SAUNDARYA LAHARI

 

 

VERSE 48

A KEY VERSE

THE OPPOSITE OF VERSE 42
DAY AND NIGHT FORM A FIGURE-EIGHT
THE VERTICALIZATION OF WHAT IS HORIZONTAL
 
अहः सूते सव्य तव नयन-मर्कात्मकतया
त्रियामां वामं ते सृजति रजनीनायकतया ।
तृतीया ते दृष्टि-र्दरदलित-हेमाम्बुज-रुचिः
समाधत्ते सन्ध्यां दिवसर्-निशयो-रन्तरचरीम्
 
ahas sute savyam tava nayanam arkatmakataya
triyamam vamam te srjati rajaninayakataya
trtiya te drstir daradalita hemambuja rcih
samadhatte sandhyam divasanisayor antara carim
 
That eye of yours, in essence the same as the Sun and other than the left,
Generates daytime, the left one, presiding over night, creates its three vigils,
While the third eye, sweet like a half open golden lotus bud,
Ushers in the twilight time which moves between day and night.
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In Verse 48 there is a pointed reference to the implications of what we have to understand as a verticalized version of a cosmological process. Under Verse 42, whether we think of the sun or the moon or the light of the sacrificial fire placed in front of the votary, there are two rival versions possible for the process to be visualized. Day and night could be treated as mutually exclusive opposites. A second way would be to treat them unitively as alternating processes which could be further accentuated and subjected to a more fully verticalized dynamism, by which we could think of twilights common to twenty-four hours or forty-eight hours, merging from both sides to fuse in terms of a continuous twilight. One unit of twilight would take over when the previous one is finished, to guarantee the continuity of their vertical participation day-in and day-out. Such a picture would be as true as any other so-called “factual” one. The difference is one of orientation only, and not of fact. The contemplative prefers the verticalized version rather than a merely mechanistic one. The life process extends to the beginningless past and to the endless future, so that questions of “destiny”, “salvation” or “the happiness of humanity” would come more completely into the picture. A piecemeal version of the same tends to be mechanistic and cuts off the day of judgment or the source of human life from such a cross-sectional view.
 
Devi has two eyes placed horizontally and also a half-open golden lotus bud-like third eye which is meant to see yogic visions rather then mere brute facts. The lotus is a flower that is normally pink, but twilight hours can add a tinge of golden orange to the pink colour. The half-openness of such a third eye, resembling the bud of a lotus flower touched by colours of the twilight hour, represents the contemplative state of the yogi´s mind as it penetrates deeper into the future from the darkness of previous day/night units fused together in terms of twilight.
 
The object of this verse is to present a contemplative version of light, applicable to the consciousness of a yogi, irrespective of the event as such, but without contradicting the factual features. Classroom physiography may not tally with the version presented here, but that does not necessarily mean that this version is unscientific. Thermodynamic laws are not seen operating in the laboratory, but physicists still make such generalized statements as “the entropy of the universe is tending to zero”. A structuralized way of thinking is already treated as permissible in modern physics, which speaks of involution and evolution, implosion and explosion, endosmosis and exosmosis, space and anti-space and “big bang” and “steady state”, in a world of spectroscopic Doppler effects, referring to expanding or contracting universes based on an overall law of conservation of energy. All this is not usually questioned by orthodox physicists.
 
In this verse, one of the eyes of the Goddess, which need not necessarily be the right eye but should not be identified with the left, derives its essence from the sun. The sun is a positive luminary in the sky, and its function is best recognized at midday. Side by side with this positive status, one has to think of the other celestial orb, which takes charge of the night, which Keats described as “that orbed maiden with white fire laden, whom mortals call the moon”. Shakespeare has called it “the watery moon”. In contemplative physiography the sun is hot, while the moon is cold. The moon might have phases, but it does not shine during the daytime. Lovers feel happier in moonlight than sunlight. The gentle beams of the moon are a kind of food for love, but the position could sometimes be reversed when lovers suffer the cruel pangs of separation. In “Shakuntala”, Dushyanta complains that the flowery beams of moonlight become like cutting diamond-pointed arrows when Shakuntala`s favour is not known to him. Erotic poetry and contemplative structuralism both agree in placing these celestial orbs at two opposite vertical limits or, by way of concession, as it were, as two orbs placed in a relation reflecting “parity” instead of the relation called “handedness”. These are all structural problems which are far from being generally settled by physicists. The “fall of parity” has been celebrated more than once in some centres of scientific research. We cannot wait for them to settle their disputes to say that a four-fold structuralism, respecting horizontal “parity” and vertical “handedness”, is permissible for us to concede to absolute space. Newton and Kant have stood for such an a priori absolute space, while modern physicists, viewing the same from a relativistic perspective, tend alternately to abolish it and to accept it again in a modified form a decade later. The structure is finally what we put there, taking it from our minds; and also what we find “over there”, independently of our minds. The paradox is not likely to get abolished by itself as long as one has to think to find the truth. The effort of thought can only dance between the two possible alternatives. Unitive understanding alone can cancel out the prejudices proper to the self or to the non-self to take us beyond paradox. Sankara´s Vedanta claims to do just this, and this verse can be said to be preparing the ground for such a conclusion. The a priori and the a posteriori are both acceptable to Advaita Vedanta.
 
The question might be put: “Why not the right eye?” This is because even the sun can be transcended when positive luminaries with more powerful light could be substituted for it at a higher point in the vertical axis. The moon´s position is nearer home to us and thus comparable more definitely to the left eye of the Goddess, because there are no other luminaries between the fire on earth and the light of the moon, which is brought near to life every day. Our moon and our sun tend to come together the more we descend from the teleological to the ontological limit.
 
The reference to the three vigils of the night is to show that our consciousness passes through three different kinds of contents when we sleep at night. The early part of the night is generally spent in banishing the fatigue of the day. The second vigil could be described as semi-conscious, though equally restful. The third vigil is when angels begin to sing or evil spirits decide to depart, as in the case of Hamlet´s ghost. The cock is meant to crow to punctuate the vigils, especially of the morning hours, and the crucifixion is also connected which such divisions known to literature.
 
It is the subconscious mind that is influenced by moonlight. Virtuality is accentuated at first; then the negativity of subconscious states of dream or deep sleep takes over as night advances and sleep becomes not merely physical in its function. The horizontal alternation in which cerebration is either positively or negatively accentuated could come together without the cerebration being accentuated in any pronounced manner. Equally transparent states of mind thus can take charge of the consciousness during different nightly vigils, under the influence of the moon rather than the sun.
 
When the coalescing of these two alternating processes becomes more and more visually transparent to each other, we can imagine a creeper with two branches. When such a creeper bears its contemplative golden lotus bud between the eyebrows of the yogi, as suggested in this verse, waking and sleeping are both abolished in terms of an ever-wakeful contemplative state which is sometimes referred to as “the fourth”, or turiya. The dynamism of this fourth state can still move vertically up or down in terms of twilight, rather than a contrasting day and night. The last line here implies this state of mind. Narayana Guru describes a similar picture of contemplation in his “Atmopadesa Satakam” (Verse 9) thus:
 
He who dwells in contemplation beneath a tree
Whereon climbing, a creeper bears aloft on either side
The blossoms of the psychic states mark, such a man
By inferno unapproached ever remains.

 

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

 

In this verse we have a 90 degree tilt - the Sun and Moon produce vertical twilight.

The right eye presides over the day, the left over night, while the third eye presides over twilight.
Before, in Verse 44,  the vertical parameter began at the parting of the hair.
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Now, we have the face, with the sun and moon as eyes and the third eye, of a golden colour, as the meeting point.

The third eye of Shiva is the normalized version of the other two eyes.
There is a golden flower at the very centre of the situation.
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Do not strain yourself in meditation with open or closed eyes, but have them half-open, half closed. (Which means normalized).
 

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Another version:
 
TRANSLATION
- Gives birth to daytime.
- Your eye which is not the left (the vaguer the better in this schematic language)
- By being identical with the sun.
- That tripartite divisional factor (the whole night).
- Your left one (eye).
- It creates (manifests).
- The presidentship over night (by being the moon).
- Thy third eye.
- Of slightly-opened golden lotus beauty.
- Ushers into being the twilight dusk.
- Of day and night moving between (it lives and moves).

The night has three vigils, presided over by some kind of moon.
The day is presided over by the sun.
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Put the third eye at the neutral centre point.
This is the small golden lotus, which represents the central value.
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Another version:
 
TRANSLATION
"Thy right eye, being of the form of the sun, begets the day,
While the left (eye), of the form of the moon, begets the night;
Thy third eye, which resembles a slightly blossomed golden lotus,
Brings forth the twilight, which introduces day and night."