• ‘u’ ( ] ) is the unfolding maya, it is the measure of things as our consciousness moulds out forms in the formless. The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad shlöka I.3.23 says :-And this ‘u’ is ‘udgītha’, the universal song. The vital breath ‘prana’ is ‘ut’, for by vital breath is this whole creation upheld, supported. The universal song, verily, is speech. This is ‘udgītha’, for it is ‘ut’ and ‘gītha’.

          The compilation of entire knowledge is the ‘universal song’, Gītā. In its full form it should be called ‘udgītha’ . ‘Ud’ means ‘to evolve’ and ‘ut’ is the ‘life breath’ or prana ; coupled with speech this vital breath gives ‘name and form’ to all things in this conscious universe.Ishvara is the eternal order. It can be sensed, yes, but yet it is strangely uniform, devoid of any dimensions of space, time and so forth. This is the samsara , the Sanskrit word for the world. Sam means ‘the same everywhere’. Sara means ‘the essence’. In this dimensionless world the only disturbance, according to the Vedic Hymns of Creation, is a thought – “Let me be” – the Creator’s need to have a Self. This ‘thought’ disturbs the Uniformity, the Order, giving rise to the Chaos & Order dichotomy. The dimensions unfold and the Creator, Preserver & Destroyer trinity takes form. This trinity is variously explained in the texts, but for our purpose here, we consider Ishvara as the creative equanimity ; Shiva as the chaotic destroyer and Vishnu as the one that preserves order. In the galaxies above us, the supernovas are bursting with tremendous energies and the black holes are coalescing these under crushing gravitational forces. These are the two extremes of the visible universe and beyond these all scientific explanations seize. The expanding supernovas is Vishnu that is always depicted with agni or fire emanating from it. The root verb ‘ag’ means ‘a tortuous movement’ and the suffix ‘ni’ means in this context ‘to throw out’. So, agni is ‘the flickering of the flame’ that shines and spews forth energy. The opposite is n-agni or nāgini that means a snake, literally ‘a black tortuous movement’ that absorbs energy.

Thus, Shiva is portrayed with snakes around his neck. The river Ganges entangled in Shiva’s flowing mane, at another level, stands for ‘ākāsh-Gangā’ – the Sanskrit name for our galaxy ‘the Milky-way’.

            Shakti, power is the flow of energy between the Vishnu and Shiva back and forth. Each letter of the mātrika-chakra has its individual resonant sound and these combine as root verbs, words, shlökas and mantras to enable the ‘naming’ and ‘explaining’ of each and every aspect of life and its concepts. The multitudinous variety of these names and their possibilities far exceeds the Cantor’s ‘numerable infinite’ and this is how the following sibilants – the “Shakti” symbols or Ūhsma are delineated…