From Shiva to Jiva: Introduction
The Descent of Consciousness
Saiva Siddhanta begins with a bold premise: Consciousness (Brahman) alone is real — eternal, unchanging, and self-luminous. Everything else — the cosmos, time, space, body, and mind — is but its appearance or manifestation.
In this vision, the universe is not a creation outside Consciousness, nor a product of matter or chance. It is the līlā or self-expression of that same infinite awareness — just as countless waves arise and dissolve upon the surface of the ocean, without ever leaving the ocean itself.
But how does the One become many? How does the stillness of Shiva seem to transform into the movement and multiplicity of creation — into Jiva, the individual soul?
This series, From Shiva to Jiva, traces that profound journey: from the Absolute (Para Brahman) to the manifest world, from pure awareness to embodied experience. It reveals the timeless process by which the unmanifest becomes the visible universe we inhabit.
"Transformation” into Matter and Energy
When this Consciousness appears as the world, it undergoes transformation into:
- Energy (prāṇa, movement, vibration)
- Matter (the gross elements we experience)
Yet Saiva Siddhanta emphasizes that Consciousness itself never really changes — only its appearances do. Just as gold takes the form of ornaments without ceasing to be gold, the One Consciousness takes the form of the cosmos.
Through Māyā, the principle of appearance or projection, Consciousness manifests as:
- The mind (subtle manifestation)
- The body and matter (gross manifestation)
Maya in Advaita Vedanta and in Saiva Siddhanta
Saiva Siddhanta and Advaita Vedanta both discuss Maya as a cosmological principle that veils ultimate reality, yet they differ in yet they differ in how they regard its ontological status.
Maya in Advaita Vedanta
In Advaita Vedanta, Maya is the power of illusion that makes the One Reality (Brahman) appear as the diverse world of names and forms. It has only empirical (vyavaharika) existence but not ultimate (paramarthika) reality. Maya is anirvachaniya—neither real nor unreal—but a dependent appearance that vanishes upon realization of Brahman. Liberation (moksha) arises when one sees the world as a projection on Brahman caused by ignorance (avidya).
Maya in Saiva Siddhanta
In Saiva Siddhanta, Maya is real, not illusory. It is an eternal, formless, and subtle substance—the material cause (upadana karana) of the universe. Shiva is the efficient cause (nimitta karana) who operates through His power (Shakti, the instrumental cause, a subset of the efficient cause). Thus, Maya is understood as prakriti or the primordial matter from which all tattvas — fundamental blocks of existence — emerge.
From this subtle and eternal Māyā will arise the chain of tattvas, tracing Consciousness as it differentiates into energy, mind, and matter — a journey we shall unfold step by step.
“Mind creates matter” — Modern resonance
The ancient intuitions that subtler realities can give rise to tangible forms find an intriguing echo in modern thought. Contemporary neuroscience, for instance, reveals a parallel principle at work within the human being: each act of thought, intention, or awareness—the subtlest movements of the mind—produces measurable physical effects in the brain.
A purely mental event — a thought — alters neural pathways and firing patterns, generating electrochemical activity observable as brain waves. Thus, a subtle movement of awareness creates a physical change — illustrating, in miniature, what Vedānta proposes at the cosmic scale:
Consciousness → Mind → Energy → Matter
Each stage is a progressively denser form of the same underlying reality. The cosmos, therefore, is not made of matter, but of Consciousness appearing as matter. The mind does not merely observe matter — it participates in shaping it. What we call physical reality is a condensed form of awareness.
Summary
In Saiva Siddhanta, creation is seen as a divine unfolding from Shiva (சிவம்) or Brahman, the Supreme Consciousness, to the soul’s experience in the material world. We will trace this journey in the subsequent posts:
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