In the context of NŚT, Śiva is not the name of a god. Rather, the word is understood to signify the peaceful, quiescent ground of all Reality, the infinite silence of transcendent Divinity, or, in the poet’s phrase, the “still point at the center of the turning world.” While Śakti is extroversive, immanent, manifest, omniform, and dynamic, Śiva is introversive, transcendent, unmanifest, formless, and still. Śiva is the absolute void of pure Consciousness. (To be more accurate, Consciousness is never absolutely still, so on the level of the Śiva-tattva, there is what Abhinava calls
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