Shakti and Shâkta : essays and addresses on the Shâkta Tantrashâstra, S. 131

CHINACHARA

are persistent, though the forms are variable, just as is the case with the Platonic Ideas or eternal architypes. In this sense neither Veda, Tantrashastra nor Buddhism had an absolute beginning at any time. As types of ideas or faiths they are beginningless (An@di), though the formsmay have varied from age to age, and though perhaps some of the types may have been latent in some of the ages. If the Vedas are Anadi so are the Tantra-shastras. To the Yogic vision of the Rishi which makes latent things patent, variable forms show their hidden types. Nothing is therefore absolutely new. A Rishi in the Treta Yuga will know that which will apparently begin in Kali or Dvapara but which is already really latent in his own age. Vishnu appears to his vision as the embodiment of that already latent, but subsequently patent, cult. Moreover in a given age, what is latent in a particular land (say Aryavartta) may be patent in another say (Mahachina). In this way, according to the Hindu Shastra, there is an essential conservation of types subject to the conditions of time, place, and person (Deshak&lapatra). Moreover, according to these ShAstras, the creative power is a reproducing principle. This means that the world-process is cyclic according to a periodic law. The process in one Kalpa is substantially repeated in another and Vashishtha, Buddha, and the rest appeared not only in the present but in previous grand cycles or Kalpas. Just as there is no absolute first beginning of the Universe, so nothing under the sun is absolutely new. Vashishtha therefore might have remembered past Buddhas, as he might have foreseen those to come. In Yogic vision both the past and future can project their shadows into the present. Every Purana and Samhita illustrates these principles of Yogic intuition backwards and forwards. To the mind of Ishvara both past and future are known, And so it is to such who, in the necessary degree, partake of the qualities of the Lords’ mind. The date upon which a particular ShAstra is compiled is, from this view-point,

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