Siva-Sakti
Deciphering the essence of life
It is believed
that in the very beginning of the creation, there was a motionless meditative
Sava. Then, came along an enigmatic, enchanting and a magical SAKTI. She
glanced at the speechless, lifeless and mystical Sava and sensed an innate
potential in his trance. Sakti gracefully swayed and danced around Sava and
caressed him. At the very moment of the touch, there was a divine attraction
between them. Sava merged with the ‘e kara’/ ‘ई कारा’ or the feminism of Sakti and emerged out as the
magnificent and powerful yet composed and calm SIVA and hence everything else followed
in the creation. It depicts an amalgamation of two
divine energies into an inseparable vitality and strength. This is a
beautifully captivating story that I have heard from my childhood, and I always
wondered about its mysticism. I ever wanted to relate it to the reality of our
world and understand its essence. Today, I firmly know that this symbolizes the
essence of our life.
Duality is an existential reality of
our world, not just today but from the beginning of our knowledge about this
life. Look around, everything exists in pairs, in partnerships or complementary
to each other as counterparts. Each one of us, at some point in life, must have
wondered about these twofold situations that we come across. The earth has two
poles, the north and the south pole, which are two far ends but their relative
presence to each other is detrimental to the sustenance of the planet.
Similarly, we have the poles of the magnet. The north is attracted to the south
and vice versa. They seem to be just made for each other that can stay in balance
only when together. The north is represented as the positive or the plus sign.
The south is represented as the negative or the minus. This reminds me of my
classroom lecture on atoms where the protons with the positivity exist at the
centre of the atom and are surrounded by the negatively charged electrons which
very much seem to be dancing in their orbits around the central protons. This
takes us back to our original story about Sava and Sakti. Can we draw an
analogy between these phenomena and the story? Yes, the original meditative
Sava can be compared to the north pole or the positivity present in almost
everything. Then, Sakti is the south pole, or the dynamically charged electron
attracted to and swirling around the proton. Now the story begins to make a
novel symbolic meaning. Be it in the form of magnetic poles or charged
particles of electron, Siva-sakti personify pure energies.
Our lives are
wound around the day and night, another duality. The day is full of activity
while the night is when we rest, recharge and get prepared for the next day. In
fact, our body with all its organs follows the so-called circadian rhythm where
they are conditioned and programmed to function as per the 24-hour clock. Only
when we perform in accordance and respect the boundaries of day and night, we maintain
a harmonious state of vibrance of physical and psychological health. Balance is
the ultimate key to being sound.
With
determination as deep as the ocean, and optimism as vast as the sky and space,
Siva personifies the masculinity and represents the innate capability,
strength, logic and skill. It is the motivation ‘to do’ things and to achieve
them in life. On the other hand, Sakti is the feminine liveliness in the flow
of a river. It is the energy of the tides that makes its existence felt, with an
intuition as swift as the breeze that whispers and communicates its emotional
nurture, an inspiration simply ‘to be’ in life. It is the feminine quality that
bestows confidence and recognition to the masculine willpower and reasoning,
similar to the breeze that gives an identity to the air and makes it felt.
Siva Sakti
are embedded in our chromosomes and genes. It is the genes that confer us our
characteristics and nature. If we consider the sperm as the power of manliness
and the ovum or egg as the zeal of woman-hood, then their union is Siva-Sakti
itself. Each life born into this world ferries forth the coupled energies of
shiva-shakti. So, we bear the paired spirits inside of us, only waiting to blossom,
be utilized evenly and to be poised. In today’s world man lives in an
ambivalence, oscillating between the duplexity of joy and sorrow. We all crave
for happiness yet forget the fact that in the absence of sorrow, joy never had
an identity. To recognize one, we need the other. Yet, again attaching joy to
material pleasures is temporary happiness. There lies a quiet space between joy
and sorrow, the stillness of neutrality and tranquility called the
Shiva-Shakti. This stillness is an unwavering permanence. If we examine deeper
into ourselves, our body is controlled by the so called autonomic nervous
system with a double responsibility of providing vigor with agility and at the
same time having a calm relaxation effect as and when needed. The dual
machinery of this system controls and co-ordinates our body’s responses keeping
it under harmony and balance. On one end it enables us to fight the distress
while the other rejuvenates us to prepare for the fight.
Siva Sakti is
a perfect picture of non-duality existing in the face of duality. Non duality
as perfectly called Advaita is the harmonious existence of both the masculine
and feminine energies or qualities. This in itself is the essence of living a
peaceful life by synchronizing the odds and the evens. Siva-Sakti is that
Advaita, though dwelling in Dvaita of life situations, it seeks for an equilibrium
towards a meaningful and blissful existence.
Siva-Sakti is an
introspection, a peek into the microcosm within self. They are not entities
that exist in some imaginative realm but are very much alive in the vast expanse
of universe inside of us. The potential and the dynamism to live and let live,
the very essence of life.
