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A LOVER OF LIGHT AMONG LUMINARIES : Dilip Kumar Roy Sarada moni Devi. Like the Tantric illuminates, he, too, believes that women can not only win to the peak realisation in yoga, but be real Shaktis (religious helpmates) of saints and sages as well."159 Anirvan, being proficient in the Tantra, vindicates it very powerfully in his discourses. The message of the Tantra, Anirvan surmises, is to win jivanmukti (liberation), here and now, in the earth life. He finds its philosophy in Shaiv-darshana as well as Vedanta. He agrees that if the followers of the Tantra are likely to indulge in immorality, then the illuminates of any other path may similarly get debased. Very emphatically, he says:
“.... you are urged not to stave off women to conquer lust but to seek her help and cooperation to be purged of all cravings of the flesh. In India many a dauntless aspirant has striven to achieve this difficult feat and was singularly successful-way back from the Vedic age.
“Need I add that in our country people have made such an unnecessary hullabaloo about this lead of the Tantra that they have made confusion worse confounded. But then the edifice of human civilization stands on the union of man and woman. So unless we divinize this relation how can the Divine Man put in an appearance?"160
It is said that when Anirvan was seven or eight years old, he saw the vision of a girl which changed the course of his life. He was walking down on a village road one day. At that time, he suddenly saw a girl walking in front of him. She was not one among those he knew and yet not wholly unknown. He was surprised. The girl turned back slightly, and alluringly smiled. Then she began walking. The boy followed him. After a while, the girl disappeared into thin air, leaving behind her the flash of an ineffable beauty and a maddening call. The boy gave his entire life in search of that impossible she. Anirvan saw her, his life's passion, in different forms. He called her by many names like "Haimavati, Champa, Nanda, Uma, Sivasimantini, Kanyakumari, Sudakshina, Sagarika, Shatarupa, Rajrajeshwari, Shorhasi, ... Kaveri, Kajari..., Parvati...""'101 He found her a mystery Indescribable, an Immanent that is in the body and yet not in the body. Anirvan's description of her is similar to the one given in Devisukta (10.125) of avasana, anagna Vak. As he was elected by the Wordi Vak) whenever he was explaining the Vedas, his disciples could see that a single phrase of his was piercing through the luminous realms. In one of his letters he wrote:
"Champa is indeed the Queen of my world (Bhuvaneshwari). With what nectar she overflows this receptacle during these autumnal years, I cannot explain that to any one. My Vedic exegesis continues, it has a thrill of its own hard to convey. And
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