Eastern Cosmology @ 101
produces the number two, foci of the primary differentiation of
Ultimate Reality into what the Hindus describe as consciousness and
power, symbolized by the god Shiva and the goddess Shlkti. Shiva
stands as the static principle-potential, changeless, stable-and Shakti
as the dynamic, kinetic source of movement and change.Yet the duahty
remains inseparable: as logically explained by Hindu sages, there can be
no power without wdl, no activity without potential energy, no change
without a changeless substratum, no action without a will to change.As
will is concerned with the end, so power is concerned with the means
of attaining that end.WiU without power to provide the means is help-
less. Power without will to provide the end, and continued concentra-
tion of that end, is purposeless.
From these two Hindu divinities all the polarities in the mani-
fest universe are seen to be derived: positive-negative, father-mother,
space-time, energy-matter, attraction-repulsion, electron-proton. By
their mutual action and reaction, and by their balancing of opposites,
the fabric of the universe is woven. But in this occult cinemascope it is
only when something called "mental space," or Akasha, comes into ex-
istence that a manifested system-one of universes, galaxies, and solar
systems-can be created. As mind is seen to be no more than "a dis-
turbance in consciousness," what is needed to manifest a universe is an-
other dual polarity, one of self and not-self. To achieve this further
schism, consciousness is described as producing, out of itself, two
streams, one the basis of subjective phenomena, the other the basis of
objective phenomena, the former related to the perceiver, the latter to
the perceived, there being no phenomena without a seer to witness
what is seen. Shiva provides the viewer, Shakti the raw material for what
is viewed. And so develops the next polarity of mind-matter. Summed
up by occultists: "Matter floats and functions in a sea of Mind; Mind
functions in a sea of Consciousness; Consciousness functions in the
void or plenum of the Ultimate Reality."
And so we come to the world as we know it, or think we know it.
When integrated consciousness reacts through any viewing vehicle
produced by Shiva-Shakti with any matter produced by Shiva-Shakti,
the result of the interaction, say the Hindus, is mind, the basis of all