The Serpent Power — Arthur Avalon (Sir John Woodroffe) (1924)
the Divine Father. The Mother Herself is all activity and Gunamayī (in Her aspect as Prakriti composed of the Gunas). Her nakedness means that, though She encompasses all, there is nothing to encompass Herself; her darkness means that She is inscrutable, Avāng-mānasagocharā (beyond the reach of thought and speech). Of course, this is no partition of reality into two (there lies the imperfection of the Sāngkhya doctrine of Purusha and Prakriti, which is otherwise all right), but merely polarisation in our experience of an indivisible fact which is the primordial (Ādyā) Shakti itself. Thus Chit is also Shakti. Shiva is Shakti and Shakti is Shiva, as the Tantras say. It is Gunāshraya (support of Gunas) as well as Gunamaya (whose substance is Gunas); Nirguna (attributeless) as well as Saguna (with attribute), as said in a well-known passage of the Chandī.
“Your suggestive hint¹ makes the nature of the Kundalī Shakti rather clear to me. You are quite right, perhaps, in saying that the cosmic Shakti is the Samashti (collectivity) in relation to which the Kundalī in the bodies is only the Vyashti (individual): it is an illustration, a reproduction on a miniature scale, a microcosmic plan, of the whole. The law or principle of the whole—that of macrocosmic Shakti—should therefore be found in the Kundalī. That law we have seen to be the law of polarisation into static-dynamic or potential-kinetic aspects. In the living body, therefore, there must be such polarisation. Now, the Kundalī coiled three times and a half at the Mūlādhāra is the indispensable and unfailing static background of the dynamic Shakti operative in the whole body, carrying on processes and working out changes. The body, therefore, may be compared to a magnet with two poles. The Mūlādhāra is the static pole in relation to the rest of the body, which is dynamic; the working the body necessarily presupposes and finds such a static support, hence perhaps¹ the name Mūlādhāra, the fundamental support.
1 That Kundalinī is the static Shakti.
In one sense, the static Shakti at the Mūlādhāra is necessarily coexistent with the creating and evolving Shakti of the body, because the dynamic aspect or pole can never be without its static counterpart. In another sense, it is the Shakti left over (you have yourself pointed this out, and the italics are yours) after the Prithivī—the last of the Bhūtas—has been created, a magazine of power to be drawn upon and utilised for further activity, if there should arise any need for such. Taking the two senses together (yours as well as mine), Shakti at the Mūlādhāra is both coexistent with every act of creation or manifestation and is the residual effect of such act—both cause and effect, in fact— an idea which, deeply looked into, shows no real contradiction. There is, in fact, what the physicist will describe as a cycle or circuit in action. Let us take the impregnated ovum—the earliest embryological stage of the living body. In it the Kundalī Shakti is already presented in its two polar aspects: the ovum, which the mother-element represents, one pole (possibly the static), and the spermatazoon, which is the father-element, represents the other (possibly the dynamic).² From their fusion proceed those processes which the biologist calls differentiation and integration; but in all this process of creation the cycle can be fairly easily traced. Shakti flows out of the germinal cell (fertilised ovum), seizes upon foreign matter, and assimilates it, and thereby grows in bulk; divides and subdivides itself, and then again co-ordinates all its divided parts into one organic whole. Now in all this
1 Certainly.
2 The process of fertilisation is dealt with in the Mātrikābheda Tantra.
the Divine Father. The Mother Herself is all activity and Gunamayī (in Her aspect as Prakriti composed of the Gunas). Her nakedness means that, though She encompasses all, there is nothing to encompass Herself; her darkness means that She is inscrutable, Avāng-mānasagocharā (beyond the reach of thought and speech). Of course, this is no partition of reality into two (there lies the imperfection of the Sāngkhya doctrine of Purusha and Prakriti, which is otherwise all right), but merely polarisation in our experience of an indivisible fact which is the primordial (Ādyā) Shakti itself. Thus Chit is also Shakti. Shiva is Shakti and Shakti is Shiva, as the Tantras say. It is Gunāshraya (support of Gunas) as well as Gunamaya (whose substance is Gunas); Nirguna (attributeless) as well as Saguna (with attribute), as said in a well-known passage of the Chandī.
“Your suggestive hint¹ makes the nature of the Kundalī Shakti rather clear to me. You are quite right, perhaps, in saying that the cosmic Shakti is the Samashti (collectivity) in relation to which the Kundalī in the bodies is only the Vyashti (individual): it is an illustration, a reproduction on a miniature scale, a microcosmic plan, of the whole. The law or principle of the whole—that of macrocosmic Shakti—should therefore be found in the Kundalī. That law we have seen to be the law of polarisation into static-dynamic or potential-kinetic aspects. In the living body, therefore, there must be such polarisation. Now, the Kundalī coiled three times and a half at the Mūlādhāra is the indispensable and unfailing static background of the dynamic Shakti operative in the whole body, carrying on processes and working out changes. The body, therefore, may be compared to a magnet with two poles. The Mūlādhāra is the static pole in relation to the rest of the body, which is dynamic; the working the body necessarily presupposes and finds such a static support, hence perhaps¹ the name Mūlādhāra, the fundamental support.
1 That Kundalinī is the static Shakti.
In one sense, the static Shakti at the Mūlādhāra is necessarily coexistent with the creating and evolving Shakti of the body, because the dynamic aspect or pole can never be without its static counterpart. In another sense, it is the Shakti left over (you have yourself pointed this out, and the italics are yours) after the Prithivī—the last of the Bhūtas—has been created, a magazine of power to be drawn upon and utilised for further activity, if there should arise any need for such. Taking the two senses together (yours as well as mine), Shakti at the Mūlādhāra is both coexistent with every act of creation or manifestation and is the residual effect of such act—both cause and effect, in fact— an idea which, deeply looked into, shows no real contradiction. There is, in fact, what the physicist will describe as a cycle or circuit in action. Let us take the impregnated ovum—the earliest embryological stage of the living body. In it the Kundalī Shakti is already presented in its two polar aspects: the ovum, which the mother-element represents, one pole (possibly the static), and the spermatazoon, which is the father-element, represents the other (possibly the dynamic).² From their fusion proceed those processes which the biologist calls differentiation and integration; but in all this process of creation the cycle can be fairly easily traced. Shakti flows out of the germinal cell (fertilised ovum), seizes upon foreign matter, and assimilates it, and thereby grows in bulk; divides and subdivides itself, and then again co-ordinates all its divided parts into one organic whole. Now in all this
1 Certainly.
2 The process of fertilisation is dealt with in the Mātrikābheda Tantra.
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