Matangi’s shadow aspect assigns objective truth to the language we use to talk about objects, people, and processes, binding us in secondhand experience. Her light is non-stealing, one of the yamas of the yoga sutras, which frees us from the limitations of language and awakens us to our true nature that cannot be defined in words.
Matangi symbolizes the referential power of language to separate creation and experience into objects and concepts. Language is born of her fingers strumming the strings of her veena, which then powers the separateness of all objects in creation.
Matangi’s name is derived from “matanga,” which is the process by which unmanifest truth perceives itself as I-Am, which is then expressed through language. She symbolizes the outward expression of Tara’s primordial vibration.
Exercise: Contemplate Matangi
Contemplate Matangi’s symbolism—how important are language and expression in your life? Can you visualize a situation in which you might not be able to express yourself, even while fully cognizant of objects? How would your life go on without language?
As we saw in chapter 4, creation comes into being when Tara’s pristine vibration descends into the physical matter. As it does so, this colorless light becomes colored, like light dispersing through a prism. Matangi represents the unique expression of each form. From the formless Divine, each form expresses its uniqueness—a pigeon’s call is different from a robin’s; a rock is different from a tree; the sun is different from the moon.
Expressions of uniqueness contribute to a sense of separation. We express our unique nature as children and come to see ourselves as being separate from our parents and caregivers. Even though we may have the same genes as our siblings, our bodies and mind will differ based on how these genes are expressed.
With the power of Matangi’s expression, the Divine can experience itself as the many: expression creates diversity from oneness because even though all of creation is made of the same pristine truth, its objects are separated by how they express that truth.
Within us, expression happens through vak, which means “speech.” The levels of vak correspond to the states of consciousness:27
The stages of speech arise from turiya, the Self, or awareness that is the silent background that makes all expression possible. Permeating the three stages of speech, turiya is Shiva, the witnessing awareness in which Shakti arises and dissolves as the objects of the world and mind. Turiya, our true nature, remains hidden in plain sight because our attention remains fixated on the gross and subtle objects of the world and mind being expressed through speech at various levels. This fixation is made possible through Matangi’s shadow of objectivity of language.
Will, knowledge, and action produce objects that arise in our experience and seem to cause the language that conveys them. We can feel as though a chair makes us call it that. A man, woman, or car impels us to use words such as “he,” “she,” or “it.” Names like “Sam” and “Mary” evoke mental images of specific people, as we feel absolutely certain that the names must refer to them. By assigning this certainty to the object-word relationship, we take language literally. In this way, we come to think of language as the absolute, objective way to represent experience.
When we were infants, we had no concept of objects. For example, when we looked at a flower as young children, it appeared as a colorful shape that held our wonder. After we were taught that combinations of colors and shapes are known as “flowers,” we began using the word to refer to the object. As this relationship became established in our mind, it took the form of absolute truth. Associating an object with the word that refers to it becomes our second nature and assumes the form of certainty.
However, this certainty occurs through plagiarism, which is defined as taking someone else’s work or ideas and passing them off as our own. The way we associate objects with words becomes our truth because we learn these labels from our caregivers and peers. By applying labels to our experience as our own concepts, we plagiarize what we were taught because they weren’t our concepts at birth.
We learn to associate labels not only with the objects of the world but also with ourselves. Through language, we solidify ideas, concepts, and rules, using them to describe ourselves with absolute truths. Our belief in them causes our likes and dislikes, which make up our vasanas. For example, if someone called me “stupid,” it might enrage me if I associate myself with the word “smart.” Object-word relationships like these are established as vasanas in the unexpressed form. I dislike stupid and like smart, and when unexpressed speech in the causal body reflects on to the subtle body, it turns my stupid-smart vasana into an image. I see myself as smart, and the word “stupid” contradicts the image. This results in anger or irritation. My likes and dislikes attach labels to who I think I am—they become my identity, the I-self. The I-self is strengthened through this power to refer to objects.
When we learn to associate an object with a word, the vivid sensations that originally arose from experiencing the object diminish. Because the I-self is made of language-based labels, it steals the vividness from the sensation. It strives to keep itself alive through the label it associates with the sensation. For example, the pure sensation of what we call anger can be so overwhelming that the I-self makes it more manageable through labeling and storytelling. By thinking, I am angry, the powerful sensation of anger gets tied up in “I.” We lose the ability to feel the vividness of the energy of anger. This is the I-self stealing from sensation to fuel its own existence. Storytelling keeps the I alive because every story revolves around itself.
Labeling an experience thus reduces its power, which is then transferred to the I-self. By associating the word with the I-self, Matangi’s shadow of objectivity makes us avoid the truth of our experience. In every instance, we use the power of the object-word association to maintain the I-self, rarely pausing to experience an arising without the constraint of language and labeling. Within this shadow, the I-self exploits arisings by seeking pleasurable object-word situations, emotions, and relationships and pushing away painful ones.
When we take what we perceive to be the absolute truth and as a final and definitive dictum, we either bond with others or become conflicted with them based on whether our definitions concur or differ. We experience daily frictions in what we perceive as absolute truths in others that propagate our own suffering. When my definition of truth differs from yours, it becomes the basis of my conflict with you. Any image-based truth, like being a democrat, activist, vegetarian, Christian, black, or European, can become the basis for separation. When we can’t convince others of our truth based on the particular object-word association, we go to war with them. In the throes of separation, we use the power of language as ammunition to create and perpetuate conflict.
Language and expression also have the astonishing power to bring us together in groups and tribes. If a particular object-word association has the ring of truth to you and me both, we become part of a tribe. In this bonding, the I-self is validated and propagated. Our common purpose further solidifies our identity as we validate each other. The power of language in groups and tribes creates greater walls of separation—instead of me versus others, we find comfort in us versus them.
Matangi’s shadow perpetuates the shadows of all the other Mahavidyas. Through the sense of separation created by language, we resort to Kali’s shadow of violence in the form of comparison and judgment, which in turn makes us feel validated by Tara’s shadow. We come under Sundari’s shadow of obsession with our version of the truth. By boxing ourselves into this version of truth, we are constricted by Bhuvaneshwari’s shadow, which casts upon us the heavy weight of inertia, Bhairavi’s shadow. We become addicted to this version of reality as Chinnamasta’s shadow, which drags us into Dhumavati’s void of ignorance. Ignorance is furthered by the idea of truth, which clutters the Self, Bagalamukhi’s shadow.
Contemplate the labels that you use to define yourself and someone who rubs you the wrong way. How accurately does this person match up with who you and he or she are? Think of a situation when you simply don’t have the ability to label him or her. Nothing has changed about the person’s behavior—you have simply lost the ability to call it good or bad. How would you relate to this person now?
Non-stealing is one of the yamas in the Yoga Sutras, and it is a necessary quality for realization of the Self. It refers to much more than refraining from stealing physical objects or ideas and concepts protected by patents and intellectual property rights. Matangi’s essential lesson is that no word can capture an arising experience. When we stand in her light of non-stealing, we realize that a word that refers to an object is itself an arising. Both the object and the word are arisings, and further, no arising can cause another arising: an object does not cause its label, and a label cannot cause its object.
Everything arises, stays a while, and subsides in awareness. Both the object and the word can only refer to awareness and not to each other. With the loss of this object-word association, we gain complete freedom from our notion of causality: we come to see that there is no causal link between what happened in the past and how we feel now. We stop relying on arisings to maintain our identity and break free from karma.
The association of an arising with a word requires expenditure of our vital energy, or prana. In the subtle body, prana is used up for the conversion of paraa into pashyanti, madhyama, and vaikhari vak through the association of our mental images, sense perceptions, emotions, and thoughts with words and labels. If we can remain still and resist the urge to attach meaning to arisings, prana is freed up for our awakening into Self-knowledge.
If we were never taught to label arisings, if sense and body perceptions, breath, thoughts, emotions, and situations were experienced without the filter of language, we would feel the presence of Shiva-Shakti in all things. I unexpectedly discovered what this might be like during a plane flight when I asked for hot tea. As soon as the beverage touched my lips, a profound shift occurred in my perception. There was no tea. There were only sensations—smell, warmth, and taste. Each sip was a brand-new experience, as if I’d never had tea before. In the pure experience of sensations, there was no “me” experiencing “tea.” There was just seeing, tasting, feeling—arising and subsiding—in the spaciousness of awareness. The word “tea” itself was an arising in witnessing awareness.
Non-stealing requires diligence. As we go about our day, we can observe how the mind labels every thought, word, emotion, and sensation with attributes, such as acceptable or unacceptable, pure or impure, and worthy or unworthy. When we see again and again that all labels are themselves arisings in awareness, we stop using object-word associations to validate our identity as the separate, lacking, and limited I-self.
Matangi is sometimes called Uchistha Chandali. Chandali is a derogatory name given to a woman who eats the leftovers of others. As if to defy and elevate this definition, tantra assigns this role to the powerful Matangi. Uchishta Chandali translates as “the depraved goddess who eats leftovers,” and it is a common tantric practice to offer Matangi leftover food and other taboo offerings, such as menstrual blood. This is because her adoration surpasses superficial customs of purity or chastity.
Matangi represents what is “left over” of the Divine after its descent into expression with the understanding that, no matter how large or small creation is, no matter how pure or defiled, the creator remains undiminished, eternal, and infinite. A ring can be made from gold, but the gold maintains its brilliance and has the power “left over” to be melted down and reformed as a bracelet or a necklace. Similarly, all of creation arises and subsides in the creator’s brilliance that is never diminished—it always remains whole and pure. With this understanding, the ritualistic cleansing and rigid rules for “pure” offerings are done away with in the sadhana of Matangi. This is because no lowly or defiled offering can possibly diminish the brilliance of the Divine when everything is made of its brilliance.
The lowly offerings made to Matangi represent our concepts of purity, piety, morality, and ethics—which make up the object-word relationship that we take to be the absolute truth. For example, menstrual blood has no inherent qualities of purity or impurity—it just is. But deeply rooted beliefs can bring up a strong aversion to it. In some cultures, girls are forced to live and sleep outside their homes during menstruation. Menstrual blood can be so feared that menstruating women are thought to be bewitched, dirty, or cursed. And at the first sign of menstruation, young girls can be forced out of school into marriage or slavery.
These cultural effects are born from assigning truth to a perfectly neutral object. A physiological fluid is made bad, evil, or undesirable through the power of language. Therefore, to offer Matangi menstrual blood demonstrates our willingness to break free of her shadow. When we step out of her shadow, we open to her light of non-stealing, where an object-word association loses its ability to appear as absolute truth. Dualities, such as right or wrong, holy or profane, and pure or impure, begin to dissolve into the sweetness of immediate experience.
In her light aspect, Matangi takes a prominent role as a minister to Sundari, and her divine knowledge permeates but also transcends all the triads of creation. Matangi directs the unique ways in which these triads express themselves. Her sadhana shows us that if we wish to understand the nature of an object, we must work with its unique expression. For example, if we want to understand the nature of the three gunas or the five sheaths, we must first learn how they express in our own bodies and experiences.
Matangi is thus the gateway to Sundari’s beauty, knowledge, and wisdom. As a minister, she fulfills her role through two distinct personalities. One represents the brilliance of expression, and the other facilitates its fluency. Both brilliance and fluency arise from understanding the expression of an object. For example, you become a concert pianist by studying the expression of music, particularly via the piano. Your understanding of expression makes you brilliant and fluent, facilitated through your musical sadhana. Brilliance and fluency surpass mere technical skill—your music is sweeter because you become one with it.
On the path to awakening, brilliance and fluency of expression arise from the inner silence that Bagalamukhi inspires by stilling the endlessly chattering mind. Inner silence allows the cultivation of discernment with which we begin to see that no object of the world or mind is separate from awareness. Language, itself an arising, begins to lose its ability to refer to any other arising.28 With this understanding, Matangi’s two personalities transform ordinary expression into wisdom. When we enter the Self through the gateway of its expression of silence, we become brilliant and fluent by losing learned concepts and beliefs. This is one of the many paradoxes on the spiritual journey, where the great silence of the Self becomes the springboard for beauty in expression. We become the veena through which the Divine expresses, finally free of the shackles of learning.
Until this point in our sadhana of the Mahavidyas, the power of language has been of paramount importance for our progress. We have used language in several ways thus far, especially as a figurative tool. The iconography of the Mahavidyas that is so important on this path relies heavily on figurative language, where each aspect of a deity refers to specific macrocosmic and microcosmic principles. It uses metaphors heavily to make its points.
The most effective spiritual paths are those that self-deconstruct once the teaching has served its purpose. In the sadhana of the Mahavidyas, Matangi represents this power. Having served the purpose of leading us into the light through our shadows, Shakti now shows us that the whole path had been like a stairway built in thin air—it doesn’t exist as a concrete object.
With the realization of Matangi’s light, everything that we have based our awakening on begins to disintegrate—the cosmology, the three bodies, the five sheaths, the four states of consciousness and speech, the nadis of energy, the granthis and chakras, and the laws of karma. They no longer seem like absolute truths. Even the stories we constructed about Shiva separating from Shakti have no bearing in this light of awareness—Shiva-Shakti never really separate.
When we lose the ability to assign truth to an object-word association, our ability to stand as witnessing awareness is strengthened. No longer bound to any assumed truths, this stand seems like a continuous free fall into the delightful recognition of every arising as our own Self. Our heart splits wide open in this recognition, infusing all experience with love, warmth, and bliss. Without absoluteness of truth, inner and outer conflicts are resolved. Matangi’s light opens us to the splendor and beauty of Kamalatmika, the last of the Mahavidyas.
Exercise: Moving from Shadow to Light—Allowing Things to Be as They Are
There are two parts to this practice: one is a sitting-down meditation practice, while the other is an open-eyed practice that is done while going about your day. Both techniques are from Vijnana Bhairava.29 You may want to journal about your experience for later review.
Sitting-Down Practice
Open-Eyed Practice
Try this as you go about your day. Bring your attention again and again to the sensations in the body as it responds to sense objects, thoughts, emotions, and circumstances. What is the sensation of the taste of coffee, the sight of a cup, the thought of a loved one, being stuck in traffic? Let go of the stimulus or story and focus only on the pulsing of the sensation.
Exercise: Non-Dual Inquiry on Matangi’s Role in Creation—Language as Causality and Reference
Matangi’s shadow makes us feel as though an arising causes its associated label. This sense of causation can be very strong, as we may feel that certain thoughts cause particular emotions and actions. For example, we might feel that the events of our childhood have led to our current predicament. We may hold our parents, caregivers, spouses, children, politicians, natural disasters, or world events responsible for our thoughts, emotions, and actions. In this exercise, we will examine our direct experience to see whether this is indeed true—can one arising cause another? Here, we will use the example of the memory of an event that you might feel is causing you feelings of sadness or anxiety. Begin with the Heart Opener (chapter 2).
Exercise 1
If we observe closely, we will see the following sequence occur:
Repeat this exercise with any phenomenon that seems to have a pattern. Is there anything in your direct experience other than a claim-thought that says there is a pattern? When we look closely, we can’t find causation as anything other than an arising in awareness.
In the next investigation, we will examine the relationship between an object and its label. We will check to see whether, in direct experience, the label points to the object. If it does, the object-word association can be taken to be the absolute truth. For this inquiry, we will use a flower. You can obtain a real one or use a picture. Place it on a surface where you can see it clearly. Begin with the Heart Opener.
Exercise 2
If we observe closely, we find that this process occurs in the following sequence:
If we continue to observe this process closely, we see that each arising came out of awareness and subsided back into it. We find here that all arisings are always pointing to one thing only—awareness. The thought that claims that there is an object-word association is itself an arising pointing to awareness. In reality, no label ever touches an object—both are independent arisings in awareness.
Examine your own views and ideas about yourself, others, and the world. Do they ever touch the direct experience of memory, others, and the world? Can your views and thoughts be true if they never actually touch an object or event or circumstance?
As we continue to inquire into direct experience, the association between language and inference becomes clear. Previously, language seemed to indicate the truth in definite and fixed ways. Now, it becomes obvious that expression is always only inference and can never be the truth. In fact, we can see that language does not refer to truth in a concrete or definitive way.
As we begin to realize that there is no true association between object and word, we begin to wake up to deep peace and joy. We begin to see that all pairs of opposites are equally mistaken concepts and labels when they are taken literally, as if they truly point to objects. Discernment cultivated through this inquiry leads to non-attachment. How can we possibly be attached to images of ourselves and others when we see through the objectivity of language? When we give up the practice of stealing experience to support the I-self, we set ourselves free. In this fire of inquiry, we offer up all experiences indiscriminately to Matangi—the good, the bad, and the ugly thoughts, ideas, memories, dreams, and speech that form the basis of our states of consciousness and expression. Paradoxically, freedom from stealing brings with it her gift of creative and wise expression.