Siva-Sakti

 

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.