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.sacred-texts.com/tantra/sas/sas02.htm (10 of 13)07/03/2005 16:02:12Chapter Two: Shakti: The World as Powercenters as objects outside of and different from the self.Consciousness thus becomes contracted.In lieu of being All-knowing, it is a 'Little Knower,' and in lieu of being Almighty Power, it is a 'Little Doer'.Maya is not rightly rendered 'Illusion'.In the first place it is conceived as a real Power of Being and as such is one with the Full Reality.The Full, free of all illusion, experiences the engendering of the finite centers and the centers themselves in and as Its own changeless partless Self.It is these individual centers produced from out of Power as Maya-Shakti which are 'Ignorance' or Avidya Shakti.They are so called because they are not a full experience but an experience of parts in the Whole.In another sense this 'Ignorance' is a knowing, namely, that which a finite center alone has.Even God cannot have man's mode of knowledge and enjoyment without becoming man.He by and as His Power does become man and yet remains Himself.Man is Power in limited form as Avidya.The Lord is unlimited Power as Maya.In whom then is the 'Illusion'? Not (all will admit) in the Lord.Nor is it in fact (whatever be the talk of it) in man whose nature it is to regard his limitations as real.For these limitations are he.His experience as man provides no standard whereby it may be adjudged 'Illusion'.The latter is non-conformity with normal experience, and here it is the normal experience which is said to be Illusion.If there were no Avidya Shakti, there would be no man.In short the knowing which is Full Experience is one thing and the knowing of the limited experience is another.The latter is Avidya and the Power to produce it is Maya.Both are eternal aspects of Reality, though the forms which are Avidya Shakti come and go.If we seek to relate the one to the other, where and by whom is the comparison made? Not in and by the Full Experience beyond all relations, where no questions are asked or answers given, but on the standing ground of present finite experience where all subjectivity and objectivity are real and where therefore, ipso facto, Illusion is negative.The two aspects are never present at one and the same time for comparison.The universe is real as a limited thing to the limited experiencer who is himself a part of it.But the experience of the Supreme Person (Parahanta) is necessarily different, otherwise it would not be the Supreme Experience at all.A God who experiences just as man does is no God but man.There is, therefore, no experiencer to whom the World is Illusion.He who sees the world in the normal waking state, loses it in that form in ecstasy (Samadhi).It may, however, (with the Shakta) be said that the Supreme Experience is entire and unchanging and thus the fully Real; and that, though the limited experience is also real in its own way, it is yet an experience of change in its twin aspects of Time and Space.Maya, therefore, is the Power which engenders in Itself finite centers in Time and Space, and Avidya is such experience in fact of the finite experiencer in Time and Space.So much is this so, that the Time-theorists (Kalavadins) give the name 'Supreme Time' (Parakala) to the Creator, who is also called by the Shakta 'Great Time' (Mahakala).So in the Bhairavayamala it is said that Mahadeva (Shiva) distributes His Rays of Power in the form of the Year.That is, Timeless Experience appears in the finite centers as broken up into periods of time.This is the 'Lesser Time' which comes in with the Sun, Moon, Six Seasons and so forth, which are all Shaktis of the Lord, the existence and movements of which give rise, in the limited observer, to the notion of Time and Space.That observer is essentially the Self or 'Spirit' vehicled by Its own Shakti in the form of Mind and Matter.These two are Its Body, the first subtle, the second gross.Both have a common origin, namely the Supreme Power.Each is a real mode of It.One therefore does not produce the other.Both are produced by, and exist as modes of, the same Cause.There is a necessary parallelism between the Perceived and the Perceiver and, because Mind and Matter are at base one as modes of the same Power, http://www.sacred-texts.com/tantra/sas/sas02.htm (11 of 13)07/03/2005 16:02:12Chapter Two: Shakti: The World as Powerone can act on the other.Mind is the subjective and Matter the objective aspect of the one polarized Consciousness.With the unimportant exception of the Lokayatas, the Hindus have never shared what Sir William Jones called "the vulgar notions of matter," according to which it is regarded as some gross, lasting and independently existing outside thing.Modern Western Science now also dematerializes the ponderable matter of the universe into Energy.This and the forms in which it is displayed is the Power of the Self to appear as the object of a limited center of knowing.Mind again is the Self as 'Consciousness,' limited by Its Power into such a center.By such contraction there is in lieu of an 'All-knower' a 'Little Knower,' and in lieu of an 'All-doer' a 'Little Doer'.Those, however, to whom this way of looking at things is naturally difficult, may regard the Supreme Shakti from the objective aspect as holding within Itself the germ of all Matter which develops in It.Both Mind and Matter exist in every particle of the universe though not explicitly displayed in the same way in all.There is no corner of the universe which contains anything either potential or actual, which is not to be found elsewhere.Some aspect of Matter or Mind, however, may be more or less explicit or implicit.So in the Mantra Scripture it is said that each letter of the alphabet contains all sound.The sound of a particular letter is explicit and the other sounds are implicit.The sound of a particular letter is a particular physical audible mode of the Shabdabrahman (Brahman as the cause of Shabda or 'Sound'), in Whom is all sound, actual and potential.Pure Consciousness is fully involved in the densest forms of gross or organic matter, which is not 'inert' but full of 'movement' (Spanda), for there is naught but the Supreme Consciousness which does not move.Immanent in Mind and Matter is Consciousness (Cit Shakti).Inorganic matter is thus Consciousness in full subjection to the Power of Ignorance.It is thus Consciousness identifying Itself with such inorganic matter.Matter in all its five forms of density is present in everything.Mind too is there, though, owing to its imprisonment in Matter, undeveloped."The Brahman sleeps in the stone." Life too which displays itself with the organization of matter is potentially contained in Being, of which such inorganic matter is, to some, a 'lifeless' form.From this deeply involved state Shakti enters into higher and higher organized forms.Prana or vitality is a Shakti-- the Mantra form of which is 'Hangsah'.With the Mantra 'Hang' the breath goes forth, with 'Sah' it is indrawn, a fact which anyone can verify for himself if he will attempt to inspire after putting the mouth in the way it is placed in order to pronounce the letter 'H'.The Rhythm of Creative Power as of breathing (a microcosmic form of it) is two-fold -- an outgoing (Pravritti) or involution as universe, and an evolution or return (Nivritti) of Supreme Power to Itself [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]