3. Śiva as Consciousness

Śaivism depicts an absolute God who is both pure consciousness and soul consciousness and both actively passive and unconditionally dynamic. It projects a vision in which there is a place for both the individual will and divine will.^[1] Śiva having manifested the worlds through His dynamic energy, He remains in the back ground, as a knower of the past, the present and the future, watching the events unfold themselves and letting things go by. For the mortals, He is there, yet He is not there. He is with us and yet He is not with us. He is the same and yet He is different. He hides Himself behind a thick veil of ignorance, beyond the senses, the mind and the objective world. He willfully lets Prakṛti or Śakti do her work. He is the master of the worlds. This conception of God centric cosmic drama in which the destiny of individual beings stretched beyond time and space made Śaivism particularly popular among inquisitive minds in the ancient world.^[2]