Sadashiva

In certain schools of tantra practice,
particularly in the Trika school of
Kashmiri Shaivism, the name for the
first step in the evolution of the cosmos. According to the Trika school, the
Ultimate Reality, conceived as Shiva, is
utterly nondual, and thus neither masculine nor feminine. The first step in
cosmological evolution comes when
the divine consciousness becomes
conscious of itself through the reflection (vimarsha) of its original illumination (prakasha). Moved by this selfconsciousness, the unqualified divine
being transforms itself into a divine
being containing a masculine and feminine nature, the first of many such bipolar
dyads from which the universe is born.
The masculine part of this first dyad is
Sadashiva, which is considered the
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Sadashiva
material cause of the universe. The
energy for creation comes from the
creative and dynamic power of the
dyad’s female principle, Shakti. For further information see Jaideva Singh,
Pratyabhijnanahrdayam, 1982.