(SCIENCE OF YANTRA: UNLOCKING YOUR HIDDEN POTENTIALS)
(This work is a gift from all of my masters (Gurus) in Yoga, who have been warm and gracious to bless me, and now you, with these gems of yogic knowledge).
॥श्री गुरूभ्यो नमःहरिःऊँ॥
In the tantric system, you must have seen the geometrical diagrams of upright and inverted triangles, quadrangles and many other geometrical figures known as yantras. How are these geometrical figures associated with human beings?
A Yantra is nothing but a combination or a confluence of triangles. The Sri Yantra is supposed to be one of the most powerful yantras, symbolizing the process of creation, the manifestation of energy from the dormant potential state. Even as a plant sprouts out of a seed, in the same manner the whole manifestation of the macrocosmic universe has come out from a state of unmanifested reality. We call it avitha, unmanifested. What you perceive now in the form of time, space, objectivity, past, present and future is manifested reality.
SYMBOL OF CREATION
Sri Yantra is supposed to represent this process of manifestation where life, names, forms, time, all of space and the different dimensions have been evolving. This yantra has been taken as a symbol of our unconscious mind. It is difficult to explain the exact nature and relationship of the unconscious state of existence. In Vedanta and Samkhya philosophy, it is known as the causal body.
This unconscious state can be experienced by the practice of kundalini yoga, laya yoga, pure pranayama and also Kriya yoga. When a yoga aspirant practises these different yogic systems, then the whole consciousness, the whole personality is completely extinguished just as you blow out a candle, nothing remains of what you are. It is not a state of shoonya, void, or a state of completeness, it is a state of nothingness. That is unconscious.
In Vedic texts, the oldest books written by humanity, we use the words hiranya and garbha. Hiranya means ‘golden’ and garbha means ‘womb’. This unconscious mind, unconscious body or the causal body of the laya state of experience is like a golden womb. The shape and the form of this manifestation are geometrical. Therefore geometry defines the process of the universe.
I am not a student of physics but I can tell you that the whole universe, the whole creation is nothing but circles and triangles, not men, women or children! The creation is a science of mathematical numbers and geometrical figures.
The yantras in tantra are supposed to be very powerful. Take a yantra designed for yourself by an expert who knows the science, put it here, and it starts working positively and negatively. The people who have experienced the miracle of yantra, will not be able to explain the modus operandi of it. The ordinary yantra and there are plenty of them, is a receptacle for and a transmitter of powerful energies.
NEED FOR A BASIS:
The moment a yantra is placed near the unconscious body, they come into the association, into communion with each other and start working. Therefore in the system of kriya yoga, we have the yantras of each chakra. Mooladhara has the inverted triangle and Anahata has two intersecting triangles. The inverted triangle is the symbol of Shakti, the straight triangle represents Shiva, and when they intersect or embrace each other, that is the union of Shiva and Shakti.
Therefore, the practitioner of kundalini yoga concentrates on the yantra. I am not talking about bija mantra, my subject is now only confined to yantra about the awakening of the unconscious forces in man.
To awaken your great personality or higher personality which we call anandamaya kosha, the blissful sheath, you concentrate on each chakra using the yantra of each. The students of kundalini yoga should take care to learn, investigate and concentrate on the yantra, then go from one chakra to another, to the third, fourth, fifth, like this, to bring the consciousness from the material plane to a different plane where it is more powerful, stretched and expanded.
It is necessary that while you do this you must have a basis. Without a basis, consciousness cannot function. There are certainly very few people among us who can be aware of pure consciousness, who can be aware of pure mind. Most of us cannot think of mind without a thought. We cannot think of consciousness without a symbol, we cannot think of existence without any basis. Therefore, there must be some type of concrete symbolism.
In the context of kundalini yoga, there are various forms, right from the bottom to the top. They are encased in the yantra. Within the form of a circle, you have a crocodile, within the form of an inverted triangle you have an elephant. That is the symbol, the basis.
Remember again that the mind cannot be comprehended without a thought; we know the mind because we know the thought. If we want to know the mind only, it is not possible because it is formless, and the comprehensibility of something formless is an impossibility. Therefore, in kundalini yoga, we have the symbolic representation of the forces of the unconscious in the form of the yantra.
HOW YANTRAS EFFECT THE MIND?
Yantras have an immediate effect on the unconscious body. whatever you have experienced in your childhood is deeply embedded in the depth of your personality. Later, when you grow, this can become a problem, an ailment or an emotional crisis. It is not easy for a psychoanalyst to bring an individual back to his childhood and put him in touch with an experience which he had during his unconscious period. We can’t do this. So what do you have to do? You have to design something which will explode the unconscious quietly.
My Gurudev narrated thus, “Many years ago, I used to wander as a mendicant from place to place. I was lean and thin. Once I was living in a village during a very scorching summer. After some time I developed a high temperature, something like 106°F, or 107°F. Somebody took mercy on me and called a doctor. The village doctor gave me some medicine but it did not work. For two full days, I was unconscious, nothing existed for me. After the third or fourth day, a very old man came to know that a swami who had come to his village was having a very high fever. He came and looked at me, went back and brought a small piece of copper. On the copper were inscribed only two petals and one circle, that is Ajna chakra. He just hung it on my neck, and within half an hour the fever was finished. In the evening I left the village.”
This simple but very significant example shows the influence of a yantra. This influence was not conscious; if it had been you could say this is a psychological process. However, it was not a process taking place via the mind but directly into the mind. The yantra does not work through the mind or faith because you may not believe and still it will work. It is like a bullet, whether you believe in it or do not believe in it, it is still going to act upon you.
YANTRAS ARE A BLAST FROM THE SUBCONSCIOUS MIND
So coming to the point of conclusion, the yantras that you see are a blast of the subconscious. No artist, no painter, no poet can ever create that language of the triangle unless the subconscious is blasted completely through. Everything coming out from here, from the bottom, comes from the small golden egg, the causal body, the unconscious body, the anandamaya kosha, call it by any name you wish. Where there is no time, no space, no form and no name, where there is no I and no you, there are no numbers, it is just one homogeneity, no Scandinavians, no Indians, no French people, no man and no woman, just one homogenous consciousness. This mass of consciousness is a totality of existence, as one not as two.
Therefore, the yantra in tantra is a very powerful system of self-culture. It is a very powerful system for redeeming the diseases of the unconscious and also for the formation of our personality.
Yantra means a vehicle for liberating energy.
Yan–vehicle
Tra–the liberation of energy
The circuit it forms into our minds, reaching the deepest recesses of the mind, is nothing but the entire collection of samskaaraas in circuital format, giving rise to circles, squares, rectangles, angles, quadrangles, boundaries, lotuses, all of these hold the energy of samskaaraas—our karmic impressions—and exploding quietly as the energies of mother yantra–Sri Yantra gets superimposed on it. Here, the circuits try to realign with the mother energy of Sri yantra and harmonise it’s own circuital format by exploding one circuit after another, finally merging being absorbed by Sri yantra to manifest the Real Man from within the turbulence of this Apparent Man (the disturbed circuits of samskaaraas).
The energies of Sri Yantra, from its circuit of geometrical pattern, can be made to vibrate and move on its energy only by the impetus of sound, as the Sri Yantra is the geometry of Mind Harmonised, and mind is governed only by sound.
Here, steps in the phenomena of Mantra, and it’s an aura, which assists the turbulent circuits to align with the Sri Yantra geometry, is the Mandala.
Sri yantra, also known as Sri Chakra, is called the mother of all yantras because all other yantras derive from it. In its three dimensional forms Sri Yantra is said to represent Mount Meru, the cosmic mountain at the centre of the universe.
The Sri Yantra is conceived as a place of spiritual pilgrimage. It is a representation of the cosmos at the macrocosmic level and of the human body at the microcosmic level (each of the circuits corresponds to a chakra of the body).
The Sri Yantra is a configuration of nine interlocking triangles, surrounded by two circles of lotus petals with the whole encased within a gated frame, called the “earth citadel”. The nine interlocking triangles centred around the Bindu (the central point of the yantra) are drawn by the superimposition of five downward pointing triangles, representing Shakti; the female principle and four upright triangles, representing Shiva; the male principle. The nine interlocking triangles form forty-three small triangles each housing a presiding deity associated with particular aspects of existence.
Man’s spiritual journey from the stage of material existence to ultimate enlightenment is mapped on the Sri Yantra. The spiritual journey is taken as a pilgrimage in which every step is an ascent to the centre, a movement beyond one’s limited existence, and every level is nearer to the goal. Such a journey is mapped in stages, and each of these stages corresponds with one of the circuits of which the Sri Yantra is composed from the outer plane to the Bindu in the centre.
The Sri Yantra is a tool to give a vision of the totality of existence, so that the adept may internalize its symbols for the ultimate realization of his unity with the cosmos.
The goal of contemplating the Sri Yantra is that the adept can rediscover his primordial sources. The circuits symbolically indicate the successive phases in the process of becoming.
Yantra (vehicle of energy), on it the Mantra (sound energy), and through it, the Mandala (the aura of healing energies generated at your effort with mantra), is the journey of the Apparent Man to the Real Man!!
Anil Rao is a Yoga Psychotherapist, Mantra Trainer and Healer with 15 years of experience in these fields. He has procured his Yogic Education from the prestigious Bihar School of Yoga, in Yogic Psychology, Mantra Yoga, and has mastered Yogic treatments for Hypertension, Stress, Anxiety, Fears, Lung problems, Thyroid imbalances, Migraine. He can be reached out at 7507377042 (what’s app)
