Shakti and Shâkta : essays and addresses on the Shâkta Tantrashâstra, S. 162

SHAKTI AND SHAKTA

elsewhere. What is not here is no where.” (Yadihdsti tad anyatra, Yannehdasti natat kvachit). Similarly the northern Shaiva Shastra says that what appears without only so appears because it exists within. One can only take out of a receptacle what is first assumed to be within it. What is in us must in some form be in our cause. If we are living, though finite forms, it is because that cause is infinite Being. If we have knowledge though limited, it is because our essential substance is Chit the Illuminator. If we have bliss, though united with sorrow, it is because It is Supreme bliss. In short our experience must exist in germ in It. Thisis because in the Shakta Agama, there is for the worshipper a real creation and, therefore, a real nexus between the Brahman as cause and the world as effect. According to the transcendent method of Shangkara, there is not in any real sense any such nexus. The notion of creation by Brahman is as much MA&y4 as the notion of the world created.

Applying these principles we find in our dual experience an “1” (Aham or subject) which experiences as object a “This” (Idam): that is the universe or any particular object of the collectivity which compose it. Now it is said that the duality of “I” and “This” come from the One which is in its essential nature (Svarfipa) an unitary experience without such conscious distinction. For Vedanta, whether in its MayAvada or Shakta form, agree in holding that in the Supreme there is no consciousness of objects such as exists on this plane. The Supreme does not see objects outside Itself, for it is the whole and the experience of the whole. It is Pairna. How then, it may be asked, can a supreme, unchanging, partless, formless, Consciousness produce from Itself something which is so different from Itself, something which is changing, with parts, form and so forth. Shangkara’s answer is that really, that is transcendentally, it does not produce anything. The notion that it doessois Maya. What then is his Maya? ThisI have

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