Fundamental Facets of the Great Cosmic Power Tripura Sundari
When we refer to the transcendent divine matters involving the essential forms of consciousness and power of God, Tripura Sundari is associated to the indissoluble reality which is Cit-Shakti. In her aspect of pure knowledge, she is known as Samvit, which refers to the power to understand and perceive everything (every object, every being, every phenomenon, etc.) as being infused with the Supreme Consciousness of God the Father. From this perspective, the Great Cosmic Power Tripura Sundari appears as a power of knowledge especially intuitive and divinely perceptive, and less as knowledge that comes from analysis and discursive reasoning. It is that manifestation of the Supreme Divine Energy (Parameshvari), which appears as pure consciousness and as endless bliss that flows from it. In a general attempt to summarize these issues, we can say that Tripura Sundari combines some aspects of the energy of action that are manifested by Kali with some aspects of the energy of knowledge that are displayed by Tara, adding to these the dimension of the ecstatic happiness or the bliss of the supreme spiritual realization.
Because she is so closely associated with the energy of the spiritual bliss and with the presence of the divine nectar (soma), Tripura Sundari also represents the Moon as a visible embodiment of beauty and transcendent happiness. In terms of the subtle, Sundari is the ecstatic experience of spreading the divine nectar or divine “ambrosia” inside the aspirant’s being, thanks to its deep resonance with the most elevated aspects of God’s Consciousness. Therefore, being the very beneficial source of the spring of subtle soma, the goddess has her subtle residence at the level of Sahasrara Padma, i.e. the top of the head. Through her grace, the divine nectar of immortality (“nectar” also called amrita) is spread inside the aspirant’s being, until he realizes that the entire Manifestation is infused with the same subtle energy of the infinite bliss.
Thus, the Great Goddess appears to us as the effulgent beauty of the whole Creation, but this perception is achieved in terms of the indestructible divine unity (in the sense that the whole macrocosm is Brahman or God the Father) and that there is nothing outside the Absolute Consciousness of God. Therefore, the full of fervor worship of the Great Cosmic Power Tripura Sundari is one of the shortest and safest ways to reveal our Eternal Divine Self. When the mind is infused with this unlimited knowledge, it will easily find a plenary satisfaction in everything it sees. Our perception is then full of transfiguration, so that we find joy and happiness even in the most ordinary and seemingly insignificant objects, because then we are fully free from any conception of time and space, size, distance or importance of things. Any perception then reveals us the eternal and full of endless love and compassion presence of God; it becomes, thus, a kind of small universe in which we intuit profoundly the uniqueness of the Divine Consciousness under the appearance of the myriad types of expression.
The most elevated way to worship Tripura Sundari is to find our eternal peace and silence in our Immortal Self (Atman) itself, in other words, to reveal our divine essence as the ultimate and unchanging reality of the whole creation. The most direct way to achieve this goal is through deep introspection on our true identity, which is atma-vichara (synthetically presented, this path is reduced to the fundamental question: “Who am I truly?”) or the very elevated and abstract methods that constitute jnana yoga.
The resulting fundamental experience is the one through which we deeply understand that everything around us is no different from us, having the same source and the same essential nature. Moreover, in this respect, the Vedanta tradition teachings tell us that it is below our dignity (as beings whose essential nature is Divine Eternal Self (Atman)) to let ourselves overwhelmed by nearly any feelings of fear, worry, anger or any other emotion inconsistent with the perfection and spiritual harmony which we embody. It is also below our status as conscious beings in which the infinite divine consciousness shines, to falsely identify ourselves with a small body of flesh and bones or a fleeting mental structure and, similarly, it is almost an insult to the Self Essence of other human beings to look at them and treat them only as a limited body or as reluctant personalities who need help, encouragement and a lot of comfort. The profound understanding of these truths attracts to us the overwhelming manifestation of the grace of the Great Cosmic Power Tripura Sundari, who will prepare our body, mind and heart to experience and ineffably perceive the infinite eternal bliss of the Divine Absolute.
yogaesoteric
February 2013
