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Shaivism - Concepts and symbols - Balance
Identifier
022590
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
The key to obtaining spiritual experience is to achieve balance, thus if one is a man, one has to embrace the feminine and find ways of bringing out the symbolically feminine attributes.
Ideally a woman has to find some masculine attributes in the form of reason and logic. This is taught in Shaivism via Vaisheshika.
Danielou concentrates below on the need for the man to gain the positive emotions – love, compassion, empathy, kindness, gentleness etc as – well he was a man! Joking aside, it is a great deal more difficult for a man to genuinely get an experience than it is for a woman to, so it is worth concentrating on ‘men’s problems’.
A description of the experience
Alain Danielou – While the Gods Play
The Tantric term Vamachara, the "left-hand way," literally means "the woman practice." According to the Acharabheda Tantra, "The ultimate female force is to be propitiated by becoming a woman" (McEvilley, An Archeology of Yoga, pp. 71-72).