Fiercest of the Mahavidyas, Chinnamasta is the force of separation as well as union of creation and creator. Her shadow, which is addiction to the I-self, is overcome by her light of appropriate cultivation of sexual energy, one of the yamas in the Yoga Sutras.
Creation manifests in triads, and the Divine’s triad of sat-chit-ananda, or eternal-consciousness-bliss, becomes all the other triads of creation. The movement from the Divine’s triad to those of creation is forceful, like lightning—in a flash of light and sound, the Divine beheads itself, and creation forgets its true nature. Manifestation becomes propelled by its own cycles of will, knowledge, and action. Planets and stars take birth, evolve, and die. The Divine is forgotten.
Her name conveys her dance with opposites as “she whose head is severed.”
Exercise: Contemplate Chinnamasta
Contemplate Chinnamasta’s fierce imagery. What does self-beheading mean to you? Can you see your own face without a mental image or looking in a mirror? What do you find when you try to look at your own head or face? Can you feel the luminous spaciousness of your head?
The five functions of the Divine are creating, sustaining, destroying, concealing, and revealing (chapter 5). Becoming all forms, the Divine casts a spell of forgetfulness upon them. Only through this power of concealing can the Divine experience itself as form. Just as great actors live in character to make the movie or play a success, creation forgets its divine origins so its drama is rendered more interesting.
This power of concealment fosters a game of cosmic proportions: all of creation hankers to find the Divine, forgetting that its true nature is already divine. On the other hand, the power of revealing offers the prize that makes the whole game worthwhile. By finding itself again, the Divine can revel in delight and wonder, just as we recognize ourselves when we look in a mirror. Chinnamasta’s self-beheading is symbolic of both the concealing and the revealing powers of the Divine.
When we are in the womb, the energy of the Divine descends into our bodies through the topmost point of the head, the brahmarandhra. This energy courses through innumerable nadis, facilitating the functioning of cells, organs, and organ systems as well as our mind, emotions, and intellect. After the divine energy descends all the way down to the base of the spine, the brahmarandhra closes off, and we forget our true nature. Only a fraction of the divine energy courses through the nadis to maintain the body-mind; the remaining rests as kundalini or dormant potential energy at the base of the spine. We become identified as the I-self, and Chinnamasta’s beheading is complete.
Chinnamasta is the sushumna, the central channel that runs along the spine. Her attendants, Varnini and Dakini, are the ida and pingala channels that we ordinarily vacillate between (see figure 1 in chapter 3). Because our true nature is concealed, we identify as the I-self, and the prana fluctuates between the ida and the pingala, which have opposing functions. We stay enchanted with the I-self through the dualistic tendencies of our mind, fed by energetic vacillation between these two channels—we oscillate between good and bad, joy and sadness, right and wrong, want and don’t want, and have and don’t have.
Chinnamasta stands upon Kama and Rati, a couple in eternal conjugal bliss. Kama is the god of love who induces desire, which, as we saw in chapter 3, is the driving force for creation. Rati is the goddess of physical and sensual pleasure. Together, they personify the procreative nature of desire, which causes the I-self to be born again and again, from one moment to the next.
In one epic story, Kama induces desire in Shiva for Parvati, a form of Shakti. At the time, Shiva is an ascetic who has renounced desire and worldly pleasures. Realizing Kama’s hand in the stirring of desire in his heart, Shiva incinerates him with one angry glance. With desire’s death, creation comes to a standstill. When Parvati finally wins Shiva over, she convinces him to bring Kama back to life out of compassion for Rati, his widow. Revived by Shiva, Kama assumes his role once again as the stimulus for creation. Sundari eventually absorbs him into her own being, and he becomes her flower-laden arrows that keep us bound to our senses.
Without Kama’s arrows representing the allure of the five senses, we would be entirely uninterested in the desires that propagate the I-self. Rati, his wife, represents the enjoyment of the senses, without which we wouldn’t be inspired to chase them. Their union beneath Chinnamasta’s feet depicts the great concealing power of desire that is necessary to sustain the cosmos and its microcosmic equivalent, the I-self.
When we think of addiction, we tend to refer to things like drugs, alcohol, gambling, or pornography. However, the strongest universal addiction is the identification with the seductive I-self. In the forgetfulness induced by Chinnamasta’s beheading, we mistake ourselves to be the body-mind. This entraps us in the I-self’s perpetual sense of lack and leads to an addiction to seeking wholeness. We become addicted to the stories, beliefs, thoughts, and actions that validate and justify our limited identity. The validations and justifications are fortified when we judge others and compare ourselves with them. Our stories are so seducing that we return to them again and again to maintain our sense of identity with the separate I-self.
The I-self’s inherent sense of lack keeps us addicted to chasing external objects to feel whole. Kama and Rati keep us so enticed in sense objects that we try to find completion in physical objects, sense pleasures, and relationships. The addiction is so strong that we would lose our sense of identity if we were to lose a prized possession or relationship.
Just as a drug addict’s life revolves around his or her substance use, addiction to the I-self become the lens through which we see the world, what we unconsciously attract into our lives, and what we consciously seek out.
Chinnamasta’s shadow causes us to become addicted to fixed ways of thinking and reacting that lead to suffering and pain. When something bad happens to us, we can gain temporary satisfaction for being right about how the world, relationships, life, or diseases are working against us. Paradoxically, we can become addicted to suffering because it validates us. When we view the world as being out to get us, our outlook is naturally based in suspicion, fear, and self-protection. Addiction to suffering keeps us hooked to the feeling of being right about everything that is wrong with the world. When our worldview is one of suffering, we attract situations and people that validate and magnify it. This is how misery begets misery.
Just as substance abusers can’t stop using even when they know the ill effects of their addiction, we can’t help being drawn into the lure of our attachments and aversions even when we know that they will bring us misery. Sometimes, this presents as a nagging sense of dissatisfaction that may not feel like full-blown misery. Whether it is the low-grade fever of dissatisfaction or the full-blown illness of misery, it begins to define our identity, the I-self. The lure of the I-self and its dramas overshadow our desire for peace. Even if we do want peace, our addiction to suffering pulls us back into misery again and again. Most of humanity lives in the shadow of this addiction, unable to break free of the hypnotic trance of the I-self. We may fear the unknown so much that the familiarity of our less-than-optimal situation feels safer.
Suspicion and fear often become sources of bonding in groups and communities. Being part of such groups gives us feelings of protection, strength, and security to the extent that even when we discover their toxic nature, it is difficult for us to leave. Having our suspicions and fears validated by like-minded people gives us such security that the satisfaction of shared misery overshadows our desire to be free of it. This is also one of the reasons why many of us stay in painful or abusive relationships. This is the immense power of Chinnamasta’s shadow.
Chinnamasta personifies the subtle movement between desire, or will, and knowledge. As we have seen in previous chapters, will is the fuel for knowledge and action. When desire leads to a specific conclusion in our mind, that is knowledge. Our attachments and aversions make us desire certain things and arrive at specific conclusions. However, in the throes of addiction to the I-self, the conclusions we arrive at only serve to validate our attachments and aversions.
When we get what we want, we become attached to the outcome, and when our desire is thwarted, we become averse to whatever we think stands in the way. This colors our conclusions about the world and our experiences. We decide that something is either good or bad based on the attachments and aversions that have come to define us. If I feel insulted by someone and decide that he is mean, I’m irresistibly drawn to make the same conclusion every time we cross paths. The story I tell myself about the insult reflects the desire for validation, which ripens into knowledge through my conclusion about his meanness, and turns into the action of begrudging him.
Ultimately, the I-self’s desire to feel validated wins—by succumbing to this desire, I conclude the same way every time, restricting my knowledge of I and the other into labels. He becomes an insulter, and I become his victim. By coming to the same conclusion every time I see him, I continually propagate the I-self. This leads to ongoing suffering because I keep looking for ways to affirm that my conclusion is correct. This is true even if I decide that someone is funny and witty, and I enjoy being around her. By concluding that she adds to my experience of joy, I seek her out because she validates my belief that I am a lighthearted person.
This false knowledge, fed by attachment or aversion, is a way of cutting ourselves off from the Divine. Jumping to such conclusions propagates our desires, which in turn reinforces what we already know. Knowledge that is bound by the I-self’s limited desires is the cause of Chinnamasta’s shadow of addiction.
Chinnamasta personifies lightning and is thus the supreme accomplisher of divine will, the one who catalyzes it into knowledge and action. In this role, she acts through the human mind as the power of perception behind the sense organs. Ordinarily, our eyes, ears, nose, tongue, and skin are externally directed—through them we “take in” the world.
When we are addicted to the I-self’s attachments and aversions, our sense organs become the tools that we use to fulfill our feelings of lack. We approach sense objects for their ability to complete us, however momentarily. Whether it is through traveling the world to see new sights, going to the movies, enjoying good food, or keeping up with fashion, our externally turned senses keep us addicted to the I-self. We feel temporary relief from craving and are further validated by getting what we want.
Among all sense-driven impulses, the sexual impulse is the strongest, capable of sparking conflicts, oppression, and crime. This is because it compels us to seek out a partner to complete us, and in some cases, to control and dominate others. For example, some cultures have high levels of fear and suspicion about the sexual powers of women and seek to control and dominate them by subjecting young girls to genital mutilation. This violent, painful, and disfiguring act is meant to ensure their fidelity to the men they will someday marry by taking away their enjoyment of sexual intercourse.
The desire to possess an object of longing is explicit in sexual urges, as seen in jealousy, rape, the deceptions behind infidelity, physical and psychological entrapment through abuse, and even laws that restrict social freedoms. Every situation involving the drive to harm ourselves or others through sexual energy is Chinnamasta’s distinctive and powerful shadow.
Whether procreative or otherwise, sexual desire is challenging for even those engaged in prolonged sadhana. This potent and difficult-to-tame energy is kundalini, and all spiritual paths use it directly or indirectly for transformation. When we are caught in Chinnamasta’s shadow and continue to take ourselves to be the I-self, the energy is directed to fulfill primal sexual desire, which can feel urgent, addictive, and compulsive.
When our focus shifts to fulfill desires such as service, devotion, and knowledge, kundalini is transformed into Chinnamasta’s light of appropriate cultivation of sexual energy.
Exercise: Exploring Fulfillment
What sense objects do you pursue? Think of the things you collect, do, and spend time on, and think about how they make you feel fulfilled.
In the Yoga Sutras, brahmacharya, commonly translated as “celibacy,” is one of the prerequisites for liberation. There are many ways of interpreting this yama that go beyond its most basic definition of abstinence from sexual activity. Celibacy is tricky because when we try to repress naturally arising sexual energy, it causes great imbalances in the body-mind and takes us further away from liberation. However, when we use it responsibly and with specific intentions, it propels our awakening.
Brahmacharya is thus better understood as cultivating the thoughts and behavior that lead to realizing Brahman, the ultimate non-dual reality that is our true nature. This understanding emphasizes judicious and responsible cultivation of sexual energy. The art of appropriate cultivation of sexual energy relies on living according to our purpose.
Our current phase of life determines not only what we must do but also how we must express our sexual energy, which is both procreative and creative. Kundalini fuels all the workings of the body-mind. When we become aligned with our particular phase of life, this energy can be directed into wholesome expression in both its creative and procreative aspects.
By thinking of our purpose per our phase of life, we act within the confines of our developmental phase, which then opens us to the actions and energies of the next phase. This way of thinking of our phases of life that nurture our development is known as ashrama, of which there are four:
When we are in the grihastha phase, our purpose in life can be further clarified by our aptitude for certain types of work, which is known as varna and is based on our gunas.
These callings help us understand how we can contribute to society and focus our energies with a sense of purpose as we accomplish our work. All callings are valuable, and they exist in every society or organization. Each of these four callings consists of the three gunas combined in different ways that give us our unique talents and abilities:
Living a purposeful life is the first of the four universal desires (as discussed in chapter 5), which also determines how we cultivate our sexual energy. Purpose is determined by both the aptitude we have for certain types of work as well as the developmental stage of life we are in. This sense of purpose is one of the many uses of the word “dharma.” Knowing our dharma is essential, as it helps us focus our energies.
A college student’s dharma is to direct all of his or her energies toward learning, a seasoned professor’s dharma is to dedicate his or her accumulated knowledge and contemplation to enriching students, a business manager’s dharma is to lead a team by example, and a working parent’s dharma is to provide for his or her children. Dharma is unique to each of us, as what is dharma for one person may turn out to be adharma, or harmful, to another. Our dharma offers us a true north that we can refer to as we direct our energy toward and navigate through life. Dharma keeps us on the path of appropriate cultivation of sexual energy, virtue, and wisdom.
When our identity rests on our likes and dislikes, our dharma can become murky. We start confusing our attachments and aversions for our dharma. When this happens, our creative and procreative energies are used up by Chinnamasta’s attendants, and we remain identified as the I-self.
Dharma is navigated through the will-knowledge-action cycles that come up from one moment to the next. At any given point, our dharma is to do what is most appropriate and refrain from what isn’t for our chosen work and stage of life. Unclear dharma is the result of being trapped in stories from the past and projecting them into the future, both of which contribute to our vasana-triggered actions. When rooted in the present moment, we can align with our dharma and know the right way to act.
Exercise: Finding Your Dharma
Apply the principles of dharma to figure out your purpose in life. What roles have you committed to? What does your role call for in this moment? If you don’t feel like doing what you are supposed to do, ask yourself why. What would you rather be doing—what is this based on? Is it an image of the future or a dream you had in the past? Apply the non-dual inquiry exercise in chapter 3—do these images or thoughts exist now as anything but thoughts? Reexamine your purpose after this exercise. Has your perspective changed?
The way we cultivate sexual energy determines our gunas, which in turn determine our alignment with dharma. When we set aside our likes and dislikes and direct our energy toward what we need to do at any given moment, tamas, or inertia, gives way to the enthusiasm and activity of rajas. Rajas enables us to discern which of our actions will serve our dharma further. When we gradually become established in doing what is required of us, rajas opens us to sattva. With increasing sattva, we become adept at setting aside our personal preferences and acting according to our dharma. With equanimity and dispassion, we are further able to discern between the reality of the situation and the veiling effect of our likes and dislikes.
Dispassion and discernment direct sexual energy from the ida and pingala into the central sushumna. As the energy moves upward, the granthis that create and sustain the I-self begin to dissolve. Chinnamasta’s concealing power gives way to her revealing grace. Sexual energy that was previously directed downward into physical gratification turns upward to become the subtle essence of amrita, Sundari’s nectar.
As our granthis unravel by the upward march of sexual energy, we may find that the job we chose initially loses its appeal, particularly if it was based on attachment or aversion. We may find that our dharma lies in an entirely different type of work. A banker who was attached to the ideals of money may find his job unappealing and become a college professor or an economist, using his knowledge to serve the greater good. Sattva changes not only the type of work we do, but also its intent. How we do our job becomes transformed.
With increasing sattva, a politician may no longer be interested in attaining a position of power to feel complete. With the transmutation of his sexual energy, his greed for power is replaced by an outpouring of service, and he may begin to view his position as a vehicle to uplift the community, organization, or nation. Transmutation of sexual energy frees us from the binds of the I-self while leading to an influx of light and love into the work we do.
Exercise: Moving from Shadow to Light—Transmuting Sexual Energy
The following practice has two flavors: one uses the excitation of sexual energy and the other reveals the gap between will and knowledge.
Exercise 1
Exercise 2
This is a subtler practice. Be patient if you don’t get it right away.
Exercise: Non-Dual Inquiry on Chinnamasta’s Role in Creation—Separation
In this inquiry, we will examine the concept of being a separate self. Begin with the Heart Opener (chapter 2).
In this exercise, we come to see that both the other and the self are a thought, an image, or a feeling that arises in witnessing awareness. If something arises, it must arise to something that knows it. Thus, the feeling of being separate arises in awareness, which knows it. Notice that the feeling of separation is not always there, especially with people (or pets) that we love deeply, but you as awareness are always present.
When we try to find a boundary between ourselves and others in awareness, it can’t be found. They both arise and subside in awareness. You are this awareness, the subject to whom all objects, including your own body-mind, appear. You, the subject, are without borders or attributes.
Chinnamasta’s light opens the sushumna, and now instead of feeding her two attendants, the ida and pingala, she begins to consume the lifeblood of the I-self. Kundalini rises in the sushumna to the head, where Chinnamasta’s lightning-like power severs open the brahmarandhra. In this second beheading, identity as the I-self dissolves into non-dual realization. We lose our head by losing identification with the I-self. The dawning of this knowledge is the beheading of the separate self.
Chinnamasta embodies both the force of separation as well as the power that drives the union of the created and the creator. In this union, the awakened perspective reconciles all dualities and paradoxes—we come to see that along with all of creation, the I-self is also divine. No longer captivated by Kama and Rati, the I-self is seen for what it is. Chinnamasta’s light as awakened kundalini transforms ordinary experience into extraordinary beauty.