________________
120 Saiva Philosophy in the Purāņas [CH. everybody. It is by satisfying all people that God becomes satisfied. Any injury done to any living being is an injury done to one of the forms of God itself.
We have seen above that the whole world is a personification of God. This pantheistic doctrine should be distinguished from the monism of the Vedānta as explained by Sankara and his followers. In the Vedānta the reality is Brahman as sac-cid-ānanda, and everything else that we perceive is but an imposition on the reality of Brahman. They are ultimately false and their falsehood is discovered when the person attains liberation. So the world appears, but there may be a time when it may absolutely disappear before a liberated person. Here, however, the material world as such in all its various forms of the living and non-living is regarded as but different real forms of God, which are controlled by God, and are set in motion by God for the benefit of the souls, which latter again are but forms of God.
In this connection the question is raised as to the way in which God pervades the world as the male and the female powers. In reply to such a question Upamanyu is supposed to have replied that the energy or śakti called the great female Deity (mahādevī) belongs to mahādeva, the Great Lord, and the whole world is a manifestation of them both. Some things are of the nature of consciousness and some things are of the nature of the unconscious. Both of them can be pure or impure. When consciousness is associated with the unconscious elements, it passes through the cycles of birth and rebirth and is called impure. That which is beyond such associations is pure. Siva and His sakti go together, and the whole world is under their domination. As it is not possible to distinguish the moon from the moonlight, so it is not possible to distinguish the sakti from Siva. So the sakti or the power of the saktimān, the possessor of the power, the supreme Lord, are mutually dependent. There cannot be sakti without Siva, and there cannot be Siva without sakti. It is out of this sakti that the whole world is created through the process of prakyti or māyā and the three guņas. Everywhere the operation of the sakti is limited by the will of Siva and ultimately this goes back into Siva. From the original sakti as inherent in Siva, there emanates the 'active energy' (kriyākhyā sakti). By the disturbance of the original equilibrium there arises nāda, and from that arises bindu,
