Shakti and Shâkta : essays and addresses on the Shâkta Tantrashâstra, page 159

CHIT-SHAKTI

space and all other categories of existence. We live 7n the Infinite. All limits exist in Chit. But these limits are also another aspect of Himself that is Shakti. It is a boundless tranquil ocean on the surface of which countless varied modes, like waves, are rising, tossing, and sinking. Though It is the one Cause of the universe of relations, in itself It is neither a relation nor a totality of relations, but a completely relationless Self-identity unknowable by any logical process whatever.

Chit is the boundless permanent plenum which sustains and vitalises everything. It is the universal Spirit, allpervading like the Ether, which is, sustains, and illumines all experience and all process in the continuum of experience. In it the universe is born, grows and dies. This plenum or continuum is as such all-pervading, eternal, unproduced, and indestructible: for production and destruction involve the existence and bringing together and separation of parts which in an absolute partless continuum is impossible. It is necessarily in itself, that is as Chit, motionless, for no parts of an all-filling continuum can move from one place to another. Nor can such acontinuwm have any other form of motion, such as expansion, contraction, or undulation, since all these phenomena involve the existence of parts and their displacement. Chit is one homogeneous, partless, allpervading, eternal, spiritual substance. In Sanskrit, this plenum is called Chidaékasha; that is, just as all material things exist in the all-pervading physical Ether, so do they and the latter exist in the infinitely extending Spiritual “Ether” which is Chit. The Supreme Consciousness is thought of as a kind of permanent spiritual ‘Space’ (Chidak&sha) which makes room for and contains all varieties and forms appearing and disappearing. Space itself is an aspect of spiritual substance. It is a special posture of that stress in life which takes place in unchanging consciousness (P. Mukhyopadhyaya “The Patent Wonder,” 21—24). In this Ocean of Being-Consciousness we live, move and have our

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