From the Lakshmi Tantra Four Steps to Enlightenment Linda Johnsen

Want to follow the path to enlightenment? You don’t have far to go. According to the yoga tradition, the soul has only to take four steps and it’s there. The first three you already know well. But the last one is a doozy.

The story of the four steps is found in the Lakshmi Tantra, a voluminous text full of spiritual techniques, written somewhere between 800 and 1100 AD. It begins with a description of Anasuya, one of the most famous female masters in yoga history. The text tells us she was extremely intelligent and highly educated, familiar with many different spiritual traditions, and had a loving, tranquil nature that delighted even the gods. Legends about Anasuya go back more than 4000 years and are almost certainly based on a real female adept.

As the Lakshmi Tantra opens, Anasuya (like many women today) decides she wants to learn more about the Great Goddess, the feminine face of the divine spirit. So she approaches the famous sage Atri and asks to be initiated in the tradition of the goddess Lakshmi.

If you’ve ever visited India, you’ve seen Lakshmi’s picture everywhere. To the common people, she is the goddess of wealth and good fortune. You’ll find posters and statues of her in banks and businesses, grocery stores and sari shops. But to yogis, Lakshmi means something very different. In her pictures, two of her hands sprinkle golden coins downward onto her devotees. Her other two hands hold up lovely white lotuses, symbolizing the gifts of the spirit that are available to yogis who are wise enough to ask for inner treasures that time (and stock market disasters!) can never take away.

© "Yoga International" (December/January, 2003) published by Himalayan International Institute, Rural Route 1, Box 1130, Honesdale, Pennsylvania 18431. Website: yimag.org. Reprinted with permission.

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