Thursday, October 23, 2008

The Forms of Parashakti

Parashakti is God's Consciousness that pervades all existence. As the orginal consciousness of all that exists Parashakti is Pure Consciousness; from which all energy, intelligence and awareness arises. Thus Parashakti is experienced and depicted in amorphous forms such as Divine Light, Pure Love, Pure Consciousness, Pure Space and Pure Intelligence. Amorphous forms are not equal to formlessness. Some Hindu scholars equate Parashakti or Satchitananda to formlessness. This is not theologically accurate. Formlessness is the realm of Parabrahman, the third Aspect of God. Infact part of the mystery of God is how form and formlessness co-exist, (It is actually a mistake for me to use the word co-exist to describe the relationship between Parashakti and Parabrahman, but this is for the lack of a better word) but then again God is All-Mighty.

Knowledgeable Hindu pundits describe the Aspects of God tersely as: rupa – easily tangible form; rupa-arupa, form-formlessness – less tangible form, and arupa, formlessness absolutely intangible. Parashakti is rupa-arupa, less tangible form. To be clear, tangible form (rupa) is anything that is constrainted by the three dimentions of height, lenght and width, within the fourth dimension of space. In other words just about anything we can see and touch in the physical or spiritual worlds. From the spiritual perspective, rupa also includes spiritual forms, even forms we visualize in our mind are considered rupa. Whereas rupa-arupa are forms that are less tangible and not constrsint by height, lenght and width, but do take up space. Light, sound, space, even mental or spiritual space, feelings such a love and hate; all this are examples of rupa-arupa. The distinctions between the three Aspects of God, become especially important to understand properly in the quest for God Realization. Generally a guru will help the sishya with this understanding when the sishya begins to experience God mystically.