| YOGA ART GALLERY |
Visions Beyond Enlightenment |
| Inspired by the Siddhar Yogis of South India |
| Goddess Maha Kali |
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| Characteristics: | heals,inspires,protects against negativity, guides and enlightens
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| Ideal Place: | meditation/yoga room, living room, dining hall, office room,
study
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| Chakra Centers: | From the heart, connecting to the third eye, between
the eye brows |
Uniting as divine yoga is She the ascending Ascended above ego;
Cut free Becoming the lamp above the navel As Shakthi,
She is the joyful mother of the yogin In the pleasure realms of seedless bliss,
Detached, the enlightened sing of Maha Kali!
True tantra, in grace, as love She lets be! Him merged as Her in surrender.
Aum Shanthi !!
-Siddhar Thirumulanathar
Mother Kali's fierce form is strewed with awesome symbols. Her dark complexion symbolizes her all-embracing and transcendental nature. Says the Mahanirvana Tantra: "Just as all colors disappear in black, so all names and forms disappear in her". Her nudity is primeval, fundamental, and transparent like Nature ? the earth, sea, and sky. Kali is free from the illusory covering, for she is beyond the all maya or "false consciousness."
Her three eyes represent past, present, and future, ? the three modes of time ? an attribute that lies in the very name Kali.
"O Mother, even a dullard becomes a poet who meditates upon thee raimented with space, three-eyed, creatrix of the three worlds, whose waist is beautiful with a girdle made of numbers of dead men's arms..." (From a Karpuradistotra hymn, translated from Sanskrit by Sir John Woodroffe)
This painting is an invocation of the sacred Goddess as in wisdom. Mother Kali laughed at my futile attempts to paint Her initially. She asked me, "Do you know Me enough to bring My Presence as a revealing form that represents Me?". This hard ridicule sank me into an egoless state that searched for Her true meaning. It was at the final thoughts of surrender when i mentioned to Her, "Mother, take my head and all that "i" am supposed to be. Let it be my offering to You", that She said, "Now paint Me!". Within two hours, She allowed the painting to be brought alive.
The inner meaning of this painting is- It is only when the male ego is sacrificed as the head (intellect and ego) offered that enlightenment is found. Now though the sacred sensuality of tantra, the journey beyond enlightenment begins as the dance of Kundalini. Each hand of Her's depicts a mudra- the symbols of love and grace, the abundant giving, the protective powers, the energies to destroy evil and ignorance, the renewal, the grace of re-birth and the light beyond our human perception of light and darkness.
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