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THE LAMB, THE HERO, AND THE MAN-GOD
Brahman is anāhata sabda, "the sound (sabda) which comes without the striking of any two things together (anāhata).” 88 This sound is OM; not the OM pronounced by the lips, which is but a mnemonic suggestion produced by the striking of the wind from the lungs upon the organs of the mouth, but the fundamental OM of creation, which is the Goddess herself as sound. Because this is hcard in the lotus of the heart, that center is called anāhata; it is pictured as a ruddy lotus of twelve petals, and is the seat of the element "air."
"Ether," the fifth and ultimate element, is centered in the cakra of a smoky purple hue and of sixteen petals at the level of the throat. This is the Visuddha Cakra, "the completely purified.” Beyond, at the point between the eyebrows, is the Lotus of Command (ājñā), white as the moon, possessing two petals, shining with the glory of perfected mcditation, wherein the mind, beyond the zones veiled by the five elements and thus completely free of the limitations of the senses, beholds immediately the seed-form of the Vedas. This is the seat of the Form of forms, where the devotee beholds the Lord-as in the Christian heaven. Beyond is the center beyond duality, Saliasrāra, the varicolored lotus of a thousand petals at the crown of the head. Here Sakti,who is to be thought of as having ascended through all the lotuses of the susumnā, waking each lotus to full blossom in passing-is joined to Śiva in a union that is simultaneously the fulfillment and dissolution of the worlds of sound, form, and contemplation.
The Täntric worshiper is supposed to imagine himself as having purified his body by suffusing all the lotuses with the awakened Sakti in this way (only a perfected yogi being capable of making the kundalini actually rise). Meditation (dhyāna), the recitation of charms filled with the power of the Goddess in the form of sound (mantra), eloquent postures of the hands and
** Cf. Arthur Avalon (Sir John Woodroffe), The Serpent Power, grd revised edition, Madras and London, 1931, p. 120.
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