The real meaning of shaktipata (grace) in Kashmir Shaivism

In this excerpt, Swami Lakshmanjoo explains what grace (śaktipāta) really means in Kashmir Shaivism. This is from Chapter two, the commentary on verse 64-65 of the Bhagavad Gita, in the Light of Kashmir Shaivism.

Click here to read the previous post with verses 64-65: Meditation and the stages of yoga, which led to this subject and gives more detail.

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SWAMIJI:

[Grace] śaktipāta means you have to maintain your vigor, you have to maintain your will. There must be firm will. That is śaktipāta.

Śaktipāta [grace] is not derived from other sources. You have got śaktipāta, you have got the power of śaktipāta, i.e., to have it. You [must] possess it with vigor, with force, because you have got that power.

But you don’t like it [laughs]!

You don’t like it and you go on meeting others and everything and . . .

JONATHAN: Can I just ask one question? What causes that change? You said you possess that śaktipāta, that power, but you don’t like it, you just go to these other things. What makes that change, when you suddenly are not worried about these things and you dive into that?

SWAMIJI: When śaktipāta [grace] comes from within. From within! Śaktipāta does not come from without. It is not [from] without.

JONATHAN: It is there already.

SWAMIJI: It is there. Because when God is united with limited God, [this is possible only because] limited God is not separate from unlimited God.

yogī ca sarvavyavahārān kurvāṇo’pi . . . [comm.]

[Abhinavagupta]: That yogi, although he does each and every activity of the world–he [goes] to the pictures, he [goes to see] everybody, he [goes] to the cinema and sightseeing and everything, whatever we do, lokottaraḥ, but he is above [those activities], he is supreme.

Click here to read the previous post with verses 64-65: Meditation and the stages of yoga, which led to this subject and gives more detail.