Shakti and Shâkta : essays and addresses on the Shâkta Tantrashâstra

SHAKTI AND SHAKTA

the result of the maintenance of these two poles. In the human body the potential pole of Energy which is the Supreme Power is stirred to action, on which the moving forces (dynamic Shakti) supported by it are drawn thereto and the whole dynamism thus engendered moves upward to unite with the quiescent Consciousness in the Highest Lotus.

There is a polarisation of Shakti into two formsstatic and dynamic. In a correspondence I had with Professor Pramatha Natha Mukhopddhyaya on this subject he very well developed this point and brought forward some suitable illustrations of it of which I am glad to avail myself of. He pointed out that in the first place in the mind or experience this polarisation or polarity is patent to reflection: namely the polarity between pure Chit and the Stress which is involved in it. This Stress or Shakti develops the mind through an infinity of forms and changes, themselves involved in the pure unbounded Ether of Consciousness, the Chidakasha. This analysis exhibits the primordial Shakti in the same two polar forms as before, static and dynamic. Here the polarity is most fundamental and approaches absoluteness, though, of course, it is to be remembered that there is no absolute rest except in pure Chit. Cosmic energy is in an equilibrium which is relative and not absolute. Passing from mind let us take matter. The atom of modern science has, as I have already pointed out, ceased to be an atom in the sense of an indivisible unit of matter. According to the electron theory the so-called atom is a miniature universe resembling our solar system. At the centre of this atomic system we have a charge of positive electricity round which a cloud of negative charges called Electrons revolve. The positive and negative charges hold each other in check so that the atom is in a condition of equilibrated energy and does not ordinarily break up, though it may do so on the dissociation which is the characteristic of all matter, but which is so clearly

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