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Makar Sankranti Blessings
I’m sending Makar Sankranti blessings to all of you.
Renuka Mata Darshan
Renuka Mata Darshan
The Mother Renuka in Mahurgarh is a head. A glimmering orange sindhur moonrock egg, head. Way too naïve to be benign. Almost cartoon-like, something I would never expect, I felt like I had come into the presence of the dark side of Howdy-Doody. Did I say dark? The inner recesses of the sanctum sanctorum was dark, lit only by flickering butter lamps making the thick stone walls black with grease. The space suggested by the confining black walls lacked definition. Enigma is black, as is the Mother Renuka before she is covered in a surface of orange vermillion and mustard seed oil. Her eyes (windows of the soul) are an attachment, black onyx with painted white ringed corneas. The only natural mark on the great Egg-Stone, the Mother’s signature, is an opening into the stone, Her mouth. For, among the Mothers, what issues from their wombs exits from their mouths. The world is born from the Mouth of the Mother, and it retreats into Her Mouth. Her Names are fifty-one, a reflection of the fifty-one syllables, worn around her neck in a garland.
Was she ammonite? Did she have a fossilized kundalini snake coiled in a circle, inside of her blackness, frozen forever in potential, resembling the Matrix of the World? Constantly pushed and jostled by the ever surging crowd of devotees, I looked around. Could these raven haired tribal women awash to their toes in primitive silver ornaments be having thoughts like these, I wondered. How could they, as they held each other’s skirts forming an unbroken chain, and sought proximity to the Stone with a Mouth? Pulled by some force. And then, from time to time, one would break the chain, scream and shake and rip out her hair and collapse with a painful sounding thud on the stone floor, writhing in trance.
It was obvious that she was most likely possessed by a not-so-benign spirit. Otherwise, why all the thrashing about? The screaming and the violence. The look of terror in their faces. Thank gods Hari Puri Baba wasn’t like that. I’d have hated to make such a fool of myself in front of all those nice people. It was enough just to stand out as a foreigner.
Not that I was securely in my body at that moment. Bells clanged, mantras intoned by priests echoed off the black walls, women broke their bangles, smeared their vermilion third eyes, and screamed, and everyone shouted out sacred slogans, praises of The Mother. Hari Puri Baba wiggled inside of me. Be good, I said to myself, meaning that body-mind shell that also had my baba as an occupant. .
“Did you have darshan of both mothers?” the priest asked me on my return to Dattatreya’s dhuni. He referred to both Anasuya, the mother of Dattatreya, as well as Renuka. I had gone to the Mother Anasuya’s Temple after visiting Renuka.
I hadn’t been aware that the Renuka Temple, on that twin hill facing us, is considered one of the most powerful shakti-piths in all India and a magnet for worshippers of the Goddess in one of her most powerful forms. Many who came were tantriks. I was told that the temple was considered by many to be one of Three in Maharashtra.
Dattatreya is thought by many to be Lord of Tantra, and Renuka is among the most worshipped Goddesses by tantriks. Many of the tantras and tantrik texts are attributed to Dattatreya, who is certainly not the property of any one sect. Many of the different sects of tantriks and yogis attribute their origins to Dattatreya.
Tantric Goddess, Mother Renuka
Tantric Goddess, Mother Renuka
Mother Renuka is an incarnation of the Great God Shiva’s consort, Parvati, the Lady of the Mountain. She was born out of the fire of a sacrifice performed at a Prayag Kumbh Mela in the Treta Age by the rishi-sage Agastya, and coming of age, married the rishi-sage Jamadagni. She reflects a complement to Mother Lakshmi, the Earth Mother, who is the consort of the God Vishnu, The Maintainer. While Mother Lakshmi is Fecundity and Her daughter, Prosperity, Renuka is Enigma and Her daughter, Transformation.
Two main stories about Mother Renuka find their telling, performance, and appearance in folk arts wherever there are devotees of this mother. They are both tales from which the Traditions of the Mysteries, Tantra, and Magic find a surface reflection. For many tantriks and other devotees, these stories are a hook, a beginning, that take the adept into deep subterranean caverns, below the surface of the world.
In the first story, the virtuous Renuka’s husband, rishi-sage Jamadagni questions her thought-chastity. Angry at her response, he orders his sons in then order of their age to kill their mother. They refuse their father, all except the youngest son, Parshuram, Axe-wielder, who happened to be an incarnation of God Vishnu. Following the order of his father without hesitation, he lopped off his mother’s head with his handy axe.
Seeing his son in such a distraught state, having committed such an atrocious act, he offered Parshuram a boon, a wish, as a reward for his unswerving duty to his father. With salty tears running down his face, the fourteen year old boy told his father that he wanted his mother back. “That’s it?” his father questioned him. “No Victory Over Enemies, World Empire, Victory Over The Gods, or Immortality? You name it!” Parshuram was never one to mince his words. He was a very serious character, didn’t joke around; he was all business. “No, give me my mother back,” he said.
For Jamadagni, the Knower of All Things, this was not a major problem. Taking care that her head was in exactly the right position, facing straight forward on the shoulders of her headless body (for once attached, the head would be fixed permanently in that posture), he fastened his wife’s head back on her body and she came back to life. continue reading…
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Was Rumi’s Guru a Sannyasi?
Multani Baba
Shah Shams i Tabriz, the guru of Rumi, has a curious background.
During my apprenticeship with my gurus, I learned that my family’s name was Multani marhi, or the Lineage of Multani Baba, also known as Keshav Puri. As Sannyasis are not cremated, but buried, Keshav Puri’s tomb is just outside of the city in Pakistan with which his name is connected, Multan.
It was one of my main gurus, Shri Maharaj Kapil Puri, who first told me in the 70’s that our Lineage Namesake is also worshipped in the Muslim world as a great Sufi saint. He told me that the old fakir/baba tradition knew him as Shamshad Tapa Rez, a descriptive name, prompting several interpretations, that come from his story. “Tapa”, in this case is Sun, heat, and austerities, all connected. In Sanskrit, “tapas.” My gurus interpreted his Muslim name as “One who pulls the Sun.”
But, as they went on, he became known as Shams i Tabriz by the public. “Shams” is also an Arabic word for Sun. Curiously, the word “Keshav” which has several meanings, all of which have something to do with long hair, is also thought of as the rays of the sun, and Keshav is one who is Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva, like Dattatreya.
As you will read below in a modern song of Multani Baba, still sung in our lineage in Haryana, especially in the sub family of Sheetal Puri Baba, Keshav Puri Ji got into big trouble after he raised the Multan Ruler’s beloved son from the dead. The other shamans, healers, and babas, in fact the Pir of Multan, became very jealous and turned the king against Keshav Puri Ji. And he was indeed imprisoned, but when he tore off his fakir’s gown, and all could see he was UNCIRCUMSIZED, that he was a Naga Baba, they let him go out of fear. continue reading…
Take a look at Orientalist paintings of late 19th. It’s a fantasy world, like our fantasy comics today. It didn’t exist in the “Orient” but only in the imagination of the “Occidental.” Yet, the imaginary Orient of writers and artists, became the “real” Orient that Imperial culture sought to essentialize, and represent, as its agent. Those among the colonized who could perceive the value in providing this essentialized “real thing” to the Imperium were well rewarded and became a model for others to follow.
Baba answers regarding numbers in Initiation Video
from FACEBOOK 11 June 2010
In the moral universe, or the Christian/Jewish/Muslim monotheist universe one might assign Maya as an obstacle or even an evil.
Yes, we transcend Maya, but we don’t SHUN Her, we honor and worship Her. Ma as Maya, the Matrix, the World Mother, is indeed Measure, and we worship Her singing “Mother, you are so astounding, let me count the ways…” I see the numbers as reflections of Her manifestation, not with specific meanings, but as reflections of many different things that bear RESEMBLANCE to each other. For example, but not limited to by any means, 3 gunas, 5 elements, 9 planets, 12 houses, 15 days of the moon, and vowels (Shiva’s shaktis), 50 or 51 syllables, 9X12=108 the Universe reflected as the night sky, Brahmanda – the egg of Brahma, and the “mathematics” of 1 +1 = 11, Shiva and Shakti, Gaurishankar. Let me count the ways, Auspicious One! Oh, 1008, just add another Egg in the middle of things. The syllable Ma lives in that Sacred Geography where the Cosmic Unmanifest meets the World, she holds the power, potential, and possibility to manifest the world by her personality of Limitation. Shiva as pure bliss, Ananda, is reflected in the World as “feeling,” bliss, suffering, any feeling. Shiva as Eternity, is reflected in the world, through the prism of Limitation as time, the ticking clock. His omniscience, All-Knowing is reflected as knowledge, and then further, in our age, to information. Things are not equal in the Universe, the INDIVIDUAL on whom the influence of Jupiter falls is not equal to Jupiter. The path of the Sannyasi, the renunciate, the yogi, or even the seeker, is to turn the world upside down, and return to Shiva, or the source, or the nothingness, or whatever you want to call it.
It’s not that it’s important to count, nobody is counting, we are observing and witnessing, and we notice RESEMBLANCE in the world. The more we observe resemblance, the more we see that it is Speech. A sacred Speech. Not just us in India, anywhere one can see the sky. It’s a speech that may require interpretation, but has no connection with fickle ideologies of man. Ideology, in fact, stands in the way of observation, it replaces observation. In effect ideology says: “Don’t believe what you see, believe what we tell you. Think about this with linear reasoning.” So we incorporate this “speech” in our Theater of Analogy, in our cloning of the world on our little stage, what the world categorizes as Ritual.
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MORE MEHTA:
MORE MEHTA:
Drugs and hatha yoga have the same aim: to help us lead healthier lives.
India has given the world yoga for free. No wonder so many in the country feel that the world should return the favor by making lifesaving drugs available at reduced prices, or at least letting Indian companies make cheap generics.
And yet, the very international drug companies that so fiercely protect their patents oppose India’s attempts to amend World Trade Organization rules to protect its traditional remedies.
BABA: But what does this really mean to “protect” its traditional remedies? Will the village vaidya have to pay the Indian Government or even worse, get permission from them, to make his triphala churan for his patients. Maybe in that case it would be easier to buy Dabur brand, or Pfizer or Longs brand. The system is flawed, I don’t believe you get anywhere playing one part of it against the other. continue reading…
DALAI LAMA DARSHAN
DALAI LAMA DARSHAN
A few years ago, during a visit to the States, a friend took me to hear the Dalai Lama speak in Los Angeles. After walking through a carnival, Disneyland-like arcade, we arrived at the Universal City Amphitheater, where we had to abandon our mineral water bottles in case they contained explosives. Inside there were long lines of people buying cappuccinos and snacks because they knew that the Dalai Lama might go on for at least an hour. Inside I sat next to a middle age woman who ate popcorn throughout HH’s discourse and whispered comments to me about his deep wisdom.
The Dalai Lama was superb. He warmed up the audience with a few well-told jokes (I’m pirating those, I said to myself), and then with everyone having a good time, he gave a brilliant talk on compassion.
I think the tickets cost a lot but I didn’t ask because I was a guest, and my hostess was comped. HH put on a great show, he was funny, profound, inquisitive, and little naughty – this was high quality entertainment. Thank Goddess there is a human being like him around for the betterment of the world and all who make some sort of contact with him. But, excuse me, this IS show biz. We are in a new age and it seems that without show biz there is no biz. I have no problem with that, especially if it’s in good taste.
Deepak Chopra (who I know and have great respect for) and others have found ways to extract withdrawals from the storehouse of India’s Intellectual Capital, and create properties of value, for their own personal wealth, for the profit of the media multinationals who distribute the properties, and to the public who are entertained and informed by them. continue reading…
Baba’s response to an editorial in the New York Times
Baba’s response to Suketu Mehta’s editorial in the New York Times
NYT: …that anybody can make that much money from the teaching of a knowledge that is not supposed to be bought or sold like sausages.
BABA: It is for the colonizer of knowledge to create sausages out of the living animal. Sausages have a bigger market than pigs and cows.
NYT: …the forefront of the patenting of traditional Indian wisdom are Indians, mostly overseas…
BABA: Indian culture is very old and has been dealing with logic and rational thinking for millennia. Indians are very intelligent. Look what they did to the Westminster model of parliamentary democracy, the pinnacle of enlightenment thinking when it came to the human “science” of politics. They ate it alive. It more resembles Swiss cheese than anything British. I’d be proud. continue reading…
Hermeticism reflecting Dattatreya
Compare the line from Avadhut Gita with the Medieval European Alchemical formula:
Like the firmament, constellated with stars
He’s not bound, like thief to his galley oars,
But free and powerful, to no order bows,
Stars contained within him, the world is prose.
In the context of my book, and our tradition, you may see the dome of the sky as a reflection of the dome of our speech, from our throat to our lips. You may also see the analogue of the possibilities of human speech (reflecting the boundaries of human knowledge) reflecting all the stars in the sky; the “speech” of the sky containing within it The Book of the World. This is the direction I can suggest for you to travel, to go deeper into the power of Dattatreya’s statement.
AVADHUT GITA – an unforgettable line
JNANAMRTAM SAMARASAM GAGANOPAMOHAM
I kept chanting it just under my breath. It was Thursday night. The evening arati rituals had been completed in Datt Akhara, Ujjain, and I sat at the feet of the Pir, Amar Puri Ji, the abbot of this ancient monastery, who was possessed and inhabited by the previous Pir, as were all the abbots back to when it all began.
We sing the line forty times. Do you someone’s trying to make a point?
It is Guru Dattatreya’s refrain, a line so powerful that it has never left me alone since the moment I first heard it. It MADE me chant it. It is a line that is central to the Tradition of Knowledge. And one finds curious resemblances with the Hermetic traditions as well.
Being a Westerner, my nature is to first consider the grammatical subject of the line-and sure enough the subject is “I,” aham and then the verb, an implied, “to be.” How do I translate the implications of having the subject so far away from the action, at the tail end of an articulation, as much for meter as for clarity, a final aham.
I am “the immortality of knowledge (jnanaamritam),” a mere lifting of a to aa, by fusion, takes us from death to immortality, a (no) mrita (death). Amrita is also nectar or elixir, and we translate it as the Elixir of Immortality.
“We got the juice,” says the Pir of Dattatreya Akhara. Well, he used the word, rasa. Rasa has many meanings; the most common is juice, and it’s often used as essence as well. But there can also be a transformative element in this essence, as rasa can also be Mercury, Quicksilver, a shape-shifter capable of transforming other things. Rasayana is alchemy or also rejuvenation of the body.
In the ancient Mediterranean, Mercury-Hermes was the “Messenger of the Gods.” Translated into Sanskrit that would be Avadhuta, a frequent name of Guru Dattatreya, and the name of his song.
The Pir had been an alchemist. He vehemently denied he had ever turned base metal into gold, but nevertheless had been attacked in his youth by robbers, looking for his loot. They couldn’t find his formulae, they were in his head. And he had no books. continue reading…
“I Dream India into Existence”
Le Marchand d'eau - Ludwig Deutch, 1891
Autobiography of a Sadhu, a Journey into Mystic India
Chapter 2: “I Dream India into Existence”
I dreamed India into existence. Not that it was my personal private dream, but a believable movie reasonably constructed from the group psyche. It was comforting this dream, cushioned, as it were, with familiarity. It tamed the wild profusion of things, using the sights, sounds, and faces of India as its raw material. Everything might appear different from my ordinary world back home, but I knew that this was the way it was supposed to be. It was a good dream, it made me feel happy.
I recognized India immediately, like meeting a blood relative for the first time, because I carried with me, deep inside, images corresponding to what I saw on the outside. Later I realized that these images resembled Orientalist paintings of 19th-century Europe. I saw that same domed dwelling as the artist Delamain. I learned to label it a dargah, the tomb of a Sufi saint. I searched the back streets of the Muslim Quarter looking for Deutsch’s water seller, knowing full well I would never drink that water. Guaranteed dysentery. But I would enter into his doorways. continue reading…
The Gunas (Tantra Vidhya)
The Gunas
Purusha, primordial consciousness or spirit, the potential subject of knowledge, the syllable “a,” and Prakriti, primordial matter as yet unmanifest, nature in potential, the potential object of knowledge, the syllable “i” manifest through Cosmic Mind Stuff – reflected in an unruffled mirror-lake of Intellect, into a separation between a subject and an object of knowledge.
A discrimination arises between the Same and the Other, which are identical reflections of one another. The World’s existence, however, requires a drop in the mirror-lake, causing a ripple, a desire for identity, for separation. That first rippled reflection of I-dentity, named ahamkara, Ego Principle, appears as Movement, itself, and we may distinguish three qualities, gunas, that excite the World into manifestation.
If there were only sattva, The Balanced, then Ego would remain transparent and Movement would only be potential. Rajas, the Active, attracts, as the agent of The Same, transforms and assimilates. Tamas, the Passive, repels, as the agent of the Other, and maintains the isolation of things.
Rajas, the Active, supported by the subjective sattva, the Balanced, attracting matter to consciousness, manifests the eleven organs, named indriyas, which are reflected in man – five organs of knowledge: organ of smell, organ of taste, organ of sight, organ of touch, and organ of hearing; the five organs of action, the hands, legs, tongue, anus, and genitals; and the organizing organ of mind.
When subjectivity is not present, the qualities of activity, rajas, and inertia, tamas, reflect the subjective organs of knowledge as objective Rudimentary Elements, tanmatras: perceived by smell, perceived by taste, perceived by sight, perceived by touch, and perceived by hearing. Further reflection, as if another mirror is inserted, renders the five rudimentary elements into the five Gross Elements, the mahabhutas: earth, water, fire, air, and ether demonstrating The Passive, tamas, maintaining the ultimate isolation of things.
Baba’s answers to questions on evolution.
How would you briefly define Science?
A modern methodology based on a linear logic, in which man’s ideas and representations of the world are tested to conform to his experience of it; the results being accepted by the authoritative peer group of linear logicians.
How would you briefly define Hinduism?
A non-ideological grouping of people originally of the greater Indian subcontinent based on family, family origins connected to specific clans, “sacred” geography, and the resulting family traditions.
How would you briefly define Evolution?
A scientific theory describing a linear development of the world from the ultimately simple to the complex as a means of adaptation to change brought about by the linear progression of time.
Colonial Enterprise in India
Consider the colonial enterprise in India against the backdrop of the European ”enlightenment” in which there was first a mapping of the physical universe (Geometry is the language of God – so go out there and measure!), and then a mapping of the human universe, in which the subject of knowledge of the first exercise becomes also the object of knowledge in the second. An Authority was established that represents another culture, including its knowledge, from the outside; that is the colonial enterprise.
Indian culture was mapped extensively by its colonial rulers, largely by missionaries. It’s botanicals and medicines, treatments and magic, healers and their systems were catalogued and exported to the West. The colony was “farmed” for whatever resources might be valuable. This slice of intellectual capital brought almost immediate great health benefits to the west and enormous financial rewards as it spawned a pharmaceutical revolution.
Even though small pox vaccination (subcutaneous insertion of dried pustules from previous year infections) was banned by the British rulers in India in 1802 on “humanitarian” grounds, the knowledge of it certainly didn’t escape them. From the mid 18th century, countless studies and volumes of research on knowledge deemed theologically incorrect, contributed to huge advances in immunology, surgery, and the establishment of what we now call modern medicine.
