Mahayana teaches that all things are embryos of the Buddha; they are embryos of the Tathagata, the complete.
All things are formed out of the same energy; vajra is immanent in everything.
Thus also the fourth body (subtle body) of the Buddha is a manifestation of the lightening power in the form of bliss; it is vajrasattva or ananda—bliss. (Nietzsche: “Since all pleasure wants eternity, wants deep, deep eternity.”)
In this state of bliss and in the form of vajra the tathagata embraces its Sakti.
This is the eternal cohabitation of the god with its female form, its offspring, its emanation, its matter.
This belief occurs above all in Shivaism.
The worshiped god is Siva, the many-armed.
He is the hunter on the mountains, the lightening, the hidden power of creation. He is purely contemplative.
His spouse is Sakti, the emanation of power, the active creative power.
This idea corresponds to an old Upanishad concept of purusha and prakriti. (Siva and Sakti = purusha; and prakriti = linga and yoni.)
Siva is also conceived and portrayed in images of worship as Siva-bindu (bindu = point), that is, as the latent point-shaped power of creation.
Surrounding Siva-bindu, around the center, rests the Sakti in the shape of a wheel or cakra. This is the primal form of the mandala.
Such a cakra is also called a padma-lotus.
To this relate the mystical syllables Om mani padme hum, which are best translated as something like: “Oh, by the gem in the lotus.”
They mean the highest perfection and the first beginning at the same time.
Contained therein is everything that can be said.
For us such speculations are the ultimate point at which one may arrive, whereas for the Indian they are simply the starting point, or point of departure.
He begins with the internal, whereas we constantly live in the external.
The visible world is for him Maya, appearance, illusion, Maya-Sakti, that is, the product of Sakti.
Consciousness is Maya, a veil which consists of the projection of earlier experience (samskaras).
The tabula rasa of childlike consciousness is predetermined through the experience of foresight—through the collective unconscious, we would say.
But the Indian says: Sakti has consciousness in itself. (Herein lies a key to the inconceivable.)
The first childhood dreams contain the samskaras, the archetypes.
It is thus in no way surprising that we find obvious cakras or mandalas in children’s drawings.
Small children are very old; later on we soon grow younger.
In our middle age we are youngest, precisely at the time when we have completely or almost completely lost contact with the collective unconscious, the samskaras.
We grow older again only as with the mounting years we remember the samskaras anew. ~Carl Jung, Kundalini Yoga Seminar, Pages 73-74.