Shiva (Cosmic Dance)

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Adsorbing power from the feminine Shakti, Shiva rhythmically produces blissful existence (Sat-Chit-Ananda). When depicted concretely, Shiva's four arms bring us two key technologies (fire and a drum), as well as two paradoxical hand-gesture messages ("fear not" and "man is blind"). One leg of Shiva is raised in the throes of the dance; a pure embodiment of kinetic consciousness. The other leg remains planted, and tethers our corporeal experience to the formless and inexpressible Isvara - well out of the scope of the present drawing. In this abstract rendition, an armless (or body-less?) Shiva is depicted as self-organizational, autopoetic, and emergent. 

We know that Nature is rhythmically organized across all spatial-temporal scales. The human task of local integrator ("Man" sensu Bucky Fuller) is to become both micro- and macro-cosmic, to speculate and experiment, to reject all forms of duality between the wave and the water. As per Bucky's Synergetics, the most minimal dissection of any system is actually four-fold (tetrahedral), not dualistic as commonly parroted. The tetrahedral structure of existence is draped upon 4 anchors: Isvara as the imperceptiblely energetic Godhead, Shiva as the alchemical process generating matter from unmatter, Ether as the media of reality, and Humans (plus maybe Ants) starring as both subject and object. 

Western thought sees the Mind as a blank tablet to write on (an Ipad rasa), a preformed cup to fill with Education™. This doctrine breeds an enormous amount of hand-clasping and ink-wasting on the moot debates like "how is the mind created?", "what shape is the cup?", and "why am I experiencing anything at all?". These questions are syntactically well-formed, but induce delerium in the untrained mind and chaos in the untrained society. In the beginning there was just the Word, and I suspect that the end will be just words, words, words.  

As far as I can feel, the Self better concords with the Vedic notion that Mind is inherent, primary, and pre-material. In Vedanta, the materialist boondoggle of "how does matter become mind?" metamorphoses into a more meaningful form: "how does Mind become Matter?". The materialist continues to bang his head against a brick wall because he does not percieve how solid his patterns of thought are. Electrodes are barred from the depths of the Mind by the skull, by the cell membrane, and by funding limitations. Thankfully, thoughts are not so encumbered.

What phase is room temperature H2O? A child unspoilt by the Gospel of Chemisty will tell you plainly: Water is solid when you belly-flop, and fluid when you pen-dive. Mind is quite obviously the same way. Mind is the liquid pool that we dive into, Yoga is how we consciously shape our body and mind. Those already in the water yell out desperate orders to us - if they can yell at all! Since when is Physical Education a different subject from Physics or Philosophy? 

OM