परमार्थसार (महामाहेश्वर अभिनवगुप्त - त्रिक-दर्शन, अद्वैत शैव साधना एवं सान्वय सटीक)

Introduction 17 lute is His static aspect in which He is known as Śiva or God and the aspect of His phenomenal manifestation through the five divine activities is His dynamic aspect in which He is known as Śakti or Godhead. Śiva is thus the basic eternal reality and Śakti is the divine nature of such absolute reality. The phenomenal divine activities are basically neither due to any external element like Māyā nor to anything internal like Vāsanā, the flow of mental impressions. The appearance of the phenomenon is not basically due to ignorance but to the Godhead of the eternal truth. Māyā, Vāsanā etc. work in it at some intermediary stages of its evolution and are themselves due to the outward manifestation of the Godhead of the absolute reality. The phenomenon is not to be taken as false but as the absolute reality itself, appearing through its divine powers in such form. It is not to be rejected as something non-existent. Such an outlook may amount to deceiv- ing one's own self. It is to be taken as correct and true at the mundane phenomenal level. At the level of correct knowledge it is to be seen as God and He alone. That is the view of Kashmir Śaivism with respect to the phenomenon and that is one of its main differences from the Vedāntic and the Buddhist absolutism. The absolute consciousness is blissful by its basic nature and such nature makes it constantly playful. Its divine playfulness urges it to be active in outward manifestation of its divine powers. Such manifestation does not involve it into any change or trans- formation. It takes place in the manner of a reflection. The divine powers of God become reflected inside the psychic light of His pure self-consciousness and such reflections of these powers shine as the creation etc., of the whole phenomenal existence. The Absolute God appears thus as all the pure and impure beings as well as the whole mental and material existence. All this happens on account of the theistic nature of God. Such playful activity does not imply any want in Him. It is His essential nature to play like that. God, shorn of such nature, would cease to be God and would get reduced to the position of pure space or even to that of absolute nihility and nothing other than such nihility would have ever come to being in that case. Bondage and liberation are just two stages of the divine dramatic play of God. Pushing His divine and pure nature into oblivion, He appears as a bonded soul, undergoing all misery in the cycles of births and deaths. That is the first stage of His divine play as an individual being. At its