Reality has certain innate, inherent powers, which can be broadly termed as shakti. It has the power to project, sustain and withdraw the world. The Upanishads explain this with the example of the spider’s web.
The spider has the ability to project or create its own web out of itself, stay in it or sustain it and in the end take it back into itself or swallow it. The Sanskrit word srishti is normally understood as creation.
But strictly speaking the world is not created it is projected, like the dance of the dancer. The dance though not separate from the dancer remains with her in an unmanifest form, when she is not dancing.
She has the ability to project the dance at will, very much like the spider weaves its web. Similarly the world is created through Shiva’s dance of creation.
Shiva or the Supreme Reality has the power to project, sustain and withdraw the dance of creation. We say dance because dance conveys movement, fluidity and change. Like the dance, the world is constantly changing. The dancer goes through various movements, while she herself remains unchanged. So too, the Lord remains unchanged through the whole process of creation.
The Lord or the Supreme Reality has two other major powers. It has the power to delude itself and also the power to remove the delusion. Despite perfect vision the blindfolded person is not able to see when the scarf is round his eyes. In a similar fashion the Reality deludes itself or plays with itself, by projecting itself as the little beings of the world.
We have all the powers of God because we are cast in His mould. Through the process of sadhana we shower grace on ourselves and come out of this self inflicted delusion. The Supreme Consciousness is the very core of our personality.
Like the sun or light it is self-luminous, conscious by itself and not dependent on anything for support. It is surrounded by a layer of ignorance or vasanas which can be termed as unconsciousness. It is a state in which we are not conscious of anything. Sleep is a part of this layer.
This layer is surrounded by the layer of sub-consciousness in which all our thoughts and emotions exist. This is the layer that projects the dream world and holds as it were all our ideas, philosophies and visions about ourselves as well as the world. The conscious mind exists in the outermost layer of our personality.
Logically if you tell a sad person to give up sadness it will not have the required result because sadness rests at the level of the subconscious and not the conscious mind. Unless we are able to reach the sub conscious level of our mind the desired result will elude us and the negative emotions will remain unaltered.
The subconscious level can be reached through faith; deep convictions can transform the negativities stored at this level. But even faith cannot reach the unconscious level. Only grace can touch this layer – God’s grace or the grace of the Guru.
A spiritual master of the Chinmaya lineage, Swami Nikhilananda Saraswati is the Regional Head of Chinmaya Mission in New Delhi and its centers in Noida, Gurgaon and Faridabad.
Swami Nikhilananda Saraswati
