Secret channels of spiritual telepathy

 Mount Kailasa depicting the sacred family.

The Gods are clever; they gave us a mind to think and also gave it the nature to wander. We are small minor spiritual centers that dot the earth, each center housed in the mind, have a task to do. The purpose is simple; it is to log on to the mother ship of spiritual thought and meet the celestials in other worlds. This is easier said than done for the mind generates thought, but while it meanders through it, it gives little consideration to the quality of the thought it nurtured on the way. We live in a mental swamp, a place that we call home and feel familiar about but scarcely do we realize this stinks of rotting thoughts that need to be disposed.

So here is a swamp inside the mind, being constantly fed by the muck of every one's swamp outside, so much so that we tune ourselves to get used to everyone's swamp being important enough to be a part of our own. Yes, in our journey to meet the celestials on the other side, we are looking for a couple of gems within the swamps that surround us but there is hardly any luck in finding it. Given the miserable helpless lives we lead, a few great beings who once dotted our earth decided to give us a set of rules, as defined by a school of thought. They gave the Gods a form, they gave them character that we would understand, they gave them names, they gave them sacred syllables and they assigned all of them a mystic path, that we could latch on to in order to reach them in the other world.

Here is where the whole cosmos seems to have played the game in sync with these great masters. They just didn’t give rules and tell us to follow it. They derived an ingenious method to bring in intrigue and mystery into this search leaving us ever wanting more with no apparent luck to getting it. Our journey into this mysticism gets thicker as we realize that the realm we apparently deal with is something quite beyond the swamp. As we spend more time and energy with it in what is termed as ritual, this process starts to clean up the thoughts we have and slowly the swamp within begins to flower. The experience of this change, the color and fragrance within, the freshness and newness of these thoughts lead us away from the swamp we belong to while physically we still exist in it.

The more the cleaning of these thoughts, the greater is the inner resistance to let the outside swamp bother us so much so that we start living within this beautiful garden inside and scarcely look at the swamp outside, it is as good as non existent from here on. But is that all?

Not really. This inner garden has the tendency to log onto the bigger paradise in the other realm. This garden now starts to have the nature of being a drop of paradise and as it transforms itself, it urges us to start the outside journey to visit the sacred earth that once held the power centers as part of them. What we apparently assume is a temple hosting the idol of the Gods with the walls defining their character; we scarcely realize that deep down within its core is a circuit that connects directly to the Gods, giving us mysterious access to one of the doors of this invisible mother ship. These are sacred mandalas or yantras that are housed with great reverence within the temples and are constantly fed everyday with living worship to ensure the doors remain open permanently to all who seek. The other way of accessing these spiritual doors is to house the yantra itself within one's own home, but that comes with a set of rules. To keep to door open, and to feed the yantra we need to be spiritually clean and the mental swamp has to try hard enough to clean itself up through a disciplined approach which has also been defined.

And so life moves on, giving us living moments to ensure we evolve ourselves and transform our swamps into paradise. Finally we reach the sacred power centers that call out the rules really loud. These are zones that we don’t get to visit often, they are almost inaccessible and have the nature to resist the swamp from a long mile. They are the actual mother ship, the axis mundi, the host spiritual power center and the home of million celestials. We are blessed to even get the opportunity to access these zones and our time is short. Access is limited to these zones based on how unclean our swamp is. The rules are so potent here and the experiences so intense that should a person have no swamp at all, they can simply fly to the mother ship discarding the body that housed the mental swamp. Others simply see and experience the realm of the mother ship, feeling the tingle of spiritual bliss as they view the grandeur of the mother ship for the first time with their naked eye.

How would this metaphor translate to real life?

Should we be blessed with purity that we worked hard for to clean up our own mental swamp, and managed to be blessed to visit the shores of the ocean of beauty, the Manasarovar, we would have the joy of viewing the crystal moon, this pure white dome of snow, this huge peak draped in white, the great abode of Kailasa.

Kailasa is one such zone, the others being Mount Meru, Mount Mandara and the like. These are spiritually clean places, hardly allowing us to inhabit the earth around their zones, and hence they exist in bleak regions. They are extremely sacred power centers, rich with life in other realms. They are the homes of the celestials who live in the space, in the air, in the realm of the atmosphere around them. Lesser celestials live closer to the earth and greater beings live higher and deeper within these zones. What is invisible to our swamp is the richness and the purity of the earth, water, air and wind around here. This is an overwhelming experience because the purity outside has a very strong impact on the swamp inside which undergoes a sudden urge to transform into a garden leaving us emotionally very intense resulting in tears on the exterior. The need to want to stay, the urge to remain and the weakness of attachment to the swamp makes us retreat to our marshland.   

Back home in the stench of swamps, we have managed to grow a pretty garden inside the mind. We have connected with the Gods, and touched the sacred door to paradise. Our mind has made a connection it cannot forget, though we are incapable of expressing it. We only feel the beauty of that paradise, we experience the sublime feeling of freedom to disconnect from the swamp, we know there is a path and we want to take it. This garden is now beginning to flower and mystical path is now open and is speaking to us. We have opened the channel to the celestials, to the Gods and if we are persistent, they will visit us. And when they do, we speak a language they understand, a set of syllables strung together, a particular set of sounds when woven in line will produce music to their ears and make them appear to us. What a beautiful world, what an ingenious technique to make the mysterious super world a part of ourselves and transform this swamp into a path leading up to the mother ship of the super gods.

Photo courtesy: Wikipedia: Axis Mundi

A journey from Pictures to Temples to Yantras to Nirvana.

The temple, sacred in its presence and alive with energy that sets the heart beating when a devotee walks in wanting to catch the sight of Paramatman again in his aniconic form, is the seat of the universe itself.

The walls don't just house the supreme emblem inside but fortify the very energy center along a ground plan that is the blue print of the yantra that forms the mystic symbol of the individual Gods and Goddesses.

The yantra is the mystical base on which either temples rise or Gods descend into puja rooms. Be it an elaborate architectural wonder or be it a picture of deity well decorated within the puja room, the form takes on that which is intricately woven into the sacred syllables within the yantra - the geometrical representations of these deities.

This is not just about geometrical patterns that mystically define a form that we feel a lot familiar with in pictures, these are sacred beeja mantra syllables that define a lot more and call upon the very living force to bless the home or the temple with their presence.

Entering into the main temple shrine is defined by the number of gates that surround it, in the south of India, this is defined by the gopurams in four cardinal directions as well as the number of walls one crosses to get to the main shrine, which is the same as depicting 4 square gateways that lead into the center of the yantra from its four square sides describing the same gates geometrically in abstraction. This in popular terms is possibly called Vaastu Shastra.

Coming into the vicinity of this energy center entails one to be pure physically as per the scriptures. Be it a bath before the puja or be it a dip in the temple tank one is purified physically before they make their way to the main shrine. With offerings of flower and fruit, coconut and small flame of life the devotee offers moments of contemplation to the Istha Devata.

Walking around the temple as one advances towards the sanctum, brings the devotee face to face with the many Avatars the deity took to bring calm into the universe, the same is described by sacred syllables and minute depiction of the sacred self in the geometry of the yantra either obviously or through direction that emphasizes the respective forms as in the case of Sadashiva who is made of 8 forms of himself, each representing a cardinal direction. Back in the picture, this might not be depicted altogether but is largely understood.

In contemplation, deities appear either 2 handed,4 handed, 8 handed or 16 handed. Each hand carries an element, that visually appears like a noose, a sickle, sword, axe, arrow or bow etc. but also carries a profound sound that is capsuled with energy around the deity, defining their presence a lot more effectively in contemplation. These profound sounds are small syllables that appear in petals around the main geometrical form, in numbers of 4, 8, or 16 petals of a lotus inscribed in the yantra. In the picture at home, the deity is seen carrying these elements or is seated on a lotus seat of similar number of petals.

The Yantra described triangles with colors representing various Gods and Goddesses, the same is redefined in the clothes they wear in the pictures. Authentic pictures always show Devi in red and Ganesha in green and yellow. Decorating the deity with a crown and ornaments with flowers and clothes is similar to doing alankaram to the yantra after regular abhishekam. The same is done in a more elaborate way within the temple walls where the deities are dressed in the same colors in silks.

Contemplation involves invoking these forms of the supreme by regularly reciting the sacred syllables and mantras that bring them alive. Back at home, this leads the bhakta into silent japa, at the temple the priest utters these sounds during abhishekam. The energy is kept alive and the deity invoked blesses the bhakta.

On completion of this contemplation, as the peace sinks in, the devotee raises the small deepam in aarti, culminating the puja to an end. The priest raises the aarti in various lights, of numbers 1, 3, 5, 27 and 108, with mudras and offerings of a parasol, fanning and other sacred symbols of divine praise, offering them to the devata who is seated on their throne, beautifully decorated within their sanctum. This is the same form that is captured in a picture that comes alive within the puja room, a visual and far more familiar and understandable form as compare to a yantra, that strangely asks for more rule and greater care in its worship.

As one goes deeper into worship, spending more time in contemplation, one comes into understanding deeper levels of worship, superior forms of ritual that define methodology that helps realize the secrecy of this mysticism which brings alive a different world to the bhakta. This mysticism can just be realized and experienced, as the devotee is blessed with heightened emotion, mesmerized by the very form that they see of the supreme paramatma. These are in the form of mudra, natya, song, japa, vrata and sadhana.

This entire ritual through life, awakens the istha devata within the self and triggers energy of a different kind within the physical temple that we are built of, awakening each chakra within our system and converting us into a living temple where the apasmara is smashed to give way for the supreme to be enthroned within the seat of our sanctum - hrudaya kamalam.

Eklingji town, Shiva temples near Udaipur, Rajasthan

The name Eklingji is not that of a temple as much as it is the name of a place. Eklingji hosts approximately 108 temples scattered around the green hilly Rajasthani countryside near Udaipur. In this untouched terrain, one is faced with low hills, lakes with proliferating wild life, thick ancient walls and narrow alleys leading into small houses surrounding stone temples...its almost dream like.

Rural Rajasthan is a quiet landscape with architecture so quaint and so different that one could live there and just admire it. Its not about forts, palaces and havelis, or the homes of the once rich and famous but about single chambered temples with a simple mandap in front, scattered every where yet sacred in themselves.

While the sun rises and lights up these ancient wonders into current times, while the lamps light up these otherwise silent interiors, they bring with them an aura of spiritualism far more active and prolific than what we probably have today. These once populous temples just remain historical wonders, waking us up only occasionally to their presence.

In this vast sea of stone structures, crowded with sculptural representations of an open society in ancient times, we have the deep under currents of faith ruling these miniature wonders. One of the most interesting temples, with a difference is that of Eklingji temple Kailashpuri founded by Acharya Viswaroopa, a contemporary of Adi Sankaracharya.

This in one word is "anokha" or unique. This temple is dotted with smaller single chambered temples along its walls that surround the larger temple with two floors in the center of this courtyard that gradually climbs the hillside.

Going back into those ancient days, where electricity gave way to fire torches and lamps lit the interiors, and folk songs echoed among these walls, the ambiance appeared almost magical. As we step into this wondrous world of dancing flames in the wind, throwing shadows of sculptures on the walls and almost bringing them alive, the drums beat reverberating through the walls and the bells ring as the flame goes up in arti, we witness a spectacle of divinity that touches our souls. Deep within the garbha griha, are the sparkling eyes of a Shiva linga, comprised of four faces each in a cardinal direction.

Silent cool pillared halls lead into this deep chamber that hosts one of the most spectacular icons of divinity. Covered by a gold triple parasol, we have all of the Gods residing within. The flames flicker on, lighting up the face of Surya to the east, Vishnu to the North, Brahma to the west and Rudra to the south, all carved into a sacred black marble stone. Decorated with precious stones that shine through like the cosmos itself, the lingam is striking, with the eyes of divinity capturing us, our senses, our minds, leaving us helpless and swollen with an emotional high of bhakti in its purest form. As we circle around this icon of divinity on earth, all forms of the Lord locked into the linga peetha, we are met with the most powerful and profound symbol of all. A sacred yantra crowns their heads, powerful and divine that rules the faith of people who visit this enchanting temple. Surrounding this divine form, resting within their niches are Parvati, Ganesha and Karthikeya.

This chamber brings alive a phenomenon, in a symbolic form. The black marble represents the cosmos, the universe itself, created and preserved by the very forms who reside within the linga, each eye glowing and sparkling waking us to that which is beyond. At its crown lies the power of the yantra, that which defines the nature of this power that has created the universe and controls it. The unique element of this yantra is that it is not embedded deep within the idol but out in the open, present for us to see, a very unique feature uncommon in Indian temples.

This linga is a reminder, that Brahma, Vishnu and Surya are a part of a larger whole, the apex of which is the divine form of Lord Shiva, embedded within the yantra, that is sacred and has been preserved through generations for worship. Indeed, with the vastness of the cosmos proliferating with life, there is indeed just one force that controls it all - Eklingji Shiva who protects all and is not just the guardian deity of the Maharanas of Mewar.

Photo courtesy: Indiantemples.com (templenet.com)