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Shakti can be equated with all material objects (that is energy in any form) including the forces of nature - Mother Nature of course! This is exactly the same concept as expressed in Einstein's famous equation E=mc2 which shows that matter is in fact nothing other than energy. At the macrocosmic level, an exploding star for instance, pure shakti is unbounded energy and at the most subtle level, mental energy is pure shakti too. In the middle are things like earthquakes, cyclones, floods, etcetera which the atheists call acts of nature but which the religious call acts of God. To a tantric, they are not acts of a supreme person, a deity, or of the unconscious force itself, but they arise out of the accumula-tion of natural forces requiring release, which must then respond according to the laws of nature.
Shiva can be equated with the inherent order of things, existence's inherent intelligence, the laws of nature to which the energy of nature must respond, the way in which things work, the "grand plan", the rules for existence. And here again, atheists call these the laws of nature, whereas the theologists call them God's laws.
For creation to occur shakti, that is pure non-material energy, must be turned into matter, that is energy which has organised form. This comes about by its union with the consciousness principle. The religious called this consciousness principle God (by many names), and believe in a thinking kind of creator-person who "makes things" and "makes things happen". The non-religious, some of whom acknowledge the consciousness principle and some of whom don't,have | |
many and varied names for it also, but their understanding is of a force which is impersonal.
The classical Indian philosophies on the other hand, rather than dividing the two camps into religious and non-religious, classify these two camps of thinkers as personalists and impersonal-ists, respectively. Vedantic, Samkhyr, Tantric and Yogic philosophies all teach the revelatory paradox that supreme consciousness is neither personal nor impersonal - and yet it contains both!
In humans, consciousness or knowingness is always in a potential state with no medium for manifesting itself into being. Shakti is the raw form of matter into which the formlessness of Shiva can manifest. But unlike the lower species, humans have the ability to wilfully put conscious-ness into action and to wilfully raise their own level of consciousness. For example does an earthquake know what it is doing - I don't think so. Can it by any means come to know what it is doing? No. It contains no self consciousness or even potential for consciousness at all. The same is true for man's most intelligent friend, the dog. A dog may have greater intelligence than an amoeba but it has no more ability than a rock to evolve itself wilfully. Sure, it knows it is hungry, but it does not know that it knows. Whilst it can decide to go and do something about its hunger, it cannot, no matter how smart it is, decide to go and do something about its own state of self awareness - but humans can. Because we have consciousness of our own consciousness, or awareness of our own awareness, we can choose to do something about it. We can choose to evolve to a higher level of being. |
