Vimalananda, the subject of this book, designed the cover and
dictated to the author the following regarding its symbolic meaning:
"Ghora is darkness, the darkness of ignorance. Aghora means
light, the absence of darkness. Under the Tree of Knowledge is
an Aghori, a follower of the path of Aghora. He has gone beyond
ignorance thanks to the Flame of Knowledge which billows from
the funeral pyre. The funeral pyre is the ultimate reality, a
continual reminder that everyone has to die. Knowledge of the
ultimate reality of Death has taken the Aghori beyond the Eight
Snares of Existence: lust, anger, greed, delusion, envy, shame,
disgust and fear which bind all beings. The Aghori plays with
a human skull, astonished by the uselessness of limited existence,
knowing the whole world to be within him though he is not in the
world. His spiritual practices have awakened within him the power
of Kundalini, which takes the form of the goddess dancing on the
funeral pyre: Smashan Tara. He is bewildered to think that all
is within him, not external to him; that he sees it not with the
physical eyes but with the sense of perception. The Flame of Knowledge
is that which preserves life, the Eternal Flame, the Supreme Ego,
the Motherhood of God which creates the whole Maya of the universe
and thanks only to Whose grace the Aghori has become immortal."
The contents of this book have been encapsulated on its cover:
the breadth, the power, the majesty and the divine delirium of
Aghora.
At midnight on the dark night of the moon an aghori
sits alone in the great cremation ground (smashan) of Tarapith
the 'sacred site of Tara' in Bengal, India. He is
naked or 'sky-clad', fearless and unashamed, and gazes in wonder
at the resplendent form of his beloved goddess, Smashan Tara.
His matted hair is piled up into a topknot symbolizing that
he upholds his tantric vows, and the rest of his hair hangs down
freely representing that he is completely free from the
restraints of conventional reality. His right hand holds a skull,
indicating that he has realized the insubstantial nature of all
phenomena and the ultimate truth of selflessness. With his left
hand he counts the beads of a rosary made from rudraksha
seeds as he invokes the goddess with her mantra. He is seated
upon a stone plinth and surrounded by pieces of bone from the
charnel ground, and has created a protective circle around himself
by hammering pegs of bone into the ground and binding them with
black thread a ritual practice known as kilana.
Behind the aghori's head is a small Shiva temple crowned
with an iron trident, whilst in the background are a range of
triangular mountains and the ascending columns of smoke from smoldering
funeral pyres. Behind his back is a shrine to Bhairava and Bhairavi
the wrathful forms of Shiva and his consort Parvati
which are represented by a stone boulder with a wrathful face
painted upon it, and a trunk of wood painted with the three eyes
of the goddess. In front of this shrine are three skulls, which
represent Shiva's mastery over the three gunas or qualities
of nature dynamic (rajas), pure (sattva),
and inert (tamas). At the back of this shrine is a leafless
bel or bilva tree a tree that is especially
sacred to Shiva and to all manifestations of the goddesses or
shaktis. In front of the aghori is a female jackal, who
serves as the 'messenger' or emissary of Smashan Tara. The jackal
bares her teeth and gazes back lovingly towards her Mistress,
after she has crossed the boundary of the aghori's protective
circle with her right paw. Behind the jackal is a wrathful lamp
fashioned from an upturned human skull. The skull rests upon a
square block representing the element of earth, and is fuelled
by human fat and a wick twisted from the hair of a corpse. From
the flames of this lamp arises the symbol of a tantric staff or
khatvanga, which is fashioned from a small skull mounted
upon a handle of human vertebrae. At the top of this skull-staff
is a flaming iron trident, which symbolizes the goddess's victory
over the three realms (beneath, upon, and above the earth), three
times (past, present and future), and three poisons (ignorance,
desire and aversion). [Note: The wrathful lamp image is on the
spine of the book and not pictured here.]
Smashan Tara 'Tara of the Cremation Grounds' - is deep blue
in color, with one face, three eyes, and four arms. She arises
amidst the blazing heat of a funeral pyre, and stands in 'warrior-stance'
upon the fire-consumed skeleton of a male corpse with her
right foot pressing upon the breast of the skeleton (the place
of desire), and her left foot pressing upon the skeleton's legs
(the place of worldly ambition or progress). The roaring flames
of the funeral pyre represent the 'fire at the end of time' (kalagni)
the ultimate conflagration of the universe, which transmutes
all phenomenal appearances into the unified ashes of selflessness.
Her body is formed of pure light and the flames can be seen through
her lower legs. She is unrestrained, wild, terrifying and fearless,
with a beautiful midnight-blue complexion that represents her
immutable and indestructible nature. She is the color of space
vast and measureless like the night sky and she is
beyond all concepts or qualities (nirguna). Her breasts
are large or pot-shaped (ghatastani) symbolizing
the spiritual nourishment of her devotees, and her stomach is
full and rounded (lambodari) symbolizing her hunger
for the corpses of selflessness and the blood of ecstatic bliss.
She is naked or 'clothed in the sky' (digambara), symbolizing
her freedom from the veils of emotional defilements. Around her
waist she wears a girdle of eight blood-dripping forearms, which
symbolizes her severance of all actions or karmas and the
eight worldly dharmas of loss and gain, praise and blame,
pleasure and pain, ignominy and fame. Her long black hair is disheveled
and hangs freely behind her back, symbolizing that she has untied
the knot of appearances and revels in her unconditional freedom.
Another symbolic meaning that may be applied to her disheveled
hair is that she is menstruating, as Indian women were traditionally
considered to be 'impure' or 'polluted' during their menstrual
cycles and would only rebind their hair after the ritual bath
that marked the end of their menstrual periods.
Smashan Tara has three lotus-like eyes, which represent her triumph
over the three realms and times, and the three main psychic channels
or nadis (sushumna, ida, pingala) of the subtle
body that are activated in Kundalini Yoga. Her left eye
has the nature of the moon (lunar channel or ida-nadi),
her right eye has the nature of the sun (solar channel or pingala-nadi),
and her central wisdom eye has the nature of fire (central channel
or sushumna-nadi). Her forehead and limbs are smeared with
finger-marked lines of cremation ashes, symbolizing the undifferentiated
perfection of her wisdom. Her mouth gapes open showing her sharp
canine teeth, and her extremely long tongue lolls downwards and
drips with flesh blood symbolizing that she consumes and
is consumed with absolute bliss. Around her neck she wears a garland
of eight freshly severed and blood-dripping male heads, which
as sacrificial symbols represent her destruction of the 'eight
snares of worldly existence' ignorance, desire, anger, jealousy,
pride, shame, aversion and fear. She wears bracelets, armlets
and anklets made from small splinters of human bone, which are
bound with small poisonous serpents, and a necklace of human bone.
These bone ornaments represent her perfections, and the serpents
represent the various castes of nagas or serpent-spirits
that are under her control.
Her four arms represent the four activities of karma
pacifying, enriching, subjugating and destroying, and the four
purified elements of earth, water, fire and air. In her upper
right hand she wields a sacrificial cleaver, which is marked with
the single wisdom-eye of the goddess and is used to behead sacrificial
animals. This cleaver symbolizes the severance of all conceptual
thought processes and the decapitation of the ego or self-cherishing
identity. In her lower right hand she holds a pair of sharp scissors,
which are used for disemboweling sacrificial victims and for severing
their life-veins. These scissors represent her severance of all
delusions and emotional obscurations. In her upper left hand she
wields a rope-snare or noose, which is used to bind all demonic
fiends and enemies. With this snare she captures, binds and strangles
all mental delusions and emotional defilements. In her lower left
hand she holds an upturned human skull, symbolizing her triumph
over death and all phenomenal appearances.
Robert Beer 06/09/2002
