SAUNDARYA LAHARI
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VERSE 77
FINE STRUCTURALIZED SPACE
यदेतत्कालिन्दी-तनुतर-तरङ्गाकृति शिवे
कृशे मध्ये किञ्चिज्जननि तव यद्भाति सुधियाम् ।
विमर्दा-दन्योन्यं कुचकलशयो-रन्तरगतं
तनूभूतं व्योम प्रविशदिव नाभिं कुहरिणीम्
yad etat kalinditanutara tarangakrti sive
krse maddhye kincijjanani tava yad bhati sudhiyam
vimardad anyonyamkucakalasayor antaragatam
tanubhutam vyoma pravisad iva nabhim kuharinim
krse maddhye kincijjanani tava yad bhati sudhiyam
vimardad anyonyamkucakalasayor antaragatam
tanubhutam vyoma pravisad iva nabhim kuharinim
O Auspicious Mother, that something revealed at Your slender waist
Looking like ripples on the surface of the river Kalindi,
Looms in the mind of contemplatives as space reduced to ethereal particles
Entering into the cavity of Your navel, and produced by the friction of Your pot-like breasts.
Looking like ripples on the surface of the river Kalindi,
Looms in the mind of contemplatives as space reduced to ethereal particles
Entering into the cavity of Your navel, and produced by the friction of Your pot-like breasts.
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Verse 77 presents many enigmatic features which cannot be easily explained.
The first is that oft-repeated idea found in Sanskrit prayers to the Goddess that the waist of the Goddess is so thin that it is mithya kalpita (falsely put there by the mind).
The second major enigma is the reference to the pot-like breasts, which must be metalically solid, creating waves or vibrations fine enough to reveal the very inner structure of pure space itself.
Thirdly, it is stated that such a vision is given to selected devotees called sudhis, suggesting that they have to be especially clever, wise, or sensible. We have here translated this word as “contemplatives”.
Even a contemplative has to focus his attention on this region before it can reveal the special kind of wave effect present on the surface of the river Kalindi when fine ripples play on its placid water. Perhaps this refers to a special light effect which could be described as a glimmering sheen produced by the crisscross effect of ripples of thinly alternating troughs and crests, forming a spiral pattern made up of spots of light, alternately dim or bright.
We have already had a reference to the breasts as ruby pots in Verse 73, which makes them out to be solid instead of supple, as in reality. We have also seen that such qualities as applied to the twin breasts could form a whole series, sometimes rich in terms of luxury, or of a consistency that is metallic and solid. Here the pot-like breasts have to be imagined to be made up of a heavy metal like gold. When two such pots that are floating on water collide with each other, vibrations will be produced which send ripples cutting crisscross against the natural ripples produced by the gentle wind playing on the placid surface of the river. This is a new structural detail that is purposely introduced here by Sankara. The middle waist region of the Goddess round the navel is supposed to present a mystery, into the depths of which only a wise man can penetrate, as is evidently meant to be understood here.
The structure of Absolute Space has been a major headache with modern scientists. Space is said to have a curvature in the context of Einsteinian relativism. There is also non-Euclidian space, projective space, scalar space, topological space, vectorial space, as also the structure of space as understood by Minkowski, Lobachevsky and Riemann. We have hitherto kept in mind our own structural pattern of two cones placed base to base. We have elsewhere suggested that these two cones could also be placed apex to apex, when the position of the structure is pushed from the bottom of the vertical scale to the top. We have an ontological “universal concrete” here-and-now locus when the cones are placed base to base at the bottom. The converse of the same, where “universal elsewhere” and “universal nowhere” come together in an intelligible point of light at the meeting point of the apexes, rather than the bases, or similar cones, could be imagined on the numerator side; instead of a “ universal here-and-now” we would get a “universal elsewhere” when the perspective is thus changed.
In this verse we are concerned with the middle region of the Goddess. A special kind of magic or mystery is supposed to be hiding here which it requires a wise man to see. The ontological basis becomes abolished in favour of a teleological one. When the apex points of two inverted cones come into contact, there is a point of beauty or interest where they participate. This is the central locus to be kept in mind in respect of this verse. This point is what is referred to in the first line, as an enigmatic “something” placed at the centre of the slender waist. The words yad etad, “this something” (which is seen), justify the location of such a point of participation, which could be said to be both visible and invisible to the eyes of a fully-informed Advaita philosopher, implied by the word “contemplatives” here. Thus, the slenderness of the waist and the point of interest at the locus are understood by us from this first line.
The second line refers to superfine ripples which, according to the fourth line, are produced by the impact of the solid metallic pot-like breasts and postulated for the purpose of revealing the fine structure applicable to this mid-region where motherhood can freely function. The appellation “Auspicious Mother” (sivajanani) would indicate that such a sacred idea of motherhood is in the mind of the poet also.
In the fourth line there is reference to tanu bhutam vyomam, which we have translated as “space reduced to ethereal particles”. Physicists have postulated something like ether as the medium for the propagation of light; but no ponderable ether was discovered by the Michelson-Morley experiment. Ether thus remains to us an ambiguity equally relied upon by both physicists and metaphysicians as a kind of Absolute Substance, both material and mental, within which a measurable velocity of light could be calculated or postulated. We shall not examine the final epistemological status of this vyoma, or space, but treat it as a kind of neutral medium, both mental and material at once. The collision of the two pots representing the breasts of the Goddess produces vibrations which cut at right angles to the natural ripples produced by the wind on the surface of a river. As the river flows downwards toward the navel of the Goddess, it is to be imagined as becoming subterranean. The outside world and its space are turned into an inside world, in terms of some kind of negative or pseudo-space. Outside can become inside in topological or projective space. Right-angled triangles can become obtuse or acute-angled ones by expansion or contraction of space. Inside can become outside by a Moebius-strip inversion. A one-to-one correspondence in relative positions, vectorially or tensorially understood, could still be maintained. Euclidean axioms can give place to revised ones known to modern non-Euclidian geometry. Right and left could be interchanged by torsions or rotations around an axis. The navel of the Goddess is going to be compared to a frozen whirlpool in the next verse.
It thus requires a great deal of what is also known to modern mathematicians to sympathize, even barely, with what Sankara is saying here. He cannot be easily dismissed as a man of superstitious belief. It must be assumed that contemplation can arrive at certain theoretical intuitions that science also attains through more positive or demonstrable laboratory-based disciplines. Axiomatic thinking and experimental thinking have to meet in either case. Eddington is known to be a non-experimental physicist. Mathematics is mainly axiomatic in its status as a discipline. Thus, what intuition can guess from one side can meet what laboratory disciplines can reconstruct from the other. When they meet, as Bertrand Russell writes, the marriage of these two rival approaches can take place. On our part, we believe that Sankara, in his own way, understood intuitively long ago what modern scientists are just beginning to understand. There are points of contact between the writings of Eddington and Narayana Guru.
Without entering into this subject in too much detail, let us think of the “space reduced to ethereal particles” in the third line (tanu bhutam vyomam). We could easily concede that waves or ripples could be of two kinds. The main waves have a simple harmonic movement, as between crest and trough, which is properly called “wavelength”; while “frequency” is a kind of sinuous movement, vibrating more quickly, where amplitude and shortness give it intensity rather than length. If one is magnetic; the other could be said to be electromagnetic. Maxwell and Fourier have studied the laws of the propagation of waves of both sound and of light; and modern television and the use of videotape to propagate light or sound have many secrets, all of which depend upon the uniformity of the laws applicable to the propagation of light and of electromagnetic impulses. An antenna can conduct all these impulses intact and reproduce them thousands of miles away on a television screen in the drawing room. Thus, the disappearance of two sets of waves, in the form of ethereal particles, into the cavity of the navel of the Goddess is at least not to be considered merely as a mythological exaggeration.
It is also possible to think of the structure of space as revealed in crystallography, where cross-polarized light can produce strange interference figures, sometimes suggesting the embryonic stages of some simple animals, together with what is called “optical movements”. Crystals are supposed to have lattice-like structures in their makeup, conforming to units of different solid polygons. These are sometimes referred to as gratings through which light is reflected, refracted or diffracted into variegated coloured patterns, which also seem to be revealed in nuclear structure. We have already said that the surface of some fruits represent light patterns belonging to outer space. The conversion of outer space into inner space is a magic that takes place at what is referred to here as the navel of the Goddess.
The impact of the metallic breasts finds mention in Verse 80 also. The “universal concrete” can have an accentuated material solidity. Matter is defined as "something that impenetrably occupies space". This is a quality of exclusion of the extraneous, and thus a highly horizontalized tendency or impetus found at the heart of existence, which can express itself in fluid verticality or solid horizontality. The impact of two solids will produce vertical lines of force resembling ripples. Thus, wavelengths and horizontal free amplitudes can break up pure space into ethereal particles. Probabilities and possibilities, parameters or perimeters, expressing qualitative or quantitative processes of growth or becoming in the general flux of life, could all be thought of in abstract terms, with the deep navel region of the Goddess treated as the lake in this verse.
("There is also non-Euclidian space, projective space, scalar space, topological space, vectorial space, as also the structure of space as understood by Minkowski, Lobachevsky and Riemann". In mathematics non-Euclidean geometry is a small set of geometries based on axioms closely related to those specifying Euclidean Geometry The essential difference between the metric geometries is the nature of parallel lines. Another way to describe the differences between these geometries is to consider two straight lines indefinitely extended in a two-dimensional plane that are both perpendicular to a third line.
- In Euclidean geometry the lines remain at a constant distance from each other even if extended to infinity, and are known as parallels.
- In hyperbolic geometry they "curve away" from each other, increasing in distance as one moves further from the points of intersection with the common perpendicular; these lines are often called ultraparallels.
- In elliptic geometry the lines "curve toward" each other and intersect. ED)
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ADDITIONAL COMMENTS WITH STRUCTURAL DIAGRAMS RELATED TO THIS VERSE FROM SAUNDARYA LAHARI/NOTES.
WORD FOR WORD
Yadetat - gleaming (with a sheen)
Kalindi tanutara taranga krtih - of the form of the slender or fine ripples on the surface of the river Kalindi
Shive - o Shiva-consort
Krshe madhye - with thin middle part
Kimchit - something
Janani - mother
Tava yat - that which is Yours
Bhati sudhiyam - to learned and good devotees it shines (as)
Vimardad anyonyam kucha kala shayoh - by mutual impact of the water-pot-shaped breasts
Antara gatam - what lies between
Tanu bhutam vyomam - made into a thin, schematic factor (sky-space: "bhutam vyomam")
Pravishad iva - as if entering
Nabhim kuharinim - the navel, an orifice or opening
Yadetat - gleaming (with a sheen)
Kalindi tanutara taranga krtih - of the form of the slender or fine ripples on the surface of the river Kalindi
Shive - o Shiva-consort
Krshe madhye - with thin middle part
Kimchit - something
Janani - mother
Tava yat - that which is Yours
Bhati sudhiyam - to learned and good devotees it shines (as)
Vimardad anyonyam kucha kala shayoh - by mutual impact of the water-pot-shaped breasts
Antara gatam - what lies between
Tanu bhutam vyomam - made into a thin, schematic factor (sky-space: "bhutam vyomam")
Pravishad iva - as if entering
Nabhim kuharinim - the navel, an orifice or opening
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Another version:
WORD FOR WORD
Yad etat - this which is here seen
Kalindi tanu tara taranga krti - having the form of superfine ripples on the river Kalindi
Shive - o Shiva consort
Krshe madhye - at Your slender middle region
Kinchit - that something
Janani - o Mother
Tava yad - Yours which is
Bhati sudhiyam - looms in the mind of contemplatives
Vimardat anyonyam kucha kala shayoh - reduced by the friction of Your pot-like breasts
Antara gatam - entering inside (the cavity of the navel)
Tanu bhutam vyoma - pure space reduced to ethereal particles
Pravishad iva nabhim - as if entering into the cavity of the navel
Kuharinim - which has a hollow cavity.
Yad etat - this which is here seen
Kalindi tanu tara taranga krti - having the form of superfine ripples on the river Kalindi
Shive - o Shiva consort
Krshe madhye - at Your slender middle region
Kinchit - that something
Janani - o Mother
Tava yad - Yours which is
Bhati sudhiyam - looms in the mind of contemplatives
Vimardat anyonyam kucha kala shayoh - reduced by the friction of Your pot-like breasts
Antara gatam - entering inside (the cavity of the navel)
Tanu bhutam vyoma - pure space reduced to ethereal particles
Pravishad iva nabhim - as if entering into the cavity of the navel
Kuharinim - which has a hollow cavity.
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For the next five verses Sankara talks about the stomach and navel of a woman as an area which materializes the Absolute.
The Devi is here treated as a universal concrete.
The Devi is here treated as a universal concrete.
This is the powdered or pulverised world of the monde affiné of Bergson .
There is no major difficulty in its treatment.
There is no major difficulty in its treatment.
(In Vedanta the world is a "monde affiné" as Bergson calls it - a flux; a world of particle physics, not as actual as it seems. ED)
The ripples are the Kalindi river going underground in the Devi's body.
The surface picture is of an affiné river.
The surface picture is of an affiné river.
This is Eddington's physical world, exponential mathematics.
It is pure mathematical contemplation, abstracted and generalized.
The four dimensions become abstract at the waist where there is only a vertical vertebral column.
There is no psycho-physical communication except through the Susumna - the extremely thin central nadi or passage.
Matter is horizontal wrinkles in pure vertical space according to Eddington.
There is nothing in the middle of a woman's body except the pure virtuality of a child to be born.
This is gynaecological schematismus.
Above are some examples of Minkowskian Space
.We have hitherto kept in mind our own structural pattern of two cones placed base to base. We have elsewhere suggested that these two cones could also be placed apex to apex, when the position of the structure is pushed from the bottom of the vertical scale to the top. We have an ontological “universal concrete” here-and-now locus when the cones are placed base to base at the bottom.
The converse of the same, where “universal elsewhere” and “universal nowhere” come together in an intelligible point of light at the meeting point of the apexes, rather than the bases, or similar cones, could be imagined on the numerator side; instead of a “ universal here-and-now” we would get a “universal elsewhere” when the perspective is thus changed.
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Also, below, the colour solid:
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Other examples of the same structure, with different applications:
Minkowski Space.
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The Guru's space has cones and Chakras and conic sections.
The Devi's garland between her breasts is a hyperbola coming from the other side of the universe, like Halley's comet, which appears, then goes to the other side of the universe.
The Devi's garland between her breasts is a hyperbola coming from the other side of the universe, like Halley's comet, which appears, then goes to the other side of the universe.
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When schematism (i.e. structuralism) is known to you with all its dynamisms, you become a wise man, your consciousness becomes like that of a baby in the womb, verticalized in Lobachevskian space. You know your past and your future, what it is possible to do with yourself and what is not possible.
Another version:
TRANSLATION
Gleaming (with a sheen) of the form of the slender (or fine) ripples on the surface of the river Kalindi
O consort of Shiva
With thin middle part (waist)
Something (which resembles the shining of the ripples)
O Mother
That which is yours
To learned and good devotees it shines (as)
By mutual harsh contact (impact)of the water-pot-like shaped breasts
What lies between
The sky-space made into a thin string (schematic factor), (reduced into the vertical)
As if entering the navel /orifice leading into (navel), (the sky which has been pulverised by the two breasts, enters into the navel)
O consort of Shiva
With thin middle part (waist)
Something (which resembles the shining of the ripples)
O Mother
That which is yours
To learned and good devotees it shines (as)
By mutual harsh contact (impact)of the water-pot-like shaped breasts
What lies between
The sky-space made into a thin string (schematic factor), (reduced into the vertical)
As if entering the navel /orifice leading into (navel), (the sky which has been pulverised by the two breasts, enters into the navel)
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Schemas - what are the ripples on the water?