अभिनवगुप्तोक्त-द्विजता

Initiation and dvijatA

यथा हेमादिधातूनां
पाके क्रमवशाद्भवेत् ।।५१२।।
रजतादि तथा संवित्-
संस्कारे द्विजतान्तरे ।

As gold and other metals happen to assume the hue other than their own on being heated in fire, such as those of silver, etc., even so having been subjected to the process of sanctification, the student attains the status of the twice-born leaving his earlier status behind. (512b-513a)

योनिर् न कारणं तत्र
शान्तात्मा द्विज उच्यते ॥५१३।।
मुनिना मोक्षधर्मादाव्
एतच् च प्रविवेचितम्
मुकुटादिषु शास्त्रेषु
देवेनापि निरूपितम् ।।५१४।।

On this point, discounting the source of one’s birth, it is the peacefulness of his temperament on account of which he comes to be known as the twice-born. This has been decided by sage Vyāsa in the beginning of the Mokşadharma Parva of the Mahābhārata. The same thing has been confirmed by Lord Siva in texts like Mukuta Sastra. (513b-514)

The Kaula’s blissful adoration of the outer field of experience as the expansion of the deity immanent in consciousness was universalised in the concept of liberated social conformity, integrating the antagonistic paths of purity and power. Thus one could be “internally a Kaula, externally a Saiva [a worshipper of Svacchandabhairava in the Kashmirian context] while remaining Vedic in one’s social practice.”130 The new Śaiva was to see his self as an actor with his individuality as its stage, and his faculties as an audience of aesthetes initiated into the appreciation of the outer world not as a system of external values exacting the extrinsicist impotence of a contentless consciousness but as the expression of the self’s infinite inner autonomy, pervaded by a vibrant beauty.131