July 7, 2020

 I am the first and the last

I am she who is honoured and she who is mocked
I am the whore and the holy woman
I am the wife and the virgin
I am the mother and the daughter
I am she ....
Do not be afraid of my power ....
I am the knowledge of my name
I am the name of the sound and the sound of the name

~ The Thunder: Perfect Mind
(as written at the beginning of The Book of Longings)

Continuing our exploration of the excerpt from The Thunder: Perfect Mind, here we focus on the last three lines. Line six, “I am she...” articulates the totality at the heart of non-dual paradigms. Each individual is a woven from the fabric of the One that is the source of all. Form is a condensing of the expansive energy of this primordial source and holds within it all that makes up the Divine.

Line seven is “Do not be afraid of my power.” The Divine is recognized as all- powerful in most spiritual traditions, sometimes benevolent and sometimes fear-inspiring. If we are essentially Divine (molded from the same fabric as the Creator), then we have that same potency within us. As we mentioned when discussing Act Four of the Shiva Nataraja (https://www.monakeddyyoga.com/ blog-concealment), Marianne Williamson’s quote articulates that our greatest fear is of our brilliance, our power, our light - not our inadequacy. In this line of the passage, we are told to not be afraid of this power. This is the primal power that was surging prior to the Big Bang, the Sound, that created the Universe out of chaos. It is the power the mother draws on deep within herself to birth a body from a body. It is the continuous reverberation of OM constantly vibrating beneath all sound and in all silence. It is the Word, Be, that when uttered brought everything into existence. This emanating power is immense and awe-inspiring, and yet ultimately compassionate and desirous of connection and self-understanding. As such, it need not be feared.

The last two lines of this passage are perhaps the most mysterious. In classical Tantra the Sanskrit alphabet encompasses all the foundational sounds that

come together in infinite diversity to create words, to name things and to form language. Each mantric sound holds the seeds of all the sounds. Mystically, the mantra OM is said to hold the essential sounds common to all the languages in the world. Each name formed from the basic sounds holds the knowledge of the Universe in the sounds of that name.

I am the knowledge of my name. Held within my name is the knowledge of all the experiences and choices of my lifetime. My likes and dislikes are wrapped up my name and my name holds the family legacy and position in the relative world. My name holds the knowledge of my individuality and the roles I have assumed with this embodiment.

On another level, our name references our humanness. We are distinct from the other creatures on the earth. We carry the vast quantities of instinctual and cultural understanding accumulated as human beings on this planet. While these individual and collective identities are not of our ultimate nature, they are part of the our embodied knowledge.

It is easy to stop at these layer of the knowledge that comes with our name without probing into the mystery below the surface of the name. If deeply investigated, though, our name carries us into the essence of who we are, to the wisdom of the ages held in our depths with our unique combination of experience, heritage and universality. Probing into the essence of our name, we arrive at I am. Unspoken here are all the layers of intuitive, instinctual understanding coupled with our unique heritage that we are asked, from a non- dual perspective, to interweave into a unified whole that is not disconnected from our name.

I am the name of the sound and the sound of the name. This line is compelling, mysterious, known and veiled. There is something potent here, but not necessarily easily accessed. In linking the name of the sound and the sound of the name, the anonymous author draws us to the word and the vibration of the word. In mantra science, the vibration of the sound is more significant than the word itself and the exact meaning is the least significant. Naming the sound and sounding the name is equally important. The mantra only reveals herself through articulation (silent or out loud) and is not potent if just read. Mantra strips away all the layers of constructed identity and leaves us ultimately with “I.” This “I” is the One that is the only universal “I” which is the name of all sounds. All sounds that carry us back to the One Name found at the heart of every name. We are returned, full circle, to “I am” - the first sound that sparked creation and “I am” - the last sound which will dissolve it.