Sri Annamalai Swami
Q: You say that maya is one of the saktis. What exactly do you mean by sakti?
AS: Sakti is energy or power. It is a name for the dynamic aspect of the Self. Sakti and santi (peace) are two aspects of the same consciousness. If you want to separate them at all, you can say that santi is the unmanifest aspect of the Self while sakti is the manifest. But really they are not separate. A flame has two properties: light and heat. The two cannot be separated.
Santi and sakti are like the sea and its waves. Santi, the unmanifest aspect, is the vast unmoving body of water. The waves that appear and move on the surface are sakti. Santi is motionless, vast and all-encompassing, whereas waves are active.
Bhagavan used to say that after realization the jivanmukta experiences santi within and is established permanently in that santi, In that state of realization he sees that all activities are caused by sakti. After realization one is ware that there are no individual people doing anything. Instead there is an awareness that all activities are the sakti of the one Self. The jnani, who is fully established int he santi, is always aware that sakti is not separate from him. In that awareness everything is his Self and all actions are his. Alternatively, it is equally correct to say that he never does anything. This is one of the paradoxes of the Self.
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