Soundarya Lahari is the ideal ladder in the evolution process of the humankind. It is described by sage Adi Shankaracharya in 100 different verses. Each verse is interlinked with the other, taking on self — jivatman or soul to the paramaatman, the supreme soul.
It is attainable only through true spiritual devotion and sublime knowledge of the paramatman, supplemented whole heartedly by the successful accomplishment of samadhi — a meditative trance by overcoming mental ordeals through faith.
You, as a human being, hereby known as the jivatman becomes a upasaka or an earnest seeker of the non-differentiated brahman — the formless form of god. This makes your soul lead you through non-differentiated upasana — concentrated devotion between monoism, theism, dualism and the like, squeezing out the spiritual essence of the Upanishad and the smritis. This is the eternal principle of the soul towards its liberation or mukti.
This is called as sanatana dharma — the eternal principles of truth passed on by the ancient rishis or men of wisdom of this holy land. These rishis enabled the time hallowed system of theirs to endure through the ages and passed on this system to various classes of people. This enabled these people to evolve from different rungs of the ladder of spiritual evolution.
These seers themselves evolved different forms of worship in sanatana dharma according to Agama, Tantra, Puranas, Itihasas and the Vedas in the ambit of the vedic ideals. Then the seers continuously intuited and found this intuition originating from deep within themselves. They found out that this intuition came out from their internal consciousness and they called it as chit. Intuiting further, they found out that this chit was a huge reservoir where the sublime truth was originating. This was in the form of sublime bliss coming out in waves and waves continuously, one wave merging with the other wave. They found the waves were consistently and constantly generating bliss. These sages did not stop here, they wanted go deeper and deeper to find out who controlled or from where this chit was manifested. They realised that the collection waves of bliss originating from their chit was called as shrividya or as shuddha vidya — pure knowledge.
The sages did not stop here. They further went deep within themselves to find out the source of this shrividya and also the perpetuator of this highest form of shrividya. They found out that this source was coming out or being generated by a supreme energy beyond any form and they called it as adiparashakti. They also happened to ascertain that this was a creative energy that perennially created many worlds or jagath. They suddenly got the intuition that this creative energy was also called as jagat janani, moola prakruti and so on. It suddenly dawned within them that this was called as Devi. One by one it further dawned upon them that She being a creative energy, she was also the creator herein referred to as mother of Brahma, Vishnu and Maheshwara and their consorts as well.
Waves of Beauty series Saundarya Lahiri by Shri Nimishananda. Visit www.shrinimishamba.org http://www.shrinimishamba.org