WHAT IS HINDUISM?
absolute awareness is a constant meditation of the realm of
undifferentiated potentialities of awareness which is the
creative matrix or womb of the Great Mother. It is out of
Shiva’s meditation of the Mother, this being a pure
awareness of the pure potentiality or power (Shakti) latent
within awareness – that this at first undifferentiated power
differentiates and manifests itself as countless Shaktis –
emerging through the light of the One Supreme and Pure
Awareness that is Shiva from the dark womb of the One
Supreme Power or Shakti (Paramashakti) that is the Mother
Goddess. Hence the opening sutras of Abhinavagupta’s
Tantraloka:
“May my heart throb, which is pure, seat of art, creative by
the coupling state of Shiva and Shakti, Shakti (Mother
Devi) who is creation, the cosmos and the divine mother
and Shiva who ... offers the internal bliss and external
expansion...”
“I bow down to the deity Pratibha (Paramshakti) who is
beyond, infinite and rests in the Supreme Awareness at the
seat of the divine lotus situated in the threefold state
beyond mind.”
‘Shaivism’, understood in this way is the very essence of
‘Shaktism’. In contrast there are forms of ‘Shaktism’ whose
principle aim is not the recognition of the dynamic
relational unity or non-duality of Shiva and Shaki – the
divine masculine and divine feminine – but rather the