Verse 7

In plain words

Full awakening to the wheel of mātṛkā. From that guru, when he is pleased: "Comes to the disciple" is to be supplied. In the way the Parātriṃśakā and other works teach, the first kalā of the reflective awareness "I", whose form is the unsurpassed Akula, spreading forth, becomes bliss. Then, after making the stages of will and mastery shine, she shows the state of unfolding, which is knowledge, and, through the greater outlining of appearing objects, its waning. She then spreads forth will itself in a twofold form: as mere radiance, like lightning and its flashing, and as stability, which, because it is coloured by what is willed, is tinged with the sounds ra and la; and so, because she has made appearing objects her own in her self-luminous light, in the form of nectar; and, because she merely touches the appearing of objects and cannot give birth to other seeds, in the form of the four seeds called neuter. Then, through the joining of the unsurpassed, bliss and will just mentioned, she shows the triangular seed; through joining the unsurpassed and bliss with unfolding, the letter o, which takes on the power of action; and through the joining of these two seeds, the six-cornered seed and the trident seed, made of the joining of the three powers, since in it the full power of action pervaded by the powers of will and knowledge predominates. Then she opens the bindu, which is the single knowing of the universe up to this point, and displays the ground of emission, whose self is the two bindus, emitting within and without at once. Therefore by inner reflective awareness she shows this universe resting in the unsurpassed itself; while by outer reflective awareness she spreads forth the whole, up to puruṣa, the five groups of five from ka to ma, from the powers a, i, u, ṛ and ḷ. Each power has five powers, and so from each a group of five arises. From these same powers, she made to shine the letters named antastha, "standing within", in keeping with the terms taught in phonetics, because they stand within, in the ground of the puruṣa, as niyati and the other sheaths; which the traditions call dhāraṇā, "holding", because they hold the ground of the knower and so hold the universe; and above them the four letters called ūṣman, "heat", because they have opened through attaining non-difference as difference melts away. And here, at the end, having shown the full letter of nectar that stands at the limit of all creation, at its end she shows the seed of prāṇa, so as to make one recognise that the universe, all this, which is what is spoken and what speaks it and is the expansion of the six paths, is made of unstruck sound nourished by the unsurpassed power. That is why, by the method of pratyāhāra, the universe is held within the womb of Śiva and Śakti, the unsurpassed and the unstruck, and is made of them alone. This is the reality of the reflective awareness "I", which is the potency of the great mantra. As our supreme teacher, the revered Utpaladeva, says: "The resting of light in itself is declared to be the sense of 'I'; and that resting is called freedom, since it is free of all dependence, agency, chief of all, and lordship too." The reality of mātṛkā up to this point is shown at the end by the kūṭa seed, the pratyāhāra of ka and sa, whose essence is the joining of the unsurpassed and emission. Enough of revealing secrets. There is a full awakening, made of absorption into one's own nature, dense with consciousness and bliss, to the wheel, the group of powers just described, unsurpassed, bliss, will and the rest, that belongs to mātṛkā: mātṛkā as she has been explained, whose greatness the tradition points to in: "… there is no knowledge higher than mātṛkā." This has here been merely sketched. It is set out at length by our master in the Parātriṃśakāvivaraṇa, the Tantrāloka and other works. And the Siddhāmṛta says: "Here Kuṇḍalinī is the life of the seed, made of consciousness; from her the triad called the fixed, will and unfolding; and from these the letters. From the letter a, ā, and so on, up to the kalā of emission; and that, from emission, the letters from ka to sa, is fivefold. Outside and inside, in the heart, in nāda, then in the supreme state, the bindu in the Self, at the top of the head: from the heart it pervades. Without the first and the last, mantras would be like autumn clouds. The guru should make known this sign, the first and the last. He who knows is to be worshipped like me, Bhairava, of the nature of the deity. Whatever there is, verse or song, is joined with the first and the last; so, knowing this, he sees everything as mantra." This is indicated by implication in the Spanda: "This power of Śiva, made of action, abiding in the paśu, binds; known as abiding on its own path, it brings attainment."