365bet娱乐

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of joining. In the same way, they have attempted to integrate the
joining ritual, as a component of the main initiation via one of the
paths.
Later theological and sectarian concerns likely motivated this
integration. A competitively sectarian community with a
structured dogma and an organized religious hierarchy would,
naturally, prefer to offer a closed set of controlled rituals, as the
sole vehicle of initiation. The less liturgical and more heterogeneous
meditation procedures, subsumed under these larger initiation
rituals, evidently reflect the practices of circles of earlier Saiva
ascetics. In a less institutional and more fluid setting, marked by
active master disciple relationships and oral tradition, they,
undoubtedly, transmitted and cultivated various esoteric techniques
yielding liberation and supernormal attainments.
For the sectarian 艢aivas the initiate has no active role. In
the ritual of joining, for example, the master, representing 艢iva岣�,
extracts and manipulates the self of a completely passive initiate.
The theology of an omnipotent 艢iva岣� and his institutionalized grace
dictates this causal relationship. For ascetic circles, in contrast,
disciples likely learned meditative practices from masters, and
actively applied them to attain liberation, just as the adept, in
the Saiva schools, conducts his own service to attain powers and
enjoyments. Accordingly, the text presents the following
components of the ritual of joining as parenthetical instruction,
needed by masters when initiating disciples. Following the model of
the mutual pervasion of the six paths, redactors have rationalized
these disparate and redundant practices as overlapping and
substitutable aspects of the same process. Under the surface of
redactorial integration, however, they still retain traces of their