In Sanatana Dharma, before beginning any work, Ganapati Bappa is remembered and worshipped. And in that same Sanatana Dharma, the first step of any puja is shuddhi.
Bathe. Change your clothes. Wash your face. Fast. Be pure before every act, and then proceed.
But there is a sadhana in Sanatana Dharma in which all these rules move aside. After eating, without washing the mouth, in that very state, God is called. This is no small sadhana. It has been called the essence of all tantra.
Why, then, when the whole of Sanatana Dharma says, “Be pure first,” does this one path move separately?
The answer lies first in the fact that some sadhanas of tantra can be done only through the vama marga.
Vidyavan and the Wall of Purity
Long ago there was an asura named Vidyavan. Looking at Vidyavan, you could not have called him an asura at all.
He had no thirst for blood and no hunger for destruction. He had something else: knowledge of the Vedas.
In his kingdom, rites were observed completely. Brahmins could perform their Vedic sadhana. Yajnas were held. Mantras were recited with pure pronunciation. No error, no shortfall. Seen from outside, it was a golden age.
But Vidyavan raised a wall.
Vidyavan accepted only Brahmavada. The saguna worship of all other deities he denied. This one decision destroyed the balance of the world.
Those whom Vidyavan’s order considered impure (shudras, chandalas, and other people) had their lives made hard. Even the right of worship was taken from them. The fault was in an order that judged a person by his karma.
This suffering did not stop on earth. Soma rasa was offered to the gods. Vidyavan stopped that too. He declared the gods mleccha. He said that those who accepted soma rasa could not be pure.
The gods became helpless.
Here was a system in which the mantra was pure, the yajna was pure, and the rules were pure, but the gods themselves stood hungry. Millions of people could not reach God at all.
When purity itself becomes a wall, it is no longer purity.
And so all the gods took refuge with Lord Shiva.
But there was one problem. Vidyavan had received a boon from Lord Brahma. His death could come only at the hands of one whose body was human but whose face was that of an animal; one who was like a pishacha, able to digest the impurity he consumed; and one who was nevertheless a knower of Brahman.
Vidyavan had asked for this boon deliberately. His reasoning was clear: one who lives in impurity can never reach supreme knowledge.
His entire order stood upon this one idea.
And this very idea became the cause of his death.
Ma Matangi, Ucchishta Chandalini
The ninth of the ten Mahavidyas is Ma Matangi. An extremely secret and fierce tantric form of hers is Ucchishta Chandalini.
Ucchishta means that which is left over. The eaten remnants which the world throws away. Chandalini means she whom the society of that time kept outside its boundary.
Ma accepted both. She accepted ucchishta, and she took the form of a chandala girl.
Ma Matangi is the presiding goddess of speech, music, and divine knowledge. She grants her sadhaka vak siddhi, the power by which spoken words come true.
Appearing in her chandala-girl form, she declares one truth:
Self-knowledge does not look at caste, rank, or outer purity. It comes only from inner awareness and surrender.
But why did Ma take this form?
Rishi Matanga
For this, we must return to the age in which all of this began.
Lord Shiva took an avatar. He came to earth as the rishi Matanga, whose birth was in the chandala caste.
In Rishi Matanga’s mind, a wish had remained hidden for years. The mountain king Himavan was his friend. Rishi Matanga had seen many times that the world-mother, born as Ma Parvati in Himavan’s house, played in Himavan’s lap.
Each time, his heart wished that he too might give Ma that vatsalya, that paternal affection, as a father does.
He chose the path of hard tapasya. He became absorbed in the sadhana of Devi Neela Saraswati.
The yajna fire kept burning. Days passed, and Rishi Matanga did not move from his sadhana for a single moment.
Then, one day, Devi herself appeared from that yajna kunda.
But she did not give a boon and depart.
She appeared from that fire as Rishi Matanga’s daughter. For this reason, her name became Matangi. Ma Matangi, the daughter of Rishi Matanga.
Time passed. Ma Matangi grew up.
Rishi Matanga wished that his daughter’s marriage should be with an excellent person. Here the hardest truth of this story comes forward.
No Vedic Brahmin said yes to that marriage. Nor did any Kshatriya.
There was one reason only: everyone was under the influence of Vidyavan’s order. In that order there was no place at all for Ma Matangi.
The daughter of Lord Shiva himself, the goddess who appeared from the yajna fire, and the society of that time was not ready to accept her.
The Marriage of Matangi and Ucchishta Ganapati
What did Ma Matangi do?
She did not plead before that society. She did not ask that society’s permission. She did not hold out her hand before anyone.
She did sadhana.
Ma Matangi began sadhana in order to obtain Lord Ganapati himself as her husband. Rishi Matanga gave her diksha into the nine-letter and thirty-two-letter maha-mantra of Lord Ucchishta Ganapati.
Then father and daughter sat down together.
Both chanted that nine-letter mantra. The fire kept burning. The mantra kept resonating.
From that yajna kunda of Rishi Matanga’s ashram, the Lord appeared.
His form was such as no one had ever seen before: completely naked, the colour of his body red like blood, his face like that of an elephant.
This was not the Ganapati whose murti adorns every home.
Ma Matangi saw him. She was not disturbed. She did not step back.
Rather, she herself placed the marriage proposal.
Lord Ganapati accepted it.
Their marriage was completed on the shukla shashthi of the month of Chaitra.
The Path of Ucchishta
The gods then prayed to Lord Ganapati that Vidyavan be destroyed.
The Lord gave his word. But the path he opened was entirely different from war.
He propagated vamachara tantra. One limb of that path is called uchchishtachara.
Understand the characteristic of this path: what the world called impure became the sadhana of this path. The very limitation that held you back became the door that carried you to the absolute.
Lord Ucchishta Ganapati himself took the form of the great pishacha in order to accept the dense negativity and darkness spread throughout the world.
This secret was revealed to Kankol Rishi in his deep samadhi state.
People began to move toward this path. Those who had been performing only nirguna worship for many years also accepted it.
This news reached Vidyavan.
He became furious. He decided to put an end to this path, and he himself came and stood before Lord Ucchishta Ganapati.
But what he saw left him with no answer.
Before him was the elephant-faced Lord, in union with his own Shakti. His disciples too were in that same state. In union with their own Shaktis, they were taking meat. They were taking madya. And at that very time, they were also reciting Vedic mantras.
That recitation was so pure, so innocent, and so one-pointed that no answer remained for Vidyavan.
His knowledge had taught him that the two could not exist together.
Vidyavan challenged the Lord to a shastrartha, a formal debate on scripture. The condition was that whoever lost would die at the winner’s hands.
The Lord accepted.
Even while in union with his Shakti, he began the shastrartha.
The debate continued for six days. On the seventh day, on the krishna chaturdashi of the month of Vaishakh, Vidyavan was defeated.
The Last Knowledge
Before Vidyavan’s final moment, the Lord gave him one last knowledge.
He asked him:
“How can anything be called right or wrong, sin or merit, pure or impure, high or low? On what basis, then, are you dividing this into divine and undivine?
This is maya, my own dear maya, which has kept you blind with this duality.”
That answer was a blow struck against the very wall that had kept millions of people away from God.
Vidyavan was defeated. His death was certain.
But in that moment, the Lord began to give him knowledge. He told Vidyavan the Ucchishta Brahma Sukta of the Atharvaveda. He taught him the great yoga of uchchishtachara.
Him whom he could have finished in an instant, he first gave supreme knowledge.
Then, with the ankusha of Lord Ucchishta Ganapati, Vidyavan’s end came.
All living beings praised him. Gods and asuras alike sang his glory.
From that day, the deity of the nine-letter and thirty-two-letter mantras, Lord Ucchishta Ganapati, became joined with Ma Matangi Ucchishta Chandalini.
The Fullness of the Remnant
Now we return to the question from which we began.
Ucchishta means that which remains. But its deepest meaning is in the Upanishad:
Om Purnamadah Purnamidam
Purnat Purnamudachyate
Purnasya Purnamadaya
Purnamevavashishyate
That is full. This is full. From the full, the full has come forth. And after taking the full from the full, that which remains is also full.
What remains is not false. It is not to be discarded. It too is exactly as full.
That is ucchishta.
That is the seed of the next creation.
Karma is of three kinds: sanchita, prarabdha, and agami.
Prarabdha is that which has ripened, which we are experiencing in this birth. Agami is that which we are now accumulating. Sanchita is your ucchishta: the remnant of other births lying in your consciousness.
This is the sadhana that burns sanchita karma to ash.
Here the secret of the hasti pishachi is revealed: that power of the Lord which accepts the remnant.
The Child’s State
This rule works upon consciousness as well.
What, then, is the real condition of this path?
The state of a child.
A small child is above pure and impure. He cannot clean his own dirt. Whatever comes before him, he eats. He becomes happy with anything at all.
His state is very simple, like that of an avadhuta.
To attain siddhi on this path, the sadhaka must come to that sheer child’s bhava.
This path does not give a licence for indulgence. Here, the use of impurity is not for the body. It is for the mind, to break the very doubt that says you are not worthy of God.
Kubera, who came to possess all earthly wealth; Vibhishana, who became king of Lanka; and Kanchi’s Maha Periyava: all of them walked this path, and all of them attained siddhi by walking it.
Now that you know the whole story of Vidyavan, its answer is clear as well.
The day you accept that any part of you is not worthy of reaching God, that very day you build within yourself the same wall that Vidyavan built in the world.
And breaking that wall is the beginning of this sadhana.
