"The five topics, and the expositions,—such is the system of recognition."
The first aphorism in their text-book is as follows[151]:—
"Having reached somehow or other the condition of a slave of Maheśvara, and wishing also to help mankind,
"I set forth the recognition of Maheśvara, as the method of attaining all felicity."
[This aphorism may be developed as follows]:—
"Somehow or other," by a propitiation, effected by God, of the lotus feet of a spiritual director identical with God, "having reached," having fully attained, this condition, having made it the unintercepted object of fruition to myself. Thus knowing that which has to be known, he is qualified to construct a system for others: otherwise the system would be a mere imposture.
Maheśvara is the reality of unintermitted self-luminousness, beatitude, and independence, by portions of whose divine essence Vishṇu, Viriñchi, and other deities are deities, who, though they transcend the fictitious world, are yet implicated in the infinite illusion.
The condition of being a slave to Maheśvara is the being a recipient of that independence or absoluteness which is the essence of the divine nature, a slave being one to whom his lord grants all things according to his will and pleasure (i.e., dásya, from dá).
The word mankind imports that there is no restriction of the doctrine to previously qualified students. Whoever he may be to whom this exposition of the divine nature is made, he reaps its highest reward, the emanatory principium itself operating to the highest end of the transmigrating souls. It has been accordingly laid down in the Śiva-dṛishṭi by that supreme guide the revered Sománandanátha—
"When once the nature of Śiva that resides in all things has been known with tenacious recognition, whether by proof or by instruction in the words of a spiritual director,