Saraswati is the ‘energy that grows’ even though you part with it ! It is like the fruits of a tree that multiply or the dispersion of knowledge or like lighting many candles with one and so on. It is the mythical Goddess of speech and music. The root-verb for this type of increase is ‘brih’ and it is from this that the word Brahman is derived.

■■       The Siva Sutras of Abhinavagupata, cited above, explain the human form in terms of seven aksharas out of the Matrika-chakra . We will next look at these seven bija-mantras to try and understand how the divine symmetries are reflected in our body.

●          The two aksharas , ‘a’ ( A ) and ‘h’ ( h ) are the first and the last letters of the alphabet respectively. The latter is the last of the Sibilants or the Shakti symbols. It is the aspirate and is uttered from the glottis or kantha ‘with an extra force of breath’. In terms of speech, its positioning in the glottis is adjacent to that of ‘a’ ( A ). Interestingly while the ‘a’ (A) sound is present in all the consonants, as discussed earlier, the ‘h’ ( h ) sound is present in half of the alphabet (barring the nasal stops). For example to the ‘ka’ ( k ) sound the aspirate is added to bring about the next letter ‘kha’ (K ). The former is called the alp-prana or ‘lesser life breath’ and the latter is called maha-praṇa or ‘larger life breath’.