46 - Discourses on Tantra Volume One

Chapter 12 The Meaning of “Krśńa” in Rája Yoga (2)

The various cakras are controlled by particular biija mantras, particular acoustic roots, and also emanate sound vibrations; and every sound vibration coming from each such plexus – each such network of nád́iis [psychic-energy channels] – is in scripture given the name of a particular devatá [deity], a particular vibrational existence. When you think in a particular way, your mind is vibrated in the corresponding way, and your nerve cells and nerve fibres are vibrated in the corresponding way. When someone gets angry, the mind also becomes heated and red, and there is a corresponding reaction in the nerves. The body becomes reddish and starts trembling. Now these devatás or vibrational existences – each the repository of a particular kind of thinking and each representing one point in a given cakra – are controlled by the nuclei of their respective plexi, and all those nuclei are controlled by the human mind, which is the collective expression of fifty main propensities.

Those fifty main propensities function both internally and externally. One may donate something to someone both internally and externally. Likewise, one can steal both mentally and physically. Hence every propensity is functioning in two ways, and fifty times two equals one hundred. Furthermore, each propensity functions in ten directions [north, south, east, west, northeast, northwest, southeast, southwest, up and down]. One hundred times ten equals one thousand. Hence there are one thousand functioning propensities. These one thousand vrttis are controlled by the mind from the pineal gland, which is why [its corresponding cakra] is called sahasrára [sahasra means “thousand”]. So the nucleus of the sahasrára controls the sahasrára itself, every subsidiary plexus below the pineal gland, and the vrtti-controlling points of all those cakras. (Each of these points is a vibrational existence, a devatá.) All the devatás of a given plexus are controlled by the controlling point of that plexus, and the supreme controlling point is the controlling point of the pineal gland. This supreme controlling point is called Paramashiva in yoga philosophy – Paramashivah Puruśottamah vishvasya kendram [“Supreme Consciousness at the nucleus of the universe is known as Paramashiva or Puruśottama”]. The same entity which is called Paramashiva or Puruśottama in Rája Yoga is known as “Krśńa” in Vaeśńava Tantra. This is one aspect [of the Krśńa concept in philosophy]. This is a very important point which should be well understood.

When a spiritual aspirant can concentrate all his or her psycho-physical existence or individual “I” feeling on Paramashiva or Puruśottama in the sahasrára cakra, the jiiva becomes Shiva. A jiiva is manifested out of Paramashiva as a jiiva in a human body – or rather, simultaneously in the Cosmic Body and in a human body. Each and every microcosmic structure is like a universe. Hence the yoga scriptures say, Traelokye yáni bhútáni táni dehatah – “Whatever exists in the universe exists in your small structure as well.” Just as the universe, starting from Paramashiva, Puruśottama, flows on and on along the path of saiṋcara and attains the form of the crudest matter (if it undergoes further crudification it will explode), and thereafter starts moving on the path of subtlety, similarly in the human frame the last vertebra is the crudest manifestation. The last vertebra in the human body is termed kula in Sanskrit. So kula literally means “that which bears the load of the entire body”.(4)

[[The jiivabháva [unit identity] sleeps [coiled around] that kula; spiritually it is asleep. “Asleep” means that it lies as if sleeping [around] that last bone with its own tail, that is, its own existence, clamped in its mouth. It sleeps like a snake. That sleeping devabháva [divinity], sleeping jiivabháva, that lies [around] the last point of the kula bone is called the kulakuńd́alinii.]]

(4) A page of linguistic discussion omitted here. –Trans.