The Sivanandalahari of Adi Sankaracarya, like its twin, Saundaryalahari, is a poem of intense devotion, as noted for its poetic skill as for its spiritual fervour.

God cannot be conceived of , meditated upon or loved with devotion in the abstract.

To love God, the one ultimate reality, indefinable, ineffable, eternal, omnipresent and immanent, the primal cause- as the Brahma Sutras put it- from which the cosmos is born, maintained and dissolved, God has to be conceived of as the Father-Mother, inseparable as word and meaning-in the immortal analogy of Kalidasa.

This is the conception of Siva-Sakti, Father-Mother, who are in themselves one, the embodiment of truth, goodness and beauty and are Being, Consciousness and Bliss, Sat-Cit-Ananda.

Mythology and metaphysics, legend and poetry have enveloped this Father-Mother image of God in the magic of love, devotion and adulation.