Despite the endless diversity that we perceive around us, the universe consists of only one ingredient—a single, all-pervasive substance which is the common source of each and every property that defines the world in which we live. Space, time, force, matter—virtually all objects and events are manifestations of this fundamental ground field of unceasing, indestructible vitality.
   Such statements, expressing the unity of all Creation, describe a world-view which is commonly shared by both the vanguard physical scientists of today and the venerated yogic sages of antiquity. While modern science has brought this aspect of reality to light through an in-depth examination of the outer world, yogic science has arrived at the same discovery by delving into the world within. Thus, we now have further confirmation of the ancient yogic teaching that the internal reality (the inner Self) is identical in nature to the external reality (the cosmic Self).
   The similarities between modern science’s description of basic reality and that put forth by Yoga do not stop here, however. In the course of this section, as well as elsewhere in this web site, we will find that recent scientific discoveries are corroborating, with amazing frequency, the world-view outlined by the philosophies of many spiritual sciences. Of course, compared with the spiritual scientist who has been investigating the true nature of things for thousands of years, today’s physical scientist must be considered a neophyte in the quest for the essence of reality.
   One of the most important similarities between the physical and spiritual sciences is that in both these disciplines, all true knowledge must be supported by scientific experimentation and not just creative intuition or intellectual reasoning.
   In any scientific field, two main types of experimental research are performed. In the first type, experiments attempt to solve one more of the baffling riddles with which nature constantly confounds the human intellect; and in the second type, previous experiments are repeated in order to verify the original results. Modern physical science is, of course, actively engaged in both types. Yogic science, on the other hand, is no longer involved in experimentation aimed at breaking new ground, for this ancient spiritual discipline no longer needs to contend with any unsolved riddles; its blueprint of reality has been totally complete for countless generations, so the only type of experimental research being performed in this field nowadays is the second type. Any one of us may repeat the ancient Rishis’ experiments and personally verify their findings by experiencing the essential nature of reality for our self. Accordingly, we should expect yogic science to be capable of presenting us with a truly comprehensive picture of Creation’s real structure, unlike the limited models of modem science, which still contain many important, unfilled gaps.
   Glaringly absent from the findings of modern science, for example, is the exact nature of the universal, organic substratum that forms the ground field from which all manifest reality springs forth. What exactly is this fundamental, nonmaterial, ever-active, all-pervasive, indestructible “stuff” that unifies Creation? What is this power it possesses which enables it to assume or relinquish material form apparently at will? And exactly who or what decides when these manifestations shall occur or vanish?
   To answer such questions, Yoga presents us with a concept called “the universal mind.” Since most Western readers will undoubtedly decide that this concept sounds suspiciously like the one they refer to as “God,” before we go any further perhaps we’d better attempt to establish some common understanding about the concept of divinity as it applies to the field of spiritual science.

Is God Dead?
   The modern concept of God is a highly ambiguous one, meaning many different things to many different people. Some of us are uplifted by it, while others find it offensive; some of us believe that God is the force of Truth or Love, while others insist that He has a humanlike form. Members of organized religions generally view God as sectarian; they feel that their sect alone has access to supreme divinity. Nonreligious people either question His existence or deny it altogether, proclaiming Him to be a fabrication of the human mind.
   Most modern scientists argue that there is no place for the concept of divinity in its models of Creation, but there are many notable exceptions and their number is increasing rapidly. This may be surprising to many of us who have grown up in an era of violent conflict between science and religion, but the fact is that this centuries-old feud is well on its way to becoming resolved amicably, thanks to the coming-of-age of modern physics.
   The battle began back in the Middle Ages, when physical science was still naive and steeped in ignorance, and so the Church unwisely took upon itself the responsibility for explaining things which were really not in the province of religion. Thus, every natural phenomenon was explained to the masses in a theological or miraculous context, a move which the Church would later look back upon with much regret, for as the discoveries of a rapidly maturing field of physical science began to prove such church pronouncements wrong one by one, people became increasingly skeptical about the validity of religious dogma altogether.
   The climax came when Newton presented his model of a creation constructed like a vast precision machine, quite capable of running itself without divine supervision. Western philosophers then used this model of a mechanical, impersonal cosmos as an excuse to banish all notion of spiritual purpose from Creation. Throughout this conflict, theology was further handicapped by the fact that its countless sects were found to be in constant contradiction with one another, while science the world over spoke out with a single, authoritative voice.
      Nevertheless, though modern science had set out to utterly demolish the concept of God, scientists soon began to learn that they were hopelessly mismatched with an adversary who was far more powerful than expected. Instead of annihilating God, physical science has only managed to taint His reputation for a mere few hundred years; in the end it has been science which has been humbled and compelled to retreat, confining itself once and for all to the material aspect of reality and leaving spiritual matters to the sphere of religion where they belong.
   The Newtonian universe has proved to be illusory, and physical science has been forced to forever give up any hope of isolating and observing ultimate reality, that formless, fundamental ground field from which spring forth all manifest phenomena. Despite its systematic debunking of church pronouncements regarding mundane physical objects and events, science has never been able to disprove the real heart of religious belief, the common essence which all religions share, which is the conviction that ultimate reality can be experienced only by mystical means and never by intellectual endeavors.
   Thanks to our modern scientific revolution, then, physical science has ceased to compete with religion; the two fields are complementary rather than contradictory, the purpose of religion being to explore and chart that level of reality at which physical science becomes ineffective. This reconciliation was foreseen by the great physicist Wolfgang Pauli, who in 1927 made the following statement to his fellow scientist Warner Heisenberg: “. . . it was precisely the idea of an objective world running its course in time and space according to strict causal laws that produced a sharp clash between science and the spiritual formulations of the various religions. If science goes beyond this strict view—and it has done just that with relativity theory and is likely to go even further with quantum theory—then the relationship between science and the contents which religions try to express must change once again.
   By and large, an understanding of this amazing reconciliation has not yet filtered down to the average person, for our modern literature, art and philosophy are all still steeped in the now-archaic belief that Creation is meaningless and purposeless. This being the case, let’s now take a more up-to-date look at the cosmos to see if we can once again find a place for God among all our scientific discoveries.

 

The Universal Mind
“My religion,” wrote Albert Einstein “consists of a humble admiration for the illimitable superior spirit who reveals Himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble minds. That deeply emotional conviction of the presence of a superior reasoning power, which is revealed in the incomprehensible universe, forms my idea of God.
   This “superior reasoning power” described by Einstein reveals itself to modern physicists in a few important ways which indicate that there is some form of actual intelligence working at the most basic level of reality. Since intelligence can be defined as the ability to create and maintain order for a specific purpose, the existence of some cosmic intelligence would be indicated scientifically if we could find some evidence that both order and purpose are fundamental elements of the universal structure.
   During the infancy of quantum physics, when scientists saw the Newtonian model of Creation crumbling before their very eyes, theories of cosmic chaos came into vogue for a short time; but then, as deeper levels of reality began presenting themselves to the amazed observers, the universe once more proved to be a system of perfect order. In fact, it is just this cosmic harmony which enables theorists such as Einstein to predict and discover natural laws simply by solving mathematical equations.
   Bell’s Theorem is one result of modern research which effectively supports the existence of a harmonious universal order by showing that the behavior of subatomic particles is determined by what other particles are doing at that moment—regardless of the distance that separates them. Each particle seems to “know” at all times what every other particle is up to, and this implies that all the subatomic entities in Creation are in some way intimately interconnected.
   Order, then, is unquestionably a basic ingredient of Creation, but what evidence is there to indicate that there is also some sort of purpose at work?
   Well, thanks to modern physics’ discovery of a law called “the principle of minimum action,” it has now been shown that the interactions which take place at the subatomic level of reality are not simply the effects of previous interactions; rather, they happen spontaneously in order to bring about effects of their own: that is, they occur with an intention to fulfill an explicit purpose!
   At the most elementary level of our physical world, then, things do not happen because they are caused by other things, but instead all events take place as if there were a final cause in mind. In the words of physicist Max Planck, the founder of quantum theory, “Theoretical physics has reached a kind of causality with a definite theological character, without in the least contradicting natural scientific laws.” Then he adds that this principle of minimum action just mentioned above “cannot help but awaken in unbiased minds the feeling that nature is ruled by a rational will aiming at a specific goal.
   Whoever or whatever it is, this cosmic intelligence must either be separate from its creation or an integral part of it. Were it to remain aloof, running things from some remote place outside the universe, its nature would be forever inaccessible, and its laws completely unintelligible to us. But modern scientists are discovering over and over again that Creation is governed from within and not through external manipulation. In other words, God must be somewhere in the universe, and we have already determined that the universe seems to contain only one thing—that mysterious, vibrant “stuff” which we have not yet been able to define. Could this omnipresent substance have anything in common with the all-pervasive intelligence that most of us call God?
   Yogic doctrine confirms what reason and logic lead us to propose at this point: that this omnipotent field, whose eternal dance of creation and destruction accounts for the entire cosmos, must also be the cosmic intelligence that establishes and maintains universal order with a specific purpose in mind. In short, God is not different from His Creation; the universe is God Himself.
   According to Yoga, there is only one real ingredient in all of Creation, and that ingredient is Intelligence “divine consciousness.” The universe, then, is nothing less than a vast sea of vibrant consciousness, an intelligent mind-stuff which produces the characteristics we identify as matter, force, space and time. This means that everything in Creation is made entirely of this divine consciousness, which, of its own free will, becomes all objects and events. The totality of this cosmic mass of consciousness is referred to in Yoga as the universal mind; religion calls it God; and modern science labels it the fundamental ground field.
   Forever hidden from the probing instruments of physical science is the metaphysical fact that the primal energy which vibrates in each subatomic particle is nothing less than a unit of pure awareness. Thus, to obtain an experience of the formless aspect of reality as well as its substantial one, we must invoke the essences of both science and religion, which of course is exactly what the field of spiritual science has done. In the words of Albert Einstein, “Science without religion is lame; religion without science is blind.

 

The Terminology of Yoga
Modern physicists and yogic scientists alike derive their knowledge of reality by investigating realms which are not perceivable by the physical senses. Since the concepts and images of human language are designed to reflect and support only that level of reality which can be perceived by our senses, both physicist and Rishi find such language to be all but useless in describing their experience of more subtle realms.
   Accordingly, physicists employ two different forms of communication in order to convey their ideas and discoveries to others. First, through the abstract language of mathematics, they construct models of reality which can become extremely powerful tools for humankind when applied through technological experimentation, but such models are generally meaningful only to their fellow scientists; the ordinary layperson finds this language all but incomprehensible, like some secret code that can only be deciphered by au expert. Therefore, in order to communicate with the rest of us, physicists try to devise accompanying models of verbal concepts which, though necessarily slightly vague and imprecise, at least convey the essence of their ideas or findings to the masses.
Yogic scientists also employ two different types of language to convey their discoveries and teachings. First, through abstract scriptural terminology, they encapsulate the full import and significance of reality’s basic aspects and thereby make eternal wisdom preservable throughout the ages; but like the mathematical models of modem scientists, these scriptural aphorisms are often so inscrutable that much of their true significance becomes lost to us unless we hear them explained by an accomplished master. The profound caution that “Even the devil can quote scripture for his purpose” attests to the fact that without expert guidance the ordinary person can easily misinterpret the scriptural aphorisms passed down by the perfected masters of spiritual science.
   Esoteric scripture, then, is often employed by perfected masters in order to communicate with one another. But, since they, like the modem physical scientists, also desire to make their discoveries available to virtually every person interested in learning about true reality, they also endeavor to express the inexpressible as clearly as possible through the simple and concrete symbology of metaphor. By encapsulating abstract metaphysical concepts in the form of familiar images, they make it possible for every one of us to grasp the essence of even the most subtle realities and apply this knowledge to our everyday life.
   Of even greater significance is the demonstrable fact that the symbols employed by yogic science are not merely contrived representations of essential truths, but are also intimately connected to these truths in a mysterious way which will be made clearer when we examine the phenomenon of mantra in a later section. This connection empowers each yogic symbol to serve as a kind of spiritual transformer, a channel through which energy of transformation can be transmitted to us from perfected masters; thus, through repeated contemplation of these symbols we find that gradually, along with a steady refinement of our intellectual understanding, our everyday experience of reality becomes corrected as well.
   Yoga’s metaphoric models of reality date back far beyond the beginning of recorded history. For untold millennia such knowledge was imprinted solely upon the memories of specially gifted sages, passed on from mind to mind, generation by generation, only through spoken word and memorization. To provide spiritual seekers with all the necessities for a successful ascent to Self- realization, a number of complete philosophical systems have been passed down by the ancient Rishis, each providing a detailed road-map for the journey to the topmost peak of spiritual enlightenment. Though all of these philosophies lead their followers to the exact same goal, each outlines a slightly different route along the mountainside; and in addition, each employs its own unique set of images and concepts to explain the true nature of reality.
   Our primary concern in this book will be that yogic philosophy known as Trika, more often referred to as Kashmir Shaivism, for this system of knowledge is the keystone philosophy of Siddha Yoga. Kashmir Shaivism is said to date back to the very beginning of time, born not through inspiration but through divine revelation, and the authenticity of this assertion has been affirmed countless times by beings who have attained cosmic consciousness through the experimental application of its teachings.
Shaivism is heralded as a perfect system of knowledge because it accurately outlines the exact nature of Creation, life, human psychology, and the process through which any person may achieve union with the supreme universal principle. In terms of its comprehensiveness in detailing the complete structure of reality, Kashmir Shaivism stands at the paramount position in the field of yogic philosophy, its sophistication exceeding even the great system of Vedanta.
The keystones of Shaivism are (I) its non-dualism, showing the one unifying principle that underlies everything in Creation, and (2) its proclamation that every individual is inherently divine. As it is a minutely detailed and complex system of knowledge, it would be hopeless to accurately survey all its teachings in a single section of this web site. What follows, then, is a highly simplified overview of  this ancient yogic blueprint of reality, our intent being to capture the essence of this remarkable doctrine while .sacrificing much of its subtlety.
   Although Shaivism meticulously stratifies reality into thirty six distinct levels, it also teaches that we can sustain a good general understanding of Creation’s essential nature by examining just the topmost two, from which all the others emanate. In the language of Kashmir Shaivism, these two fundamental aspects of reality are called Shiva and Shakti.

The Shiva and Shakti of Kashmir Shaivism
   Trika philosophy refers to ultimate reality as Paramashiva, a concept so abstract and nebulous that the only way any of us can ever really comprehend it is by personally experiencing it through meditation. But meanwhile, Shaivism tells us that the closest we can come to such an understanding intellectually is to think of this supreme reality as consisting of two essential aspects—a static one called Shiva and a dynamic one called Shakti. This philosophy presents Shiva and Shakti as abstract universal principles, but perhaps we can more easily gain a general understanding of their nature by employing a yogic artifice called deification: we will personify these cosmic principles and examine them in the form of Lord Shiva and his goddess consort, Shakti.
   Many of us may feel put off by the endless parade of gods and goddesses described in Eastern philosophies, but such repulsion is usually due to our failure to understand that these deities merely represent universal principles which the Rishis have chosen to personify in order to make them easier for us to comprehend. The cosmic principles on which all of Creation rests are far too subtle and elusive for the human mind to grasp in their actual, formless state, so Yoga simply lends them substance to make their essence more accessible to us. The cosmic mates Shiva and Shakti are the supreme deities of Shaivism because they embody the highest cosmic principles.
Lord Shiva represents the most fundamental aspect of reality, and he is therefore depicted as the ultimate divinity. Being static in essence, Shiva does absolutely nothing, yet his mere existence makes it possible for everything else in Creation to exist. Though Shiva is a static entity, we mustn’t get the idea that he’s passive, dull, lazy or lifeless, for nothing could be further from the truth. He may not actually be doing anything, but that’s only because he doesn’t have to—he is everything.
   Just as a spinning gyroscope appears to be at rest when in fact it is the extreme opposite of rest, so too does Shiva appear to be inactive when in fact he is the supreme opposite of inactivity. Shiva does not act, because he is Action itself; he does not exist, he is Existence itself; he is not wise, he is Wisdom itself; he does not love, he is Love itself; he does not become anything, but he is everything, and everything is he. Bristling with vitality, brimming with power, wisdom and bliss, Shiva is the ultimate potential energy, the cosmic lion eternally about to pounce, perfectly balanced and vibrantly alive in every fiber of his being.
   If we think back billions of years to before the moment of Creation, before even time itself, and ask our self, “From what did this Creation spring?”—the answer will be “Shiva.” Without Shiva, nothing else could ever be; everything that is, exists because of him, and yet he remains completely unaffected by it all. Shiva is the supreme witness. Truly speaking, of course, pure, unmodified Shiva is not even a “he,” “she,” or “it”; Shiva is the very essence of gender itself. So difficult is the task of describing Shiva, the ancient Vedas can only state that he is “neti, neti’ ‘—“not this, not this’ ‘—meaning that Shiva cannot be described in any terms within the grasp of human knowledge.
   The highest attainment in meditation is the merging of our limited, individual consciousness with Shiva’s unlimited, absolute consciousness, the result being that we experience the state of Shivahood for our self. The yogic Rishis, in attempting to describe this indescribable state, have called it Sat-Chit-Ananda, which in Sanskrit means that his essential nature is that of absolute existence, absolute consciousness, and absolute bliss.
   As absolute existence, he is omnipresent; he alone exists everywhere at all times, remaining unchanged throughout eternity; he is the vessel in which the whole of Creation exists, and he is also the entire contents of this vessel. Since he and he alone exists, all else being but forms of him, he is the supreme truth, the highest reality, and the ultimate universal power. As absolute consciousness, his awareness is unlimited; there is nothing which he does not know, and nothing which he does not witness. As absolute bliss, his joy is not dependent upon anything at all; it is unsurpassable, undiminishable, and unending.
   By now we may have realized that if Shiva were the only aspect of supreme reality, we’d all be spared the fun of trying to discover the secrets of the universe, because the manifest universe would not exist. (Remember, Shiva never does anything— including create universes—he just is.) Of course, countless universes exist in Shiva, but only in potential form, unmanifest. So how does the unmanifest become manifest?
   This question brings us to a very tricky philosophical point, the kind for which the Orient is famous: Since Shiva is everything, he is also his own opposite. This means that Shiva can be both static and dynamic—motionless and active—simultaneously. Though it seems impossible to our rational 3-D mind that a single entity can display two such seemingly opposite characteristics at the same time, modern science has affirmed that such apparent paradoxes can indeed become resolved in higher dimensions of reality. In fact, in the previous section we saw how the quantum field of current physics exhibits two apparently opposite aspects which are almost identical to those of Shiva; this field is, at the same time, (1) formless, motionless and all-pervasive, and (2) substantial, active and localized.
One way in which the active aspect of Shiva is effectively portrayed in the East is by depicting him in the form of Nataraja—the Cosmic Dancer. As such, Shiva is shown performing three of his most important actions—creation, sustenance and dissolution. The quantum field of modern physics, we will recall, also gives birth to an endless array of forms, which it sustains for a time, then absorbs back into itself. Acknowledging the aptness of Nataraja as a symbolic representation of manifest reality, the renowned physicist

Dr. Fritjof Capra has written:
   Shiva, the Cosmic Dancer, is perhaps the most perfect personification of the dynamic universe. Through his dance, Shiva sustains the manifold phenomena in the world, unifying all things by making them participate in the dance—a magnificent image of the dynamic unity of the universe. . . . The dance of Shiva is the dancing universe; the ceaseless flow of energy going through an infinite variety of patterns that melt into one another.... Modem physics has. . . revealed that every subatomic particle not only performs an energy dance, but also is an energy dance; a pulsating process of creation and destruction. . . . For the modern physicist, then, Shiva’s dance is the dance of subatomic matter.

   Because it is so difficult for us to grasp the concept of Shiva being both motionless and in action at the same time, Shaivism takes pity on us and assigns a separate identity to each of these cosmic attributes. Thus, we now find two deities presiding over the supreme universal principle: Lord Shiva embodies the static aspect, and the goddess Shakti, the dynamic aspect. Still, we must always remember that the two, in reality, are one—like the two faces of the same coin.
   Shiva and Shakti are depicted as male and female—cosmic mates—not because they unite in any sexual way but because they are permanently, eternally married. The sacred bond of marriage as we know it signifies a spiritual union between two human beings; on a mundane level the mates continue to exist as two separate individuals, but on a more subtle level they are one. The marriage of Shiva and Shakti represents the supreme example of such a mystical union.
   In Shaivism, the term Paramashiva denotes both Shiva and Shakti together; in Vedanta, the concept of Brahman is comparable; and in modern physics, as we have already seen, the quantum field is a fair approximation, though Einstein’s proposed unified field is even closer. (Of course, such field concepts of physics relate only to the physical universe which, as we will see shortly, Yoga categorizes as only one stratum of a multi layered creation consisting of numerous other levels of more subtle realities)
   According to Shaivism, it is out of the eternally perfect  marriage of Shiva and Shakti that the universe is born. The word shakti means “power” in Sanskrit, and when capitalized it refers. to the active attribute of Paramashiva. This Shakti, then, is Shiva’s potential power turned kinetic; she is energy in action. While Shiva is static and quiescent throughout eternity, his Shakti aspect which is dynamic and creative—manifests only periodically, and it is during such times that a material universe comes into existence .

 

Spanda - Shakti
Cosmic creation is said to begin when Paramashiva expresses a desire to this effect: “1 am one; let me be many.” It is at this moment that the universal mind is born. Though Shaivism does not employ this precise concept, it is being borrowed here from other yogic philosophies to enhance the clarity of our presentation.
   A mind, according to many spiritual sciences, is nothing but pure consciousness contained and limited by desire. The universal mind, then, is simply boundless consciousness which has become enclosed within the confines of the desire to create a universe. (The limitations of this metaphor are obvious, of course, for in reality Shiva can never be contained or limited in any way; thus, it would be more accurate to say that his pure consciousness appears to become contained within the limits of a desire to create.) For the sake of simplicity, however, we can liken the universal mind to a gigantic glass bowl filled with water, the glass container being the creative desire, and the water being the Consciousness which has now become oriented toward fulfilling that desire. This, then, is the arena in which Creation will take place.
   Now that the stage is set, it is time for Shakti to make her grand entrance. From deep within the mass of Consciousness which has become the universal mind, she bursts forth in the form of an  initial creative impulse called Spunda—a cosmic throb or vibration. In the parlance of modem physics, we would say that a causal vibration issues from its ground field.
This Spanda-Shakti is akin to delivering a stiff jolt to our enormous bowl of water—only this jolt comes from the very water itself. When a container of still liquid is suddenly jarred, the first thing which happens is that a single shock wave passes through it, causing the entire volume of liquid to pulsate en masse. But then, as this initial vibration reverberates off all the sides of the container, a countless number of reflected waves are sent back through the liquid. When these reflected waves begin to interact, the liquid soon becomes filled with a vast array of interconnected, interrelated, constantly changing interference patterns of vibration, each of which is unique in that its precise form is unmatched by any of the other patterns; yet each is also identical to the others in that they are all made of exactly the same substance.
   This, states Shaivism, is approximately analogous to the way Shakti’s initial Spanda reverberates through Shiva’s consciousness to form an intricate web of energy patterns which manifest as the universe of objects and events. If this emergent world-view sounds strangely familiar, it’s because it exactly duplicates the one put forth by the quantum field theory of modern physics.
   If, as both Yoga and modern science agree, the universe does indeed consist of interference patterns displayed against the static background of their ground field, then this would mean that the whole of Creation is one gigantic hologram, and the most amazing quality of a hologram is the fact that its entire contents are contained in each of its parts. If we were to use holographic equipment to make a hologram of an apple, for example, we could pass coherent light through the resultant photographic plate and cause a perfect three-dimensional image of the same apple to hover in midair before us; then, if we were to shatter this plate and project the same light through just one fragment of our broken hologram, an image of the whole apple would still be produced. Transposing this phenomenon to the level of a cosmic hologram, therefore, it would not be at all inaccurate to say that the whole of Creation is contained in each and every one of its constituents. Each vibrational pattern in the universal mind is an information storehouse containing not only unique data, which make it stand out as an independent manifestation, but also general data concerning the complete structure of the cosmos. In other words, the entire universe is contained in every object and event—in every instant of time, every parcel of space, every subatomic particle of force and matter.
   Perhaps we can gain some idea of what the fundamental level of reality must be like if we pretend that our bowlful of quivering water is indeed the actual universal mind, and that we are now inside it, completely immersed in its mass of vibrant Consciousness. All around us the teeming reflected waves, which have evolved from the initial Spanda, are interacting to form a myriad of vibrational patterns in the water—and one of these patterns is us. The only thing which sets us apart from the mass of Consciousness around us is our unique pattern of vibration.
   Let’s ponder this a moment. When a vibration moves through water, it is not made of the same water throughout its journey, any more than a wave on the surface of a lake is made of the same water particles as it moves toward the shore. A vibration is merely an energy impulse that causes the substance in its path to pulsate in a certain pattern as it passes through.
   This fact takes on serious implications when extended to the phenomenon we call matter. In the previous section we found that even a material particle, being essentially a packet of vibration moving through the substance of the quantum field, is not made of the selfsame “stuff” as it moves along; it, too, propagates through its ground substance just as a water wave does.
   Since our own physical body consists of these same particles, does this then mean that as we walk along the street, the Consciousness of which we are made constantly changes? Let’s explore this intriguing possibility further.
   Figure 6 depicts a packet of vibration which gives the appearance of a material particle moving from right to left. (This is, of course, only a two—dimensional representation of what is really a very complex, 4 D phenomenon.)

Now let’s consider the way this vibrational packet affects the ground substance through which it passes. In Figure 7 we see a row of water particles in the direct path of a vibration packet traveling from right to left. As it moves along, the particles of substance in its path become agitated by its vibratory power, which causes them to oscillate in the exact same configuration as the packet’s vibrational pattern. After it passes, the particles settle down in approximately the same place as they were before; certainly they do not travel along with the vibrational pattern.

Yoga tells us that if we now transpose this phenomenon to the level of subatomic particles we can simply substitute units of Consciousness for our row of water particles; the result will be the same. Therefore, it seems that we are not, in fact, made of the selfsame substance from moment to moment throughout our physical existence; our body is merely a complex pattern of vibration which causes the sea of Consciousness to adopt a compatible configuration as we pass through it

Supreme consciousness is all-pervasive there is just as much of it between two objects as there is inside them. What we perceive as an object is determined solely by the intensity of activity in a particular area of the quantum field, activity induced by the presence of a strong vibratory pattern. It is not Shiva’s all-pervasive consciousness that we perceive as the world of objects and events, then; what we perceive is Shakti’s activity.
   When we experience the material reality around us, therefore, it is not its basic substance which we perceive, but merely the movement of that substance. Shiva’s pure, transcendent being is forever imperceptible, for his state is that of total oneness, far beyond the duality of the seer and the seen; the only way we can ever know him is by becoming him through the attainment of Self-realization.
   Shakti, however, is easy to perceive; in fact, it is impossible for us not to perceive her throughout every waking moment of our life. The Sanskrit word for our physical world is jagat—”that which moves”—and Shakti is movement personified. She is everything we see, everything we touch, everything we hear, taste and smell; she is even our own body, the instrument through which we perceive the world. Indeed, she is a perceptible form of Shiva himself, and Yoga tells us that if we really learn to see her in our self and in the world around us, if we become her intimate friend through meditation, someday she will surely introduce us to her mate.
   Meanwhile, we might as well face up to reality. Both modern science and ancient Yoga agree that from a material standpoint we are all nothing more than infinitesimal vibratory patterns in a cosmic bowlful of quivering Consciousness, never made of the same “stuff” from one moment to the next. We’re incapable of perceiving the basic substance of reality, even though it’s everywhere. Like an ocean fish which frantically combs the sea in search of water, we look high and low for the ultimate truth, the supreme reality, despite the fact that the object of our quest is all around us and inside us all the while.

Creation’s Basic Building Blocks
As we have already seen, modern physics has abandoned the notion of matter being reducible to elementary units of solid, indestructible substance, for the subatomic particles which make up all material objects have proved to consist of nothing more than vibrant energy. Physicists know that whatever the quantum field is made of, its substance is nonmaterial, and when the field assumes its granular aspect, it is not that substance which appears to us as solid material particles, but merely the movement of it. In other words, the ground substance which pervades the cosmos is eternally imperceptible, regardless of whether it is in its formless aspect or its particle aspect, and what we identify as our physical reality is simply a network of patterns created by interacting vibrations propagating through this all-pervasive substance. Our physical senses do not respond to things of substance, but to particular patterns of movement; thus, if there were no movement occurring in the quantum field, there would be no perceptible reality.
Movement, then, must be considered a basic ingredient of manifest Creation; but is it the only ingredient? What about the ground field itself? Does the fact that we cannot perceive its basic substance mean that it plays no essential part in the drama of Creation?
   Shaivism, of course, states that Shiva’s stillness and Shakti’s activity are both essential and inseparable aspects of reality. First of all, Shiva is the ultimate source of all movement; if the potential for movement did not exist in him, it could never become actualized in the form of Shakti. And secondly, though we cannot perceive Shiva, if he did not exist it would be equally impossible for us to perceive Shakti’s movement, for Einstein showed that movement is undetectable unless it occurs against a background of relative stillness. In the total blackness of outer space, for example, we could be speeding along at a million miles per hour and yet we would have no sensation of movement whatsoever unless we passed some relatively fixed object. In the same way, then, Shakti’s movement is perceptible only because it occurs against the background of Shiva’s perfect stillness.
   Though explanations of this Sort are useful in giving us at  least some vague idea of what the world is like at its most basic level, we must constantly remind our self that the true essence of reality is beyond the ken of the normal human intellect. Such concepts as “movement” and “stillness” as we know them are hut very gross approximations of their extremely subtle counterparts which function at the highest level of reality. From the viewpoint of Paramashiva, movement and rest are not irreconcilable opposites; he is fully capable of engaging in both simultaneously. At the level of the physical universe, however, such apparent dualities seem to be eternally antagonistic; they cannot exist simultaneously at precisely the same place and time.
   But even so, modern science still agrees that our material reality is founded solely upon these same two phenomena, only instead of occurring simultaneously, in the physical universe these two essential elements seem to alternate perpetually, in the form of vibration.
   As we have already seen, our entire perceivable reality is based upon the phenomenon we call “vibration,” and vibration is essentially nothing more than the rapid alternation between movement and stillness. When anything vibrates, it oscillates rapidly back and forth between two points, as does a pendulum or a child on a swing. The figure below depicts one complete cycle of vibration, which science measures from the center point (A), to the outward most point of swing on one side (B), across to the outward most point of swing on the opposite side (C), and back to the center point (A) again.
 

   When anything oscillates, it repeatedly reverses the direction of its movement; but in order to do this at the outward most point of each cycle (points B and C) it must slow down and completely stop for just the tiniest fraction of an instant before it continues on its journey in the opposite direction. Thus, what we call vibration is a rapid and repeated alternation between movement and rest; it is the way in which Shiva and Shakti manifest at the level of the physical world.
   The entire universe, from the moment of Creation to the moment of its ultimate dissolution, may be viewed as single cosmic cycle of movement which has sprung forth from a state of absolute rest, and which will eventually return to that same quiescent state. Within this master cycle of vibration, everything which exists can also be viewed in terms of progressively smaller types of cycles, from the existence-cycle of galaxies to that of solar systems, planets, individual beings and objects, all the way down to the most elementary subatomic particle, which consists of nothing more substantial than a unit of pure consciousness in rapid oscillation. Everything in Creation, big or small, gross or subtle, is not only vibrating, it is also made of vibration; and this vibration, at its fundamental level, is nothing less than supreme consciousness in motion.
   When we spin a coin on a table, both sides of it are always present before us simultaneously, yet we are able to perceive only one side at a time as it spins. If the coin is spinning fast enough, in fact, we don’t seem to see either side at all; instead, we see a solid-looking, transparent sphere which, like a subatomic particle, really isn’t what it appears to be at all. In this way, supreme consciousness (Paramashiva) appears to alternate perpetually between two phases—Shakti’s movement and Shiva’s stillness— and it is these two aspects of reality which function as the basic building blocks of manifest Creation. They are not just important properties of reality; they are its very essence.

In The Beginning.
Once we discover that the whole of Creation can be defined in terms of vibration, it then becomes possible for us to interpret even the poetic language of religious scripture in a way that makes it quite compatible with the views of modem science and Yoga. Vibration affects the human senses in many different ways: the eyes interpret it as form and color, the skin as texture and density, the nose and mouth as aroma and flavor, and the ears experience vibration as sound, such as music or words.
   If we accept “music” as being a poetical equivalent of vibration, for example, then this fifteenth century quote from the Eastern poet-saint Kabir begins to take on added meaning:
The heart of the sky, wherein the Spirit dwelleth,
is radiant with the music of light.
There, where the pure, white music blossoms,
my Lord takes His delight
   According to Shaivism, Creation begins when Shakti issues from Shiva in the form of a causal vibration, Spanda. At first glance this concept seems to have little in common with the following biblical statement: “In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God.” But if we interpret “word” here as a poetical rendering for the vibration of Spanda Shakti, we can just as accurately state that in the beginning was the Shakti, and the Shakti was with Shiva, and the Shakti was Shiva.” Interestingly, the world’s oldest scripture, the Vedas, contains language strikingly similar to that of the Bible:
Praajapatir vai idam aaseet
Tasya vaag dviteeya aaseet
Vaag vai paramam Brahma   
   “In the beginning was the Creator, within whom was the word, and the word was the Lord Himself.”
Actually, when we combine the metaphors employed by Yoga, religion and modem physics, we can paint an even clearer picture of the principles involved in Creation. Beginning with this poetic rendering from Genesis, for example: “And the earth was without form and was void; and darkness was upon the face of the waters.” Here, the Bible states that pre-Creation was a void without form. We may imagine this void to be Shiva in yogic terms, or in scientific terms the quiescent ground field, completely devoid of activity. Then, our biblical quote adds that darkness was upon the face of the deep.” Again, “the deep” may be seen as but another metaphor for Shiva, the void. Since there is as yet no motion in the fundamental ground field, there is only “darkness,” which science defines as the absence of light, a type of vibration.
   Finally, the Old Testament quote states that “the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.” Here, “the Spirit of God” is, in yogic terms, the polar opposite of Shiva, meaning Shakti or vibration. The image of Shakti moving upon the surface of water is a wonderfully accurate way of illustrating how vibration moves through a substance or medium. If we think of Shiva as a vast ocean, Shakti may then be likened to the waves moving across its surface. A wave is a vibration. When we stand on the ocean shore and watch the waves roll in, we know that the particles of water in any particular spot are not moving toward us, they are merely being undulated up and down—they are vibrating. Yet, it appears as if each wave has a continuous identity; we can watch one begin far out at sea and follow it all the way in to where it crashes on the beach. Each wave appears to be an existent thing, but in reality it is just vibration moving across the face of the water, causing the illusion of a separate entity leading a temporary existence upon the water’s surface.
   This, Yoga tells us, is what the universe is like. Shiva is a big ocean of Consciousness, and Shakti is all the bubbles, foam, ripples and waves upon its surface, patterns of movement which appear to us as people, planets, stars and galaxies. Everything we see around us is like a wave in the ocean of pure Being; the water takes on certain forms for a while, then merges with the depths again. Some of these vibrational entities exist for extremely brief periods (most elementary particles, for example, remain cohesive for just the tiniest fraction of a second), while others remain manifest much longer (the human body takes about a century to disintegrate, and a galaxy maintains its individuality [or billions of years); in any case, none of the manifestations of the universe are permanent—all eventually must return to the ground field from which they have arisen.
   Everything which has ever existed or will ever exist, be it short- or long-lived, animate or inanimate, mental or physical, as small as an elementary particle or as vast as an entire world system, is essentially just a partial experience of the entire cosmic field of interrelating forces. Like all the unique forms on the surface of agitated water, everything in Creation is made of exactly the same basic “stuff”; each entity is just a particular portion of a single mass of Consciousness—a portion which is temporarily vibrating in a special way.
   The Christian mystic Angela of Foligno probably had no knowledge of Kashmir Shaivism, yet in the thirteenth century she wrote an essay describing her moment of Self-realization, explaining that two supreme principles were revealed to her in turn, and these principles sound suspiciously like Shakti and Shiva:
The eyes of my soul were opened and I beheld the plentitude of God, by which I understood the whole world both here and beyond the sea, the abyss, and all other things. . . . And in this I beheld nothing save the Divine Power, in a way that is utterly indescribable, so that through the greatness of this wonder the soul cried with a loud voice, saying, “The whole world is full of God.” Wherefore I understood that the world is but a little thing; and I saw that the power of God was above all things and the whole world was filled with it.
   After I had seen the power of God, His will and His justice, I was lifted higher still; and then I no longer beheld the power and will as before. But I beheld a Thing, as fixed and stable as it was indescribable; and more than this I cannot say, save that it was good. And although my soul beheld not love, yet when it saw that indescribable Thing it was filled with indescribable joy, so that it was taken out of the state it was in before and placed in this great and ineffable state. . . . But if thou seekest to know that which I beheld, I can tell thee nothing save that I beheld a Fullness and a Clearness. Thus I beheld a beauty so great that I can say nothing of it save that I saw the Supreme Beauty which contains in itself all goodness.

Shakti’s Multi-Layered Creation
When we consider how little we know about our own universe, the possibility of other universes existing simultaneously should hardly surprise us. Such notions were common throughout the world during the heyday of ancient metaphysics, but now that metaphysics has been exiled by modern science, speculations about the existence of other dimensions of reality have pretty much become limited to the fields of spiritualism and science fiction. Most modern people assume that the claims of ancient occultists will eventually be proved false by Western science, but in this area as in others we’ve examined earlier. Science seems to be moving toward supporting the ancient “myths” rather than debunking them.
   With the discovery of so-called black holes in the universe, holes which seem to be sucking in matter like cosmic vacuum cleaners, astronomers have begun to speculate about the possible existence of another universe of anti-matter” at the other end of those holes. Scientists further speculate that we may actually be exchanging substance with this other universe, losing matter through “black holes” and getting new matter through “white holes” situated possibly at the center of each galaxy. With such mind-bending concepts occupying the thoughts of our best Western scientists, perhaps we should not deal too lightly with the yogic view of a Creation structured in multi-layered realms.
   According to the ancient texts, Shakti issues forth as Spanda and then oscillates at every frequency from infinity down to zero, bringing many stratified levels of Creation into being. The slower she vibrates, the more she makes Consciousness become congealed so that in the first realm the forms which she creates are extremely subtle, while in  the latter ones, which include our own universe, they are very dense indeed. The grosser the forms which Shakti manifests, the more they obscure the true reality and take on an appearance of reality themselves instead. These realms are like a series of veils obscuring the formless Shiva; the deeper the realm in density, the greater the obscuration. For this reason they are called the realms of increasingly modified reality; the grosser the realm, the more true reality fades and illusion becomes clearer. Thus, Creation represents an awakening of Shakti as the manifest world, but a falling asleep of Shiva as far as pure consciousness is concerned.
Each realm is made of increasingly gross elements. The easiest way to conceive of these realms is to think of them as independent universes of which ours is the densest. Figure 9 illustrates the six major realms which Shakti manifests during her descent into matter. The Bible characterizes them as the six days of Creation.
The words Mind, Ether, Air, Fire, Water and Earth represent archetypal elements or universal principles and should not be confused with the substances we know by those names. For example, in the Earth Realm—our physical universe—everything that has substance is made of the Earth Element, so this element is comparable to what we call “matter.” In the same way, what we know as “mind,” “ether,” “air,” “fire” and “earth” are only very gross manifestations of the cosmic principles with the same names.
Just as the Earth Realm is inhabited by beings (us) with bodies made of Earth (matter), each of the other five realms contains beings with bodies more subtle than our own. In our realm, Consciousness is so veiled by the extreme density of the forms it assumes that we humans are completely imprisoned in the illusion of reality it creates, unable to even glimpse the real fabric of Creation beneath the bright “solid” patterns of the physical universe. Beings in the higher realms are bound in varying lesser degrees, and those at the opposite end of the spectrum from us are in no way bound by the world they live in.
According to Yoga, there are many more realms in Creation than just the six major ones indicated in Figure 9. One ancient text, the Maha Nirvana Tantra, outlines fourteen levels of manifest reality, while Kashmir Shaivism, which dissects Creation with far

greater precision than any other philosophy, delineates a full thirty six separate planes of existence, among which are distributed some 224 inhabited worlds.
If all this sounds preposterous, we must remember that the purpose of this book is not to convince us that such things exist, but simply to describe what Yoga tells us we can each experience for our self through meditation. Yoga calls the different inhabited worlds of these realms lokas or bhuvanas, and much has been written about them by meditators who have personally observed them throughout the centuries. If any of us is interested in testing the authenticity of these lokas we may compare the numerous eyewitness accounts of them which have been written, or better still, we may choose to meditate and find out for our self.
   Now that we’ve examined the unfolding of Creation and its structure upon completion, all that now remains to be covered is the end of Creation, or Dissolution.

Dissolution
   Vibration is movement that occurs in cycles. Since everything in Creation is vibration, then Creation itself must also be cyclical—a gigantic cycle of evolution and dissolution which begins when Shakti moves within Shiva and ends when she returns to her potential state again. As soon as each cycle ends, a new one begins. According to Yoga, our present universe is just one in an endless chain of universes which have previously been created and destroyed, and there will be countless universes after ours.
   Until recently, astrophysicists could neither confirm nor deny this yogic view of cyclical Creation, but discoveries made in just the past few decades have begun to shift the weight of scientific evidence quite clearly toward the position upheld by the ancient sages.
   For the past fifty years astronomers have known that all the galaxies in the universe are rapidly flying away from a common center, and the speed with which they are receding from one another suggests the possibility that at one time, billions of years ago, all the matter in Creation suddenly exploded outward from a single point, a blast which marked the exact moment that Creation began. Despite the fact that this “big bang” theory was supported by the discovery that the universe is expanding, most scientists doggedly refused to accept the possibility that the cosmos had a definite beginning, for then they would have been forced to attend themselves to the question of who or what began it. Thus, for decades the big bang theory played second fiddle to the more comforting “steady-state” theory, which held that the universe is exactly the same as it has always been and will always be the same as it is now.
   The steady-state theory continued to hold sway right up until 1965, when two researchers from the Bell Laboratories discovered that our planet is enveloped in a faint glow of radiation which is coming at us uniformly from every direction in the universe, If indeed the cosmos had begun with a “bang,” followed by a gigantic, white-hot fireball, this mass of intense heat and brilliant light would never entirely vanish from Creation; instead, as the universe continued to expand, the glow from the initial explosion would simply grow more and more faint. The all-pervasive radiation discovered in 1965 consists of the exact pattern of wavelengths expected for the aftermath of just such an ancient cosmic explosion. In yogic terms, the vibrational pattern that these researchers discovered is nothing less than the remains of the initial Spanda of Creation, the first creative impulse which caused the universe to become manifest, which now sustains it, and which, when it finally returns to its ground state, will effect the dissolution of the cosmos.
   As a result of this monumental find, the steady-state theory has finally, though reluctantly, fallen by the wayside, leaving the big-bang concept the only plausible explanation for the history of the universe. Now, astrophysicists must live with this imposing question: What existed before the moment of Genesis?
   If the universe was created, as the world’s scriptures have insisted all along, then it follows that someone or something had to create it. Whatever hard evidence there might have been to give science clues to these mysteries was certainly burned up in the intensity of that awesome primal explosion. In the words of Robert Jastrow, Director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, “At this moment it seems as though science will never be able to raise the curtain on the mystery of Creation. For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries
   Having proved beyond a reasonable doubt that Creation did indeed have a beginning, modem scientists have now been made to ponder whether or not the cosmos will also have a distinct end. Two possibilities are now being explored with regard to the future of the universe: (1) it may continue to expand forever, or (2) it may eventually stop expanding and begin to contract. In order to determine which of these two possibilities will become reality, it is essential for astronomers to know how much matter exists in the universe. Matter’s mass exerts gravitational pull, so if there is enough of it present in the expanding arena of Creation, it will eventually drag the receding galaxies to a halt and begin pulling them back toward their original center.
   As recently as 1978, astronomers had estimated that the universe contained only about one-tenth the amount of matter required to “close the universe’ ‘—to prove that Creation is indeed a complete cycle with a beginning, middle and end. Since then, however, they have discovered the existence of previously unsuspected cosmic gas clouds between two galaxies, and since such clouds are material in that they contain great amounts of mass, the presence of such phenomena throughout the cosmos could increase the amount of known mass to a level which would close the universe. In addition, more recent findings have indicated the possibility that a subatomic particle called the neutrino, which was previously believed to be mass less, may indeed contain a small amount of mass. If true, this discovery alone could more than double the known mass of the universe.
   Thus, science is coming closer and closer to confirming the yogic model of a cyclical Creation. Furthermore, astronomers expect that if the universe does indeed prove to be closed, its contraction phase will end when all matter in Creation comes together at a single point, a collision which theorists expect will eventually produce another big bang—meaning that a new universe will then emerge, made out of the melted-down stuff of our present world—and this cyclical process could well repeat itself into eternity. Such speculations, prompted by recent findings, have led Dr. Fritjof Capra, theoretical physicist at Stanford and The University of California, to state that”.., modern physics leads us to a view of the world which is very similar to the views held by mystics of all ages and traditions.’’
   The thought of our present universe being just a single throb in an endless oscillation between creation and destruction may overwhelm us with the apparent meaninglessness of it all; but there is no use fretting about such things, for our finite reasoning power is useless when it comes to fathoming the infinite. Yoga tells us that the closest we can come to comprehending the eternal cycles of Creation is to think of them all as simply the play of Consciousness —Shiva and Shakti having fun. If from our present point of view, we can’t fully appreciate the entertainment value of such Divine Sport, so what? Other people probably don’t understand why we have fun doing some of the things we like to do, either. The Rishis advise us that there is only one way to appreciate the merits of this sport, and that’s to become one of the players—which means expanding our awareness until it becomes the cosmic kind.

    This, then, is the environment in which we live. Whether we examine it from the viewpoint of Yoga, modem physics or religion, it always proves to be an astounding, mystifying, paradoxical experience. But what, we may now inquire, is the role of humankind in this incredible Creation? To find out, we must now focus our investigation upon the investigators themselves.