ABSTRACT
When the people focus on the cosmic form of the Devi presented in the Shakta puranas and tantras, they realize that this cosmic form can actually be read as the dancing alternation of life and death –or rather, waking and sleeping –that the universe is. The shava-rupa can become homologous to the vishva-rupa only when both of them are seen as –not bounded systems –but open fields of dancing energy. The stasis of the corpse is only apparent, and at the heart of both the corpse and the cosmos there is the undivided dancing energy. Nigurananda says that the entire cosmos is the body of Sati figured as the cosmic figure of Goddess Kali. Brahmarshi Satyadeva, in Sadhana Samara, his unique commentary on the Devi-mahatmya, says that, without embracing Kali, the embodiment of death, the people can never experience immortality. The chapter shows that Devi-as-corpse erases the ontic divide between beings and things, matter and spirit, life and death.
