SHIVA-PARVATI

We know from elementary Physics that Potential energy is stored up energy within matter – it alone cannot create. So also Kinetic energy - which comes into play when there is movement in matter – cannot create on its own. However, it is the constant play of these two energies – their combination – that creates all, manifests all. To my mind, Shiva is Potential energy – still, serene, unmoving, in high meditative state - and Paravati is Kinetic energy – playful and trying tenaciously to move Shiva. Together, they constitute total energy. Their constant play, their attraction and repulsion is what causes ‘creation’ to take place. Their interplay causes movement – which is the ‘life-force’, that causes the creation, right from the smallest atom to the gigantic stars and galaxies – to the animates and finally man. All this and more (all that is yet to be discovered) exists due to the interaction of these two energies. The whole of ‘creation’ exists because of these constantly opposing forces – when one increases, the other decreases and vice versa. Shiva or Potential energy, singly, on its own is incomplete – Paravati or Kinetic energy, singly, is incomplete – but in their combination, the two together become ‘whole’ and this ‘completeness’ causes ‘procreation’ which keeps ‘existence’ going on and when Kinetic energy is exhausted - all goes back to Potential energy – because the sum total of both these energies at any given point in time always remains constant! Thus the Vedas say that at first there was nothing, then there was a ‘spandan’ or vibration, a flash of light – and creation started to manifest and ultimately all will go back into nothingness at the time of ‘Pralaya’ – to start all over again after some rest - and – these are the exact ideas that modern scientific thought is echoing. Thus this beautiful divine play of hide and seek of Shiva and Paravati has been going on from time immemorial and thus it will go on for time immemorial!

Dr. Poonam Mehra