Thank you so much Emptybill. I wonder if you or Richard might be able to answer the following two questions. 1) Do Hindus who adhere to the Advaita tradition consider Shankara a shakta? 2) Do we know whether GuruDev and MMY thought of their particular strand of Advaita as being fully within the shakti tradition? In short, would both men consider themselves, and Shankara, as shaktas? Cheers Bill
From: emptybill <emptyb...@yahoo.com> To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Thursday, July 14, 2011 7:53 PM Subject: [FairfieldLife] Re: How to pronounce the mantras This could be a duplicate Yahoo post or maybe not. Sorry but no troth with Yahoo. Bill, Contrary to what you might read, "Shakti" does not mean "energy", as in electricity, but rather "power". Shakti(power) carries none of our modern connotations of a strictly mechanistic force but rather points to what Shakta-s (shakti initiates) see as the intelligence(s) that actualize the cosmos and enact its unmanifest design. You seem to recognize that Shaktivada (shakti-ism) is a doctrine (-vada) that is quite separate from Advaita. It is a doctrine asserting that there is a universal power that manifests the cosmos and that it's actualizations are various all-constituting intelligences. Since these are intelligences, rather than insentient material forces, the further insight is that they are accessible to other intelligences (like us) and that there is a methodology for doing just this. That methodology is called Tantra and includes not only formulae for contacting these intelligences but also specific etiquettes for creating, maintaining and enhancing this contact. These intelligences are deva-s/devi-s … the numinous presences that constitute and animate our body, along with our sense powers, mental operations and the functions of consciousness (chitta). All of these internal deva-s/devi-s are considered micro-processes of macro-intelligences that are massively awake and actively cognizant. They are the internal-external values that order, organize and interconnect the various subjective/objective strata of the universe. This, however, does not include Awareness (chit) which is a reality eulogized as Shiva, the auspicious One, the Presence-Awareness-Felicity that is the essence of all true identity. Sounds abstract but that's the cliff notes version for dummies like me. You may find it a mere iteration of what you already know but it never hurts of hear it again. Now I think I'll go have a beer.……………………………………………………………………………… --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, William Parkinson <ameradian2@...> wrote: > > > > Richard and Emptybill: Given my rudimentary knowledge at this point I am > wondering if the both of you can clarify something. I went and looked up on > Wikipedia about Sri Vidya. I thought that the basic shakti doctrine was as > follows: Shiva is the static consciousness that pervades all things, while > shakti represents (envisioned in feminine form) the dynamic form of > consciousness. In essence, they have divided up the notion of Brahman. One is > pure consciousness, static in existence, while the other is pure > consciousness in its changeable phenomenal form? I thought all these divine > goddesses were simply a manifestation of shakti. Is that not correct? > Cheers > Bill  > >
