanding may indeed be so.
Mill's terms. Bijas may denote things or processes but ordinarily do not connote their qualities; so they are what J. S. Mill calls non-connotative terms. According to the Sastra they are really connotative, if one can penetrate the kernel.
Two ways of building a secondary name
To express Agni by its quality "burning" (dahika-sakti):
- (a) Take the letters, each the approximate natural sound of some thing or process, and combine them (two or more at a time) so that the combination represents "burning". More than one combination may serve.
- (b) Use existing roots (dhatu), themselves formed from natural sounds or onomatopoeically, and with affixes and suffixes make them connote "burning", producing Agni. Different words may arise for the same quality: synonyms (paryaya).
Secondary names can be graded by closeness to primary ones.
Abhidha and Laksana
Hindu philologists distinguish saktyartha from laksyartha, that is abhidha-sakti from laksana-sakti. Words have two vrttis (functions):
| Abhidha | Laksana |
|---|---|
| Sakti in the sense that it compels understanding of the thing denoted | Approximately denotes the object: "it leads the hearer to the door but does not enter" |
| The object cow is the vakyartha of the word "cow" | Laksya is what a sign points to |
| The word Brahman is the vakyartha of Saguna Brahman | The word Brahman is only the laksyartha of Nirguna Parabrahman |
Secondary names are not indifferent in expressiveness: some show qualities and relations better than others. Agni, Vahni, Hutasana are connected with Ram in this way: Ram represents the thing as a whole; they express its attributes specifically. Ram seems non-connotative; they are connotative.
The Twofold Test
The test of natural names is said to be twofold and experimental:
- Thing to sound. Whether the causal stress of a thing makes a sound (say the bija Yam) can be verified by yoga: "the thing being given, a sound evolves."
- Sound to thing. That sound, repeatedly and harmonically uttered in japa, must create or project into perception the corresponding thing: "the sound being given, a thing evolves."
Why mantra is said to work. If a bija is the approximate sound of a thing's constituting forces, then repeating it sets up in the practitioner's own body-mind the same pattern of stress that constitutes the deity or element. By the principle of Chapter II, the mind takes the shape of that pattern. Test 2 is the practical claim of the whole Mantra-Sastra.
"It is not absurd" is not "it is true". Woodroffe is careful here, and readers should keep his caution. The theory of natural names is a metaphysical hypothesis with deep roots in Mimamsa and the grammarians. Its two tests are framed so that only practitioners can perform them, and success depends on the practitioner's own attainment. Modern linguistics treats the sound-meaning bond as largely conventional, with limited sound symbolism (some cross-language tendencies, such as "bouba" and "kiki"). That modest finding is far from the Tantric claim, but it shows the question is not empty.
Key terms: natural name, Supreme Ear, Supreme Tongue, approximate natural name, Manasaputra, Hamsa, Nada-bindu, onomatopoeia, secondary natural name, paryaya, abhidha, laksana, vakyartha, laksyartha, non-connotative.
Reflect: Try the Hamsa observation: watch ten breaths. Does the out-breath sound like "ha" and the in-breath like "sa" to you?
Vaidika-Sabda
Chapter IX applies the theory of natural name to the Veda. Woodroffe's verdict is graded: no Vedic word is an absolute natural name; the Veda heard by gross ears is not a system of natural names; it claims to be a system of approximate natural names in varying degree. He then separates, with notable care, the philosophical theory (probable, he thinks) from the historical claim that present-day Vedic Sanskrit is the eternal standard language (which philologists deny).
Approximate Names Scattered in Ordinary Speech
The Vedas communicate natural names of some things, subject to the limits of relative ears and tongues. As the Tantras contain bija-mantras "scattered here and there in a varied mass of ordinary Sanskrit", so Sruti contains closely approximate natural names combined by natural laws of harmony (chandah) into mantras irresistibly connected with their esoteric objects (Devatas). These are explained and applied in passages that do not consist of natural names.
Analysing mantras themselves, some sounds are in natural use and some not; each word does not necessarily stand for causal stress. What mainly counts is order of combination and rhythm. As a whole the mantra may be the approximate natural name of a Devata or function.
Where a mantra's power lies
- (a) Mutual aiding and inhibiting of sounds within the chandah: the veils of the individual sounds are removed by the order of their collocation. The "curves" of sound are constructive, not destructive.
- (b) Cumulative repetition: by repetition there is summation of stimuli.
Three Classes of Vedic Sound
| Class | What it is | Closeness to a universal natural language |
|---|---|---|
| (1) Primaries | Approximate natural names standing alone or in groups: Om, Ham, Hamsah, Svaha | Most nearly so among all languages |
| (2) Mantras | Combinations of sounds not natural distributively that naturalise each other by order and harmony, becoming approximate names of objects and processes; they gather creative momentum by repetition | Less so |
| (3) Explanatory mass | The large body of words explaining meanings, uses and results, which need not be natural names | Least so |
So the Veda of gross ear and tongue is not a system of natural names; it is claimed to be one of approximate names in varying degree. The Veda of the Absolute Ear and Tongue is a system of absolute natural names.
There are four strata in Vedic experience: the nameless Supreme Experience, then the three classes above. Sabda, artha and pratyaya are absolutely connected on the absolute plane and progressively less so below.
The conch again. When a conch is blown, its natural name is not the sound we make it give (produced by our effort and variable) but the sound of the causal stress that generates and holds the shell together. The blowing sound is only practically natural.
Language Is Not Invented
Names may be classed as (a) typal or (b) variational: Sanskrit "gauh" is typal; English "cow" variational.
In the Indian view no one ever invented a language. Volapuk and Esperanto are "mere combinations of the sounds of pre-existing language". The Vedic language was revealed by Isvara to the Manasaputras and through them to men. As ordinary (laukika) speech it became corrupted; rectified, it was called Sanskrit, "that which has been purified". So original Vedic language must be distinguished from current Sanskrit, though they share words.
The Grammar of Variation
The orthodox view: there is a typal or standard language, the universal one, of which all others are variations. Every variation raises three questions:
- (a) When does it appear and how long does it last?
- (b) Where, in what places or planes?
- (c) In whom, for what persons or groups?
A variation is always subject to time, place and person. Variations may be:
| Mark | Meaning | Example |
|---|---|---|
| (a) Common (samanya) | Across a whole class of persons | "Cow" among English speakers; gai or gabhi among Bengalis |
| (b) Special (visesa) | In one individual | Each person's own pronunciation of "cow" |
| (c) Voluntary | Due to free will of a person or group | |
| (d) Involuntary | Not so |
Typal sounds are eternal, latent in cosmic sleep. Taken two at a time the marks yield six combinations:
| No. | Combination | Status |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Common and special | Impossible, self-contradictory |
| 2 | Common and voluntary | Not eternal: a free act has an absolute beginning; if it merely repeated a prior cosmic order it would not be free |
| 3 | Common and involuntary | Eternal but less than the types: "passing, though recurrently"; the types also recur, but in larger cycles. Fully eternal so far as they approximate their type |
| 4 | Special and voluntary | Not eternal, for the same reason as 2 |
| 5 | Special and involuntary | Not eternal so far as brought about by part volitions |
| 6 | Voluntary and involuntary | Impossible, self-contradictory |
Woodroffe admits "the whole question is of so great difficulty" that the tangle cannot be fully unravelled. Where is the line between voluntary and involuntary, between absolute and finite will? Is the cosmic cycle exactly recurrent? Practically:
- The general plan and the types are recurrent and eternal.
- Common variations are recurrent and eternal subject to more conditions.
- Special variations are practically not eternal.
The Full Classification of Names
Woodroffe gives a lettered scheme. Arranged as a tree:
- Name
- (b) Conventional / arbitrary: not discussed further.
- (a) Natural
- (c) Absolute: heard only on the unconditioned plane. The manifest Veda is not this.
- (d) Relative
- (e) Primary: the causal stress, thing or function as a whole, approximately represented to the relative ear
- (g) elementary sounds or letters (varna)
- (h) compound sounds: bijas and roots (dhatu)
- (f) Secondary: specific attributes and relations
- (i) appealing directly to the ear: (j) self-produced or (k) induced or excited (onomatopoeia)
- (l) appealing to other senses: (m) single words built of letters or roots, or (n) combinations of words, either (o) harmonic (mantra) or (p) non-harmonic but kramic
- (e) Primary: the causal stress, thing or function as a whole, approximately represented to the relative ear
Every Letter Is the Cosmos
Vyasa's Yoga-bhasya on Yoga-sutra III.17 says each letter is sarvabhidhana-sakti-pracita: possessing power to denote and connote all objects. As the Visvasara Tantra says, "what is not here is nowhere". A letter is the whole cosmos in miniature. Letters differ in the relative latency of the universe of artha in them, the universe being the same. They come to mean particular things by the order (krama) of their grouping; their particular meanings (samketa) come not from intrinsic difference but from order.
To naturally connote an artha, letters cannot be chosen and arranged arbitrarily: certain letters connected with it must be chosen in a certain order. Words without such selection are conventional: a telegraphic code (though even it has a designed order), many proper names, algebraic symbols. The krama of Vedic words is said to be eternal.
The Chemistry Analogy
Letters are to words as atoms are to molecules. To make hydrogen, a set number of electrons in a set order is needed; a different number or order gives a different atom. To make water, two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom must be arranged so that H2O results. Likewise letters combine into natural words only in definite proportions. And as the atom is itself a system of moving electrons (radioactivity proves it), so letters may not be absolutely simple, though they are for practical purposes. All atoms are made of the same kind of electron; so the garland of letters may be evolved from one kind of elementary sound by differential aggregation, perhaps the uninterrupted anahata dhvani finitised into sound-points (sabda-bindu) or sound-atoms (sabda-paramanu).
He extends the picture:
- A circle may be treated as the sum of infinitely many tiny straight lines. A ritual diagram (Sarvatobhadra-mandala), a yajna or homa may be treated so.
- So a natural word may be represented by a diagram (yantra), which for a bija is "the graph of the bija", or of the causal stress whose sound it is.
- An electron is a unit charge, perhaps "an element of ether in stress". That element is the parasabda-paramanu; heard by the relative ear it is the sabda-paramanu. So sabdas (aggregates of sound-atoms) and arthas (aggregates of electrons) are naturally connected; random aggregates make neither natural things nor natural names.
- Physically, by Fourier's theorem, a complex harmonic motion resolves into simple harmonic motions. All ordinary letters are complex; a simple harmonic motion is a sabda-paramanu.
- Physiologically, each vibration gives one "nerve-shock", which should give one "feeling-atom", as W. K. Clifford argued in his theory of "mind-dust", opposed by William James. Mukhopadhyaya's view: without direct yogic testimony we cannot say these exist; we hear letters as simple, but they can be represented as made of feeling-dusts, which yogic ears may perhaps hear.
Agni and Its Names
The bija Ram gives the whole-thing view of fire. Other names give side views:
| Name | Root | Relation expressed |
|---|---|---|
| Agni | ag, tortuous movement | The winding movement of fire: the vortex of hot gas, curling smoke. Perhaps "ag" is itself the approximate sound of that causal stress |
| (a purifying name) | pu | That fire purifies |
| Hutasana | hu and as | That it consumes all things (offerings) |
| Vaisvanara | Present in all living beings as the heat of oxidation | |
| Vahni | vah, carry | It carries offerings to the gods |
| Anala | an | It pervades all things |
Words like "smooth", "rough", "horrible", "tremendous" are secondary natural names of class (l): uttering them produces organic sensations that suggest the actual feel of smooth or rough things. Class (i) onomatopoeia is of two kinds: a cuckoo or crow produces its own sound; a flute sounds when stimulated. Class (n) combinations may be rhythmic (chandobaddha-vakya) or non-rhythmic.
Within the secondary group, mantras (class o) are the closest approach to natural names. The test remains experimental: sound given, object evolves; object given, sound evolves. In absolute names these relations hold at once; in relative names, in varying measure through krama and japa. Whether the Veda is such a system is "a question of fact".
Philosophy Versus History
Woodroffe now separates two questions, and insists "the two must be kept apart":
| Philosophical claim | Historical claim |
|---|---|
| The relation of sabda and artha is eternal; some sabda is the natural name of each artha; natural language is the standard and all others vary from it | The Vedic language as it exists today is that eternal standard; "gauh" is the natural name of the cow for all eternity |
| Woodroffe: "philosophically probable" | Woodroffe: "an entirely different matter". Philologists and historians will deny it, pointing to changes in the language and earlier languages of other peoples |
Even granting a universal original language (as in the Biblical tradition), it will be denied that Vedic as we know it is that language. Evidence within Veda itself points the other way: it has been argued that according to the Satapatha Brahmana the original language was monosyllabic.
He declines the philological question. The ultimate philosophical question is: "Who, if anyone, first said that this sound meant that thing?" The Indian answer is that the bond is eternal, not conventional, and that there is a system of natural names, whatever that system in fact is. That answer "stands clear of" the claim made for present-day Vedic.
This concession frees the theory of mantra from a weak historical claim. One can hold that some sounds track the forces of things, and practise bija-mantra on that basis, without believing that Vedic Sanskrit is the primeval language of humanity. Woodroffe in effect lets the orthodox historical claim go and keeps the philosophy.
Atoms and electrons, 1922. The chemistry here is Bohr-era physics: "about 75 different atoms" (a footnote adds 19 discovered since), electrons as possibly "ether in stress", and Clifford's mind-dust. The ether has gone, and the elements now number 118. The analogy (definite combination rules versus random aggregation) still works as an analogy; the suggestion of a natural physical link between sound-atoms and electrons does not survive.
Key terms: Vaidika-sabda, chandah, summation of stimuli, typal and variational name, samanya and visesa variation, sarvabhidhana-sakti, krama, samketa, sabda-paramanu, yantra as graph, chandobaddha-vakya.
Reflect: Woodroffe separates "is the theory of natural names true?" from "is Vedic Sanskrit the original language?". Which question matters more for someone who chants mantras?
The Tattvas
Chapter X supplies the map without which the rest of the Mantra-Sastra cannot be read: the thirty-six Saiva-Sakta Tattvas. Woodroffe states the stakes plainly: Sakti is in Sakti-tattva, Nada in Sadakhya-tattva, Bindu in Isvara-tattva. Unless these are understood, "no progress in knowledge of the Mantra Science" can be expected. The chapter is a compact account of how one consciousness becomes subject and object, ending with a full list of the 94 Kalas.
The "I" and the "This"
Experience as Sakti is called Vimarsa. It has two elements:
| Aham, "I" | Idam, "This" |
|---|---|
| The knowing aspect (grahaka) | The known aspect (grahya) |
| The Self resting in its own light, not looking towards another (ananyonmukhah aham-pratyayah) | Experience looking towards another (anyonmukhah idam-pratyayah) |
The "other" can only be the Self, since there is nothing else; but it is experienced differently at different levels:
- Supreme state: "This" exists with "I" in mingled union.
- Pure experience between that and Maya: "This" is recognised as an aspect of the Self.
- Impure experience under Maya: the object appears different from the limited self.
As above, so below
Three maxims carry one principle:
- The Hermetic maxim: "As above so below."
- The Visvasara Tantra: "What is here is there; what is not here is nowhere."
- Saiva doctrine: things appear without only because they exist within. So what exists in our experience also exists in the Supreme experience, "though in another way".
Parasamvit, the Supreme Experience
Parasamvit is not abstract, objectless knowing. It is the coalescence into one undivided unity of "I" and "This": of Siva (Prakasa, the illuminating) and supreme unmanifest Sakti (Vimarsa, the known), "undistinguishably one".
- It has the immediacy of feeling. It is Ananda, defined as "resting in the Self" (svarupa-visranti).
- Its universe is the Perfect Universe: Supreme Sakti, called in the Parapravesika "the Heart of the Supreme Lord".
- "Bliss is supreme love." The Brhadaranyaka describes the state: "He indeed was just as man and woman in embrace", with neither within nor without, lover, loving and loved forgotten in unity.
- It is spaceless, timeless, full, all-knowing, almighty: Niskala Siva or Paramasiva, beyond all Tattvas (tattvatita).
- As the Perfect Universe it is Paranada (Supreme "Sound") and Paravak (Supreme "Speech").
Our worldly experience is an inverted reflection of all this, seen in the causal waters of Maya. Maya-Sakti is bhedabuddhi, the sense of difference: each self excludes others, where in the Supreme one Self experiences itself.
The Five Kancukas in Brief
The Purusa is consciousness under Maya and the five Kancukas ("jackets"), which contract its natural perfections:
| Kancuka | Perfection contracted | Result |
|---|---|---|
| Kala (time) | Timelessness | Limitation by time |
| Niyati | Independence (svatantrata) | Regulated as to what to do at each moment |
| Raga | Fullness (purna, wanting nothing) | Interest in objects as other, hence desire |
| Vidya | All-knowingness (sarvajnata) | A "little knower" |
| Kala (part) | All-mightiness (sarvakartrta) | A "little doer" |
(These receive their own chapter, XV.)
The Pure Tattvas Step by Step
Siva has a transcendent (Niskala) and a creative, immanent (Sakala) aspect. The pure Tattvas explain how the imperfect world-experience comes from the creative aspect of the Perfect.
Siva-tattva and Sakti-tattva
- Siva-tattva is the creative aspect of Paramasiva, holding the Sakti called Unmani. It is the first movement (prathama spanda) of the Unmoving.
- Sakti-tattva is only the negative aspect of Siva-tattva. Her function is to negate (nisedha-vyapara-rupa saktih): she deprives experience of its objectivity, which is herself as Para-Sakti, leaving Prakasa-matra, the bare "I".
- Because no trace of objectivity remains, Siva-tattva is "the very void" (sunyatisunya): empty of objective content.
- Sakti-tattva is also the Will (iccha) of Siva, unmanifest and ever inseparable (santata-samavayini).
Woodroffe calls this "extraordinarily subtle": to get dual experience from unitary experience, first blot out the object, leaving pure subjectivity; then unveil the universe gradually, first as unmanifest, then through Maya as manifest.
The Siva-Sakti Tattva is not an emanation: it is the same in creation and dissolution, "the seed and womb of the whole universe".
Sadakhya or Sadasiva-tattva
- The first emanation or manifestation (abhasa). The cause remains what it was though appearing differently in the effect.
- Abhasa is like the vivarta of Mayavada; the difference is that here the effect is real, for Sankara unreal, which turns on how "reality" is defined.
- Real evolution (parinama), where a thing ceases to be what it was, exists only in the compounded products of the material world.
- Called Nimesa ("closing of the eyes"), as against the Unmesa ("opening") of the next stage. The universe is seen faintly; the Self hazily experiences itself as object. Emphasis on "I".
- First step in evolution, last in involution.
- He whom Vaisnavas call Mahavisnu and Buddhists Avalokitesvara, who sheds compassion on all; by tradition the source of the Avataras.
- Here is what the Mantra-Sastra calls Nada-Sakti.
Isvara-tattva
- Unmesa: the distinct blossoming (sphutatva) and externalisation (bahyatva) of the universe, experienced distinctly yet as part of the Self. Emphasis on "This".
- Called Bindu: consciousness completely identifies itself with the unmanifest "This", subjectifies it, and becomes with it a point. Example: the mind exists for each of us as a mathematical point, while the body, so far as not subjectified, appears as an extended object.
Sadvidya or Suddhavidya-tattva
- Equal emphasis on "I" and "This" (samanadhikaranya): a synthesis (samgamana) on a single basis (adhikarana), not on two bases as for the Maya-bound experiencer.
- Ready for severance.
- Called Paraparadasa, the intermediate between pure and impure creation.
- Experience of difference-and-non-difference in the form of mantra (bhedabheda-vimarsanatmaka-mantrarupa): different because "This" is separated from "I"; non-different because both are still the one Self. Like the Isvara of the Dvaitavadins: "All this is my manifestation" (sarvo mamayam vibhavah).
- It is "in the nature of Mantra" because this is pure spiritual ideation, before objective manifestation.
- Below it were created eight Pudgalas (Jivas in the form of knowledge) and seven crores of Mantras with their Mandalas.
The four emphases at a glance
| Tattva | Experience | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Siva | Aham-vimarsa: "I" | "I" alone |
| Sadasiva | Aham-idam: "I-This" | On "I" |
| Isvara | Idam-aham: "This-I" | On "This" |
| Sadvidya | "I" and "This" equal | Balanced |
Maya, Purusa and Prakrti
At this point Maya-Sakti divides "I" from "This", and the Kancukas make consciousness subject to time and space, birth and death, limitation and desire. This is the Purusa-Prakrti-tattva.
- Purusa is Atma or Siva subject to Maya and the Kancukas.
- Prakrti is the Santa Sakti of Siva in contracted form: the equilibrium of the gunas, which are a gross form of the Saktis of Will (iccha), Action (kriya) and Knowledge (jnana). All exists in her as feeling in a homogeneous mass.
- Purusa is enjoyer (bhokta), Prakrti the enjoyed (bhogya). Prakrti differentiates into mind (antahkarana), senses (indriya) and matter (bhuta).
Every single thing is Purusa. An atom of sand is consciousness identifying itself with solidity (prthivi), showing its limited consciousness as atomic memory. "What consciousness thinks, that is, identifies itself with, that it becomes."
The whole chapter in one sentence. Supreme Experience has a creative aspect, an "I" which gradually experiences the "This" as part of itself: faintly with "I" predominant (Sadasiva), clearly with "This" predominant (Isvara), then equally (Sadvidya); Maya cleaves the two into subject and object; and Sakti as Prakrti differentiates into the many. Throughout, it is the one Siva, whether as Supreme Experience or as consciousness embodied in solid matter.
The Kalas
Associated with the Tattvas are Kalas: the forms of activity (kriya) of the Tattvas as Sakti. Srsti (creation) is a Kala of Brahma; Palana (protection) of Visnu; Mrtyu (death) of Rudra. Woodroffe admits the fit is not always easy to see.
The Sakta Tantras speak of 94 Kalas. Per the Saubhagya-ratnakara:
| Group | No. | Names as given |
|---|---|---|
| Sadasiva | 19 | Nivrtti, Pratistha, Vidya, Santi, Indhika, Dipika, Recika, Mocika, Para, Suksmamrta, Jnanamrta, Amrta, Apyayani, Vyapini, Vyomarupa, Mulavidyamantrakala, Mahamantrakala, Jyotiskala |
| Isvara | 6 | Pita, Sveta, Nitya, Aruna, Asita, Ananta |
| Rudra | 11 | Tiksna, Raudri, Bhaya, Nidra, Tandra, Ksudha, Krodhini, Kriya, Utkari, Amaya, Mrtyu |
| Visnu | 10 | Jada, Palini, Santi, Isvari, Rati, Kamika, Varada, Hladini, Priti, Diksa |
| Brahma | 10 | Srsti, Rddhi, Smrti, Medha, Kanti, Laksmi, Dyuti, Sthira, Sthiti, Siddhi |
| Fire | 10 | Dhumrarci, Usma, Jvalini, Jvalini, Visphulingini, Susri, Surupa, Kapila, Havyavaha, Kavyavaha |
| Sun | 12 | Tapini, Tapini, Dhumra, Marici, Jvalini, Ruci, Susumna, Bhogada, Visva, Bodhini, Dharini, Ksama |
| Moon | 16 | Amrta, Manada, Pusa, Tusti, Pusti, Rati, Dhrti, Sasini, Candrika, Kanti, Jyotsna, Srih, Priti, Angada, Purna, Purnamrta |
Count the Sadasiva list. The text says 19 but names only 18; one (probably Suksma, which appears in the Matrka list below) has dropped out in printing. Several apparent repeats (Jvalini twice under Fire, Tapini twice under Sun) are probably names that differ in vowel length in Sanskrit (e.g. Tapini and Tāpinī) and lost the difference when diacritics were stripped. This edition reproduces the list as printed.
The 50 Matrka-Kalas
Of these, 50 are Matrka-Kalas, which manifest through the Pasyanti, Madhyama and Vaikhari stages as the gross letters. In order:
- Nivrtti, Pratistha, Vidya, Santi, Indhika, Dipika, Recika, Mocika, Para, Suksma, Suksmamrta, Jnanamrta, Apyayani, Vyapini, Vyomarupa, Ananta (16)
- Srsti, Rddhi, Smrti, Medha, Kanti, Laksmi, Dyuti, Sthira, Sthiti, Siddhi (10)
- Jada, Palini, Santi, Aisvarya, Rati, Kamika, Varada, Ahladini, Priti, Dirgha (10)
- Tiksna, Raudri, Bhaya, Nidra, Tandra, Ksudha, Krodhini, Kriya, Utkari, Mrtyurupa (10)
- Pita, Sveta, Asita, Ananta (4)
The totals make fifty, the number of letters. (Editor's observation, not Woodroffe's: the first group has sixteen names, the number of the vowels.)
The 94 Kalas are worshipped in the Wine Jar, which holds Tara dravamayi, the Saviour-Mother in liquid form. She is herself called Samvit-Kala. The Yoginihrdaya Tantra: "I take refuge in that Samvit-Kala who shines in the form of every thing, whatever it be, of place, time and object."
Key terms: Vimarsa, Aham, Idam, grahaka, grahya, Parasamvit, Paranada, Paravak, sunyatisunya, abhasa, vivarta, parinama, Nimesa, Unmesa, Sadvidya, Pudgala, Purusa, Prakrti, Kala, Matrka-Kala, Samvit-Kala.
Reflect: Woodroffe says the mind exists for each of us as a point, while the body appears extended. Notice where "you" seem to be right now. Is it a point or a region?
Sakti: Potency to Create
Chapters XI to XIII treat Sakti, Nada and Bindu, the three causal stages of Sakti on the way to creation. Chapter XI deals with Sakti-tattva itself. Woodroffe builds on the Sarada-Tilaka of Laksmanacarya with Raghava-Bhatta's commentary, and uses the author's lineage to argue that Saiva and Sakta Tantra are not separate worlds.
The Sarada-Tilaka and Its Author
The Sarada-Tilaka was "formerly of great authority in Bengal", its value raised by Raghava-Bhatta's commentary, the Padarthadarsa. The author's own account of his family:
- Mahabala, a great sage, was succeeded by
- his son Acaryapandita, a Desika (Tantric guru), whose son
- Srikrsna-Desika had a son
- Laksmana-Desika, who wrote the Sarada-Tilaka.
Raghava gives his guru line (gurupankti): Srikantha → Vasugupta → Somananda → Utpalacarya → Laksmana. Laksmana's disciple was Abhinavagupta (author of the Paramarthasara), whose disciple was Ksemaraja (author of the Sivasutra-vimarsini).
Dating, from details supplied by Akshay Kumar Maitra of the Varendra research society:
- Abhinavagupta is usually placed in the eleventh century, so the Sarada was written at the end of the tenth or start of the eleventh century.
- Raghava gives 1510 as the date of his commentary; taken as Vikrama Samvat, that is 1454 CE.
The point: Laksmana belonged to the Kashmir Saiva school, yet his work was authoritative among Bengal Saktas. Those who insist on total disconnection between Saiva and Sakta Tantras are mistaken.
An identification to hold loosely. The Kashmir lineage named here belongs to Laksmanagupta, Abhinavagupta's teacher in Pratyabhijna. Whether Laksmana-Desika, author of the Sarada-Tilaka, is the same person is disputed. Many modern scholars treat them as different people, with the Sarada-Tilaka somewhat later. Woodroffe's broader point (heavy borrowing between Kashmir Saiva and Bengal Sakta traditions) stands on other evidence too; the single-author link is weaker than he presents it.
The Key Verse
Sarada-Tilaka I.7: "From Sakala-Paramesvara, vested with the wealth of Sat, Cit, Ananda, issued Sakti; from Sakti came Nada; and from Nada issued Bindu."
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Paramesvara | Here Siva-tattva |
| Sakala | "With Kala", with creative Sakti. Sakti individualised (vyastirupa) is called Kala |
| Vested with Sat, Cit, Ananda | His association with Avidya does not affect his own nature (svarupa) |
Sakala-Siva is Saguna-Brahman. Siva is always with Sakti, but in the supreme state Sakti is unmanifest, in her own form as Being-Consciousness-Bliss, indistinguishable from Siva.
Siva has two aspects:
- The Supreme Changeless One, Saccidananda: Parasamvit.
- The One who changes as the universe, change being the experience of the Jiva so created. Its cause is Siva-tattva inseparably joined to Sakti-tattva.
How Sakti "Issues" from What Already Has Sakti
The objection: how can Sakti issue from what was already with Sakti? Raghava-Bhatta's answer:
- The author follows the Samkhya principle that realities appear from realities (sad-utpatti-vada).
- What "issues" is Sakti's condition of readiness (ucchunavastha), the swelling of one who, without beginning or end, existed in subtle state identified with Caitanya during the Great Dissolution.
- That identification is adhyasa: attributing the nature of one thing to another.
The subtle point is marked by two words: Cit for Siva and Cidrupini ("in the form of Cit") for Sakti. That principle which in creation appears as seeming non-consciousness (acit) is in itself Cidrupini.
Woodroffe states his own preference: Sakti in dissolution is what she really is, namely Cit. In creation consciousness as Sakti has power to veil its own nature, and when we are subject to this power we attribute unconsciousness to it.
Scriptural images
| Source | Image |
|---|---|
| Prayogasara | "She, who is eternal and all-pervading, the Genetrix of the Universe, issues from Him." |
| Vayaviya-samhita | By Siva's will, Para-Sakti, united with Siva-tattva, appears at creation "just as oil from sesamum seed when pressed" |
| Pancaratra | The Parama Purusa, seeing that she is the source (adhisthana) of all Tattvas, makes manifest eternal Prakrti |
All such accounts are "pictorial thinking": imperfect attempts to explain consciousness in activity. Cause and effect are really one but appear different.
The Stages of Sakti
| Stage | Aspect | Tattva |
|---|---|---|
| Sakti | First kinetic aspect of Brahman | Sakti-tattva |
| Nada | More prone to creation | Sadakhya |
| Bindu | Fully ready | Isvara-tattva |
| Kamakala | Bindu differentiates into the Triangle of Divine Desire | |
| Sabda-brahman | Upon the triangle; bifurcates into Sabda and Artha | Sakti as effect (karya): universe of mind and matter |
Nada and Bindu are "two states of her creation" (srstyupayogyavastharupau), mere labels for states of Sakti.
The Tantric account has two parts:
- An apparent development within the causal body of Sakti: a resolution of like to like.
- A real development (parinama) of effects from that causal body.
The whole is described as gradual, but process exists only in time, which first appears with the Sun and Moon. Bhaskararaya (on Lalita-sahasranama, verse 117) cites Goraksanatha's Maharthamanjari: "In a moment the world is created and in a moment it is destroyed."
Siva-tattva and Sakti's Negation
Both exist even in dissolution; the first emanation proper is Sadakhya (Nada in the verse).
- Tattva-sandoha 1: "That, beyond which there is none other, moved of His own will to create the whole world. The first movement (spanda prathama) is called Siva-tattva by those who know."
- The Vimarsini on the Pratyabhijna: the "I-experience not looking towards another".
- Sakti's function is negation of all objectivity, producing Prakasa-matra, the sunyatisunya. She then evolves from herself the objective world as content of Siva-consciousness.
- Tattva-sandoha 2: she is pure Will ever associated with Siva, the seed of the whole universe of moving and unmoving things then absorbed in herself.
The Heart of the Lord
She is called Womb (yoni), Seed-state (bijavastha), and in the Parapravesika "Heart of the Supreme Lord".
- The Yoginihrdaya Tantra: she is Yogini because connected with all things as cause and effect; "Yogini svavid", knower of herself. She is the Heart, for from the heart all issues; the pulses of the universe are herself as Sakti.
- The same Tantra: "What man knows the heart of a woman? Only Siva knows the heart of Yogini."
- Pratyabhijna-hrdayam, sutra 4 (commentary): Paramasiva, wishing to manifest the universe one with himself, first shines as the one Cit, the Very Void detached from Maya and undifferentiated light; then appears as endless experiencers, Tattvas, worlds and beings, a blossoming of consciousness and bliss.
Polarisation
From the static transcendental aspect (Parasiva, Parasakti) consciousness endures changelessly. From the kinetic creative aspect (Siva-Sakti) there is polarisation: Siva and Sakti as the "I" and "This" poles. The unitary experience is replaced by knower, knowing and known (matr, mana, meya). Consciousness then identifies with mind as subject and matter as object.
The grain of gram (canaka). Under the husk of a chickpea lie two halves so closely joined they look like one. Tear the husk and they fall apart. The halves are Siva and Sakti; the husk is Maya. Woodroffe flags the limit: in the gram there are really two seeds, while Siva-Sakti are an indistinguishable unity.
The commentator on the Sat-cakra-nirupana (verse 49) cites: "In Satyaloka is the formless lustrous One, like a grain of gram without hands or feet, surrounded by Maya; She is Sun, Moon and Fire. Casting off the covering she divides in two and turns to creation; then by differentiation of Siva and Sakti arises creative ideation (srsti-kalpana)." "Differentiation" means polarisation into Prakasa and Vimarsa: the Self sees another.
Ham, Sah and Hamsah
| Source | Division of the Parabindu |
|---|---|
| Prapancasara as cited by that commentator | Into two: right = Bindu, male, Purusa, "Ham"; left = Visarga, female, Prakrti, "Sah". Hamsah is their union, and the universe is Hamsah |
| Manuscripts behind Woodroffe's own edition | Parabindu divided by Kala becomes threefold: Bindu, Nada, Bija |
"The difference is of no moment": Bindu (karya) is Siva, Bija is Sakti, Nada is their mutual relation (mithah-samavaya), which Hamsah also expresses.
The Kulacudamani Nigama (I.16 to 24): the Devi says "I, though in the form of Prakrti, lie hidden in Being-Consciousness-Bliss"; then, when karma ripens, she "becomes desirous of creation and covers Herself with Her own Maya".
Static and Dynamic
All action implies duality; duality is manifestation; manifestation is appearance to consciousness. As there is one Self, the Self appears to itself: consciousness is polarised into the continuity of "I" and its ever changing "This".
As cosmic energy is potential or kinetic, so Sakti is static and dynamic, and in every sphere of activity there must be a static background. One spiritual reality cannot actually be divided, but experience can be polarised. How? Maya, the power by which what is impossible to us becomes possible.
Maya is Sakti, but Sakti is not only Maya. In the 36 Tattvas Maya is a particular, comparatively gross form that appears after Sadvidya, defined as bhedabuddhi. This differs from Sankara's Mayavada, a point "of primary importance from the point of view of Sadhana".
All accounts end in the inconceivable Sakti (acintya), the One Primordial Sakti (Adya-Sakti) appearing as many. So the Sakta sadhaka says "Aham Devi na canyo'smi" ("I am the Devi and none other") and thinks "Sa'ham", "She am I".
The Sakta reversal of "So'ham". Vedanta's "He am I" becomes "She am I". The change is more than gender. If the ultimate is power as well as awareness, then identification with it is identification with dynamism: the practitioner claims the creative force, not only the still witness.
Key terms: Sarada-Tilaka, Padarthadarsa, gurupankti, Sakala, Saguna-Brahman, ucchunavastha, adhyasa, Cidrupini, karya, Kamakala, Sabda-brahman, Yogini, matr-mana-meya, canaka, Hamsah, mithah-samavaya, bhedabuddhi, Adya-Sakti, Sa'ham.
Reflect: Woodroffe says every activity needs a static background. In your own attention, what stays still while thoughts move?
Nada: The First Produced Movement
Chapter XII treats Nada, the union and mutual relation of Siva and Sakti that is the first movement toward manifestation. It opens with a sharp defence against Western critics of Tantric erotic symbolism, places Nada in the five stages of mantra's emanation, decodes the bija Hrim, gives the utterance-time scale of the subtle Saktis, and ends with an important defence of the Mantra-Sastra's complexity, grounded in an analogy of cosmic waking from sleep.
Union as Nada
Sakti-tattva is the negative aspect of Siva-tattva; the two are indissolubly one. Together they are the ultimate potency of creation. When they begin to act, the first movement occurs. The Sakta Tantra says: "Siva-Sakti-samayogat jayate srsti-kalpana", "from the union of Siva and Sakti arises creative ideation".
This union and mutual relation is called Nada. As a relation is not a substance apart from its terms, Nada is really Siva-Sakti, passing from mere potency into the first ideating movement.
Answering the Critics
Woodroffe quotes two hostile readings:
- A missionary author: the whole system rests on "the conception of the sexual relationship as the ultimate explanation of the universe".
- An American reviewer of one of his books: "a doctrine for suffragette monists", "religious feminism run mad".
His replies:
- Sexual relationship exists on the gross plane of matter. It cannot be the ultimate explanation of That which manifested it and every other relation.
- Feminism is irrelevant. The doctrine has no more to do with it "than with old age pensions". It concerns not biology or the rights of women but ultimate dual principles, aspects of one active consciousness, which project man, woman and every other duality.
- Siva and Sakti are one and neither is higher.
- Western writers are hardly to blame when "a distinguished Indian Sanskritist" says Sakta doctrine holds "God is a woman". Sakti is called female, Mother, because that is the aspect of the Supreme as Genetrix and Nourisher. God is neither male nor female. The Yamala: she is "neither female, nor male, nor neuter, nor inert".
- These are symbols borrowed from the only world we ordinarily know.
- If this is "pseudo-philosophy", the same must be said of Advaita Vedanta: Sakta Tantra is the sadhana-sastra of Advaitavada, teaching Vedanta in its own ritual symbolism.
The symbol stated
- Nada is the maithuna of Siva and Sakti.
- When Mahakala was in viparita maithuna with Mahakali, Bindu issued. The reversed posture symbolises that Siva is inactive (niskriya) and Sakti active (sakriya).
- Others substitute the logical term mithah-samavaya ("mutual inherence") for maithuna. Nada is Kriya-sakti.
Why there must be two, and then three. "Unity is necessarily actionless." Before sound there must be two; two involves a third, the relation of both. This Trinity of Power is reflected in the Maya world as Brahma, Visnu, Rudra. From Nada comes Mahabindu, which differentiates into the Tribindu: Kamakala, the root (mula) of all mantras.
Sakala and Niskala Again
In Pralaya, Siva and Sakti exist as "two in one": Siva as Cit, Sakti as Cidrupini, inseparable (avinabhava-sambandha), undivided supreme Cit-Sakti (akhanda-paracicchakti).
| Niskala Siva | Sakala Siva | |
|---|---|---|
| Also called | Nirguna Siva | Brahman with Kala: Samkhya's Mulaprakrti, Vedanta's Avidya, the Agamas' Sakti |
| His Sakti | Cidrupini and Visvottirna, beyond the universe | Visvatmika, appearing as the universe |
| State | Para-Sakti one with Caitanya at rest | Sakti's "swollen" readiness (ucchunavastha), ripening into Nada and Bindu |
In Nada-Sakti Kriya predominates: mere readiness becomes action.
Woodroffe notes the language problem: "stages" and "development" are borrowed from the manifest world, which appears only after Purusa-Prakrti and the impure Tattvas from Buddhi to Prthivi. But a sadhana-sastra "could not usefully use terms and symbols other than those borrowed from the world of the sadhaka".
The Prayogasara: Sakti turned towards Liberation (niramaya-padonmukhi) wakes as Nada, turned to Siva (sivonmukhi), and is then called male (pumrupa), for she becomes "Ham" in Hamsah.
Nada in Other Writers
According to Raghava-Bhatta, some writers omit Nada; the Sarada mentions it to show the sevenfold character of Tara (Om). The Nada state is meant by those who speak of Kala:
- "in the Kala-tattva which is Sound" (ravatmani kala-tattve);
- the Hymn to Bhuvanesi: "Obeisance to Thee who art called Tattva in the character of sound."
Nada corresponds to Sadakhya-tattva, and Bindu to Isvara-tattva; each is the transcendent aspect of Sabda in its Tattva. As the "I" separates from the "This", what was diffuse consciousness in Sadakhya is objectified as all-embracing akasa, whose quality is gross sound.
Not gross sound
"Nada" means "sound" and "mantra" is manifested Sabda, but neither means sound heard by the ear. Gross sound is the quality of karyakasa, ether, in the impure creation. Woodroffe prefers Sabda, which with Artha is manifested in the Varnamala, "Garland of Letters".
- Paranada and Paravak are Parasakti.
- Nada is the unmanifest seed (nadamatra) of what becomes Sabda, devoid of letters and particulars (varnadi-visesa-rahita).
- It develops into Bindu, which as it differentiates is the Sabda-brahman, source of Sabda and Artha and of the Tattvas and their Lords (Tattvesa).
What is Sabda-brahman? Disputed, as Raghava shows. His own answer: "the Caitanya in all beings", existing in every breathing creature as Kundalini. So Nada too is Caitanya and Sakti.
The Five Stages of Mantra
| Stage | Name | Character |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Nada | First emanative stage |
| 2 | Bindu | Sabda-brahman |
| 3 | Tribindu | Bindu, Nada, Bija, or Kamakala |
| 4 | Matrkas | Subtle Sabda: subtle state of the letters |
| 5 | Gross letters | Sthula-sabda: letters (varna), syllables (pada), sentences (vakya) |
The Prayogasara: "O Devi, that Antaratma in the form of Nada itself makes sound (nadate svayam)... urged on by Vayu (prana in Jivas) it assumes the form of letters."
The sub-stages of Nada
- Mahanada or Nadanta: the first movement forth of the Sabda-brahman.
- Nada: Sakti fills the whole universe with Nadanta; the completed movement.
- Nirodhini: universal operation done, Nada works in a particular way and becomes Bindu, Sakti as Creative Lord (Isvara-tattva).
Read as the end of the series, Nadanta is the dissolution of Nada (nadasya antah layah).
Unmani at the summit
Above Bindu the Saktis grow subtler until Niskala Unmani, which the Yoginihrdaya calls "uncreate motionless speech". Its twin aspects are Samvit as the Void and Samvit as subtle tendency to manifest. Unmani is beyond causal Sakti: no experience (bhana), no Kala, no Devata, no Tattva. It is svanirvana param padam, the supreme state of one's own extinction, nirvikalpa-niranjana Siva-Sakti, called Guruvaktra, the guru's mouth.
Decoding Hrim
Nada and Bindu occur in all bija-mantras, usually written as the candrabindu, with Bindu above and Nada (crescent) below. Old pictures of Omkara show the real position: Nada above Bindu as an inverted crescent.
The great bija Hrim = Ha + Ra + I + M:
| Letter | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Ha | Akasa |
| Ra | Agni |
| I | Ardhanarisvara, combined Siva-Sakti |
| M | Nadabindu |
The five Bhutas fall into two groups:
- Amurta (formless): Akasa and Vayu; until Agni appears as rupa there is no colour or form.
- Murta (with form): headed by Agni.
So Akasa with Agni = form; Ra is the first manifestation of rupa; that form is held in Ardhanarisvara. The first three letters are the form aspect (akara). The mahatmya, Nadabindu, is formless and causal, holding the others within it (antargata).
Meaning: Cidakasa associated with rupa: the sound-statement of the birth of Form as such, from which all particular forms derive. Hrim as pronounced is the gross body, as sound, of the cosmic mind's ideation of Form.
Utterance-Time
Subtlety of the Saktis is measured by uccarana-kala, "utterance time", taking Bindu as the unit:
| Sakti | Utterance time |
|---|---|
| Unmani | None: formless and unutterable (nirakara, niruccara), beyond mind, speech and universe (visvottirna) |
| Samani | 1/256 (named from its association with mind, manah-sahita; Unmani lacks it) |
| Vyapika | 1/128 |
| (intermediate Saktis) | "and so on" (the text does not list them here) |
| Nadanta | 1/32 |
| Nada | 1/16 |
| Ardhacandra | 1/2 |
| Bindu | 1 |
A gap in the printed scale. Halving from 1/128 should reach 1/64 before Nadanta's 1/32, and between Nada (1/16) and Ardhacandra (1/2) there should be steps at 1/8 and 1/4. The text says only "and so on". Other works (Woodroffe's own Serpent Power among them) supply names such as Sakti, Anji, Nirodhini; readers should not assume the series is complete as given here.
A Defence of Complexity
The objection: the Mantra-Sastra is needlessly complex. Woodroffe answers in stages.
"He saw"
Simple minds may settle for "God created the world". The Veda gives the answer in two words: "He saw" (sa aiksata). But who saw, what, and how? If there is only One, how was there anything to see? What is seeing (iksana)?
- "He" is consciousness, in itself actionless. It becomes active through its two aspects: Niskala-Siva (actionless) and Sakala-Siva (activity, embodying all samskaras), called Sakti.
- How one thing has two contradictory aspects can be answered only by svabhava, its own nature. Analogy: dual and multiple personality in psychology.
- Ultimate reality is alogical and inexplicable (anirvacaniya). Its oneness is proved by Veda and the experience of yoga (svanubhava).
- Seeing is not observing something already outside. It is the rising into consciousness of the memory of past universes, held as samskaras. For that, consciousness must obscure its own nature and experience itself as an "I" observing a "This" projected by Maya. Why this is possible: inscrutable Sakti (acintya-sakti).
The waking analogy
Creation as waking up. A man rising from deep sleep first has bare awareness, gradually filled with the thought of self and then of particular things, until he recognises again the world that had vanished in dreamless sleep. So cosmic consciousness passes gradually from susupti (the Great Dissolution) to jagrat (consciousness of the gross universe). The Tattvas are the stages of this re-awakening.
- Stage 1, up to and including Isvara-tattva (so including Nada): the "This" is part of the self, held as a vague generality; an awareness of self-scission and nothing more.
- Stage 2, through Maya: the object is externalised, and there are many objects, each with its differences.
The twist: this is waking to the world but falling asleep to true consciousness. So in Kundalini-yoga: when Kundalini sleeps in the Muladhara, man is awake to the world; when she wakes, the world vanishes and consciousness regains its own state.
How is this known
"Were we there?" As individuals, no; but the Jiva was there as the plant is in the seed, and those who fall back into the seed have experience of it. Two grounds:
- Correspondence between all planes: "what is without is so because it is within". So we may study daily psychology to learn the cosmic process. Normal experience is limited but is transcended in yoga, when consciousness becomes niralamba-puri, detached from objects.
- The Sastras record supersensible truth (atindriya-tattva); the Tattvas are not speculative guesses.
Such truth must be told in terms of present experience: potency ripening into actuality, potential becoming kinetic. That does not make them wholly untrue. "One of the commonest errors is to raise false partitions between things." The experience is real because it is Siva's; real on its plane; yet the terms lose full validity as consciousness rises, and other forms must take their place until the Formless is reached. The Tattvas chart the return to svarupa-visranti, rest in the Self, and peace. The Buddhist Mantrayana defines yoga (Tibetan rnal-'byor) as "finding rest or peace".
Mantra-yoga and jnana-yoga
- These states are realised in jnana-yoga, when the mind is wholly withdrawn and faces the power behind it.
- Mantra-yoga is the mind thinking those states. Kundalini is both Jyotirmayi (subtle form, light) and Mantramayi (gross form, mantra). We begin with the latter.
- The Mantra-Sastra traces how cosmic consciousness, as Paravak (without idea or language), becomes Genetrix of subtle and gross Sabda (Matrkas and Varnas), the "hidden sound" (avyakta-rava), the Logos, uttering the Garland of Letters.
Citta-suddhi
Mantra practice gives more than intellectual understanding of Vedanta: it produces pure bhava ripening into mahabhava through purification of mind (citta-suddhi). What Westerners and "sometimes the English-educated Indian" do not see: reading Vedantic texts without citta-suddhi brings neither true understanding nor fruit.
Anecdote: a man asked a friend of Woodroffe's, "in a somewhat testy manner", for "a plain exposition of the Vedanta in five minutes". It takes years to master any science or profession; how can what claims to explain everything be mastered in a talk? And study must be accompanied by sadhana. The Tantras supply it for the Hindu, "though it is open to him or any other to devise a better if he can". "Forms ever change with the ages, while the Truth which they express, remains."
Fair reply, uneven tone. Woodroffe's point against reading the Siva-Sakti symbolism as literal sexuality is sound, and Sakta scholars today make the same distinction. But the chapter also shows the limits of his apologetics: practices of literal maithuna did and do exist in some Kaula lineages (Woodroffe discusses them elsewhere), so the missionary was not inventing the sexual element; he misread its rank. Woodroffe's rebuke of "English-educated" Indians also recurs through the book and is better read as cultural polemic than as argument.
Key terms: Nada, Siva-Sakti-samayoga, maithuna, viparita, mithah-samavaya, Tribindu, Kamakala, Visvottirna, Visvatmika, Sivonmukhi, Sabda-brahman, Nadanta, Nirodhini, Unmani, Samani, candrabindu, Hrim, amurta, murta, uccarana-kala, sa aiksata, anirvacaniya, citta-suddhi, Jyotirmayi, Mantramayi.
Reflect: Notice the next time you wake from deep sleep. Is there a moment of bare awareness before "I" and "my room" arrive?
Bindu: Sakti Ready to Create
Chapter XIII completes the causal triad. Bindu is Sakti "massive" (ghanibhuta), fully ready to create: the Point into which the universe collapses at dissolution and from which it springs. Bindu then divides into three (Tribindu), which completes the sevenfold causal sound-forms of Om and opens the way to Kamakala, the Tattvas, and the Sabda-brahman.
What Bindu Means
Literally "drop" or "point", like the anusvara dot. In the Mantra-Sastra it is technical. Woodroffe scorns a "distinguished Indian Sanskritist" who rendered it merely "drop", with "red drops" mixing with "white drops": a description that recalls "the pharmacy or sweet shop than the Sastra". Such readers, he says, have had their souls "captured in the net of an English education"; those who think another's thought must take care "that their own Indian self is not... lost".
The Point in world religion
Any Westerner with some history of religion would see what "Point" means:
| Source | Statement |
|---|---|
| Le Mystere de la Croix (18th century, by one of the "French Protestants of the Desert") | "Before all things there was a Point": not the atom or mathematical point, but the diffusive; in the One the Many lay implicit; light and darkness, beginning and end, everything and nothing, being and non-being. "The All is engendered from the central indivisible point of the double triangle", the Tantric Satkona-yantra |
| Clement of Alexandria, Stromata V.2 | Abstract from a body its depth, breadth and length: the point left is a unit having position; abstract position too and there is the notion of unity |
| Shelley | "plunge into eternity where recorded time seems but a point" |
At Mahapralaya the extended universe collapses into a Point: like a mathematical point in having no magnitude, unlike it in having no position, for there is no space. This is a symbol borrowed from present experience and cannot adequately represent what lies beyond it.
The point of consciousness
Interpreted in terms of consciousness, Bindu is Isvara-tattva: consciousness completely identifies with the unmanifest "This", subjectifies it, and becomes with it a point. Example again: the mind is completely subjectified and exists for each of us as a point ("spoken of by some as being of atomic dimension"), while the body appears extended. Isvara does not see the universe as many outside objects; if he did he would be Jiva. He sees it as one whole which is himself.
Sadakhya to Isvara to Suddhavidya
- In Sadakhya, the "This" is seen, per the Vimarsini on Isvara-pratyabhijna III.1.2, "in a hazy fashion, like a picture just forming itself, seen by the mind only and not outside by the senses". Emphasis on "I".
- In Isvara-tattva all haziness gives way to clarity; emphasis on "This".
- After equal emphasis, the two are wholly separated by Maya after Suddhavidya. So when the yogi passes beyond the Maya world, his first higher experience is in Suddhavidya.
Ghanibhuta: Thickened Power
Raghava-Bhatta: Nada and Bindu are two states of Sakti proper to creation (upayogyavastha), prone and ready (ucchunavastha). Bindu is the massive state (ghanavastha). The Prapancasara: Sakti, "seized with desire to create" (vicikirsu), becomes ghanibhuta, as milk thickens into cream or curd.
So Sakti passes from subtlety through Sakti-tattva and Nada in its three stages to a relatively massive power fully equipped to pass from potency to manifestation: Mahabindu or Parabindu, so called to distinguish it from the Bindus into which it later divides.
Testimony from the Serpent Power commentary
Kalicarana's commentary on the Sat-cakra-nirupana:
| Verse | Statement |
|---|---|
| v.4 (citing Todala Tantra VI) | Supreme Light is formless, but Bindu implies both the Void (sunya) and Guna: Void as Supreme Brahman; Guna as its creative aspect, which becomes Purusa and Prakrti |
| v.49 | This Bindu is the Lord (Isvara), called by some Pauranikas Mahavisnu and by others Brahmapurusa |
| v.37 | Parabindu is the state of "Ma" before manifestation: Siva-Sakti enveloped by Maya |
| v.41 | This Bindu is worshipped in secret by all Devas |
| v.44 | It is the ultimate object of adoration by all classes of worshippers: Siva, Mahavisnu, or the Devi of those "filled with a passion for Her Lotus Feet" |
On "Ma": M is male, and the nasal Bindu, sounded as M, is unmanifest Siva-Sakti, revealed on its later division into three Saktis.
Bindu as cause is cidghana, massive consciousness and power, in which all worlds and beings to be created lie potentially in a mass, indistinguishable. This is Paramasiva, holding all Devatas. Its phases appear in the candrabindu (Nada-Bindu), Sakti and Santa of Om and other bijas.
In the body: this Bindu is in Satyaloka, which in man is the pericarp of the thousand-petalled lotus (Sahasrara), the highest cerebral centre. It is the grain of gram again: under the husk (Maya), Siva and Sakti in undivided union.
"Siva and Sakti are of course not actually divided, for they are not like a chapatti." Woodroffe says such obvious remarks would be needless but for experience of "absurd misunderstandings": "God is a woman", "Feminism" akin to Lester Ward's primacy of the female sex, "the sexual relationship as the ultimate explanation". What is meant: in Pralaya Siva-Sakti were one; in creation, remaining what they were, they project the universe which is Sakti, and then Paramatma and Jivatma seem different to the latter.
One object of worship under many names. By making Parabindu the ultimate object of every sect's worship, the Sastra reduces sectarianism "to a matter of words" and "its real common denominator". Woodroffe cites the Gita: whomever men worship, the worship comes at last to Him.
Not Evolution in Time
Bindu is the cause of the universe of name and form (namarupa): concepts and concepts objectified, Sabda and its Artha. The states before Bindu are its unfolding by an avikrta-parinama, "unchanged transformation": aspects of one pure Sakti. This is not evolution in time. Plotinus: the universe "was formed according to intellect, and intellect not preceding in time but prior", as cause precedes effect. Even this is imperfect, since cause and effect suggest time to our minds.
Parabindu heads every line of creation: the Tattvas from Buddhi to Prthivi, their Lords, and the Sabda or mantra creations, all belonging to vikara-srsti or parinama-srsti.
| In the Isvara body | After Prakrti appears |
|---|---|
| Sakti assumes aspects with a view to create, without manifestation | Real evolution (parinama): consciousness split into subject and object in time and space |
The Threefold Division
Sarada-Tilaka I.8 to 9: "That which is Supreme Sakti again divides itself into three: Bindu, Nada, Bija. Bindu is of the nature of Siva, Bija of Sakti, and Nada is the mutual relation between the two, say those learned in the Agamas."
- One manuscript reads "Bindur nadatmako"; the Sat-cakra commentary (v.40) explains it as sivatmaka.
- These are Tribindu. Nada is again the trait d'union, the "Yoga" of the other two (Prayogasara).
- They are Siva, Siva-Sakti, Sakti: not that Siva and Sakti are ever dissociated, but each aspect is Siva-pradhana or Sakti-pradhana, predominantly one.
- Bhaskararaya (Lalita-sahasranama, v.132): "From the causal (karana) Bindu proceed the effect (karya) Bindu, then Nada, then Bija: known as supreme, subtle and gross."
- One text of the Prapancasara: Parabindu divides into right = Bindu, male, Purusa, Ham and left = Visarga, female, Prakrti, Sah; the universe is Hamsah. Woodroffe's manuscripts: Bindu divided by Kala becomes threefold. "Substantially the matter seems one of nomenclature": the two Bindus of Visarga become three with the Siva-Bindu; and Hamsah implies the relation called Nada.
Three mantras from three vowels
It is said:
- From the first vowel issued Hrim: general form.
- From the second, Hamsah: a grosser form of Akasa and Agni held within the "skin" (carma) of Ardhanarisvara.
- From the third, "Hrim, Srim, Klim": beginning with the first and last letters, it includes all 24 Tattvas and all fifty letters, into which general Form particularises.
Excitant and excited
On the bursting of the seed (Parabindu): Siva or Bindu, Sakti or Bija, and Nada, which as result is their combination and as cause their inter-relation, one acting as excitant (ksobhaka) and the other excited (ksobhya). The Sat-cakra commentary (v.40) calls Nada the union of Siva and Sakti, of the nature of Kriya-sakti, and made of Kundalini (kundalinimaya).
Bindus and Gunas
The gunas belong to gross Prakrti but exist subtly in the higher Saktis:
| Aspect | Guna (seen from below) | Reason |
|---|---|---|
| Sakti | Sattvik | First potentially kinetic aspect; the Cit aspect |
| Nada | Rajasik | Sakti grows more kinetic, gathering its powers |
| Bindu | foreshadows Tamas | Ghanibhuta, massive; the world is "largely the product of Tamas" |
Gunas never exist separately; where there is Sattva there is also Rajas and Tamas. So with Iccha, Jnana, Kriya, and so with Sakti, Nada, Bindu: each contains the others.
The Sevenfold Causal Forms of Om
Paramesvara assumes, for the Jiva, these forms, which are the seven causal sound-forms of the Pranava:
- Sakala Paramesvara (Saccidananda, his svarupa unaffected by Avidya)
- Sakti (Sakti-tattva)
- Nada (Sadakhya-tattva)
- Parabindu (Isvara-tattva)
- Bindu (karya)
- Nada
- Bija
Woodroffe's own open question. He admits: "It is not clear to me where (if at all) the Suddhavidya-tattva comes in according to this scheme, unless it be involved in Nada the mithah-samavaya." He suggests the Purusa-Prakrti Tattvas take birth on the division of Parabindu into Ham and Sah, Hamsah being the Purusa-Prakrti mantra. The fit between the 36-Tattva scheme and the Sarada's mantra sequence is therefore his reconstruction, honestly flagged as uncertain.
Why Creation Starts
The first impulse comes from the ripening of the adrsta (unseen karmic residue) of Jivas. Then Sakala Paramesvara puts forth his Sakti to produce a universe where karma's fruits may be suffered and enjoyed. The seven stages make up the first stage of iksana ("seeing"), in which Sabda is in its supreme form (para-sabda-srsti). She who is eternal, subtly existing as Cidrupini in Mahapralaya, becomes eager (utsuka) for the life of form and enjoyment, and reveals herself on the disturbance of the equilibrium of the gunas.
Paramesvara is Saguna Siva, the Isvara of Vedanta with Maya as upadhi (Sarva-vedanta-siddhanta-sara-samgraha 312, 313, 315). The Pancadasi (3.38): a Sakti of Siva controls all things; when Isvara creates, Isvara-sakti or Maya, aggregate of all Saktis and yet beyond them, issues, and from it the particular Saktis.
Accounts differ in symbols and sometimes in doctrine, but not here: this is a sadhana presentation of Advaitavada. The Sakta Tantra teaches unity of Paramatma and Jiva, though its treatment of Sakti, Maya and cidabhasa differs from Sankara's (see Chapter XIV and his Shakti and Shakta).
Tribindu as Kamakala
The three Bindus are the great Triangle of World-Desire, the Kamakala (Chapter XVII). They correspond to:
| Set | Members |
|---|---|
| Lights | Sun, Moon, Fire |
| Saktis | Iccha, Jnana, Kriya |
| Gunas | Sattva, Rajas, Tamas |
| Devis | Raudri, Jyestha, Vama |
| Trimurti | Rudra, Brahma, Visnu |
| Colours | White (sita), Red (sona), Mixed (misra) |
| Brahman aspects | Prakasa, Vimarsa, Prakasa-Vimarsa |
(Woodroffe declines here to settle the order of correspondence.) In ritual they are the Three Feet (carana-tritaya). The Gurupaduka-mantra, given in the final Sadamnaya-diksa, stands for a state beyond the white, red and mixed Feet. So Sruti speaks of four Brahmapadas: three here and one supreme beyond.
The One is presented as two for creation, since unity is actionless, and their relation makes a third. This does not touch Brahman's unity. Rudrayamala II.22: "The three Devas Brahma, Visnu, Mahesvara are but one, formed out of My body; they create, preserve and destroy."
From Bindu to Sabda-brahman
From the differentiating Bindu come the Tattvas from Buddhi to Prthivi and the six Lords of the Tattvas (with Parasiva the seventh), the presiding Devatas of mind and the five forms of matter. Here, on the diremption of consciousness, mind and matter appear.
Sarada-Tilaka I.11: "From the dividing Parabindu arose the unmanifested sound (avyaktatma rava); those learned in the Agamas call it Sabda-brahman." The Pranatosini notes that "Parabindu" means the first Bindu, a state of Sakti.
Sabda-brahman = Brahman as immediate undifferentiated cause of manifested Sabda (language in prose or verse) and Artha (subtle or gross objects that thought and language denote): the causal state of mantra.
The causal chain to remember.
- Sakti (readiness) →
- Nada (union, first movement) →
- Parabindu (massive readiness, Isvara) →
- Tribindu: Bindu (Siva), Nada (relation), Bija (Sakti) = Kamakala →
- Sabda-brahman, unmanifest sound →
- Sabda and Artha: letters and the things they denote.
Key terms: Bindu, anusvara, Parabindu, Mahabindu, ghanibhuta, cidghana, avikrta-parinama, Tribindu, karana and karya Bindu, ksobhaka, ksobhya, kundalinimaya, adrsta, iksana, para-sabda-srsti, carana-tritaya, Gurupaduka, Brahmapada, avyakta rava, Sabda-brahman.
Reflect: Woodroffe says every sect worships the same Point under different names. Is that a uniting insight or a quiet absorption of other traditions into one?
Maya-Tattva
Chapter XIV is Woodroffe's clearest statement of how Sakta Advaita differs from Samkhya and from Sankara. All three agree that the world arises by a veiling of consciousness. They differ on who veils. In Sakta doctrine it is consciousness itself, which never ceases to be consciousness, so nothing in the universe is wholly unconscious. The chapter then sketches a life-force science of matter and ends by defining mantra as "the thought that saves".
What Matter Is
The senses tell us only matter's effects, felt in five ways:
| Sensation | Sanskrit |
|---|---|
| Hearing | Sabda |
| Feel, including the thermal quality of things | Sparsa |
| Colour and form | Rupa |
| Taste | Rasa |
| Smell | Gandha |
The causal ladder, from gross upward:
- Five Bhutas, the causes of these sensations,
- from the Tanmatras, general elements of sense particulars;
- with the Indriyas (mental faculties working through organs) and Manas (attention, selection and synthesis of the discrete manifold),
- from Ahamkara and Buddhi, the personal forms of the Antahkarana,
- from Prakrti-tattva,
- produced through Maya-Sakti from the pure Tattvas, Suddhavidya up to Siva-Sakti, whose own form is Saccidananda.
Matter is therefore an aspect of Spirit; the two are ultimately one. They seem two because fundamental Feeling (Cit) can, as Sakti, experience itself as object.
Spirit-Matter and Matter-Spirit
Woodroffe enlists Ernst Haeckel: spirit and matter are two aspects of one substance, combined in every atom, which holds elements of life and of further development in consciousness and will.
- Cit-Sakti is the spiritual aspect, Maya-Sakti the material. In the universe the first is spirit-matter, the second matter-spirit.
- They are inseparable (avinabhava-sambandha), as, in a Saiva simile, the winds of heaven from the ether they blow in.
- Manifest Sakti is the universe; unmanifest Sakti is feeling-consciousness (cidrupa).
- There is nothing absolutely lifeless or unconscious, because Sakti is Cidrupini, Anandamayi, beyond all worlds (visvottirna), appearing as apparently unconscious or part-conscious forms within them (visvatmaka).
- The one consciousness, changeless, is Siva; as source of and as all moving things, Sakti.
The Spanda-karika: "By veiling its own true form its Saktis ever arise."
Three Schools, Three Veilers
| School | What veils consciousness |
|---|---|
| Samkhya | A second independent principle, unconscious Prakrti, real despite its changes |
| Sankara's Mayavada | Maya, the non-Brahman unexplainable mystery |
| Sakta Advaitavada | Consciousness itself, which veils itself without ceasing to be consciousness |
The Mahanirvana Tantra names the text "All this verily is Brahman" (sarvam khalv idam brahma) as the basis of Kulacara. But Brahman is consciousness, and there is an apparent element of unconsciousness in things. How is it accounted for?
Sankara's Maya
- An unexplainable (anirvacaniya) wonder, neither real (sat), nor unreal (asat), nor both (sadasat).
- Not Brahman, and not a second reality, yet inseparably sheltering in Brahman (maya brahmasrita) in its Isvara aspect, owing its appearance of reality to Brahman.
- An "eternal falsity" (mithyabhuta sanatani).
- As Purusa's reflection on Prakrti makes Prakrti seem conscious, so Brahman's reflection (cidabhasa) on unconscious Maya is Isvara, and on unconscious Avidya is Jiva.
- To prove Jiva = Isvara, Sankara must eliminate Avidya from the one and Maya from the other, both being ultimately nothing; Brahman is left as common denominator.
Woodroffe: positing Maya at all gives Sankara's doctrine "a tinge of dualism", from which the Sakta doctrine, "which has yet a weakness of its own", is free.
The Sakta view
- No need of cidabhasa. Maya is a Sakti of Brahman, and Sakti is not different from its possessor (Saktiman); in its own form it is consciousness.
- Consciousness veils itself; not unconscious Maya veiling consciousness.
- The Sakta needs to eliminate nothing. Man's spirit (Atma) is Siva; his mind and body are Sakti; Siva and Sakti are one. The Jivatma is Siva-Sakti in world aspect; the Paramatma is Siva-Sakti with Sakti uncreating, as Cidrupini.
- Man is "not the Spirit covered by a non-Brahman falsity but Spirit covering itself with its own Power."
Satyananda, a Kaula teacher, on Isa Upanisad mantra 4 (commentary published by Woodroffe): the changeless Brahman appears in creation as Maya which is Brahmamayi and Cidrupini, holding unbeginning karmic samskaras as the three gunas. So she is Gunamayi though Cinmayi; and since there is no second principle, these gunas are Cit-Sakti. The Yoginihrdaya names the Devi Prakasa-vimarsa-samarasya-rupini, the harmony of light and its self-awareness. The Advaitabhava Upanisad exclaims "Aham stri", "I am woman".
Same destination, reversed route.
- Sankara: there is unconsciousness that appears conscious through cidabhasa.
- Sakta: there is consciousness that appears to have an element of unconsciousness, through its own veiling play as Maya-Sakti.
Both end in "All is Consciousness"; "the method... and the presentment of the matter is reversed". For worship this matters: those who worship the Mother worship nothing unconscious, but a Supreme Consciousness which is Love, whose body is every form of consciousness-unconsciousness.
Life in All Matter
Woodroffe claims the Sakta view fits "scientific research" showing that even "brute matter" shows the elements of sentiency. Sentiency is "an integrant constituent of all existence":
| Plane | Its forms |
|---|---|
| Inorganic | relation to environment, response to stimuli, atomic memory |
| Organic | consciousness, perception, thought, reason, volition, individual memory |
Throughout, "it is the one Mother who works", veiling her bliss in inorganic matter and unveiling it by stages in living forms. To reach this, assume as the Saiva-Sakta schools do that Kriya and its preliminary Iccha are functions of consciousness. Abhinavagupta: action is the manifestation of all objects, objects marked by consciousness-unconsciousness are "a shining forth (abhasa)"; the universe is a "going forth" (prasara) of Siva.
The life-force argument in steps
- Ultimate reality is Saccidananda; as source of appearances, Sakti.
- In its Sat aspect, Sakti is the eternal source of cosmic prana and individual pranas.
- Manifest Sakti is life-energy, "the one fixed unalterable potential", of which all other energies are effects.
- Life has no absolute end, only certain structures end; so it has no absolute beginning. The search for "the origin of life" is futile, for it issues from Brahman, Infinite Life.
- "Every atom of dust is quivering with it."
- Life cannot be explained on exclusively mechanical principles; mechanical energy is the effect, not the cause, of life-energy.
- Evolution's purpose: take up the living potential from a lower grade, develop it, and hand it to a higher.
- Sakti as Iccha is the source of will-power and, in matter, of mechanical energy; as Jnana, of mentality and feeling; as Kriya, of all activity.
In gross matter (bhuta) the light of consciousness is "turned down to its utmost" but never extinguished. It shows faintly in experiment on matter, more in micro-organisms, plainly in plants and animals.
Two starting points. Sakta doctrine starts with the Full (purna) and treats creation as cutting it down. Science may start with inorganic matter and speak, with G. Dubern (in his essays on the living molecule), of a radical life-potential in all matter. From the Sastra's side the process is veiling down to Prthivi, then unveiling up to man, who in samadhi realises his own form as unveiled consciousness.
Haeckel and the life-force doctrine are weak allies. Haeckel's monism was materialist in spirit and was used to support social Darwinism; enlisting him for Sakta spiritual monism borrows a name, not an argument. The life-force doctrine (a special force irreducible to physics and chemistry) has since been abandoned in biology, and "atomic memory" in rocks is not a scientific finding. The philosophical thesis that experience is basic has modern defenders under the name panpsychism, but they argue from the problem of consciousness, not from the 1920 science cited here.
The Stages of Veiling
- In Siva-Sakti-tattva: complete negation of the "This".
- In the pure creation: the "This" acts on the subjective aspect, subject and object as part of one Self.
- Through Maya: severance of subject and object, now experienced as separate.
The junction is Sadvidya or Suddhavidya, "the first truly realistic stage of the yogi", called Paraparadasa (Isvara-pratyabhijna III.1.5), and in the Svacchanda Tantra (IV.95) "experience in the form of mantra of both difference and non-difference".
Definitions of Maya
| Source | Definition |
|---|---|
| Tattva-sandoha v.5 | "Maya is the sense of difference (bheda-buddhi) in all Jivas, which are parts of Her. As the shore holds in the sea, She ever obstructs the otherwise unobstructed manifestation of Atma." |
| Isvara-pratyabhijna III.2.6 | The notion of difference (bheda-dhi) held by the Doer, himself consciousness, is Maya-Sakti; others, like the Vidyesvaras, call her Vidya |
| Ibid. 7 | She is Vidya-Sakti when she reveals the Lordship of the Atma in its pasu (bound) state; when she veils (tirodhana-kari), she is Maya |
Siva has two functions: tirodhana, by which he veils himself, and anugraha, by which he reveals himself by saktipata, "descent of Sakti" or grace. She is both Madhumati, "Honey", and Maya (Lalita-sahasranama, v.139); the saving (taraka) knowledge that crosses samsara.
Further texts:
- The Padma Purana: the Citkala, the portion of great consciousness wrapped in mind and matter, dwells as the core of the "inner working" of all Jivas, the Anandakalika, "germ of bliss".
- Lalita-sahasranama v.142: she is mithya-jagad-adhisthana, basis of the false (that is, impermanent) universe.
- Sandilya-sutra 86: Maya is the Lord's power that obscures.
- The Devi Purana: called Maya because it is "the marvellous instrument whereby unheard of results are produced, like those of dreams or magic".
In every system, as Prakrti, Maya or Maya-Sakti, she is the finitising principle by which forms are created in formless consciousness, by causing the duality of self and not-self within the great experience, Mahasatta.
From Maya to Solid Matter
Under Maya and the five Kancukas, the Self experiences itself as object; Prakrti-tattva joins Purusa-tattva (Atma enveloped by the Kancukas), the pair being Hamsa. On the disequilibrium of her gunas, Prakrti develops the impure Tattvas (asuddha-tattva) down to Prthivi, where conscious life-energy forms what Dubern calls the "crust" of the living molecule of solid matter.
- Subjectively, Maya sets up a dichotomy of subject and object in a unitary experience.
- Objectively, it creates the psychical and physical forms into which the universal substance projects, ever grosser.
Bindu (ghanibhuta) is the first massive state; through Maya it becomes Prakrti and its evolutes, until, past four states of decreasing subtlety, substance emerges as solid atoms. Physical science works this backwards. "At a point, search on the path of objectivity is closed." To know more, the mind must turn in on itself, release all objectivity, and fall back into consciousness beyond Maya (mayatita).
Mantra: The Thought That Saves
From the mantra side, undifferentiated Sabda arising on the division of Bindu into Purusa-Prakrti (Hamsa) develops into manifest Sabda and Artha: letters from the subtle Matrkas, uttered in Vaikhari as letters, syllables and sentences.
Mantra = man (thought) + tra (saves, trayate). It saves:
- from the evil that man, under Maya, commits; and then
- by citta-suddhi, from Maya herself, who in the sadhaka is transformed into Vidya-Sakti.
Mantra is a pure thought-form, a pure vrtti of the antahkarana, which is Devata. Senses and mind are also Devatas, being operations of the one divine Sakti. Through mantra the mind is divinely transformed: filled with and identified with divinity in mantra form (the gross aspect of Devi), it passes into her subtle Light form (Jyotirmayi Devi), consciousness beyond Maya.
Maya and Vidya are one power facing two ways. The same Sakti that veils the bound soul reveals when its direction turns. Sadhana does not defeat an alien Maya; it reverses the gaze of one's own power. This is the practical reason Woodroffe insists the Sakta view of Maya "is of primary importance from the point of view of sadhana".
Key terms: Bhuta, Tanmatra, Antahkarana, Cit-Sakti, Maya-Sakti, avinabhava-sambandha, visvottirna, visvatmaka, anirvacaniya, cidabhasa, Saktiman, Gunamayi, Cinmayi, prasara, bheda-buddhi, tirodhana, anugraha, saktipata, Madhumati, Citkala, Mahasatta, mayatita, mantra.
Reflect: Sankara's man is spirit covered by falsity; the Sakta's is spirit covering itself with its own power. Which picture makes your body and mind feel more like allies?
The Kancukas
Chapter XV defines the six Kancukas, the "jackets" by which infinite consciousness becomes the finite Purusa. It quotes the Tattva-sandoha definition of each, notes Otto Schrader's thesis that they elaborate an older Pancaratra triad, and ends with a dense passage from Abhinavagupta on how Kala produces Purusa and Prakrti simultaneously.
Sheaths and Contractions
The six, with Maya as root of the other five: Maya, Kala, Niyati, Raga, Vidya, Kala.
- Kancuka means sheath or envelope.
- They are also called contractions (samkoca), for creation is the contracted form (samkucad-rupa) of infinite Sakti.
Schrader's thesis. In the Pancaratra Agama, Maya, Niyati and Kala hold the place the Kancukas hold in Saiva-Sakta systems (Ahirbudhnya-samhita, 63, 64, 90). Schrader thinks the six Kancukas elaborate the older Pancaratra doctrine of three samkocas: Maya, Kala, Niyati. In both, the Atma as finite experience is stripped of the attributes it had as Perfect Experience.
The Two Triangles
An hourglass of triangles. Draw an inverted triangle (the Yoni or Sakti as the pure Tattvas) resting on the point of an upright triangle (the impure Tattvas of worldly experience). The point of intersection is Maya. "Seen in the waters of Maya all is reversed": worldly experience is the inversion, by contraction and negation, of the Perfect Experience.
Through Maya and the Kancukas, Sakti takes the gross contracted form of Prakrti-tattva, which with Purusa-tattva is Hamsa. Siva and Sakti are the Bird Hamsa: Ham is Siva, Sah is Sakti. "The Hamsa pair in gross form are the universe" (pum-prakrtyatmako hamsas tadatmakam idam jagat).
Maya is the root, being the sense of difference (bheda-buddhi). Each Purusa, and they are innumerable, is "a universe of his own" (Svacchanda Tantra); each creates under Maya its own universe.
The Five Kancukas Defined
| Kancuka | Perfection before | After contraction | Tattva-sandoha |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kala (Time) | Eternity (nityata) | Orderly delimitation (pariccheda), producing appearance and disappearance, birth and death | v.11: "That Sakti of His which is Eternity, descending and producing appearance and disappearance, and ever in regulated manner performing the function of division, is Kala-tattva" |
| Niyati | Freedom (svatantrata) | Forced guidance as to what must or must not be done at each moment | v.12: His Sakti called independence, contracted, "subjecting Him perforce to guidance and regulation" in what is to be done or not done |
| Raga | Complete satisfaction (nitya-paripurna-trpti); the Full | Interest in objects, attaching him to enjoyment | v.10: eternal complete satisfaction, become limited, "attaching him ever to enjoyment" |
| Vidya | All-knowingness (sarvajnata) | A "little knower" | v.9: all-knowingness limited, "capable of knowing only a few things", producing limited knowledge |
| Kala (Part) | All-doing-ness (sarvakartrta) | A "little doer" | v.8: all-doing-ness contracted, "capable of accomplishing but a few things" |
Notes on each
Kala. It is the power that urges on and matures things. It is not subjective or empirical time, though it gives rise to it. It is transcendental time without sections (akhanda-kala) giving birth to time as effect (karya-kala). Gross time with parts (sakala-kala) comes only with the gross Tattvas. Hence the saying "Time leads me in time." Consciousness is "contracted into the mode of temporal thinking".
Niyati. In the Pancaratra it is "the subtle regulator of everything" (suksma-sarva-niyamaka, Ahirbudhnya VI.46), and per Schrader includes there the functions of Vidya, Raga and Kala.
Raga. The Isa Upanisad calls Brahman purna, the Full that wants nothing. When experience becomes dual, the self as subject becomes interested in other things.
- Iccha as desire implies a lack of the Supreme fullness. Iccha in the supreme creative sense is merely consciousness directed toward activity.
- Raga is usually translated "desire", but is properly the interest in objects that precedes desire: interest in objects seen as other than the self, which ripens into desire.
Kala (part). "Nothing but kartrtva (infinite agency) cut down to the limits of the Jiva's power." Consciousness limited in this sixfold manner is the Purusa associated with Prakrti.
Agency, Enjoyment, Knowing
Woodroffe interposes a note:
- Kartrtva is creative activity, ideation and formation: the power of modifying the "This".
- Jnatrtva is merely induced, passively accepted experience: knowing.
- Bhoktrtva is enjoying, experiencing.
- Samkhya: Purusa is enjoyer but not doer (bhokta, not karta). Saiva-Sakta: there is no kartrtva without bhoktrtva.
| Level | Jnatrtva (knowing) | Bhoktrtva (enjoying) | Kartrtva (doing) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Parasamvit | Germ, all three in undistinguishable unity | ||
| Siva-Sakti-tattva | Present | Suppressed | Suppressed |
| Sadakhya | Present | Incipient | Incipient |
| Isvara-tattva | All three developed but undifferentiated | ||
| Sadvidya | Equal attention on "I" and "This"; Maya and the Kancukas arise | ||
| Purusa | Knowing works through Buddhi, whose vrttis are changing, limited and partial |
In Isvara, Sakti involves no limited modification, "for the whole universe as the Self is present to the Self". In Purusa it does.
How Kala Makes Purusa and Prakrti at Once
Abhinavagupta's Tantrasara, Ahnika 8 (the Saiva work, Woodroffe stresses, not Krsnananda's Sakta ritual digest of the same name):
- Maya has already produced little-doer-ness (kimcit-kartrtva).
- Kala, operating on the qualified part (visesya, the doer-ness) of this "little doer-ness", is the cause of Vidya and the other Kancukas.
- The moment Kala separates from herself the qualifying part (visesana), the "little" (kimcit), which is the object of knowledge and action, at that very moment Prakrti-tattva is created.
- This Prakrti is a bare generality (samanya-matra), not yet marked by specific enjoyables such as happiness, sorrow and delusion; another name for it is the equalisation of the gunas.
- So the creation of enjoyer (bhoktr, Purusa) and enjoyed (bhogya, Prakrti) under Kala is simultaneous, "without any succession whatever", and being simultaneous they are ever conjoined.
Tantraloka, Ahnika 9 adds:
- Agency is always accompanied by the power to enjoy.
- From the "kimcit" aspect, Kala gives birth to Pradhana as "a clear but general objectivity, separate from" Purusa.
- "Kala produces the bhogya and the bhokta simultaneously by seeking a distinction" within herself (between kartrtva and kimcit), yet the two are inseparate.
- Because this barest objectivity (samvedya-matra) is later known as happiness (sukha), sorrow (duhkha) and delusion (vimoha), it is called the equalisation of these at the beginning.
Woodroffe's restatement
- When Maya first severs "I" and "This", the "This" is still an unlimited whole.
- Next it is limited and broken into parts, since our experience is of a heterogeneous universe.
- Kala belittles Purusa's agency into kimcit-kartrtva.
- Agency has two sides: the qualified power of action (Purusa's) and the "little" it acts on (the universe as Purusa now sees it).
- Kala operates on agency, not on the "This"; the "This" becomes "little" necessarily, because "the object is nothing but the Self as object".
Shrink the subject and the world shrinks with it. Producing Purusa is Kala's positive operation; producing Prakrti is a negative one, the by-product of limiting the knower. Prakrti is simply "the object of kartrtva as it exists when the latter has been whittled down." The practical inversion: expand the subject's capacity and the world appears less confining. Contemplative practice works on the knower, not the known.
Two meanings of one word. English readers must keep apart Kala (time) and Kala (part, limited agency); without diacritics they look identical, and the chapter also uses Kala in the earlier sense of individualised Sakti (Chapter X). Woodroffe's sequence also lists Kala-Niyati-Raga-Vidya-Kala while the Tattva-sandoha verses he quotes run in the reverse order (v.8 Kala-part, v.9 Vidya, v.10 Raga, v.11 Kala-time, v.12 Niyati); different texts order the Kancukas differently, and neither order is the only one.
The chapters that follow deal with Purusa and Prakrti, or Hamsa; the Kamakala (three Bindus) whose differentiation sees the birth of Hamsa; the impure Tattvas from Prakrti; and the Varnamala, whose evolution is the origin of speech and mantra.
Key terms: Kancuka, samkoca, Ahirbudhnya-samhita, pariccheda, akhanda-kala, karya-kala, sakala-kala, Niyati, Raga, Vidya, Kala, kartrtva, jnatrtva, bhoktrtva, kimcit-kartrtva, visesya, visesana, samanya-matra, Pradhana, samvedya-matra.
Reflect: Woodroffe separates Raga, interest in an object, from Iccha, desire for it. Catch one moment today where interest is just beginning to turn into wanting.
Hamsa
Chapter XVI treats Hamsa, the Purusa-Prakrti pair: "Ham" the male, Siva; "Sah" the female, Sakti. Woodroffe gathers the bird's symbolism, the four Atmas of the Jnanarnava Tantra, the argument that every atom is a Purusa, and a careful account of the gunas as transformed Iccha, Jnana and Kriya.
The Bird
Hamsa is Purusa-Prakrti-tattva. The bird's physical identity is variously given as goose, flamingo, brahmini duck, "and rightly by others" as legendary. "The universe is made of, and informed by, the Hamsa pair (hamsa-dvandva)."
| Text | Statement |
|---|---|
| Anandalahari 39 | "In Thy Anahata Lotus I salute the Wondrous Pair who are Ham and Sah, swimming in the mind of the Great who delight in the honey of the blooming lotus of knowledge" |
| Sammohana Tantra VIII | Hamsah reversed is the Vedantic "So'ham". "Hakara is one wing, Sakara the other. Stripped of both wings, Tara is Kamakala" |
| Same Tantra | Jiva is Hamsa. The sadhaka of Tara is lord of both Kadi and Hadi schools. The Hamsatara Mahavidya, sovereign of yoga, is called Kali by the Kadis, Srisundari by the Hadis, Hamsah by the Ka-Hadis |
The Four Atmas
The Jnanarnava Tantra (XXI.22), speaking of the Citkunda, the mandala in the Muladhara where inner homa is done, defines four Atmas, "by the knowledge whereof there is no rebirth":
| Atma | Nature | Image |
|---|---|---|
| Atma | Pranarupi: present in all beings as their prana; Hamsa-svarupi, the Jivatma shown by out-breath and in-breath | Ether in a pot: the potter's wheel separates it from the surrounding akasa, but when the pot breaks there is no difference. The individual breath is the cosmic breath, seemingly different only by the forms it animates |
| Jnanatma | Saksat-saksi-rupaka: the direct witness of all, by which the unity of all is known; substratum of Buddhi and the mental Tattvas | Moonlight on water: reflected in Buddhi and seeming one with it, yet distinct |
| Antaratma | The subtle, secret Atma pervading all, the spark of Paramatma indwelling all bodies; the Hamsa known only to yogis | The bird anatomised: beak = Tara (Om); wings = Nigama and Agama; feet = Siva and Sakti; three eyes = the three Bindus |
| Paramatma | The Paramahamsa, Hamsa in supreme aspect, consciousness-ground of the Jiva | When it becomes unworldly and dissolving (samhararupi), its "birdness" (paksitva) disappears and "So'ham Atma" is established |
When the Paramahamsa is spread out, the elements akasa, air and the rest arise in order; their root is citta. The Hamsa disports in the world-lotus sprung from the mud of delusion in the lake of ignorance.
Purusa and Prakrti Defined
- Purusa is Atma subject to Maya and the Kancukas.
- Prakrti is the state of Sakti produced by Maya and the Kancukas acting together: a homogeneous general objectivity that develops by its own power (the sum of the Saktis that made it) into the heterogeneous universe.
They arise as a bifurcation in consciousness when Parabindu divides into the three Bindus of Kamakala, pictured as the triangular base of the pyramidal (srngataka) figure in the Sri-yantra, at whose apex are the Baindava-cakra and Parabindu.
From this differentiation arise three lines of creation:
- Mantra line: Parasabda, then manifest Sabda and Artha.
- Tattva line: Buddhi and the rest.
- Lords of the Tattvas: Sambhu and the rest.
Philosophically, Purusa-Prakrti is the stage where, after the "I" and the "I-This" experience (completed in Isvara), consciousness experiences duality, with the object outside the self. But this objectivity is still general; it has yet to evolve into the differentiated objects (asuddha-tattva) and Parasabda into letters, syllables and sentences, the birth of mantra.
Every Atom Is a Purusa
With the differentiation of Prakrti appear multitudes of Purusas, each living in a universe of its own. Purusa is not only man: it is every Jiva, every enjoyer of an enjoyable. It includes plants, micro-organisms, and inorganic matter. "All is Jivatma which is not Paramatma."
Woodroffe argues:
- Science is breaking down "the former arbitrary partitions" between living and non-living.
- We may practically call "living" what plainly shows life; but life in organic bodies is not wholly new. It exists subdued or potential in every kind of matter.
- Life as we know it is the phenomenal aspect of Sat. Feeling-consciousness is the limited manifestation (manifestation being limitation) of Cit.
- All that is manifest exists potentially in its ground; each manifestation is that ground veiled in varying degrees.
"What one thinks that one becomes." The Upanisad says it and "modern so-called 'New Thought' repeats" it. All accept the principle up to a point: "If man thinks inhuman thoughts he dehumanises himself." Vedanta takes it to its conclusion: cosmic or collective Thought evolves every type, and the universe is its material expression.
- Every atom is a Purusa identifying itself with the solid (parthiva) "crust" of matter.
- If gross matter looks like rigid mechanism, this is because life and consciousness are veiled by Tamas, with Kala, Niyati and the other Kancukas operating to their fullest.
- But they can never be destroyed, being Sakti herself.
- "Nothing however is absolutely unconscious or inert." Every atom moves; hence Jagat.
The mantra: "Hrim. The Supreme Hamsa dwells in the brilliant Heaven." Here Hamsa is derived from "hanti", meaning gati, motion; Sayana says the sun is called Aditya because in perpetual motion.
Texts on Prakrti and Purusa
| Source | Statement |
|---|---|
| Tattva-sandoha 13 to 14, on Prakrti | The collectivity of all Saktis (Will, Knowledge, Action); the quiescent (santa) Sakti of Him in contracted form; the equilibrium of Sattva, Rajas, Tamas, which are Will, Knowledge and Action gathered together; of the nature of general unparticularised feeling (citta), the undifferentiated Buddhi and other Tattvas |
| Tattva-sandoha 6, on Purusa | "He who, having by Her become of limited form with all His powers contracted, is this Male (puman); like the sun which, red at eventide and its power contracted, can scarce reveal itself" |
| Tattva-sandoha 7 | His many Saktis, beginning with complete kartrtva, become contracted as Kala and the rest, and so make him manifest as Purusa |
| Isvara-pratyabhijna III.2.9 | The experiencer beginning with Sunya (Siva-tattva), clothed by the five Kancukas and becoming object to himself, then experiences objects as separate from him |
That is: the object is the Self appearing as such. He keeps his selfhood and becomes his own object. Maya is not apart from Brahman: it is Brahman who through Maya, an aspect of himself, becomes his own object. Only when the subject is clothed by the Kancukas does he see objects as other; then duality exfoliates in Prakrti's evolutes.
The Gunas
"Qualities" is a poor translation: a quality needs a substance. Prakrti as Prakrti is the gunas and nothing else, though her own nature, like that of every Sakti, is Sat-Cit-Ananda. They are factors or constituents.
All three veil, to different degrees:
| Guna | Predominant, it is | Tendency |
|---|---|---|
| Sattva | The least veiling (Sattva is not absolute Sat) | To unveil: reveal Sat and Cit |
| Rajas | The operative power in both directions | Activity |
| Tamas | The greatest veiling | To veil |
All bodies have all three. Sattva's presence in organic matter is why it shows rudiments of sentiency; in inorganic matter Tamas prevails. As bodies evolve, Tamas weakens and Sattva grows until in man it predominates.
The aim of sadhana in one line. "Increase Sattva-guna until, on man becoming wholly sattvika, his body passes from the state of predominant Sattva-guna into Sat itself." The gunas are not just moral categories; they are degrees of transparency of matter to consciousness, and practice is the work of making the instrument clear.
Saktis of the Lord, gunas of the bound soul
In the Jiva (pasu), the gunas are the Lord's Iccha, Kriya, Jnana and Maya-Saktis. The Lord (Mayin), as the Kularnava says, wields and is free of Maya; the Jiva is controlled by it.
- Isvara-pratyabhijna IV.1.4: the Jnana and Kriya of the Lord (Pati) toward things that are His own limbs, together with Maya as third, are the Sattva, Rajas and Tamas of the pasu.
- Iccha, Jnana and Kriya are inseparable like the gunas, one or another predominating. Iccha and Kriya go together: resolve is the preliminary of action.
- In the Saiva Sastra Iccha is "a state of wonder" (sa camatkara icchasaktih) in the Purusa.
- Kriya, analysed apart from Jnana, is blind; hence its link to Tamas.
Ksemaraja, Tattva-sandoha 13 to 15, gives the correspondence precisely:
| Lord's Sakti | Becomes guna | Becomes inner organ | Function |
|---|---|---|---|
| Iccha | Rajas | Ahamkara | Produces the notion of "I" |
| Jnana | Sattva | Buddhi | Determining form of experience |
| Kriya | Tamas | Manas | Vikalpa and samkalpa, rejection and selection |
Shifting correspondences. In Chapter XIII the Tribindu ran Sakti = Sattva, Nada = Rajas, Bindu foreshadowing Tamas, and in Chapter XVII the texts disagree over which Devi, Deva and Sakti goes with which Bindu. Ksemaraja's scheme here (Iccha-Rajas, Jnana-Sattva, Kriya-Tamas) is one authoritative version, not the only one. Woodroffe himself declines to "attempt a discussion" of the orders. Readers should treat the three-by-three tables in this book as families of symbols, not a single fixed code.
The next chapters describe the Kamakala, in which Hamsa arises, then the evolution of the impure Tattvas, then the Varnamala, the mantra side of the same evolution.
Key terms: Hamsa, hamsa-dvandva, So'ham, Kadi, Hadi, Hamsatara, Citkunda, Pranarupi, Jnanatma, Antaratma, Paramahamsa, paksitva, srngataka, Baindava-cakra, parthiva, Aditya, santa Sakti, guna, Mayin, Pati, pasu, camatkara.
Reflect: Watch the breath as "Ham" going out and "Sah" coming in, then try it reversed as "So'ham". Does the reversed form feel different?
Kamakala
Chapter XVII describes the Kamakala, the triangle formed by the three Bindus into which Parabindu divides. It is "the root (mula) of all mantras", the threefold aspect of the Sabda-brahman. Woodroffe sets out the conflicting orders of Devis, Devas and Saktis, gives a memory device using the bija Ram, maps the A-Ka-Tha triangle of the alphabet, explains the Devi as Tripurasundari, and defends the erotic term samarasya.
Kama as Divine Will
Kama here is not desire in the gross sense, sexual or otherwise, but Iccha, the divine creative Will toward the life of form.
- The undivided supreme Cit-Sakti, desiring to appear as all the Tattvas, assumes the Bindu aspect (bindubhava), marked by predominance of activity (kriya-pradhanya).
- Will is a form of action in the sense that it sets the Self in motion. Sakti passes from potency through Will to action.
- Bindu's three aspects as it works: Bindu (Sivatmaka), Bija (Saktyatmaka), and Nada, the samavaya or relation of exciter (ksobhaka) and excited (ksobhya), which is the cause of creation (srsti-hetu).
The Sarada (I.10) then describes the three Devis and three Devas, in the nature of the three Saktis and of Fire, Moon and Sun; and from I.15 it turns from Sabda-srsti (creation of sound) to Artha-srsti (creation of objects).
Why the Orders Conflict
Woodroffe admits that summarising the Devis, Devas and Saktis accurately "is not easy":
- Verse texts cannot always be read as they stand, since metre regulates word order. The Pranatosini, on the Goraksa-samhita, says texts must be read not word by word (pratisabdam) but "according to the facts" (yathasambhavam), which still leaves the facts to be found.
- Raghava-Bhatta: the order of Saktis differs in Isvara and Jiva:
- Isvara: Iccha, Jnana, Kriya. He wills to know or do (svecchaya kriya); then has the capacity to cognise the act (Jnana-sakti); then the gross effort (sthula samudyama), Kriya-sakti, from which the world proceeds.
- Jiva: Jnana, Iccha, Kriya. We know first, then want, then act.
- Sabda-srsti and Artha-srsti order things differently: of the Pranava it is said "A, which is Sun, is Brahma", but the Sarada verse says "Visnu is Sun".
Three versions
| Source | First | Second | Third |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sarada I.10 to 11 | Bindu → Raudri → Rudra | Nada → Jyestha → Brahma | Bija → Vama → Visnu |
| (and, in verse order) | Jnana, Fire, Nirodhika | Iccha, Moon, Ardhendu | Kriya, Sun, Bindu |
| Yoginihrdaya I | Iccha, Vama, Pasyanti | Jnana, Jyestha, Madhyama | Kriya, Raudri, Vaikhari |
| Kamakala-vilasa (comm. v.22), Yoginihrdaya (Samketa 1), Saubhagyasudhodaya | Iccha, Rajas, Vama, Brahma, Pasyanti | Jnana, Sattva, Jyestha, Visnu, Madhyama | Kriya, Tamas, Raudri, Rudra, Vaikhari |
These are all "states of Sakti", identified with Iccha and the rest because they arise from Sakti.
The Yoginihrdaya's shapes:
- Vama: Iccha in the form of a goad (ankusakara), the bent line (vakra-rekha), about to display the universe held as seed; she is Pasyanti, "she who sees" (iksana). Named Vama because she "vomits forth" (vamana) the universe.
- Jyestha: the straight line (rju-rekha), attaining the state of Matrka; she is Madhyama.
- Raudri: Kriya in triangular or pyramidal (srngataka), three-dimensional form; she is manifest Vaikhari.
"For present practical purposes", the three Bindus are:
- Siva, Sakti, Siva-Sakti
- Prakasa, Vimarsa, Prakasa-Vimarsa
- White, Red, Mixed
- Bindu, Nada, Bija
- Supreme, Subtle, Gross
- the three Devis, the three Devas, the three Saktis of Will, Knowledge and Action.
"The Supreme at this point thus becomes a Trinity of Energy."
A Memory Device
Build the triangle from the bija Ram.
- Write the Fire-bija Ram: Ra with candrabindu.
- Invert the Nada crescent: it becomes the Moon (Indu); the dot is the Sun (Ravi); the Ra is Fire (Agni).
- Draw the triangle: two sides as a bent line, then close it with a straight line.
- Place Ravi-bindu (Sun) at the apex, Vahni-bindu (Fire) and Candra-bindu (Moon) at the left and right corners.
- On the sides:
- Sun to Moon: Vama, the bent line, Brahma
- Fire to Moon: Jyestha, Visnu
- Moon to Sun: Raudri, the straight line, Rudra
(Woodroffe's own wording names the third side "Moon and Sun" as well as the first; the text seems to have a slip, and the third side should run between Sun and Fire.)
The A-Ka-Tha Triangle
Between the points run lines formed by all the letters (matrka-varna): the A-Ka-Tha triangle. Kalicarana's comment on the Padukapancaka (verse 2):
| Line | Letters | Sakti |
|---|---|---|
| First | Sixteen vowels beginning with A | Vama |
| Second | Sixteen letters beginning with Ka | Jyestha |
| Third | Sixteen letters beginning with Tha | Raudri |
| Corners | Ha, La, Ksa |
This triangle is the abode of Sakti (abalalaya).
Supporting texts:
- Kalyurdhvamnaya: the Tribindu is the supreme Tattva, embodying Brahma, Visnu, Siva; the triangle of letters emanated from Bindu. A to Visarga = Brahma line; Ka to Tha = Visnu line; Tha to Sa = Rudra line.
- Tantrojivana: Rajas, Sattva, Tamas lines surround the Yoni-mandala; Sattva above, Rajas on its left, Tamas on its right.
- Agamakalpadruma: Bindu is Ham (one point); Visarga (two points) is Sah, Sakti.
- Yamala: "She is the Eternal One who is the three Bindus, the three Saktis and the three forms (Trimurti)."
- Mahesvari-samhita: Sun, Moon, Fire are the three Bindus; Brahma, Visnu, Rudra the three lines.
Why a triangle? On the material plane, if there are three forms, the only way they can interact while remaining distinct and yet parts of one whole is as a triangle.
Tripurasundari
The Lalita-sahasranama calls the Devi Kamakalarupa. Bhaskararaya (v.78): Kama (creative will) is both Siva and Devi; Kala is their manifestation. The Tripura-siddhanta: "O Parvati, Kala is the manifestation of Kamesvara and Kamesvari." Or she is the manifestation (kala) of Desire (kama), that is of Iccha-Sakti.
Bhaskararaya's guru Nrsimhanandanatha wrote a verse: "I hymn Tripura, treasure of Kula, red of beauty, her limbs like those of Kamaraja... the Will of Siva, who dwells in the Bindu and manifests the universe." Bhaskararaya's gloss:
- Red because she is Vimarsa-sakti.
- Tripura because she has three "cities": three Bindus, lines, angles, syllables. Three angles in the triangular Yoni, three circles, and a three-lined Bhupura in her yantra.
- "Yoni does not here mean generative organ, but karana, the Cause of the universe."
- She creates the three Devatas through Vama and the others, as Will, Knowledge, Action. Everywhere triple, she is Tripurasundari.
- Her mantra's three syllables are the three divisions of the Pancadasi: Vagbhava, Kamaraja and Sakti kutas, which per the Vamakesvara Tantra are Jnana and the other Saktis.
Klim and the "I"
The Kama-bija is Klim; Klimkara is Sivakama. Here "I" (the vowel) denotes Kamakala in the Turiya state, through which moksa is gained. Hence the saying: "he who hears the bija without Ka and La does not reach the place of good actions": he goes not to the heaven won by good acts but to liberation won by jnana alone.
Meditations on Kamakala
| Source | Instruction |
|---|---|
| Bhava-cudamani | Meditate on the face as Bindu, below it the twin breasts (the other two Bindus), and below them the half Hakara |
| Commentator on the Anandalahari | In the fifth sacrifice (yajna), think of your Atma as the one Siva, and of Kundalini as a subtle thread from the Adhara lotus to Paramasiva. See the three Bindus in her body: Iccha, Jnana, Kriya; Moon, Sun, Fire; Rajas, Sattva, Tamas; Brahma, Visnu, Rudra. Then meditate on the Cit-kala below |
| (gloss) | Face = Virinci (Brahma), Rajas. Breasts, meditated in the heart, = Hari (Visnu) and Hara (Rudra), Sattva and Tamas. Below, the Cit-kala holds all three gunas and all three Devatas |
| Yogini Tantra and others | Ends: "then let the sadhaka think of his own body as such Kamakala" |
The gross and subtle triangles
- In the Muladhara is the Traipura-trikona, so called because Devi Tripura is within the Ka inside the triangle. Ka is the chief letter of the Kama-bija; Kam is the bija of Kamini, Tripurasundari's aspect in the Muladhara. The three lines Vama, Iccha and the rest are here too.
- So the Traipura-trikona is the gross aspect of the subtle Sakti called Kamakala in the upper Sahasrara.
- In worship the essence of japa (tejo-rupa-japa) is offered to this Kamini; the external japa is given to the Devata worshipped, so that the sadhaka may retain the fruits of his japa (Nityapuja-paddhati 8).
"Man physically and psychically is a limited manifestation of this threefold Sakti which resides within himself and is the object of worship." Worship leads to identification.
Samarasya
The Sritattvarnava: "Those glorious men who worship that Body in samarasya are freed from the waves of poison in the untraversable sea of samsara."
- Samarasya ordinarily means the bliss of sexual union.
- But it is both gross (sthula) and subtle (suksma); here the subtle is meant: the merger of Jiva and Supreme Consciousness in samadhi.
- Such imagery is found in the Upanisads and in non-Indian scriptures: the Song of Songs, read as Christ's love for his Bride the Church ("whether rightly or not, I will not here inquire").
- Mantra-yoga seeks perfection and unity of bhava, which leads to jnana-yoga samadhi.
"Here the latter is meant" is a choice. Some Kaula and Sri-vidya lineages did practise the Kamakala meditations with a gross as well as a subtle sense, and the Kamakala-vilasa tradition includes explicit bodily imagery. Woodroffe chooses the subtle reading and defends it well, but he presents as the single meaning what is better described as the reading preferred by the Samaya and Dakshinachara schools, which he knew and which his Bengali collaborators followed.
The Unmanifest Sound
Sarada I.11: "On the division of the Supreme Bindu there was the Unmanifested Sound." This is Sabda-brahman: avyaktatma (unmanifest), akhanda (undifferentiated), nada-matra (bare sound-principle), nada-bindu-maya, without letters or particulars.
What is Sabda-brahman?
| View | Verdict |
|---|---|
| It is Sabda (sound) | Rejected: sound is unconscious (jada) |
| It is Sabdartha (sound with meaning) | Rejected for the same reason; the word Brahman means Saccidananda and would lose its sense |
| Sarada I.13: "In my opinion Sabda-brahman is the Consciousness in all beings" (caitanyam sarvabhutanam) | Accepted |
Raghava-Bhatta: Sabda-brahman is nada-bindu-maya Brahman as unmanifest, undifferentiated, all-pervading sound: "the first manifestation of Paramasiva in creative mood". He also cites an unnamed work: from Prakrti in Bindu form, in whom Kriya-sakti prevails, arose the supreme Sabda-brahman, cause of Sabda and Sabdartha.
Sarada I.14: "Consciousness, which is the own form of and appears as Kundali-Sakti in the bodies of all living beings, manifests as letters in prose and verse, having obtained the instruments of utterance, the throat and so forth."
All later Sabda-srsti comes from Kundalini. Kamakala is the root of all mantras, being the threefold Sabda-brahman, cause of all Sabda and Artha.
Pasyanti, Madhyama and Vaikhari are discussed with the Tattvas, since they exist only in the created body. Parasabda is unmanifest Caitanya; the other Three Feet of the One Brahman are set in the manifest world.
Key terms: Kamakala, bindubhava, samavaya, ksobhaka, ksobhya, Sabda-srsti, Artha-srsti, pratisabdam, yathasambhavam, Vama, Jyestha, Raudri, vakra-rekha, rju-rekha, srngataka, A-Ka-Tha, abalalaya, Tripurasundari, Pancadasi, Klim, Traipura-trikona, Kamini, tejo-rupa-japa, samarasya, Sabda-brahman.
Reflect: Raghava says Isvara wills, then knows, then acts, while we know, then want, then act. Watch one ordinary action today: which came first for you?
The Gross Tattvas and Their Lords
Chapter XVIII turns from the creation of sound (Sabda-srsti) to the creation of objects (Artha-srsti), following the Sarada-Tilaka from verse 15. It gives the line of Lords from Sambhu to Brahma, the image of the Devi's couch of five corpses, the evolution of the impure Tattvas from Mahat to earth, a comparison with the Buddhist chain of dependent origination, and a working account of how the inner organ handles a sensation.
The Line of Lords
Sarada I.15 to 16: from Sambhu, "in the nature of Kala and Bindu" and "friend of Kala", issued the "Witness of the World" (jagat-saksi), the all-pervading Sadasiva; from Sadasiva Isa, from Isa Rudra, from Rudra Visnu, from Visnu Brahma. Raghava: these arose in Sabda-srsti before; here they arise in Artha-srsti.
Raghava's glosses:
- "Kala" is used generally, or for the Nivrtti and other Kalas that Sambhu produces.
- "Friend of Kala" means Sambhu is of the nature of Nada, and helper of Time, which is creation, in beginningless and endless time. "Friend" marks Kala's instrumental causality (nimittatva).
- A verse says time "has its beginning in lava and ends in pralaya and is full of Tamas-sakti". A lava is the time taken to pierce a lotus petal with a needle; thirty lavas make one truti.
- This Kala is apara (lower); there is also Para Kala. Kala or Maya causes birth and destruction.
- Prakrti and Kala exist even in Mahapralaya, but their permanence is dependent (apeksaka-nityata). Only the Purusa, in whom all things have their goal, is independently permanent (svato-nityatva).
- Sadasiva does the five works: creation, preservation, destruction, favour (anugraha) and disfavour (nigraha).
The Couch of Five Corpses
The five Sivas are the "five great corpses" (panca-mahapreta). Siva is shown corpse-like (savarupa) because consciousness in itself is actionless; all action is by Sakti. Hence the Devi is pictured standing on the inert body of Siva, and the same idea underlies viparita-maithuna.
The meditation, from the Anandalahari: the five Mahapretas form the couch on which the Devi, "Wave of Consciousness and Bliss", rests in the house of Cintamani, with a garden of Nipa trees, in the Island of Gems, ringed by celestial trees, in the ocean of nectar. This is the Tantric meditation on the heart-lotus of worship below the Anahata-cakra.
Bahurupastaka and Bhairava-yamala:
| Part of the bed | Who forms it |
|---|---|
| Abode | The Devi's supreme mandira, full of wish-granting Cintamani stones |
| The great couch | Siva |
| Mattress (kasipu) | Sadasiva |
| Pillow | The great Isana |
| Four legs | Isana, Rudra, Hari, Brahma |
| Reclining on it | The supreme Tripurasundari |
So the Lalita-sahasranama (v.73) calls her Panca-brahmasana-sthita, "seated on the five Brahmas". The Jewelled Island is a high state of consciousness in the ocean of nectar that is infinite consciousness itself. In the Pranava the Devi is united with Paramasiva: the Nada over Omkara is the couch on which Parasiva rests in Bindu form. Thus A, U, M, Nada, Bindu and the Sri-cakra are both referred to.
Lords, lokas and cakras
| Lord | Presides over | Loka | Centre in body |
|---|---|---|---|
| Paramasiva | Beyond mind and matter | Satyaloka | (Sahasrara) |
| Sambhu | Mind | Maharloka | Ajna |
| Sadasiva | Ether | Tapoloka | Visuddha |
| Isa | Air | Janaloka | Anahata |
| Rudra | Fire | Svarloka | Manipura |
| Visnu | Water | Bhuvarloka | Svadhisthana |
| Brahma | Earth | Bhurloka | Muladhara |
Kundali-Sakti manifests as the six, yet in all her subtle and gross forms remains the same Cit and Ananda; the Atma in its own nature is the same everywhere.
The loka sequence as printed. The standard ascending order is Bhur, Bhuvar, Svar, Mahar, Jana, Tapas, Satya. The text pairs Sambhu with Maharloka and puts Tapoloka before Janaloka in descending order, so that Janaloka sits below Tapoloka in rank but is paired with a higher element. The table follows the printed text; readers comparing with Puranic cosmology will find the middle lokas differently arranged. The Sahasrara entry for Paramasiva is supplied from the rest of the book.
The Impure Tattvas
Sarada I.17 to 18, with Raghava:
- From the unmanifest Mulabhuta (Prakrti, root of creation) of the Paravastu-Bindu, when it changes (vikrti) through inequality of the gunas, issued the sattvika Tattva Mahat, "in the form of the Antahkarana and gunas".
- Mahat is cosmic Buddhi. It contains Buddhi, Ahamkara and Manas implicitly.
- "Gunas" here means the Tanmatras of sound, touch, sight, taste, smell. On how these attach to the elements, Nyaya: each element has its own special quality; Samkhya: ether has one, air two, fire three, and so on.
- From Mahat came Ahamkara, threefold:
| Ahamkara | Guna | Produces |
|---|---|---|
| Vaikarika | Sattvika | The Vaikarika Devas, presiding Devatas of the senses |
| Taijasa | Rajasa | The Indriyas |
| Bhutadi | Tamasa | The five Tanmatras and the Bhutas |
- Vaikarika because it issues from Paramesvara when his samarasya with Sakti becomes disturbed (vikrta); for Samkhya, because generated from Pradhana when disturbed.
- The Vaikarika Devas: Dik (Directions), Vata (Wind), Arka (Sun), Praceta (Varuna), the two Asvins, Vahni (Fire), Indra, Upendra (a form of Visnu), Mitra (the third sun), and Ka (Candra).
Tanmatras to Bhutas
| Reading | Process |
|---|---|
| Text and commentary | Akasa from Sabda-tanmatra, Vayu from Sparsa-tanmatra, and so on |
| Others (reading "purva") | Each causes what follows together with what went before: Sabda gives Akasa; Sabda + Sparsa give Vayu; those two + Rupa give Agni; and so on |
Colours of the Bhutas (Sarada): ether transparent (svaccha), air black, fire red, water white, earth yellow. Raghava says some invisible things are given colours "for the purpose of worship". Woodroffe questions whether this makes the colours unreal:
- Transparency is no colour; black is absence of colour. But with rupa there must be colour, for form is perceived only through colour, and the last three Bhutas have form.
- The colours are widely shared: in China too yellow is earth's colour; red and white are generally fire and water.
- Perhaps "for worship" means only that they are mentioned for that purpose. Otherwise how could yogis perceive them, as the text says the Tanmatras are objects of direct yogic perception?
Elsewhere: ether is hollow (susira), air moving, fire digesting (paripakavan), water tasteful (rasavat), earth solid (ghana). All the universe is the four Bhutas entering into one another, pervaded by ether.
Two Ways to Read the Tattvas
| In order of evolution | In the working of the mind after creation |
|---|---|
| Buddhi first: bare presentation, consciousness of being without "I", untouched by particular sensations: impersonal Jiva consciousness | Buddhi last |
| Ahamkara: the personal "I" | Easier to explain starting from the sense objects |
| Manas: the desire that follows | |
| Senses and objects: the means of enjoyment, the end of all will to life |
The evolutionary order is like waking: first a vague general experience without the limited self, then "I am so and so", then desire, then the instruments of enjoyment. The cosmic mind projects its content as ideas and desires onto the gross plane, where the individual mind enjoys them.
The Buddhist parallel
Woodroffe sees the same scheme in Buddhism's twelve links:
- Avidya (ignorance), from which
- Samskara, giving birth to
- Vijnana (which is Buddhi), then
- Namarupa, an external world vaguely perceived; the wish to cognise it gives
- Sadayatana, the six sense organs: Manas and the Indriyas; then
- Sparsa, contact, giving
- Vedana, feeling as pleasure and pain; this produces
- Trsna, desire (which "a recent work on the Unconscious calls Libido"), then
- Upadana, attachment, and
- Bhava, the individual Jiva consciousness, which is
- Jata, born,
- ages and dies and is reborn until Nirvana.
Throughout it is the will to life rooted in Avidya, which produces mind and senses and creatively imagines its content from the store of past lives in past universes. True experience comes only by destroying the root, Avidya.
A plea, a century early. "One of the tasks which yet remains to be done is to show the essential similarities of Buddhism and Hinduism instead of dwelling... on their differences." Woodroffe adds that truer notions of Buddhism will come "when it is fully realised that Buddhism took its birth in India". Comparative work on Tantric Buddhism and Saivism has since borne out many shared structures, as well as real differences (on the self, above all).
A biological illustration: in some animals with no specialised sense organs, a part of the body stimulated often becomes sensitive and develops an organ. This assumes objects already exist, but similar principles act in world evolution: desire evolves the instruments of enjoyment and projects their objects.
How the Inner Organ Works
Science no longer holds matter to be indestructible atoms: atoms dissociate, force and matter are forms of one thing. The basis is Maya or Prakrti-Sakti; matter is a stable form of force, into which it vanishes when disturbed.
Sense data come in five kinds: hearing (akasa), touch and feel (vayu, not all contact, since solidity is not yet developed), colour-form-sight (rupa), taste (rasa), smell (gandha). Particular perceptions are of particular objects, but there are also general elements: the Tanmatras, "mere thatness", supersensible (atindriya) matter, normally known only through the particulars they produce.
From stimulus to decision in five steps.
- Indriyas (outer instruments, bahya-karana) receive: jnanendriyas for cognition (afferent) and karmendriyas for action (efferent).
- Manas does three things: supplies attention (without it there is no sensation, alocana); selects one sensation from countless others besieging us; and gathers the "points of sensation" into a whole. Its function is samkalpa-vikalpa, selection and rejection.
- Ahamkara, "self-arrogation", makes the sensation one's own.
- Buddhi determines: forms percepts and concepts, or resolutions ("this must be done by me", kartavyam etat maya).
- All serve the enjoyment of the Purusa: not independent things, but endowments of the Spirit, "an organised co-operative effort in the service of the Enjoyer".
Three Tattvas and Four Atmas
The Tantras also group the 36 into three:
| Group | Range | Character |
|---|---|---|
| Atma-tattva | Prthivi to Prakrti | Impure (asuddha) |
| Vidya-tattva | Maya, the Kancukas, Purusa | Pure-impure |
| Siva-tattva | Suddhavidya to Siva | Pure (suddha) |
The chapter closes by restating the four Atmas of the Jnanarnava Tantra, already given in Chapter XVI (Woodroffe's chapters began as separate essays, which explains the repetition). One added detail: the Antaratma is here called "of atomic dimension" (rahasya-suksma-rupaka-paramanu) and "inner bodiness" (antarangata).
The next step is to resume Sabda-srsti from Parasabda through Pasyanti, Madhyama, Vaikhari into bodies made of these Tattvas, showing the birth of the letters: the subject of Chapter XXI, after the causal Saktis of Om and the Kalas.
Key terms: Artha-srsti, jagat-saksi, lava, truti, apeksaka-nityata, anugraha, nigraha, panca-mahapreta, savarupa, Manidvipa, Panca-brahmasana-sthita, Mahat, Mulabhuta, Vaikarika, Taijasa, Bhutadi, Tanmatra, pratityasamutpada, Sadayatana, Trsna, bahya-karana, alocana, samkalpa-vikalpa, Atma-Vidya-Siva tattva.
Reflect: Follow one sound that reaches you now through the five steps: hearing, attention, "my" sound, judgement. Which step happened without your noticing?
Causal Saktis of the Pranava
Chapter XIX is Woodroffe's report of research in Kashmir, undertaken while writing The Serpent Power, to link the Saktis named in Tantric ritual with the 36 Tattvas of the Saiva-Sakta school. Its centrepiece is a set of definitions of the twelve causal Saktis of Om, from Unmana down to A-kara, summarised for him in Sanskrit by the Srinagar pandit Harabhatta Sastri from the Netra Tantra with Ksemaraja's commentary and the Tantraloka.
The Kashmir Connection
Woodroffe states a position that matters for his whole project: as the Kularnava Tantra (a leading "Bengal" Tantra) shows, the Saiva-Sakta darsana, not Sankara's Vedanta, is the original philosophical basis of the Sakta faith, though "some who call themselves Saktas seem nowadays to have forgotten" it. In Kashmir, he believes, Kula-sastra is another name for the Trika.
Being With and Without Form
Being (satta) is formless (arupa) or with form (rupa).
- In the formless, "I" and "This" are one: Siva and Sakti in the embrace of the Lord and "the Heart of the Lord". He is Para, she is Para (feminine). This is Ananda, svarupa-visranti.
- Siva experiences the universe as Parasakti, Paranada, Paravak: "the Love of the Self for the Self", "the bliss of unalloyed Love". The two are "as it were one tattva" (ekam tattvam iva), in the Ahirbudhnya-samhita's phrase.
- Supreme Sound and Supreme Speech are the Perfect Universe, the supreme Kailasa.
Creation is then the diremption by Sakti's negation of that unity, until "I" and "This" diverge fully.
Thinkable, speakable, separate
The manifestation of mantra is cosmic ideation (srsti-kalpana):
- Jnana-sakti formulates the outlines of the coming universe as the "thinkable" (mantavya).
- Through Nada (Kriya-sakti) it moves toward the "speakable" (vacya).
- Consciousness identifies with it as Bindu, marked by predominance of activity.
- Diversity (prthag-bhava) is produced by Bindu as Ma-kara in Maya-tattva.
- Sakti as U-kara creates objects (prameya) as separate existences.
- With the Tattvas complete, objectivity is fully revealed as A-kara.
This "grand system of abhasa" would need a full account of Kashmir Saivism; here only the Saktis of the root mantra (Pranava) are given. Accounts vary, but "rather because some are fuller than others than from any substantial difference in principle".
Isvara-pratyabhijna IV.1.4 again: the Lord's Jnana and Kriya, with Maya as third, appear as Sattva, Rajas, Tamas in the pasu.
The Fivefold Division
The "five rays" of Om: A, U, M, Nada-Bindu, Santa. The Prapancasara:
| State | Sakti |
|---|---|
| Jagrat (waking) | Bija |
| Svapna (dream) | Bindu |
| Susupti (deep sleep) | Nada |
| Turiya (fourth) | Sakti |
| Laya beyond | Santa |
The simplest form: one Sakti per letter plus the candrabindu.
The Sevenfold Divisions
Parasamvit is not technically a Tattva (it is tattvatita). Count it as the transcendent aspect of Siva-tattva, and count Purusa and Prakrti as two, and we get seven. Seven recurs:
- Seven Sivas: Parasiva, Sambhu and the five Mahapretas.
- Seven Saktis of Omkara in the Sarada.
- Seven Saktis, Unmani and the rest, in Kalicarana's commentary on the Sat-cakra-nirupana, the chapter of Purnananda Svami's Sritattvacintamani (The Serpent Power).
- Kundalini's three and a half coils (Kubjika Tantra: Purusa, Prakrti, Vikrti), which uncoiled and divided by the diameter give seven.
| Sarada series | Kalicarana series |
|---|---|
| 1. Paramesvara (Saccidananda) | 1. Unmani (Unmana) |
| 2. Siva | 2. Samani (Samana) |
| 3. Sakti | 3. Anji |
| 4. Nada | 4. Mahanada (Nadanta) |
| 5. Bindu (karana) | 5. Nada |
| 6. Bindu (karya), with Nada (karya) | 6. Ardhacandra |
| 7. Bija | 7. Bindu |
(The Sarada list as printed names Siva, Sakti, Nada, Bindu (karana), Bindu (karya), Nada (karya) and Bija as six Saktis, which with Paramesvara make seven; the left column pairs the last two Saktis for alignment.)
If karya-Nada, the mutual relation of Siva-form karya-Bindu and Sakti-form Bija, is taken as the counterpart of Suddhavidya with its samanadhikaranya, then the Sarada series covers all Saiva Tattvas up to Purusa-Prakrti. The same holds for Kalicarana's.
Kalicarana's glosses:
- Unmani: where all "mindness" (manastva), all ideation, ceases; no Kala nor time; "the sweet pure mouth of Rudra", Sivapada.
- Samani: "cause of all causes".
- Anji, also called Vyapika-Sakti: appears at the beginning of creation.
- Mahanada: the causal Nada, Kriya-sakti, first appearance of Nada.
- Nada develops from it, then becomes Ardhacandra, then Bindu.
The Twelve Saktis from Kashmir
From the Netra Tantra, Ksemaraja and the Tantraloka, as summarised by Harabhatta Sastri:
| No. | Sakti | Definition (paraphrased) | Tattva |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Unmana | When Paramasiva, unchanging light, moves forth by his will, that movement, inseparable from him, is Unmana | Siva |
| 2 | Samana | When Unmana displays herself as the universe from the Void to Earth (sunya to dhara), formulating the thinkable as mere thought | Sakti |
| 3 | Vyapini | Samana when she withdraws into herself all the thinkables she created (samhara-pradhana) | Sakti |
| 4 | Anjani (also called Sakti) | Samana when chiefly creative toward her thinkables; "Anjani" because coloured by the thinkable | Sakti |
| 5 | Nadanta (Mahanada) | When Sabda-brahman moves forth with great force from its Siva form, the very first sound, like the hum of a struck bell | Sadasiva |
| 6 | Nada | When Sakti fills the whole universe with Nadanta | Sadasiva, because of the equality of "I" and "This" there |
| 7 | Nirodhini | When Nada ceases universal operation and works limitedly | Sadasiva |
| 8 | Ardhacandra | When Nada is slightly operative toward the "speakable" | Isvara |
| 9 | Bindu | When Parasakti is inseparate illumination of the whole range of the speakable | Isvara |
| 10 | Ma-kara (Rudra-Devata) | When Bindu causes diversity to appear | Maya |
| 11 | U-kara | When Sakti creates objects as separate existences | Prakrti |
| 12 | A-kara | When creation of Tattvas ends and objectivity is fully revealed: Sakti as Mantri-kala, the creative process as sound | (completion) |
Reconciling seven and twelve
The five extra Saktis come from:
- Adding A, U, M;
- Counting Vyapini and Anjani separately, rather than as the nimesa and unmesa (withdrawing and opening) aspects of one Sakti;
- The sevenfold series folding Nirodhini (Nirodhika) into Nada, of which it is a more particular development.
Where the "equality of I and This" belongs. The Kashmir summary puts samanadhikaranya (equal stress on "I" and "This") in Sadasiva-tattva under Nada. In Chapter X, following the standard Pratyabhijna scheme, that equality is the mark of Suddhavidya, with Sadasiva stressing "I". Woodroffe spots the tension himself: "Apparently its original is here represented to be the function of the earlier Sadasiva-tattva." The Mantra series and the Tattva series do not line up neatly, and this edition preserves the discrepancy rather than smoothing it.
From General to Particular Motion
Nada in the fuller series stands for samanya-spanda, general vibration of the sound emanation.
Two parallel tracks.
- Ideation: from infinite consciousness to general ideas to particular ideas.
- Mantra (the objective side), the path of Saktopaya-yoga: motion begins from the unextended point, first general, then particular, at last the clearly defined particularity of speech and of the objects speech denotes.
"The rhythmic vibration of objects is the same as that of the mind which perceives them, since both are aspects of the one Sakti which thus divides itself." This is the metaphysical ground of mantra: sound repeated in the mind can tune the mind to the object.
The chapter closes with the Bhuvanesi hymn's line: "Obeisance to Thee, who art called Tattva in the character of sound."
Key terms: Trika, Kula-sastra, satta, arupa, Kailasa, srsti-kalpana, mantavya, vacya, prthag-bhava, prameya, abhasa, five rays of Om, tattvatita, Unmana, Samana, Vyapini, Anjani, Nadanta, Nirodhini, Ardhacandra, Mantri-kala, nimesa, unmesa, samanya-spanda, Saktopaya.
Reflect: The definitions say the first sound is like "the hum of a struck bell". Strike a bell or a glass and listen until you cannot tell whether the sound has ended.
The Kalas
Chapter XX explains Kala, a word "for which it is difficult to find an appropriate English rendering": a particular display of Power (vibhuti), a mode or aspect of Sakti. It lists the Kalas of each causal Sakti from the unpublished Netra Tantra, explains the four great Kalas (Nivrtti, Pratistha, Vidya, Santi) as forces inside the Tattvas, groups the Tattvas into four cosmic "Eggs", and untangles the sixteenth and seventeenth Kalas, Ama and Nirvana.
What a Kala Is
- Siva is Niskala (Nirguna) or Sakala (Saguna): without or with Kala. Siva is never without Sakti, but Sakti in her own nature is Caitanya.
- No Kalas in Unmani (Siva-tattva). With Samani in Sakti-tattva, Kalas appear: the Netra Tantra (ch. 22) gives Samani seven.
- A Devata's Sakti divides into sixteen Kalas:
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Purna-kala-murti | The Devata with full power |
| Kala-murti | One-sixteenth, or any part, of the whole |
| Amsa-murti | A fraction of a Kala-murti |
| Amsamsa-murti | A fraction of that |
Siva is partless; Sakti has parts. But literal parts exist only after Prakrti evolves; for Saktis above Prakrti, Kala means modes or aspects. Kala is also one of the Kancukas (Chapter XV).
Why so many names
Apart from the four great Kalas, the rest are hard:
- The texts disagree, through bad manuscripts, real variance, or both.
- Explanations are mostly lacking, though commentators sometimes give them.
- They are best read as variant aspects (like the avarana-devatas of worship), describing the Sakti's nature and functions for upasana, the long lists suiting "the taste of the age".
Examples of meaning: Jyotsna (moonlight), because of its all-knowing, light-like nature, white and brilliant; Indhika (kindling), because of the nature of knowledge; Rundhani, because it opposes or stays. The elaboration also follows "a psychological principle on which Tantric upasana is based", which Woodroffe does not explain.
Kalas of the Causal Saktis
From Harabhatta Sastri, citing the Sri-Netra Tantra (unpublished then):
| Sakti | No. | Kalas |
|---|---|---|
| Samani | 7 | Sarvajna, Sarvaga, Durga, Savarna, Sprhna, Dhrti, Samana |
| Anjani | 5 | Suksma, Susuksma, Amrta, Amrta-sambhava, Vyapini |
| Mahanada | 1 | Urdhvagamini |
| Nada | 4 | Indhika, Dipika, Rocika (some texts Recika), Mocika |
| Nirodhini | 5 | Rundhini, Rodhini, Raudri, Jnanabodha, Tamopaha |
| Ardhacandra | 5 | Jyotsna, Jyotsnavati, Kanti, Suprabha, Vimala |
| Bindu (Netra ch. 22, Svacchanda) | 4 | Nivrtti, Pratistha, Vidya, Santi |
| Bindu (Prapancasara, which gives the four above to Nada) | 4 | Pita, Sveta, Aruna, Asita |
The Sat-cakra-nirupana (v.38) names Nirodhini's Kalas instead as Bandhati, Bodhini, Bodha.
The guardians of the threshold
Rodhini and Rundhini ("opposing") mark the opposition met by lower experiencers, Brahma and the other Devas, trying to enter Nada. Like "the Dwellers on the threshold" of Western occult literature, they oppose all to whom they do not extend grace (anugraha) through Jnanabodha (wisdom) and Tamopaha (dispeller of darkness). So they are Sarvadeva-nirodhika: they bar entry to the higher state and bar the fall of Devas who have reached it.
Ardhacandra's Kalas are sarvajna-pada-samsthita, established in omniscience: "If one can remain in Ardhacandra-pada, all things are known, past, present and future."
Kalas of A, U and M (Netra Tantra)
| Letter / Deity | Kalas |
|---|---|
| Destructive Rudra | Tamomoha, Ksudha, Nidra, Mrtyu, Maya, Bhaya, Jada |
| Protective Visnu | Rajas, Raksa, Rati, Palya, Kamya, Buddhi, Maya, Nadi, Bhramani, Mohini, Trsna, Mati, Kriya |
| Creative Brahma | Siddhi, Rddhi, Dyuti, Laksmi, Medha, Kanti, Dhrti, Sudha |
These differ in number and names from the Prapancasara (ch. III), which Woodroffe does not repeat.
The Four Great Kalas
Nivrtti and the rest are the generalities (samanya) of the Tattvas: the Tattvas are subdivisions of these four.
| Kala | Dominant in | Role |
|---|---|---|
| Nivrtti | Prthivi (solidity) | Here "the stream of tendency is stopped and the manifesting energy turned upwards". Supplies the outer covering: per a friend learned in Saiva texts, the curving, circular motion seen in the rounded skin and flesh of all creatures |
| Pratistha | Ap to Prakrti (Tantraloka, Ahnika 10) | Supplies the basis and inner framework on which the outer universe is laid |
| Vidya | Purusa up through the five Kancukas to Maya | Limited knowledge. Linked with Vama, Jyestha, Raudri, the three motions that make the universe; in consciousness, the movements of the antahkarana toward its objects, combinations of lines in curves and circles |
| Santa (Santi) | Sadvidya to Sakti-tattva | Peace, beyond Maya, "free of the duality which is the source of sorrow" |
When evolution reaches Prthivi, Sakti becomes Kundali, coiled and at rest. Her next movement, yoga, is upward by involution, retracing the descent. The Prthivi-anu, point of solidity, is inexhaustible potential, the spiral power welling up from and coiling round the Siva-bindu.
The universe as three-dimensional construction. Vidya gives the lines and motions; Pratistha the three-dimensional framework; Nivrtti the outer solid skin, curved by the spiral Sakti. Above them, Santa is the peace of non-duality, and beyond all, Santatita.
"The Kalas are not dead forces; for the universe does not proceed from such." They are realised in direct experience as Devatas, may be used in sadhana, and are worshipped diagrammatically in yantras as modes of the one Mother.
The Four Eggs
The Kalas group the Tattvas into four "Eggs" (anda), spheroids each sharing one dominant Kala:
| Egg | Envelope | Contains |
|---|---|---|
| Brahmanda | Akasa | Prthivi-tattva, in which all others are involved |
| Prakrtyanda (Mulanda) | Prakrti | |
| Mayanda | Maya | Field of Vidya-kala: the limited dual consciousness of experiencers (Pralayakala, Sakala) below Sadvidya |
| Saktyanda | Sakti | From Sakti-tattva to Sadvidya: Samani, Vyapini, Anjani, the Nada and Bindu groups and their Kalas. Abode of the Mantramahesvaras, Mantresvaras, Mantras and Vidyesvaras |
Beyond and pervading all is Siva-tattva, toward which the Divine Sakti as Kala is utter negation (sunyatisunya), a space-giving power (avakasada): the negative pole of Siva-Sakti. It is Paramasiva, Parasamvit, the great Bhairava experience, with the universe negated.
So the 36 Tattvas are manifestations of five Kalas, into which partless Sakti differentiates "in an infinite variety of permutations":
- Santatita (Avakasada)
- Santa
- Vidya
- Pratistha
- Nivrtti
Lords of the spheres: Brahma, Visnu, Rudra from Prthivi to Maya; Isa and Anasrita Siva of the higher Tattvas; Siva of Siva-tattva, source of all Kalas but beyond them. The Vijnanakalas, below Suddhavidya, are still above Maya.
Ama and Nirvana: the Sixteenth and Seventeenth
From the Sat-cakra-nirupana with Kalicarana and Visvanatha: a Nirvana-Sakti has two Kalas, Nirvana-kala (17th) and Ama-kala (16th). Unmani is Sivapada, beyond Kala and Kalas; their source is in Sakti-tattva.
| Item | Visvanatha | Kalicarana |
|---|---|---|
| Nirvana-Sakti | Samani, the origin of all being (sarvesam yonirupini) | Unmani |
| Nirvana-kala (17th) | Vyapini-tattva, Sakti's own form, higher than the 16th | Samana-pada |
| Ama-kala (16th) | Vyapika-Sakti (citing Yoginihrdaya) | Agrees |
Woodroffe's reading: Nirvana and Ama are the supreme and creative aspects of Vyapini-tattva, as Vyapika and Anjani. Rising: Ama, then Nirvana-kala, then Nirvana-Sakti or Samani, in Sakti-tattva "wherein is bondage (pasajala)".
- Ama is the receptacle of the nectar flowing from the union of Para (Bindu, Siva) and Para (Sakti): "the rapture of creation which is known to us also".
- Nirvana-kala is the pure consciousness aspect (cinmatra-svabhava) of what, creatively, is Ama.
- Ama is both srstyunmukhi (facing creation) and urdhva-saktirupa (facing liberation). The first is the sense of "downward-turned mouth" (adhomukhi), which is the position of the lotus petals before Kundalini rises.
Kashmir variant: Sakti is called the 17th or Ama when cinmatra-svabhava, and Amrta-kala when Purusa is with the sixteen Kalas, here the five jnanendriyas, five karmendriyas, five tanmatras and manas (including ahamkara and buddhi). "This may be a difference of terminology only."
What is clear: in Sakti-tattva there are two Kalas, the supreme and the creative, whether named Nirvana and Ama or Amrtakara and Amrta-kala. The sixteenth is creative; the seventeenth is changeless Cit.
"This is my reading of texts which are not devoid of discussion." Woodroffe openly reconstructs here. His two commentators disagree about which Kala is which Sakti, and his Kashmir informants used the numbers differently again. The table above records the disagreement; the "clear" result he extracts (a creative sixteenth and a changeless seventeenth) is a sensible synthesis, not a reading every text supports.
Why "seventeenth"? The moon has sixteen digits (kalas) that wax and wane. The seventeenth is the one that neither waxes nor wanes: the changeless light behind all change. Naming pure consciousness as the "seventeenth kala" places it inside the series as its ground while keeping it outside the cycle.
Summary
- Paramasiva as Siva-tattva is sunyatisunya, without trace of objectivity: Santatita.
- Sakti gradually unveils the universe to Siva; Santa-kala arises from Sakti-tattva to Sadvidya: the Saktyanda.
- From Bindu's unfolding come the other Eggs with their three principal motions.
- The Mayanda, field of Vidya-kala, gives the limited dual consciousness.
- The Prakrti and Brahma Eggs give vehicles for the Sakala experiencer, all from Brahma downward who are not liberated.
Key terms: Kala, vibhuti, Purna-kala-murti, Amsa-murti, avarana-devata, Rundhini, Sarvadeva-nirodhika, Nivrtti, Pratistha, Vidya, Santa, Santatita, avakasada, anda, Brahmanda, Mayanda, Saktyanda, Mantramahesvara, Vijnanakala, Ama-kala, Nirvana-kala, adhomukhi.
Reflect: The Nirodhini Kalas both bar the way up and stop a fall back. What in your own practice works as both a barrier and a safeguard?
The Garland of Letters, or Varnamala
Chapter XXI gives the book its title. It follows Vak, "the Word", from the motionless Para in the Muladhara through Pasyanti, Madhyama and Vaikhari to the spoken letters. It then explains what makes a mantra awake (mantra-caitanya), why japa is like waking a sleeper, and why the naked Kali wears a garland of fifty severed heads. It ends with the 51 coils of Mahakundali, each a form of the Goddess.
Four Steps of Vak
Sruti (Rgveda I.164.45): "Four are the steps measured by Vak. The wise Brahmana knows them. Three, hidden in the cave, do not issue. The fourth is spoken by men in their speech."
The Parabindu is Sabda-brahman: on its division arises "unmanifest sound" (avyakta-rava), the Hidden Word. Its further development assumes mind and body. Sabda-brahman as appearing in bodies is Kundalini-Sakti (kundalini sabdabrahmamayi).
The Sevenfold Series in the Body
Sarada I.108 to 109: "Kundalini, pervading all as Sabda-brahman, produces Sakti; from it came Dhvani; from Dhvani, Nada; from Nada, Nirodhika; from Nirodhika, Ardhendu; from Ardhendu, Bindu; and thence Para." The cosmic sevenfold development is repeated in each body.
| Stage | Cit as... | State |
|---|---|---|
| Sakti | entered by Sattva | Paramakasavastha, supreme ether |
| Dhvani | entered by Sattva, penetrated by Rajas | Aksaravastha |
| Nada | penetrated by Tamas | Avyaktavastha, unmanifest |
| Nirodhika | with abundance of Tamas | |
| Ardhendu | with abundance of Sattva | |
| Bindu | with both combined | Ghanavastha: Kriya in full creative perfection |
Sakti in male form (pumrupini), the Lord, "moved by the strength of Iccha, illumined by Jnana", puts forth Kriya-sakti.
Sarada continues: "Then came Pasyanti, Madhyama and Vaikhari. In this order Kundali, who is Will, Knowledge and Action, who is both Light (tejorupa, cidrupa) and in the form of the gunas (gunatmika), creates the Garland of Letters."
The Four Bhavas of Sound
Para is Sabda as Parabindu, motionless (nispanda). Raghava: by shifting to another place in her, Bindu is called Pasyanti, Madhyama and Vaikhari.
| Bhava | Place | Nature | Associated with |
|---|---|---|---|
| Para | Muladhara | Subtle, mere light, not an object of hearing. Cit-Sakti "not moved to vibration" | |
| Pasyanti | Svadhisthana and up (Muladhara to navel) | Self-manifesting in the Susumna; Bindu-natured; general motion (samanya-praspanda). Called "seeing" because it is Jnana | Manas |
| Madhyama | Anahata and up (navel to heart) | A form of Nada; "a mere undifferentiated hum" (samjalpa-matra); Hiranyagarbha sound; inner and outer instruments | Buddhi; specific ideation |
| Vaikhari | Throat (heart to mouth) | A form of Bija; appears at chest, throat, teeth, nose, palate, head, from the root of tongue and lips, as all the letters; "Mother of all sounds", audible |
Tantraraja (Kadimata), cited by Raghava: by one's own will a high Nada called Para arises in the Muladhara as prana-vayu; carried up by will it appears in the Svadhisthana as Pasyanti with Manas; led up, it is Madhyama with Buddhi in the Anahata; further up, Vaikhari in the Visuddha. Thence it becomes the letters A to Ksa, through head, throat, palate, lips, teeth, tongue (root, tip, back), nose, palate-and-throat, lips-and-teeth, throat-and-lips. Their "letter-hood" (aksaratva) lies in being divided from A to Ksa.
Madhyama is "in the midst": between Pasyanti, which is seeing (iksana), and Vaikhari, which is utterance; not like the one, not yet going outward with full articulation like the other.
Why "Vaikhari"
| Source | Derivation |
|---|---|
| Raghava | From its particular hardness (kharatva) |
| Bhaskararaya (Lalita v.81) | Vi (very) + khara (hard) |
| Saubhagya-sudhodaya | Vai (certainly) + kha (ear cavity) + ra (to enter) |
| Yoga-sastras | Produced by the prana called Vikhara |
Vaikhari is Virat-sabda: the manifest letters which singly or combined are mantras. "Strictly speaking all uttered sounds are mantras", but usually mantra means the letters used in upasana and mantra-yoga.
What Mantra Is
Man (to think) + tra (saving). Woodroffe had called mantra "thought-movement vehicled by and expressed in speech" and "a power in the form of idea, clothed with sound", and found this misunderstood. He clarifies:
- The one Sakti appears as the Word (heard) and the Object (artha) it denotes. A child learns that this word means that object.
- But a mantra is the Devata. The sadhaka is taught who the Devata is, but does not yet see it: for him it exists as audible sound evoking a particular thought-movement.
- By mantra-sadhana he must realise the Devata: not only as word and mental counterpart, but as a form of that Power of which they are a faint reflection.
- Realisation comes by the co-operation of Mantra-Sakti with his own Sadhana-Sakti. "At length and by striving", the consciousness manifesting as Sadhana-Sakti unites both, and the Devata appears to the sadhaka.
- This is the Saguna or vacaka (denoting) form of Devata, which in turn leads to the vacya-Sakti (the denoted) it points to.
Two forms of the Devi.
- Sthula, Mantramayi: her gross form as mantra.
- Suksma, Jyotirmayi: her subtle form as light.
Realisation is the passage from indirect knowing, through word and its mental counterpart, to direct knowledge, which is union with the Devata whose form the mantra is.
Sabda and Artha, Subtle and Gross
Artha comes from "r", to get, know, enjoy: what is denoted, known and enjoyed.
| Sabda (Nama, name) | Artha (Rupa, form) | |
|---|---|---|
| Subtle | Matrka: the mind as cogniser (grahaka) | The vrtti, the mental impression, the mind as cognised (grahya) |
| Gross | Varna: uttered letters | The physical object |
When an object is perceived, the mind forms itself into a vrtti, the exact mental counterpart of the object. In evolution, undivided Sabda splits into subtle Sabda and subtle Artha, then gross Sabda and gross Artha: the Cosmic Mind projects its subtle artha onto the sense plane as a physical object named in speech.
Correspondences
| Body | State | Individual | Cosmic | Sound |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Causal | Dreamless sleep | Prajna | Isvara | Pasyanti (with Para, the causal aspect) |
| Subtle (linga-sarira) | Dream | Taijasa | Hiranyagarbha | Madhyama |
| Gross (sthula-sarira) | Waking | Visva | Vaisvanara (Virat) | Vaikhari |
| Turiya | Para |
| Sound | Movement |
|---|---|
| Pasyanti | Samanya-spanda: the first undefined push of vayu toward manifestation |
| Madhyama | Visesa-spanda: vayu beginning to differentiate |
| Vaikhari | Spastatara-spanda: the clear separate movements of articulate speech |
Mental artha is a samskara, an impression left on the subtle body by past experience, recalled when the Jiva re-awakes from the cosmic dreamless state (Pralaya). Its cause is the Sabda or Nama corresponding to it. Hence a double line of creation: language expressing ideas, and the objects they denote.
Inner naming is similar in all races; that may be why a thought-reader en rapport with another can read the "hidden speech" of one whose spoken language he does not know. Vaikhari differs by race, climate and vocal anatomy. But for each speaker, the uttered name is the gross expression of inner thought-movement: it evokes and expresses the idea, which is consciousness as mental operation, and that operation can be intensified until it is creative.
Mantra-Caitanya
Natural name (Chapter VIII): the sound produced by the forces that constitute a thing. So one who utters with creative force the natural name of a thing brings it into being. Ram is the bija of fire, the gross expression of the subtle sound of fire-force.
But "the mere utterance of Ram or any other mantra is nothing but a movement of the two lips." Only when the mantra is awakened (prabuddha), when there is mantra-caitanya, can the sadhaka make it work. In every case it is the creative thought ensouling the sound that works, "now in man's small magic, just as it first worked in the grand magical display of the World-Creator". Each man is Siva and can attain His power to the degree he consciously realises himself as such.
Japa as waking a sleeper
- Mantra and Devata are one; by japa the Devata's presence is invoked.
- Japa is like a man shaking a sleeper to wake him.
- The two lips are Siva and Sakti; their movement is their maithuna; the sound is Bindu.
- The Devata so produced is "as it were the son of the sadhaka": not the actionless Supreme Devata, but an emanation produced by the sadhaka for his benefit only: the Bala-Siva (Boy-Siva), made strong by the sadhaka's nurture.
The Devata as one's own consciousness grown strong. "The occultist will understand all such symbolism to mean that the Devata is a form of the consciousness of the pure sadhaka, which the latter arouses and strengthens." All mantras are in the body as forms of consciousness (vijnanarupa). Fully practised, a mantra enlivens the samskara and its artha appears to the purified mind. Woodroffe's summary: concentrate and enliven thought and will-power, by a method of language and graded practice, which Mantra-vidya supplies.
Kali's Garland
Mantra-vidya is the science of thought and its expression in language as evolved from the Logos. In this sense the universe is made of the Letters.
The fifty (or fifty-one) letters of the Sanskrit alphabet are the garland of severed heads worn by the naked Mother Kali, dark as a threatening rain-cloud, standing among bones and carrion in the burning ground on the white corpse-like body of Siva. She "slaughters": she withdraws all speech and its objects into herself at Mahapralaya. From her as Mahakundali coiled round the Siva-bindu they come.
The Coils of Mahakundali
| Coils | She is |
|---|---|
| 1 | Bindu |
| 2 | Prakrti-Purusa |
| 3 | The three Saktis (Iccha, Jnana, Kriya) and three gunas |
| 3 1/2 | Actually creative (srstyunmukhi), with Vikrti |
| 4 to 51 | The Devatas below, per the Sakti-samgama Tantra (Utpatti-khanda, Ullasa 1) |
Each coil is a Matrka, a subtle letter, and gives the number of kutas (divisions) in that Devata's mantra.
Reading the Tantra's list from coil 4, with the two anchors the text supplies (Dasamahavidya = 10, Gayatri = 24):
| Coil | Devata | Coil | Devata | Coil | Devata |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4 | Ekajata | 11 | Smasana-kalika | 18 | Mahamadhumati |
| 5 | Ugratara | 12 | Candabhairavi | 19 | Mahapadmavati |
| 6 | Siddhakali | 13 | Kamatara | 20 | Rama |
| 7 | Kalasundari | 14 | Vasikarana-kalika | 21 | Kamasundari |
| 8 | Bhuvanesvari | 15 | Pancadasi | 22 | Daksina-kalika |
| 9 | Candikesvari | 16 | Sodasi | 23 | Vidyesi |
| 10 | Dasamahavidya | 17 | Chinnamasta | 24 | Gayatri |
Then, toward 51: Pancami, Sasthi, Maharatnesvari, Mulasanjivani, Paramakala, Mahanilasarasvati, Vasudhara, Trailokyamohini, Trailokyavijaya, Mahakamatarini, Aghora, Samitamohini, Bagala, Arundhati, Annapurna, Nakuli, Trikantaki, Rajesvari, Trailokyakarsini, Rajarajesvari, Kukkuti, Siddhavidya, Mrtyuharini, Mahabhagavati, Vasavi, Phetkari, Mahasrimatrsundari, and Srimatrkotpatti-sundari (51).
The count does not close. Starting at coil 4, the two anchors fit neatly (Pancadasi at 15 and Sodasi at 16 match the fifteen- and sixteen-syllable mantras of those names, which supports the reading). But after Gayatri the printed list has 28 names for the 27 coils from 25 to 51. Either two names belong to one Devata, or a name has been added in transmission. This edition gives the full list as printed and does not guess which to drop.
Mahakundali coiled round the Siva-bindu, like a mathematical line without magnitude, makes one point with it. At creation she uncoils and creates the universe as letters and their objects; then rests again as Kundali in the Muladhara of every creature, issuing as Pasyanti, Madhyama, Vaikhari. Man's body is the microcosm (ksudra-brahmanda), holding all that is in the macrocosm (maha-brahmanda).
Sound and Its Absorption
Yoginihrdaya I.36: when Sakti first "sees", she is Parama-kala in Mother form (Ambika), both supreme Peace (Parama Santa) and supreme Speech (Paravak).
| Bhava | Sakti | Character |
|---|---|---|
| Pasyanti | Vama | Iccha about to display the universe in seed |
| Madhyama | Jyestha | Jnana; first assumption of form as Matrka; particular motion |
| Vaikhari | (Raudri) | Kriya; form of the gross universe |
The subtle letters (Matrka) are the vasanas; the gross letters are words and their objects. They form the Mother's Garland, issuing from her as Kundali and absorbed by her in the yoga that bears her name.
- Yoga-kundali Upanisad: "That Vak which sprouts in Para gives forth leaves in Pasyanti, buds in Madhyama, and blossoms in Vaikhari. By reversing the order, sound is absorbed. Whoever realises the great Lord of Vak... is unaffected by any word."
- Hatha-yoga-pradipika IV.101 to 102: "Whatever is heard in the form of sound is Sakti. The absorbed state of the Tattvas is that in which no sound exists. So long as there is the notion of ether, so long is sound heard. The soundless is called Parabrahman or Paramatma."
Sabda-brahman is thus Brahman as cause of manifest Sabdartha: the ideating, kinetic aspect of the ether of consciousness (cidakasa), the Saguna Brahman of worship, Cit-Sakti vehicled by undifferentiated Maya-Sakti. The chapter ends with the Candi: "Reverence to Her who is eternally Raudri, Gauri, Dhatri... to Her who is the Consciousness in all beings, reverence and again reverence."
Key terms: Vak, avyakta-rava, Dhvani, Para, Pasyanti, Madhyama, Vaikhari, samjalpa, aksaratva, Virat-sabda, vacaka, vacya, Mantramayi, Jyotirmayi, Matrka, Varna, vrtti, grahaka, grahya, samanya-spanda, visesa-spanda, mantra-caitanya, prabuddha, Bala-Siva, vijnanarupa, Mahakundali, kuta, ksudra-brahmanda.
Reflect: Say a short word aloud, then whisper it, then only think it, then hold only the impulse before the thought. Can you feel the four steps of Vak in reverse?
Om
Chapter XXII is a short essay on the most compressed mantra in India. Woodroffe reads Om as a whole philosophy in one syllable. Nada and Bindu above it stand for the unmanifest "fourth" state, and A, U and M for Brahma, Visnu and Rudra, the three functions of one living substance that are creating, maintaining and dissolving all the time. Along the way he defends the Mother image for the First Cause and the doctrine of one unbroken life-continuity.
A Philosophy in a Syllable
- The ancients had "an aptitude, much to be appreciated in these often verbose days, of saying a great deal in a few words". Om is the instance.
- It holds an Eastern philosophy "gaining increased support from Western science". The two will be reconciled once science drops what a friend called its "habit blinkers", giving "a science which is religious, and a religion which is scientific".
| Element | Meaning |
|---|---|
| A + U | Two vowels that coalesce into O |
| M | Third letter |
| Candrabindu above | Nada (crescent) and Bindu (dot) |
| Nada | Mantra name for the first going forth of Power |
| Bindu | That Power gathered in massive strength (ghanibhuta) to create |
| A, U, M | The Trinity of Energies into which creating Bindu differentiates |
Nada and Bindu are aspects of the Mother (Mahasakti), called Magna Mater in the Near East and Megale Dunamis by the Gnostics. She is both efficient and material cause; the universe is her body. Nada-Bindu is the unmanifest "fourth" (Turiya), just before the world appears in its three conditions of dreamless sleep, dream and waking.
Why "Mother"
- "Man always anthropomorphises." The West says Father. The Saktas say Mother, more aptly, because this Power conceives in its womb, which is Consciousness, gives birth to and nourishes the universe.
- The first mantra a child learns is Ma; "Mother" is often the last word of the dying. Reverence to one's own mother is reverence to the Mother of all.
- In the world, only the Mother aspect of Brahman is fully manifest. What she is in herself (svarupa) is unknown to mind and senses.
- Yoginihrdaya Tantra: "What man knows the heart of a woman? Only Siva knows the heart of Yogini." This is the Cosmic Heart, whose systole and diastole are the going forth and return of millions of worlds: pravrtti and nivrtti in Brahmanism, and Yang and Yin in Taoism (which Woodroffe calls "perhaps a Chinese adaptation" of the Upanisads).
Person and beyond person
| Aspect | Description |
|---|---|
| In itself | Sat, Cit, Ananda (as related to human knowledge) |
| Adya Sakti | Inconceivably beyond manifest personality, which is limited experience |
| Vyasti | Ever personalising as every individual thing |
| Samasti | A Person as the aggregate of all personalities; while infinite, it contains all human and other experience |
Two claims to hold lightly. First, the suggestion that Taoism is "perhaps a Chinese adaptation" of the Upanisads has no historical support, and Woodroffe himself offers it only as a "perhaps". Yin and yang come out of an independent Chinese cosmology. Second, the promise that Western science is moving toward this philosophy rests on the early twentieth-century physics he cites in Chapter XVII. The parallel is a real one at the level of method and imagery, but it is not a confirmation.
One Unbroken Life
The Power is beyond mind, in "that darkness (as man thinks it to be) which is the body of Mahakali", but its manifestations are seen. From them it is inferred as the Radical Living Potential, the thread (sutratma) of the whole series of beings, which form one unbroken living continuity, the principle on which Indian monism rests.
- Nothing has an absolute beginning or end; all is transformed. Birth and death are modes of transformation.
- Each existence is a knot tied in an infinite rope: tied at birth, untied at death.
- Something does not come from nothing, and something never becomes nothing.
- Universes come and go, under a transformation governing all life "from a blade of grass to Brahma Himself".
- The infinite appears limited and discontinuous because of the limits of the senses. Consciousness never holds the whole Fact, only the section given pragmatic attention, which seems localised and successive.
- Ether is more continuous than matter, "said to be more than a thousand times denser than gross ponderable matter". The visible earth is "a microscopic point" evolved by Sakti within the all-pervading Divine Substance.
- Since the Power is itself living and creative, none of its manifestations are "dead". "The search for the origin of life is futile, since life is eternal and had no beginning." All things are part of the one Mother who is Life itself.
Ether "a thousand times denser" than matter comes from the ether physics of the late nineteenth century (Oliver Lodge and others), which relativity made unnecessary. The book reports it as "said to be", and this edition keeps that hedge. The metaphysical point, that the subtle is more continuous than the gross, does not depend on that physics.
A, U, M: Three Functions
The widest generalisation of the Power's working shows three movements:
| Letter | Deva | Function | Scientific gloss (Woodroffe) |
|---|---|---|---|
| A | Brahma | Creative upbuilding | Anabolism; "ever rejuvenescent molecular activity" rescuing organised life from the processes that consume its forms |
| U | Visnu | Holding the two in equilibrium | Stabilising matter; across space and time, a theological statement of the Conservation of Energy |
| M | Rudra | Destructive disintegration | Catabolism; chemical breakdown toward dissolution into the Mahabhutas or into Prakrti |
Nadabindu differentiates into Iccha, Jnana and Kriya, which are "Sun, Moon and Fire" (Chapter XXV), and this self-unfolding Power works in matter in the threefold way above.
- "These are not 'Gods.' There is only one God." They are Devas, "Shining ones", aspects of the one Power whose feet even Brahma, Visnu and Rudra worship.
- They are "scientific concepts deified, and rightly so", standing for the three functions of living Substance.
- All three operate all the time. It is wrong to think Brahma created the world millions of years ago and then stopped, or that Rudra has not yet had his turn.
- Things have only relative stability, so Rudra's power wins at the end. Matter is a relatively stable form of Energy: it comes from Supreme Will and merges back into it at its end state. Visnu holds it together meanwhile.
The Trimurti as a present-tense process. Woodroffe takes the three gods out of mythic time and puts them into every cell: building, holding and breaking down at once. In this reading, meditating on Om is meditating on what is happening in the body right now.
Om as Pratika
Om is the pratika (representative) of:
- The Radical Living Potential of the universe.
- The Trinity of Energies by which it actualises itself.
- The five forms of "matter" that result: ethereal (akasa), aerial (vayu), fiery (agni), liquid (ap), solid (prthivi). Woodroffe notes that ether is not ponderable matter.
Through worship of and meditation on this pratika, with all its implications, man (according to Advaita Vedanta) realises himself as the one living Sakti who is the Mother of all.
Key terms: Om, Candrabindu, Nada, Bindu, ghanibhuta, Mahasakti, Magna Mater, Turiya, svarupa, pravrtti, nivrtti, vyasti, samasti, Adya Sakti, sutratma, Mahakali, Trimurti, pratika.
Reflect: Somewhere in you, building, holding and breaking down are all going on right now. Which one do you tend to resist, and why?
The Necklace of Kali
Chapter XXIII takes one detail of the most misunderstood image in Hindu art, the garland of severed heads on Kali, and uses it to show how a symbol should be read. It is the Garland of Letters (Varnamala): the universe of name and form, which the Mother withdraws into herself at dissolution. Before that, Woodroffe makes a general case for reading symbols fairly across cultures.
One Wisdom, Many Symbols
- The world has never been without the Wisdom (the Mula Veda) or its teachers. How much is given, and in what symbols, varies with the capacity of those receiving it and with the worshipper's own progress.
- That variety has led to "the superficial view that difference in beliefs negatives the existence of any commonly established Truth". On a deeper view, one Wisdom is revealed more or less fully through symbols fitted to particular racial temperaments.
Disgust works both ways
| Observer | Recoils from |
|---|---|
| The Western mind | Hindu symbols that seem "repulsive and absurd", above all the terrible forms of the Goddess |
| The Hindu | Western symbols "in terms of blood and death", such as the "Slain Lamb" |
| Catholics themselves, earlier | The Sacred Heart imagery, which at first met opposition in terms "which would today be counted as shocking irreverence" |
"All is not smiling in this world." India has given form to "the undoubted Terrors which exist in and around us". Such differences last until people find the essential truths and become indifferent to how they are presented.
What a symbol meant, and what it means now
| Symbol | Origin | Present meaning |
|---|---|---|
| The Maypole | Like similar forms, originally the great Linga | Peasants who danced round it knew nothing of this |
| The bishop's mitre | Said to be the fish-head of ancient Near Eastern hierophants | "It has no such associations now" |
The question is what an image means now to the initiate, and has meant for centuries.
Kali in the Burning Ground
- Kali devours Kala (Time) and resumes her own dark formlessness.
- Mahanirvana Tantra IV.30 to 34: Mahakala, the Dissolver, is her form. Because Time devours all, he is Mahakala; because she devours Mahakala himself, she is the Supreme Primordial Kalika, the Adya Kali. After dissolution she remains "One, Ineffable, and Inconceivable"; formless though in form, beginningless though the beginning of all, Creatrix, Protectress and Destructress.
From her, one with Siva in the soundless state (asabda), come all letters and words (sabda) and the world of objects (artha); into her as Kali they dissolve.
| Feature | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Cremation ground (smasana) | She withdraws all things at dissolution. Here the Vira sadhaka worships at dead of night. Only one who has abandoned worldly desire worships without fear: on the burning ground all worldly desires are burnt away |
| Dark, like a rain-cloud | Beyond mind and speech, she reduces all to a worldly "nothingness" which, as the Void (sunya) of all we know, is the All (purna): Light and Peace |
| Naked (digambari, clothed in space) | The Great Power is unlimited, and in herself beyond Maya (mayatita), the very power by which she veils herself and creates |
| Standing on the white corpse-like (savarupa) Siva | He is white as Prakasa, the illuminating transcendent aspect; inert as the changeless aspect. She is the apparently changing aspect. In truth they are one: "the One who is changelessness in, and exists as, change" |
Woodroffe names the other symbols, then sets them aside to deal only with the garland:
- Loosened hair
- Lolling tongue
- Thin stream of blood at the corners of the mouth
- Position of her feet
- Apron of dead men's hands round her waist
- Her implements
Theories of the Garland
| Reading | Content |
|---|---|
| Historical conjecture | Kali was the goddess of the dark-skinned Vindhya hill people, taken into Brahmanical worship. One writer thought her a deified princess who fought the incoming white Aryans, pointing to the fact that the severed heads are those of white men |
| Western psychological | An objectification of the Indian mind, deifying the Power of Death |
| Eastern reply | She is a samketa (symbol), the effect of the impress of a Spiritual Power on the Indian mind |
| Esoteric | The heads of demons she has conquered as the power of righteousness |
| Inner (Tantra-sastra) | The Garland of Letters: the fifty (or fifty-one) letters of the Sanskrit alphabet |
The Buddhist Demchog Tantra gives the same reading of the garland worn by the great Heruka (see Woodroffe's Sri Cakra Sambhara).
Woodroffe declines to rule on the historical and psychological theories ("I do not pause to consider these matters here"). This edition leaves them in the same state. The racialised "white Aryan" reading reflects the invasion debates of his own time and is not supported by present scholarship. His actual argument does not rest on any origin story. It rests on the claim that meaning is set by present use within a living tradition, which is the Maypole point applied to Kali.
The Letters as the Universe
The letters are nama-rupa: Sabda and its Artha. She "slaughters", that is, withdraws both into her undivided consciousness at the great dissolution. She wears the letters she bore as Creatrix, and which, as Dissolving Power, she takes back. The movements of her projection are shown by the letters on the petals of the inner lotuses.
| Cosmic state | Sabda | Content |
|---|---|---|
| Dreamless sleep (susupti) | Para-sabda, Para-Vak, the Logos | Immediate cause of the split into "I" and "This" |
| Awakening, "seeing" | Pasyanti | Forms arise in the Creative Mind as samskaras carried over from previous worlds |
| Dream (svapna) | Madhyama, "Inner Naming", "Hidden Speech" | Mind as cogniser (Sabda) and cognised (subtle Artha). The Matrkas ("Little Mothers") answer to letters. The object is still within the self |
| Waking (jagrat) | Vaikhari | Images projected as gross objects (sthula artha); uttered letters, syllables, sentences: Nama and Rupa |
Uttered speech varies with individual and racial character, country and climate. Woodroffe recalls the tradition of a universal speech before the Tower of Babel.
When Kali withdraws the names and forms, the dualism that is creation vanishes. There is neither "I" (aham) nor "This" (idam), only the non-dual Perfect Experience that Kali in her own nature is.
The Humble Worshipper
Woodroffe anticipates the objection: does every Hindu think such things on seeing Kali? "Of course not," any more than an Italian peasant follows the Catholic mystics or the doctors of theology. But a Westerner who sets out to explain Indian symbolism must, in fairness, understand what it means to the high as well as the humble worshipper.
Vak, Artha and the six paths.
- Vak is Prakasa, the illuminating consciousness. It takes the form of Varna (letters), Pada (syllables) and Mantra.
- Artha is Vimarsa, its object. It takes the form of Kala, Tattva and Bhuvana.
Together these are the six Adhvas (Chapter XXVII), and the world is "made of six paths" (sadadhvatmaka). The letters that make up syllables and mantras hang round Kali's neck, and in her they dissolve in the fiery ending of the worlds.
Key terms: Mula Veda, samketa, Kala, Mahakala, Adya Kali, asabda, smasana, Vira, digambari, mayatita, savarupa, Prakasa, Varnamala, Heruka, nama-rupa, Para-Vak, Matrka, aham, idam, Vimarsa, sadadhvatmaka.
Reflect: Think of a symbol from your own tradition that would shock an outsider. What would they need to know to see what you see?
Dhvani
Chapter XXIV is the book's most philosophical treatment of sound. It separates unlettered sound (Dhvani) from lettered sound (Varna), tests and rejects three tempting ways of drawing that line, and then sets the Indian doctrine of eternal letters against Western abstractionism. In that doctrine, the uttered sound only manifests a Varna that always exists. It ends by noting that in the Tantras Dhvani also names a causal Sakti high in the sevenfold series.
Produced and Unproduced Sound
| Kind | Description |
|---|---|
| Produced | Effect of contact of one thing with another: hand and drum, or vocal organs and air |
| Unproduced (Anahata) | Causal stress itself, uncreated, self-produced, "not caused by striking". This Brahman-movement is heard in the heart, which it made and causes to pulse |
The Anahata-sabda shows itself in two forms:
- Dhvanyatmaka-sabda: unlettered sound, Dhvani.
- Varnatmaka-sabda: lettered sound, Varna.
Bhasapariccheda 164 to 165: Sabda is of two kinds, Dhvani and Varna. Dhvani is the sound of a drum (mrdanga) and the like. Varnas, born of contact with the throat, are Ka, Kha and the other letters. Drums, thunder, laughing and crying show no particular letter (varnavisesanabhivyanjaka).
Three Wrong Criteria
Both kinds arise from clashing (abhighata) of created things, so that is not the difference. Woodroffe tests three other candidates:
| Proposed criterion | Why it fails |
|---|---|
| 1. Use of the vocal organ | Laughing, crying and animal cries use the throat but give no letters. So Dhvanis can be vocal |
| 2. Vocal organ as sine qua non of Varna | Articulate sound from the telephone or gramophone has no vocal organ as its immediate cause (only perhaps a remote one) |
| 3. Varnas have meaning, Dhvanis do not | True "in a general sense", but not always. To Isvara every Dhvani has a meaning; laughter or crying tells us someone is happy or in trouble; animal cries, a bell, bugle or drum, the midday gun carry meaning. Conversely, M-A-N spells "man" but M-N-A does not, and N-A-M "may have some sort of meaning" |
On combinations: per the Vyasa-bhasya on the Yoga Sutra, each Varna can express every meaning, but a special combination is needed for a special meaning. Electricity is latent in all things, but only zinc, copper and sulphuric acid in a cell make it flow; wood, water and oil will not. In an unsuitable combination of letters, their Saktis check one another.
The real distinction: sounds that manifest as letters, and sounds that do not. Varnas are usually throat-produced (kantha-samyoga-janmanah) but not invariably. Both are momentary (ksanika).
The Problem of Recognition
Say "Ka" a hundred times. Each is a different sound; another person's "Ka" differs again in pitch, softness, harshness. Yet we recognise one Varna throughout: "It is the same Ka that I utter now and uttered a moment ago; the same Ka that you and I have uttered." This is recognition (pratyabhijna).
| Western psychology | Indian theory (Vedanta) | |
|---|---|---|
| Process | Comparison, abstraction, assimilation: differences are "thought away", leaving a generic sound, as with the notion "Man" or "Book" | The letters have imperishable, invariable (nitya) forms |
| What is real | The variations are the actual phenomena; the type is a mental construction | The Varna-sabdas are more real and more actual than the variations |
| A mind that cannot abstract | Hears only different sounds | |
| Analogy | Like the imperishable paramanus of matter | |
| Nearest Western view | Plato's ideal archetypes and their sensible variations |
How "eternal" is eternal
- Nitya here means "imperishable as long as the cosmic order lasts". Vedanta-paribhasa: "In the interval there is no production or destruction of letters."
- The interval (madhye) is the Kalpa, a hundred years of Brahma, from creation to dissolution. At Laya the letters enter a germinal state as seeds of potency.
- They are like a jar in a dark room (andhakarastha-ghatanupalambhavat): always there, not always manifest as acoustic phenomena.
- To be heard they need a manifestor (abhivyanjaka), and that vehicle is Dhvani.
- The Varna-sabdas are always going on, nitya and anahata (continuous and uninterrupted), but usually avyakta to the gross senses. Om is ever sounding, audible only in certain stages of sadhana or in a quiet place, especially at night when sound-waves interfere less.
The jar in the dark. Picture Varna as the jar and Dhvani as the lamp. Lighting the lamp does not make the jar; putting it out does not destroy it. Pitch, timbre, loudness and accent belong to the lamp. Identity belongs to the jar. This is why you can recognise your own "Ka" in another person's very different voice.
Transferred Impermanence
Dhvani, as acoustic manifestation of a nitya Sabda, depends on place, time and circumstance: it is anitya (impermanent) and vikari (variable). We transfer by association these traits from the vehicle to the letter, and say "Ka is now produced and is no more". What comes and goes is the Dhvani, not the Varna-sabda.
Vedanta-paribhasa (ch. IV) gives two verdicts on the perception "Ga is produced":
- Not valid, because it conflicts with the recognition (pratyabhijna) that this Ga is identical with every Ga heard before.
- Or valid, if we ascribe production to the letter (which is manifested, not produced) on account of the Dhvani that is produced, using for the manifested a characteristic that belongs to the manifestor.
Samkara on Dhvani
Sariraka-bhasya I.3.28: Dhvani is what a listener at a distance hears without making out the separate letters. For a listener close by, it colours the letters with its own high or low pitch and so on.
- Udatta, Anudatta and other accent distinctions depend on Dhvani, not on the letters, which are recognised as the same whenever pronounced.
- A man shouting from far off: we hear pitch and modulation, not words. Close up: words plus pitch, sweetness and so on. In both cases pitch and so on are the Dhvani.
So Dhvanis are:
- Gross embodiments (anitya, vikari) of nitya, avikari Varna-sabdas.
- Other gross sounds, natural (a storm) or made (laughter, music), that do not seem to embody Varnas.
Grammarians who hold to Sphota treat Dhvani as its manifestor. Samkara contests the need to assume Sphota (Chapter VII).
Abstraction against archetype is still an open question. Woodroffe frames the debate as Western empiricism versus Indian realism about types. Modern phonology arguably sits between them: a phoneme is a category defined by contrast within a language system. It is neither a mere average of tokens nor an eternal sound. The Indian thesis that letters persist through a Kalpa as "seeds of potency" is a metaphysical claim that no acoustic test can settle. Woodroffe presents it as the Vedanta view and does not try to prove it.
Dhvani as Causal Sakti
In the Tantras Dhvani has a different sense: a form of causal Sabda. People speak of "the sweet murmuring Dhvani of Kundalini", Creatrix of all Sabdas and Arthas. In Sarada-tilaka I.108 to 109 (Chapter XXI), Dhvani comes second, after Sakti, in the series Sakti, Dhvani, Nada, Nirodhika, Ardhendu, Bindu, Para, so it is a subtle causal principle, not a gross sound.
| Causal Sakti | Condition of Cit | State |
|---|---|---|
| Sakti | Sattva-predominant (sattvika) | Paramakasavastha |
| Dhvani | Sattvika with a trace of Rajas (rajo'nuviddha) | Aksaravastha |
| Nada | With a trace of Tamas (tamo'nuviddha) | Avyaktavastha |
Raghava (quoted in the Vacaspatya): Kundalini, in heart, throat and palate, passing through head, nose and teeth, issuing from the root of the tongue and the lips, becomes audible Vaikhari, "invested with the Varnas, Mother of all varieties of Sabda". The gross Vaikhari manifests from Madhyama through the Dhvani of vocal organs and air.
Whether Dhvani means a causal Sabda or a gross manifestation depends on the context.
Key terms: Anahata, abhighata, Dhvanyatmaka, Varnatmaka, ksanika, pratyabhijna, nitya, anitya, vikari, abhivyanjaka, Kalpa, avyakta, vyakta, Udatta, Anudatta, Sphota, Paramakasavastha, Aksaravastha, Avyaktavastha.
Reflect: When you recognise a friend's voice on a bad phone line, what exactly is staying the same? Is it closer to the jar or the lamp?
Sun, Moon and Fire
Chapter XXV decodes three code words. "Sun", "Moon" and "Fire" do not mean the heavenly bodies. They are Mantra-sastra terms for the creative Trinity, the three Bindus that together form Kamakala. Drawing on the Kamakala-vilasa, Woodroffe explains the mirror image of Siva seeing himself in Sakti, the letters A and Ha that make Aham ("I"), and the body of Mahatripurasundari. He closes with the Sricakra and a rebuttal of a missionary's reading of it.
Vimarsa and the Mirror
- In Brahman's own nature Vimarsa lies merged (antarlina-vimarsa). Sruti: first there was One without a second; it turned toward creation (srsti-mukha) with "May I be many".
- Vimarsa is what is experienced as "This" (idam), and idam is the universe: the world as object of experience (prapanca-paramarsa). Vimarsa-Sakti is the power that produces the universe and exists as it.
- Before the world, it was in Brahman as Brahma-Sakti. Then there was only the Light beyond sun, moon and stars, called in the Agama the imperishable Supreme Word (anapayini Para-Vak).
- She is our Supreme Lady (Para-bhattarika) Mahatripurasundari. All 36 Tattvas, from Siva to Ksiti, are in her. She is in the form of all worlds (sarva-prapancatmika) and transcends them (taduttirna), and she is beyond the three Saktis that are Sun, Moon and Fire.
- Siva cannot create without Sakti, nor Sakti without Siva. As between moon and moonbeam, there is no difference.
The king and the mirror
Kamakala-vilasa: the svarupa of Siva is "I" (aham). Vimarsa is the experience of I-ness, and the primordial Vimarsa-Sakti is the pure mirror (nirmaladarsa) that shows it.
A handsome king looks into a mirror and knows, "I am he who is thus reflected." In the same way, the Supreme Lord, looking at his own Power within himself, knows himself as "I am all" (purno'ham), the perfect "I".
| Element | Is |
|---|---|
| The king | Siva, Prakasa (illumination); Jnana-Sakti |
| The mirror | Vimarsa, "composed of a mass of His rays"; Kriya-Sakti; visphurana-sakti, impulse ripening into action |
| The rays reflected back onto the ground of consciousness | Mahabindu |
| The recognition | Paramesvara as purno'ham |
A (Siva) + Ha (Sakti) = Aham, "I". The supreme "I" is Siva and Sakti massed together, the ahambhava that arises when Siva gazes on his own luminous Sakti. So in the notion of "I", illumination rests in itself (atma-visranti). Svetasvatara Upanisad IV.1: "That which is letterless (avarna) generates many letters (varna)." This "I" is cinmaya, made of consciousness.
The Three Bindus
| Bindu | Colour | Code name | Aspect | Body of the Devi |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Aham | White (sita) | "Moon" | Siva | One breast |
| Idam | Red (sona) | "Fire" | Sakti | The other breast |
| Their union | Mixed (misra) | "Sun" | Kamesvara with Kamesvari | Her face (the Bindu above) |
| Kala below (half of Ha) | Her womb (yoni) |
- The Sun is Kama; Moon and Fire are Kala. The three Bindus together are Kamakala.
- Kama is "that which is desired (kamyate)" by great yogis who know the Paramartha as their self.
- Mahatripurasundari, inseparable from Kamesvara, is the collectivity of the Bindus and Kamakala.
- The mixed Bindu becomes creative and causes Vak and Artha. From it issues Nada-Sakti in seed form, the source of all sound, which divides into all letters and words and into all subtle elements and objects. Speech and objects have one origin.
A letter or word is Brahman as that word, just as its object is Brahman as that object.
Mantra and Devata Are One
The two Bindus, Prakasa and Vimarsa, are inseparable; hence Siva and Sakti are one Tattva. In the same way:
| Indicator | Indicated |
|---|---|
| Vidya or Mantra, the vedaka, vacaka | The Devata, the vedya, vacya |
Vak and Artha are always united. In sadhana this becomes experience: the Devata, the artha of the mantra, appears and leads the sadhaka on to the Vacya-Sakti, the Brahma-svarupa (as in Chapter XXI).
Natanananda-natha, commenting on Punyananda's Kamakala-vilasa (vv. 6 to 7): great yogis worship Mahatripurasundari, who is Kamakala. "Pura" here means Bindu: the three (tri) are Sun, Moon and Fire, which are illumination and bliss. Within her is the Power (virya), the endless mass of letters (anantaksara-rasi) and great mantras.
The Sricakra
In worship of the Sricakra-yantra (illustrated in Woodroffe's edition of the Kamakala-vilasa):
- The gross Vaikhari letters are in the outer mandalas.
- The worshipper passes through subtler forms of Sabda.
- He reaches Sabda-brahman and the Sunya.
Vijnana-bhattaraka, cited by Natanananda: "By passing through the different mandalas where the gross letters are, and rising up to Ardhendu, Bindu, Nadanta and to the Sunya in the Bindurupa-cakra, one becomes Siva."
The missionary's reading. Woodroffe reports that a missionary author described this as "worship of the pudendum muliebre". His reply: the yantra is made of intersecting triangles, some upright and some inverted, and only the inverted ones symbolise the Yoni. Even that is "not the Yoni of any woman" but the womb of the Divine Mother of the world, the seat of the secret play of Siva and Sakti as Moon, Fire and Sun, from which Nama (Sabda) and Rupa (Artha) proceed. Note that Woodroffe himself has just mapped the Devi's face, breasts and womb onto the three Bindus and the Kala. So the bodily imagery is real and intended. The dispute is over its referent. It is cosmic and generative, not genital worship in the missionary's sense.
Self-recognition as the first act of creation. In this chapter the universe starts as an act of self-knowing, before any making. Consciousness sees itself in its own power and says "I am all". "I" (Aham) is spelled with the first and last letters, A and Ha, so it contains the whole alphabet, and with it the whole world of names and forms.
Key terms: Vimarsa, antarlina-vimarsa, idam, prapanca-paramarsa, Para-Vak, Mahatripurasundari, sarva-prapancatmika, taduttirna, Prakasa, purno'ham, Mahabindu, ahambhava, atma-visranti, sita, sona, misra, Kamakala, Kamesvara, Kamesvari, vacaka, vacya, Sricakra, Nadanta, Sunya.
Reflect: The king knows himself through the mirror. What in your life works as the mirror in which you recognise yourself?
Bija-Mantra
Chapter XXVI defends the most ridiculed part of Tantra: the "seed" syllables such as Hrim, Srim, Krim and Hum, which mean nothing in ordinary language. Woodroffe traces them to the first general vibration of Prakrti (Om) and the particular vibrations that follow. He explains why a bija ends in the nasal Candrabindu, how a guru picks letters by the disciple's excess or lack of a Bhuta, and then gives the letter-by-letter meanings of twelve bijas from the Varada Tantra.
Action Is Sound
Action implies movement (spanda), and movement is, to a perceiving subject, sound, whether or not it is heard:
- Someone with sharper natural hearing hears what others miss.
- Some sound is heard only with a scientific instrument.
- Some sound is apprehended only by the yogic mind.
| Phase of Prakrti | Sound |
|---|---|
| Equilibrium (samyavastha) | No sound, since there is no movement of the objective world |
| First disturbance (vaisamyavastha) | A general movement (samanya-spanda) through the whole mass: the Pranava-dhvani, the Om sound |
| Continuing | Particular movements (visesa-spanda) and sounds |
The spoken Om is only "the approximate representation or gross utterance to gross ear" of the subtle sound heard in yoga, the first movement, which is continually taking place. At every moment, creative movement is present.
The shaken vessel (from "The World's Eternal Religion"). Shake a vessel of water. First the whole mass moves together. Then particular movements break out everywhere, this way and that. In the same way, the balanced gunas first vibrate evenly, and then they act on one another and set up diverse vibrations and diverse sounds.
- The general motion is Om, the Maha-bija, source of all other and compound sounds.
- The particular motions are the other bijas, the letters of the alphabet.
Spoken Om and the bijas are articulate equivalents of the inarticulate primal Dhvani. They become articulate only at the last of the four stages:
| Stage | Movement |
|---|---|
| Para | Rest passing into movement |
| Pasyanti | General movement |
| Madhyama | Special movement, subtle, heard by the subtle ear |
| Vaikhari (spastatara-spanda) | Special movement fully articulated, heard by the gross ear |
Pranava is the sound-equivalent of Brahman; the bijas are the saguna forms of the Devas and Devis. Om is said to be A, U, M, but that does not mean the primordial Dhvani was those letters. The letters are its product: gross Om is the samdhi (combination) of them.
The "Clearing of the Throat"
A European Sanskritist told a friend of Woodroffe's that Om before a mantra is simply "the clearing of the throat". Woodroffe's replies:
- Om also follows a mantra: why clear the throat afterward?
- Om has nothing to do with the throat. Indian belief holds it to be a sound actually heard by yogis.
- Anyone who heard it recited would feel the explanation is shallow: Om is sounded "as from the navel" with a deep, rolling, continuous sound, ending high in the nostrils where the Candrabindu sounds.
- What of Am, Em and the other bijas? Did "the unpleasant and unmannerly act of clearing the throat" undergo "an unaccountably varied development"?
"Be the doctrine true or false, it is more profound than that."
Anatomy of a Bija
- Mantras are named by number of syllables. Strictly, a bija is a single-letter mantra, such as Kam: K + Candrabindu, which ends all mantras.
- Even here there is a second letter, because a vowel cannot be sounded without end and must be stopped by a consonant. Panini: the consonant's function is to interrupt a vowel. But a consonant cannot be sounded without a vowel, so the vowel is the consonant's Sakti.
- The ending is M as nasal breathing (Candrabindu = Nada and Bindu), sounded high in the bridge of the nose; it never reaches the lips.
Bhutas and the guru's choice
| Fact | Consequence |
|---|---|
| In every other letter one of the five Bhutas (akasa, vayu, agni, ap, prthivi) predominates | The guru examines the disciple for excess or lack of a Bhuta and chooses letters accordingly |
| Excess of a Bhuta | Its letter is said on the out-breath |
| Deficiency | Said on the in-breath |
| In M the Bhutas are in equipoise | M ends the bija |
Popularly, short "unetymological" vocables of several letters, such as Hrim, Srim, Krim, Hum, Aim, Phat, are also called bijas. Hrim = H + R + I + Candrabindu.
Meaning Without Dictionary Meaning
- Bijas "have no meaning according to the ordinary use of language", hence the ridicule. To the initiated, their meaning is the svarupa of the Devata whose mantra they are: a form of the subtle creative Dhvani that sounds in all letters.
- Each Devata has a bija: Krim, Kali; Hrim, Maya; Ram, Agni. The primary mantra of a Deva is the Mula-mantra.
- Every letter, syllable and mantra is a form of Brahman, and so are the image, the lines of the yantra, and every object. Hence the Sastra: they go to Hell who think the image merely stone and the mantra merely a letter.
- The mantra of a Devata is the Devata. Its rhythmic vibrations regulate the unsteady vibrations of the worshipper's sheaths, transforming him. Through his sadhana-sakti, the form of the Devata it is arises.
- Brhad-gandharva Tantra (ch. V): "by the mere utterance of the mantra the form of the Deva is born".
- The Devata is taught to the sadhaka as a child learns that "rose" means a flower, and "rice" and "milk" particular foods.
- Bijas of the Bhutas: Ha, Ya, Ra, La, Va with Candrabindu.
- Meanings of single letters are given in the Bijakosas, such as the Tantrabhidhana.
Twelve Bijas from the Varada Tantra
From Varada Tantra, ch. 6, as quoted in the Bengali compendium Pranatosini. Throughout, Bindu = "Dispeller of sorrow" except where stated.
| Bija | Letter meanings | Worship of |
|---|---|---|
| Haum | Ha = Siva; Au = Sadasiva; Sunya (Candrabindu) = dispeller of sorrow | Siva |
| Dum | Da = Durga; U = to save; Nada = Mother of the universe; Bindu = "(pray) do" | Durga |
| Krim | Ka = Kali; Ra = Brahman; I = Mahamaya; Nada = Mother of the universe; Bindu | Kalika, for the end of sorrow |
| Hrim | Ha = Siva; Ra = Prakrti; I = Mahamaya; Nada = Mother of the universe; Bindu | Bhuvanesvari |
| Srim | Sa = Mahalaksmi; Ra = wealth; I = satisfaction; Nada = Apara (perhaps Apara-brahman or Isvara); Bindu | Laksmi |
| Aim | Ai = Sarasvati; Bindu | Sarasvati (Vani) |
| Klim (Kama-bija) | Ka = Kamadeva (or by some, Krsna); La = Indra; I = contentment; Am = giver of happiness and sorrow | |
| Hum (Varma-bija, armour) | Ha = Siva; U = Bhairava; Nada = Para, supreme; Bindu | |
| Gam | Ga = Ganesa; Bindu | Ganesa |
| Glaum | Ga = Ganesa; La = what pervades; Au = tejas; Bindu | Ganesa |
| Ksraum | Ksa = Nrsimha; Ra = Brahma; Au = teeth pointing upward; Bindu | Nrsimha |
| Strim (Vadhu-bija) | Sa = deliverance from difficulties; Ta = saviour; Ra = liberation; I = Mahamaya; Nada = Mother of the universe; Bindu |
Three slips in the source.
- In the Hrim gloss the English reads "Ka means Siva", while the Sanskrit verse has hakarah sivavaci. Ha is meant, as in Haum and Hum. This edition corrects the table and flags the change here.
- The Bhuta bijas are said to be of "the four forms of sensible matter", but five letters (Ha, Ya, Ra, La, Va) are listed for the five Bhutas.
- Ra is glossed as Brahman in Krim, Prakrti in Hrim, wealth in Srim, Brahma in Ksraum, and liberation in Strim. The same letter has a different sense in each bija.
Woodroffe concedes that "a close examination of the above may raise some difficulties." His claim is limited. It is not that the system is tidy, but that "the charge that the Bija is a meaningless saying to the worshipper" is false: "It is full of meaning to him."
The bija is compressed theology. Read Krim letter by letter and you get Kali, Brahman, Mahamaya, the Mother of the universe, and the end of sorrow: a whole Sakta creed in one breath. Nearly every bija also ends in the same promise, Bindu as "Dispeller of sorrow".
Key terms: spanda, samyavastha, vaisamyavastha, samanya-spanda, visesa-spanda, Pranava, Maha-bija, samdhi, Candrabindu, Mula-mantra, Bijakosa, Varma-bija, Kama-bija, Vadhu-bija, sadhana-sakti, Pranatosini.
Reflect: Hum the M of Om high in the nose without closing the lips. Where in the body do you feel the sound settle?
Sadadhvas: The Six Paths
Chapter XXVII sets out the six "paths" (adhvas) by which the One becomes the many, and by which the worshipper climbs back. Three are on the side of sound (letter, syllable, mantra) and three on the side of object (Kala, Tattva, Bhuvana). The core of the chapter is a full table of the Bhuvanas (worlds) of each Tattva, which Woodroffe takes from T. A. Gopinatha Rao. It then describes the hierarchy of beings that live in those worlds, and eight grades of consciousness from pointed Cit down to the body.
The Six Adhvas
Adhva means a path; Mantradhva is all knowledge relating to mantra. On each side, each path depends on the one before it.
| Side | Adhva | Number given |
|---|---|---|
| Sabda | Varna (letter) | 51 |
| Pada (syllable) | 81 | |
| Mantra (combination of syllables) | 11 | |
| Artha | Kala | 5 |
| Tattva | 36 | |
| Bhuvana | 224 |
The science of the six paths appears in both Saiva and Sakta works but is "peculiarly characteristic of the Sambhava-darsana", which synthesises the two:
| School | Worships | Emphasis |
|---|---|---|
| Sakta | Siva and Sakti | Sakti |
| Ordinary Saiva | Sakti and Siva | Siva |
| Sambhava | Both, raised into a higher synthesis | Neither |
Likewise Kula = Sakti, Akula = Siva, so a Kulina is one who worships the two in one.
Kalas and Tattva Groups
Kala means Sakti, either in its higher aspect generally or, more often, a specific aspect and function. The five chief Kalas (Chapter XX) sum up groups of Tattvas:
- Santyatita-kala
- Santi-kala
- Vidya-kala
- Pratistha-kala
- Nivrtti-kala
The 36 Tattvas fall into three classes, and the Siddhanta-saravali gives them three names:
| Class | Name | Tattvas |
|---|---|---|
| Pure (suddha) | Siva-tattvas | Siva and Sakti (Siddhanta-saravali). The table below counts Sadasiva, Isvara and Suddhavidya as pure as well |
| Pure-impure (suddhasuddha) | Vidya-tattvas | Sadasiva to Suddhavidya (Siddhanta-saravali). The table puts Maya to Purusa here |
| Impure (asuddha) | Atma-tattvas | Maya to Prthivi (Siddhanta-saravali). The table puts Prakrti to Prthivi here |
Bhuvana comes from asmat bhavati iti bhuvanam, "what comes from this", that is, what is produced: a world or regional body. The Bhuvanas too are pure, pure-impure and impure.
The Bhuvana Table
From T. A. Gopinatha Rao, Elements of Hindu Iconography, Vol. II, Part II, pp. 392 to 397, with "one or two verbal corrections" by Woodroffe.
Santyatita-kala (15)
| Tattva | No. | Bhuvanas |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Siva | 10 | Anasrita, Anatha, Ananta, Vyomarupini, Vyapini, Urdhvagamini, Mocika, Rocika, Dipika, Indhika (five Sakta-bhuvanas, five Nadordhva-bhuvanas) |
| 2. Sakti | 5 | Santyatita, Santi, Vidya, Pratistha, Nivrtti (the Baindava-puras) |
Meanings of the first ten:
| Bhuvana | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Anasrita | Without support, self-sustaining |
| Anatha | Lordless, since no higher Lord is here |
| Ananta | Endless |
| Vyomarupini | In the form of all-spreading ether |
| Vyapini | All-spreading |
| Urdhvagamini | Upward-going |
| Mocika | Freed of all bonds |
| Rocika | Beautiful, source of beauty |
| Dipika | Illuminating |
| Indhika | Destroyer of all impurity |
Santa-kala (18)
| Tattva | No. | Bhuvanas |
|---|---|---|
| 3. Sadasiva | 1 | Sadasiva-bhuvana |
| 4. Isvara | 8 | Sikhandi, Srikantha, Trimurti, Ekanetra, Sivottama, Suksma, Ananta |
| 5. Suddhavidya | 9 | Manomani, Sarvabhuta-damani, Balapramathani, Balavikarani, Kalavikarani, Kali, Raudri, Jyestha, Vama |
Vidya-kala (27): the pure-impure Tattvas
| Tattva | No. | Bhuvanas |
|---|---|---|
| 6. Maya | 8 | Angusthamatra, Isana, Ekeksana, Ekapingala, Udbhava, Bhava, Vamadeva, Mahadyuti |
| 7. Kala (time) | 2 | Sikhesa, Ekavira |
| 8. Kala | 2 | Pancantaka, Sura |
| 9. Vidya | 2 | Pinga, Jyoti |
| 10. Niyati | 2 | Samvarta, Krodha |
| 11. Raga | 5 | Ekasiva, Ananta, Aja, Umapati, Pracanda |
| 12. Purusa | 6 | Ekavira, Isana, Bhava, Isa, Ugra, Bhima, Vama |
Pratistha-kala (56): the impure Tattvas
| Tattva | No. | Bhuvanas |
|---|---|---|
| 13. Prakrti | 8 | Srikantha, Auma, Kaumara, Vaisnava, Brahma, Bhairava, Krta, Akrta |
| 14. Buddhi | 8 | Brahma, Prajesa, Saumya, Aindra, Gandharva, Yaksa, Raksasa, Pisaca |
| 15. Ahamkara | 1 | Sthalesvara |
| 16 to 21. Manas and the five jnanendriyas (ear, skin, eye, tongue, nose) | 1 | Sthulesvara |
| 22 to 26. The five karmendriyas (speech, hands, feet, anus, genitals) | 1 | Sankukarna |
| 27 to 31. The five tanmatras (sabda, sparsa, rupa, rasa, gandha) | 5 | Kalanjara, Mandalesvara, Makota, Dravinda, Chakalanda |
| 32. Akasa | 8 | Sthanu, Svarnaksa, Bhadrakarna, Gokarna, Mahalaya, Avimukta, Rudrakoti, Vastrapada |
| 33. Vayu | 8 | Bhimesvara, Mahendra, Attahasa, Vimalesa, Nala, Nakala, Kuruksetra, Gaya |
| 34. Tejas | 8 | Bhairava, Kedara, Mahakala, Madhyamesa, Amrataka, Jalpesa, Srisaila, Hariscandra |
| 35. Jala | 8 | Lakulisa, Parabhuti, Dindi, Mundi, Vidhi, Puskara, Naimisa, Prabhasa, Amaresa |
Nivrtti-kala (108)
| Tattva | No. | Bhuvanas |
|---|---|---|
| 36. Prthivi | 108 | From Bhadrakali to Kalagni |
Many of the lower Bhuvanas carry names of famous tirthas (Kuruksetra, Gaya, Kedara, Srisaila, Avimukta, Naimisa, Prabhasa, Puskara). Each is a divine body named after its divine resident.
The table's arithmetic, checked.
- Section totals (15 + 18 + 27 + 56 + 108) come to 224, which matches the 224 in the text. The printed "Grand Total 234" is a misprint.
- Isvara-tattva is counted as 8 but lists 7 names.
- Purusa is counted as 6 but lists 7.
- Jala is counted as 8 but lists 9.
- Two sections are both labelled "(d) Pratistha-kala", and the Vidya-kala section is labelled "(a)". These are lettering slips.
- The Siddhanta-saravali grouping of the three classes does not match the table's own grouping (see above).
This edition keeps every name as printed and does not decide which count is right.
The Beings in the Worlds
Paramasiva created all these regions for the enjoyment of their inhabitants, an immense hierarchy from man up to the supreme Lord and Lady. Beings in the pure regions are wholly pure; the rest are pure-impure or impure.
Impurity is ignorance, of three kinds: Mala, Maya, Karma.
| Class of pasu | Covered by | Location |
|---|---|---|
| Vijnanakala | Mala only | Below Suddhavidya, above Maya |
| Pralayakala | Mala and Maya | In Maya |
| Sakala | Mala, Maya and Karma | All beings from Brahma downward who are not mukta |
When Mala is about to leave a being it has undergone ripening (paripaka). Vijnanakalas whose Mala is well ripened are the eight Vidyesvaras:
| No. | Vidyesvara | Colour |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Anantesa | Blood-red |
| 2 | Suksma | White |
| 3 | Sivottama | Blue |
| 4 | Ekanetra | Yellow |
| 5 | Ekarudra | Black |
| 6 | Trimurti | Crimson |
| 7 | Srikantha | Red |
| 8 | Sikhandi | Dark brown |
Rao cites southern Agamas (Purva-karana, Amsumad-bhedagama, Kamika) for their dhyana; colours are not always given the same way. The Vidyesvaras are higher spiritual entities by whose aid lower beings rise.
The ascending order
| Being | Tattva |
|---|---|
| Mantra-mahesvaras | Sadakhya (Sadasiva) |
| Mahesvaras | Isvara |
| Mantras (distinct from the eight Vidyesvaras) | Suddhavidya |
| Mantresvaras | Given pure body (tanu), instrument (karana), region (bhuvana), enjoyment (bhoga); they gradually shed all Mala |
| Vidyesvaras | Ego-side pure, but they see the object as other than themselves, as the Isvaras of the Dvaitavadins do |
| Vijnanakalas | Below Suddhavidya, above Maya |
| Pralayakalas | Maya |
| Sakalas | Below |
Beyond all are the eternal, unproduced Siva- and Sakti-tattvas. Vimarsini on the Isvara-pratyabhijna (III): Sadasiva-tattva is the specialisation of consciousness (cid-visesatva) that experiences the mass of ideation (bhavarasi) of the Mantra-mahesvara class.
Eight Grades of Consciousness
"The whole of the Sambhava-darsana rests on a principle of the specialisation of Consciousness": stages of descent, each more bound in ignorance, until gross matter is reached.
| No. | Grade | Nature |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Cit | Pointed, the Bindu state |
| 2 | Citi | Outspreading (vyapini) |
| 3 | Citta | With inward and outward activity |
| 4 | Caitanya | Bodha, experience from outward to inward |
| 5 | Cetana | Retention (dharana) of that bodha |
| 6 | Indriya-karma | Experience through the senses |
| 7 | Deha | The body |
| 8 | Kala | Its inherent subtle moving forces, such as the 38 Kalas of Moon, Sun and Fire |
In Moon, Sattva dominates; in Fire, Tamas; the Rajasik Sun mediates between them.
Lords of the Tattvas, from Earth upward
| Lord | Range |
|---|---|
| Brahma | Prthivi to Pradhana (Prakrti) |
| Visnu | Purusa to Kala |
| Rudra | Maya |
| Isa | Up to Sadakhya |
| Anasrita Siva, then Parasiva | Beyond |
The map works in both directions. Read downward, the six paths describe emanation: Cit becomes letters and worlds. Read upward, they become the route of ritual purification (adhva-sodhana), in which the worshipper "purifies" each path in turn, as in Saiva diksa. The chapter supplies the full map. The practice it implies is taken up in Chapter XXVIII.
Key terms: adhva, Sadadhva, Varna, Pada, Mantra, Kala, Tattva, Bhuvana, Sambhava-darsana, Kula, Akula, Kulina, Baindava-pura, Nadordhva, Mala, Maya, Karma, paripaka, Vijnanakala, Pralayakala, Sakala, Vidyesvara, Mantresvara, Mantra-mahesvara, bhavarasi, Cit, Citi, Citta, Caitanya, Cetana.
Reflect: The eight grades descend from a single point of awareness to the body's moving forces. Where does your attention usually rest on that ladder during an ordinary day?
Mantra-Sadhana
Chapter XXVIII turns from the theory of mantra to its practice. It defines mantra, explains why a translated mantra is no longer a mantra, separates mantra from prayer, and gives the preparatory rites that "awaken" a sleeping mantra. At its centre is two Saktis working together: the Mantra-Sakti, which is the Devata in sound, and the Sadhana-Sakti that the practitioner builds. Their union turns human power (jaivi) into divine power (daivi).
Definitions
| Source | Definition |
|---|---|
| Gayatri Tantra | That by meditation (manana) on which the Jiva gains freedom from sin, heaven and liberation, and attains in full the fourfold fruit (caturvarga) |
| Elsewhere | So called because it is achieved by mental process |
| Etymology | "Man" from manana (thinking) + "tra" from trana (liberation from samsara). A mantra "calls forth" (amantrana) the four aims |
All letters, syllables and words are forms of Brahman, forms of the Creative Stress as uttered, heard and understood. "Mantra" in the usual sense means the particular sounds used in worship and sadhana: certain letters in a definite sequence.
- The relations of Varna, Nada, Bindu, vowel and consonant constitute the Devata in varying forms. Certain vibhutis of the Devata inhere in certain Varnas.
- The mantra of a Devata is the letter or letters that reveal that Devata to the sadhaka's consciousness once evoked by sadhana-sakti. The Devata's form appears out of the mantra of which it is the adhisthatri-devata.
- It must be intoned correctly by letter (varna) and rhythm (svara).
Why Translation Fails
A translated mantra ceases to be a mantra. The translation is other sounds, giving the Sanskrit's meaning to the intellect, but they are not the Devata's body and do not evoke it. So mantra is "not mere individual thinking but a particular sound-body of consciousness."
| Ordinary words | Mantra |
|---|---|
| Something gross, though like all else a form of Sakti | The Devata in mantra-body: "a very mass of radiant tejas" |
| Give information and advice | Awaken superhuman power |
| Subject to birth and death, like a Jiva | Brahman in sound-body, unwasting, undecaying |
Mantra Is Not Prayer
Prayer or self-dedication (atma-nivedana) uses words the worshipper chooses, and its meaning is on its face. Only ignorance of Sastric principles thinks a mantra is merely the words in which one speaks to the Divine. If it were, the sadhaka could pick his own language without the eternal, fixed sounds of Sastra. (Woodroffe refers to Arthur Avalon's "Tantra-Tattva or Principles of Tantra" for more.)
Sabda in the Body
- Visvasara Tantra (ch. II): Sabda-brahman, which is mantramaya, exists in the Jiva's body as the subtle aspect of its life-giving Sakti.
- Prapancasara: the Brahmanda is pervaded by Sakti as Dhvani, called Nada, Prana and so on.
- Gross Sabda would be impossible without subtle Sabda. Sabda is the guna of akasa but is not produced by it; it manifests in it. Sabda-svarupa is Brahman.
- As in outer space air movements make sound-waves, so in the space within the body, sound-waves arise with the movements of prana and the in- and out-breath.
- The Sabda first appearing in the Muladhara (see The Serpent Power) is the Sakti that gives the Jiva life.
The breathing Jiva utters a great mantra: the Ajapa-mantra, Hamsah (Chapter XVI), "ajapa" because it repeats itself without effort. The heaving of Dhvani causes the alternating breath. Sakti causes the sweet, indistinct, murmuring Dhvani like the humming of black bees. It is Para, then Pasyanti, subtle as Madhyama, gross as Vaikhari.
Kundalini, varnamayi and dhvanimayi, is the Paramatma manifest in bodies. So the substance of all mantra is Cit. The letters (aksara) are the yantra of the Aksara, the imperishable Brahman.
Two Saktis in Every Mantra
| Sakti | Is | Example (Durga mantra) |
|---|---|---|
| Vacaka-Sakti | The Devata who is the mantra (mantramayi-devata); saguna; the object of worship; a support and means | Durga |
| Vacya-Sakti | The Devata indicated (pratipadya-devata) as the ultimate svarupa; nirguna | Mahamaya |
The gross form of Kundalini, appearing as different Devatas, presides over all mantra, though all sadhakas aim at the subtle form. Worship assumes some form as its object. When the saguna Sakti in and as the mantra is awakened by sadhana, "She opens the gate of monistic truth." Both are one, but by the law of his nature and its gunas the Jiva must first meditate on the gross before realising the subtle, which is liberation.
Waking the Mantra
"The utterance of a mantra without knowledge of its meaning or of the mantra method is a mere movement of the lips. The mantra sleeps." Preliminary processes:
| Rite | Practice described |
|---|---|
| Mukha-sodhana (purifying the mouth) | Japa of Pranava, varying with the Devata, e.g. Om Hsau for Bhairava (Sarada-tilaka ch. X) |
| Jihva-sodhana (purifying the tongue) | Seven japa of: one-letter bija tripled, Pranava tripled, one-letter bija tripled |
| Asauca-bhanga (removing "birth" and "death" defilement) | Japa of the Mula-mantra preceded and followed by Pranava (see Tantrasara 75 ff.) |
| Kulluka | Done over the head; for Kalika it is Maya (Hrim) (Puruscarana-bodhini p. 48, Tantrasara) |
| Nirvana | Japa of Mula- and Matrka-bija in the Manipura |
| Setu | Usually Om or Hrim, but varies: Kali's setu is her bija Krim; Tara's is Kurca |
| Nidra-bhanga (waking the mantra) | Japa preceded and followed by Im, seven times |
| Mantra-caitanya (giving life) | Japa of the Mula-mantra in the Manipura preceded and followed by Matrka-bija; meditate on the Mula-mantra in Sahasrara, Anahata, Muladhara with Hum, and again in Sahasrara. (Mula: the principal mantra, such as the Pancadasi) |
| Mantrartha-bhavana | Forming a mental image of the Devata; literally thinking the meaning, or the matrkas in the mantra that make up the Devata from foot to head |
| Ten samskaras of the mantra | (Tantrasara p. 90) |
| Dipani | Seven japa of the bija preceded and followed by Om; with Hrim instead of Om it is Prana-yoga |
| Yoni-mudra | Guru in the head, Ista-devata in the heart, then the Yonirupa Bhagavati from head to Muladhara and back, with japa of the Yoni-bija (Em) ten times (Purohita-darpana) |
This list is descriptive, not instruction. Woodroffe gives it in condensed notes and sends the reader to the Sarada-tilaka, Tantrasara, Puruscarana-bodhini and Purohita-darpana for the details. Every one of these rites presupposes initiation (diksa) and a guru, and the mantra itself is chosen by "Cakra and other calculations". The edition reproduces the list in full for study. It is not a self-administered procedure, and the source does not offer it as one.
How the Two Saktis Unite
- The mantra is Devata: Cit-Sakti in that form. It wakes (mantra-caitanya) through the mantrin's sadhana-sakti.
- Sadhana-Sakti and Mantra-Sakti are at base one Sakti; the mantra's is the stronger.
- The sadhaka's consciousness becomes en rapport and in union with the consciousness in mantra-form. The Devata who is the mantra's artha appears to a mind "cleansed and illumined by devotion".
| Practice | Saktis at work |
|---|---|
| Puja, dhyana and other sadhanas | Sadhana-Sakti alone |
| Mantra-sadhana | Sadhana-Sakti plus all-powerful Mantra-Sakti, which reinforces the imperfect, obstructed individual power |
Fire and air. "The individual Sakti is like fire." Air waves, struck and struck again by flames, set up a blaze with redoubled force. In the same way, struck by Mantra-Sakti, the sadhaka's Sakti develops rapidly, and then a strong individual Sakti unites with Mantra-Sakti and makes it doubly powerful. So a Jiva may do what seems impossible, and win "the treasure which is worshipped even by Siva".
Jaivi-Sakti (power of the Jiva as such) is transformed by mantra into Daivi-Sakti (power of a Deva as such). With it, he can do what a Deva can. Mantra is an aspect of the Divine Mother, appearing through mantra-sadhana with devotion to her.
Mantra-Siddhi
Tantra-tattva II.45: "The string of fifty letters from A to Ksa, which are the Matrkas, is eternal, unbeginning and unending, and Brahman itself." Woodroffe calls this "the first of all Tantras."
- Realising this mantra-consciousness is mantra-siddhi.
- Perfect siddhi in even one mantra gives the knowledge gained by learning all the Vedas. The reason:
| Dhvani of Kula-kundalini | In the body of | Becomes |
|---|---|---|
| Its parinama (evolution) | Isvara | Veda, Dhvani uttered by Brahma |
| Its parinama | the Jiva | Sabda, Dhvani uttered by the Jiva |
In that Sabda is every form of mantra, the giver of life to the Jiva, and it evolves into uttered sound, the body of the Devata. No siddhi until the mantra is awakened.
Woodroffe's minimum claim. "It may be that the appearance of the Devata is a fact or it is not a fact." He leaves that open. What he will not allow is the caricature: that mere utterance is superstitiously supposed to work, or that japa is "a mere vain and senseless repetition." The method insists on the reverse: an unawakened mantra does nothing.
Key terms: manana, trana, amantrana, caturvarga, adhisthatri-devata, svara, tejas, atma-nivedana, Ajapa, Hamsah, aksara, vacaka-sakti, vacya-sakti, Mukha-sodhana, Jihva-sodhana, Kulluka, Setu, Nidra-bhanga, Mantra-caitanya, Mantrartha-bhavana, Dipani, Yoni-mudra, jaivi, daivi, mantra-siddhi, parinama.
Reflect: If an unawakened mantra is "a mere movement of the lips", what in your own practice keeps a repeated form from going to sleep?
The Gayatri-Mantra
Chapter XXIX is a short commentary on the most sacred Vedic mantra, in which "the Veda lies embodied as in its seed". Following the Gayatri-vyakarana of Yogi Yajnavalkya, Woodroffe glosses it word by word. He identifies Bharga as the light that is the same in the solar disc and in the ether of the heart, and closes on a social contrast: the Vedic Gayatri was closed to Sudras and women, while the Tantra gives a Gayatri to all.
The Text
Om. Bhur bhuvah svah. Tat savitur varenyam bhargo devasya dhimahi. Dhiyo yo nah pracodayat. Om.
Woodroffe's rendering: "Om. The earthly, atmospheric and celestial spheres. Let us contemplate the wondrous Solar Spirit of the Divine Creator (Savitr). May He direct our minds", understood as toward dharma, artha, kama and moksa. Om.
Word by Word
| Word | Gloss (Gayatri-vyakarana and Woodroffe's notes) |
|---|---|
| Bhur bhuvah svah | The vyahrtis: earthly, atmospheric and celestial spheres; the three lokas |
| Tat | "That", taken as accusative, agreeing with varenyam. Those who link the vyahrtis to the rest read it as part of a genitive compound, giving tesam |
| (yat) | "Which" is to be understood, though some say it is present in yo nah |
| Savituh | Genitive of Savitr, from su, "to bring forth": the Bringer-forth of all that exists. The Sun is cause of all that exists and of the state in which it exists |
| Varenyam | = varaniyam, adorable: to be meditated on and adored to be freed from the misery of birth and death |
| Bhargah | The Aditya-devata in the solar region (Surya-mandala) in full glory (see below) |
| Devasya | Genitive of Deva, agreeing with Savituh: the radiant and playful (lilamaya) one, ever at play with creation, existence and destruction, pleasing all by his radiance. Lila applied to Brahman equals Maya |
| Dhimahi | = dhyayema (root dhyai): we meditate, or let us meditate |
| Pracodayat | May He direct: understood as along the caturvarga. Bharga ever directs our inner faculties (buddhi-vrtti) on those paths |
Bhavisya Purana on Surya: "Surya is the visible Devata. He is the eye of the world and the Maker of the day. There is no other Devata eternal like unto Him. This universe has emanated from, and will be again absorbed into Him. Time is of and in Him. The planets, stars, the Vasus, Rudras, Vayu, Agni and the rest are but parts of Him."
Bharga: Outer Sun and Inner Light
Bharga is to the Sun what the atma is to the body.
| Outer | Inner |
|---|---|
| In the solar region, the outer material sphere | In our inner selves |
| The light of the light in the solar circle | The light of the lives of all beings |
| In the outer ether: the Sun (Surya) | In the ether of the heart: the wonderful Light, the Smokeless Fire |
"That Being whom the sadhaka realises in the region of his heart is the Aditya in the heavenly firmament. The two are one."
Two derivations of Bhargah
- From bhrij, "to ripen, mature, destroy, reveal, shine": Surya matures and transforms all things, shines and reveals all by his light, and at Pralaya destroys all as Kalagni (destructive fire).
- Letter by letter:
| Syllable | Meaning | The Sun... |
|---|---|---|
| bha | Dividing all things into classes | divides all things |
| ra | Colour | produces the colours of all objects |
| ga | Constantly going and returning | ever goes and returns |
Brahmana-sarvasva: "The Bharga is the atma of all that exists, moving or motionless, in the three lokas. There is nothing which exists apart from it."
Who meditates, and why
Those who fear rebirth, desire freedom from death, seek liberation, and strive to escape the three kinds of pain (tapa-traya):
- Adhyatmika, arising from oneself
- Adhidaivika, from divine or natural agencies
- Adhibhautika, from other beings
They meditate on the Bharga who, dwelling in the Sun, holds in himself Bhur-loka, Bhuvar-loka and Svar-loka.
The same light in two places. The Gayatri is often read as sun-worship. On Yajnavalkya's reading it describes a single light seen in two places: in the sky and in the heart. Dhimahi (let us meditate) gives the method; pracodayat (may he direct) gives the result. The light that ripens the world is asked to ripen buddhi.
Two Gayatris
| Vaidiki Gayatri | Tantrik Brahma-gayatri (Mahanirvana III.109 to 111) | |
|---|---|---|
| Who may utter | Only the twice-born | No such exclusiveness |
| Forbidden to | The Sudra, man or woman, and women of all other castes | |
| Text | As above | Paramesvaraya vidmahe, para-tattvaya dhimahi: tan no Brahma pracodayat |
| Meaning | "May we know the Supreme Lord. Let us contemplate the Supreme Reality. And may that Brahman direct us." |
The social point is the sharpest one in the chapter. Woodroffe reports the Vedic restriction without comment and then sets the Tantra's openness beside it. The contrast supports his wider claim that the Tantra is a sastra for the Kali age and for all. The restriction he cites still has force in some communities, and many modern teachers have since given the Vedic Gayatri openly. The Mahanirvana's Brahma-gayatri is also tied to that text's Brahma-worship. Whether it was ever as widely used as the Vedic Gayatri is not something this chapter shows.
Key terms: Gayatri, vyahrti, Savitr, su, varenya, Bharga, bhrij, Aditya, Surya-mandala, Smokeless Fire, Kalagni, lila, dhimahi, pracodayat, caturvarga, buddhi-vrtti, tapa-traya, Brahma-gayatri.
Reflect: The Gayatri asks the light to direct the mind rather than to grant something. What changes when you pray for direction instead of outcome?
The Gayatri-Mantra as an Exercise of Reasoning
Chapter XXX began as a lecture to the Rationalistic Society of Calcutta. Woodroffe uses the occasion to argue that Advaita-Vedanta honours reason more than Europe ever did, that reason is supreme in worldly matters but only probable about ultimates, and that the Gayatri can be read as a graded argument: seven steps of reflection by which ordinary earth-bound consciousness discovers that the whole world lies within the Self as its cause. He closes by moving from argument to conduct: power, harmony and compassion.
What "Rationalism" Can Mean in India
Woodroffe opens by doubting the English label. A society that only copied one Western school would add to "the volume of imitativeness in this country". He thinks its members meant something better: reasonable thinking and practice as found in the Arya-Dharma, "cleansed of all bad and useless accretion". He reports a suggestion to call it Satyajnana-Sabha, the Society for the Knowledge of Truth.
Two senses of "Rationalism" are separated:
| Sense | Woodroffe's verdict |
|---|---|
| Technical: rationalism opposed to sensationalism (knowledge from reason versus from the senses) | Meaningless in India for those who believe a child is born with its samskaras |
| General | Acceptable, and stated in three beliefs (below) |
The three beliefs of general rationalism:
- Reason is the chief source and final criterion of knowledge.
- Each person must investigate and gain knowledge for himself, not merely submit to outside authority.
- Therefore any alleged knowledge that cannot be rationally demonstrated must be rejected.
Where Reason Rules
The Vedantist asks: which "knowledge"? If it is worldly (laukika) knowledge, gained through the senses (indriya), the rationalist and the Vedantist agree. In that sphere reason is the chief source and final test.
- Samkaracarya: if even the Veda contradicted what is a matter of worldly proof (laukika-pramana), it would not be Veda. Scripture is no authority against the senses and inference in their own field.
- Yoga-Vasistha (II.18.2 to 3): a sastra of purely human authorship should be accepted if it agrees with reason; anything unreasonable should be rejected even if a rsi said it; the reasonable word of a boy should be accepted; the unreasonable should be thrown away like a blade of grass, "even if it be uttered by the Lotus-born (Brahma) Himself".
- Woodroffe points readers to the whole fourteenth chapter of Book II (Mumuksu-khanda) of the same work, a glorification of vicara, reasoning.
More Than the Senses Show
Reason's domain is wider than the eye. Woodroffe lists four kinds of reality beyond ordinary sight, in rising order:
- The mind itself: it exists, but is not seen by the senses (atindriya).
- Scientific instruments: they materially extend natural faculty, letting the senses perceive more.
- Psychic powers (siddhi): clairvoyance, clairaudience, hypnosis, thought-reading, telepathy. They are supernormal, not supernatural; extensions of natural faculty in which mind works independently of the gross sense organs. "We do not reason ourselves into them"; we reason about whether they exist and what they show.
- Spiritual or religious experience: knowledge of the infinite principle behind phenomena "through an actual participation in Its Being". He cites William James's "Varieties of Religious Experience" as one of the first essays in a field only now being cultivated.
For the last two the question is one of fact and proof, not of reasonableness. "Nothing is more unscientific than to pronounce a priori against them." He adds that "there is a bigotry of science as of religion".
How spiritual experience can be proved
| Kind of proof | What it consists of |
|---|---|
| Direct and certain | Having the experience oneself |
| Probable | The persistence and universality of such reports |
| The nature of the truths said to be revealed | |
| The effect on the person who had the experience | |
| For the greater experiences, the effect on the world: the rsis, Sakya-Muni, Laotze, Jesus and Mahommed |
To call the influence of these figures on millions "the outcome of hallucination" is, he says, "a very shallow view".
Which experience is true?
Readers with knowledge find elements common to all reports and some that vary. Variation is expected, because spiritual experience, like ordinary experience, has grades. His image: two men approaching a mountain, one fifty miles away, one at its foot. Their views differ, yet both are true for where each stands.
Veda, from vid, "to know", is "experience in the limit", of which all other experience is a partial reproduction. It may be primary (one has it oneself) or accepted on the authority of those who have had it.
The Limits of Unaided Reason
On what is not seen, such as one Supreme Cause of which the universe is an effect, unaided reason gives probabilities, not certainty. It can argue reasonably for or against Monism, Dualism or Pluralism, and so reaches contrary conclusions.
Woodroffe's survey of the "Philosophical Fair" of his day: Realism (old style and the new kind of Bertrand Russell), Idealism (objective and subjective), Monism, Pluralism, Pan-psychism, Humanism, Pragmatism. He doubts modern metaphysics has advanced on the best of the ancients; "none is better constructed than the Six Darsanas".
The advance has been in science, and for him its importance is that the latest scientific inferences agree with the intuitions of the ancient sages:
| Scientific finding (as of c. 1920) | Indian doctrine it supports |
|---|---|
| Breakdown of the atomic theory; new ideas of the constitution of matter | Maya; a single material basis of the universe |
| Ether | Akasa, accepted in India "when Europe had not passed beyond the so-called four elements" |
| Evolution from inorganic to organic, plant to animal to man | No gulfs between forms of life; man differs from animal in degree, not kind |
| New psychology and psychical research: mind as material force (Herbert Spencer), mind as power ("New Thought"), the extended field of consciousness, dual personality | Vedantic psychology |
Even so, metaphysics and science "may lead to the door of the shrine, but they do not directly and unaided place the enquirer within".
Revelation, redefined. Woodroffe's key move is to say that revelation "is not the speaking of any voice, divine or otherwise, from without. It is self-knowledge in its deepest sense and nothing more." Brahman can never be an object of knowledge, so "one can only know Brahman by being Brahman". Sruti is then the recorded self-knowledge of others. Once accepted, it makes certain what reason found only probable, and reason can follow it "without violence to its own principles", because truth is one.
India and the Rights of Reason
Woodroffe reverses the usual colonial claim:
- "It is not India who has denied the rights of Reason. It is Europe who in the past has done so." Europe won free thought only after a long fight against Church tyranny, aided by the State: imprisonment, torture, burning.
- Struggle sharpened Europe. Had India been so opposed, it might be more intellectually active today; Europe's political energy likewise grew from oppression.
- "Man" is from the Sanskrit root man, "to think": man is Manu, "the Thinker".
- No country has thought more. India was "a very hot-bed of speculation".
The schools he lists:
| School | Position |
|---|---|
| Carvaka and the Lokayatas | Materialists, true atheists; Ajitakesakambali, opponent of the Buddha, taught that man is the four elements and is gone for ever at death |
| Sankhya | Dualists and realists; Spirit exists, but a governing God is unproved (Nirisvara-darsana) |
| Nyaya-Vaisesika | Pluralists and realists who affirm the Supreme Lord |
| Buddhist idealism (Vijnanavada) and the so-called "Nihilists" (Sunyavadins) | Idealism; emptiness |
| Vedanta | Monism, qualified Monism, and Dualism in several theistic forms |
| Mimamsakas and Jainas | And "every shade of thought imaginable" |
Reasoning is built into Vedantic practice. The three steps are sravana (hearing), manana (reasoning) and nididhyasana (contemplation). All the Darsanas, especially Nyaya, serve manana, and the Brahma-sutras are called Vaiyasika-nyaya-mala, "Vyasa's garland of reasonings".
On science, he cites Brojendranath Seal and Binay Kumar Sarkar on India's record, grants that since the modern period "the palm" belongs to the West, but says that over the span from 2000 B.C. the comparison reverses in India's favour.
India's restrictions were of another kind: the social ordering of life and, later, exclusion from knowledge by artificial caste distinctions. Those to whom the book of knowledge was open "have always been able to think freely enough".
An advocate's comparison. The contrast between a free-thinking India and a Church-bound Europe is rhetorically strong but uneven. It sets Europe's worst centuries against India's best schools, and Woodroffe himself concedes the main Indian limit: knowledge was open only to some, which is a large qualification on "intellectual liberty". His "science confirms the sages" table also rests on the physics of about 1920. The luminiferous ether had already been abandoned by most physicists after Einstein, and "New Thought" was a popular movement, not science. The stronger and more lasting part of his case is philosophical: the Advaitin really does grant reason full authority within experience and rests its higher claims on experience, not on decree.
The Gayatri as Argument
Woodroffe found among his papers a note on the Gayatri sent to him years before, and restates its argument "with some further additions of my own". The Gayatri becomes a staircase of reflection.
Om and the three letters
The mantra opens and ends with the Pranava, Om. Its parts:
| Part | Stands for | Woodroffe's "scientific" reading |
|---|---|---|
| Nada-bindu | The causal state of the World-Power before its threefold differentiation | |
| A (Brahma) | Creation | Ever-rejuvenating molecular activity that rebuilds form and rescues organised life |
| U (Visnu) | Maintenance | The power that stabilises matter, itself "a relatively stable condition of energy"; Visnu as Maintainer is "a theological statement of the doctrine of the general conservation of energy" |
| M (Rudra) | Dissolution | Chemical action breaking down combinations of matter: the disintegration of form |
The Mahasakti, in herself perfect consciousness (Cidrupini), is the threefold power of Will, Knowledge and Action, appearing as the building up, maintenance and dissolution of forms. As sound (dhvani), Om is the approximate natural name of the first undifferentiated movement (samanya-spanda) of Prakrti: the primordial "Sound" or stress is the first functioning of Brahma-sakti.
The three Vyahrtis and the fourteen Lokas
Bhuh, Bhuvah, Svah stand for (are laksana of) all fourteen lokas, though in the everyday (vyavaharika) world only the first three concern us:
| Vyahrti | Covers |
|---|---|
| Bhuh | Bhuh and the seven nether Talas |
| Bhuvah | Itself |
| Svah | Svah and the upper regions up to Satya |
The lokas are states of consciousness.
- Bhurloka (earth) is normal experience; the lokas above are supernormal, the Talas below subnormal.
- Matter grows denser as one descends; as the veil thickens, consciousness changes.
- The first five lokas from earth upward are those of the five forms of sensible matter; the sixth is that of Mind; the seventh (Satya) is the causal state of both.
| Body of the Great Purusa | Regions |
|---|---|
| Gross | Earth and the nether states |
| Subtle | Bhuvah to Tapah |
| Causal | Satya |
This Great Purusa is the one worshipped in the Sun-circle (Aditya-mandala). The Vyahrtis say that the Self indicated by Om pervades every region.
The Seven Stages of Earth-Consciousness
The core of the chapter is a sequence of seven stages within the Parthiva (earth) consciousness, each reached by reflecting on the one before. The terms seer (jnata), seeing (jnana) and seen (jneya) track the movement: at first all three are "out there"; at the end all three are internalised and unified.
- Naive realism (Bhuh proper). The world is completely objective, stable and independent, lying "over there" in space. I (aham) am here; This (idam), the Vimarsa-sakti, is there. All materially minded thinkers live here.
- The world depends on the senses. Objects are bundles of qualities that exist as they do only because our senses are built as they are. Change the senses and the object changes. Objective stability wears off; the world becomes "mobile". This is the stage of some forms of idealism, in which the subjective factor is admitted but still located mainly outside.
- The senses depend on attention. The senses grasp nothing unless manas attends. The whole world presses on them at every moment, but only what we attend to is perceived. The Brhadaranyaka Upanisad: "I did not hear. My mind was elsewhere." Attention is directed and willed, so behind the senses stands a Self.
- The Self is free of the body. This Self is not conditioned by the senses but conditions them. It appears uncontrolled by the physical body, self-luminous, and wider than the senses' reach.
- The Self is the independent cause. Self, senses and objects are in relation. No fourth principle holding them together is found, and positing one leads to regress ad infinitum. So the ground of the relation lies in whichever of the three is independent. Objects need the senses; the senses need the Self's attention; but the Self remains the Self without them, as in dream, where it is cut off from the senses and yet produces both objects and senses. "What we see in dream is real while it lasts."
- The cause is ideal, not material. A cause cannot produce an effect really external to itself; if it could, the dream-world would not vanish with the dream. The world is ideally within its cause and projected in cosmic evolution. Mind and matter, once evolved, have equal reality and equal impermanence. Reality = Persistence = Deathlessness (amrtatva) = Ananda, life flowing unimpeded, which is Atma. Herbert Spencer, on biological grounds, called pleasure "the index of the unimpeded flow of vitality". What fully persists is the Self. As the dreamer holds his dream, the "World-dreamer" holds common experience.
- The world lies necessarily in the cause (the Satya stage). Is the world within its cause by the cause's own nature or through something outside? Nothing outside exists for the cause to take in. Any outside link would need a medium, and then a reason for the medium, another regress. So the connection is natural and necessary: the whole universe lies, as a seed (bija), ideally and potentially within its cause, which is nothing but the Self.
One argument in seven moves. Read the stages as one chain: world → senses → attention → self → independent self → ideal cause → necessary cause. Each link removes one layer of apparent independence from the object and adds it to the subject. By stage seven, nothing remains outside to explain the world except the Self as the seed that holds it. The lokas of the Vyahrtis are then the same ladder told as cosmology.
Savita, Tat and the Inner Reason
At the Satya stage the sadhaka sees one side of "the grandeur of the Self as the potential cause of the entire universe". His widened consciousness breaks out into the Gayatri itself as an exclamation of homage.
| Word | Woodroffe's reading |
|---|---|
| Savita | "The Projector of the Universe from out of Its own thought, without external material or aid" |
| Tat ("That") | The indwelling Self, still pictured as out in space. The sense of externality began with ether (akasa) and is strongest in the earth principle (prthivi-tattva), so Parthiva consciousness always locates both seer and seen outside. Hence "That". This "Thatness" will meet the supreme in one unity at the last stage |
| The prayer | "Let us meditate on the adorable darkness-dispelling Spirit of the self-luminous all-producing Savita", asking that It inspire and illumine our inward Reason |
Savita produces the universe according to the principles of reason, which are His own inner being (vicara-camatkrtih paramatmamayi). Our reason is an efflorescence of Its all-knowingness; it is true in its own sphere and, once illumined, passes from reasoning about objects to the rational vesture of the Spirit and then to intuitive realisation of the Spirit itself.
Why we are universal
- If we stayed only individual, we could never perceive the universe as common to us all.
- In so far as we perceive a common world, we are not individual but universal.
- Individuality is the part of perception that differs between people.
- That difference rests not on our essential being but on limitations produced by particular karma, which stop everyone perceiving everything equally.
- These limits divide one person from another, but cannot divide anyone from the Indwelling Universal, the common ground.
So the sadhaka says that Savita inspires the reason of us all, and through its self-luminous consciousness, known "not only in Samadhi, but in and through every act of reasoning", we learn the truth (Satyam), which is the Persistent Self itself. Beyond this point lies the subtler Atma-sadhana of the next chapter.
From Argument to Life: Power, Harmony, Compassion
To those who truly see, by reason or intuition, the universe comes from its source and returns to it, "as the Ganga from the Himalayas". The source is the power of perfect consciousness, Siva, "the Auspicious and Good". Beings live in happiness so long as they are in harmony with Him who is Bliss.
"Power and Harmony: let us repeat these words day by day."
- Think the thought of Power and be powerful. Individual power is small; linked to the Supreme Power, it grows in proportion to the harmony and union.
- Power is not only material force. That is power translated to the material plane. Power is also mental, moral, spiritual.
- "Love is Power, the greatest of Powers." Everything is Power, the Mother (Ambika).
Body and mind must match the doctrine
- Man is one whole: body, mind and spirit.
- To realise the Pure one must be pure (suddhatma) in body and mind.
- In the West a man may be "a philosopher" and lack character and morals. Vedanta says its doctrine cannot be understood, still less realised, without that purity.
- Sadhana varies with competence (adhikara), but the highest sadhana is karuna, compassion.
Woodroffe quotes a recent English novel, curiously titled "The Rationalist", which hails "the phenomenon of Compassion which is now beginning to express itself in action" as something new on the horizon. In India, he replies, it is as old as the Vedas and the Buddha Gotama.
The rule of compassion: avoid giving pain; allay it where it is. Its application is "not so simple as is sometimes thought".
| Who | What is asked |
|---|---|
| The truly great | Nothing but to be themselves: "By the mere fact of their own self-redemption, they redeem others" |
| The rest | Hold the ideal in view amid the struggles their nature brings |
"Mere apathy however is not Yoga." Yoga is unity with the Lord in the forms of His Power: family, friends, people and world. He is Jagadbandhu, Friend of the World. Whoever lives so as not to cause pain to, and to relieve the suffering of, "this great Body of the Lord which is the Universe" begins really to understand, and finds that the power to impose one's will on others increases. "The greatest cloud upon understanding is selfishness."
Evolution and Sandhya
- "The mass of men are still mere candidates for Humanity."
- Evolution is the liberation of the Spirit from all that hides its freedom, rising from inorganic to organic and culminating, for now, in man.
- The highest humanity is where humanity and Divinity meet.
- The "I" is still developing in present humanity. Its end is first the perfecting of the present "I", then by stages its identity with the Universal "I", the Purnaham, the Infinite Self.
Japa on the Gayatri is needed to correct the natural outward tendency of thought. This is the true Sandhya, which he glosses as "perfect Dhyana or meditation", of which the Gayatri is the soul.
Those who neglect it see only present powers and the fulfilment of desires. They miss the purpose of human life, which is:
- Harmony with the active power (Visvatma-sakti), and then
- Union with the unchanging Brahman (Cidrupini-sakti).
All thinkers, materialist, idealist or spiritualist, assume some Reality (Matter, Mind, Spirit, Brahman, God, Allah) that eludes the mind. If it is there, it must also be here, "as one with the deepest inmost self". So man should study the outer universe to know the Sakti-aspect of reality, but must "plunge deep into his own nature", since it can be realised only within.
Beings lower in evolution lack the "I" developed to the level of vijnana or buddhi, so reason and understanding must be developed. Most of the work of evolution must be done by the individual, under the divine principle of reason. Give up lethargy and the contentment of the animal, "whether as beast or man", with present powers. The chapter ends by asking us to grasp intellectually, then realise through the Eye of Divine Wisdom (jnana-caksu), "the Beginning, the Maintainer and the End of all: the Vacya-sakti of the Gayatri-Mantra".
Two cautions. First, the seven-stage argument is idealist: it moves from "objects depend on perception" to "objects are ideally within the perceiver". A realist will say that showing how we know objects does not show what they are, and the dream analogy, central at stage five, assumes what is to be proved. Woodroffe himself grants that reason gives only probability here, so the argument is best read as a meditation that prepares the mind, as the chapter presents it, rather than a proof. Second, the evolutionary hierarchy ("candidates for Humanity", beings "lower in evolution") echoes early twentieth-century progressivism and could be read, in other hands, as ranking people. Woodroffe's own emphasis falls on compassion and self-correction, which works against that reading.
Key terms: Satyajnana-Sabha, laukika-pramana, vicara, atindriya, siddhi, Veda (vid), Darsana, sravana, manana, nididhyasana, Vaiyasika-nyaya-mala, Pranava, Nada-bindu, samanya-spanda, Vyahrti, loka, tala, Aditya-mandala, Parthiva consciousness, jnata, jnana, jneya, amrtatva, Savita, Tat, suddhatma, adhikara, karuna, Jagadbandhu, Purnaham, Sandhya, Visvatma-sakti, Cidrupini-sakti, jnana-caksu, Vacya-sakti.
Reflect: Stage three says you perceive only what you attend to. What did you fail to perceive today because your mind was elsewhere, and what does that suggest about who is doing the perceiving?
Atma-Sadhana: Yoga by Reasoning
The last chapter picks up where the Gayatri-sadhana of Chapter XXX ends. That chapter reasoned from the outer world to the Self as the seed of the universe. This one turns the same reasoning inward, in meditation, and climbs back through the five tanmatras (gandha, rasa, rupa, sparsa, sabda), then through three inner Vyahrtis, to Consciousness itself, which is Bliss. It is the book's practical summit: the theory of sabda from Chapter II, now used as a path of yoga.
The Object Persists, but Refines
Duality is built into all manifested being. Until one realises the whole (Purna-brahman), the universe as one with both its immanent and its transcendent root, there is always an object. It may seem wholly outside the Self or be felt inside as a mode of the Self's own being, but it is there.
The object has grades, and they run parallel to the grades of matter:
- Objectively, matter grows grosser from its first form, ether (akasa), down to ponderable matter of science.
- Subjectively, as consciousness ascends and matter is withdrawn into the Self, the object becomes an ever subtler expression of the principle from which all objectivity comes.
At full manifestation, ordinary Bhuh experience, the object (idam, "This") is wholly outside and independent, and Self and object exclude each other. One may stay there, "which is that of objective science", or go within, to the Root of all experience. If the root is within, only introspection can find it.
What Carries Us Inward
The will-to-know, in a nature purifying itself and gaining strength as it nears the Almighty Savita. "This is Prayer in its highest form." At each advance one naturally pays homage, as Linnaeus fell on his knees when he first saw the golden flower of the wild gorse.
The inward movement has two parts:
- The object is brought from outside to inside, felt not as different from the Self but as a mode of its existence.
- Then it becomes less pointed and more diffused, drawing closer to the subject.
Both are done by "an intense and penetrating meditation at each stage", aimed at the subjective root of that stage. As the outward tendencies of thought are held in check, consciousness shows itself more purely.
The Turn at the Satya Stage
In earth-consciousness, matter is a sharp point outside the Self, and even the Self appears as a point in space, until the Satya stage is reached. There reason suggests that the whole universe must lie within the Self. Acting on that suggestion, Parthiva consciousness turns back on itself and, for the first time inward-facing (antarmukhi), finds something within, still pointed. The world has been carried inside.
The Five Tanmatras in Reverse
Woodroffe now describes five kinds of consciousness. In creation they are the subjective roots of sensible matter. In fully outward matter they are the five ways matter affects the senses: smell, taste, sight, touch and hearing. Meditation climbs them from grossest to subtlest:
| Stage | Consciousness | Element it roots | How the object is felt |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Gandha (smell) | Prthivi, earth | A point located outside: matter in its earth condition; ordinary Bhuh experience |
| 2 | Rasa (taste) | Ap, water | The point carried inside the Self; the outer location vanishes. Closer to the Self, and less sharply pointed than gandha |
| 3 | Rupa (form, sight) | Agni, fire, "the builder of forms" | As rasa weakens, experience shifts outward again, now as intellection, not feeling: an undifferentiated "something there all round the Self", felt on the surface of the subject. The last of the form-bearing (murtta) tattvas |
| 4 | Sparsa (touch) | Vayu, air | Rupa, let come very close, is felt as touch. Not touch by shaped objects (which needs Agni first) but like sensing the warmth or coolness of things. The whole subject now responds as a whole, so experience moves inward again |
| 5 | Sabda (sound) | Akasa, ether | Sparsa, examined closely, is found to be "externality idea-points" spread over the subject's surface, "receding away as mere hints of outsideness". This is the seed of all externally located phenomena, the deathless basis (amrta) into which all resolve on the way up |
A breathing pattern of in and out. The stages are not a straight line inward. They alternate: gandha is outside, rasa is inside, rupa is spread over the surface, sparsa is felt through the whole, sabda is the faintest hint of "out there". Each step lowers the intensity of the point and brings the object nearer. At sabda, all that remains of the world is the bare idea of outerness. This is the reverse of the order of creation in Chapters X and XIX, where akasa comes first and earth last.
Beyond Sound: The Three Inner Vyahrtis
Sabda refers back to its own origin: the inner mind that projects the bare idea of outerness, "as the tree from its seed". This inner root of akasa is Brahma-consciousness as the inner root-will, corresponding on the earth plane to manas.
Behind it are two further assertions of the Self. Woodroffe names them as a second set of Vyahrtis, now on the inner, ideal, subjective side:
| Inner Vyahrti | Assertion | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| Supreme Bhuh | "I am myself" | Cit as objectified self-consciousness; the end-point of objectivity, the Self as Universe. It is the Bhuh of the inner region, as earth is the Bhuh of the outer |
| Supreme Bhuvah | "I am" | The assertion of pure self-existence, since every other assertion of the outer world is now transcended. "I am myself", subjectifying itself as "I am myself I", becomes the Cosmic Will |
| Supreme Svah | "I" (Aham) | The eternal subjective "I", distinct from the outer "I" of individuality in the lower Svah |
Behind all assertion lies Consciousness (Cit) per se: unchanged, unconditioned, yet the source of every changing form, which merge back into it. This is Bliss (Ananda), or Joy: the Joy of which the world is an expression, by which it is held, and into which it returns, "the Universal Mother (like the earthly mother) clasping the child which She has produced to Her breast".
The Supreme "I"
This Aham is not the limited "I" of ahamkara, which is only its gross reflection. Woodroffe gives the Kamakalavilasa account:
- Prakasa (Siva as illumination) unites with itself as Vimarsa-sakti in samarasya, perfect equal union.
- Vimarsa is a pure mirror (darpana) made of a mass of Siva's own rays.
- The rays are reflected back, and Purnahambhava, the experience of the "I" as being all, arises.
- There is no other but the Self, which is then the Enjoyer of Bliss.
From this root "I", which is Kama, the will to create and the collectivity (samasti) of all powers, grow the trunk, branches, leaves and fruit of the great Asvattha tree, the universe.
Why the order cannot be skipped. Only when the Universal "I" is reached can one realise its inwardness as the Mahasunya, the Great Void, "nothing which thought can conceive or words utter". "None of the higher stages can be realised until the next lower one is grasped." Before the universal "I", the "I-less" Cit cannot be reached, because the veil of matter, thinner at each step, still covers "its Glorious Face". The method is graded because the veil is.
The Practice in One Paragraph
At meditation, thin the whole veil of earthly (Parthiva) existence by moving inward through the stages, reducing each cruder form of consciousness into the subtler, until the subtlest point of the universal "I", Isvara of the Vedanta, is reached. Then the eternal, changeless ground even of Isvara is realised. That is Kaivalya Moksa, the basis of every form that arose from its self-assertion, "the Will to be many of which the Veda speaks". It is the great Self of Vedanta and the Perfect Experience called the Supreme Love (niratisaya-premaspadatvam anandatvam).
Three States and the Fourth
The forms of the Self fall into three broad classes:
| State | Character |
|---|---|
| Waking (jagrat) | Actual, objective, external |
| Dream (svapna) | Ideal, subjective, internal, assertional |
| Dreamless sleep (susupti) | The bare subject standing by itself, not yet asserting, but past the point of equilibrium and about to assert; all ideas lie latent there, ready to shoot out into the ideal and then the actual |
The Perfect Consciousness lies beyond all three, yet is one with all, supporting them by its own Being and Power (Sakti).
- It runs through all as the thread-self (Sutratma) and unifies them.
- It gives each its separate existence yet sums them up in its own life.
- It is beyond all because it is infinite.
- It comprehends all because it is the whole (Purna).
- It is Love, because it is the love of the Self for the Self.
- It is Joy, because all love is that; but it is perfect also.
- It is the Perfect Experience (Jnanasvarupa), "which thought achieves by a pure mind in a pure body".
"It is thus the Supreme Siddhi of all Sadhana and Yoga." The book ends: Om Tat Sat.
A personal synthesis, not a classical text. Woodroffe says this sadhana was "given to me some years ago"; he does not name the source, and the scheme of inner Vyahrtis mapped onto "I am myself" / "I am" / "I" does not appear in this form in the standard Tantras. It combines Sankhya's tanmatras, the Kashmir Saiva language of Prakasa-Vimarsa (via the Kamakalavilasa), Advaita's Isvara and Kaivalya, and the Mandukya scheme of three states and a fourth. Read it as one teacher's map of how the book's theory might be practised. The tanmatra sequence, in particular, is a contemplative reconstruction: the alternation of "inside" and "outside" is Woodroffe's description of experience, not a doctrine he cites. The Celephais editor's note at the end of the source also asks readers to remember that Woodroffe wrote from inside the Sakta position, "which will go some way to explaining the seeming credulity of a number of passages".
Key terms: Atma-sadhana, Purna-brahman, idam, antarmukhi, tanmatra, gandha, rasa, rupa, sparsa, sabda, murtta, amrta, Brahma-consciousness, Cosmic Will, Aham, ahamkara, Prakasa, Vimarsa, samarasya, darpana, Purnahambhava, Kama, samasti, Asvattha, Mahasunya, Isvara, Kaivalya Moksa, jagrat, svapna, susupti, Sutratma, Purna, Jnanasvarupa.
Reflect: Woodroffe says the will-to-know, in a nature purifying itself, is prayer in its highest form. When you study, is your will to know mixed with a wish for some other result, and does that change what you are able to see?
Glossary of Key Terms
A compact glossary of the terms this edition uses most. Diacritics are omitted, as in the rest of the edition.
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Adhva | "Path"; the six ways (sadadhva) by which the One becomes many: letter, syllable, mantra, kala, tattva, bhuvana |
| Aham | "I"; formed from A (first letter, Siva) and Ha (last letter, Sakti); the Supreme "I" is Purnaham |
| Akasa | Ether, the first gross element, rooted in sabda-tanmatra |
| Artha | Object, or the meaning a word points to |
| Asabda | The soundless: the transcendent beyond all sound |
| Bhuvana | A world or region within a tattva |
| Bija | "Seed" syllable such as Hrim, Srim, Krim, Hum; an approximate natural name of a Devata |
| Bindu | "Point"; Sakti massive (ghanibhuta) and ready to create |
| Candrabindu | The nasal crescent-and-dot ending of a bija, marking Nada and Bindu |
| Cit | Pure consciousness |
| Devata | The deity, whose sound-body is the mantra |
| Dhvani | Unlettered sound, as distinct from varna |
| Gayatri | The most sacred Vedic mantra, addressed to Savitr; also the Tantric Brahma-gayatri |
| Hamsa | "Ham-sah": the pair Siva and Sakti, Purusa and Prakrti; the natural mantra of the breath |
| Hiranyagarbha | The cosmic subtle body; the Lord at the subtle level |
| Isvara | The creative Lord; Bindu-tattva |
| Japa | Repetition of a mantra |
| Kala | A particular display of power (vibhuti); also one of the six kancukas (limitation of agency) |
| Kamakala | The triangle of three Bindus; "root of all mantras" |
| Kancuka | "Jacket"; the limitations (Maya, kala as limited agency, vidya, raga, kala as time, niyati) that make the finite Purusa |
| Kundalini | The coiled power at the base of the spine; Sabda-brahman in the body |
| Madhyama | The "middle" level of speech: thought-sound before utterance |
| Mantra | Sound that is the Devata, which, awakened, transforms the one who utters it |
| Mantra-caitanya | The "consciousness" or awakeness of a mantra, without which japa is fruitless |
| Matrka | The "little mothers": the letters as subtle powers |
| Maya | The power that makes consciousness experience itself as limited |
| Nada | The first produced movement: Siva and Sakti in relation |
| Natural name | The sound of the forces that make a thing what it is, as heard by a perfect ear |
| Om (Pranava) | A-U-M with Nada and Bindu; the whole process of creation, maintenance and dissolution in one syllable |
| Para | The supreme, motionless level of speech in the Muladhara |
| Parasabda | Causal sound: the Lord as the stress from which all sensation follows |
| Pasyanti | "Seeing" speech: the first manifesting movement |
| Prakasa | Siva as illumination |
| Pratyaya | The mind's grasp of its object |
| Sabda | Sound, word; at its highest, the Causal Stress in Sakti |
| Sabda-brahman | Brahman as the ground of all sound and meaning |
| Sadhana | Disciplined practice |
| Sakti | Power; the active aspect of the one reality |
| Siddhi | Attainment: a power, or the supreme attainment of liberation |
| Tanmatra | The "mere that": the subtle root of each element (sabda, sparsa, rupa, rasa, gandha) |
| Tattva | "Thatness"; one of the thirty-six principles of Saiva-Sakta cosmology |
| Vaikhari | Spoken, audible speech |
| Vak | Speech, Word; the creative power of Brahman |
| Varna | Letter, lettered sound; also "colour" |
| Varnamala | The Garland of Letters: the fifty letters as the Devi's necklace |
| Vimarsa | Sakti as the mirror in which Siva knows himself |
| Vyahrti | The utterances Bhuh, Bhuvah, Svah |
Master Synthesis
The Garland of Letters is the most theoretical of Woodroffe's books, and the one that most repays a second reading. It sets out to answer one question for an English reader of 1922: why should sounds that mean nothing in any language be held to have power? His answer is a complete metaphysics of the Word, built in three blocks and then turned into practice. This synthesis gathers the argument, the takeaways and the places where a modern reader should add context.
The Book's Argument in Twelve Steps
- The Word is the creative power of the Absolute. Vak, Sabda and Logos name the same idea: the world is spoken into being (Chapter I).
- Every experience has three faces: the object (artha), the mind's grasp (pratyaya) and its sound (sabda), produced by one movement of consciousness (Chapters II to III).
- At its highest, "sound" is not sound. Sabda means the Causal Stress in Sakti, of which hearing, sight and touch are later effects (Chapters IV to V).
- Classes and their names are eternal; individual things are not. That is the sense in which the Veda's sound can be called eternal (Chapters VI to VII).
- A natural name is the sound of the forces that make a thing what it is. No human word is one exactly; bija-mantras claim to approximate them (Chapters VIII to IX).
- Creation runs through the thirty-six tattvas, from Siva and Sakti through Sadasiva, Isvara and the kancukas down to earth (Chapters X, XIV to XV, XVIII).
- Sakti, Nada and Bindu are the causal stages of power before manifestation; Bindu divides into the three-point Kamakala, the root of all mantras (Chapters XI to XIII, XVII, XXV).
- The same process is told in Saktis and Kalas: twelve causal Saktis of Om, and the Kalas as specific displays of power within the tattvas (Chapters XIX to XX).
- The fifty letters are the Devi's body and her garland. Speech descends from Para through Pasyanti and Madhyama to Vaikhari; Kali's necklace of heads is the universe of name and form she withdraws (Chapters XXI, XXIII).
- Om and the bijas compress the whole cosmology into syllables. A guru chooses them by the disciple's nature; their letters each stand for a power (Chapters XXII, XXIV, XXVI).
- Six paths link sound and object, so that worship along the sound side climbs the worlds along the object side (Chapter XXVII).
- Practice awakens the mantra by joining Mantra-sakti with the practitioner's own Sadhana-sakti; the Gayatri, read as argument and then as inward yoga, leads from earth-consciousness to the Self that is Bliss (Chapters XXVIII to XXXI).
Twelve Takeaways
- A mantra is not a prayer. Its power is held to lie in fixed sound, not in meaning, which is why a translated mantra stops being a mantra.
- Sound is the bridge between mind and matter. Sabda stands between pratyaya and artha, so working with sound is working on both.
- "Natural name" is the key idea. Without it, bija-mantras are nonsense syllables; with it, they are a claim about vibration and form.
- The claim is graded, not absolute. Woodroffe says no Vedic word is a perfect natural name. Mantras are approximate ones.
- Consciousness never becomes unconscious. In Sakta Advaita, Maya is consciousness veiling itself, so nothing is wholly dead matter.
- The body repeats the cosmos. Kundalini is Sabda-brahman in the body; the cakras carry the letters.
- Symbols must be read on their own terms. Kali's severed heads are letters, not trophies; the erotic language of Nada is metaphysics, not licence.
- Initiation matters. A mantra received without the guru and without awakening (caitanya) is said to sleep.
- The Tantra opens the mantra to all. Where the Vedic Gayatri was closed to Sudras and women, the Tantric Brahma-gayatri is not.
- Reason has full rights in its sphere. Woodroffe's Vedanta accepts nothing in worldly matters that reason rejects, even from scripture.
- The highest sadhana is compassion. The book ends its theory of power with the words "Love is Power".
- Woodroffe writes as an advocate: read him for the system as its insiders saw it, and read the critics for history and philology.
Where Woodroffe Needs Correction or Context
| Issue | Woodroffe's position | Modern view |
|---|---|---|
| "Arthur Avalon" | A pseudonym | Kathleen Taylor and others credit much of the Sanskrit work to Atal Behari Ghose and other collaborators; "Avalon" was partly a joint name |
| Science of 1920 | Ether, the breakdown of the atom, "New Thought" and Spencer as support for Vedanta | Ether was abandoned by physics; the parallels are suggestive analogies, not evidence |
| Natural names | Bijas approximate the sound of the forces that form things | An untestable claim in its strong form; Woodroffe's own "experimental" test depends on the guru's ear |
| Eternal Varnas | Letters exist eternally and are only manifested by utterance | Linguistics treats phonemes as features of particular languages; the doctrine is a Mimamsa and grammarian position, not a finding |
| Saiva and Sakta unity | The Tantras form one system | Broadly supported for the tattva scheme; but lineages, texts and ritual differ more than his synthesis suggests |
| The Netra Tantra and Kashmir sources | Reports summaries made for him by Harabhatta Sastri | Now edited and studied directly; some of his readings were second-hand |
| Atma-sadhana | A sadhana "given to me" | An unnamed, personal synthesis mixing Sankhya, Kashmir Saivism, Advaita and the Mandukya; read as one teacher's map |
A Reader's Path Through Woodroffe
- Introduction to Tantra Sastra: the map of the whole system.
- The Garland of Letters (this edition): the theory of sound and mantra in depth.
- The Serpent Power: Kundalini, the cakras and the Sat-cakra-nirupana in full.
- Shakti and Shakta: the essays that defend and widen the Sakta worldview.
- Mahanirvana Tantra: the scripture behind the first book.
- Hymns to the Goddess and Hymn to Kali: the devotional voice.
- The World as Power and Mahamaya: the later philosophical studies.
A Practice Path, With a Caution
The book itself says that mantra works through initiation, a living teacher and an awakened mantra. What follows is a reader's way of testing the ideas, not a substitute for that.
- Attend to sound. For a week, notice the sounds around you without naming them. Chapter XXIV's distinction between unlettered sound and letter becomes concrete.
- Notice naming. Watch how a thing changes for you once you have its name. That is the sabda-artha-pratyaya triangle of Chapter II in action.
- Use the seven stages. Work through Chapter XXX's seven steps of reflection slowly, one per sitting.
- Try the inward ladder. In meditation, follow Chapter XXXI from smell to taste, form, touch and sound, then to the bare sense of "I am".
- Keep compassion as the test. Woodroffe's last word on power is harmony and the relief of suffering. If practice makes you harder, it has gone wrong.
What the book proves and what it presents. The Garland of Letters is a superb exposition of how the Sakta tradition understood sound, meaning and mantra. It is not, and does not claim to be, a proof that mantras work. Its strongest arguments are philosophical: the analysis of word, meaning and thought in Chapters II to VII, and the graded, careful handling of the Veda's claims in Chapter IX. Its weakest are the appeals to the physics of its day. Read it as a key to a tradition that has shaped Indian practice for more than a thousand years, and as one of the first serious attempts in English to take that tradition on its own terms.