Onnaaya ninneyiha randennu kandalavil
Undaayor indal bata, mindaavathalla mama
Pandekkanakke varuvaan nin kripaavalikal
Undaakayenkaliha, Naaraayanaaya namah
[Lord! May Your divine Grace descend upon me once again, as it did before, and restore me to the awareness of that One Reality. May Your Grace remove the suffering caused by my perception of duality. I surrender to You and offer my salutations.]
(Verse 02, Harinama Keerthanam)
The One is perceived as many, and this perception of duality causes suffering. Here Thunchath Ezhuthachan prays for Nārāyaṇa’s Grace to return and restore the experience of Oneness.
We must become strong in the faith that
1. Ourselves
2. Guru
3. Mantra
4. Sri Chakra
5. Devi are one.
The worship of Samayacharam establishes the fact that I am One, five aspects of a single unity. I am myself the Sri Chakra. My body is the temple of God; God resides within. Consider the body to be the navavaranam (the nine corridors of the Sri Chakra). The chakras, the body, the object used for worship, and I are all One. Worship of the Sri Chakra is called the Navavarana Puja. We must visualize our own body as the Sri Chakra. Kundalini Sakthi is the Devi residing inside each body.
Devi’s subtle body is in three forms:
1. Vagbhava (Her lotus face)
2. Kamaraja (Her body from the neck down to the waist)
3. Sakthi Kutam (her form below the waist)
These three forms together form Devi’s Panchadashakhari Mantra. The realization must dawn upon us that we are One with the Mantra of Devi, that the mantra and I are one and the same. The realization must dawn upon us that We, the Mantra, the Guru, the Objects used for external worship like the Sri Chakra Yantra, Our body, and Devi are all One. In the principle of unity, we say I am thee, O Great Goddess.
In the Hamasamantra, which is “soham”, we identify ourselves with the Universe or Ultimate reality and say I am That. The principle of Unity, of identification with the divine, is reflected in the meaning of both the mantras. This identification with the primal power is what we must acquire as our siddhi (unique and extra-sensory cognitive powers). The identification with the divine, the realization that God resides within us, that We are One with the Absolute, is the subject of the mantras up to samayacharatatpara, where Devi is extolled as She who is devoted to the Samaya form of worship.
We have listened to the mantras describing the Kaula marga in which, through various spiritual and Yogic practices, the Kundalini, lying dormant in the muladhara, awakens, moves upward, passing through the six adhara chakras, reaches the thousand-petalled Sahasara in the head, and merges into Siva, causing ambrosial nectar to flow through the 72,000 channels in the body. We have listened to the samayachara, in which the worship of Siva and Sakthi as equal and inseparable awakens in the devotee the experiential knowledge of his/her identification with the Ultimate Reality.
