SHAKTI: What this Group is About! (Long But Important Post)

[Guest guest]

This is an important message for all Group members: I think there is

some confusion going on in our group, and as a moderator, it's my

duty to try and clear it up to some extent. The confusion I'm

referring to comes down to an extremely basic question -- What is

Shakti Sadhana, the subject of this Group?

 

I've been meaning to write something on this for a long time, but the

final straw that finally made me sit down and do it was the recent

post in which a certain "Uriya Baba" (I have never heard of him

before, but I'm guessing he's a Shaiva or Vaishnava swami) was quoted

as saying, "Disengage yourself from this body, a place of

humiliation, a despicable bag of wastes, urine and excreta (your

body)."

 

Uday, who posted that quote, later explained it further,

saying: "Ultimate truth is atma, soul, or say supreme power, God.

Rest all is myth. complete materialistic world is a myth."

 

My problem with these posts is simple: Thay have nothing to do with

Shaktism! In fact, they are diametrically opposed to the very spirit

and teaching of Shaktism! To reject this world or to dismiss one's

own body in a temple of Devi is as wrong as it would be to

proclaim, "Embrace Christ!" or "Submit to Allah!" while standing

among the worshipers here. It's simply poor taste. However legitimate

such diverse religious sentiments may be in their proper place, they

do not belong in a forum devoted to Shaktism. In fact, many Shaktas

would consider such remarks to be nothing less than a provocation, a

slap in the face -- a direct insult to their faith, to the Goddess

Herself!

 

Please don't take me wrong: I am *not* arguing that Uriya Baba

is "wrong" or that Shaivism or Vaishnavism or any other religion

is "wrong." I am simply setting forth what Shaktism

considers "right;" that is, what distinguishes our path from all the

others. For me to do any less would be to do a disservice to Devi,

the religion that extols Her as Supreme, and the devotees who follow

Her faith.

 

WHAT IS SHAKTISM?

 

Let's begin with a basic definition. When faced with the hard

question, "Are you a Shaiva (devotee of Shiva) or a Shakta (devotee

of Goddess)?" the easy (and all-too-typical) answer is to say, "It

doesn't matter! Shiva and Shakti are One!" Which is fine -- it is a

good answer and -- at a vastly high level of abstraction -- it is

ultimately the right answer. But it's also a refusal to answer, in a

certain sense, and it is almost ridiculously vague for the vast

majority of devotees, who have a long climb ahead before reaching

that lofty spiritual peak.

 

But let us try to rephrase the concept in a more useful way: Both

Shaivism and Shaktism agree that the Ultimate Divine contains the

Feminine the Masculine, and the Neuter, while simultaneously

transcending all such gender distinctions. And you don't have to take

it from me. Devi Herself states as much in the "Devi Bhagavata

Purana":

 

"I am Manifest Divinity, Unmanifest Divinity, and Transcendent

Divinity. I am Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva, as well as Saraswati,

Lakshmi and Parvati. I am the Sun and I am the Stars, and I am also

the Moon. I am all animals and birds, and I am the outcaste as well,

and the thief. I am the low person of dreadful deeds, and the great

person of excellent deeds. I am Female, I am Male, and I am Neuter."

 

By way of explanation, the Sanskrit scholar C. MacKenzie Brown

clarifies that pure Shaktism "clearly insists that, of the two

genders, the feminine respresents the dominant power in the universe.

Yet both genders must be included in the ultimate if it is truly

ultimate. The masculine and the feminine are aspects of the divine,

transcendent reality, which goes beyond but still encompasses them.

Devi, in her supreme form as consciousness thus transcends gender,

but her transcendence is not apart from her immanence."

 

Brown's analysis continues, "Indeed, this affirmation of the oneness

of transcendence and immanence constituites the very essence of the

divine mother [and her] ultimate triumph. It is not, finally, that

she is infinitely superior to the male gods -- though she is that,

according to the [shaktas] -- but rather that she transcends her own

feminine nature as Prakriti without denying it."

 

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE A SHAKTA?

 

The next question we must ask is, exactly does it mean -- in

practical terms -- to be a Shakta, rather than a Shaivite? In a way,

this question is like a version of the famous paradox, "Which came

first, the chicken or the egg?" Only, in our case, the question

becomes: "Is Shiva a manifestation of Shakti, or is Shakti a

manifestation of Shiva?" At the most basic level, if you answer the

former, you're a Shakta; if the latter, you're a Shaiva.

 

That's not just a matter of semantics, either! The choice a devotee

makes has definite ramifications that go far beyond those highfalutin

intonements that "All is One." Because however true that may be in

the Ultimate, Ultimate sense, we need to choose and stick with a path

that will take us to that One.

 

"Shiva and Shaki are one and he who worships the one necessarily

worships the other. But whereas the Shaiva predominantly worships

Shiva, the Shakta predominantly worships Shakti. … Each will adopt

that which most suits [her or] him.. As the `Ahirbudhnya Samhita' of

the Pancharatra Agama says, the aspects of God[dess] are infinite,

but no philosopher can seize and duly express more than one aspect."

(Woodroffe, "Shakti and Shakta: Essays and Addresses," 1918; 1987

Reprint).

 

So yes, Shaivism and Shaktism are similar, but they also have

extremely important differences -- just as Roman Catholicism and

Eastern Orthodoxy are closely related forms of Christianity, but with

fundamental splits of doctrine and practice.

 

To hugely oversimplify, Shaivism posits Shiva as the Supreme One,

Without a Second. Shakti manifests from His left side and devolves

into the visible Universe. She is Maya, Illusion, a mere projection

of Shiva, Who is the real truth and who remains unmanifest. All of

this life is a dream, without substance. Our only goal is to pierce

that veil, to get past Shakti so to speak, and thereby find Shiva.

That's where comments like Uriya Baba's "bag of excrement" come from;

why worry about your body or your world if it's all just one big lie

keeping you away from Shiva?

 

But let us now look at Shaktism. Again, this is a vast

oversimplification, but here we see Shakti as the Supreme One,

Without a Second. To devotees of Shiva or Krishna or Rama who would

scoff that we are giving Her far too much importance, we can quote

the Rig Veda, the most ancient scripture of Hinduism where Devi says:

 

"I am the Sovereign Queen; the treasury of all treasures; the chief

of all objects of worship; whose all-pervading Self all Devatas [god

and goddess forms] manifest; whose birthplace is in the midst of the

causal waters; who in breathing forth gives birth to all created

worlds, and yet extends beyond them, so vast am I in greatness." (Rig

Veda, Devi Sukta, Mandala X, Sukta 125).

 

And if sheer belief and faith are not enough for the devotee,

Shaktism appeals to logic and reason as well. Take for example the

Shakta/Tantric belief (here formulated in the Vishvasara Tantra)

that "What is here, is elsewhere. What is not here, is nowhere." That

maxim expands to explain that our human bodies and experiences are

not mere "bags of excrement and urine," but microcosms of the Supreme

Reality. By looking into ourselves, the Tantras say, we can find

every Truth!

 

So let us look at what we know of Creation: In our little microcosmic

world, we know that only Woman can give birth. And so we deduce that,

in the Macrocosm, only Shakti can give birth. Furthermore, science

has proven that every fetus, as a matter of biological fact, begins

as "female" -- the human male is, in essence, a modified female, and

not vice-versa. And so we say, Shiva emerged from Shakti, and not

vice-versa.

 

IS THE BODY A TEMPLE OR A `BAG OF WASTE'?

 

This understanding causes us to "split" from Shaivites in other ways

as well. Because the Shaivite says that Shiva (i.e. the Transcendent,

the Unmanifest) is the only thing that's

real, it follows that Shakti (i.e. Maya, Illusion, the Manifest

Universe) is false. Vaishnavas (followers of the third and most

popular of the three main Hindu

schools, i.e. devotees of Vishnu, Krishna, Rama) believe basically

the same thing. Such a philosophy can cause one to turn within,

neglecting or devaluing one's body, one's family, the feminine

gender, one's planet! Why bother?

 

By contrast, Shaktas say Shakti is the One; that She is Reality, and

that Her reality has two aspects: The Transcendent, and the Manifest.

They are both real. This world is real -- Maya is not a complete

illusion, a fake -- but rather, it is a veil. Mother has given us

senses, not to fool us and mislead us, but to enable us to function

in a three-dimensional world of individual people and objects, all

governed by the laws of physics. As long as we are in this Universe,

we need these senses to function on a day-to-day basis.

 

"In short the world is real. It is a true experience," explains Sir

John Woodroffe, an initiated Tantric Shakta and renowned

Sanskritist. "Maya is not `illusion,' but Experience in time and

space of Self and Not-Self."

 

But at a certain point in our spiritual evolution, we begin to tire

of this world's transitory pleasures and satisfactions. We may still

love the world very much -- the beauty of nature, the faces of our

children and those beloved to us; the pleasures that this earthly

body can give us sometimes -- but we begin yearning to move beyond

this rather limited sense of reality. You might say that we love

Shakti so much that we yearn to see the rest of Her -- her

Transcendent Aspect (which you can call "Shiva" for convenience if

you like, or not).

 

The Shaivite would say that the sole, best use of this body and this

world, is as a springboard to the next. While we are incarnated as

conscious, sentient beings, we must work on ourselves to escape the

churning wheel of samskara as soon as possible! The Shakta would

agree -- to an extent. Yes, the ultimate goal of Shakti Sadhana is

liberation; but we say that Devi is not only the goal. She's also the

journey!

 

IS THERE `REALLY' A GODDESS?

 

This brings us to the next Shiva-Shakti split: A Shaivite, convinced

that the journey (i.e. our lives in this world) is mere illusion,

will find it easy to dismiss our activities and experiences in this

sphere as a mere "process or technique." From this viewpoint, the

only thing this world is good for is whatever opportunity it affords

us to escape it.

 

And the person who learns to disdain this world as illusion -- but

who nonetheless feels unable to escape it -- will either be

frustrated and angry on some level (which leads to ignoring or

neglecting one's material surroundings, as suggested above) or they

will begin to feel a sense of hopelessness and futility about their

belief in Devi as Mother, since She is just `maya.'"

 

A Shakta correspondent recently wrote me to say, "Without something

tangible to relate to, we would all be lost -- since Maa, Maya and

enlightenment are beyond our senses and knowledge in this world. And

at the same time, we feel there is "something" calling us, nurturing

us and pulling us to the finally resting place."

 

And here we see another result of the Shaivite/Shakta split.

Shaivites tend to dismiss

Shaktas as, perhaps, less-evolved Shaivites! ;-) We insist upon the

reality of the world, only because we are not spiritually advanced

enough to let it go completely. From the Shaivite perspective, it is

often said that Maya is both false (because it's fake) and true

(because we spend our material lives acting like it's not fake). As

for the "something" that calls us, the Shaivite explains perhaps that

Mantra can produce god/dess forms in the Maya to help guide us beyond

Maya.

 

In Shakta terms, we say yes, Mantras can produce the form of the

deity whose mantra you chant. However, as a Shakta, we also believe

that the world around us is Real, and so the Goddess who appears

before us is a Real manifestation of Devi, not just a form or

guidepost in the fog of Illusion.

 

In that regard, someone once joked with me, asking if I really

believe there is a "Big Mama" sitting up in the clouds looking down

on us, or on the "Jeweled Island," which is said to be Devi's

celestial abode. My response is, "Why not?" Devi can take any form --

she *is* form, after all -- and if we need a Big Mama, She'll be one

for us, and if our soul needs to rest on a Jeweled Island, she'll

provide it. Without getting into metaphysics, these heavenly visions -

- I believe -- exist in those areas of Reality that fall between the

Manifest and the Transcendent. They are a higher reality, though not

yet the highest.

 

Shakespeare wrote, in Hamlet, "There are more things in heaven and

earth, Horatio, /Than are dreamt of in your philosophy." How could we

ever doubt it? To do so would merely be to project upon Her the

limitations of human reason, imagination and intuition.

 

Thank you for your patience.

 

Aum Maatangyai Namahe