Philosophy and Religion / Arthur Avalon: Mahamaya

Sir John Woodroffe and Pramatha Natha Mukhyopadhyaya

Mahamaya. The World As Power: Power As Consciousness (Chit-Shakti)

Chapter X. Retrospect and Conclusion

Thebe is no finality in human science, and its conclusions are, and are apt to remain, for the most part dubious. Yet, the results and hypotheses of science in the domains of Matter, Life and Mind (including what are called "parapsychic phenomena”) as they now stand, and also regard being had to what they now point to, appear to be not antagonistic to the principles of Shakta Vedantism; nay, they appear, so far as they go, to fit in with those principles. The modern dynamic view of the constitution of Matter—a view that has tended to dematerialize Matter; a view that sees in the atoms of Matter a vast magazine of Power; a view that is faced with a residual element of the inexplicable in all its mechanistic explanations; a view that sees in radio-activity the drafting of new and practically inexhaustible energy into the hither-to-supposed closed and constant realm of physical energies;—already shows that Physical Science has taken vast strides towards the Shakta position which (a) makes Power to be the essence of everything; (b) makes Power in reality immeasurable in everything and in the universe for the matter of that; and (c) makes the “Dynamic Point ” the Perfect Magazine of Power (hence making the ”atom” also a vast magazine). As regards the further and higher view of Vedanta that this Power manifesting as Matter is essentially Consciousness-Power which is measureless Joy expressed in unrestricted Play, Physical Science has, as such, nothing to say at present; but if one were logically to work out what is now implicit in its position, and imagine the promise contained therein fulfilled, particularly in consonance with the results and promises of Biological and Psychical Sciences, one might feel that Science has, unconsciously, taken even a longer stride than one would imagine towards the final position of Shakta Vedantism. To see this, the results and indications of one Science should not be reviewed by themselves alone; but they should be correlated to, co-ordinated with those of the Sister Sciences—because, Science is one. As it is, Physical Science within her own province has steadily, and now very closely, approached the ideal of unification and correlation. She has tended more and more to reduce all kinds of Matter to one kind, and all forms of Energy to one kind; and has, further, tended to reduce Matter and Energy to a Common Root. So that the physical universe has now become a universe of Stress-systems, not of gross stresses only but subtle stresses (as evidenced by X and other invisible rays, and the Hertzian waves of the wireless among other things), not limited and calculable but practically unlimited and incalculable (as evidenced by radioactivity), not forming a “closed curve” but in subtle and constant action and reaction with other kinds of forces—vital and psychic.

The Vital and Psychic Sciences, in their turn, are helping this grand unification and the universal linking up of forces and phenomena. Though the “living molecule” is now even a greater mystery than it ever was, the gulf between the living and the non-living is steadily narrowing rather than widening, and already there are indicators of the characteristic responses of the living being, in a veiled way, discoverable in the so-called non-living matter; and, within the province of the living itself, the supposed absolute difference between plant life and animal life is in the course of being gradually effaced, not of being accentuated. Evolution is now sought to be explained less and less on mechanistic lines or in terms of “fortuitous modifications,” and more and more in terms of an “original impetus,” free and not determined, given in the constitution of things and at the root of phenomena to change and evolve (a position from which one can have a vision of Vedantic Joy and Play—the basic factors of world evolution and involution). And Biologists, no less than Physicists, are now on the way to perceiving that the path of world-evolution is not traced by an “upward movement” only, but that it is a curve showing rhythms and cycles—making the world’s history one of evolution and involution and then evolution again.

Within the living organism itself. Biology, so long content to explain its phenomena on quasi-mechanistic lines in terms of nerve-stimulation, cell-disturbance, and so forth has now unexpectedly stumbled upon a new and mysterious factor whose action on the organism is found to be more profoundly “vital” than that of any other known agency: the mysterious glands (“pituitary,” “pineal,” “thyroid,” “adrenal,” “interistial”) and their mysterious secretions (“hormones”). Descartes, it is true, had suggested the pineal gland as the “bridge” between the Mind and Matter in us; but he was never taken seriously until quite recently.

Correspondence between Science and Shakta Doctrine should be understood in the full depth of its import. It shows that as in radio-activity Science has discovered the physical atom to be a magazine of Power whereby its constitution as well as its “evolution” (or transmutation) is determined, so in the case of the cells of these glands and their subtle secretions (analogous to the radiations of the radio-active atom) she has now discovered a magazine Power and its workings whereby the constitution of the body and its growth, etc., are regulated. In Physics she has discovered the vast potency and efficiency of the smallest thing—the atom, and of its unseen emanations; in Biology she has discovered the wonderful potency and efficiency of the smallest constituents of the gland and of their subtle secretions. Apparently the smallest is thus being perceived to be really and dynamically the greatest—a perception which is preparing the way for a final recognition of the “Dynamic Point” of the Shakta Doctrine, which is “smaller than the smallest and greater than the greatest”.

As regards the position that Consciousness merely accompanies and “lights up” some of the processes of the nervous system (viz., the cerebral processes), it has been shewn before that the actual evidence before us does not warrant the conclusion (1) that Consciousness is simply an onlooker and revealer exercising no causal influence on the cortical phenomena which by themselves form a “closed curve”; and (2) that Consciousness as such, that is as distinguished from that part of it which is pragmatically accepted as the Consciousness, is limited to the cerebral centres and lines only, not having anything to do with other centres which are commonly taken as subconscious or unconscious. On the contrary, on two grounds at least Consciousness must be believed to possess causal efficiency (not merely as a directing force or “switcher” but as a supplier of new energy)¹ over the whole range of man’s nervous mechanism: (a) the fact that a very slight stimulus (e.g., the reading of a line of a message that a beloved friend is seriously ill) provokes an enormous and complicated response (in emotion, idea and action) out of all proportion to the physical nature and intensity of the provoking cause; and (b) the fact that the activity of every nerve-centre whether in the cerebrum or in the spinal cord, is in the nature of an overflow of energy and selective operation (suggesting, therefore, Joy, Play and Choice). Besides these, there is also the indisputable evidence of self-consciousness shewing Consciousness—to be an ever-active operative Power—not merely in the so called “motor” phenomena of conscious experience as attending, striving and willing, but also in what are called the “sensory,” cognitive and affective phenomena—knowing, imagining, thinking and feeling. Consciousness as operative Power is a matter of direct and constant experience.

Mental Science, in dealing with ordinary psychic and the “parapsychic” phenomena, is steadily veering round to a position whence one can have not a very distant view of the ultimate truth as held in Shakta Vedantism. Mental Science is coming to recognise (1) that ordinary, pragmatic consciousness is only a part of a large Consciousness which it now calls “Sub-consciousness”; (2) that this larger Consciousness is not only a Power but the Power which seems to contain within itself the whole mystery and wonder of Life and existence; (3) that this larger Consciousness is one in which all individual pragmatic consciousnesses “live, move and have their being”; that it is to the individual Centres what the Ether is believed by many to be in relation to the strain-and-stress centres in it; (4) that to this larger Consciousness Matter and Force are not alien, but they seem to be its evolutes, products and dependents; and finally, (5) that Time and Space also are not alien to, and independent of, it; that these are its own ways of representing itself to the centres involved in it. The fourth point is being steadily established by the accumulation of phenomena collected under the general heading, “psychodynamism”; and the fifth by the phenomena of “psychometry,” “X-ray vision,” and so forth, in which spatial determinations such as “here and there,” “near and distant,” as well as temporal determinations such as “now and then,” “past and future” all appear to be, not only “in the melting pot,” but meeting in a “Point”.

Referring to certain genuine cases of pre-vision of the future (Dr. Maxwell’s, Professor Flournoy’s, Mrs. Verrall’s . . .) M. Maeterlinck writes . . . “Under the erroneous idea we form of the past and the present, a new verity is living and moving, eager to come to light. The efforts of that verity . . . strike to the very roots of history. We soon lose all inclination to doubt. We penetrate into another world and come to a stop all out of countenance. We no longer know where we stand; before and after overlap and mingle, we no longer distinguish the insidious and factitious but indispensable line which separates the years that have gone by from the years that are to come. . . We discover with uneasiness that time, on which we based our whole existence, itself no longer exists . . .it alters its position no more than space, of which it is doubtless but the incomprehensible reflex. It reigns in the centre of every event; and every event is fixed in its centre; and all that comes and all that goes passes from end to end of our little life without moving by a hair’s breadth around its motionless pivot . . . yesterday, recently, formerly, erstwhile, after, before, to-morrow, soon, never, later fall like childish masks, whereas to-day and always cover with their united shadows the idea which we form in the end of a duration which has no subdivisions, no breaks and no stages, which is pulseless, motionless and boundless.”

The “to-day and always” without subdivisions and breaks and stages is rather the “now and always”—shewing Duration² in the aspect of “Point” (now) and in that of boundless “Continuum” (always); that is to say. Duration which has no beginning and no end and breaks is also wholly condensed into a “Point,” and this latter aspect is referred to above as the “centre of every event” or phenomenon, “its motionless pivot”. But though the centre or pivot is “motionless” in this sense that the whole of Duration or History is condensed into, and as, it (so that to be at the centre is also to be and have the whole), it is also dynamic in the sense that the centre or “Point” does expand as a sphere, and an ever-widening sphere, which is the Experience of Duration—the beginningless and endless History with past, present and future. If the “Point” were to remain statical, there would be no experience of Duration or History as it actually is (involving past and future); on the other hand, if Duration or History were not wholly condensed into, and given in and as, the Point, the pre-existence of the future in the present, and therefore, foreknowledge of the future (either Divine or human—that of the “seer”) would not be possible; but since this is said to be not only possible but is, already to some extent, a fact, so it is claimed, perfect foreknowledge and perfect recollection must be believed to be possible also; and that is possible only if the Future and the Past in their entireness co-exist and meet at a Point. The same reasoning will apply to Space also. If the “X-ray vision” with respect to a spatially remote thing or event be a fact, then, we must believe that Space too, like Time, has the twofold aspect of “here and everywhere”³—the former aspect (here) containing as a “Point” the whole of Space regarded as a boundless “Continuum” (“everywhere”). And the “Point” is dynamic in the sense above explained.

The Dynamic Point, as we have seen, occupies a very prominent place in the Shakta-Vedanta: It is the Consciousness-Power regarded as Perfect Potency to envolve; and It is also a Perfect Universe in the sense that whatever is to evolve as the world in Time, Space and Causal concatenation, is contained in the Bindu which is the seed of everything. It is thus the centre of every being and every event: the centre “swells”⁴ into every being and every event, and every being and every event is reabsorbed, folded up into the centre. Time, Space and Causality are “forms” or modes of such “swelling” and “shrinking”⁵ of the Dynamic Point. Hence to be consciously in touch with the Bindu is to know whatever exists or goes on in the spatial, temporal and causal scheme of the universe.

The possibility of foreknowledge (perfect or partial) does not, however, require that the world-order is unalterably fixed and determined leaving no margin for free play. The world is a free play;⁶ every being is an incarnation of Joy; and every act and event is a play out of Joy. Joy and Play are the “birthright” even of the so-called material thing, and, there is no reason to suppose that it has entirely forfeited that right. Actions are, more or less, free or undetermined in every instance. No foreknowledge of them is, therefore, possible if, and so long as, we take actions and events in the ordinary temporal way—arranging them according to the scheme of past, present and future: what is not yet determined cannot now be known. But in the Dynamic Point where all times and spaces meet (in an alogical and unthinkable way), what is not yet co-exists with what has been and what is. So that there the undetermined future co-exists with the determined past, and with the present determining itself. Here, therefore, foreknowledge of a still undetermined future becomes possible, because here Time itself is annulled or transcended. A “seer” placing himself in rapport with this “Point’’-Universe may, therefore, (it is said) “see” exactly how a person “will” act or an event “will” happen, though the acting and the happening are, wholly or partly, free and undetermined.

This “mystic sense” is, of course, inexplicable. But we may suppose that the seer may, after seeing the free and undetermined act in the timeless and spaceless Point, decipher his mystic knowledge back into temporal and spatial terms, and predict that so-and-so will act thus or do this at that particular moment and that at that particular place. The case is, in a way, analogous to the “deciphering” by the motion of the machine itself of a gramophone record where a song is given and inscribed in co-existent scratches back into the singing of the song in which the notes succeed one another. The analogy, however, is partial, because, though the record contains an order of succession transformed into an order of co-existence, it is not the “ Point ” transcending both Time and Space; and so what the machine does is apparently to retranslate a song already determined and spatially inscribed into a rehearsal of the song in the usual temporal way.

Whilst the Sangkhyan Doctrine makes the evolution of the world a process of actual change of the Root Principle, and Mayavada makes it one of seeming change of Brahman, the Shakta Doctrine combines the two views recognising in each a partial truth. The Root changes as the evolving world, and yet, It changelessly abides—an insoluble logical contradiction for which, however, man has, in his own experience, sufficient warrant. The corollaries to this Principle of Evolution are important:

(1) Pure and Perfect Consciousness, in evolving by Its own Power as finite and particular consciousnesses (i.e., consciousness of varying modes, degrees and limits), does never cease to be Pure and Perfect Consciousness; so that, restricted consciousness, “sub-consciousness” and “unconsciousness” are imbedded in a never-failing background of Pure and Perfect Consciousness.

(2) Consciousness as Pure and Perfect Bliss-Joy and Freedom-Play remains as such, never ceases to be other than Itself, though, as finite centres. It evolves as infinitely varied pleasures and pains, actions and their determining conditions. Just as in the first case, the Universe regarded as Experience is not merely the sum total of restricted, particularised consciousness, subconsciousness and unconsciousness, but is like an unbounded sphere of Pure and Perfect Consciousness within which these are included as smaller spheres, so also in the second case. Pure and Perfect Bliss-Joy and Freedom-Play is not the sum total of the particular pleasures and pains, actions and conditions of the particular centres, but, (a) includes these and is immanent (as an unfailing background) in these, and (b) exceeds these as Pure and Perfect Bliss.

(3) Its condensation as the Dynamic Point does not efface the immensity of Its Being-Power; hence, the Point = the whole Brahman or Shiva-Shakti.

(4) The Point also, in actually “swelling” and “shrinking” (as evolution and involution of the world), does not cease to be the Perfect Bindu.⁷

Each of these corollaries, it will be observed, involves the insoluble logical contradiction above referred to. In the scheme of 36 Principles outlined in the previous chapter, it has been noted that Ishvar-tattva has a place especially assigned to it, and that, considered in that technical sense, it is not the highest category. The highest Category in the logical line is Shiva-Shakti, beyond which there is Para-Samvit which is alogical, beyond the scheme of Principles, and, therefore, not Itself a Category. It will thus be perceived that what western metaphysic and religion regard as the highest category of Being and Thought (viz., God) cannot be identified with the Ishvara in the above scheme: It corresponds rather to Shiva-Shakti. The Shastra, however, does not require that the “higher” and “lower” in the above scheme should be taken in a rigid and absolute way, especially in that part of the scheme which shows the evolution of what are called “Pure” Principles. In the domain of the “impure” Principles—where Maya and the Envelopes hold their sway—“higher and lower” as also “before and after,” “cause and consequence” have ordinary, pragmatic meanings; but in the realm of Pure Principles, each is the Whole with the emphasis of logical representation laid on a special aspect (such as “I” or “This”). Hence, Shiva-Shakti is also usually spoken of as Maheshvara-maheshvari or as Parameshvara-Parameshvari—usually with the epithets mahat (Great) or Parama (Supreme) prefixed to the term Ishvara.

Now, Shiva-Shakti is Being-Consciousness-Bliss. This Supreme Principle veils and finitizes Itself in, and as, the world of finite Centres. As a consequence we have not only different modes of finite being but even so-called “non-being”; different modes of particular consciousnesses but even so-called “unconsciousness”; and different modes of joy and pleasure but also “pains” and “sorrows”. Thus also, God who is Pure Act becomes in, and as, the finite Centres actions-and-reactions, conditional actions; Who is Perfect “Energy,” becomes in and as, such Centres, mixtures of potential and kinetic power—in which Power is neither wholly kinetic nor wholly potential, and therefore, imperfect energy. But in evolving as all this, the Supreme Principle remains Supreme Being-consciousness-Bliss, Pure Act and Perfect Energy: we have thus an alogical mingling of change and changelessness in the Life of the Perfect Being-Power.

There is much actual pain and sorrow in the world. Since the Supreme Experience of God includes all this, how can it be said that the Supreme Experience is all Bliss? The Supreme Experience (1) sums up all particular pains and sorrows as also all particular pleasures and happinesses, and (2) involves each particular pain or pleasure as such. Now, in the first case, it need not be supposed that the grand total of all pains and pleasures must be a prodigious pain plus a prodigious pleasure. As two sets of opposing forces may produce in the resultant not motion this way or that but rest or quiescence; as, again, the sum of all particular sounds is, according to Mantra-Shastra the Mahamantra Om; as, also, in the realm of colours the synthesis of all the colourbands is white light;—so it may be reasonable to suppose that the grand total of all pleasures and pains is not a dual experience of great pleasure and great pain, but a non-dual alogical experience of something which is akin to man’s feeling of quiescence. And this feeling of quiescence is imbedded in an undiminished Bliss-Consciousness which, as the Shastra maintains, perpetually abides even while finite Centres of Expression appear in It.

In the latter case, particular pleasures and pains as such enter into the Supreme Experience. But even that does not make that Experience other than an Experience of Bliss-Joy. In the first place, each particular pleasure or pain is not there in Divine experience in a veiled, isolated and disconnected way, but in the fulness of its relation to other feelings, and to the whole; and as a particular note, discordant in itself, may not be so when it forms an element of the harmony of a symphony, so a feeling, painful when its relations and background are veiled, may not be so when it is consciously set in its relations to the whole. Hence, Divine Consciousness, though It involves and knows all particular feelings of particular Centres, involves and knows them as “elements” of an infinite whole of Experience, so that their effective tones as veiled and disconnected particulars do not remain when seen as elements of a Grand Harmony which is Divine Life. Pain is feeling of bar or constraint which is created by veiling or ignorance. In Divine Experience there is no ignorance, and therefore, no bar: particulars exist in it but not veiled away from the whole. In such Experience, therefore, there can be no pain as such. In the second place, the Supreme Being having by His own activity evolved as particular Centres and their particular experiences of pleasure and pain, knows in, and as, such Centres all their pleasures and pains. In fact, their pleasures and pains are His pleasures and pains. Hence, as such Centres, He feels pleasure as pleasure and pain as pain. Therefore, we have four forms: (1) Divine Life as transcendent-immanent Being-Consciousness-Bliss which is unchanged in changing as the varied world—this guarantees a background and “atmosphere” of Bliss-Joy for all particular feelings of whatever kind; (2) Divine Life as the grand total of all particular feelings, which is a Life of Bliss and Quiescence, though the particular constituents may be variously pleasurable or painful; (3) Divine Life as the grand Harmony in which particular feelings without coalescing and neutralizing one another are “seen” in their proper and true relations like the notes of a symphony; and (4) Divine Life as the Life of the particular Centres with their particular pleasures and pains. In the last case, pleasures and pains are “seen” as such, but since the Supreme Being, in becoming a particular Centre, does not (a) cease to be Supreme and (b) pure Bliss-Consciousness, it follows that the “seeing” of particular pleasures and pains of particular Centres by God means their being reflected on a pure and perfect Bliss-Consciousness, imbedded in an unbounded mass of Pure Joy:⁸ It is Infinite Joy and Bliss looking finite pleasures and pains in the face.

Such reflexion of man’s pleasures and pains on Cosmic Bliss-Consciousness renders divine compassion and grace possible. And it should be noted that Shakta Vedanta, in its practical aspect, is not the Path of Effort and Action⁹ only, or the Path of Contemplation and Meditation¹⁰ only, but it also is the Path of Devotion and Love.¹¹ It is not simply an Art that achieves, a Science that knows, but it is also an Aesthetic awakening in the aspirant of spiritual thirst and feeling, making him love and worship the Divine Mother whose play it is to bind and whose grace it is to liberate. As on the speculative side this doctrine is a synthesis and harmony of partial, and sometimes warring truths, so on the practical side it is a summing up and reconciliation of divergent methods of realisation.

As the Doctrine of Power it looks upon every Centre as a veiled Cosmic Power and makes its emancipation the realization by it that it is the Cosmic Power. Naturally the greatest emphasis is laid on active Effort in the practice of realization. It rightly recognises that complete self-surrender to God and absolute reliance on God’s grace is not at all a negative and passive attitude signifying lack of will and power, but it is, really, perfect self-exertion and heroism, and “conquest” of divinity: that if to strive after divinity connotes exertion of power, surrender to and reliance on divine grace, to the exclusion and inhibition of all little, ordinary self-seekings and self-adjustments, also connotes it. This doctrine lends no countenance to such methods as are really calculated to diminish the efficiency of human will and endeavour, such as really spell lack of vitality. As on the speculative side the essence of Reality is Power, so on the practical side the essence of spiritual endeavour is dynamism.

Accordingly, it is not a cult of false asceticism and excessive mortification of the “flesh”. Since all is manifestation of Bliss-Consciousness-Power, and every object of creation, however apparently “lowly” and “insignificant”, is an incarnation and magazine of such Power, the highest end of realization cannot be achieved by fleeing from or rejecting the world of objects, but by removing the veil of practical ignorance which has concealed from men their true nature of Bliss-Consciousness-Power. When the veil is removed, the Experience of realization will be of the form “All is Brahman”¹² as well as of the form “Thou art It”.¹³ It is man’s use, or rather abuse, that has made things—in reality, “True, good and beautiful”—lowly, bad, ugly, evil, and so forth. There are other things, too, which, in man’s use, are high, good, beautiful, and so forth; but they are finitely and relatively so. To realise “All is Brahman," these latter must be perceived to be infinitely and absolutely so—that is, each object must be realized as Mother Sachchidananda-mayi Herself. More essential and more difficult becomes the task when the former objects—lowly, ugly and evil—have to be so realized. And they must be so realized—else, “all is not Brahman"—there will be duality of Good and Evil, and so forth. Hence, greater emphasis should be laid on this latter task: the aspirant must know that it is ignorant abuse that has made these things evil and ugly, and that he can reach his goal of non-dual Perfect Experience only by seeing, realizing the Brahman in and through them. This is the true principle of the psycho-physical ritual in the Shastra. It is the effort of the Hero,¹⁴ and not of the ordinary man in his bonds of convention.¹⁵ The purification of the five "tattvas”¹⁶ means or should mean the casting off of their pragmatic sheaths of abuse and ignorance in which they masquerade as lowly and ugly and evil; when these sheaths are cast away, they are as much true, good and beautiful as the Self of the aspirant, and then, they can be assimilated, the result being the Self and the Not-Self assimilated to each other in, and as, the Whole.

As to the question whether Shakta Doctrine affords a sure and sufficient basis for man’s belief in a Personal and Moral God, it may be observed only this that though the Reality-Whole = Perfect Experience = Alogical = beyond all duality such as moral non-moral, personal impersonal, and so forth, yet the most fundamental expression of the Supreme Reality-Power is the Supreme “Joy”¹⁷ = “Supreme Person = God. God, therefore, is quite secure in this Doctrine, though it does not allow the defining and circumscribing of a Reality which is indefinable and immeasurable. The Supreme Being-Power is a Personal and Moral God, but personality and morality are attributes that do not exhaust the immensity of Supreme Being.

Further, since this Doctrine in solving the world problem suffers no residue, overt or covert, of duality to remain, since, therefore, according to it, the “lowliest” object is really the Mother who is Sachchidananda-mayi Herself, it follows that physical, moral and aesthetic evil exists only in ignorance and non-acceptance of the Whole, and that in the eyes of him who sees the Whole, the Mother showing Herself in an infinite variety of expression (which finite Centres may know pragmatically as good or bad, true or false, beautiful or ugly, and so forth) never goes out of Her Being-essence which is Being-Consciousness-Bliss.

The Cosmos being the theatre of Divine Play provides the arena in which the Centres must interplay and ultimately realise the Divinity playing in, and as, them. The scheme of creation and the principles on which it is run are calculated to lead progressively to the end or purpose of the world-scheme.

As the belief in Universal Power has been the basis of all ancient human faiths, so a body of “mysterious” rites (called “magical”) has been at the basis of all ancient human religious practices. The nature of “magic” has been commonly misunderstood; but modern thought is slowly coming to recognise that it is not “meaningless”; that it is a kind of “primitive science” whereby the primitive man, still in the lower grades of culture, has essayed to propitiate the powers by which he thinks he is encompassed and turn their influence to his own best account. The definition is substantially correct, if we drop the terms by which the cult of magic is thus evaluated as “primitive,” “lower,” and so forth, and if we drop also the distinction commonly made between magic which is supposed to involve no sense of man’s dependence on higher Powers and no element of worship, and religion which involves both. Tantric ritual (whether we call it magic or not) is based upon the Science that the World is Power which is the same as the Consciousness-Power in man, that the Cosmic Power can be linked up with Man-Power by worship and other means, giving effectiveness and success to man in the pursuit of his ends, in the world or as liberation therefrom.

This linking up is held to be possible, for at root man’s power is the Cosmic Power. The Kularnava Tantra says that in Shakta doctrine world-enjoyment may be made Yoga.¹⁸ Power may be realised in twofold way: man may wish to remain man, to perfect himself as man, and to have such worldly enjoyment as he may lawfully desire.¹⁹ He then cultivates those powers which are the Mother in Form. Or he may desire to be one with the Formless Mother Herself. This end also may, (according to the system) be achieved on the path of world-enjoyment provided that it be realised that the individual life is a part of the divine action in nature and not a separate thing to be held and pursued apart for its own sake only. In the Vedas enjoyment is the fruit of sacrifice and the gift of the gods. The higher sacrifice is to the Mother-Power of whom all deities and all men are inferior forms. When this is known and man unifies himself with that Cosmic Power, enjoyment becomes Yoga and passage is made to that state in which there is neither sacrifice nor sacrificer. This is the Supreme-Experience which is the Mother-Power in Her own formless nature. As the Creatrix of forms the Divine Mother is Maya, and as the produced individual form Avidya (ignorance). As Liberatrix from the ignorance of the forms which are of Her making She is Maha-Maya)²⁰ In the Shakti Sutras of Agastya all is spoken of in terms of Power, which is the essence of Reality as World, and which is the Real, both as God and God-head.²¹

Footnotes

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