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