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Shri Mahavir Jain Aradhana Kendra
www.kobatirth.org
Acharya Shri Kailashsagarsuri Gyanmandir
S'aivism and s'āktism
623
with Tripurasundari, and one of his religious exercises is to habituate himself to think that he is a woman." He also refers to a number of goddesses worshipped as the forms of the S'akti, i.e., Umā, Rudrāni, Durgā, Bhavāni, Kumāri, Kāli, Kāpāli, Mahākāli, Canại, Katyāyani, Karālā, Vijaya, Kausiki, Lalita, Anandabhairavi and Tripurasundari, Tripurasundari being the supreme in excellence and power.?
The same S'akti which is one with S'iva evolves infinite real forms and is present in all those forms; Māyā is not here illusory, but is the real power of S'iva that evolves the whole universe. S'iva, the Self or spirit, is essentially constituted of pure consciousness; S'akti is a part of Him and S'akti manifests herself in the form of Mind and Matter both being derived from the same cause. There is a parallelism. The pure-consciousness of S'iva is immanent in both the Mind and the Matter. Inorganic matter also is consciousness in full subjection to the Power of Ignorance. It is consciousness identifying itself with inorganic matter. Mind and matter are the subjective and objective aspects of the one polarized consciousness.
The Jivas, the individual souls, are the evolutes of the S'akti, the Māyā. They are the finite centres of consciousness and are produced out of Ignorance. They are not unreal, but their reality or experience is limited. They cannot have the full
i Bhandarkar R. G.: Vaisnavism, S'aivism and Minor Religious Systems, p. 146.
2 Ibid. p. 144. 3 Woodroffe John: Shakti and Shakta, pp. 46, 47,
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