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diversity. Are not all artificial means to stimulate presentiment ridiculous?
CHAPTER 14
THE SHAMBHAVI MUDRA AND THE INNER LIGHT
(35) The Vedas, the Shastras and the Puranas are like prostitutes [attainable to all]. The shambhavi
mudra, however, is like a chaste woman, carefully guarded.
Wisdom was never secret in the Orient Secret areonly the paths to wisdom.
The intellectually created world of concepts has been dissolved. Now let's return to the man who
created a new world by the two levels of vibration (light and sound), that interior world of a higher
life, which requires the stronger flame, the flame which he learned to fan by khecari mudra.
Dissolution is samadhi; re-creation is shambhavi mudra, work with the sound symbol (mantra) and
the image symbol (yantra), the source of inner light.
(36) Shambhavi mudra consists in fixing the mind inwardly [on any one of the chakras], and fixing
the eyes without blinking on an external object. This mudra is left secret by the Vedas and Shastras.
What does the yogi do at this stage of training? How does he practice?
He rises at 4:00 a.m., the hour of Brahma, cleans his breathing organs and sits down on bis tiger
skin.6 After the introductory practices (such as the nadi purification) he venerates the three aspects of
his sadhana (his personal deity): Keshava, Narayana, and Madhava as the three aspects of Vishnu; or
Siva, Ganesh, and Bala as aspects of Siva. Then follows a complicated fivefold introductory ritual
which leads him to his main practice, the shambhavi mudra. This takes the following course: First he
speaks his mantra, clearly and audibly, in expression and intonation exactly as he has learned it from
his guru, and retains the sound in his ear.
We will not analyze the sound in the ear here (sec Chapter 15), but will concern ourselves merely
with the question of what happens to this sound. The yogi must imagine that the sound is coming
from one of the chakras. (The chakra varies according to his sadhana and his state of development.)
And this sound is conceived of as so encompassing that it not only vibrates in the given chakra but is
passed on--and this is the roost important process--from chakra to chakra.
THE SHAMBHAVI MUDRA AND THE INNER LIGHT 87
Yoga Swami Svatmarama. Hatha yoga pradipika
The mantra consists of various sound elements, each of which has a different function to fulfill. The
introduction usually consists of the pranava 0m, while the core, the shakti mantra, is a sound which
influences the kundalini by its vibration struc-ture. The framework of the mantra is tuned in part to
the respective chakra; in part it contains other activating vibrations.
At the same time, if the yogi is not fully in possession of the yantra inwardly, he fastens his gaze
upon the form symbol, the yantra, and imagines that this is the chakra concerned, the mantra that
sounds within. For the deity, the chakra, the mantra, and the yantra, are one as name, image,
projection, and
6. Only yogis who lead a strictly celibate life use tiger skin. The others use antelope skin. The reason
for this is the difference in the power of the respective skins to isolate earth magnetism.
scat of the deity. The deity reposes in the chakra, the yantra is the expression of the divinity and of
the chacra, the mantra synchronizes with the vibration level of the chakra, fashions the name of the
deity, and is analogous to the yantra.
Add to this the proscribed color scale of the emanation of divine light and there is little room left for
distracting thoughts. Many Indian and Tibetan texts which devote so much space to the description
of the divine manifestations serve the yogi solely as means to reach the perfection of shambhavi
mudra.
(37) It if rightfully called thambhavi mudra, when mind and prana are absorbed by the object, when
the eyes become rigid in the contemplation of the object. Once this state has been reached by the
grace of the guru [who gives the binding yantra as object], everything perceived becomes a
manifestation of the great Shambu (Siva) and is thus beyond emptiness and not-emptiness.
Everything is Siva: everything is kala (ligfit-waves, form, yantra, manifestation of the divine image
in all its forms), nada (sound waves, sound) mantra, divine name in all its forms), and bindu
(meaning, the divine) and the logos common to both the other spheres).
Before getting to the central point of this chapter we have to answer a question. The culminating
point of Part Three was khecari mudra (the upcurled tongue) whereby the life process was intensified
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