Shakti and Shâkta : essays and addresses on the Shâkta Tantrashâstra

SHAKTI AND SHAKTA

most can keep themselves alive, Even where there is the desire, there is little opportunity to carry out the lengthy and complicated rituals of a more leisured age. But our life is not wholly dependent on, or concerned with, externals. We can make good Karma and so alter ourselves and our environment. Those who speak of Karma as_ being “inexorable”, and who liken it to the physical law of causality, misunderstand the doctrine. If it be inexorable, how can anyone be liberated? The will is free; for freedom is man’s essential nature. Those who know all this, and wherein is placed the centre of Power, will gain the strength to rise superior to adverse circumstance, which is often but the cumbering relict of some past and decaying life. Not only are such successful in their contest with evil surroundings, but they become creative to produce an exterior world in harmony with their interior spirit and its desires. True life is at every moment creative. True life follows on unity, in all acts, with the World-soul. Life cannot be creative unless we have knowledge of, and faith in, our Power or Shakti. It is said in the Shastra that without knowledge of Shakti Liberation is not possible. But this statement is true of the phenomenal life also. Real life, imposing itself upon and creating the environment, is only to be had through the knowledge that within man is the same Cosmic Power or Prapancha Shakti (and none other) which creates the whole universe. Man is thus a magazine of Power. And thisisso, even if we regard man as a distant and secondary source of Energy, ultimately itself derived from the Supreme Power. He can, if listless, merely exist by that Power, drifting here and there in the cross currents of the stream of life, or he may consciously unify himself with this Power by Sadhana and evoke it to strengthen himself and modify the surrounding world. This is the life of action and energy when Shakti displays itself, piercing though the veil and inertia of Tamoguna, thrilling the mind with the thought “S@’ham’’—*She Tam.” To realise this it is not|necessary 432