The Personification of the Two basic Vedantic Principles
The Creation is explained by Einsteins’s famous equation, E=mc2 which means that energy is inert matter in motion. It doesn’t include Consciousness. Vedanta says that the Creation is two principles: consciousness and energy. Energy is called shakti in Vedanta and prakriti in Yoga. Because both consciousness and shakti are not perceptible to the senses they are personified in many ways to make their union understandable. Human beings are a combination of these two cosmic principles. Consequently, they are not sure if they are spiritual beings with material bodies, or material beings with spiritual inclinations. Consciousness is also symbolized by words. Shiva, for instance, a Hindu God, stands for consciousness and Shakti, which is personified as many feminine goddesses, stands for the energy that creates in the presence of uncreated consciousness. At the macrocosmic level creation is called the Big Bang by material science.
In general the material part of creation is called nature. St Francis of Assisi called the sun ‘brother’ and the moon ‘sister’, etc. In the Hindu tradition too, there is personification or anthropomorphism, thinking of and calling the forces in nature both masculine and feminine. All forms in creation are a combination of these two principles, consciousness, sometimes called spirit, and nature or matter. Matter is tangible and consciousness is intangible.
For example, knowledge is masculinised as Brahmaji, the Creator, since knowledge is required to create. It is like the seed or the sperm of a male. The power ‘behind’ that knowledge is feminised and called Sarasvati, the goddess of knowledge, language, sciences, the arts. To maintain creation, material abundance is needed. Or sometimes the maintenance aspect is masculinised as Vishnu while the power to maintain names and forms is feminized as Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth, abundance, prosperity. At the time of the “Big Crunch,” which is the opposite of the “Big Bang.” when the universe once again returns into its unmanifest or potential state, the process of ‘un-manifestation’ is sometimes masculinised as Shiva or feminised and feared as Kali, a “wrathful” deity. The power of the wind and water to generate electricity is shakti.
If a person wants to understand and worship either the consciousness principle or the material principle, which together are cald God, but has difficulty with abstract scientific teaching of the God principle, this metaphor of male and female may make God understandable. For instance, the consciousness principle is often referred to as a sperm or a phallus and the material principle as an egg or a womb out of which a child—the world—is born. Eastern religious art is replete with images of god’s and goddesses enjoying loving intercourse, a symbol of the intimate relationship between spirit and matter. Those who worship God as a remote entity apart from themselves are called dualists.
Non-dualists are people who may worship symbols but interpret them differently. They see the act of creation is a union of the two principles and understand that Shiva and the Shakti represent the non-difference of the material and the spiritual parts of themselves, just as a child is different but non-different from its parents. Everything that is in the child comes from the parents.
For non-dualists all there is, is consciousness, the one, non-dual, absolute, unchanging Reality, which is called in Sanskrit, satyam. The word ‘real’ means, “that which is always present and never changes.” Only consciousness fits that criterion. This consciousness manifest as the powers, principles, and the laws governing all of creation and as all forms.
But there is no separation between consciousness and Its manifold forms. For example, there is no separation between gold and a ring that is fashioned out of it. The difference is only in name, not in reality. So, the non-dualist focusses on or worships consciousness, his or her true inner nature and enjoys the benefits of that recognition, which is perfect security, limitless satisfaction and immortality, since consciousness is non-different from existence, which is uncreated, perfect and eternal.
The non-dualist acknowledges the presence and experience of all forms of matter as shakti and shakti as existence/consciousness seemingly moving. The seeming movement is caused by Maya, the material principle which is not the same but not different from existence/consciousness. Shakti is a relative and dependent reality, a transient form of consciousness, called mithya in Sanskri. Dualists think that shakti, the changing forms of consciousness, like thoughts and feelings are real whereas non-dualists know that the only real principle is existence/consciousness.
Shakti is like a mirage, an existent event which can be experienced but is momentarily real, not absolutely real. Or, it is like a wave, water taking a form, that is not independently existent. Knowing the difference and non-difference of consciousness and its forms frees a person from dependence on the forms, whereas someone who takes the forms to be real and doesn’t appreciate ever-free consciousness as one’s true nature and the source of the many forms, takes the forms to be real and tries to find satisfaction in forms, which always decay and cause suffering.
Personally, we experience shakti as feelings and emotions, not knowing that consciousness which is being, the nature of which is unborn bliss, is what we really are. So, like Hamlet, we have a choice. By knowing what we are we can enjoy the bliss of being, for which everyone wishes to live another day, or we can remain attached to changing things and suffer the disappointments and despair of “not being.” “To be or not to be. That is the question!”
Ben De Silva
