14/11/2022
🧘🏼♀️ On the relationship master-disciple 🔱
It can only be understood insofar as one keeps in mind the nature of this relationship. Abhinavagupta distinguishes humanity into two species: those who are embraced by grace and the others.
"The Supreme Lord who eternally projects the world in his energy, is grace, he causes the world to emanate and is free". [Trikahridaya]
Shiva, through the impetuous play of his freedom, first veils his own essence by concealing himself under the ever-renewed forms of his energy and, freely, becomes a limited and enslaved being; it is still he who, so freely, dispenses his grace and reveals himself in his true essence. Whether Shiva mystifies or bestows grace, his basic nature is only grace. He is therefore the only master, true Consciousness or absolute I. His Supreme energy - Grace - perpetually watches over all conscious subjects and constitutes the real relationship between master and disciple.
It is the same consciousness which questions as a disciple and which answers as a master: under the first aspect, imperfect consciousness without clarity, full of doubts and uncertainties (vikalpa), under the second, intense and lucid, it puts an end to all doubts. Thus the appearances of master and disciple in different bodies, because they are imaginary constructs, disappear when one and the same Liberating Knowledge illuminates both.
Shiva, the first of the guru, assumes the form of multiple masters: divinities, sages, super-men and women, nature. It does not matter that the lineage of masters extends infinitely in time, the guru is one; when he liberates his disciple, he liberates himself.
