Sahastrara as the Lotus

"Sahastrara is the most beautiful part of your being. It is a big lotus with one thousand petals of different colours appearing like inflated flames. It is a thing that has been seen by many people, but to see it pour that torrential rain was like these flames becoming a fountain, a fountain of colour, fountain of fragrance; when you think of a flower pouring its colour and its fragrance around. People have written very little about Sahastrara, because whatever they have seen is from outside, and it is not possible for them to see from inside. Even if you reach from inside and the whole Sahastrara is not opened out, you cannot see its beauty; because when it is closed, the whole of it, you just pass through an aperture and get out of it. But just imagine a huge big one thousand petalled lotus, and you are sitting inside on the corona and looking at all those petals, all very beautifully coloured, and fragrant, and pulsating with the bliss of joy. To remain on that position is the ideal position, but then after the silence you are filled with tremendous compassion and love, and you are drawn out to people who haven't yet known what is having eyes. And then you try to put your attention to the Sahastrara of millions of people; and then you start seeing the problems that exist in the Sahastrara. And even if you desire to open the Sahastrara, it is a very difficult thing, because the channelling of the Divine to human beings has to be done through human beings. The power may be with you, but it has to be channelled through human beings."
(H.H. Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi, Talk on Sahastrara Day 1982, France)

"Dearest, (in the pinda exist) the chakras of five lines, 16 lines, sixty four petals, the truly beautiful 100 petal (lotus)[Agnya?] and the beautiful thousand petal lotus [Sahastrara] and above this is a very brilliant 10,000,000 petal lotus. Above the 10 million petal lotus is a 30,000,000 petal lotus, each pericarp of which is similar to a flame. Above this is the all encompassing, eternal, undivided, independent, steady lotus – pervading all, stainless. By its will (sveccha) it causes creation and dissolution. Both the animate and inaminate are dissolved in this linga."
(Kaulajnananirnaya Tantra, third chapter, attributed to Matsyendranath, 11th century CE)

Photo: front cover of the music CD, 'Hindustani Saxophone' by Nicolas Buff (Melbourne, 2006)