Among the great women-mystics of India, Mutayakka holds an eminent rank.
The names of Muktayakka and her brother Ajaganna invariably go together. Ajaganna is the elder of the two. It seems that they lived in the same house for some time. Ajaganna, carrying the Linga in his throat, was vowed to silence. When his secret bhakti became manifest, the Word came out, and at the very moment he breathed his last. Muktayakka is plunged in unbounded grief:
How, brother, how can I survive?
I have now become as one
Who blinks between light and dark.
O Ajaganna, your lore
Has first blindfolded my eyes,
And then shown me the glass!
Forever remembering the Silence of the Supreme and asking how she should forget It, she incessantly grieves and cries her heart out. Thus Muktayi, being tossed between light and dark, mourns as though a stone should melt, and wonders at the amazing height of Ajaganna yoga:
I am amazed
At Ajaganna yoga
Who moves about
In hueless hue!
How strange, the fire
Has melted away,
The camphor remains!
Strange, too, indeed,
Ajaganna yoga!
Sisterly affection is a normal human weakness and Muktayi is caught in the polarity of light and dark, knowledge and ignorance. Her mind is so shaken that she is almost on the point of losing the Experience she had gained by her association with her brother. Eager to uplift her from such a distressing condition, Prabhu, touring from place to place and performing miracles, arrives. The mere sight of him lends to her bereaved heart inexplicable solace and peace. This is how she gives vent to her joy:
I hail thee, O Lord!
Hearken to my prayer!
The joy of the news
Has charmed my ear;
And the joy of the ear
Now stands before my eye,
A living form!
The joy of my eyes had seen
Stands clear before my mind.
How can I describe the joy
Of meeting the Saint of Shiva
Face to face?
O Prabhu! Look my grief
For Ajaganna, my brother,
Who, having conquered self,
Enjoys the highest Bliss,
Thro' your sympathy, is gone!
She is involved in a web of errors, and proves a problem even for an accomplished yogi like Prabhu. He remonstrates:
Tell me, should you mourn
For the self gone back to Self,
Where neither Consciousness
Nor yet oblivion is?
Tell me, should you grieve?
Look, the word is wrong
That says destruction waits
The disembodied soul.
Lo! To him who has attained
The Ultimate Bliss,
There's neither one nor two,
Nor yet within and without -
And such is Guheshvara's saint,
Ajaganna!
But Muktayakka, in the hold of dvaita, fails to catch the spirit of these words. To her, the physical form alone is real. Prabhu makes further efforts to dispel her ignorance:
To say that you have seen,
Is the error of your eyes;
To say that you have not,
Is the stupor of your mind;
To say that you are united,
Is the failure of your wisdom;
To say that you have parted,
Is stark insensibility.
If you but see
Your Self in you,
There is no parting
Anymore!
At this word of Prabhu another doubt arises in Muktayi's mind and she questions:
If you say that He
Is the flesh of your flesh,
Is mind of your mind,
Is breath of your breath,
How can the herd know?
Tell me what it means,
He is within me?
Muktayi declares she needs the Guru to heal her heart's sickness. Prabhu, a great teacher that he was, he adapted his methods to each individual case and though elsewhere he is known to have insisted on initiation, here he upholds the cause of advaita:
''If you know your Self, your knowledge is your Guru. It can, in its unmanifest form, be the Guru. Though Ajaganna is not now seen in his physical form, yet the unmanifest knowledge abides in you.''
But Muktayi is not satisfied; she expounds in return the very essence of Veerashaiva philosophy:
Without the Master's word,
Linga cannot be known.
Without the Master's word,
Jangama cannot be known.
Without the Master's word,
Prasada cannot be known,
Without the Master's word,
You yourself cannot know.
Prabhu's is the height of the Formless, whereas Muktayakka's is that of Form. As a matter of fact, both the Form and the Formless are true. Muktayakka's ability to discuss with an eminent genius like Prabhu, standing face to face on an equal footing, is no ordinary thing. To believe firmly what she has known was part of her nature. She can not meekly give up her stand.
Although oneself be Master,
One needs, nevertheless,
Attach oneself to a Master
Like my Ajaganna.
Prabhu asks her in return:
Even if a Guru is needed as long as one would become Linga, where is the justification for a Guru after one has become oneself?
Her patience is now at the end of its tether, and she speaks out bluntly. To Prabhu's statement that he, having realised advaita has transcended the need of a Guru, she replies:
The people who say
They have gone beyond
The Thought of Twain
And grasped the One,
Should be as a child
Who has dreamt a dream.
For, so long as they
Can speak of it,
Are they not within
The thought of Twain?
The people who say
They have destroyed
All consciousness
And ignorance too,
And are released
From the Master's strings,
How could they explain
The heart's art of love?
If the self-effulgent
Appears before
The eye of Awareness
Upon the sharp
Summit of Mind,
Tell me, can one
Become oneself'
If one can forget
The knowledge grasped,
One should be dumb
Like my Ajaganna;
For the traffic of words
Goes with the lack
Of self-possession,
O Prabhu!
This shows how steadfast she was in her convictions. But though she scores a point, her mind moves within a limited sphere. The larger eye of consciousness which can see Prabhu partaking the nature of the limitless Absolute, is yet closed in her. Though the glorious Prabhu stands before her without concealing his name, she could not know his true Self. God is only accessible to the intuitive experience and not to speculative logic. Prabhu is now to reveal the secret to Muktayakka and that what she expected from Ajaganna was the same. That is why, on this occasion too, without directly blessing her, Prabho fights a sham wordy combat with her in order to bring out Muktayakka's spiritual attainment. But to Muktayi, speech denotes dvaita, whereas to Prabhu it denotes the effulgent Linga. Since she knew Ajaganna only and his vow of silence, she erroneously believed that none else had attained to his height. That is why she charges Prabhu in blunt words:
The need for words has not yet ceased:
Then how tell others what to do?
The trace of body's needs remains:
Why, then, this mystic talk, brother?
If you are That, how could you tell?
If you can show your wit,
Look, my brother Ajaganna
Worldless communicates!
Language too blunt and daring perhaps! Prabhu keeps his patience, and shows his affection for aspirants that stumble ignorantly, by saying:
If I inquire, so that I may clear
The turbid waters of your mind,
My mind has neither spot nor stain!
Because you are Guheshvaralinga's
Favoured child,
I opened my mouth.
At these words, the heart of Muktayi melts at last; her illusion is dispelled and she sees the Light. Now she realises that Prabhu has embodied the spirit of her brother Ajaganna. Therefore she cries, ''Hail, O hail, to thy glory embodying Ajaganna'' and bows to his holy feet.
No sooner did Prabhu's grace dawn upon her than her life took a new turn. She scales the highest summit of divinity and attains the ultimate state. The majesty of her mystic experience is vividly mirrored in her vachanas:
1. Do not mock me - orphaned of all I had;
And if you do, I little care!
Look, can you, by squeezing with love,
Make a stone swat?
What use to clasp between your arms
One that in other arms is lost;
Or try to crush the dry leaf,
Hoping for juic,
O 'father' Ajaganna?
2. Yoga should be
Like fragrance hidden in a flower;
Like the sixteen digits in the moon;
Like the wind that is lost in sound;
Like strong light lurking in the bolt;
Like my 'father' Ajaganna!
Her former pride and conceit have melted away in the Guru's grace. Now she shines as a light that has fed upon light and become the Light itself. The ego-ridden aspirant has, through the fellowship of Sharanas, become like camphor consumed by fire.
Note:
Some attempts have been made in recent times to publish the original Shunyasampadane in Kannada; but for the benefit of non-Kannada readers, a
comprehensive edition with an English translation of each vachana and an introduction in English was felt to be necessary. This suggestion was,
in fact, made by Shri Kumarswamiji of Navakalyanamath of Dharwar. He also offered to help translate these vachanas into English and to write a
general introduction to the work. At that time, he was Honorary Professor of Veerashaiva Philosophy at the University; but owing to pressure of
other commitments he had to give up the teaching work in the University and also that of editing Shunyasampadane as he originally desired to do.
So an independent committee consisting of Dr. S.C. Nandimath, Prof. Armando Menezes and Dr. R. C. Hiremath was formed. This committee has now
completed the first volume of the work, consisting of the first three chapters of the Shunyasampadane. The remaining chapters will be published
in about five further volumes in the course of the next year or so.
Karnatak University
Dharwar, July 15, 1965
This article 'Shunya Sampadane - Sampadane of Allama Prabhu' is taken from SHUNYASAMPADANE, Volume I, 1965, KARNATAK UNIVERSITY, DHARWAD.
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