KRIYASHAKTI


Kama...is in the Rig Veda (x, 129) the personification of that feeling which leads and propels to creation. He was the first movement that stirred the ONE, after its manifestation from the purely abstract principle, to create, "Desire first arose in It, which was the primal germ of mind; and which sages, searching with their intellect, have discovered to be the bond which connects Entity with Non-Entity." A hymn in the Atharva Veda exalts Kama into a supreme God and Creator, and says: "Kama was born the first. Him, neither gods nor fathers (Pitara) nor men have equalled."... The Atharva Veda identifies him with Agni, but makes him superior to that god. The Taittariya Brahmana makes him allegorically the son of Dharma (moral religious duty, piety and justice) and of Sraddha (faith). Elsewhere Kama is born from the heart of Brahmâ; therefore he is Atma-Bhu "Self-Existent" and Aja, the "unborn".

The Secret Doctrine, ii 176

 There is a vital connection between Kriyashakti, the creative potency of self-conscious thought, and Kamadeva, the Rig Vedic deity of compassion. At the highest metaphysical level, Kriyashakti is continuous with the most primal currents of cosmic creativity and impulsion. This supreme potency of self-conscious thought is capable of bodying forth from the most sublime states of transcendental awareness an unbroken stream of emanations that may serve as sources of strength for all aspirants on lower planes of consciousness. Like all the mighty shakti powers hidden in the constitution of man, Kriyashakti can be fully aroused and made active only out of the most compassionate and universal motives. The divine imagination can be awakened only in the service of universal good. This capacity to enact in manifestation an ideal vision of the Agathon is a self-conscious embodiment of the creative compassion of the cosmos symbolized in Kamadeva. Ordinarily, the current of kama is a force that makes for human bondage. This impact of kama, however, is but a shadowy reflection of the cosmic principle of divine creativity and universal compassion.

 The Rig Vedic Hymn to Creation highlights the intimate relationship between precosmic desire at the most primordial level and precosmic ideation. Precosmic ideation connotes a great deal more than mere passive contemplation of abstract ideas. Indeed, the very concept of ideation implies active volition. At the most primeval level of the cosmos, on the plane of Mahat, this volitional agency is represented as the primal seed or germ of mind. It is the pristine ground and unmanifest matrix of universal self-existence. As the causeless Germ in the Root, it is Atma-Bhu and Aja – Self-Existent and Unborn. It is the unmanifest Logoic Heart of the cosmos-to-be, the ineffable self-conscious source which radiates through every dimension of space, and the transcendental reflection of the unknowable Absolute. Between the ineffable zero of Be-ness and the infinitude of existing beings, it swells and vibrates with the pure desire to create, the volition of the One to become the many. It is within this mysterious Root of the cosmos that the highest Rishis have found and realized "the bond which connects Entity with Non-Entity". Such a Rishi has plumbed to its depth the problem of identity and mastered the meaning of universal self-existence in Deity. The fully perfected human being has become one with Deity, one with God. He is therefore able to understand from within his own universal self-consciousness the deific principle of cosmic creation. He has become one of the rays streaming forth from the heart of the Spiritual Sun. He has become one in consciousness and being with the kernel of the mystery of the One and the many.

 Apart from this most mysterious and sacred realization, it is logically and psychologically impossible to resolve the impasse between the unconditional and the conditioned. In the arcane metaphysics of Gupta Vidya, the One without a second, by its very nature, can have no relationship to the world of differentiated time and space, the realm of manifested subjects and objects. How, then, is it possible to account for the world of differentiation? To the uninitiated mind it would seem that either there must be a god who creates the world out of nothing or that the world and all its life are a godless accident sprung from material chaos. Yet this apparent dilemma – anthropomorphism or atheism – is but a false dichotomy. Through travelling the inward path of meditation (dhyana), it is possible to apprehend the bond between that One, which is eternally absolute, and the world of time and of manifestation. To understand is to become and to participate in the mystery. One must merge in consciousness with the Logos, become refulgent like the sun with the unconditioned potentiality of Divine Thought and diffuse the rays of unconstrained creativity throughout universal space.

 The universal indifference of the Logos to all possible modes and forms of manifestation is equivalent to its universal compassion and benevolence. As the mystical mirror of the Agathon, it is neither subject to itself nor possessed of any object. It is neither added to nor subtracted from by the appearance or disappearance of the manifested cosmos. To begin to conceive of it, one might think of a realm of the unmanifest causally prior to the region of the manifest. Even this, however, may only confuse minds addicted to thinking in terms of subjects and objects. It is extremely difficult to sunder Deity from its emanations, to distinguish between the subliminal force of abstract terms like TAT, Daiviprakriti and Mulaprakriti and the unmanifest Logos. Ultimately, even these words are themselves emanations from that plane of transcendental self-existence. They are themselves reflections and radiations, focussed out of compassion and for the sake of understanding, of the consciousness of enlightened beings. They are meant to serve as the basis for deep meditation and an inward ascent in noetic consciousness.

 Through intensity of devotion in meditation upon such potent ideas, even the neophyte can come to sense some glimmering of the mystery of the relation between Entity and Non-Entity. When one ideates in the realm of pure thought, without reference to objects or temporality, one will in the end experience within oneself the intrinsic continuity extending from one pole of that meditation – which is voidness – to the other pole – which is fullness and plenitude. Through this mystical experience of emptiness and plenitude within the same state of universal consciousness, one experiences something of the mystery of Fohat, something of the mystery of the bond connecting Entity with Non-Entity.

 Hidden within the folds of this mystery is the ultimate metaphysical basis of all Kriyashakti, all creative imagination. At this highest level one must understand the whole universe as the product of the highest Kriyashakti. One must therefore recognize the consubstantiality of the essential nature of each human being with the Divine Ground that is prior and unrelated to all manifestation. This recognition can come about only through entering into that realm of pure being which is the Divine Darkness prior to all worlds and to all forms. The highest basis of creativity is, naturally enough, very far removed from worldly notions and tokens of creativity. It has nothing to do with concretized desires for results impelled by an acute sense of deficiency and want. It is completely free from any illusions foisted by an incomplete self-consciousness upon that which is necessarily mutable and mortal. In spanning the poles of pure voidness and pure plenitude, this highest Kriyashaktic creativity transcends all limited modes of affirmation and negation, whether in relation to space or time or motion. It is neither tinged with the angularity of self-interest nor trammelled by the distortions of exaggeration and denial.

Something of the supreme self-confidence of self-existence is conveyed in the hymn of the Atharva Veda which portrays Kamadeva as the offspring of Dharma and Shraddha. Dharma in this sense refers to supreme necessity, flowing forth from precosmic harmony or Rta as its architectonic embodiment in abstract space. On the one side, it is the stern decree of necessity, imposing harmony upon the relations of all manifested beings; on the other side, it is the compassionate fitness of all things and the vital sense of everlasting right. In the primal exercise of pure cosmic Kriyashakti, there is an element of seeming involuntariness, of that which is both binding and holy. In this dharma there is a solemnity and sacredness which far transcends all derivative notions of destiny and faith, all earthly promises and prospects. Standing prior to all of these, and serving as the root of all legitimate aspiration, dharma is the unwavering and authentic imperative of the truth of Self-Existence. It is the abstract principle of integrity and the fount of all obligation and its fulfilment.

 At the same time, there is in that pure cosmic Kriyashakti an element of shraddha or faith. This faith is an unshakeable conviction of the inherent value of the action of Kriyashakti, independent of entropy and of the reflection of creativity in the complex processes of change. It is the unbroken assurance of the Divine, which is unborn and undying; it is the full freedom of selflessness, the formless joy and boundless beneficence that gives freely of itself without a shadow or hint of calculation. Thus, the allegorical offspring of Dharma and Shraddha is the mystical power of divine creation at the heart of the invisible cosmos. It is Kriyashakti personified as Kamadeva, the infinite potency of Divine Thought and the Law of laws, Compassion Absolute. It is Eros in its most profound philosophical sense, the awesome creative and therapeutic force extolled in the Banquet of Plato. Whether one speaks of it as pure love or cosmic creativity, it cannot be understood without reference to a world that is unmanifest and a state of being which is prior to manifestation. Before the dawn of manvantaric manifestation, pure thought and pure creative desire become fused within the primal germ of mind. This spirit of unconditioned self-existence was called by H.P. Blavatsky "Love without an object". As the mystical confluence of shraddha and dharma, it is both the source and the fulfilment of all devotion and discipline, all love and service. It is the one flame burning without wick, fuel or stand amidst the boundless field of the Divine Darkness.

 This highest Logoic centre of the cosmos is the primordial source from which all differentiated beings come into existence and to which they return. It is all in all, and the binding force of all. In it the many live, move and have their being. It is the law of growth and the entelechy of all existence. All the manifested processes of cosmic life, with their complex interplay of creation, continuity and change, are crystalline aspects of the meta-biological Logoic life within and beyond the cosmos. As that universal current of life is itself unborn and self-existent, there is that in its reflected modes which cannot be construed in terms of any finite sequence of antecedents or formal set of preconditions. The mystery of life outside the cosmos, yet also at its root, is mirrored in the myriad living beings that people the cosmos on its different planes. Each is a spark of that original creativity, and each is an embodiment of its law. Thus, whilst there is comprehensible transmission and continuity among living forms, there are also sudden changes and creative transmutations of living form that cannot be reduced to finite causes. These changes do not, however, represent randomness or disorder within the cosmos. Rather, instead of being traceable to the action of the parts, they represent the living presence of the whole in each, the presence of the One amidst and within the many.

 On the physical plane this is the problem of heredity and variation which has intrigued intrepid thinkers throughout the centuries. Since Pythagoras inserted the idea of evolution into early European thought, many philosophers have ardently sought to account for biological continuity and change. The rich resources of ancient thought have been largely eclipsed since the nineteenth century by empirical science's narrow and obsessive interpretation of Darwin's thought. When one considers Darwinian notions in the light of a broader stream of thought in world culture, their exclusive respectability can hardly be defended. For though there is evidently something plausible in Darwinian explanations of speciation and variation, there is also something grossly inadequate. What it accomplishes by way of concrete explanation, it achieves at the cost of mechanistic assumptions. By insisting upon the mechanical efficacy of transmission of characteristics at the level of individual instances, it renders collective evolution utterly random and chaotic. Whilst freeing biological thought from the arbitrary anthropomorphism and hazy teleologies of the Middle Ages, it leaves life to languish as a statistical accident, a blind offspring of a philosophy that is itself blind to the potency of ideation.

 The price of this shallow materialism and narrow empiricism is a persistent inability to conceive of the nature of the creative potential inherent within human beings. Without taking into account the logic of the Logos on the plane of Akasha, it is impossible to form any adequate conception of the nature of the modes of transmission of life on the physiological plane. Genetic transmission can only account for some of the variations within patterns that themselves cannot be explained by physical heredity. In order to understand the conception, gestation and birth of even a single human form, one must allow for the invisible progenitors such as the Lunar Pitris. Certainly, to gain some grasp of the elusive logic of human procreation, as it applies to the entire race, one must see the present mode of procreation in relation to a series of different modes in the past and the future. One must consider the complex history of anthropogenesis, recognizing the diverse roles played by differing hosts of creators and Pitris in the formation and ensoulment of human vestures on the earth. At the very least, one must attempt to abstract one's idea of human procreation from its present means of accomplishment. Hence, one is helped by mythic accounts of the mysterious modes of birth that characterized the earlier human races – the chhaya birth, the sweat-born, the egg-born and the androgynous. Citing a telling example from zoology, H.P. Blavatsky pleaded for a more open-minded approach to the nature of human reproduction.

 The very interesting polyp Stauridium passes alternately from gemmation into the sex method of reproduction. Curiously enough, though it grows merely as a polyp on a stalk, it produces gemmules, which ultimately develop into a sea-nettle or Medusa. The Medusa is utterly dissimilar to its parent-organism, the Stauridium. It also reproduces itself differently, by sexual method, and from the resulting eggs, Stauridia once more put in an appearance. This striking fact may assist many to understand that a form may be evolved – as in the sexual Lemurians from Hermaphrodite parentage – quite unlike its immediate progenitors. It is, moreover, unquestionable that in the case of human incarnations the law of Karma, racial or individual, overrides the subordinate tendencies of "Heredity", its servant.

Ibid., 177-178

 The cosmic law of Karma, which works through all race evolution, is involved in the descent of the Kumaras, the solar ancestors who endowed nascent humanity with the power of Manas over eighteen million years ago during the Third Root Race. That same law of inherited Karma is also involved in the procrastination of some of that host, as in their eventual retribution whereby they were projected into senseless forms. Similarly, the law of Karma comprehends the vast scope of the hosts of the Lunar Pitris working up the materials of the living lower kingdoms throughout the preceding Rounds. This complex karma of all humanity over millions upon millions of years is involved in the changes and continuities affecting the human race. That karma involves the activity of beings of surpassing wisdom and power as well as myriads upon myriads of elementals, the living atoms of Nature's sounding-board. It should not be surprising, therefore, that it is impossible to explain or anticipate everything that is transmitted through human beings merely through some theory of physical heredity, however complicated in terms of modern biochemistry and microbiology. Whilst it is possible to gain helpful lessons through a microscopic study of its physical manifestations, there are far more important insights to be gained by rising in consciousness to a more global awareness of human life. It is in the multi-dimensional life of humanity as a whole that the deepest mysteries are to be discerned regarding the Logoic processes of creation, continuity and change.

 Similarly, abstracting from the present human condition and attempting to recover in consciousness some awareness of the earlier androgynous condition of humanity can help in coming to understand Kriyashaktic creativity. Before the separation of the sexes took place over eighteen million years ago, human beings in the Third Root Race were hermaphroditic or androgynous. Subsequently, the familiar form of division into male and female has prevailed. Insofar as human beings generate in consciousness an exaggerated sense of specialization or polarization through being male or female, they will experience either a false sense of insufficiency or a false sense of self-sufficiency on the lunar plane, which acts as an obstacle to creativity. Once polarization has taken place, there is an intrinsic incompleteness in the male principle and a corresponding if deceptive wholeness or self-sufficiency in the female principle. Each of these could inhibit that potent force of fearlessness and detachment in the realm of imagination which is required to release the higher creative will. Until one overcomes the lower psychic sense of completeness or incompleteness that accompanies the astral form, one cannot tap that authentic fearlessness which enables one to enter the Divine Darkness prior to all worlds and all forms. One must readily transcend the polarity of the astral form that refers to being male or female if one seeks to recover an inner sense of the stern necessity and divine compassion of mental and spiritual creation, and if one is to root oneself in the supreme faith and abiding self-existence of the immortal Triad.

 The wings of ideation are typically weighted down through identification with the astral and physical form. One's capacities for meditation and creativity are clipped through attachment to that which is merely a mutable projection. The force of this attachment is increased by the activity of kamamanas, particularly through speech and cerebration. All of these cause the astral to bloat until it becomes quite heavy. It is significant that in hinting about the after-death states of consciousness, Plato in the Phaedo uses as the primary pair of opposites the heavy and the light. Those whose souls were weighted down in life are weighted down even in death. In contrast, those who lightened themselves in life experience, effortlessly, a degree of lightness after death. They are able to ascend to the higher planes of consciousness. To experience the ultimate in lightness and effortlessness combined with fearlessness, detachment and faith in creativity, one must transcend altogether the astral plane. One must develop an inward sense of being that can function freely through the karana sharira, the permanent vesture which is the basis of the permanent astral body.

 A developed disciple of Brahma Vach can gestate such an astral body in any life, and continue to do so over succeeding lives. Thus he, like an Adept, will eventually be able to exercise some volitional control over incarnation and to conceive and contemplate a voluntary incarnation. This process, continuing through many lifetimes, involves the hatching out of astral matter of a particular kind of permanent astral vesture, which itself is emanated out of the karana sharira, out of the purest vesture which might be called "the meditation body". It is what is sometimes called in Buddhist literature the Buddha-nature or Buddha-body. Only through profound meditation can one gain a sense of the potential reality of that subtle vesture of meditation. And only then can one transcend without effort the seeming insufficiency and false sufficiency that belongs to the astral plane through the separation of the sexes.

 Long before an individual attains to this advanced and deliberate state of self-evolution, he can gain a provisional and theoretical understanding of Kriyashakti arising out of meditation as the paradigm of creativity. Citing the mysterious role played by Kriyashakti in the evolution of humanity and the presence of this power as latent in every human being, H.P. Blavatsky characterized Kriyashakti as

the mysterious power of thought which enables it to produce external, perceptible, phenomenal results by its own inherent energy. The ancients held that any idea will manifest itself externally if one's attention (and Will) is deeply concentrated upon it; similarly, an intense volition will be followed by the desired result. A Yogi generally performs his wonders by means of Itchasakti (Will-power) and Kriyasakti.

Ibid., 173

 Human beings in every walk of life have had intimations of the reality of such powers, and even realized that what the Inner Self truly wishes is what ultimately is handed down through justice. This is Kriyashakti at the simplest level. This relationship of intense volition to tangible result cannot be understood inductively or in terms of likes and dislikes. One cannot even begin to ponder the idea of what one's inner Self – the Ishwara within – chooses without attaining a high degree of detachment. According to Patanjali, vairagya, or detachment, is indifference to everything but the Supreme Soul, rooted in a sense of supreme fitness and inner moral necessity. To act for and as the Supreme Self is to embody both dharma and shraddha, moral necessity and spiritual conviction. Paradoxically, when the mind and heart are concentrated deeply upon that which is totally right, one no longer desires anything for oneself. Then one will reach one's goal. This process of mental and spiritual creativity through and on behalf of universal good is experienced through mystic meditation. In the perfected human being, permanently rooted in consciousness on the plane of Akasha, Kriyashakti unfolds as the ceaseless capacity of compassionate ideation extended in protective benevolence over all beings.

 This divine capacity of the perfected human being is derived from the creative heart of the Logos. Its exercise by Buddhas and Mahatmas is inseparable from the creative compassion in the primal germ of mind at the origin of the cosmos. All phenomenal matter is only a kind of appearance which, at the root, is in essence inseparable from Root Matter or Mulaprakriti. In that primordial matter, which is the invisible essence behind all phenomenal matter, there is Daiviprakriti, the primordial Divine Light which is also Life in the highest sense. That eternal Life is also Light and Electricity at the earliest precosmic level. All of these are reflected at the dawn of manifestation in cosmic electricity or in the Light of the Logos in manifestation. They are reflected in the life that then becomes the Fohatic energy, which maintains an entire set of worlds in manifestation. At the primordial level, Light and Life can be summoned out of the Mulaprakriti which is hidden in phenomenal matter. Kamadeva is this highest energy of the purest ideation awakened in the primal germ of mind through Kriyashakti on the plane of the Logos. It is through Kriyashakti that the Lords of Wisdom, the Kumaras, the eldest sons of Brahms born of the body of night, created progeny in the Third Root Race of humanity. That progeny was and is both a single wondrous Being and a radiant Host of beings,

the so-called SONS OF WILL AND YOGA, or the "ancestors" (the spiritual forefathers) of all the subsequent and present Arhats, or Mahatmas, [created] in a truly immaculate way. They were indeed created, not begotten, as were their brethren of the Fourth Race, who were generated sexually after the separation of sexes, the Fall of man. For creation is but the result of will acting on phenomenal matter, the calling forth out of it the primordial divine Light and eternal Life. They were the "holy seed-grain" of the future Saviours of Humanity.

Ibid.

 The gestation and emanation of a new nucleus of Mahatmas and Adepts set apart for the coming races of humanity arose out of the original meditation of the highest divine beings in the Third Root Race. This is Kriyashakti in its most exalted sense. It is intimately connected with the mysteries of initiation, whereby a Bodhisattva can, out of the light of the Dhyani Buddha which is within himself, project a Manushya Buddha and a Nirmanakaya. It is also possible, through Kriyashakti, to project a certain type of human being which becomes a model and a redemptive saviour for races to come. This, associated with Padmapani Bodhisattva, is the highest and most sacred form of creativity. Every human being has within himself the principle of Christos, Chenresi, Avalokiteshvara or Padmapani Buddha. Every human being has within the spiritual essence of the universal light of the universal Logos which is eternal Life, and which encompasses each and every form of divine creativity.

 Attempt, I entreat you, to mark what I say with as keen an observation as you can. He who has been disciplined to this point in Love, by contemplating beautiful objects gradually, and in their order, now arriving at the end of all that concerns Love, on a sudden beholds a beauty wonderful in its nature. This is it, O Socrates, for the sake of which all the former labours were endured. It is eternal, unproduced, indestructible; neither subject to increase nor decay; not, like other things, partly beautiful and partly deformed; not at one time beautiful and at another time not; not beautiful in relation to one thing and deformed in relation to another; not here beautiful and there deformed; not beautiful in the estimation of one person and deformed in that of another; nor can this supreme beauty be figured to the imagination like a beautiful face, or beautiful hands, or any portion of the body, nor like any discourse, nor any science. Nor does it subsist in any other that lives or is, either in earth, or in heaven, or in any other place; but it is eternally uniform and consistent, and monoeidic with itself. All other things are beautiful through a participation of it, with this condition, that although they are subject to production and decay, it never becomes more or less, or endures any change. When anyone, ascending from a correct system of Love, begins to contemplate this supreme beauty, he already touches the consummation of his labour.

The Banquet
–PLATO

Hermes, August 1984
by Raghavan Iyer