Before you know or do anything, you want. That wanting—prior to action, prior to thought—is Icchā Śakti, the will-to-know and will-to-act inherent to consciousness itself.
God is consciousness (Cit), and consciousness is inherently blissful (Ānanda) because to be infinite and self-aware is to lack nothing. But infinite bliss doesn't sit still. It desires—not from need, but from fullness. This desire is Icchā Śakti, the cosmic will that makes knowing and doing possible.1
Most traditions treat desire as something to overcome or transcend. Kashmir Shaivism inverts this: desire is divine. It's the pre-cognitive, restful desiring power that generates both intellectual inquiry (Jñāna Śakti) and action (Kriyā Śakti). You don't first think, then decide to act. You first want—want to know, want to do—and from that wanting flow knowing and doing.
The crucial move: Icchā is not generated by Jñāna or Kriyā. It subsumes them. All sincere practice, whether meditation or ritual, nourishes Icchā. The desire deepens through engagement.
In spiritual traditions, there's perpetual conflict: the knowledge path dismisses ritual as mechanical, the ritual path dismisses study as sterile head-work. Both are wrong—or both are right, depending on what drives them. A person doing pūjā mechanically out of habit has no Icchā. A person studying philosophy to seem sophisticated has no Icchā. But a person who longs—to know, to practice, to approach the divine—already possesses what matters. The form is secondary.
Ramakrishna Paramahamsa exemplifies this: he would dissolve any question about what to believe or what to do into one answer: longing. Do you long for God? That longing is sufficient. Everything else—the rituals, the study, the discipline—nourishes that longing if undertaken with sincerity.
This means:
This resolves the knowledge/action split by transcending it: both express the same subsuming power.
Psychology: Desire as the primary motivational structure. Most psychological frameworks treat desire as an input variable (what do you want?) and examine outcomes. Here, desire is itself the practice. Compare to intrinsic vs extrinsic motivation: Icchā is intrinsic motivation so deep it doesn't depend on external reward. The desire to know is satisfied by knowing; the desire to act is satisfied by acting. Both are self-nourishing. This parallels Csikszentmihalyi's "flow" — that state where you're so engaged you forget the goal; the engagement is the goal.
Creative Practice: Artistic creation arises from fullness, not lack. A poet doesn't write to "fill a gap" but because she's so full of language and image that she must overflow. This is Icchā Śakti in artistic form. The desire to express precedes and generates the expression. Art that comes from lack (trying to prove something, seeking validation) feels thin; art that comes from fullness (an artist who simply cannot help but create) vibrates.