❓QUESTION:
Regarding a very early question on this channel about Shiva’s identity, you once stated that he was not a literal being but a metaphor. However, a recent reply suggested that a personality named Shiva does exist, as he served as a teacher and established several schools. What, exactly, does this mean?
❗️ANSWER from lee:
This means that when stories of Shiva are told, they are metaphorical narratives in which Shiva is not merely the entity in whom "everything dissolves." He simply cannot be physically contained within a personality, just as an ocean cannot fit into a bottle.
Furthermore, texts attributed to Shiva are delivered from a higher vantage point—metaphorically, it is the ocean itself describing its waves. It is futile to interpret these writings linearly, much like trying to understand the sea's vastness by observing the contents of a shaken bottle.
Shiva can also take on various forms and archetypal manifestations depending on the context. In those moments, the operative principle is that "the whole is present within the part," rather than an individual acting upon personal whims or self-serving interests.
A similar logic applies to the Archangels and, for example, to Ra—forms of divine consciousness that exist beyond time, remaining present even now within human energies.
