Shakti and Shâkta : essays and addresses on the Shâkta Tantrashâstra

KUNDALINI SHAKTI

man should make the best of both worlds. There is no real incompatibility between the two provided action is taken in conformity with the universal law of manifestation. It is held to be false teaching that happiness hereafter can only be had by absence of enjoyment now, or in deliberately sought-for suffering and mortification. It is the one Shiva who is the Supreme Blissful experience and who appears in the form of man with a life of mingled pleasure and pain. Both happiness here and the bliss of Liberation here and hereafter may be attained, if the identity of these Shivas be realised in every human act. This will be achieved by making every human function without exception a religious act of sacrifice and worship (Yajna). In the ancient Vaidik ritual, enjoyment by way of food and drink was preceded and accompanied by ceremonial sacrifice and ritual. Such enjoyment was the fruit of the sacrifice and the gift of the Devas. Ata higher stage in the life of a SAdhaka it is offered to the One from whom all gifts come and of whom the Devatas are inferior limited forms. But this offering also involves a dualism from which the highest Monistic (Advaita) SAdhan& of the Shakta Tantra is free. Here the individual life and the world-life are known as one. And so the Tantrik SAdhaka when eating or drinking or fulfilling any other of the natural functions of the body does so saying and believing Shivo"ham “IT am Shiva” Bhairavo’ham “Iam Bhairava ” ‘*Saham” “ [am She.” It is not merely the separate individual who thus acts and enjoys. It is Shiva who does so 7m and through him. Such an one recognises, as has been well said, that his life and the play of all its activities are not a thing apart, to be held and pursued egotistically for its and his own separate sake, as though enjoyment was something to be filched from life by his own unaided strength and with a sense of separatedness; but his life and all its activities are conceived as part of the Divine action in nature; Shakti manifesting and operating in the form of man. He realises in the pulsing ALT 53