and gateway to the power or Shakti of that trans-personal
awareness that is Divinity or ‘God’ as such. Human beings
become Gurus not by virtue of being sole human
embodiments of God (for there is no one who is not a
living embodiment or ‘son’ or ‘daughter’ of God) but
because they recognise Shiva alone – and no human being or
teacher – as Supreme Guru. It is because of this that they are
able to receive knowledge and enlightenment through Him,
as well as from those higher, trans-human beings that dwell
in His realm - that plane of awareness known as Shivaloka.
No world ‘religion’ is merely founded on a creed, faith,
dogma or doctrine. Instead it is more like a great work of
drama enacted on the stage of our earthly human reality -
one designed to alter our metaphysical understanding and
experience of ourselves and the world in the most direct
way, and in doing so transform our way of being in the
world and relating to others. It is because of their nature as
religious dramas, that religions require characters – dramatis
personae. Yet though these may draw from religious symbols
of the past, if these symbols are imbued with new
experiential and metaphysical comprehensions they become
vehicles by which the future can realise itself in and
transform the present.
A genuinely new future for humanity cannot be forged
by clinging to the past and yet, in Heidegger’s words, it is
the “arrival of what has been” – of what has yet to be fully