Swami Shankarananda, The Yoga of Kashmir Shaivism

 

“Kashmir Shaivism does not postulate a God sitting on high and casting out a universe. Instead, Consciousness Itself opens and manifests in precisely the same way that your dream world is manifested. The outer world is withdrawn when universal Consciousness returns within, just as when you go to sleep at night the outer world disappears as you go within. To get to the pure space of Shiva, we have to go inside ourselves and find it there. The thing that stops us, that makes the process hard, is the veil, maya. We get pulled to the outer, to the material part of creation. The senses get intoxicated by objects and pull us away from focus on the Self. The pull of the world is so strong, the outer is so overwhelming: this is the power of maya.”