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Jagadish Chandra Chatterji
Kashmir Shaivism
Part II. The Main Doctrines of the System: The Transcendent Parama Shiva.
First,—i.e., logically but not in time—1 there is Parama Shiva who is of the nature of Bliss itself and all complete in himself. He holds in himself the still unmanifested Universe as an idea, rather, as an experience of his own which is also the root of all that afterwards becomes expressible in terms of discursive thought and speech.2 At the same time He transcends even this supremely ideal Universe or, which is the same thing, this Universal experience.
So long as He is this, that is, so long as He is both the transcending Reality, Bliss and Intelligence as well as the one all-including Supreme Experience of the perfect, because the supremely ideal, Universe, there is no need of a Universal manifestation. For there is, as it were, no feeling of a want, Parama Shiva being all-complete in Himself.
Footnotes
1. There is as yet no experience of Time' as we understand it. Time,' as a succession of moments, is experienced only with the manifestation of the 26th Tattva i.e. with Kāla; see ante and below. This is a point which should be borne very carefully in mind if one is to avoid confusion. Of course in speaking even of a purely logical process one has to use such phrases as 'before', 'after', now' and so on. But it should be understood that this is so only because we cannot speak otherwise, and that the experience of Time which such phrases imply does not begin till we come to the 26th Tattva in this list.
2. Parama Shiva holds the universe as an आमर्शः परनादगर्भः ।
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