The Cosmic Energy, Shakti and Siva

"Shakti and Siva are One." Amrita Patel

Shakti is transforming, manifesting herself in five specific ways as described in the Siva Sutras: Chitta--awareness; Ananda--bliss; Icha--desire; Gyana--knowledge; Kriya--action. For the one in growing self awareness, Shakti arises in consciousness as an element of passion. Passion isn't personal, however another may prompt awareness of its present possibilities. Passion as described in the Sutra is universal; it is the particles of light-giving life. In Christian terms, this passion is described as the Christ, who is the light of the world.

As a part of the cosmic energy Shakti is but one power, one part of light. Its energy is inspired by spirit and its drive is creative. Shakti in creation brings forth Siva in traditional Hindu view of the creative functioning of the world. Inspiring passion, the ordinarily abstract and unconscious Siva is made manifest by the dances of Shakti. The energy borne of the cosmic pair, passionate love, is energy that makes every thing new, every being renewed, innocent in expression.

Siva is all awareness, silent and intuitive. Siva as a part of cosmic energy described in tradition, creates, destroys or empties, protects, covers, reveals. Siva is present in life's processes. The miracle of the process in revelation is that the love energy borne by Siva, and directly in the world by Shakti, is like a miracle, revealing a divine shift, love itself manifesting in peacefulness, joy and a sense of the whole.

Siva is also known as "Pashupati," Lord of creatures. To this end, Sri Chakra worship is witness to the unity of Shakti and Siva. It is a symbol of the infinite as well. Sri Aurobindo writes:

"This is the knot that ties together the stars;
The two who are one and the Secret of all power,
The two who are one are the might and right in things "

For Aurobindo, this scripture and others demonstrates that Shakti and Siva are One, writes Amrita Patel in his literary book, Perspectives on Sri Aurobindo's Poetry, Plays and Criticism.

Transformation, Siva and Shakti

"Transformation is the process of evolution of the consciousness through its three main levels of development... predominantly masculine in character... It is a woman's journey as much as man's." --Transformation by Robert Johnson

"Man evolves from acting instinctively to putting his psychic energy under the control of his ego. Then he must evolve further, to place his psychic energy under the control of the Self," writes Robert Johnson in his book, Transformation. Nineteenth century writer and poet, Henry Thoreau wrote extensively of transformations in his writings, Walden Pond.
To many of his time, Thoreau was a genius, a wonder, inspiring people who were now living urban lives to recollect the simplicity they had before, and what was now a challenge before themselves. His writing is a chronicling of a complex man's desire to restore 'simplicity to life through Mother Earth and natural living.'

Johnson writes about his first visit to India as a young man; he was told to expect horrors, deprivations and extreme poverty, corpses lying about on the public streets. He found all this darkness to be true, and he discovered something quite wonderful: there was great joyfulness all around despite this ever present darkness. People were, to his eye, unmistakably happy.
He latter learned that the roots of the word 'happy' are from the verb infinitive, to happen. Happiness he writes, is 'simply what happens.' Simple man lives in this state of happiness; for them it is the rejoinder to both their interior lives and the reality of the exterior, happening world around them.

Falling back upon the Judeo-Christian motif of the Garden, Johnson traces the development of men from the time that they are driven forth from their free, simplified, garden world, robbed of their child-like existence. He asserts that in agrarian societies everywhere, in measured degrees, most people are to be left permanently in simple consciousness. Yet today's complexity and formal education have become so highly valued, many are zealous champions of its development.
In contrast, the India he encountered, the Indian society he experienced was one of Caste, with Brahmins at the top and the Untouchables at the bottom. This system, he noted, keeps the majority of people in Simple consciousness. And while it has its flaws from the Western point of view, Johnson finds advantage in the reduced stress and anxiety in their daily lives, that it "overall avoids mass neurosis prevalent in Western societies."

Using stories familiar to Western readers, Johnson writes of Faust, Mephistopheles, Hamlet and the idea of the personal 'shadow,' the un-lived, concealed parts of the personality. Some have called the shadow a representative of the road less traveled; the ins and outs one may have chosen at different points in their life, but didn't or have not chosen to pursue.
He argues that contrary to assumptions, the shadow is not all grim, all darkness; rather it is the source of much gold, much good in the creative endeavors. The shadow engages one in the art of retrieving those facets of life that are full, meaningful, and maybe what is missing from the daily grind. While some perhaps deduce this all to mean that the shadow is subversive, dark or evil existing life, Johnson disagrees.
He sees the Shadow as an important element to finding ones' wholeness, to completing oneself. By this process, and it is a process, one may redeem oneself; the shadow provides energy and paradox, important components for redemption, the "do over chance" in life.
 
For some it creates so much energy that there is the sense of brilliance, it burns fire, a blinding light. "This is not unlike the manifestations of Siva, Indian God of Destruction, who appears as paradox for the Western mind." 
 The end is what creates the beginning, the empty becomes full again, are two such examples of paradox. "It is only when Brahma, God of Creation and Shiva are together present" that wholeness becomes loving, Shakti.

You Can't Go Home Again

"Simple persons live within the happiness of their inner world."--   Transformation  by R. Johnson

In most every spiritual tradition there is a sense of growing maturity, a ripening of the self into what some call satori, enlightenment or salvation, among other descriptions of this experience. Author and Jungian psychologist Robert Johnson discusses this in his book, Transformation.

He writes there are three levels of consciousness. They are universal the world over, yet in industrialized societies the progression of these experiences is made all the more difficult by our very advances in book learning and complex societies. The level of all mankind, endowed to each of us by nature is what he describes as 'simple consciousness,' followed by 'complex consciousness,' the "usual state of educated Western man, and an 'enlightened' state of consciousness, known only to a very few individuals."

Enlightenment, Johnson reckons, comes to very few men only after much work and training by highly motivated individuals. He recounts a simple story to illustrate these notions: 'the simple man comes home in the evening wondering what's for dinner; the complex man comes home pondering the imponderables of fate, and the enlightened man comes home wondering what's for dinner.
"Simple man and enlightened man have much in common, including a direct, uncomplicated view of life, and so they react in similar ways."

The difference between them is that the enlightened are conscious of their condition in ways that simple persons are not. Complex persons, however, are often engaged with worry and often live lives marked by anxiety.
Writing Walden Pond, 19th century author Henry David Thoreau writes about his experiences and those of others he knows. He chronicles the complex, Western man's attempt to regain a sense of simplicity in their life.
Gandhi urged India in an earlier era to retain its domestic simplicity; his urgings were largely ignored. Today when one travels to India we are often aware of the tremendous poverty, illness and wants of her citizens. All true. However alongside of these ills is a clear and abundant sense of joyfulness. There is a happiness among large numbers of Indians in their daily lives. Johnson writes of his experiences there, "I was witnessing the miracle of simple man finding happiness in a rich, inner world, not in the pursuit of some desired goal.

Simple persons live within this happiness of their inner world, no matter what the exterior circumstance may be. Those of enlightened conscious also know this and live with an attitude of happiness which bridges their inner world with objective facts, a connection the Simple person does not or is unable to make.
Many a Hindu learns that the highest worship is to simply be happy. On the other hand, complex persons often live in their sense of anxiety and dread, trapped between nostalgia and anticipation of what may come, a fate that mostly eludes ones' grasp.
Despite this, complex consciousness is so highly valued by Westerners that nothing is thought to be too great or expensive in a bid "to gain freedom, self-determination and choices," wrought by his expanded perception writes Johnson.

Traditional Indian society, he observes, is based "on a caste system that allows only a few superior individuals," Brahmins, the chief caste to gain consciousness. The lower castes are less concerned with enlightened minds or methods. This keeps the vast majority of Indians in a state of their natural given, simple consciousness.
For once on the path to enlightenment, many will make significant gains before meeting frustration warned Carl Jung, Johnson's mentor.

Jung noted that once one has left the innate state of simple consciousness for more complex states, one can no longer turn around to retrace the steps of the path from where one has come. Quite simply, he believed that on the path to consciousness, Complex persons may meet with stresses and frustration from which they cannot retire. In other words, Jung believed, one can't just go home again to an earlier simplicity and peace you once knew, in recognition of a certain loss of innocence.

Prana, the Breath of God

"The heart is the chooser, the midway Chakra that stands between upper and lower; it is the mediator, the center of feeling. The function of the heart isn't to label good or bad; it doesn't judge or reject. Out of love it blends high and low..." --The Path to Love by Deepak Chopra

Human beings, writes Chopra "are the only creatures born with a higher and a lower nature." Here in the West, he notes, the terms higher and lower, are hued with the ideas of sacred and profane; yet we know by experience that there is one world, all things are infinite within it. There are not two worlds, good/bad, or sacred/profane. The world contains everything within herself: all good, all wicked, all holy, blessed and all corrupt. It is filled with love, indifference, intolerance and the One.

When young, we may wish, desire, crave even, for an intimate relationship with another. Chopra discusses in his book, The Path to Love that we may think that intimacy is sexualized love; later we may find through our life experiences, through being open to life challenges that life is love, sex, laughter and pain-- getting close is frightening, provoking, even. Sometimes the road seems as if it will swallow us up; we want to run, to hide. We fear abandonment or rejection along the path. "There's a spiritual issue here," says Chopra. 

Life is a process. It is forms; it's being and non being, the ways of feeling and doing. "In India it's taught that the same life force, or Prana, runs through everything. In Christian terms, it is the "Breath of God," which transforms dead, inert matter to life, says Chopra. Writing in the book, The Upanishads by Sri Aurobindo, Aurobindo details a bit more in contrast to Chopra. 

Sri Aurobindo describes, "Prana, the life force in the nervous system, is indeed the one main instrument of our mental consciousness; for it is that by which the mind receives the contacts of the physical world through the organs of knowledge, sight, hearing, smell, touch and taste; it reacts by action. All these senses are dependent upon the nervous life force for their functioning."
Aurobindo goes on to detail the inner and exterior workings of Prana, the breath or life force as he describes them. He says there are five workings of the life force. The discussion is lengthy and complex. 

He concludes in part, that respiration is only one part of the life force, but one which can be suspended (in his view) without the body necessarily being destroyed. He writes that we become aware of Prana through purification of the mind and body.

Inside the Grail Legend

“...if one is to find the Grail, [that] means not to fall prey to a mood.” The Holy Grail as interpreted by Robert Johnson


There are many, many truths to be gained from study of this most unique of legends, the Holy Grail. Following the lead of Carl and Emma Jung and Marie Louise von Franz, Robert Johnson writes in his book, He, that “what the Grail myth is telling us is that in his relationship to the interior feminine a man should relate to her, that interior feminine [self] on a feeling level and not on a mood level.” The author distinguishes the terms mood and feeling by explanation: he writes, a mood is the result of the interior self unconsciously in possession, the anima or interior feminine self of a man; a feeling is a value, the ability to value. “If a man has a good relationship with his anima, his feminine self, he is able to feel, to value, and thus find meaning in his life. If a man is not related to his anima... he has no capacity for valuation. So sharp collision between the two types of interior experience a man goes through."

In the Legend of the Grail, Percival is guided to his feeling senses, his anima. In discovering a bit of this sense, he is useful and creative; in doing so, he must not however seduce or be seduced by the interior feminine self. Granting himself seduction is destructive towards his goal of finding the Grail Castle. He is, in the legend, most thoroughly advised not to fall prey to a mood. “As soon as a man falls into a mood, he has no capacity for relationship, no power for feeling and therefore no capacity for valuation.” All moods, good or bad, are trouble.

While under the spell of a mood, the one who feels its effect is like a person bewitched. “He cannot think, he cannot function, he cannot relate; he may think he’s doing a great deal, but there is just so much churning inside. If something is not already wrong, a man in a mood will make it wrong.” And if they are not wise to it, a man’s loved ones may also fall victim to his moods. A man may, in fact, in that state of mind think that they are quite responsible for his moods!

Robbed of a sense of relatedness or meaning, a man in a mood we learn in the Grail legend, is a man who cannot find fulfillment. He is easily bored. Thus “if something is wrong with one’s ability to relate, the meaning in life is gone. So depression is another term for mood. One finds that most of the content of a psychosis for a man is anima. It’s a haunting, a possession.” A mood is a little madness then, which overtakes. Many times a person may be overtaken by a mood. There is then wild enthusiasm for this or for that, but the mood runs its course and then the thing is forgotten; much time and money is expended by those in a mood. While in this state he does not ‘run his own house’ and then is impossible to live with; he is terribly critical of exterior, in the flesh women at this time, soundly blaming them for any number of things to which they stand mystified!  A man must learn in his quest for the Grail to look for fulfillment but not good moods, lest he is again in possession by something destructive. It’s as if in the mood he declares, “You are going to make me happy--or else!”

The anecdote to this is to learn to live in time, moment to moment. One can learn to recognize the advent of a mood and refuse it. It is one's responsibility to know what is going on within himself so as to live consciously-- the point of this quest for the Holy Grail. “A man who has this kind of self-knowledge begins to develop ego strength,” writes Johnson. When truly enthusiastic, a man is filled with the Spirit of God. He is vibrant and creative. A great creativity flows, one which is stable and productive. It is not the petulance of a child.

The truest genius of a flesh and blood woman is that if she can be consciously aware of her innate feminine nature, not critical of others, and strong enough to stand up to this “spurious femininity” when a man’s mood presents such; he will likely come out of his mood and return to his senses. Many in this world are in the possession of a mental illness, a foul mood which befalls them either frequently or intermittently. They may say they’re having a bad day while in this state. And when comes its opposite, because balance is necessary, mania or depression appears. Chaos may also result owing to the lack of feeling or valuing. Careful reflection and conscious awareness is the point of Percival’s methodical search. The myth, if we follow it through, tells us that Percival triumphs.