Tripura Bhairavi is the power of divine action. Her shadow aspect of inertia is destroyed by her light of perseverance, one of the niyamas in the Yoga Sutras. The heat of sadhana clarifies our perception, and we open to our true limitless nature.
Catalyzed by her fiery breath, creation springs from the dark void. The heat of her exhaled breath becomes the warmth and light of the sun, impelling life-forms to unfold and evolve. A single exhale supports eons of evolution, expansion, and growth. Sparks of her breath take up residence in each form, driving lifetimes of joy and sorrow, discoveries and inventions, technology and space travel, and war and peace.
Her name translates as “the fierce goddess who pervades all triads of manifestation.” Her fierceness symbolizes her ability to turn will and knowledge into action.
Exercise: Contemplate Bhairavi
Take in Bhairavi’s form, allowing it to dance in your mind’s eye. Can you feel her exhaled breath in you as the warmth of your body and the heat that catalyzes the countless chemical reactions that make up all your body processes?
As the previous Mahavidyas have shown us, the primordial AUM that results from the separation of Shakti from Shiva, as his self-awareness, is saturated with divine will, knowledge, and action. Sundari is the divine will, and Bhuvaneshwari is the divine knowledge. To complete the process of limiting the Divine, will and knowledge are catalyzed into action by Bhairavi. This process uses her heat to turn invisible will and ephemeral knowledge into visible, concrete forms. This heat of concentrated effort that leads to manifestation is known as tapas.
Concentrated effort, or tapas, is the heat that life depends on. The sun’s warmth is the driving force for all living activity on Earth. The extent of prana, or life-force, in our bodies is determined by the warmth of our tissues, which rapidly cool at death. All chemical reactions in the body are catalyzed by heat. Transformation of one substance into another requires heat. The transformative effects of evolution and aging require heat.
On the cosmic scale, Bhairavi represents the heat of the Divine’s tapas that manifests as all the triads of manifestation that we explored in chapter 5. She assimilates desire and knowledge into her fiery body and brings forth all of creation—they arise from her breath and are infused with her essence, heat.
In the last chapter, we saw how desire turns into knowledge, and knowledge limits our infinite nature in the ways in which we come to define ourselves. This limitation is further solidified when these qualities are converted into action. For example, if you have a burning desire to be a lawyer, that desire will contribute to your identity as an aspiring lawyer. When you get into law school, your identity is further strengthened by the knowledge you acquire through classes and assignments. The greatest contributor to your identity will be the fruition of desire and knowledge into action—you finally feel like a lawyer when you are practicing as one. Desire and knowledge existed only as thought forms until they became manifest through the heat of your concentrated effort, or tapas.
Bhairavi is the heat of consciousness that determines aspiration, energy, and intelligence in every being. As tapas, she directs all outward actions, inward thoughts, and the course of our life by catalyzing the vasanas in our causal body and the knowledge in our subtle body into actions in our gross body. Action is the outward manifestation of will and knowledge, but even the movement of will into knowledge requires the heat of tapas. We can desire something, but if we never take a step to learn how to go about actualizing it, then the desire cannot come to fruition.
When a desire is fulfilled, Bhairavi’s sword comes down to destroy further karma and gives us the opportunity to wake up. This is the momentary sense of calm we feel after we get what we want. It happens because the I-self is fueled by desire, and when a desire is fulfilled, it dies temporarily to reveal our true nature. Then, when a new desire starts up again, the next will-knowledge-action cycle arises, and a bead on Bhairavi’s mala moves to initiate it.
In sadhana, Bhairavi is the heat that results from our desire to wake up and the knowledge of what we must do to actualize our longing. When this will and knowledge are converted into tapas by our sadhana, they coax the rise of kundalini in the sushumna.
Tapas is required not only for awakening but also to maintain separation, the root cause of suffering. Constricted as the I-self, we feel separate from others. Because others have the power to hurt us, diminish us, or complete us, separation leads to fear, suspicion, and anxiety. We need to continually reinforce our identities as a separate I-self, and this takes effort. Our will and knowledge are directed toward manifestation of this separation.
In the subtle body, this effort to maintain separation occurs when we direct our vital energy into the ida and pingala—the channels on the left and right of the body that maintain duality (see figure 1 in chapter 3). The likes and dislikes of our causal body force our will and knowledge into these two channels. If you like romantic comedies, the desire to watch one leads to the knowledge of where and how to find this type of movie, which becomes the action of watching. If you dislike someone, you’ll find ever-new ways to avoid that person or give him or her a cold shoulder. The heat of tapas is required for desire to become knowledge and for knowledge to become action. By constantly directing our will and knowledge into actions that fortify our likes and dislikes, we become conditioned. This is how we create habits.
Vasanas drive our will-knowledge-action cycles, which in turn strengthen existing vasanas and create new ones. We become conditioned through this two-way process, where our actions turn into habits. When we were children, we tried the grown-ups’ coffee and found it vile. But as we grew up, we saw coffee as part of being an adult. We tried it again and again until we developed a taste for it. The will to be like everyone else led to knowledge of where to find coffee and how to make and consume it. This will-knowledge-action cycle repeated until it became a vasana. Now, the vasana drives the cycles without conscious effort, and for decades we get out of bed to make coffee before we do anything else. Coffee-drinking, a neutral action, thus becomes a habit.
Our granthis are made of habitual will-knowledge-action cycles that perpetuate the I-self with its accompanying feelings of lack and separation. These habitual cycles direct our tapas into the ida and pingala, which in turn support the creation and preservation of the I-self. Bhairavi’s grace redirects our efforts toward Self-knowledge, where our tapas directs kundalini into the sushumna instead of the ida and pingala. The dualities represented by the ida and pingala dissipate when kundalini rises in the central sushumna to dissolve the habitual cycles that reside in the granthis.
Sundari and Bhairavi are the beautiful and the terrible, separated and united by the power of tapas. They pervade the triads of manifestation, as denoted by the word “Tripura,” and represent two sides of the same coin: Sundari has the magnetic allure of desire, which is why she is so lovely, while Bhairavi brings in the heat of hard work, which explains her fierce appearance. While Bhairavi lies toward the bottom of the spine, Sundari resides at the top. Bhairavi represents the fire and heat of our effort, while Sundari symbolizes the sweetness of divine grace.
When kundalini rises in the body, it is often felt as heat. We are purified by its fires as it burns away the limiting issues hidden in the granthis. Ordinarily, our prana is too bound up in the granthis to activate the full potential of our brain. When tapas begins to dissolve the granthis, prana begins to flow freely throughout the body. The unobstructed flow of prana to the brain opens new neurohormonal pathways, with the release of amrita, or nectar.22 Amrita soothes the heat of tapas and brings clarity to it. Amrita descends into the body-mind, infusing our will, knowledge, and action with sweetness. This is Sundari’s grace.
Through the combined effects of ascending effort and descending grace, we open to our true nature and allow its sweetness to direct our lives. This dance is vital to awakening in the sadhana of the Mahavidyas.
Among the organs of action, our speech apparatus and capacity for complex language set us apart from other animals. Language enables us to look at a conglomeration of shapes and textures and to conclude that it is a tree, rock, woman, chair, or cup—the flames emanating from Bhairavi’s body symbolize the process of turning sense perceptions into labels that define things. Through language, Bhairavi allows us to perceive shapes, sounds, colors, textures, and smells as objects.
With language’s power of storytelling, we connect the events around us to ourselves, as the protagonist in our story. Whether we are referring to a natural disaster or taxes, these stories revolve around what these things mean for us specifically. Everything gets linked with ourselves, even when it has nothing to do with us, in ways that reinforce our likes and dislikes, and determine our actions. Bhairavi’s heat turns the likes and dislikes of our vasanas into a coherent pattern by linking random events into a story that’s all about us.
In sadhana, we feel Bhairavi’s presence when these labels and stories begin to make no sense. All previous practices were preparing us for this shift. We begin to offer all the labels arising from language into Bhairavi’s fire, which turns these raw materials into radiance, luster, clarity of perception, and Self-knowledge. Desire shifts from wanting objects to wanting truth, and the subtle and causal bodies are cleansed. We become vehicles for divine will, knowledge, and action.
Exercise: Sensing Bhairavi
Think of a desire that was fulfilled recently, like finishing a project or acquiring something you desperately wanted. How did you feel afterward? How long did that feeling last until the restlessness of wanting something else began? This is how you can see Bhairavi’s sword and beads in action.
Bhairavi’s shadow of inertia is something that most of us are familiar with. We may want to change something and know what to do, but are unable to make it happen.
When I first met Jane, who had many health problems resulting from morbid obesity, she immediately vocalized her self-loathing because she had not been successful with the many diets she had tried over the decades. She knew what lifestyle changes she needed to make and asked for more advice. Intelligent and well informed, she knew what she needed to do, and promised herself to do it this time. Every time we met over the next few years, she had not followed through, finding numerous excuses for her inertia. She gradually developed more health issues from her crippling inability to turn her desire and knowledge into meaningful action.
Health offers a prime example of inertia at play, as many chronic illnesses are almost entirely diseases that develop from lifestyle choices. But even though we know that we must stop smoking, eat healthier meals, or exercise regularly, inertia prevents us from taking purposeful action.
Because desire, knowledge, and action are so closely connected, the shadows of Sundari and Bhuvaneshwari naturally give rise to Bhairavi’s shadow. On the spiritual path, we can come under the influence of Sundari’s shadow of conflicting desires: we may desire self-realization but don’t want to relinquish the I-self. When we have conflicting desires, knowledge to act becomes murky in Bhuvaneshwari’s shadow of constriction. Conflicting desires and constricted knowledge direct our efforts away from Self-knowledge and keep us bound to the limited identity of the I-self. Bhairavi’s subtle shadow of inertia keeps us from taking the definitive action of relinquishing secular knowledge in favor of Self-knowledge.
Exercise: Recognize Inertia
Think of all the things you want to do in your life—start an exercise program, change your diet, declutter your house, start meditating, volunteer regularly to help those in need, or spend more time with family and friends. What keeps you from turning the wanting into action?
Another way to describe our experience of inertia is to see it as an aspect of tamas, one of the three gunas that make up all the substances of creation (see chapter 4). Our particular blend of the gunas determines our internal landscape of thought and emotion, as well as their outer manifestation in activity. While rajas brings the ability to differentiate between right and wrong and sattva enables us to see the good in everything, tamas clouds our perception. When we are steeped in tamas, we are unable to step out of the darkness even when we know that we must.
Tamas uses every bit of energy to fuel the I-self. Under its influence, we are preoccupied with the I-self’s issues, desires, and goals, and are entirely under the influence of our vasanas. Our perception is so clouded that we are unable to see what is good for us, so we mistakenly assume that the objects we like are beneficial and the objects we dislike are not. This makes our granthis dense with obstructions so that we act solely to benefit ourselves.
We relentlessly pursue what we like and avoid what we dislike, which leads to anxiety, restlessness, hostility, anger, aggression, and violence. Insecurity forms the basis of all of our interactions. Tamas results from the I-self’s sense of separation, which leads to fear and distrust of everything that is “not me,” and fuels the I-self’s sense of lack. This is how we stay stuck in the dark rut of inertia.
The antidote to Bhairavi’s shadow of tamas is her light of tapas, which can also be translated as “perseverance.” If we want to create a new habit, such as sitting down for meditation every morning, we may struggle to wake up early enough, to remember the instructions for the practice, or to put in the effort to settle our mind rather than get swept away by the momentum of thoughts. When we keep at it, day after day, even though it feels awkward and we dislike waking up early, the practice eventually becomes a part of our life. As we keep up the practice, we no longer care about liking it.
Bhairavi comes alive and burns through tamas by the power of directed desire, which leads to the ability to persevere through obstacles. In the Yoga Sutras, perseverance is seen as a necessary virtue for success on the spiritual path. In fact, it is necessary for success on any path. Each of us has this capacity for tapas, which can direct our desire into action to obtain a particular outcome. Whether we are studying for a final exam or working late to meet a deadline, we are driven by the power of tapas. The main difference between spurts of inspired action that don’t provide consistent results and sustained efforts that make great things happen is the virtue of perseverance.
The sadhana of Bhairavi is karma yoga, which shows us that the secret to transforming desire into tapas lies in examining the likes and dislikes that sustain the state of inertia. The likes and dislikes that make up our vasanas cause us to become attached to the outcomes of our actions. We may feel like doing something only if it will lead to a guaranteed desired outcome. Our likes and dislikes become the nidus for how we behave in daily life, where we continue to create karma.
Say your first interaction with your partner’s mother was unpleasant, and you dislike her. When your dislike carries forward and makes you interact coldly with her every time you see her, your “in-law vasana” becomes stronger as she responds in kind—all in a cycle of actions and reactions that reinforce your belief that she is responsible for how you feel about her. The tension builds up until there seems to be no possible solution. This is how basing our actions on likes and dislikes traps us in the shadow of inertia.
Karma yoga helps us put an end to this cycle—when you see your mother-in-law, you set aside your dislike and treat her with courtesy, regardless of how she behaves with you. By doing so, you take complete responsibility for your own action and work on dissolving that vasana with the heat of Bhairavi’s tapas.
At any given moment, what drives our action is desire to do whatever we’re doing and the knowledge to do it. Karma yoga results from our will to awaken and our clarity about what we must do. Instead of defaulting to what we would rather be doing, which reinforces the I-self, we ask, “What is my duty at this moment?” This question is an act of taking responsibility for transforming our lives. If we know what needs to be done to achieve a result, we can do it regardless of our likes and dislikes, focusing entirely on what the present moment is asking of us.
To live purposefully is the first of the four universal desires (discussed in chapter 5) and is strongly linked with our ability to do what we need to do. When we have a purpose, we can align activity with it. But, as we will see in chapter 8, many of us struggle with finding purpose because we confuse it with our likes and dislikes. For example, if you believe that your purpose involves having a different job that is more in line with what you like, chances are you will struggle to perform your current job.
A karma yogi’s purpose changes throughout the day, with the call, for instance, of spiritual practice, work, or family concerns as and when they arise. Whether he or she likes performing these tasks is irrelevant. The karma yogi refers neither to the past nor the future, and his or her actions remain rooted in whatever the present brings.
Disregarding our likes and dislikes may sound like a foreign concept, particularly when our actions revolve around them. It is difficult to put this into practice because when we act with the sense of being the doer, we also expect to be the enjoyer of its outcome. Both doing and enjoying arise from being identified with the I-self. However, neither the doer nor the enjoyer exist when we are absorbed in a task. For example, when I’m in the process of writing, there is no writer. Only after the task is done can a thought arise to claim, I wrote that. There is no doer while the writing happens. As soon as we own the doing, we also become the enjoyer of the results of the action—if I identify with the writer, I feel good if others like my writing and bad if nobody reads it.
We feel like we are the enjoyer only if we feel like we are the doer. And we feel like we are the doer because we strongly feel that we can choose our actions freely. But when we look closely at the process of choosing, we see that all our choices arise from our likes and dislikes, which in turn arise from our past actions. Our choices are therefore never as free as we think they are—we are enslaved by our attachments and aversions.
When we see that Bhairavi’s breath moves the cosmos as a whole, we realize that our actions in the present are merely the unfolding of countless interrelated past events. If we think about it, we see that everything in the history of the world (and the universe) contributed to the events in our life that brought us to this moment. And for the most part, our lives have unfolded automatically per our vasanas—everything we do is driven by our likes and dislikes, which are nonpersonal results of past actions. Yet, the I-self makes them personal by becoming the doer and the enjoyer. In doership and enjoyership, we suffer because there are no guaranteed outcomes to our actions.
Exercise: Finding the Motivation for Action
Observe your thoughts as you go about your day—how many times do you say to yourself that you like, love, dislike, or hate something? Journal about the choices you’ve made based on your likes and dislikes. What were you expecting when you acted upon what you like or don’t like? What happened when you didn’t get what you like or got what you didn’t like?
Exercise: Moving from Shadow to Light—Mobilizing Inertia
When inertia is overwhelming and prevents us from taking definitive action, contemplative practices are not helpful. The only remedy is to activate tapas. The following recommendations work to ignite the fire of tapas:
Exercise: Non-Dual Inquiry on Bhairavi’s Role in Creation—Doing
In this exercise, you will investigate the relationship among awareness, choice, and doing. Set aside fifteen to thirty minutes when you will not be disturbed. Begin with the Heart Opener (chapter 2).
This exercise gives us several insights. First, we see that choice arises as a thought or feeling in awareness. Then the second thought arises, claiming that the first thought made the choice. When this claim-thought arises, the initial choice-thought is no longer present. We also see that a thought cannot choose another thought and that our misunderstanding of choosing arose from the claim-thought.
When we look for the entity that makes a choice, it cannot be found except as another thought, image, or feeling that arises in awareness. As we see above, thought cannot choose. Thus, the only chooser we experience directly is an arising that claims to choose.
On the path of awakening, Bhairavi’s presence is a flame that leaps upward and offers us the exquisite opportunity to throw everything into her all-consuming fire. This includes all the triads that fuel the I-self and its sense of separation; our causal, subtle, and gross bodies; the three gunas; and especially our duality-based perceptions of the world and ourselves. The greater our offering to Bhairavi, the more she can purify and propel us toward awakening, and the more sweetly we feel the bliss of Sundari’s nectar. This is because when we throw all the triads pertaining to the I-self into Bhairavi’s fire of tapas, we open to the triad of sat-chit-ananda, or eternal-consciousness-bliss of the Self.
The dance of Bhairavi and Sundari is directed by Bhuvaneshwari from her seat in the heart as space and orchestrated by Kali’s transformative power as time. Together, Bhuvaneshwari and Kali bring forth the perfect circumstances at the perfect times to fuel our tapas so we can burn through our obstacles on the path of awakening by taking purposeful action.