How To Practice Śākta Tantra | Animism & Śaktism

Today on the very sacred and auspicious day of Nāga Pañcami, the day when we honor serpents in the holy month of śrāvana, the sacred month of Lord Śiva, I felt it would be wonderful to contemplate Mā (śakti) as the all-pervasive enlivening/animating energy that is in all things and IS all things. 

This energy or life-force is inseparable from Consciousness, the all-pervasive reality that in this tradition we call Śiva. But what does it mean to say that? In this lecture, we point to how Śiva is not just quiescent, formless, impersonal Reality but that He is always endowed with ever-free and ever-blissful self-reflection (vimarśa) which in this tradition we call Śakti (i.e Mā Kālī) and that this self-reflection manifests as the eternal triad of the powers of willing (icchā-śakti), knowing (jñāna-śakti) and doing (kriyā-śakti) which is in effect what this entire universe is! 

This universe is God reflecting on Herself; it is the blazing forth of God's enlivened energy! For God IS Herself nothing but enlivened and enlivening Energy! 

We get this very radical Śakta view that everything is alive from Somānanda, the great Tāntrik master who might have been the first to articulate, in philosophical terms, this pantheistic pan-animism of Consciousness-Energy. In this lecture I argue that Somānanda's revelation in Śiva-drshti is the foundational philosophy of Śaktism, the view that everything is Mā, living, pulsating, throbbing Power! Also, in this talk, I share some insights from a conversation I had with Pujya Swami Bhajanananda Saraswati at the Kali Mandir in Laguna Beach regarding Animism and its link to Śakta theory and practice. Pujya Swamiji proposed a diachronic approach to understanding these traditions and in this view, Śaktism might be most universal of all traditions! So we attempt to argue for this also. 

Anyway since Nāga-pañcami is also a day to contemplate Kundalinī Śakti (or the "Serpent Power" as Arthur Avalonji beautifully called Her), this discussion on Power, Vitality and Śakti in the context of Śaiva Non-Duality seemed very fitting! 

Jai Nageśvarī Devī Ki Jai!