Realization And Evolution
The soul merged out of Śiva as the Self in His timeless, causeless, spaceless, unmanifest state and from Śiva as the Creator, Preserver and Destroyer in His manifest state of all form. The core of the merger between these two states, or the apex, causes a cell which breaks loose another cell, thus spawning souls. Each time the Being of Śiva goes from His manifest to His unmanifest state, it spawns a soul.
Where the Śakti unites with the unmanifest and Śiva unites with the manifest, this natural process, which continues even into the sahasrāra of man, is the core from whence creation comes.
Each God has a vehicle through which he is represented—Gaṇeśa the mouse, Murugan the peacock, and Śiva rides in man. The origin of man—being spawned from Śiva, the birthless, deathless God—therefore, is as a pure, taintless soul. After thus being spawned, the soul goes through a maturing process. This slow growth is in three basic categories: karma exercises, āṇava clouds, māyā distorts. This classroom of these experiences finally matures an intelligence free enough from the bondage of the classroom of āṇava, karma and māyā to realize its own Divinity and at-one-ment with Śiva as a taintless, pure soul. This, then, is the foundation, after once attained, for final liberation, Self Realization, to be sought for.
When the soul is spawned, it is a release of energy. This energy, once released, accumulates more energy around it from the manifest world, which is also Śiva. The impact of the spawning is so strong that finally a body is created around this tiny cell, which looks exactly like the Primal Soul body of the God that spawned the soul into being. The word soul in itself, meaning core, refers to this cell. The body of the soul, the actinic causal body, as it becomes denser, moves into another plane of manifest being and begins on its own to create, preserve and destroy, for it now is form, taking on the same nature, which is its nature, of Śiva in manifest form. The only difference now between this soul and Śiva is that Śiva can be in unmanifest state, but the soul is caught in the activity, the so-called bondage, of the manifest state. It has not yet completed the cycle. Once this soul has completed the cycle of the manifest state, then quite naturally it merges back into itself and realizes, or is, the unmanifest state.
After realization of the Self, to attain actual liberation from rebirth requires the willful and deliberate act of the adept at the point of death to direct the course. If he feels and knows that he has yet to perform actions of service on this planet, once the physical body has been parted from, he will find himself on an inner plane in which he can prepare to return at the proper place and proper time to fulfill his desire. However, should he have felt well satisfied with his many lives, as they play before his vision during his transition from his physical body, now ready to go on in this liberated state, he would find himself on an inner plane whence it would be impossible to reenter flesh. Thus, moksha, kaivalya, liberation from earthly birth, has been attained, and the way is open to further evolution on the subtle planes.
Embodied souls have attributes that are constantly refining themselves as they traverse the instinctive nature toward the Divine. These qualities are becoming more and more like Lord Śiva’s. His personality, attributes and qualities are described by the 1,008 names given to Him, for no single name is adequate to depict His attributes. Similarly, a person could not be adequately explained by one word. Now you can see the similarity between Lord Śiva and His offspring.