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Agni, Surya and Chandra Kalas—excerpt from Kala-AvahanamBy Sri Amritananda Natha Saraswati

In the Agni Kala…

From the muladhara and svadhisthana, the fire which starts as lust changes and goes up to the ajna chakra. At this point, it manifests as flowing time, past, present and future. The past is the right eye, the present is the 3rd eye and the future is the left eye.

The right eye is the eye of Shiva; he is called Bhutanatha the lord of the past. The left eye is the eye of the Devi. Devi is the creatrix, the Mother; she brings the future into the present.

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In the Surya Kala…

The Sun is the source of life on earth. If the sun is not there, the earth would be a dead planet. The earth keeps a certain distance from the sun. Of the nine planets circling around the sun, there is only life on this planet because it is the correct distance from the sun. The sun is our life force.

As soon as the sun comes up in the sky, you go about doing your duties. This life-giving energy is supposed to come from the embrace of Shiva and Shakti. That is what is being described in the 12 kalas of the sun in the Nava-avarana (Sri Chakra) Puja:

Surya mandalaya: the circle or orb of the sunDvadasha: twelve Kalatmane: having the form of 12 aspects Visesarghya: wine or milk that we are going to invoke nectar into patraya namah: the vessel which is supposed to be the sun.

The sun is called the pingala nadi. The moon is called the ida nadi. We are going to combine these two. We are going to bring in the coolness of the moon with the heat of the sun.

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The heat represents extreme passion—the passion for life—and the coolness represents detachment. We are combining the two.

In the combination lies the sushumna channel. It is like a pendulum. If you bring the pendulum all the way to the right—to the sun—it does not stay there. It moves to the middle and then swings to the left, to the moon. If you try to move the mind to vairaghya (detachment) it won’t stay there, but it shoots back into kama.

So from vairaghya and kama the mind keeps oscillating. The stable position is when you bring it exactly into the center and leave it there. It does not move. It has no aversion to passion, it has no liking for vairaghya; it has no liking for passion, it has no aversion to vairagya. It is absolute detachment.

This is the channel of the sushumna. The sushumna is warm; it is neither the heat of the sun nor the coolness of the moon. You are passionate and dispassionate at the same time. In Buddhism this is called the middle way or Madhya Marga. This procedure comes very close to the Buddhist mandalas also.

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Under Kalas of the Moon…

We then invoke the 16 digits of the moon. We pour the milk and imagine that into the milk the pattern of the visuddhi is there. And we go around the milk and invoke the digits of the moon, four in each quadrant of the cup. You go in a clockwise fashion.

The first quadrant is considered as amavasya, or the new moon. It is very sacred. That is when all the kalas of the moon have gone back to the sun. The union of the sun and moon is complete in amavasya. That is when the sushumna channel is active. Passion and vairaghya are completely united. That is when the kundalini flows through the central channel. The Devi is completely in union with Shiva on amavasya. That is where she is called Kali.

During poornima, the full moon, Devi is completely separate. She is Lalita then.