10 Sep 2024
Shri Anil asked:-
Mulaprakruti is mentioned as first created item even before the creation of 'Datta' or 'Father of Heaven'. Can we treat this Mulaprakruti as 'Adi parashakti' ? In such case Adiparashakti came first even before 'Datta' or 'Father of Heaven'.
Swami replied:- Adiparaashakti is the Mulaprakruti created by unimaginable God as the first item of creation, but, the unimaginable God didn’t merge with Adiparaashakti. He merged only with the first energetic being to become Datta or Father of heaven. Adi=first, Paraa=best and Shakti= power or energy. This word can be used in different items based on its applied meaning.
This concept is only to show that the Father of heaven is beyond gender and also beyond any specific form. This means that the Father of heaven (Datta) appears as Hiranyagarbha or Narayana or Sadashiva or Adiparaashakti or any form of ultimate God of any religion. The unimaginable God is beyond gender and beyond any specific form looking in the form and gender as desired by the devotees. By this, the Father of heaven gets universality of all world religions and all sub-religions in a religion (like various divine forms of sub-religions of which Shakteya is one sub-religion in Hinduism). Shankara brought unity in all the sub-religions like Shaiva, Vaishnava, Shaakteya, Gaanapatya, Skaanda and Saura having Shiva, Vishnu, Adiparaashakti, Ganapati, Skanda and Surya as the main deities in Hinduism. He brought unity in all the divine forms due to presence of same unimaginable God in all those forms. In fact, all these forms appear simultaneously as different forms of the same form, called as the first energetic incarnation, due to the unimaginable power of unimaginable God (Parabrahman) merged with the first energetic incarnation. It is just like the same photo of one form of God looking as different form of God by seeing in a different angle!
If you take Adiparaashakti as energetic being (not merged with unimaginable God), She represents also the creation as product form. If you take her in the causal form, She can be the non-mediated unimaginable God directly or God Datta looking as Divine female form, which is mediated unimaginable God. If you take her in product form, she is the creation. In this way, Vedanta-line speaking about God Datta resulting from Parabrahman (unimaginable God) and the Shakteya-line speaking about Adiparaashakti are not at all different. In both the forms, the same unimaginable God exists. Hence, whenever you use the word Adiparaashakti, you shall be cautious about your intention i.e., whether you like to mean the cause of the creation or the creation (product) itself.