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Saundarya Lahari

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SAUNDARYA LAHARI

VERSE 91

A LESSON TO CYGNETS

पदन्यास-क्रीडा परिचय-मिवारब्धु-मनसः
स्खलन्तस्ते खेलं भवनकलहंसा न जहति ।
अतस्तेषां शिक्षां सुभगमणि-मञ्जीर-रणित-
च्छलादाचक्षाणं चरणकमलं चारुचरिते

padanyasya krida paricayam ivarabdhumanasah
skhalantas te khelam bhavana kalahamsa najahati
atas tesam siksam subhaga mani manjira ranitac-
chalad acaksanam carana kamalam caru carite

Your young domesticated cygnets, intent on learning from You the sportive pose of steps,
Practicing still with faults, o One of Graceful Gait, on their not giving up,
With the sound of gem-filled anklets imitating,
It would seem now that You are teaching them.

In Verse 91 the overall context of the scene represented is that of a teacher and many disciples. It is in and around the leg region of the Goddess that the interest still lingers, as it has since Verse 82. Beauty is more easily described when it refers to the face than to the feet, but Vedanta insists on giving equal value to both. That is the reason why Sankara seems to take extra trouble to present a picture where the high function of teaching disciples is still the overall theme. Sarasvati can teach the three gods, who are her admirers or disciples. They are represented in previous verses as bending before her footstool or standing inclined and overcovering it.

Here it is not a question of Brahmins, saints, or divinities that are applicants for discipleship. The disciples here consist of little swans, or cygnets, whose attachment to the Goddess is because they want to learn from her the beautiful way in which she steps when she walks or dances. The correct posing of steps is the first lesson when learning Indian dancing, next perhaps to the rolling of the eyes and sharp movements of the neck. When the legs are properly posed, the sound of the jingle-bells fixed to the anklets has a firm and united resonance, which is sometimes imitated verbally by dance teachers, when the footwork is important. Instead of jingle-bells, the anklets themselves are here stated to be filled with gems. If the anklets are made of silver or gold there is a certain firm metallic beauty in the sound.

It is not the sound of the gem-set anklets alone that comes into the picture. The Goddess while teaching, out of consideration even for subhuman disciples, takes the trouble to imitate the sound of gem-set jeweled anklets as her feet are gracefully planted in the correct dance poses. Sanskrit literature often describes the gait of a beautiful woman as resembling that of a swan. This might be a good enough comparison when the feminine features of the body of a woman are meant to be represented naturally, and not artificially viewed. The cygnets are nearer the ideal of the swan-like gait; but they themselves are not satisfied with such a maladroit way of walking. Nature has always to be corrected by nurture to complete the education, in the same way that decorative embellishments can enhance the beauty of an otherwise crude beauty found in nature. The prostitutes of Ujjain are seen to score in this respect in the writings of Kalidasa.

When we consider that Absolute Beauty involves cancellation of both numerator and denominator, it is not difficult to understand here why the young swans want to add to their natural gait something which they are willing to learn at the price of great insistence and trouble, so that their beauty could approximate to what might be called Absolute Beauty. It might be asked here why Kalidasa did not give Shakuntala silk garments to increase her beauty and said instead that anything, even a rag or a bark cloth, could only enhance the superior beauty already present in the person of Shakuntala herself, descended as she was from the celestial goddess, Menaka. The prerequisite is therefore not a decoration in itself, or naturalness in itself, but the cancellation of the one against other. The gem-set anklets represent an existent numerator value; but the living voice of the teacher, which imitates the sound of the gem-filled anklets as the feet are placed gracefully on the ground, adds further numerator accentuation to the beauty that belongs to the plus-side of the situation. When a woman is heavy in her gait and moves along slowly, like a swan when it walks on land, she is described as vilasini (having accentuated attributes or characteristics of womanhood fully expressed through her beauty). Sanskrit poets revel in such descriptions of womanhood. Here Sankara purposely, it would seem, applies a corrective to this one-sided picture. He accomplishes this by bringing in a gem-filled anklet with a metallic sound, to supply a correct numerator to an otherwise negatively-accentuated picture of feminine beauty. The full numerator side is added on to the total negative situation when the living voice of the Goddess is represented here as imitating the metallic sound, instead of treating it as inferior, as previously hinted at.

The relationship of teacher and pupil is the background on which such a cancellation of counterparts takes place. It is when we remember that it is very difficult to represent beauty when it pertains to the side of existence that this representation of beauty gains a character as overwhelmingly absolutist in its value as in any so-called superior context, such as that of heavenly blossoms. Domesticated cygnets are treated with as much consideration as Vedic students in a gurukula (teaching institution) . The overall dignity of the beauty is thus retained as a constant, even here.

There is a reference to the faults that enhance the beauty, rather than spoiling it. Birds can be heard in the morning repeating some lessons as if to learn them by heart. They can also be heard to hesitate when they cannot help making mistakes, and stop singing for a while. The lispings of children are beautiful in spite of their errors, and not because they are correct. Imitation of the sound of the anklets is two degrees removed from the actual, in that the sound itself reflects the firmness of the pose of the legs, of which the imitation by the voice of the Goddess is of a second degree.

The process of instruction, and not the actual instruction, is what is to be treated as the essence of the situation here portrayed. This explains the need for the last line, as a finishing touch added to the description.

ADDITIONAL COMMENTS WITH STRUCTURAL DIAGRAMS RELATED TO THIS VERSE FROM SAUNDARYA LAHARI/NOTES.

WORD FOR WORD
Padanyasya krida parichayam iva - as if practising the sportive pose of steps
Arabdhu manasah skhantalah - intending to begin, still making faults
Te khelam - Your lovely gait
Bhavana kala hamsa - the domesticated cygnets
Na jahati - do not abandon
Atah tesham shiksham - thus their instructions
Subhaga mani manjira ranita achalad - with the sound of gem-set anklets imitating
Achakshanam - as if teaching
Charana kamalam - lotus feet
Charu charite - o one of graceful gait

Absolute Beauty is here revealed in a very humble occupation.
The sub-human world is brought into the world like Gurukula disciples following their Guru.

The Devi has patience, she is not hurried, what can she do?
The swans will not leave off.
The Devi becomes a glorified kindergarten mistress.

This is like King Dilipa following the cow in the Kumarasambhava of Kalidasa; the Absolute can be found in the simplest of relationships; cf. The preparation of a meal, from the Dasakumaracarita.

(In mythology, King Dilipa failed to notice the divine cow Kamadhenu on his way and passed without paying his respects to her. Thereby he incurred the anger of the cow, who cursed the king to go childless. To negate the ill-effects of the curse, the king was advised to worship the divine cow Nandini who was the daughter of Kamadhenu, and thereby to earn her goodwill.

The king faithfully served the cow for twenty-one days. He slept where the cow slept, ate when the cow ate; washed the cow and took very good care of it. On the twenty-second day, when the cow was grazing in the field, a lion appeared suddenly and pounced to eat the cow. The king tried to kill the lion but could not, because the lion happened to be a servant of Shiva and cast a spell on King Dilipa that made him motionless. The king wanted to protect the cow but could not do anything but speak. He begged the lion to spare the cow and eat him instead and bowed before the lion.

Denominator values are not to be neglected by the Vedantin. Ontology is better than teleology. The Devi's feet are referred to again and again; the vertical lotus stalk has its root in the denominator mud which is the dark cosmetic cosmetic paste on the Devi's neck; the cute plump Cakora partridge is the Devi; the exalted Vedantic wisdom seeker is just a baby swan trying to wiggle its behind as it follows the jingling anklets at the Devi's feet; the greatest king must serve a cow and die for it - understand this. If you do not, you will never understand Vedanta. ED)

(The Guru is referring to a passage in the DASAKUMARACARITA where a woman goes to infinite pains to create a meal with almost no money and with great ingenuity serves her guest a complete repast. The Guru described this as a Yoga. ED)

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Here the aspect of the Devi that the author wishes to describe is homeliness, condescending to the sub-human world; a sense of leisure: the cygnets keep following Her and will not go away.

Details: Written by Patrick Misson; Parent Category: Content; Published: 20 October 2008; Created: 20 October 2008; Last Updated: 27 September 2015; Hits: 13319

SAUNDARYA LAHARI

VERSE 92

A DOWNWARD NORMALIZATION OF THE DEVAS FROM THE OMEGA POINT

गतास्ते मञ्चत्वं द्रुहिण हरि रुद्रेश्वर भृतः
शिवः स्वच्छ-च्छाया-घटित-कपट-प्रच्छदपटः ।
त्वदीयानां भासां प्रतिफलन रागारुणतया
शरीरी शृङ्गारो रस इव दृशां दोग्धि कुतुकम्

gatas te mancatvam druhina hari rudresvara bhrtah
shiva svacchac chayaghatita kapata pracchada patah
tvadiyanam bhasam pratiphalana ragarunataya
sariri srngaoa rasa iva drsam dogdhi kutukam

Gone as they are to Your couch-hood, Brahma, Vishnu, Ishvara, Rudra and others
Shiva wearing a deceptive canopy derived from his crystal light;
By Your radiance projected on to it and turned to a magenta shade,
As the very embodiment of erotic bliss, he charms the view.

In Verse 92 the reference to the beauty of the legs is finally abandoned in favour of the legs of a couch on which the Goddess is sitting. We had in Verse 8, almost symmetrically situated with the present one, a reference to the actual picture of a Goddess seated on a couch which represented a metamorphosis of the person of Shiva himself. In the context of Hermetic Philosophy this is known as the principle of correspondence, represented, for example, by the tarot card of the man hanging head downward. There is a subtle inversion here, which Bergson would call “a back-to-back relation”, or a correlation between the world of concepts and the world of percepts. Bergson even goes to so far as to say that “we happen to accidents” and not the other way around, as we might think. This philosophical perspective and the epistemology and methodology proper to it, is quite in keeping with Vedanta and the structure of the Absolute known to it. We cannot enter into the discussion of such a view-point here.

Shiva, as a crystal-clear value placed at the Omega Point in the vertical axis, can lend his own ontological reality to natural objects such as the couch, which is here referred to in the first line as being made up of his sub-functionaries within the Absolute, who are divinities placed at a lower level than Shiva himself. When reflected on the side of percepts, they could, in principle, lend support to the ontological stability or firmness of the couch on which the Goddess, occupying the neutral point between the two extremes, is to be located or seated. The Shiva principle is not expended by the secondary functions that he sanctions from his own higher position. His crystal-clear pure principle, of a conceptual order, can take the deceptive form of a canopy which could have at first, before he descends too low toward the couch, a clearer complexion or colour, participating more closely with the numerator than with the central magenta of the mid-region occupied by the Goddess. Such a clear canopy, however, as it descends toward the centre from above, could have a borrowed magenta colour playing on it.

Thus the canopy would, by its revised and more ontological conditioning with reference to the central magenta glory that the Goddess always represents, appear to be magenta, while really being crystal-clear in colour. The Real can be conditioned by the False, and vice-versa. The resultant indeterminism or ambiguity belongs to Maya. Eroticism is proper to the negative side, but the positive side can also appear to be conditioned by the same quality. This is another example of anyonya adhyasa (mutual participation), of which we have had more delicate instances, as in the description of the lips and the teeth in Verse 62, and in other verses. Eroticism, as the last line makes clear, is meant here only to charm the view, and add to the beauty-value of the situation represented here.

ADDITIONAL COMMENTS WITH STRUCTURAL DIAGRAMS RELATED TO THIS VERSE FROM SAUNDARYA LAHARI/NOTES.

WORD FOR WORD
Gatah te mancha tvam - gone as they are to Your couch-hood
Druhina hari rudreshvara bhrtah - Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva, Your functionaries
Shivah - Shiva the supreme
Svacchac chaya ghatita kapata pracchada patah - wearing a canopy derived from crystal light

ENDS HERE

"Gone as they are to your couch-hood..."

What is the justification for inverting the gods?
There is a principle of inversion in the Absolute, like the hanged man in the Tarot pack.

Shiva can kill Eros, but he is also the embodiment of erotic bliss.

(This is a great paradox. The Guru would say again and again that there was a paradox at the core of the Absolute. This must be understood if one wishes to understand the Saundarya Lahari and Vedanta. ED)

Details: Written by Patrick Misson; Parent Category: Content; Published: 20 October 2008; Created: 20 October 2008; Last Updated: 27 September 2015; Hits: 13014

SAUNDARYA LAHARI

VERSE 93

TRANSPARENT BUT FIRM ONTOLOGICAL INNOCENCE IN A GIRL

अराला केशेषु प्रकृति सरला मन्दहसिते
शिरीषाभा चित्ते दृषदुपलशोभा कुचतटे ।
भृशं तन्वी मध्ये पृथु-रुरसिजारोह विषये
जगत्त्रतुं शम्भो-र्जयति करुणा काचिदरुणा

arala kesesu prakrti sarala mandahasite
sirisabha citte drsad upala sobha kucatale
bhrsam tanvi maddhye prthur urasijaroha visaye
jagad tratum sambhor jayati karuna kacid aruna

Curly in hair and naturally simple in smile, with a magenta-flower-supple mind
Bust firm like a kitchen mashing stone, extremely slender at waist,
With solid shoulders and hips, thus Shiva's world to save,
She reigns supreme, a certain kindliness called magenta.

In Verse 93 we have the picture of a common girl whose beauty is plain and straightforward with nothing glamorous about it. This does not, however, detract from its absolute quality, which we have to try and discern in and through the common earthy touches and straightforward simplicity with which her beauty is here described . Great painters sometimes produce pictures of a simple girl holding an apple or a rose in her hand and can succeed in giving just those touches which will make such paintings have an eternal value to those who can genuinely appreciate art. Good art requires people to appreciate it.

The bust is here seen to be compared to a kitchen utensil instead of a heavenly lotus. Her hips and shoulders are firm because she must be a kind of peasant girl used to hard work. The simplicity of her mind is transparently revealed by her smile. She is capable of being extremely sympathetic, having, as is stated here, “a magenta-flower-supple mind”. Her function, as stated in the third line, is the most important one that we could think of: that is, to save what Shiva would otherwise destroy. Thus, she represents in herself a concentrated negative value capable of supplying an adequate denominator to the positive forces of destruction that might endanger the whole world at a given moment. The common touch in her looks is therefore not to be despised. She is not represented as wearing any jewels or decorations, but her matter-of-fact plainness is in itself of sufficient beauty for her to never doubt its value for a moment.

Her only embellishment is the colour magenta, which uniformly overcovers and pervades her personality. Magenta being an absolute colour among colours, by addition or subtraction from which any other tint, shade or brilliance, whether chromatic or achromatic, is derivable. She needs no further coatings of paint or thinning of what is there already. An inner brilliance, fully saturating the colour effect from inside, could be presupposed by us, because in the last line she is said to reign supreme as the very personification of kindliness expressed through her mere magenta presence, sufficient unto itself.

Kindliness as a quality can be thought of as having a capital letter, raising it fully to the status of an absolute value, at least as dignified as that which Shiva, from his own theoretical side, could represent when his person is looked upon as distinct from that of the Devi. Separating the two principles, however, is not correct. One has rather to say that the beauty of the Goddess is the same as that of Shiva and vice-versa. The slightly ontological bias of Vedantic methodology can, however, be permitted to tilt the delicate balance involved here, in the present series at least, in favour of the Goddess instead of the God. This is only a methodological necessity. Doctrinally, the same Advaita remains valid.

ADDITIONAL COMMENTS WITH STRUCTURAL DIAGRAMS RELATED TO THIS VERSE FROM SAUNDARYA LAHARI/NOTES.

WORD FOR WORD
Arala kesheshu - curly of hair
Prakrti sarala manda hasite - with smile of natural simplicity
Shirishabha chitte - with a mind having the magenta-flower-supple glory in Her mental state
Drshad upala shobha kuchatate - at the bust region like a kitchen mashing-stone
Bhrsham tanvi maddhye - extremely slender of waist
Prthur urasi jaroha vishaye - sleek in respect of Your bust and hip, with solid shoulders and hips
Jagat tratum shambhohi - to save Shiva's world
Jayati - she triumphs
Kauna kachid - a certain kindliness
Aruna - (called) magenta

Sankara gives the servant girl the last of glorious places as the Absolute Goddess.
She is a plain girl, no flourishes or decoration: Sankara should be worshipped for saying this.

Fill your mind completely with overwhelming Absolute Beauty and you are a mystic.

All appreciation of beauty and all mysticism is erotic.

There is nothing closer to the Absolute than a sixteen-year-old girl.

Great painters sometimes produce pictures of a simple girl holding an apple or a rose in her hand and can succeed in giving just those touches which will make such paintings have an eternal value to those who can genuinely appreciate art.

The Taj Mahal is decorated, but a hut is also beautiful.
She is saving some value from the Denominator side, not found in Shiva: that value is called Karuna or compassion, and she is also Aruna, or magenta (a universal beauty-factor), inside.

"Shiva's world to save.." by supplying Karuna on the Denominator side.

The firmness of the breasts reflects the ontological richness of the personality - this is existential richness.

A woman is a complete psyche.

Biologically, the female is the type, the male a sub-type.

All aesthetics is erotic.

Details: Written by Patrick Misson; Parent Category: Content; Published: 20 October 2008; Created: 20 October 2008; Last Updated: 15 June 2016; Hits: 14420

SAUNDARYA LAHARI

VERSE 94

THE CIRCULATION BETWEEN ESSENCE AND SUBTLE EXISTENCE
IN THE PHYSIOLOGICAL AND COSMOLOGICAL BODY OF THE GODDESS

कलङ्कः कस्तूरी रजनिकर बिम्बं जलमयं
कलाभिः कर्पूरै-र्मरकतकरण्डं निबिडितम् ।
अतस्त्वद्भोगेन प्रतिदिनमिदं रिक्तकुहरं
विधि-र्भूयो भूयो निबिडयति नूनं तव कृते

kalankah kasturi rajanikara bimbam jalamayam
kalabhih karpurair marataka karandam nibiditam
atas tvad bhogena pratidinam idam rikta kuharam
vidhir bhuyo nibidayati nunam tava krte

The dark zone of the moon is musk; the moon's orb is water;
The moon's phases they are camphor bits filling a box of ebony,
Which, when emptied daily by Your joys,
For Your sake, Brahma fills up again and again.

Verse 94 has a very complex structural content, representing beauty placed within the context of darkness or night, here referred to as the black “box of ebony”. The box is suggestive of a real existent object. We see that cosmological, psychological and theological entities are meant to create this picture of the negative aspect of beauty, which is of the nature of existence rather than of essence. Musk and camphor are favourite examples of objects which can change into precious essences in spite of being existent objects. The duality between existence and essence has been the cause of much philosophical controversy from scholastic times to the present day. Indian philosophy tends to speak in terms of existence, as when the Bhagavad Gita refers to the rasa, or taste of water, and identifies it with the absolute personality of Krishna himself who says, “I am the sapidity of the waters” (VII, 8). The composite picture presented in this verse brings existence and essence into relief as items that are contained in a black box belonging to the Goddess, who is supposed to expend them in the form of the joys that she might have during the course of each day. The moon is the presiding orb during the night, and it is in the context of the night that enjoyments of a negative order become operative, thus tending to make the essences disappear; either by permeation into the air, or by being changed into heat and light, as in the cases of musk and camphor respectively. Musk is a negative existent form of matter that spreads its perfume subtly throughout an enclosed room. The beauty of the night sky is compared to a jewel-box by philosophers like Kant and poets like Shelley.

We have here to think of a living form of the Goddess, who is placed within the cosmological context of the alternating waxing and waning of moonlight. It is not the bright side of the moon with which we are directly concerned here, but rather with the negative or dark side of moonlight. As in Shakespeare´s reference to the “watery moon”, from ancient times the moon has been understood to belong to water rather than fire. The moon´s rays are supposed to be cooling and comforting to persons afflicted with love. The moon´s phases have already been compared to camphor bits in Verse 65. These have to be replaced after a fortnight, but if we think of what is expended instead of what is gained, the light that is lost each day can be said to need replacement after each night's enjoyment of erotic pleasures on the part of the Goddess. Thus, in the last line, it is stated that Brahma, the creator, whose function is connected with eternal regeneration, fills the dark ebony box with what has been lost each day. There is thus a compensatory metabolism in terms of existences and essences in the combined context of cosmology, psychology and theology, evident here. The overall perspective, however, still remains negative, as it is the contents of the black ebony box that occupy the focus of interest in this verse. Beauty, seen from the dark side rather than from the bright side and subject to daily increase or decrease, is the overall theme of this verse. We know that in an ordinary physical metabolism food is transformed into caloric units of energy to be spent by the mechanistic activities of each day. This verse attains to the same kind of diurnally alternating metabolism, connected, not with any physiological system, but with an aspect of personal life where subtler enjoyments are involved. Instead of becoming exhausted by such enjoyment, it is to be seen that every time enjoyment expends the existent essences involved, they are replenished by the God of Creation himself. Thus, life goes on eternally in the form of a perpetual alternating motion, as between the getting and spending of existential essences.

In spite of this alternating process; what emerges out of the total situation is a form of dark-splendid beauty more proper to a Kali than a Sarasvati. Even in this late verse, ontology has primacy over teleology. This is underlined by the analogy of the ebony box. Shyamala “the Dark One” is an epithet that is applied to this kind of absolute Goddess, seen from the negative perspective.

Bhagavad Gita, Chapter 7,

Verse 8
raso 'ham apsu kaunteya
prabha 'smi sasisuryayoh
pranavah sarvavedeshu
sabdah khe paurusham nrishu

I am the taste in waters, 0 Son of Kunti (Arjuna),
I am the light in the moon and the sun, I am Aum
(numinous exclamation) in all the Vedas, sound in
the sky and the human quality in men.

ADDITIONAL COMMENTS WITH STRUCTURAL DIAGRAMS RELATED TO THIS VERSE FROM SAUNDARYA LAHARI/NOTES.

WORD FOR WORD
Kalankah - the dark zone
Kasturi - is musk
Rajani kara bimbam jala mayam - the orb of the moon is watery
Kala bhih kapuraihi - the phases are camphor
Marataka karandam - the box (casket) made of ebony
Nibiditam atah - are only packed with these
Tvat bhogena - by Your joys
Pratidinam idam - daily this
Rikta kuharam - this, having empty space inside
Vidhir bhuyo bhuyo - Brahma again and again
Nibidayati nunam - fills up indeed
Tava krte - for Your sake

"The dark zone of the moon is musk..." Kalankah kasturi..
Kasturi (musk) is the most volatile of perfumes, as costly as gold; no perfume is more effective.

The Devi uses up some camphor-like effluvia by her pleasures every 24 hours and this has to be replenished by Brahma, the god of creation, himself.

The moon's phases are spent daily, like the camphor.

Certain kinds of essential nourishment have to be supplied to a woman's body; this is not an ordinary metabolism, but one of a very subtle order, not gross or physical.

What is seen in the sky on the numerator side becomes on the denominator side a black jewel box with something bright and beautiful inside.

This puts into relationship the inner world of the Devi with the outer world of Shiva.
The cosmic principle of creation daily restores spent animal magnetism.

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SAUNDARYA LAHARI

VERSE 95

DISINTERESTED WORSHIP VERSUS WORSHIP FOR BENEFITS (SIDDHIS)

पुरारन्ते-रन्तः पुरमसि तत-स्त्वचरणयोः
सपर्या-मर्यादा तरलकरणाना-मसुलभा ।
तथा ह्येते नीताः शतमखमुखाः सिद्धिमतुलां
तव द्वारोपान्तः स्थितिभि-रणिमाद्याभि-रमराः

purarater antahpuram asi tatas tvac caranayoh
saparya maryada tarala karananam asulabha
tatha hyete nitah satamakha mukhas siddhim atulam
tava dvaropanta sthitibhir animadhyabhir amarah

You being the consort of Shiva, it is difficult indeed
For unsettled minds to attain the equivalent of the way of Your worship;
Whatever limitless gains they, the divinities such as Indra and others might have had,
Those psychic powers such as Anima, from just outside Your door they got them.

In Verse 95 Sankara intends to sound a warning about the superior example of absolute Beauty that he has been trying to hold up to view. He says now that there could be a majority of people for whom this way of looking at beauty, from a feminine and negative standpoint, might be prejudicial to their spiritual progress. Most human beings are interested in gaining some kind of advantage for themselves while they continue to live here on earth. Transcendental values can interest only rare individuals whose minds have been first established in the context of the true contemplation of the Absolute, in which salvation, and not any other hedonistic or relativistic advantage, is to be gained. This is because most people are likely to forget that the Goddess is to be treated as a correct counterpart of Shiva, who is well-known to be the greatest of austere personages. He is a model ascetic, so the Goddess, his consort, cannot be like any other woman. In order for Her to be in love with an ascetic of the superior quality of Shiva, there must be the same complementary quality present in the Goddess as a counterpart of such asceticism. This would mean that the worshipper of such a Goddess could not think in terms of gaining any advantage belonging to the three worlds of earth, heaven or the space between them.

Vedanta discountenances siddhis (psychic powers) such as anima and so on, which we have reviewed under Verses 30 and 31. Even Patanjali, though only belonging to the context of Samkhya philosophy, in his Yoga Sutras (111, 37) clearly states that interest in psychic powers (siddhis) has an effect unfavourable to the progressive establishment of samadhi, (absorption). The Bhagavad Gita also disdains siddhis as being paripanthinau (obstructions to the right path).

In the second half of this verse these siddhis are brought into relation with the Absolute Goddess. Does the Goddess grant siddhis to votaries that might propitiate her, or is she altogether outside such an inferior context? The answer in this verse is that such siddhis are not the kind of benefit to be prayed for in respect of the absolute Goddess who, as wife of Shiva, is not interested in granting siddhis that would only be advantageous in a hedonistic setup. She would only treat the granting of such psychic powers as incidental and not as her main function. Even Vedic gods, like Indra and others, like to have some advantages in the form of siddhis, with which they could dominate those who do not have such powers. Thus the Goddess here neither grants siddhis nor refuses to grant them. She leaves them outside the door of her temple for those who badly need them and serve themselves freely with them, if they should so insist, not knowing that siddhis are really detrimental to the fullest spiritual progress in the correct absolutist context of Vedanta, as distinct from the Vedas. The Vedic Gods themselves have been beneficiaries in this matter and have been helping themselves to the available siddhis discarded by the Goddess outside her temple door.

Most persons, who are referred to as being of unsettled mind and incapable of the proper way of worshipping the Absolute Goddess, could belong to the three kinds of Devi-worshippers, which are the Kaulins, the Uttara Kaulins, and the Samayins. All of these, like the hedonistic gods of the Vedas themselves, are motivated not by the desire for full emancipation granted by a Goddess who is the true wife of Shiva, but for relativistic benefits from various surrogate divinities who do not possess that absolute status without which true salvation will not be granted to supplicants. The whole of this picture in Verse 95 refers to the context of a temple worshipper whose interest in the Absolute has not yet attained the white heat of absolutism, which alone can insure that full emancipation that Shiva and Shakti united together can confer by the combination of their mutually cancelable functions.

(On Siddhis (psychic powers) see the Bhagavad Gita, Chapters 2, 3, 7 and 10. ED)

ADDITIONAL COMMENTS WITH STRUCTURAL DIAGRAMS RELATED TO THIS VERSE FROM SAUNDARYA LAHARI/NOTES.

WORD FOR WORD
Pura ratah antah puram asi - You are the consort of Shiva, living in the inner apartments
Tata - by reason of this
Tvach charanayoh saparya maryada - as applied to Your feet the equivalent for worship
Tarala karananam - for those with unstable inner faculties
Asulabha - not easy
Tatha hi - this is surely
Ete shata makha mukhah - these here such as Indra and others
Nitah - they are led
Siddhim atulam - to unequaled psychic powers
Tava - (from) Your
Dvaropanta sthiti bhih - just outside Your door
Animadhya bhih - together with such as atomicity etc.
Amarah - those divinities

The poet says: "You are an uncompromising Absolute Goddess, Parvati, the real Absolute" - this is no numerator Brahmin girl.
Do not mix this up with benefits in this world such as psychic powers or siddhis.

(Nataraja Guru would say that psychic powers are to be looked at in the same way as the little plastic toys that one finds in a box of cornflakes - mildly entertaining but completely irrelevant to the main purpose - becoming the Absolute. ED)

This is Advaita Vedanta with no compromises.
Sankara says: "I am interested in wisdom, this is too difficult for you, go away!"
This is a tragic touch.

Show the gods taking some rejected articles from outside the Devi's door.
They do not go inside to see the verticalized Goddess in her Glory as Shiva's consort.

(The gods are horizontal and concerned with the phenomenal world of change and becoming - they are as irrelevant as their counterparts the psychic powers (or plastic toys) - " The Absolute alone exists and shines" (Darsana Mala). ED)