The Hindu Temple v2.c11.s6.23

v2.c11.s6.23

Vibrant power is the celestial beauty of her images; they all resemble the Great Goddess whose ‘eyebrows are the entrance arches of the Palace of the Lord of Love’¹³⁸ and whose eyes are like fishes, playing in the lake of the beauty of her face. This beauty in her belongs to God and is His reflex; He is seen himself to assume the state of Śakti so that he may be confronted by His own felicity with all its contents.¹³⁹ Śakti reflects by her Form (rūpaṃ) the Light (prakāśa) which is God.¹⁴⁰ She mirrors the Light of Consciousness-Bliss (cidānanda). Because she acts as its mirror, she is also shown holding a mirror in her hand (Pl. XIV).¹⁴¹ If the boughs of her tree are like her arms and the curves of the creeper like her own movement,¹⁴² if the tree-woman is one idea and composition, the mirror-woman is another type or sculptured group of Śakti; the former being a reiteration of the underlying theme by two kinds of shape, that of vegetation and that of woman, their interplay, affinity, and identity as movement, the latter enacting the drama of the reflection seen in the mirror and of the living being. "The reflection of the face seen in the mirror is nothing in itself as separated from the face; so is the living creature (jīva) in itself nothing, a reflection of Consciousness in the mind—that self-abiding Consciousness in its true state am I"¹⁴³ says Supreme Consciousness of itself. Śakti exemplifies it, on her own level, with luxurious grace and sadness, or any of the emotions which belong to the human face.