Hi, namaste, to all:

This is a very long post. I wouldn't be surprised if it's the longest post ever posted in this forum. But I finished the Devi Mahatmya/Victory of the Goddess course (including the Q&As), and have many questions. The questions that I'm posting are actually a minority of all the questions that I have, just the ones that I found particularly interesting or that seemed important to me. I'm not expecting a response to all of them from anyone. I'm posting all of them at once, because I was hoping, as they came up, that they would be resolved or asked by others by the end of the course (which didn't really happen). I even went through the entire last year of posts here hoping they would already have been asked. Maybe I'll just have to wait till after my initiation, when I can talk more directly with other initiates and more advanced students, to get answers to them. But if any of these are of particular interest/understanding to you, I would deeply appreciate your insights. Though the questions are given in the order in which the respective topics occur in the course, if I had to order them in terms of which are most burning ones for me, I would go with 7 (and 11 as complementary to that/an extension of it) as definitely the first, followed by 11, then 13, then 1-5-9 (these three are different ways the same theme is treated at different points), and then all the rest about equivalent. And if no one can answer any of them, I would at least appreciate some perspective on the meta-question at the end. That prefaced, here goes:

1. In Lecture 1, at about 10 minutes, Acharyaji is telling the story of Suratha, Samadhi and Medha, at the point where Suratha and Samadhi ask Medha why they are still hankering after the things they have lost. Medha replies, as Acharyaji puts it (verbatim), "You think you know, everybody knows; all animals and birds have equal knowledge to humans..." A bit later (around 11:20), he says, "There is a difference between the type of knowledge, cognition, that is universal to all sentient beings, and a higher awareness, that there is a gap, and in that gap is a veil of Mahamaya". From there he goes to discussing how and why Mahamaya is called Vishnumaya. Now, Mahamaya is the Goddess, Ambika, of this course (right?). So can someone explain how we can make sense of all that is then taught in the course about Her with the idea that She is here explained as being the veil between ordinary sentience and higher awareness? Is the idea basically that Mahamaya is the necessary manifestion, effusion of the higher consciousness/Self, and that one has to engage well with Mahamaya (as opposed to, in other philosophies, rejecting or spurning it) as the very necessary means or process by which to see/realize the higher, singular consciousness as well? And how did the "You think you know" answer Suratha and Samadhi's question at all? (See also Q5)

2. In Lecture 2, at about 32:20, Acharyaji says: "We are trying to excavate a Shakta philosophy that is a type of, you could call, Sankhya, where rather than being Prakriti having three gunas as jada, inertia, these three gunas determine the world, constitute both the material world as well as are comprised of consciousness and there is no dichotomy." Two questions here: First, just syntactically, I have trouble making sense of the part where he says "these three gunas determine the world". Is that (the idea that three gunas determine the world) presented as what is held by Sankhya philosophy (so that phrase as a continuation of the three gunas as jada, inertia, i.e., Sankhya things), or is "determine" there meant in an active, non-jada sense, of the three gunas having consciousness and subjectivity to them that constitutes the world? Second, he says the gunas are comprised of consciousness. That I get, but just curious, in Shakta philosophy, does the converse also follow, that consciousness is also comprised of gunas? I understand that understood as pure, self-standing consciousness, as Shiva, there probably wouldn't be any gunas to consciousness, but if we're talking about the three Mahadevis being of a certain guna, and if we're talking about the Goddess also as pure consciousness or as the Absolute in the Shakta/Devi Mahatmya context, then would we say that consciousness has gunas or not? This also comes up in Lecture 3, at 15:00. "There is sentience within the gunas", he says, which recreates the same questions for me. But a bit after that, at 15:40-ish, he says "For this triad itself, what we find is manas, buddhi and ahamkara, the mind, the intellect and the ego, constituting this triad as an expression of, uh, and the manas we can trace to Saraswati, and then buddhi, intellect, and then ahamkara; so the ahamkara killing the ahamkara comes in the context of Mahishasura so relating to Kali. So all these triadic manifestations are in our embodied states, the very expressions of the Goddess." Okay what? When he says "this triad", he's referring to the three gunas, which he just talked about, or he's stopped talking about the gunas there and moved to something new? What is the larger structure here? Is the full picture simply completed by what he says in Lecture 4 at 28:30, where he relates Kali to Tamas, Lakshmi to Rajas and Saraswati to Sattva? (If so, how does that play with the question below about Lakshmi and Mahalakshmi?)

3. Prior to that in Lecture 3, at 6:50, until about 8:30, I am afraid to admit that Acharyaji's delivery and presentation of various ideas and deities is so densely packed together that the transitions between them leave me almost completely at loss. Honestly, there are many such parts in his lectures that leave me feeling this way, and as I said at the start, I'm not asking for clarification on nearly all of them, but still, something about that 1.5 mins suggests some important things are laid down there. How do Ida, Bharati and Saraswati map to other Goddess triads, if they do at all (I suppose Saraswati maps to, well, Saraswati, but even when he had introduced this triad early in Lecture 2 as being from the Vedas, it wasn't clear about the other two)? When he says in Trika "transcending the triad of para, parapara and apara becomes crucial to the Goddess Karshini, Kalasankarshini, who is also invoked as Chandi, even in Abhinavagupta's terminology...", can someone expand on how the Goddess pertains to that Trika triad? I hadn't until now seen anything about the Goddess being crucial to transcending that triad in my Shaivism/Trika study. And then the talks about how in the text itself the "Absolute form is Mahalakshmi, and she also assumes in the lower form as Mahalakshmi, Lakshmi herself..." Having listened to the rest of the lectures, though, is Mahalakshmi the only/main Absolute form in the Devi Mahatmya, as it seems he is suggesting here, or is that only in the Rahasyas, which he alludes to right after the above bit? Does this relate to what he says in Lecture 4, at 23:00, that there is the primacy of Prakasha in Saraswati and the primacy of Vimarsha in Mahakali, and pure balanced Prakasha-Vimarsha in Mahalakshmi?

4. Related to the previous point about Lakshmi and Mahalakshmi, at 37:20 in Lecture 3, it's pretty confusing who exactly the various "she's" are referring to, made all the more confusing by the fact that the name "Shri" is also used hereabouts, and it's not quite clear when Acharyaji is saying "she" and when he's saying "Shri". I think what he's saying there is that Mahalakshmi is invoked as Shri, and after that he says, "She is both the days and the night in the form of Shri and Lakshmi". Assuming that "She" there is referring to Mahalakshmi, which Mahalakshmi, re. the previous question about Mahalakshmi as higher/Absolute and lower form, is he referring to? The transcendent Fourth or the one of the three? And Lakshmi is night? Grew up with a lot of Lakshmi mythos, and never came across that one.

5. Now in Lecture 4, at 20:00 Acharyaji talks about Maya/Vishnumaya, explaining how its via Maya/Mahamaya that one, Indra, the self becomes many, that it's through the force of Maya that one becomes infinity and one is (recognized as) one (I'm summarizing his words here a bit as well as I can). This is related to Q1, but again, can someone spell out the exact mechanism here? We kept on getting at this through the course, but it was never cleanly described, at least as cleanly as would satisfy me lol. I think there is a connection to this at 27:50—Through the Goddess manifests the world of the character of Purusha and Prakriti both—and to 31:00—"That which manifests, shines from all around is the empty void; so the empty void is as much real and as much replete with that Absolute Divinity as the manifest objects", but I'm not quite able to put my finger on it. Can someone cohere these ideas?

6. Still in Lecture 4, at 23:00, right before Acharyaji says that there is the primacy of Prakasha in Saraswati and the primacy of Vimarsha in Mahakali, and pure balanced Prakasha-Vimarsha in Mahalakshmi (which I refer to in Q3 above as well), he also says "this very Vimarsha, reflexivity, I'm reading in the form of Amba, Ambika, the higher transcendental form". How does all this square up? So Amba/Ambika is only Mahakali? But then I thought that Ambika is the transcendental form? So confused. Or is this about how Amba/Ambika is the transcendental form in the later Tantric texts but not here? If so, when he says he reads Vimarsha as Amba/Ambika, he doesn't mean Amba/Ambika as the transcendental form/fourth?

7. Still in Lecture 4, between 40:00 and 43:00, Acharyaji discusses the reconciliation of Shiva and Shakti, or the Absolute Brahman and its potencies, which seems like a crucial thing for us here in Sarvamnaya. There he brings up Bhaskararai's commentary (which one?), which refers to ichha, gnana and kriya as distinct but not separate shaktis of Parabrahman/Brahma, and while using Parabrahman/Brahman instead of Shiva, "this triadic structure explicitly is borrowed from the Trika structure". This may be the closest articulation through the whole course of the main question I have through it, which is how Trika and Shakta philosophy overlap or don't overlap. A dazzling but also perplexing thing about studying the Devi Mahatmya is that the Goddess in her highest form is basically described as... everything. It's like, if we ask, "Is the Goddess X?", the answer will be yes. Is that actually true? Q&A10 @5:15 kind of gets at how not anything goes, but again, the text itself is a long paean to the Goddess as being just so many things. There are parts (I may add timestamps if I find I've noted them in my notes ahead) of the course where she is also described as consciousness, without qualifying as reflexive consciousness/Vimarsha, or in other ways that Shiva/Purusha/Brahman in other discourses are often described as. So does that mean that speaking of Shiva or Shakti/Ambika/Chandi/Mahalakshmi is just an arbitrary choice for us situated in Sarvamnaya or in other traditions that are both "Shaiva" and "Shakta"? This was one question that I really hoped was answered in the last year of Mandapa posts, but it hasn't come up. Maybe everyone else was just able to make sense of this, and I'm struggling with a very basic point. But is there any usage of "Shiva" for us where saying "Shakti/Ambika/Chandi" instead would be incorrect, and vice versa? Is the answer as simple as She is the Shakti of the Absolute qua Absolute? But then, why is she also described as the highest, ultimate Absolute then? Or is the answer just that She is the Absolute but only for its reflexive, Vimarsha aspect? But if so, then there are also descriptions of the Goddess as unqualified consciousness/unqualified transcendental Absolute (as indeed in just my previous question, where the Goddess in different forms is mapped to Prakasha, Vimarsha as well as both balanced)? What is going on???

8. Still Lecture 4, at 51:10: "This very vritti, this very manifest consciousness, when consolidated, creates the bhava prapancha, the externalization of the world..." How? This feels like an important part of the metaphysics I want to understand, but the sentences that precede and succeed it do not really shed light on it. Also is this "vritti" the same as Patanjali's in Yoga philosophy?

9. *Still* in Lecture 4, 57:00-ish and after, where Acharyaji is discussing how the Shakta system is nondual but distinct from Kevaladvaita... how exactly does discarding Shakti lead Kevaladvaita to have to confront Mahamaya? Again my mystification (very appropriate, I realize) by the Mahamaya concept comes up; does this point relate to or help answer my questions in 1 and 5?

10. Moving ahead, finally, in Lecture 5 (the discourse on the ritual domain pertaining to the Devi Mahatmya), between 5:00 and 7:30, Acharyaji discusses the relation between the amnayas and their directions, Gods/Goddesses, their consorts. A bit after 6:30, he talks about how Ishana, Agneya and Nairitya are consolidated, united in the Vayavya (?) amnaya, "and even that amnaya, transcending all the amnayas, and manifesting in the singular form of Chamunda, inside the Agna chakra, in visualization, ???Lalana chakra, and that Lalana chakra is visualized having 64 petals, and Chamunda, the Goddess, presides over there as the samashti of all amnayas". Okay, first, again, what? Second, what is the relation between this Vayavya amnaya and Sarvamnaya? Third, is this Chamunda the same as Chandi? Or is this a different form to the Transcendental, ultimate subject of the Devi Mahatmya?

11. In the Q&A to Lecture 5 (which was an especially great Q&A btw), at 25:00, to the question of why the Mother, if proper rituals and tapas are performed for her, would ever harm another devotee on behalf of one, Acharyaji says, "She doesn't have will. She burns", and goes on to describe Shakti as, well, pure shakti, as fire, but without subjectivity, agency, ending the answer at 29:30 with "Goddess doesn't have her own will. Her will is your will." How at all does this square up with everything else in this course? This seems like a complete denial of ichha shakti, if not also gnana shakti. Are we now seeing the Goddess as just Shakti, i.e., as power or energy of physics, without volition or agentic/subjective quality, without svatantraya? If so does this help answer my big Q7—is an essential attribute to Shiva/the unqualified Absolute/Absolute qua Absolute that is not an attribute of the Goddess svatantraya? Again, not sure if that aligns with the rest of things about her in the course, but looking back on all the lectures, I do believe there was comparatively little (if anything, though I'll have to go through my dozens of pages of notes to verify) about svatantriya.

12. Now in Lecture 6, at 26:00 (this relates to the question within my Q2 above about whether there are gunas to consciousness or only consciousness to gunas), Acharyaji is talking about the relationship between Kali and the world, starting with "You [Kali] are of the form of the world", and then expands on that relationship as "Identity, svabhava, the world is the svabhava of Kali … The world is an articulation, ejection of her internal forces, internal drives, internalized energies. The world is the shakti by means of which Kali actualizes her own glory..." Now, my question here comes from my understanding the Indic term "svabhava" as "essence" as the latter is used in Western philosophy, and it may be that this translation is actually causing the problems itself. But understood as essence, the fundamental what-ness or defining, essential nature of something... it seems more fitting if it were said that Kali is the essence/svabhava of the world, not the world being the essence of Kali. I mean, if Kali is just a form of the Absolute, then the essential nature of the Absolute is not the world, right? But I could see it making sense to see the world as having the svabhava of Kali. And indeed I feel that goes along better with what follows in the lines ahead that I've quoted: If the world is an articulation of Kali's internal forces, then that seems like saying not that the world is the svabhava of Kali, but that the world, as it is an articulation of Kali's internal forces, has the essential nature of Kali. This relates to what Acharyaji says in Lecture 7 at 17:30: "What is the Shakti of the Goddess? What constitutes the Goddess as Shakti is because she manifests in the form of the world", which again supports my converse reading: If the Goddess *manifests in the form of* the world, then it would not seem that the world is her svabhava, but that she is the svabhava of the world. "Any clarifying thoughts?

13. In Lecture 8, at 43:00, Acharyaji describes the Shakta path as one in which there can be both moksha and bhoga, not having to choose between them. He also says around there (bit after 42:00) that you can't turn away from kama, desires: "Without experiencing, without undergoing, without doing bhoga, your karma are not going to be destroyed, by a mere will, 'I don't want to do any bhoga', that is like, you are just postponing, it's just like the debt you have and you don't want to pay now, and you want to pretend you have no debt. So you also enjoy the world, and be part of it, and recognize the extent for the expression of kama..." (and then to moksha, as related). Now, how mainstream in Shaiva and Shakta thought is the idea that you have to go through with your desired bhoga, kama, to truly extinguish it, "get it out of your system", as it were? This idea comes up here, but there are other occasions, perhaps more occasions, where Acharyaji expresses sentiments that to me at least seem contrary to the world-affirmation of this answer, for example in the answer between 21:45 and 29:00 in Q&A 11 (question beginning at 20:30), where he presents the more typical Indic viewpoint about how suffering comes from forgetting our true, inner core of being, and thus being sucked into raga and dwesha and moha for/regarding external reality, framing raga, dwesha and moha, desire involving samsara, as something we need to go beyond: "How can we wash of these three, is that is what is the whole core teaching of the Devi Mahatmya (26:30) … so these three divinities are there at the core, and innermost is the core, and as soon as the world is manifest, we manifest raga, dwesha, moha, and that is also where we manifest Mahakali, Mahalakshmi, Mahasaraswati; either we want to go back, that is the gate through Mahakali, we want to go out, we go out through raga-dwesha-moha". I'm sure there is a way to reconcile these two viewpoints, affirming that there can be bhoga, kama without raga-dwesha-moha, but how exactly is that? What does that look like? Especially when the outward orientation is framed here is precisely as being through raga-dwesha-moha, and the orientation *not* toward the external, but to the true innermost core, as the one that involves Mahakali, implying the external orientation does not involve Mahakali, whom I suppose he is using not necessarily to the exclusion of the other two goddesses, but as representative of the singular Divine?

14. In Q&A8, at 32:30, Acharyaji discusses how karma is treated differently in Advaita Vedanta and in Shakta philosophy. In that he explains how the latter does not reject karma but considers it essentially inseparable from gnyaana (one being external expression, other being inner), so even for Shakta thought there isn't really a dichotomy whereby karma is something entirely autonomous. In all of this in terms of equating kriya shakti and karma?

15. In Lecture 11, at 40:40, Acharyaji explains why the Goddess is called Narayani, and there he explains that name as "That whose abode is aapa, waters". Then he explains that "Aapa" is not quite water, but "the cosmic flow of energies, in which, what is that, Narayana, the self, the self-luminous consciousness, that's in this intrinsically spread all around and residing, being one with aapa, and then that force which is inherent to the self, the Atman, Brahman, is called Narayani." Okay, again, what? Is this, in a nutshell, again just saying that the Goddess, here called Narayani, is just the force corresponding to self-luminous consciousness, here called Narayana? Is there more to it? What's with the water, aapa?

Finally, a bit of a meta-question, for some assurance. As I have noted above, this is just a selection of places where I couldn't quite follow. Is this normal, or to be expected, or at least not to be worried about, when studying a course with Acharyaji or studying a text like this? I find that there are two types of questions in the forums and in the Q&As: Forum posts are mainly very general questions, and Q&As are made up of either very general questions or specific questions that are so advanced, either having understood the kinds of concepts I'm asking about or pulling forward other specific concepts, that I can't follow them. There are *almost* no questions specifically and directly asking for coherence and congruence about the exact things that Acharyaji discusses. Is this because there's just tacit understanding, that clearly hasn't been transmitted to me, that this level of understanding isn't to be obsessed over as I am? Or am I particularly lost?

If you've made it this far, thank you for even reading. I hope to get answers to at least some of these, and if I do, thanks all the more so!