The Sacred Feminine in Indian Thought

As Goethe has rounded off the second half of his Faust with the penetrating remark, nothing has fired the imagination of mankind to yearn for perfection so much as the vision of the Eternal Feminine. The study, in the context of Tantric Metaphysics, focuses on the importance of the feminine or the role of woman in Indian spirituality and aesthetics. Dr. Anniyil Tharakan explores the hidden depths of the feminine to gloss how it operates in Indian thought as a primal force in the ascent of man to spiritual heights and aesthetic vision. The Absolute polarizes into the Male and the Female Creative Principles, the Feminine Principle being the divine energy, descending into multiple names and forms in the universe. It is the descending phase of the Divine that makes the ascending growth of spirituality possible. Hindu spirituality is patterns of rhythm between ascent and descent, man’s ascent to the Divine and the Divine’s descent to him, between man and woman, so that they become polar to each other and fuse into the identical whole again. Aesthetics is the vision by the ascending self of reality as beauty when it partakes of the patterns of rhythm caused by its ascent and the descending phase of the Divine. Both spirituality and aesthetics are further glossed in the context of exploration into the subtleties of Saundaryalahari, unravelling the secret of the Eternal Feminine and proffering multiple insights into the topic under study. Emeritus Professor of Mar Ivanios College (Trivandrum) affiliated with the University of Kerala, Dr. Tharakan taught at home and abroad. He was a research scholar at the University of Notre Dame, the USA, in the years 1983-87.
Reviews:
“In Dr. Anniyil Tharakan’s work, history merges into eschatology, the past into the present and the present with the future. Aesthetics goes hand in hand with intellectuality, philosophy with religion and faith with culture. Like Hopkins in the past, he is the kind of writer who celebrates aesthetically the vision of the world and turns it into a divine experience.”
The Times of India, Bangalore.

“Dr. Tharakan has an interesting mind; his works show intense religious feeling. Some of it is unusual. One does not often find religious feeling of Tharakan’s kind in contemporary literature, nor such an awed and passionate sense of history.”
Mid-day, Bombay.

“In Dr. Tharakan powerful religious beliefs and distinctive rituals penetrate their cultural contexts and individual fibres. Christianity and Literature, USA. Dr. Tharakan’s works are major exercises in explanation, conscious attempts to provide others with understanding—to seek the central significance of life”
Explorations, the USA.