VISIONARY TEACHINGS
by Gill Schwartz

Shri Yantra

In this Universe, nothing is fully created,
nothing is completely manifest and is only
partially evolved, except at the Source.

 

I'm visiting my friends, the Waltons, in their home up in secluded, forested hills in Southwest Wisconsin. By evening, the peace of the company and surroundings soothingly settles me in. After a satisfying Indian dinner, and catching up with each other's lives, Bryan shares some teachings and illustrations he's working on of the Shri Yantra. This simple, unadorned line drawing is a primary Indian Mandala, a mythopoetic symbol and sign. The teachings he talks about come through with such powerful clarity, I have to ask him several times to pause so I can let the wisdom settle into my mind. The impressions, insights and revelations he shared continue to swirl round in my psyche later as I settle down into restful, renewing sleep in the cocoon of tree engulfed stillness.

My bathroom needs wake me at early dawn. When I've quietly finished with my toiletries --Bryan and Fanou are still sleeping-- I go to the front room to honor the Mother at their altar to Her. There I spread out my prayer rug and devoutly bow to Her in homage. I light two candles before the sides of Her picture and make an offering of the Om circular symbol with the smoke from an incense stick. Like a channel had been opened, Her love floods my heart, quenching the thirst of my devotion.

After sitting there some sweet while, I go outside to the porch railing and savor the remoteness, the vital hush of nature all around. Their house is built completely of wood planks, some 50 years old and set into the sloping side of a wooded hill. The porch on two sides looks out on heavily wooded slopes, across a stretch of cornfield and more wooded hills beyond. They have vegetable and flowers plots they've cultivated on the hill's steep side over the years and their home feels as much part of bountiful nature as the woods do.

Standing there on the plain wooden porch, my bare feet are basked with the taste of the earth. My chest and face are bathed in the sunlight just birthing over a hill on the wide valley's far side. My body and breath awaken. A breeze, and I'm guided through rapturous movement by the leaf music. Then, life-flushed and flesh enchanted, I give myself over to being gently embraced and swayed in a woven-rope chairmock strung from the porch's ceiling. I abandon myself to savor and dissolve into this treasured moment.

As my soul soars, Bryan's rich and evocative insights on Shri Yantra gently, powerfully grow to resonate throughout my being. Then, from some unimaginable heights in my awareness, in a timeless mode of awareness, I first sense, then inwardly perceive the points and edges of a descending series of five multileveled and multidemensional, overlapping Triangles. With the grandeur of eagles, these Triangles descend on wings that penetrate many realms and realities and reach out to the eternal.

Though they are starkly unadorned with detail, they resonate with the fullness of primal archetypes as they descend in a shimmering flux before and through me.

The apparition grows more tangible as it draws more fully into the field of my perception, strongly focused through color and emotion. My discursive intellect is still pleasantly absorbed in the teachings and so is content to witness and be out of the way of what's happening. As the formation of Triangles draws closer and realer, awe transforms my mind. Through my subtlest sensing, they grow more present in various celestial dimensions and realms of color, through impressions and intuitions of perception I wouldn't know how to name.

Soon, though with a separate and distinct awareness, but with very much the same power of entrancement, I behold a group of four similarly overlapping Triangles ascending from infinite Depths. The perception, the savor of the energies that these Triangles radiate is so totally unique and apart from the descending group's, it creates an altogether other and unique reality consciousness in me. As these draw nearer, realer, their embracing wings take me down to experience the Earthheart palette of sensation and Nurturing they emerge from.

Though I do fully believe from what I've learned of Shri Yantra that the two sets of Triangles must somehow interlace in form and energies, but, for me now, estranged in the grasps of my two disparate minds, they can only remain completely separate, alien. This innermost divergence creates a grievous tension for me, an essential, tearing bewilderment. Their differences are so antipathetic that for me to even imagine their approaching to touch, let alone to interweave, is painfully terrifying.

The two cosmic formations of Triangles, Above and Below, are thus held before and within me in that boundless angst for some eternities. The glory of the visioning I'd first felt is drained away in this bewildering stalemate. Even the Mandala's ancient root wisdom teachings seem impotent. Something beyond even all that is fiercely needed.

When this desperation has opened and bared me to utmost depths, I find She, the Mother, is here and has been with me since this morning's devotions. I am here to witness and experience that it is only the Mother's all embracing aura of Love that gives the two Realms of Triangles creative, dynamic possibilities with each other. Her Love graciously gifts a blessing to soothe even these most desperate opposites into mutual compassion, and my soul with the spacious means to enfold them both.

Can those primal powers that are so incomprehensibly different, opposite and mutually exclusive, come to touch? The tips of the leading Triangles of the fivefold formation from Above and the ascending fourfold from Below now begin to interpenetrate. My sense of the possible and the impossible shatters at this. All the ultimate conflicting opposites and paradoxes resonate throughout my being and I recognize this is the source of the reality I live in. The passions burst forth, fulfilling ecstasies and terrors beyond imagining. jolts and awakens me to be even more attentive, more absorbed by these many faceted revelations.

Then, as if this opens the way for the next phase, the leading tips of the Triangles in each formation cross and interpenetrate in their continuing journeys before and through me. As this continues, at each intercrossing of the Triangles' points they shift to yet newer palettes of vibration and intuition into ever deeper octaves. They waft out like exotic fragrances, new ranges of consciousness are evoked to be known, further chanting spectrums surge forth. As they flow across the surface of my psyche, in this multi-modal sensing, they evoke tones of realization that correspond with spiritual Qualities Bryan had described. Each unique envisioned imago thus created is primal and actives the Qualities these merging between Shakta and Shakti evoke in our lives.

Beholding them in this way, I recognize and feel those Qualities in my own being. I experience the descending formation of luminous shades of ruby and sapphire Triangles of masculine Shakti aspiring to manifest the Powers to take form, empower, individuate and find personal fulfillment, while the ascending Ones of feminine Shakta, in embracing spectrums of blue and violet, radiate the receptive Capacities for enfolding, compassion, union and creation that enable it to merge and manifest in union with Shakti. The union of these Powers and Capacities effuses the Qualities that fill our Universe.

And, in the bliss of this dynamic completeness, I find that the Bindu, the Center Point of Shri Yantra is in the deepest Flame of my Heart in the Eye of God. Here is the Source that all springs from and returns to, where everything is born and dies to be reabsorbed, Here is the womb of darkness and light, the core of stormy creation.

I move towards the Mandala's Center Point to find the vortex where all boundaries dissolve. I place myself right there and enter into Now. The eternal Now.

 

The Mandala enwombs me, throbbing with Life. It merges with the luminous tendrils that emanate from my Heart and my Mind. It radiates these into cosmic strands that merge me with the Wholelife Energy Bond, the web of Higher Consciousness that merges all beings.

Now, at last, the cosmic forms and motions and infinite spectrums find their place of synergy, of balance in evolution and involution. Filling my being, filling the universe, is this interlacing of Sky touched Earth and Earth embracing Sky. Shri Yantra radiates the Cosmos as the Mother's Love unites it.

As I rest my soul in this spacious consciousness, my own being continues to open. I recognize there is an "I" that contains all this that is, that encloses and unites them all in unbound Awareness. At this moment I am that "I". Here I have access to the fountain of renewal. I am capable of self-healing, self-replenishment and continual expansion into new regions beyond the self.

Shri Yantra and the Mother disclose my true Self.

 

I am all that I seek,
All that I seek, I am.
The form in the mirror merges with mine.
I become not-two,
And Now is the Now I've awaited.
Now is Now crawls up my spine.
Now is Now opens my heart
and my groin and my mind.
Now is Now!

In me two rivers meet;
Time and Eternity.
What had always been separate,
sundered, disjointing me,
now join in common flow.
And I am all that I seek,
All that I seek, I am.

 

 

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Copyright Nathaniel Schwartz 2003   www.WisdomVisions.com