Insight Editions · No. 365
The Aphorisms of Siva
The Sivasutra with Bhaskara's Commentary, the Varttika
Mark S. G. Dyczkowski
Dyczkowski's translation of the Sivasutra with Bhaskara's Varttika, the older and less-known commentary, set beside Ksemaraja's reading. All 79 aphorisms across the three Lights, each in its own section, with the Stanzas on Vibration, comparison tables, critical notes, a glossary and a practice path.
A study guide to The Aphorisms of Siva by Mark S. G. Dyczkowski (SUNY Press, 1992). Shared free for personal reading; not for sale and not endorsed by the author or publishers. Please read and buy the original.
CORE CLAIM
"Consciousness is the Self." The Sivasutra, revealed to Vasugupta in ninth-century Kashmir, teaches that we are already Siva, universal consciousness, bound only by our own limited knowledge and freed by awareness that persists through every state. Bhaskara reads this as a mysticism of Light; Ksemaraja reads in the later doctrine of universal "I".
SCOPE
Muller-Ortega's Foreword, Dyczkowski's Introduction, all 79 aphorisms of Bhaskara's recension across the three Lights, each in its own section, and the Appendix (Stanzas on Vibration), with critical notes, comparison tables, a glossary and a practice path: about 25,000 words.
KEY FIGURES
Vasugupta, recipient of the Aphorisms; Bhatta Bhaskara, author of the Varttika; an anonymous second commentator; Ksemaraja, author of the Vimarsini; Kallata, Utpaladeva and Abhinavagupta; and the translator Mark S. G. Dyczkowski.
BEST FOR
Readers who know the Shiva Sutras through Ksemaraja-based translations (Jaideva Singh, Swami Lakshmanjoo) and want the older, less-known reading; and practitioners looking for concrete methods: the gap between thoughts, the junctions of waking and sleep, the edges of emotions, Mantra joined to breath.
How to Use This Guide
The Aphorisms of Siva: The Siva Sutra with Bhaskara's Commentary, the Varttika (SUNY Press, 1992, SUNY Series in Tantric Studies) is Mark S. G. Dyczkowski's translation of the root text of Kashmir Saivism with the commentary of Bhaskara, which had never before appeared in English. He adds an anonymous second commentary and his own exposition of every aphorism, comparing Bhaskara at each step with Ksemaraja, the commentator through whom almost everyone reads the text. This guide follows the book in order and explains every section.
What the Book Is
The Sivasutra is a collection of terse aphorisms, many only two or three words long: caitanyam atma ("consciousness is the Self"), jnanam bandhah ("knowledge is bondage"), nartaka atma ("the Self is the actor"). Tradition says they were revealed in a dream to Vasugupta around the middle of the ninth century and found carved on a rock on Mahadeva mountain. Because they are so brief, their meaning depends heavily on commentary.
Two commentaries survive in full:
- Ksemaraja's Vimarsini, by the leading disciple of Abhinavagupta, which became the standard reading. It is the basis of nearly every translation.
- Bhaskara's Varttika, a verse commentary by a teacher who traced his lineage directly to Vasugupta and Kallata. Dyczkowski argues it stands closer to the original Spanda teaching.
The value of this book is that it puts them side by side.
Dyczkowski's Introduction makes a claim that shapes everything after it. The doctrine of universal "I" consciousness (aham), which most readers take to be the heart of Kashmir Saivism, was Utpaladeva's contribution, a generation or two after the Aphorisms. It is missing from both the Aphorisms and the Stanzas on Vibration. Ksemaraja "systematically encoded this concept into them at every possible turn". Bhaskara "seems totally oblivious" of it. Reading this book is largely an exercise in seeing the text without that later lens.
How the Book Is Laid Out
| Part | Pages | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Foreword (Muller-Ortega) | front matter | The dream of Vasugupta; consciousness as self-reflexive |
| Introduction | 1 to 8 | Bhaskara and Ksemaraja; the universal ego; method of translation |
| First Light (23 aphorisms) | 9 to 64 | The light of universal consciousness |
| Second Light (10 aphorisms) | 65 to 92 | The arising of innate knowledge: Mantra and the Master |
| Third Light (46 aphorisms) | 93 to 180 | The vibration of the powers: the individual's path |
| Appendix | 181 to 188 | The Stanzas on Vibration, translated |
| Notes, Bibliography, Index | 189, 209, 211 | Endnotes (keyed to every exposition), sources, index |
The Third Light is as long as the other two together, so this guide divides it into three parts, and the First Light into two.
The Three Layers of Each Aphorism
Each aphorism in the book has the same structure, and this guide keeps it:
- The aphorism, in Sanskrit and English.
- Bhaskara's verse commentary (bold in the book) and the anonymous prose commentary that explains it.
- Dyczkowski's Exposition, which compares Ksemaraja's reading, cites the Stanzas, and often adds essays of his own (on the Heart, Kundalini, Mudra, the guru, time, the channels).
It is easy to lose track of who is speaking. In this guide, "Bhaskara" means the Varttika and the prose commentary printed with it; "Ksemaraja" means the Vimarsini as reported by Dyczkowski; "Dyczkowski" marks his own exposition. Many of the book's best pages (the nine states, Kundalini, Mudra, Kali and time) are Dyczkowski's syntheses from other texts, not commentary on the aphorism in the strict sense. The guide flags these.
A Note on the Source Used
This guide was prepared from a digitised text of the SUNY edition. In a few places the scan drops words or lines (the Sanskrit of 3/25, Stanzas 33 to 34 of the Appendix, and parts of the Introduction); these are noted where they occur. Page references follow the book's table of contents.
How Each Section Works
- Every aphorism has its own heading, with the Sanskrit and Dyczkowski's English.
- Contrast boxes set Bhaskara and Ksemaraja side by side wherever they differ.
- Critical-lens boxes mark contested claims, errors, and places where commentary goes beyond the text.
- Practice boxes draw out methods you can try.
- Each section ends with a key-term table and a Reflect and practise prompt.
- The closing section gives a full comparison of the two commentators, a glossary, and a practice path built from the whole text.
Who This Is For
Readers who know the Shiva Sutras from Jaideva Singh or Swami Lakshmanjoo will find many familiar aphorisms read differently here, and the numbering shifts by one in parts of the First and Third Lights. For Ksemaraja's reading in full, see the companion Insight Editions Siva Sutras: The Yoga of Supreme Identity (No. 352, Jaideva Singh) and Shiva Sutras: The Supreme Awakening (No. 363, Swami Lakshmanjoo); this edition is the Bhaskara counterpart. Newcomers can read straight through: the guide explains every technical term at first use, and the glossary at the end collects them.
Foreword and Introduction: Two Commentators, One Text
The book opens with a short Foreword by Paul E. Muller-Ortega, editor of the SUNY Tantric Studies series, and a compact Introduction by Dyczkowski. Together they explain why this translation exists: the Sivasutra had been translated many times with Ksemaraja's commentary, but never in English with the older commentary of Bhaskara, the Varttika. Dyczkowski translates Bhaskara, an anonymous second commentary printed with it, and adds his own exposition of every aphorism, comparing Bhaskara with Ksemaraja throughout.
The Foreword: Vasugupta's Dream
Muller-Ortega begins with the story of the text's origin. The aphorisms were revealed in a dream to the sage Vasugupta, either by Siva himself or by a Siddha (a perfected being). In some versions Vasugupta is then told to go to a rock on the Mahadeva mountain, which turns over at his touch to show the aphorisms carved on it.
He reads the myth as a key to the text's meaning, not as history:
- For most of us dreams are chaotic: memory fragments, fear, unreality. For a Siddha who has realised "I am Siva" (Sivo'ham), a dream is a clear filter for truth. So when Vasugupta dreamt, "it was reality rather than illusion" that appeared on the screen of his awareness.
- The dreamer is self-enclosed, creating whole worlds within himself. This mirrors the self-reflexive stance of absolute consciousness, called vimarsa. Siva is "the great cosmic dreamer" who never leaves this self-reference, even while the universe unfolds.
- The rock is the "lithic counterpart of the dream": a private revelation given public, durable form.
Muller-Ortega makes a fine point about the first aphorism, caitanyam atma, usually translated "Consciousness is the Self". The English "is" is our insertion; the Sanskrit simply sets two words side by side: "Consciousness, Self." Read that way, the aphorism shows consciousness facing into itself. He compares it to the Upanishadic atma eva brahma. The aphorisms, he concludes, are "not merely a dry philosophical elaboration" but "a conceptual adoration of the supreme, a slowly revolving vision of the absolute".
Muller-Ortega is explicit that this is "a textual myth of origin", and he uses it symbolically. Readers should keep that framing. Dyczkowski elsewhere dates the revelation to the middle of the ninth century, but the dream and the turning rock are tradition, and the versions differ between commentators on whether Siva or a Siddha was the source.
The Seventy-Nine Aphorisms at a Glance
Before the Introduction, the book prints all the aphorisms in English. Bhaskara's recension has 23 + 10 + 46 = 79 aphorisms in three sections called "Lights" (prakasa):
| Section | Title | Aphorisms | Theme |
|---|---|---|---|
| First Light | The Description of the Light of Universal Consciousness | 23 | Consciousness, bondage, the states, Siva's powers |
| Second Light | The Arising of Innate Knowledge | 10 | Mantra, effort, the Master, Matrka |
| Third Light | The Vibration of the Powers | 46 | The individual soul, yoga, the Fourth State, liberation |
Ksemaraja's recension differs in places (he has 77 aphorisms in total). He joins Bhaskara's 1/16 and 1/17 into one aphorism and lacks Bhaskara's 3/15. These differences matter, and the guide notes them where they occur.
The Aphorisms and the Stanzas on Vibration
Dyczkowski refers readers to his Doctrine of Vibration for history and to his forthcoming Stanzas on Vibration for more. Here he makes four points:
- The Aphorisms, despite being brief and cryptic, are the first of the series of monistic works written in Kashmir from the middle of the ninth to the thirteenth century that make up most of Kashmiri Saiva literature.
- These works were inspired by the Saiva Tantras and by the earlier dualist Saiva Siddhanta.
- Abhinavagupta was the greatest of these teachers; Ksemaraja, his greatest disciple, wrote commentaries on both the Aphorisms and the Stanzas on Vibration (Spandakarika), which later tradition treats as closely linked.
- Bhaskara, son of Divakarabhatta, a Brahmin, was Ksemaraja's contemporary or a little later. He paraphrases a verse of Utpaladeva's Stanzas on Recognition, and Abhinavagupta quotes him.
The Introduction says Abhinavagupta lived "from approximately the middle of the eleventh century into the first quarter of the twelfth". This is about a century too late. Abhinavagupta is normally dated c. 950 to 1016 CE (Wikipedia on Abhinavagupta), and Dyczkowski's own Doctrine of Vibration places him in the late tenth and early eleventh centuries. The "middle of the eleventh century" given for Bhaskara follows from the same reckoning and should be read with care. Since Abhinava quotes Bhaskara, Bhaskara cannot be later than Abhinava's working life.
Two lineages
Bhaskara traces his lineage directly to Vasugupta and his disciple Kallatabhatta. Ksemaraja never does; he names only Abhinavagupta as his teacher and is critical of Kallata's reading of the Stanzas. So Ksemaraja chose "a different line of interpretation" of both texts. This is the frame for the whole book: two commentarial traditions, one closer to the early Spanda teachers, one carrying the later synthesis.
Bhaskara and Ksemaraja: Two Visions, One Truth
Dyczkowski gives a short statement of the philosophy:
- Kashmiri Saivism is monism: one reality, one universal consciousness, adored as Siva.
- It is also idealism: things exist as objects because they are perceived: "to be is to be perceived" (esse est percipi). Advaita Vedanta shares the monism and Buddhist Yogacara the idealism.
- So its distinctive feature is neither of these, but the doctrine that the one reality is "a universal egoity": pure "I" consciousness, experienced simply in being aware that "I am".
| Petty ego | Authentic "I am" | |
|---|---|---|
| Based on | A false notion of oneself as the body or a temporal personality | Pure awareness of being |
| Behaviour | Supported by "trivial pride and selfishness"; the cause of conflict | "Makes room for others"; "not a victim nor does it victimize" |
| Fear | Fears being less than others | "No fear of being less than anyone" |
| Scope | Limited | Infinite, eternal, all-powerful, omniscient; creates, sustains and withdraws all things |
The key admission
Dyczkowski states something few writers on Kashmir Saivism say plainly. The doctrine of universal "I" consciousness was first expounded by Utpaladeva, and it was absorbed so quickly that "few have noticed the fact that this was his own distinctive contribution". Abhinava applied it everywhere within decades. So "we should not be surprised... to notice that this important concept is missing in both Stanzas and Aphorisms". Scholars missed the absence because they read both texts through Ksemaraja, who "systematically encoded this concept into them at every possible turn". Bhaskara, though he knew Utpaladeva's work, "seems totally oblivious of this important idea". That difference runs through every page that follows.
Tantric roots and the Krama
The Aphorisms belong to a "purely Tantric tradition": teachers initiated into specific Tantras, passing on interpretations and writing works that presented themselves as Tantras "brought into the world". Jnananetra (Sivananda), a close contemporary of Vasugupta, saw himself as the vehicle of such a revelation. Vasugupta likewise is the recipient rather than author. Both mark the transition from scripture to the learned treatise (sastra).
The Krama school developed alongside, with its treatises on "Wheels" (cakra) of energies and the Great Sequence (Mahakrama), worshipping the energies in sequence as forms of the Goddess Kali, Goddess of Time. Ksemaraja's readings are often Krama-oriented; Bhaskara's ideas of flux as a "non-flux" of energy share the same archetype but are less sectarian.
| Bhaskara (Varttika) | Ksemaraja (Vimarsini) | |
|---|---|---|
| Lineage | Vasugupta, Kallata | Abhinavagupta |
| Core idea | The Self as "one's own nature" (svasvabhava), from Kallata | Universal "I" (aham), from Utpaladeva |
| Guiding theme | "A mysticism of Light": realisation as an expanding vision of Light | Light present but not his guiding theme |
| Colouring | General Tantric archetypes | Krama and Trika |
| Closeness to Stanzas | Closer to the original Spanda teachings | Later synthesis |
About This Translation
- The printed edition of Bhaskara includes another commentary, origin unnoted by the editor, apparently found in the manuscripts. Dyczkowski translates it too. It often bridges Bhaskara and Ksemaraja, sticking mostly to Bhaskara, though it takes the absolute ego as axiomatic.
- So each aphorism has three layers: Bhaskara (printed in bold in the book), the anonymous commentary (normal type), and Dyczkowski's Exposition.
- Sanskrit terms are given in parentheses; additions needed for readable English are placed in parentheses too. "The reader should not allow himself to be distracted by these parentheses."
Dyczkowski's method is honest, since every interpretive addition is visible. But it means the aphorisms quoted in English often carry his reading inside them: "Knowledge (born of sensory perception) is the waking state"; "(Empirical) knowledge is bondage". Readers should notice how short the bare Sanskrit is: jnanam bandhah, two words. Much of the meaning attributed to the aphorisms is the commentators', which is exactly why having two commentaries side by side is valuable.
Concluding Remarks: Why This Matters to Ordinary Readers
Dyczkowski anticipates a question: what do such elevated experiences have to do with readers "far from the developed spirituality" they require?
- For Kashmiri Saivism the sincere seeker is first and foremost a yogi, and yoga means union: realising our true nature, "infinitely greater than our thoughts could ever conceive".
- We are "ourselves the ultimate goal of all spiritual endeavour", the God called Siva or Bhairava, "Who has helped us throughout whether we know it or not".
- This realisation makes us less proud, not more. Abhinava: ordinary people "do nothing for others"; those identified with Bhairava act "only for the benefit of the world".
- "We are as close or as far away as we want be at any time."
- Some teachers hide these matters until disciples mature; the Kashmiri masters revealed them, "trusting in that inner purity that nothing can sully". But they are not an invitation to enjoy strange descriptions: "the yogi is constantly admonished to be attentive, to press on beyond his present state... whatever level of development we have reached, we must keep on growing."
Read this book as a conversation between two readings of one terse text. Bhaskara stands closer to the early teachers and speaks of Light and one's own nature; Ksemaraja reads in the later doctrine of universal "I". Dyczkowski's expositions keep both in view, so you can see where the meaning comes from.
| Key term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Sivasutra | The Aphorisms of Siva, revealed to Vasugupta |
| Varttika | Bhaskara's verse commentary |
| Vimarsini | Ksemaraja's commentary |
| prakasa ("Light") | Name of each of the three sections; also the light of consciousness |
| svasvabhava | "One's own nature": the Self in the early Spanda texts |
| aham | Universal "I": Utpaladeva's doctrine, read in by Ksemaraja |
| Krama | School of the "sequence" of energies, worshipping Kali |
| sastra | Learned treatise, as distinct from revealed Tantra |
Reflect and practise. Try Muller-Ortega's reading of the first aphorism: say inwardly "consciousness, self" without the "is", and notice whether it feels like a statement about something or a pointing back at the one who is aware. Then notice one moment today when your sense of "I" was the petty ego and one when it was simply "I am".
The First Light, Part One: Consciousness, Bondage and the States
The First Light is called "The Description of the Light of Universal Consciousness" (book pp. 9 to 64). Its 23 aphorisms move from what the Self is (1/1), through how it is bound (1/2 to 1/4), to the means of liberation, the states of waking, dreaming and sleep, and finally the powers of the realised yogi. This part covers the opening verses and aphorisms 1/1 to 1/11.
The Opening Verses and the Three Grades of Grace
Bhaskara opens with a benediction: may the Lord, beloved of the daughter of the Snowy Mountains, whose crest-jewel is the budding moon, protect us. Dyczkowski reads the verse as a map of the whole text: the three Lights correspond to Siva, Sakti and the cosmic drama in which the soul is bound and freed. A second verse offers obeisance to the teachers.
Bhaskara then explains why anyone comes to these teachings at all. It is grace (saktipata), "the descent of power", that leads a person to a true Master. Grace is graded:
| Grade of grace | Leads to | Means (upaya) |
|---|---|---|
| Intense | Immediate absorption | Sambhava: the way of Siva, will alone |
| Middling | Contemplation of pure thought | Sakta: the way of energy |
| Weak | Effort with breath, body, mantra | Anava: the way of the individual |
The philosophers' mistaken selves
Before the first aphorism, Bhaskara lists the mistaken identifications of the Self made by other schools, each of whom stops at some level short of the whole. Materialists take the Self to be the body; Naiyayikas the intellect; Mimamsakas the subtle body; Buddhists a flux of moments; some Vedantins and Madhyamikas an absolute negation; Pancaratrins the unmanifest; Samkhya a consciousness isolated from activity; other Vedantins Isvara; the grammarians Sadasiva. All are "cheated by Maya", taking a part of the hierarchy of being for the Self.
This hierarchy is a polemical device, standard in Saiva texts, that places rival schools on lower rungs of the Saiva ladder of principles. It tells you about Saiva self-understanding, not about what those schools actually held. A Madhyamika would reject the label "absolute negation", and a Vedantin would not accept that Brahman is "Isvara" in the Saiva sense. Read it as a map of possible identifications, which is how it is useful for practice.
1/1 caitanyam atma: Consciousness Is the Self
Bhaskara: consciousness (caitanya) is the freedom of knowing and doing. The Self is not a thing that has consciousness; it is that free agency. Because this consciousness is self-luminous (svaprakasa), nothing outside it can reveal it.
Ksemaraja reads consciousness as "the pure reflective awareness of the absolute ego". Dyczkowski notes the consequence both share: since nothing lies outside consciousness, there is ultimately no means (upaya) external to it. The highest way is anupaya, "no means", simply being what one is.
The whole teaching is in these two words. Everything that follows is commentary on how we lose sight of it and how we regain it. If 1/1 is grasped, the other aphorisms are descriptions of one's own nature in action, not new doctrines.
1/2 jnanam bandhah: Knowledge Is Bondage
The aphorism is two words. Bhaskara: the "knowledge" that binds is limited knowledge, "I" and "mine", always clothed in speech. This is the impurity of Maya (mayiyamala), the sense of difference. Siva binds himself freely, like an actor who takes on a role and could put it down.
Ksemaraja applies the aphorism instead to the impurity of individuality (anavamala), the root contraction by which infinite consciousness feels itself to be small. Then he reads 1/3 as the other two impurities. Either way, Dyczkowski stresses, bondage is self-imposed: there is no outside jailer.
1/3 yonivargah kalasariram: The Womb and the Body of Parts
Bhaskara reads this aphorism as describing the powers and the phonemes that bind:
- The "class of wombs" (yonivarga) is a group of four powers: Vama (the emitting power, source of bliss and of the world's diversity, connected with Kundalini), Jyestha (the eldest, power of persistence), Raudri (the fierce power of withdrawal, which also stirs up doubt) and Ambika (the mother, a steady level that prevents the soul from falling but also stops it rising).
- The "body of parts" (kalasarira) is the body of the fifty phonemes, the units of sound from which words, and so thoughts, are made.
Ksemaraja reads it as the other two impurities: the "womb" is Maya, source of differentiated objects (mayiyamala), and "kala" is limited agency, the impurity of action (karmamala). Dyczkowski adds a psychological note: the feeling of being worthless or incapable is the karma impurity felt from within.
| Impurity | What it does | Felt as |
|---|---|---|
| Anava (individuality) | Contracts infinite consciousness into a small self | "I am limited" |
| Mayiya (of Maya) | Makes things appear different from oneself | "This is other than me" |
| Karma (of action) | Makes one feel the doer of limited acts with results | "I did this; I am unworthy" |
1/4 jnanadhisthanam matrka: Matrka Is the Ground of Knowledge
Every limited cognition is supported by speech: we do not think without words, even silently. The power that presides over this is Matrka, "the little mother" or "unknown mother", the energy of the phonemes. She is unknown because we do not see that she is shaping our experience.
Bhaskara distinguishes two kinds of knowledge: pure, which leads upward, and impure, which binds. Matrka's attendant powers can be Aghora ("not terrible", raising the soul) or Ghora ("terrible", tying it down). Dyczkowski quotes the Tantrasadbhava on the phonemes as the body of the goddess. The point for practice: attend to the speech that forms your thoughts, and the same power that binds becomes liberating.
1/5 udyamo bhairavah: The Upsurge Is Bhairava
Now the means. "Bhairava is the upsurge (udyama)." Bhairava's name is read as bharana (sustaining), ravana (withdrawing, literally "roaring") and vamana (emitting). The upsurge is the sudden emergence of the highest intuition.
This is sambhavopaya, the way of Siva, for those of intense grace. It may come through the vision of a Siddha, through eating consecrated food (caru), or simply from within. The yogi does nothing but allow himself to be carried by the innate exertion of consciousness. Dyczkowski links this with the Stanzas on Vibration: the moment of upsurge appears in the centre between two thoughts.
The teaching implies a simple experiment. Watch one thought end. Before the next one forms, there is a moment with no content but full awareness. Do not try to hold it. Notice its quality of alertness, which is not the same as blankness. That alertness, according to both commentators, is the upsurge: it was present all along.
1/6 Sakticakrasamdhane visvasamharah: The Universe Withdrawn
"When the Wheel of Energies fuses together, the universe is withdrawn."
Bhaskara: the energies are the universe, all of it knowledge and action. They form a "wheel" (cakra) because they illumine (cakana). When they fuse back into one's own nature, the universe is withdrawn into consciousness, which resumes its Siva-nature. The yogi who reflects that the world of knowledge and action is not separate from the absolute sees it dissolve in "Siva's fire of supreme consciousness". Even in this withdrawal, one's own abiding state is never obscured.
Ksemaraja agrees, but reads it in Krama terms: the yogi contemplates Anakhya, "the Inexplicable", the power that pervades the cycle of creation, persistence and destruction in every act of perception, both in succession (krama) and simultaneously (akrama), while being neither. He quotes a hymn to the Goddess "Her body one with change and Her nature unchanging".
1/7 The Fourth State Abides Through the Other Three
"The consciousness which is the expanse of the Fourth State (abides constantly in) the various states of waking, dreaming and deep sleep."
The Fourth (turya) is not a fourth state alongside the others but the awareness that pervades all three. Bhaskara's commentator explains that minor states like recollection fall within dreaming, and fainting within deep sleep, so three states cover everything. When the yogi emerges from contemplation the three states resume their functions, but they no longer cover his nature.
Dyczkowski calls this central to the Stanzas on Vibration: the persistence of awareness through every change. Developing and maintaining the Fourth is an important part of the practice taught throughout the Aphorisms.
1/8 to 1/10: The Three States Defined
Three short aphorisms define the states so "all may attain liberation in this very life".
1/8 jnanam jagrat: Knowledge Is Waking
Waking is knowledge born of the senses, where the knower is absorbed in sensation. Objects are shared by everyone (sadharana), unlike dream objects. For the fettered it means loss of one's own nature; for the free it shows the radiance of that nature. Yogis call it "Established in the Body" (pindastha): one-pointed concentration on an object.
1/9 svapno vikalpah: Dreaming Is Thought Constructs
Dreaming is thought constructs arising inwardly without external objects: "towns, mountains, forests and groves". Dyczkowski's key move: the dream state occurs not only in sleep but whenever we represent something mentally. Meditation (dhyana), in which an object is repeatedly visualised, takes place in the dream state. Yogis call it "Established in One Place" (padastha); for the path of knowledge it is "Pervasion".
1/10 aviveko mayasausuptam: Deep Sleep Is Maya
Deep sleep is Maya, the absence of discernment: the power of consciousness withdraws its rays like the sun at night. Yet something persists, since on waking we recall "I slept well" or "I knew nothing". Dyczkowski distinguishes deep sleep without object and deep sleep with a subtle object. For the ordinary person it is a blank; for the yogi it is contemplation (samadhi), called "Established in Form" (rupastha), closer to universal consciousness than waking because the subject alone exists.
The Nine States
Bhaskara notes that each state contains the other three, giving nine sub-states. Dyczkowski describes them with unusual psychological precision, and this table is one of the most practically useful pages in the book:
| State | Name | What it is like |
|---|---|---|
| Waking in waking | Unawakened (abuddha) | Wholly absorbed in objects; never asks who he is |
| Waking in dream | Awakened (buddha) | Staring at something absent-mindedly, lost in thought |
| Waking in deep sleep | Well Awakened (prabuddha) | A blank moment; the yogi rests here in subtle unity. Fully awake (suprabuddha) when the Fourth persists in action |
| Dream in waking | Come and Gone (gatagata) | Grief, passion, fear or madness: taking projections for real things |
| Dream in dream | Well Dispersed (suviksipta) | The dream proper; no control over images |
| Dream in deep sleep | Consistent (samgata) | Realising "I am dreaming"; "Attentive" when the Fourth arises in the dream |
| Sleep in waking | Emergent (udita) | Sleep wipes out everything; one recalls only having slept |
| Sleep in dream | Extensive (vipula) | Faint traces of impressions appear "like the faint outlines of a picture" |
| Sleep in sleep | Peaceful (santa) | Subtle awareness of subjectivity at rest; "Very Blissful" when the Fourth persists in sleep |
The nine states turn a metaphysics into a self-observation tool. Dyczkowski's examples are ordinary: staring blankly, being swept away by grief, recognising a dream as a dream. In each, the question is the same: is the subject present to itself? The progression runs from total loss in the object to the Fourth present in every state.
1/11 tritayabhokta viresah: The Lord of the Heroes
"The enjoyer of the three (states) is the Lord of the Heroes."
Bhaskara maps the three states to the three qualities (guna): waking to sattva (illumination), dreaming to rajas (activity), deep sleep to tamas (delusion). The subject who arouses wonder in all of them is the Lord of the Heroes.
Dyczkowski says openly that Ksemaraja's interpretation "seems to us less forced" than Bhaskara's. Mapping states to gunas is neat but adds little. For Ksemaraja the "heroes" are the senses and their master is the yogi who has discovered his identity. The gap between states, where the Fourth shows itself, widens until he goes beyond all states. He becomes one with Manthanabhairava, "Churning Bhairava", who stirs his own energy into creation and destruction. Ksemaraja is blunt: one not like this "is just a worldly fettered soul", and even a yogi who has not entered this stream "is merely a deluded soul".
| Key term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| caitanya | Consciousness as free knowing and doing |
| saktipata | Grace, "descent of power", graded intense, middling, weak |
| mala | Impurity: anava, mayiya, karma |
| Matrka | "Little mother": the power of phonemes behind thought |
| udyama | The upsurge of consciousness; Bhairava |
| turya | The Fourth, awareness pervading the three states |
| pindastha / padastha / rupastha | Yogic names for waking, dreaming, deep sleep |
| viresa | Lord of the Heroes: master of the senses |
Reflect and practise. Tonight, as you fall asleep, try to notice the transition from waking to the first images of dream. In the morning, before the first thought about the day, notice whether anything was aware through the night. Over a week, use the nine-state table to mark which states you visited during the day, especially "Come and Gone".
The First Light, Part Two: Wonder, the Heart and the Yogi's Powers
The second half of the First Light describes what the realised yogi experiences and what he can do: wonder, the will as the Virgin, the universe as his body, the vision in the Heart, the three planes of Siva, Sakti and Self, the bliss of Light, the yogic body, the powers over the elements and the Wheel, and finally the vitality of Mantra drawn from the Great Lake. Here the gap between Bhaskara and Ksemaraja becomes sharpest.
1/12 vismayo yogabhumikah: The Planes of Union Are Wonder
Bhaskara: the enlightened yogi abides "as if wonder struck", watching the universe sustained by the Lord. Wonder grows in stages, beginning with a vision of light (bindu), and these stages of contemplation are the planes of union. The yogi relishes the nectar of aesthetic delight born of objects, through senses that are now "uncreated and expanded".
Ksemaraja objects that the aphorism refers only to the highest level, not, "as Bhaskara maintains", to stages on the way. For him the yogi is not suspended in realisation but constantly rising in "a fresh wave of aesthetic delight (camatkara)". Dyczkowski's comparison is helpful: the ordinary person feels such wonder before a work of art; the yogi feels it before everything, because he sees his own nature as the ground of all things. The senses pulse, expanding and contracting, and each time throw him back into rapture "fresh and marvellously new at each moment".
The anonymous commentator agrees with Ksemaraja on one point: this wonder is independent of the vision of light between the eyebrows or any experience of psychic centres. Visions are events; wonder is a mode of seeing everything. Readers attracted by lights and centres in meditation can take this as a correction.
1/13 icchasaktitama kumari: The Will Is the Virgin
"The Virgin is the will, the supreme power." The will is highest because it is linked with the agency of every act of perception. Bhaskara derives Kumari as "she who destroys (marini) the abhorrent (ku) round of rebirth". For the liberated yogi, everything "manifests as he wishes", and all of reality from the unmanifest to Earth "shines radiantly as if it were his own body".
Ksemaraja accepts Bhaskara's reading but, following Abhinava, prefers the variant icchasaktir uma kumari: "the power of the will is the virgin Uma".
- Ku + mar: she kills Maya, preventing duality from emerging.
- She is a virgin because, as the pure enjoying subject, she can never become an object for anything outside herself.
- From the root kumar, "to play": she is Siva's freedom delighting in the game of creation and destruction.
- Though virgin, she is Siva's consort, "a devoted wife untouched by anyone else", a symbol of will unsullied by desire and of Siva's love for his own nature.
Dyczkowski ends with Utpaladeva's prayer: "May my devotion for You be like the Goddess Who is full of infinite bliss, never separate from You." Uma is the power that leads the microcosm to its universal nature.
1/14 drsyam sariram: The Perceptible Is His Body
Does the Lord have one body like ours, or is everything his body? Everything perceptible is his body. Bhaskara: since he pervades all, every perceivable thing born of thought and every physical body belongs to him. The anonymous commentator: things are reflected in him as in a crystal, and he gives them existence through his light.
Dyczkowski describes the yogi's shift: his "I" moves from the small locus of his body to the whole. He now shares Sadasiva's awareness "I am this universe", and the border between inner and outer dissolves "like the juices of a peacock's egg", the classic image of undivided potential.
1/15 By Fixing the Mind in the Heart
"By fixing the mind in the Heart (the yogi) has a vision of the perceivable and of dreams." This is the first practical instruction for union.
Bhaskara: the "Heart" is the emptiness of deep sleep, so called because it lies in the centre, at the boundary of the Pure and Impure Paths. When the mind is fixed there and dissolves "just as fire goes out when devoid of heat", all identities such as brahmin, Ksatriya or murderer cease, since they belong to the body. This is the Fourth State beyond mind (nirmanaska), a "darkness" without egoity. But: "the man of unawakened intellect who happens to enter this state merely experiences sleep."
Dyczkowski's essay on the Heart
The exposition here is one of the book's richest. From Vedic times the Heart has been the place where macrocosm and microcosm meet: the Upanisads put Heaven and Earth within it; it is the inverted lotus in the "City of Brahman"; the Self there is "no bigger than a thumb", a fire without smoke. In Kashmir Saivism the Heart is:
- Another name for awareness, the undivided light and aesthetic rapture (camatkara) of consciousness.
- Active as knowledge and action, passive as the "great abode" of the universe.
- Present in all three moments of creation, persistence and destruction, like the seed that contains the banyan.
- The pulsing union (samghatta) of Siva and Sakti; Abhinava calls the universe Bhairava's body and the Heart its essence.
- "A triangular vibration" of will, knowledge and action "at rest in the abode of great bliss".
Ksemaraja: the Heart is "the light of consciousness", and the mind fixed there perceives everything, including the emptiness of deep sleep, as one's own body.
| Bhaskara | Ksemaraja | |
|---|---|---|
| Heart is | Emptiness of deep sleep; meeting point of the ascending and descending breaths | The light of consciousness in which all is established |
| Practice | Linked with Stanzas 23 to 25 and 33 to 34: breath suspension, then the Upward Breath (udana) rises | Introverted contemplation; universe seen as pervaded by consciousness |
| Fruit | When breathing resumes, the yogi shares Siva's freedom to "dream and create whatever he wishes" | Vision free of subject-object distinction |
| Danger | Falling into the unconsciousness of deep sleep | Same |
Dyczkowski draws out a point that practitioners need. Practices that quieten the mind and suspend breath can lead not to the Fourth State but to "the abysmal unconsciousness of deep sleep". Stillness is not the goal; mindful awareness inside stillness is. Anyone who finds meditation turning into dullness is meeting the problem these texts describe.
1/16 to 1/18: Siva, Sakti and the Self
Bhaskara reads the next three aphorisms as a set: three planes of realisation, each with its kind of bliss.
| Aphorism | Plane | Bliss | Bhaskara's sense |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1/16 suddhatattvasamdhanad va | Siva: "Plane of Rest" | Blissless (nirananda) | Contemplate the Pure Principle as one's own identity; external ego dissolves |
| 1/17 svapadasakti | Sakti: "Plane of Attainment" | Supreme Bliss (parananda) | Energy rests in its own abode; the light of intuition (pratibha), "the solitary churner" |
| 1/18 vitarka atmajnanam | Self: "Plane of Unfolding" | Great Bliss (mahananda) | Right discernment amid limiting conditions: recognition that the Self is Siva |
Here the two recensions diverge. Ksemaraja reads 1/16 and 1/17 as one aphorism: "by contemplating the Pure Principle (the yogi) becomes free of the power which binds" (suddhatattvasamdhanad vapasusaktih). Same letters, different word division. For Ksemaraja the yogi contemplates the universe as one with Paramasiva and becomes, like Sadasiva, Lord of the universe. For Bhaskara the yogi fixes attention directly on the light within and rests there, in a peace "devoid even of the excitement of bliss". This one difference explains why Bhaskara's First Light has 23 aphorisms and Ksemaraja's 22.
On 1/18 Ksemaraja is brief: right discernment is to deliberate "I am Siva Who is all things." Note again the "I" formula, which Bhaskara phrases as awareness of one's own true nature (svasvabhava).
1/19 lokanandah samadhisukham: The Bliss of the Light
Bhaskara takes loka as "light": the bliss of the light of consciousness is the joy of contemplation, which "attends onepointedly solely to its relish". It can arise "in an instant" through the means already given.
Ksemaraja takes loka as "world" and "people":
- The world is both the field of objects and the light that illumines it. The yogi rests in the centre between subject and object while observing both. Mahesvarananda: like the wings of a jay, the same on both sides, "how can one say that this yogi is either introverted or extroverted?"
- The people: the joy can be transmitted. One who sees a yogi in contemplation and is receptive feels its bliss within himself. The Candrajnana compares the great yogi to the moon, bringing joy to all "from hell to Siva".
Ksemaraja's second reading is the textual basis for a familiar experience in Indian spirituality: the peace felt near a realised person. It is offered not as magic but as resonance: the receptive subject's own nature is stirred by seeing it fully present in another.
1/20 Saktisamdhane sarirotpattih: The Body Arises
"The body comes into being when the energies unite."
Bhaskara: the Lord creates without material cause, by will alone, through five powers listed by the commentator. Their union forms the "Body of Action" (prakriyadeha), unlike that of man, god or beast, imperishable in agency. The yogi who contemplates this freedom "fashions a body at will", superior to the gods'.
| Power | Nature (Dyczkowski) |
|---|---|
| Isani (Mastery) | The universal will, unsullied by any object of desire |
| Apurani (Filling) | Emissive power of the absolute's bliss; the "Mouth of the Yogini", womb of the universe |
| Hardi (of the Heart) | Bliss from the union of the illumined senses (siddhas) and their objects (yoginis) |
| Vama (Emanation) | Expansion of consciousness as will to know and create |
| Murti (Form) | Named by Bhaskara; the exposition (as printed) describes only the first four |
Ksemaraja reads samdhana as contemplation, not union: "by contemplating power, the body arises". The point is not a transfigured body but the will: initiation, mantra and yoga "are all fruitless if we fail to contemplate the innate energy of our own consciousness". With that energy the yogi can create what he wishes, inwardly in dream and outwardly in waking, as in Stanzas 33 to 34.
Bhaskara is literal about a new, imperishable body; Ksemaraja internalises it. Dyczkowski reports both and does not adjudicate. Modern readers can note that the claim of a body "superior to the gods'" is not testable, while Ksemaraja's point, that outer practice without inner contemplation is fruitless, is a teaching anyone can verify in their own practice.
1/21 The Union and Separation of the Elements
"The union of the elements, the separation of the elements and the union of the universe."
Bhaskara reads this as how consciousness makes the world. Union builds each gross element from its subtle power (ether from sound, and so on); separation isolates each element so that its form can be thought; and the union of the universe brings together a group of eight. The anonymous commentator then gives a long account of the descent of the principles: the five powers support the Pure Path, become the five sheaths (kancuka) at the level of Maya, generate the gunas, the subtle body (puryastaka), mind, intellect, ego, senses and objects. Consciousness, "assuming the role of the subtle body, acts out the cosmic drama".
Dyczkowski quotes Raffaele Torella, who finds Bhaskara's reading "complex and not entirely clear" and explains the "eight" as Siva's eight forms (murti): the five elements, Sun, Moon and the Sacrificer (the Self). The yogi acts on the universe by acting on these components.
Ksemaraja reads three yogic powers:
- Union of the elements: permeating one's mind and body with the health and vigour of the spirit (Stanzas v. 38).
- Separation of the elements: severing the root of all disease and mental unrest through expansion of consciousness (v. 40).
- Union of the universe: an all-embracing vision of far space, future and past (vv. 36 to 37).
Dyczkowski is candid that the commentators do not agree, and that even a specialist finds Bhaskara unclear. The aphorism is three compound nouns with no verb. What it means depends almost entirely on the tradition one reads it through. Neither cosmology nor healing powers can be read off the Sanskrit alone.
1/22 Mastery of the Wheel by Pure Knowledge
"(The yogi) attains mastery of the Wheel by the arising of Pure Knowledge." Pure Knowledge is the awareness "I am all things", which has "the highest possible degree of freedom".
The commentator lists the eight classical powers (siddhi) that follow:
| Power | Description |
|---|---|
| Anima | Becoming small enough to enter atoms |
| Laghima | Lightness: moving "like the tip of a reed" on the breeze |
| Mahima | Greatness: making the body large |
| Prapti | Reach: touching the moon while standing on earth |
| Prakamya | Elements cannot obstruct one's intentions |
| Vasita | Control: all beings follow one's commands |
| Isita | Lordship: gathering, dispersing, changing the elements |
Alternatively the Wheel is that of Brahmi and the other goddesses, and mastery brings the higher knowledges of Patanjali's Yogasutra, beginning with intuition (pratibha).
Ksemaraja agrees on the reading but shifts the emphasis: the yogi does not seek limited powers. He contemplates the will in the first moment of perception, before thought constructs form (Stanzas v. 43). Intent only on universal nature, he gains lordship of the Wheel and is liberated. He quotes the Svacchandatantra: there is "no other knowledge but this".
The list of siddhis is standard yogic lore and is presented by the commentator without hesitation. Ksemaraja's reading is the more useful for practice and agrees with the warning of the Yogasutra itself that powers are obstacles to liberation when sought. Dyczkowski does not discuss whether such powers are real.
1/23 The Vitality of Mantra and the Great Lake
"(The yogi) experiences the vitality of Mantra by contemplating the Great Lake." The Great Lake (mahahrada) is consciousness: the union of Siva and his power, "the unfathomable ground" of the flow of emission, the highest Speech (paravac).
Dyczkowski calls the two readings here "an important development in Spanda doctrine":
| Bhaskara | Ksemaraja | |
|---|---|---|
| Great Lake | Pure consciousness, the force (bala) of divine energy in every Self | Supreme power manifest as the fifty phonemes: Matrka (emanation), Malini (withdrawal) |
| Vitality of Mantra | Experienced through the rise of Kundalini stimulated by inner strength | "I" consciousness (aham) is itself the Great Mantra |
| Closeness to Stanzas | Closer: Stanzas speak of svabala, "one's own strength" | Identifies Spanda with "I" consciousness, quoting Stanza 26 |
Bhaskara's practice
Dyczkowski summarises Bhaskara's method step by step:
- Repeat the mantra mentally with the breath; out of harmony with breathing it "can bear no fruit".
- Fix attention on the centre between the two breaths, where the breath and the mantra arise and fall away.
- The two breaths work like two firesticks of consciousness and bliss, kindling the fire that rises as the Upward Breath (udana) in the central channel (susumna).
- The lunar breath (object) unites with the solar (means of knowledge), and both with the subject as udana rises.
- This rise is the true arising of Mantra (uccara), spontaneous recitation in contemplation.
The Hamsaparamesvara: "Mantras recited in a fettered state are nothing more than mere articulated sounds, but those recited in the Central path become all-powerful." The mantra here cannot be spoken: it is Anacka, "without vowel", or "Half of Ka", the pure consonant, a subtle inner speech whose phonemes are unmanifest.
The First Light runs from Consciousness, Self to the vitality of Mantra. Its spine is the Fourth State persisting through all states, reached by the upsurge of awareness, contemplation of the Heart and Mantra joined to breath. The two commentators agree on the experience but differ on its name: Bhaskara's "one's own nature" and Light, Ksemaraja's universal "I".
| Key term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| camatkara | Aesthetic wonder; delight of consciousness in itself |
| Kumari / Uma | The will as the Virgin |
| hrdaya | The Heart: emptiness of sleep (Bhaskara), light of consciousness (Ksemaraja) |
| nirananda / parananda / mahananda | Blissless, supreme and great bliss of Siva, Sakti, Self |
| prakriyadeha | The yogic "Body of Action" |
| siddhi | Yogic power |
| mahahrada | The Great Lake of consciousness |
| uccara | The rising of Mantra with the Upward Breath |
Reflect and practise. Sit with a short mantra synchronised with the breath. Then shift attention to the pause at the end of each exhalation and each inhalation. Notice whether the mantra seems to arise from that pause rather than from effort. If the practice turns dull, open the eyes slightly and keep the attention bright, following the warning of 1/15.
The Second Light: The Arising of Innate Knowledge
The Second Light (book pp. 65 to 92) is the shortest section, ten aphorisms, and the most practical. Bhaskara says it is written for those who received a weaker degree of grace: those for whom the sudden upsurge of the First Light does not simply happen. Its subject is Mantra and everything around it: effort, the secret of Mantra, Mudra, the Master, the Wheel of Matrka, the body as oblation, knowledge as food, and the risk of falling back into dream.
Who This Section Is For
Bhaskara is explicit. The means of the First Light "can be easily grasped by those who have been blessed with the most intense degree of grace". Others "must resort to a different means": attentive concentration (nibhalana) on Mantra and other supports, purifying thought by "repeatedly hearing and recalling to mind" the teachings, so that insight grows from "dimly apparent" to clear. This is the way of energy (saktopaya), working with purified thought rather than pure will.
The three Lights correspond roughly to the three means: Siva's way in the First, the way of energy in the Second, the individual's way in the Third. Bhaskara presents them as suited to different capacities, not as better or worse people. The goal is the same in each. Readers who find the First Light inaccessible are being told directly: this section is for you.
2/1 cittam mantrah: The Mind Is Mantra
Bhaskara: "Know that the mind itself is Siva", the unconditioned subject, which "naturally experiences itself directly" and so is Mantra. The mind is consciousness (cit) that wishes to play: it descends to perceive finite objects of thought (cetya), and when it seeks to return, ascends step by step "as one does along a ladder". When it withdraws its object and turns inward, mind and Mantra are one, because both possess the same awareness.
Dyczkowski's exposition gives a careful theory of mind:
- The mind is not a misconceived abstraction. There is no mind apart from thought, but equally no thinking without mind.
- It is at once a screen on which thoughts are projected, a vessel for latent traces, and the active principle that generates them.
- Consciousness can be understood as one universal mind from which thoughts rise and fall "like waves in the sea". Each wave (urmi) or vibration (spanda) traces one chain of thought through a lifetime.
- When the mind turns to examine its own nature, it reflects not on the world but on deity, and so shares the nature of the Mantra that evokes it.
Ksemaraja, citing Stanza 27: Mantra is what the adept reflects on inwardly, and his mind, one with the deity, is Mantra. "(Mantra) is not just a mere aggregate of various letters."
2/2 prayatnah sadhakah: Effort Attains the Goal
Bhaskara: the best effort is to penetrate the nature of the mind. It is the activity of the vitality of Mantra, generated by repeated meditation. He quotes the Trikasara: Mantra is "the inherent nature of the power of consciousness", and by concentrating on it the yogi abides on Siva's plane. The anonymous commentator defines the effort as one-pointed flow (pratyayaikatanata) centred on the identity between the Self as the object of meditation and the nature of Mantra.
Ksemaraja has a sharper image. Effort is the swift force of awareness that catches the first moment in which the yogi is intent on Mantra (Stanza 31). He quotes the Tantrasadbhava:
Just as a bird of prey, glimpsing in the sky a piece of meat flung to it, quickly catches it with the speed natural to it, so should the best of yogis catch hold of the light of consciousness.
Tantrasadbhava, quoted by Ksemaraja
The effort meant here is not strain over time but speed of attention at one point. When you begin to repeat a mantra, attend to the instant just before the first syllable is formed, the intention to say it. Catch that intention "like an arrow drawn with great force". Repetition then becomes repeated returns to the source rather than mechanical counting.
2/3 vidyasarirasatta mantrarahasyam: The Secret of Mantra
"The secret of Mantra is the Being of the Body of Knowledge."
Bhaskara: knowledge is "the unfolding of one's own inherent light", the sudden expansion of the thrill of energy (sahasa). That is the real body of the one who recites. Mantra at first seems separate from the adept, but once it has done its work and he seeks its vitality, it becomes one with what it denotes.
The anonymous commentator explains how this works through the four levels of speech, each emerging from the one before:
| Level | Name | Nature |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Supreme Speech (paravac), Bindu | Pure awareness, beyond all distinction |
| 2 | The Voice of Intuition (pasyanti) | Still free of the sequence of word and meaning; linked with the life-breath, "the first transformation of consciousness" |
| 3 | The Middle Voice (madhyama) | Inner speech of thought, based on intellect; sequence "indistinct and yet clearly apparent" |
| 4 | The Corporeal Voice (vaikhari) | Articulated sound, using the organs of speech |
Ksemaraja reads this as the unfolding of Matrka and, in parallel, the rise of Kundalini. Dyczkowski writes his longest account of Kundalini here:
- In her highest form, Para Kundalini, she is Siva's innate bliss, the heart of consciousness containing the universe, the union of Siva and Sakti (rudrayamala).
- In creation she is Matrka; in withdrawal she is Malini, the two arrangements of the alphabet.
- As Kaulikisakti, she "arouses Siva from the rest He enjoys in His own nature".
- In the body she is Sakti Kundalini, sleeping in Muladhara, "coiled like a snake around Siva's seed".
- Her unconscious rise is ordinary speech and binding emanation; her conscious rise dissolves the binding forces and makes the same energies aspects of freedom.
The Tantrasadbhava passage he quotes is vivid: the goddess sleeps "like one affected by poison", holding Moon, Fire, Sun, stars and fourteen worlds in her belly, is awakened by the resonance of supreme awareness, becomes fivefold, twelvefold as the vowels, fiftyfold as the letters "from A to KS", with one point in the heart, two in the throat, three at the root of the tongue, until words form on the tip.
The Kundalini essay is Dyczkowski's synthesis from Ksemaraja, the Svacchandatantra and the Tantrasadbhava, not Bhaskara's own exposition. Bhaskara mentions Kundalini, but his commentary on 2/3 centres on the four levels of speech. Readers should not take the full Kundalini schema as what the Aphorisms themselves teach. The anonymous commentator also refers to "perfect 'I' consciousness (purnaham)" here, an example of the bridge it builds towards Ksemaraja.
2/4 The Expansion of the Mind in the Womb
The two commentators read this aphorism in opposite directions:
| Bhaskara | Ksemaraja | |
|---|---|---|
| Translation | "The expansion of the mind in the womb (of consciousness) is the slumber of all particular forms of ignorance" | "The expansion of the mind in the womb (of illusion) is the knowledge common to all men: a mere dream" |
| Womb | Consciousness, filled with the nectar of divine power | Mahamaya, ignorance |
| Meaning | Expansion ends ignorance and reveals the nature of all Mantras and Mudras | The yogi's foolish satisfaction with limited powers from Mantra |
| Lesson | With one Mantra's vitality, the yogi can empower other Mantras | Do not use Mantra for petty powers or cling to visions (Stanza 47) |
Bhaskara adds a sharp practical rule: Mantras applied by one who has already reached Siva "would serve no purpose", while at the level of individualised consciousness they are "merely lifeless sounds". Mantra works only in the zone of awakening.
2/5 Khecari: Siva's State
"When the knowledge innately inherent in one's own nature arises, (that is) Siva's state, (the gesture of) the one who wanders in the Sky of Consciousness."
Bhaskara: Pure Knowledge dawns when the yogi emerges from the higher stages of contemplation. It is the innate power already described, and in it the vitality of Mudra expands. Khecari means moving (carana) in the sky (kha) of one's own consciousness. The living essence of Mantra and Mudra is the same; we think them different because their outer effects differ.
Dyczkowski on Mudra
The word has three ordinary senses, and Kashmir Saivism uses all three:
- A seal and its impression: pure consciousness stamps its cosmic form on itself. Original (bimba) and reflection (pratibimba) are both Mudra.
- A posture in dance: Mudra is the stance of awareness we take towards ourselves and the world. "Our experience is a reflection of our inner attitude."
- A ritual gesture: Mudra is action. It is fuller of the power of action than Mantra, which mainly carries the power of knowledge.
Etymologies: mud + ra, "that which gives bliss"; or that which gives bliss and dissolves (dravayati) bondage. Mantra's vitality is emergence; Mudra's is persistence: it seals consciousness "with the stamp of the Fourth State and maintains the yogi in it".
Khecarimudra is the Path of Totality (kulamarga): each thing contains all things. For the yogi established in it, "every position of his body is Mudra". He practises devouring time (kalagrasa): withdraws the senses, frees himself from past and future, plunges into "the fleeting instant of the present", and is then freed of the present too. Mudra is less a hand position than a quality of being present in any position.
2/6 gurur upayah: The Master Is the Means
Bhaskara gives this a striking turn: the Master here is the power of grace, "the Supreme Goddess". It is Siva's own power (sambhavisakti) that frees one from longing for the world and leads one to a true human Master, who points the way to "the abode beyond the mind".
Dyczkowski's exposition covers the full Saiva teaching on the guru:
- Gu, darkness; ru, remover. The Master removes the darkness of ignorance and reveals the pervasive oneness of consciousness.
- Choose carefully: "only he is able to lead others to higher levels of consciousness who has himself realised them." The seeker should test his teacher, because "a bad teacher is not only unable to grace others but will obscure and cloud their consciousness with doubt".
- A Tantra: "just as a bee, desirous of nectar, goes from flower to flower, so a disciple, desirous of knowledge, goes from teacher to teacher." How can a tree without roots bear fruit?
- The Hamsabhedatantra: many teachers are honoured, "but it is hard to find that Master who (himself free of ego) can destroy the egos of others".
- In the end, the disciple discovers the Master is himself. Abhinava: one's own nature "through question and answer" contemplates itself, assuming the form of both questioner and answerer. "One thinks that the words one's Self utters are those of another."
This is one of the most balanced guru teachings in the tradition, and worth emphasising against modern abuses. The text permits, even recommends, testing and leaving a teacher who lacks realisation. It also places the real Master inside, as grace and as one's own nature. At the same time, the claim that the true Master is "Siva Himself in human form" can be used to demand uncritical devotion. The safeguard the text itself gives is the test of results: a true Master dissolves ego and doubt, and does not cloud consciousness.
2/7 matrkacakrasambodhah: Awakening the Wheel of Matrka
What happens "when the Master is pleased": the awakening of the Wheel of Matrka.
Bhaskara: Matrka is the light of one's own nature and the Lord's power of action. Her Wheel is the aggregate of her powers; its awakening is complete knowledge of them, so that the world of words and objects is experienced as undivided. The anonymous commentator traces the stages: the ever-shining light, then will, pure awareness, subtle touch, the manifestation of all things, the unstruck sound (anahata), the life-breath, and finally speech with its fifty letters. Then the startling conclusion:
"Whatever (the yogi) who is thus awakened may happen to say, whether nonsense or just common everyday talk, is like a Mantra that (unerringly) effects his task."
The structure of the Wheel
Dyczkowski, following Ksemaraja, explains the alphabet as a map of creation:
| Letters | Symbolise |
|---|---|
| Vowels | The pure emanation within Siva's consciousness: A (absolute), I (will), U (unfolding), and so on |
| Bindu and Visarga | The awareness of oneness before diversity; then the impulse to emit |
| 34 consonants | The 34 principles below Siva (Sakti pervades all), in reverse order: K corresponds to Earth |
| A to Ha | Pure "I" (aham), first and last letters, containing the whole alphabet |
Why reversed? Because Sakti is Siva reflected on the plane of phenomena, "as if turned upside down, like a mountain reflected in a lake".
2/8 Sariram havih: The Body Is the Oblation
Bhaskara: in the blazing fire of consciousness, one with Mantra, the body gives up the bonds of Karma and, as an oblation, becomes a divine body. The Sacrificer is the Lord of Consciousness who constantly offers body and phenomena into the fire of Great Being. Karmic impurity is destroyed when illusory subjectivity is stilled.
Ksemaraja is plainer: the oblation is the abandonment of false identification with the body (Stanza 9). He quotes the Vijnanabhairava: the true oblation is offered "with the ladle of awareness", pouring the elements, senses, objects and mind "into the fire which is the abode of the Great Void".
2/9 jnanam annam: Knowledge Is Food
Bhaskara: the yogi's food is the supreme knowledge of these two sections, which satisfies fully by repeated reflection. Free of craving, he lives in daily life "like an alert actor": infusing himself with wonder, he plays his part, draws sense objects to himself drenched with the nectar of awareness, and deposits them in his own nature, unlike the fettered soul who forgets himself in them.
Ksemaraja gives two readings:
- Knowledge as reflective awareness of one's own nature, the yogi's food, which makes him rest in himself (Stanza 44: scan perception in its first moment).
- His own suggestion: the "knowledge" is the binding knowledge of 1/2. The awakened yogi eats it: all thought constructs, conflicting views, time and space, digested into consciousness.
Bhaskara's actor appears twice in this book: in 1/2, Siva binds himself like an actor; in 2/9, the liberated yogi lives like an alert actor. The difference between bondage and freedom is not whether one plays a role, but whether one remembers being the actor.
2/10 The Withdrawal of Knowledge and the Vision of Dreams
The commentators again reverse each other:
- Bhaskara: the common knowledge of samsara is withdrawn when the light of one's own nature dawns. The yogi then sees the world as if it were a dream: things "arise and fall away in the pure mirror of awareness", like Siva's own creations. He "sports on the plane of the arising of innate knowledge". This is a description of freedom.
- Ksemaraja: the knowledge withdrawn is Pure Knowledge, "I am this and this is me". When it recedes, the dream of duality returns. This is a warning: if the yogi does not keep a steady stream of awareness, "he ceases to be a true yogi and is no better than an ordinary man" (Stanzas 21 and 35).
Dyczkowski writes a short, personal paragraph here:
It is always the 'I' which maintains awareness of itself and of its projections. The minute 'I' forget myself I am lost in 'this'.
Mark S. G. Dyczkowski, Exposition on 2/10
The danger he names is specific: resting content with minor powers that follow samadhi. However exalted they seem, the yogi distracted by them fails to persevere, and his images revert to "their natural spontaneity as happens normally with the worldly man".
The Second Light is a manual of Mantra for ordinary practitioners. The mind is Mantra; effort is catching the first moment; the secret is that Mantra and what it denotes are one; the Master is grace, outer and inner; every word of the awakened is Mantra; the body is offered, knowledge eaten. Throughout, Ksemaraja repeatedly reads as warnings what Bhaskara reads as fruits, a pattern worth noticing.
| Key term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| cittam mantrah | "The mind is Mantra" |
| nibhalana | Attentive, repeated contemplation |
| paravac, pasyanti, madhyama, vaikhari | The four levels of speech |
| Kundalini | The power of consciousness, latent in the body |
| Mudra | Seal, stance, gesture; the persistence of awakened awareness |
| khecari | "Moving in the Sky" of consciousness |
| guru | Master; for Bhaskara, the power of grace |
| havis | Oblation: the body offered to consciousness |
Reflect and practise. Choose one daily activity, such as eating or walking, and perform it as Bhaskara's "alert actor": fully in role, yet aware of the one playing. Afterwards note whether attention slipped into "this" and lost the "I". Separately, list honestly what you expect from your teachers, and ask whether they meet the test of 2/6: do they reduce ego and doubt?
The Third Light, Part One: The Mind, Maya and the Self as Actor
The Third Light, "The Vibration of the Powers" (book pp. 93 to 180), is by far the longest section: 46 aphorisms in Bhaskara's recension, about as long as the first two Lights together. It works at the individual (anava) level, where the soul is bound and must free itself step by step. Its first nine aphorisms describe the bound mind, Maya and the principles, classical yoga practices, and end with one of the most famous images in the text: the Self is the actor.
The Opening: Two Sources of Power
Bhaskara opens by saying that the powers (vibhuti) to be described arise either by the spontaneous arising of Mantra or by the recognition (pratyabhijna) of one's own nature. Bliss arises "by reflecting on the beginning and end" of the arising and subsiding of breath, perception and thought, and through that bliss one's own power of freedom becomes evident.
This short instruction is the method of the whole Third Light. The practitioner is repeatedly asked to attend to the edges of experience: the start and end of a breath, of a feeling, of a thought, of the waking state. Freedom is found at the junctions, not in the middle of the stream.
3/1 atma cittam: The Mind Is the Self
The First Light began "consciousness is the Self"; the Third begins "the mind is the Self". The contrast is deliberate.
Bhaskara: the mind (manas) is an organ of sense whose essence is intent (samkalpa). Extroverted, it is discursive intention; introverted, it is Mantra, "the contemplative awareness of one's own nature". Then it is free of the senses, its knowledge and action unimpeded, and like Siva it can manifest desired objects "so that all people can see it". The intentions of one not engaged in yoga remain private; those of one engaged in yoga can become public facts.
Dyczkowski explains the shift of level:
- At the sambhava level, the Self is pure universal consciousness.
- At the anava level, attention faces outward, and the mind's activity of analysing and classifying perceptions takes over the role of subject. "The universal Self recedes into the background", and the individual ego, built of perceptions, thoughts and emotions, emerges "in the juncture between" perceiver and perceived.
- This lower subject is a pin-point (anu) of awareness, the Self that moves (atati) from state to state, body to body.
- At the sakta level the mind appears as reflective awareness (vimarsa), the essence of Mantra, and regains creative power.
Bhaskara's claim that the yogi's intentions can manifest objects visible to all, without physical elements, is stated without qualification. Dyczkowski reports it neutrally. It belongs to the siddhi literature and should be read as a claim of the tradition, not as something the book argues for. The psychological point underneath is sound: introverted, undistracted intention is more effective than scattered intention.
3/2 jnanam bandhah: Empirical Knowledge Is Bondage
The same words as 1/2, but now, Dyczkowski explains, "knowledge" means not the pervasive impurities but individual sense perceptions and the mental processing that accompanies them. Bound by them, the soul wanders from life to life, carrying subtle traces in the subtle body (puryastaka), subject to pleasure, pain and delusion.
Bhaskara names the root: attachment. The mind not free of rajas and tamas is "distracted by its interaction with objects", cannot gain its inner power, and cannot fulfil its intentions. The remedy: detachment from inner and outer objects, by which the perceiver is freed "from his thoughts whenever they arise".
| 1/2 | 3/2 | |
|---|---|---|
| Level | Universal | Individual |
| "Knowledge" means | The impurities of Maya or individuality | Sense perception coloured by attachment |
| Remedy | Recognition of one's nature | Detachment from inner and outer objects |
3/3 Maya Is the Lack of Discernment of the Principles
"Maya is the lack of discernment of the principles beginning with Kala."
The commentator lists the principles that obscure the soul, called tattva because the universe is "pervaded (tata)" by them. Dyczkowski organises them into three bodies enveloping Purusa, the individual soul:
| Body | Principles | Function |
|---|---|---|
| Innermost: the five coverings (kancuka) | Kala (limited action), Vidya (limited knowledge), Raga (attachment), Kala (time), Niyati (necessity) | Contract consciousness directly; aspects of Maya |
| Subtle body (puryastaka) | Intellect, mind, ego and the five subtle sensations | Carries traces from life to life |
| Gross body | Senses, organs of action, gross elements | The physical frame |
Above Maya lie the Pure Principles: Siva (the light of one's own nature), Sakti (knowledge and action), Sadasiva, Isvara, and Pure Knowledge, which the commentator interestingly glosses as "the enlightened understanding of the Saiva and other scriptures".
The key point: all these principles are really emanations of the freedom of consciousness. Maya is not a separate thing but the failure to discern that they are one with one's nature. Then "the universal vibration (samanyaspanda)" seems to break up into "countless individual motions (visesaspanda)" of pleasure, pain and delusion (Stanza 20).
3/4 Sarire samharah kalanam: The Forces Withdrawn in the Body
"The forces are withdrawn in the body." Each principle has its force (kala), its functional capacity; the body is the union of these forces.
Bhaskara gives two ways:
- Gradual: withdraw each principle into its cause, in reverse order of emanation, until reaching a body of pure awakened consciousness (bodhadeha).
- Sudden: attain Sivatattva "by a single act of transcendence (ullanghanavrtti)", withdrawing all functions "in an instant directly (hathat)".
Ksemaraja rejects the sudden way here, because this aphorism belongs to the individual level, where realisation is gradual. He gives two gradual methods:
Contemplation of dissolution (layabhavana)
Dyczkowski explains the Six Paths (adhvan) in detail:
| Path of Time (denotation) | Path of Space (denoted meaning) |
|---|---|
| Letters (supreme) | Five Cosmic Forces (kala) |
| Mantras (subtle) | Thirty-six principles (tattva) |
| Sentences (gross) | 118 world systems (bhuvana) |
The yogi visualises the whole universe in his own body: the 118 worlds from the lowest hells at his feet to the highest heavens in his head, then the 36 principles, then the five forces. Ascending, he absorbs the lower into the higher. The Vijnanabhairava: meditate on the All "in its gross, subtle and supreme forms until, at the end, the mind dissolves away". Abhinava adds that for the unawakened the Path is a gradual route; for the awakened it is "an object of enjoyment to be devoured".
Meditation on the fire of consciousness (dahacinta)
The yogi imagines a fire rising from below through the cosmic body he has visualised, burning each layer, until only "the pure, undifferentiated light of consciousness" remains. Dyczkowski refers readers to his Doctrine of Vibration for more.
3/5 Withdrawal, Conquest, Freedom and Separation of the Elements
"The withdrawal of the channels of the life-breath, the conquest of the elements, freedom from the elements and the separation of the elements."
Bhaskara: as a householder is master in his house, the Self is master in the body. The channels of the life-breath (nadi) are withdrawn by merging in the Sky of Consciousness, which is "the opening of all the channels of the life-breath". When breath activity merges in the centre, six qualities appear: stability, flow, heat, movement, emptiness and reversal. The anonymous commentator gives the technical method: pacify ida and the other channels by withdrawing the breaths into the internal or external twelve-finger space, then concentrate on each element with its shape (triangular, round...), its seed-syllable and its centre, "as described in the Tantras".
The four terms map onto the limbs of classical yoga:
| Term | Bhaskara | Ksemaraja |
|---|---|---|
| Withdrawal of channels | Breath control (pranayama) | Same |
| Conquest of elements | Concentration (dharana) on elements | Same |
| Freedom from elements | Renouncing the powers gained | Withdrawal of the senses (pratyahara) |
| Separation of elements | Separating elements while each keeps the power of all 36 principles; changing anything at will | Fixing awareness, freed of elements |
3/6 mohavaranat siddhih: Perfection Through the Veil of Delusion
This is one of the most practical aphorisms in the book, and the commentators again read it in opposite ways.
Bhaskara: when lust, anger, greed or fear arise, or sudden fright, or intense joy, delusion spreads everywhere. But precisely there the yogi can attain supreme perfection: "by reflecting on his own unsullied consciousness at the initial stage, just before these states lay hold of his mind", or at the final phase when they wane. He links this to Stanza 22.
Ksemaraja: siddhi here means lower powers (aparasiddhi). Each limb of yoga, from posture to samadhi, can lead to absorption in the highest; it can also produce powers, health or long life. These are "of secondary importance", and pursuing them "leads the yogi astray", since they come from the residue of ignorance. The aphorism is a warning: the yogi of 3/4 and 3/5 is "manipulating the forces of matter"; his pursuit is "magical or manipulative".
Bhaskara's method can be practised directly. When anger, fear or desire begins, turn attention to the instant before it takes hold: the first heat, the first contraction. Or when it fades, attend to the moment of release. These are, in the Stanzas' language, moments of intense vibration, and so of unusual access to awareness itself. The emotion becomes the doorway rather than the obstacle.
3/7 By Conquering Delusion, Innate Knowledge
"(But) by conquering delusion and by (his) infinite expanse, (the yogi) achieves Innate Knowledge."
Bhaskara takes ananta as "infinite": by conquering delusion, the yogi gains an infinite expanse and innate knowledge, "the light of one's own nature". The anonymous commentator gives two readings: the dawn of the absolute ego (purnaham) in the fully awakened, or attaining the plane of the Rudra-subject, the "Infinite Lord" (Anantabhattaraka), who enjoys his cosmic empire.
Ksemaraja takes ananta as "to the end": conquest of delusion "up to the stilling of all latent traces". He bases this exclusively on the Svacchandatantra, distinguishing two stages: the pervasion of the Self when ignorance ceases, and Siva's pervasion (sivavyapti) when even its traces are gone.
Dyczkowski makes a pointed methodological observation. Ksemaraja draws heavily on the Svacchandatantra, "thus adding elements to the interpretation of the aphorisms Bhaskara ignores, even though this may at times, as happens in this case, somewhat stretch the meaning of the aphorism beyond its immediate sense." This is as close as Dyczkowski comes to openly criticising Ksemaraja. It supports his broader thesis: Ksemaraja reads the Aphorisms through a larger system imported from elsewhere.
The teaching itself is valuable. Even the yogi who experiences his Self as all-pervading may still sense a difference between himself and Siva. He must "press on beyond this level", to the supramental (unmana) level where there is "no break anywhere".
3/8 jagrad dvitiyakarah: Waking Is the Second Ray
Bhaskara plays on kara, which means both "ray" and "hand". Waking is sensory knowledge; like a hand, it gathers all things into one. The yogi should "remain awake at all times and free of duality", picking up whatever lies on the path of his awareness and seeing it one with the supreme light. He notes, nicely, that 1/8 defined waking as knowledge, and now knowledge is defined as waking: "the aphorisms refer equally to all their terms".
Both commentators link this to Stanza 44: the yogi stays alert while observing the field of objects. The waking state "no longer militates against" contemplative absorption.
3/9 nartaka atma: The Self Is the Actor
The most quoted aphorism of the Third Light. Bhaskara: the experienced actor, who knows the sentiments (rasa), emotional states (bhava) and acting, enters each role well. So the Self appears as every living being, entering the sentiment of each state and "playfully behaving accordingly". The liberated yogi, "inebriated with the juice of supreme bliss", plays the role of a limited subject without forgetting his identity, and savours the joy of consciousness.
Dyczkowski's exposition is among the most beautiful in the book:
- Siva dances to the rhythm of creation and destruction. "He has no purpose and follows no fixed plan." The dance is "the sheer delight" of his own vibration.
- "Siva alone is awake and active in a universe asleep to its true nature."
- He takes on bodies matched to every plane, even "the bodies residing in the depth of hell".
- The audience sees the play as real as consciousness itself, "neither an illusion nor simply an imitation".
- The actor "deceives others but is never himself deceived".
Just as a king over the whole earth, in the joyous and startled intoxication of his sovereignty, can play at being a simple soldier, imitating his behaviour, so, in His beatitude, the Lord amuses Himself by assuming the multiple forms of the whole.
Somananda, quoted by Dyczkowski
A verse he quotes sums it up: through birth, infancy, youth, adulthood and old age, "I (remain) Siva, the great actor."
The opening of the Third Light starts from where most of us are: the mind as subject, attached to perceptions, unable to see Maya as its own power. It offers classical yoga (breath, concentration, withdrawal), visualisation of the cosmos in the body, and the sharp practice of catching emotions at their edges. It ends where freedom begins: living as the actor who knows the role is a role.
| Key term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| samkalpa | Intention; the mind's formative activity |
| anu | The "atom", the individual soul |
| kancuka | The five coverings of the soul |
| puryastaka | The subtle body, "City of Eight" |
| adhvan | The Six Paths of time and space |
| layabhavana / dahacinta | Contemplation of dissolution / of the fire of consciousness |
| aparasiddhi | Lower yogic powers |
| nartaka | Actor |
Reflect and practise. Sit and visualise your body as the cosmos: feet as the lowest worlds, head as the highest. Then imagine a gentle fire rising from the feet, burning each level, until only open light is left. Separately, through one day, notice each time a strong emotion begins, and try once to attend to its first instant, as 3/6 asks.
The Third Light, Part Two: The Stage, the Seed and the Yogi's Vow
Having said the Self is the actor, the aphorisms complete the theatre: the stage is the inner Self, the spectators are the senses. Then come freedom, attention to the seed, the effortless sinking into the lake, the phonemes and their mothers, the instruction to sprinkle the Fourth into the three like oil, the practice of the beginning and end of each sound, the even breath, and finally the yogi's vow and his talk as Mantra. This stretch contains Bhaskara's extra aphorism 3/15, absent from Ksemaraja.
3/10 rango'ntaratma: The Stage Is the Inner Self
Bhaskara: the Self unfolding outward is the actor; the inner Self, its contraction, is the subtle body (puryastaka), and so is the stage. On it consciousness takes up its residence as man or beast and performs the five cosmic functions. Dyczkowski: the "inner soul", the vehicle that carries consciousness from life to life, is where Siva stages the drama for each individual.
3/11 preksakanindriyani: The Spectators Are the Senses
The senses, powered by consciousness, watch the Lord dance and so cannot obscure him. Without his light "all this universe would be as if blind, dumb and insentient". For the introverted yogi the senses are "aesthetically sensitive spectators", delighted by the drama free of subject-object split. When that delight is missing, Khecari and the other energies drive the senses "along the universal path of suffering".
Dyczkowski: the Well Awakened yogi is "the most sensitive of aesthetes (sahrdaya)", captivated by the beauty of the cosmic outpouring of his own nature.
| Element of theatre | Aphorism | Equivalent |
|---|---|---|
| Actor | 3/9 | The Self |
| Stage | 3/10 | The inner Self: subtle body |
| Spectators | 3/11 | The senses |
| Rasa (sentiment) | 3/9, 3/11 | Aesthetic delight of consciousness |
| The hero's part, well played | 3/12 | Life lived in sattva |
These aphorisms connect the Sivasutra to the theory of rasa that Abhinavagupta later developed in his commentaries on drama and poetry. The yogi's experience of the world is modelled on the rapt spectator's experience of a play: fully engaged, deeply moved, but never mistaking the role for the self. Spirituality here is aesthetic, not ascetic.
3/12 dhivasat sattvasiddhih: The Pure State by the Intellect
Bhaskara: when sense activity rests in consciousness, the intellect determines its nature from within. Because it precedes sensory perception, it is pure, free of latent tendencies, "the screen and ultimate limit of pure being (sattva)". Dyczkowski extends the theatre image: the best actor plays "full of the brilliance and deep feelings of sattva". Cast as the hero, "every movement of his body and every word he utters is an inspiration for all who come in contact with him".
3/13 siddhah svatantrabhavah: Freedom Is Achieved
Freedom is the Self's innate capacity to know and do, by which everything from Siva to Earth is sustained and controlled. Bhaskara's image: like "an alchemical herb" that turns to gold everything it touches, all things sanctified by contemplating Siva's nature come under the yogi's control. Dyczkowski: the yogi "continues to play the part of a limited individual", all the while enjoying universal consciousness.
3/14 yatha tatra tathanyatra: As Here, So Elsewhere
Is the yogi's omniscience limited to his own body? No: as the Self knows all that happens in the body it sustains, so its powers manifest everywhere, "in the bodies one normally considers to be those of others", by the force inherent in one's own ground (svadhisthanabala). Dyczkowski notes that Bhaskara here virtually paraphrases Stanza 39, while Ksemaraja quotes Stanzas 6 to 7. Read together they say the same thing: the pulse of consciousness impels all senses, so grounding awareness in it gives freedom beyond one's own body.
3/15 Bhaskara's Extra Aphorism: Emission and the Non-External
"The nature (of consciousness) is emission and so that which is not external abides as such." (visargasvabhavyad abahih sthites tatsthitih)
The question: if the yogi enters other bodies, will he not be affected by their qualities and fall into time? Siva "the Enemy of Time" replies. Time is the pulse produced by differentiating the course of action; but perpetual emanation is the very nature of consciousness, so time never arises on the plane of consciousness. Since nothing is truly outside consciousness, those who contemplate the unity of light and its object "never fall".
Dyczkowski notes this aphorism "is not found in Ksemaraja's recension". He treats it as amplifying the previous one: from the unity of inner and outer to the realisation that nothing is external. This is why Bhaskara's Third Light has 46 aphorisms and Ksemaraja's 45. Neither commentator's text can be assumed to be the original; the two traditions transmitted different versions. Readers who know the Sivasutra through Jaideva Singh or other Ksemaraja-based translations will find the numbering one higher from here onward.
3/16 bijavadhanam: Constant Attention to the Seed
"The best means to attain the plane of eternity." The seed of the universe is the conscious nature (cidatman); attention to it with an alert mind is its own reflective awareness. It develops "once the yogi has eliminated the limited ego through continuous and assiduous practise".
Ksemaraja: the seed is "the supreme power (parasakti), the pulsing radiance and cause of all things". Both agree on the essential point: the yogi must keep sustaining awareness even at the highest level, plunging back again and again. Realisation is not a single event that, once had, is done.
3/17 Seated, He Sinks Effortlessly into the Lake
"(Comfortably) seated (the yogi) sinks effortlessly into the lake (of consciousness)."
| Bhaskara | Ksemaraja | |
|---|---|---|
| The "seat" (asana) | The Upward Breath (udana) rising between inhalation and exhalation, stimulated by "the Movement of the Fish (matsyavalana)"; called Purifying Fire, Radiance, Wrath | The supreme strength of the power of consciousness (parasaktabala) |
| Practice | Breath retention; uniting Solar and Lunar breaths; fire of udana rises and burns away duality | Nothing more to do: meditation and higher absorptions are abandoned |
| Image | Ascent | Relaxing and sinking |
Ksemaraja quotes the Netratantra, a passage that reads like a manual of non-practice:
One must not meditate on anything above, below, in the centre, in front, behind or to either side. One should not contemplate anything within the body or outside it. Neither close the eyes nor gaze fixedly.
Netratantra, quoted by Ksemaraja
Having abandoned everything, "be established in contemplation and become one". That is the supreme state of Siva, "having attained to that unmanifest plane, one no longer falls from it".
3/18 svamatra nirmanam apadayati: He Creates by His Mother
"(Siva) fashions the world by means of His mother." Siva's power to know and do is his inner strength and "the mother of the universe". Through her he fashions things "as He wishes in an instant". The yogi who rests on that plane can fashion whatever he wishes; "his creation serves as a sign that he reposes in the abode of freedom".
Ksemaraja reads matra as "an aspect": "the yogi fashions the world by an aspect of his nature". Both agree it refers to divine creative power, gained when the yogi passes from the individual through the empowered to Siva's level.
3/19 Once Limited Knowledge Is Destroyed, Rebirth Ends
Bhaskara: impure knowledge is "inlaid with the form of the things of this world" and causes rebirth. Its destruction comes with the dawning of innate knowledge; grounded in one's own power (svabala), rebirth ceases. This is liberation in this very life (jivanmukti).
Ksemaraja reads the opposite word division: "due to the continued existence of (pure) knowledge, rebirth is destroyed". Yet, Dyczkowski notes, both make "much the same point": enlightenment is "a constantly renewing and renewed process". Insight emerges afresh so constantly that "the conditions of mind and body which give rise to the suffering of transmigration have no time to form".
3/20 The Mothers in the Classes of Consonants
"Mahesvari and the other mothers of the soul in bondage reside in the gutturals and the other classes of consonants."
Speech has two forms: the seed (bija), the vowels, which is Siva, and the matrix (yoni), the consonants, which is Maya. The eight classes of consonants are ruled by eight Mothers, beginning with Mahesvari. Their powers act in three ways:
| Power | Effect |
|---|---|
| Aghora | Raises the soul and "bestows Siva" |
| Ghora | Attachment to the mixed fruits of good and bad action |
| Ghoratara | Throws down those attached to objects to ever lower levels |
Dyczkowski: this aphorism warns of "getting lost in the realms of thought forms". The unenlightened are "caught in the welter of emotions which words, whether thought or uttered, inspire". The yogi rests in the vowels, introverted subjectivity, and so masters the consonants.
This is a sophisticated theory of how language shapes emotion. A word heard or thought carries not only meaning but affective force: it lifts, entangles or drags down. The yogi does not stop thinking; he stays with the source of speech so that words lose their compulsive grip. Modern readers can test this in a quarrel, where a single word can set off a cascade.
3/21 The Fourth Sprinkled Like Oil into the Three
"The Fourth should be sprinkled like oil into the three."
Bhaskara: the three are the energies Aghora, Ghora and Ghoratara in the phonemes; the Fourth is Siva. The yogi sprinkles the beginning and end of each thought construct "with the juice of consciousness".
Ksemaraja: the three are, "as one would expect", waking, dreaming and deep sleep. Dyczkowski explains his practice clearly: "pay close attention to the moment of transition from one state to the next". In the gap between waking and dreaming, dreaming and sleep, lies the Fourth; the more one attends there, the more its savour spreads into the three states "like oil sprinkled on a cloth".
Ksemaraja's reading gives the best-known practice of the Sivasutra. Three times a day the mind passes through junctions: falling asleep, waking up, and the moments of drowsiness in between. Attend to these deliberately. Oil on cloth spreads slowly: the image promises gradual progress, not instant change.
3/22 Merged, He Should Penetrate with His Mind
"Merged (in his own nature), the yogi must penetrate (the phonemes) with his mind."
Bhaskara: when the yogi has withdrawn his energies and become Siva, he enters the phonemes of his Mantra "as fire does burning coals", through thought-free awareness, and so vitalises his Mantra with the bhairavamudra. Ksemaraja sees no special link with Mantra: with limited self submerged, the yogi penetrates the power of consciousness with his thought-free mind.
3/23 madhye'varaprasavah: The Lower Arises in the Centre
Bhaskara gives a precise teaching on the three parts of a sound:
| Phase | What is there |
|---|---|
| Beginning | The intent to exist (udbubhusa): Siva's being. Speech fuses into pasyanti and supreme speech |
| Middle | Phonemes as separate aggregates: the soul falls into "the mere inert sound" |
| End | Repose in universal consciousness: Siva's being again |
"Siva can easily be realised at the beginning when one intends to speak or at the end when the utterance ceases."
Ksemaraja applies this to the transitions between states: the yogi can fall in the middle. If he catches the savour of the Fourth in all three, he reaches Beyond the Fourth (turiyatita), from which he never strays. But if he rests content with the Fourth in the gaps, he is still not free.
3/24 pranasamacare samadarsanam: Even Breath, Even Vision
"When the breath moves uniformly one has an equal vision of all things."
Bhaskara: the highest breath is the Supreme Resonance (paranada), the power that gives life to all. When the yogi maintains constant awareness with the rhythm of the breath at its emergence, movement and cessation, every letter, word and sentence he speaks "become equally empowered".
Ksemaraja: "(The yogi) views all things equally when he exhales slowly and correctly." Having risen from internal absorption (nimilana samadhi), he must keep the Fourth State as he returns to ordinary life. Then "all relative distinctions between good and evil, high and low social status, bondage and liberation" lose meaning; he sees everything as the bliss of universal consciousness.
The claim that distinctions between good and evil lose their meaning for the realised yogi is common in non-dual Tantra and is open to misuse. In context it means that the yogi sees the same consciousness in all things, not that ethics stop applying. The same book insists (3/29, and in Abhinava's verse) that such a person acts "only for the benefit of the world". The equality of vision is the opposite of licence: it removes contempt, including contempt for "low" status.
3/25 Uniting Awareness with the Units of Experience
Bhaskara's aphorism (its Sanskrit lost in the scanned text available for this guide) concerns "the unifying awareness of one's own perception of the individual units of experience (matra)". Each category from Maya to Earth has its units; when the yogi connects them all in one perception of their oneness with his own nature, his elemental body and the phenomenal body of sense objects arise as the aesthetic delight of consciousness.
Ksemaraja (who reverses the order of these aphorisms) reads: "By reflecting on one's own perception of things, that which was lost again emerges." It teaches how to regain the Fourth State if lost. He quotes the Svacchandatantra: "wherever the mind happens to move... as all things are Siva, once it moves where can it go?"
3/26 Sivatulyo jayate: He Becomes Like Siva
Like Siva, not yet identical. Bhaskara: the constantly dedicated yogi is like Siva "even while he acts" and is liberated in this life. When the karma he must still experience is exhausted, he is liberated at death of the body. Ksemaraja: even at Beyond the Fourth, the yogi "is not as yet absolutely identical with Siva" until the last traces of karma have worked themselves out.
3/27 Sariravrttir vratam: The Activity of the Body Is the Vow
Bhaskara maps the outward signs of the Pasupata ascetics, who carried skulls and bones and smeared themselves with ash, onto the yogi's own body:
| Outer sign | Inner meaning |
|---|---|
| Skeleton, skull, stick, anklets | The body itself: backbone as stick, bones of hands, feet and neck |
| Ashes | The supreme radiance of consciousness |
| Sacred thread | The three gunas |
| Banner | The Great Path |
| Ornaments | The senses |
The accessories of this vow "are not those visible to all". Bhaskara is pointed: the ascetic who makes a show of himself as a follower of Dharma (dharmadhvajin) "is sullied by impurity".
Dyczkowski: the liberated yogi lives without care for food or shelter, accepting what comes; "to the outer observer he appears to behave and talk like any other man". Every act, however ordinary, is a ritual gesture (mudra) in "uninterrupted worship of his own nature". Outer signs without inner realisation "restrict consciousness further".
3/28 katha japah: Common Talk Is His Mantra
"Common talk is (his) recitation of Mantra." When the yogi's consciousness has risen to that of the universal agent, "all that he says is his recitation of Mantra". The commentators list four kinds of recitation: the partless, the Gander (Hamsa), that of the individual soul, and the empowered.
Dyczkowski shows Mantra operating at three levels at once:
- The vibration of consciousness rising to the highest state and returning to everyday life: the resonance of energy (saktoccara).
- The Ajapa Gayatri, Hamsa: the sound of breath, said to repeat itself 21,000 times a day.
- Every word he utters, mindful of "the soundless sound of awareness" from which it springs and to which it returns.
These aphorisms make ordinary life the site of practice. Life is a play; the senses its audience; the edges of sounds, breaths and states its doorways. The yogi's vow is his body's activity, his mantra his conversation. And Bhaskara's warning applies to every age: outward religious display without inner realisation is a further impurity.
| Key term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| ranga | Stage: the inner Self |
| preksaka | Spectator: the senses |
| sahrdaya | The sensitive aesthete |
| bija / yoni | Seed (vowels, Siva) / matrix (consonants, Maya) |
| Aghora, Ghora, Ghoratara | Powers that raise, entangle or drag down |
| turiyatita | Beyond the Fourth |
| jivanmukti | Liberation in this life |
| ajapa | The "unrecited" mantra of the breath, Hamsa |
Reflect and practise. Speak one sentence slowly and attend to the instant before the first sound and the silence after the last. Then try the same with one breath. Over a day, notice whether your speech drags you into the "middle", lost in the content, or whether you can occasionally feel the source it comes from.
The Third Light, Part Three: The Gift, the Powers and the Final Merger
The last eighteen aphorisms describe the liberated yogi in the world: what he gives, how the universe is his powers, how he remains the witnessing subject through every change, what pleasure and pain mean to him, and how the soul is bound by karma and freed. Dyczkowski's two longest essays appear here: on the power of time and Kali (3/44) and on the breath and the channels (3/45). The text ends with a single line: "May (the soul) merge (in the Lord) once again."
3/29 danam atmajnanam: Self-Knowledge Is the Boon
Bhaskara: the highest knowledge is insight into one's own nature; revealing it to others is "the greatest boon those awakened by the power of grace can bestow". This gift is initiation (diksa), explained by the traditional etymology: it bestows (da) self-realisation and destroys (ksapana) bondage.
Dyczkowski: the yogi graced with intense descent of power receives the fullness of his nature, and then gives the same gift to his disciples. He quotes Abhinavagupta's verse again, which is also the moral centre of the Introduction:
People, occupied as they are with their own affairs, normally do nothing for others. The activity of those in whom every stain of phenomenal existence has been destroyed and are identified with Bhairava, full of Him, is intended only for the benefit of the world.
Abhinavagupta, quoted by Dyczkowski
3/30 The Yogi in the Cosmic Nature, Source of Knowledge
"Knowledge and the cause reside in the cosmic nature and the source (of the universe)." Bhaskara notes the aphorism can be read "in sections and as a whole", and the commentary does just that:
- The Lord is the source (yoni) of the universe, knowledge and action, who "reduces all that should be abandoned to a worthless nothing (tucchikarana)". The yogi who abides in the cosmic nature is the best cause of liberation and enjoyment.
- The established yogi awakens those fit to receive instruction by the power of his insight.
- The Self shines as Lord of the Wheel amid Mahesvari and the other Mothers, whose powers are the rays of his light that worship him with the pleasures of sense objects.
Ksemaraja gives two readings and prefers the one that "largely coincides" with Bhaskara's, one of the places where the commentators converge.
3/31 to 3/33: Creation, Persistence, Absorption and the Witness
| Aphorism | Teaching |
|---|---|
| 3/31 "The universe is the aggregate of his powers." | The pulses of the powers' ever-renewed outpouring are the universe. Each object, outer (blue) or inner (pleasure), rests in the light while being perceived. The yogi's world "blossoms forth into a new universe at each instant". |
| 3/32 sthitilayau "(Such is also the case with) persistence and absorption." | The same powers sustain and withdraw. "Nothing is created that does not come to an end, nor is destruction ever ultimate." |
| 3/33 "Even when these are operant, (the subject) is not lost because (he is) the perceiving subjectivity." | States cease, "but never the subject who experiences them". Without a witness, creation and destruction "would be impossible, for there would be none to witness them". |
3/33 contains a real argument. Change requires a witness that does not itself change; otherwise there would be no awareness of before and after. The "these" of the aphorism, the commentator says, are the five cosmic functions: creation, persistence, destruction, obscuration and grace. The subject who knows them is the one who performs them. Bhaskara links this to Stanza 4; Ksemaraja to Stanzas 14 to 16.
3/34 Pleasure and Pain Are External
"(The yogi's) feeling of pleasure and pain is external."
The commentators give a small taxonomy of suffering. Pain is of three kinds (spiritual, mental, physical), or five, the classical five afflictions renamed:
| Name | Meaning (commentator) |
|---|---|
| Dullness (tamas) | Pride of self |
| Delusion (moha) | False identification with the body |
| Great delusion (mahamoha) | Identification with one's son or other external things |
| Darkness (tamisra) | Hate for all who harm oneself or one's family |
| Blinding darkness (andhatamisra) | Fear of death |
Because the yogi's absorption in the acting subject is firm, pleasure and pain, "for whatever reason they may arise", do not obscure him.
Ksemaraja makes a point Dyczkowski calls pertinent: although the yogi experiences the universe as his own power, this does not mean he must feel all its ups and downs. His identity is no longer restricted to the subtle body; pleasure and pain happen to the body-mind, not to him.
The aphorism says pleasure and pain are external (bahis), not that they vanish. The yogi still has a body that hurts and enjoys. What changes is where the sense of "I" is located. This reading protects against a harmful misunderstanding: that a realised person should feel nothing, or that feeling grief shows lack of realisation.
3/35 tadvimuktas tu kevali: Free of That, He Is Liberated
The Lord is free of pleasure and pain as he is free of insentience, and so is isolated (kevala): not cut off, but established in himself because he pervades all. Dyczkowski: "When the opposites are out of balance man fails to achieve perfect harmony"; when they come together, man is freed from duality. "Isolation" here is the return of consciousness into its centre, not the Samkhya isolation of spirit from matter.
3/36 A Compact Mass of Delusion, the Soul Is Subject to Karma
Bhaskara's synonyms for delusion: stupidity, inertia, ignorance, insentience, obscuration, lack of discernment, loss of consciousness. When the Self identifies with the body, it becomes "a mass of delusion", the soul subject to karma (karmatman), seeking fruits and reborn as man or beast. Ksemaraja quotes the Kalikakrama: one under the sway of discursive thought "perceives various states of being, both good and bad, and from the bad ones he experiences great suffering".
3/37 When Diversity Is Eliminated, Another Creation
"When diversity has been eliminated (the yogi's) action is to give rise to another creation."
The commentator speaks of a creation "never manifest before", different from this one. Dyczkowski explains it as a new world of experience: as attachment to the body fades, the yogi rises through the higher principles. At each step "a more universally conscious subject takes over from one less so below it that thus becomes an object". When the process is complete, "the world of experience based on diversity and division is brought to an end and a new world of experience based on unity is created".
3/38 karanasaktih svato'nubhavat: The Power of the Senses
"The power of the senses (is proved) by one's own experience."
Bhaskara's argument is simple and charming: "Even a tiny louse possesses a degree of the power" by which the universe is made. We all create "gardens, forests, mountains, lakes, cities" when we dream or daydream. The yogi who draws on the uncreated vitality of consciousness can create whatever he wishes. Dyczkowski: our ordinary power to imagine assures us of the power of consciousness to know and act; the yogi has the same power, undiminished.
3/39 tripadadyanuprananam: The Fourth Vitalises the Three
"That which is preceded by the three states vitalizes them." The Fourth, which "precedes" the three as their ground, infuses them with its power.
Bhaskara gives a lovely example: consciousness flashes out "like a flash of lightning free of all obscuring coverings" in daily life when the yogi savours good music or other pleasing objects with introverted awareness.
Ksemaraja: the Fourth is found not only in the three states but in the three moments of every perception: emergence, persistence, subsidence.
Dyczkowski on wonder
The aesthetic delight we feel in beautiful things is "not an intrinsic quality of the object but the result of the aesthetic sensitivity of the subject". He quotes Abhinava:
The complete absence of wonder is, in effect, an absence of life. Conversely, aesthetic receptivity, being endowed with a heart, is to be immersed in an intense state of wonder consisting of the arousal of vitality.
Abhinavagupta, quoted by Dyczkowski
The practice: fix attention on the instant in which wonder wells up, "in moments of intense joy, confusion, anger or fear", and catch there the vibration of the Fourth.
3/40 The Same Stability in Body, Senses and World
"The same stability of mind (should permeate) the body, senses and external world."
Dyczkowski states a principle of this whole yoga: inner absorption (nimilana) is "perfected only when it issues out, through an expansion (unmesa) of consciousness, into the outside world". The energy found within must flow out while inner awareness is kept, so that the yogi experiences his body, senses and surroundings as pervaded by bliss.
| Phase | Name | What happens |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Nimilana (closing the eyes) | Awareness withdrawn; the Fourth found within |
| 2 | Unmilana (opening the eyes) | The same awareness extended to body, senses and world |
| Result | Equal stability | No difference between meditation and life |
3/41 Craving Carries the Soul Outward
"Due to (one's) craving, that which is transported moves outside."
Bhaskara reads "craving" two ways:
- Innocent: the Self's abundance of inner power naturally wishes to see, hear and act; this desire carries the senses outward to perform their functions.
- Binding: the fettered soul's craving for objects, by which it "abandons its own essential nature" and is carried "from womb to womb", governed by the four powers Khecari, Gocari, Dikcari and Bhucari.
Dyczkowski draws the line precisely. The outflow becomes binding when the individual "wrongly considers himself to be incomplete" and turns outward "stimulated by the desire for an outer object to fill the gap he feels in himself".
This is one of the clearest statements in the book of why desire binds. Not because the world is bad, or wanting is wrong, but because binding desire starts from a felt lack. The same outward movement made from fullness is creative play. The question to ask of any desire: does it come from abundance, or from a sense of being incomplete?
3/42 Established in Pure Awareness, the Individual Ceases
"Then (when the yogi) is established in pure awareness (his craving) is destroyed and so the individual soul ceases to exist." The state "which heralds the arising of desire" is the domain of the perceiving subject. The yogi who rests there is awake; craving dies, and with it the soul bound by karma. Bhaskara adds a humane note: even a craving person may be graced "by virtue of his many good deeds" and, studying the Saiva scripture, rise to the level of pure subject.
3/43 Clad in the Elements, Supreme Once More
"(The soul) clad in the cloak of elements is not free but, like the Lord, becomes supreme once more."
The body of five elements remains after liberation, but, Dyczkowski says, "as merely an outer shell, no longer felt to be 'I'". Thoughts and sensations that had "usurped the office of the perceiving subjectivity" are seen as objects. Ksemaraja stresses that this realisation happens in an instant: "the enlightened teacher need only say a word, or just a glance may suffice", if the moment is right.
3/44 naisargikah pranasambandhah: The Link with the Breath Is Natural
Why does a liberated person go on living? Because the link with the life-breath is natural: the breath is life itself. When false identification with the subtle body ceases, the body would fall away, "but this does not happen", so the link must be natural.
Dyczkowski's essay on time and Kali
The exposition grows into a substantial essay. Its main points:
- Manifestation is "the emergence of the temporal order from the eternity of consciousness": a shift from timeless Being-Becoming (Siva-Sakti) to movement from past to future.
- Time measures limited action, not pure action. The power of time is one with the power of action.
- Kali (Kalasamkarsini, "the Attractress of Time") embodies this power. Her name from the root kal is read in five senses:
| Sense of kal | Function of time |
|---|---|
| Casting forth | Arousal from unity into multiplicity |
| Knowing | Accompanies object-centred knowledge |
| Enumeration | Time as the measure of thought |
| Movement | Insight into time lets us move forward to catch our own nature |
| Resonance | Time as the light of consciousness reflecting on itself |
The first three entangle the subject in time; the last two form a practice in which he recognises himself as the agent.
- Time "has no fixed form": a short dream or a moment of absorption "can appear to be a very long time". Time is "the result of our memory of the past and anticipation of the future".
- Abhinava: the subject who remembers or imagines "remains always the same and is ever present: past and future do not exist". When what is, is seen as it is, past and future fade, then the present too.
- Breath and time are one rhythm: exhalation, retention and inhalation correspond to creation, persistence and withdrawal. "All the cycles of universal creation and destruction are contained in the arising and subsidence of the life-breath."
The aphorism is four words about the breath. Dyczkowski's essay on Kali and time, though illuminating, draws mostly on Abhinavagupta's Tantraloka and Krama sources, and is his own synthesis. Readers should enjoy it as such and not take the Krama theology of Kali as part of what Vasugupta's text or Bhaskara teach.
3/45 The Centre Within the Nose
"(The movement of the life-breath is stilled) by concentrating on the centre within the nose. Of what use (then) are the left and right channels or Susumna?"
Bhaskara: "the nose" means the inner Twelve-finger Space, where the breaths come to rest; the centre is the Heart. Those who fix attention there merge, and the breath is conquered. When the breath's movement ceases, the mind rests in the Unstruck Sound (anahata), and all division between meditator and object falls away. If one achieves this, the channels need no separate effort.
Ksemaraja reads nasika not as "nose" but as the power of the breath (pranasakti), because it "moves on a crooked path" (nasate). The centre within it is consciousness, quoting his own Pratyabhijnahrdayam: "the Centre is the Goddess of Consciousness alone".
The channels
Dyczkowski summarises the subtle anatomy:
- Ten primary channels radiate from the navel, branching into 72,000 secondary channels. "Just as a leaf is pervaded by its filaments, so the body is pervaded by the channels" (Svacchandatantra).
- The most important are Ida, Pingala and Susumna; Susumna runs from the Cavity of Brahma at the crown to the genitals.
- When the "crooked" movement of breath is stilled, the yogi "breathes freely with mindfulness" and finds inner peace (cittavisranti); Kundalini rises, the breaths are sucked into Susumna.
- The three channels symbolise thesis, antithesis and synthesis, overcome in unity.
Dyczkowski's phrase "the dialectic of consciousness ranging through thesis, antithesis and synthesis" is a Hegelian gloss that he brings to the triad of channels. It is a helpful analogy for Western readers but not a Sanskrit category, and it risks making the system sound more like German idealism than it is.
The aphorism's rhetorical question is worth taking seriously: of what use are the channels? After the long technical exposition, the text itself says that attention to the centre makes the elaborate anatomy unnecessary. The channels are described; the practice is to rest where the breath rests.
3/46 bhuyah syat pratimilanam: May the Soul Merge Once Again
The last aphorism gives "the ultimate purport" of all the means taught.
Bhaskara: on the higher path Siva is fully himself; on the lower path he takes on the condition of a worldly soul, wishing "to exhibit the game He plays of forgetting His own nature". He regains his own state when, "through a supreme act of grace", it becomes clear to the soul that "the glory of its power to know and do all things has not been lost".
Ksemaraja: the universe arises out of pure consciousness and, freed of the traces of multiplicity, merges again into it. Why "again"? Because the yogi's Siva-nature "is not something new but is in fact his own essential nature". Only the negative influence of thought constructs prevents him from reflecting on what is "clearly manifest".
The Third Light begins with the bound mind and ends with remembering. Its practices are many: breath, elements, visualisation, catching emotions at their edges, the junctions of states, the three phases of sound, the outflow of awareness into the world. But the last word reframes them all. Nothing new is gained. The soul merges "once again" into what it never left. In Bhaskara's language, the power to know and do "has not been lost".
| Key term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| diksa | Initiation: bestowing and destroying |
| tucchikarana | Reducing what should be abandoned to nothing |
| avasthatr | The one who experiences the states |
| kevala | Isolated: established in oneself |
| karmatman | The soul bound by karma |
| Kalasamkarsini | Kali, "Attractress of Time" |
| dvadasanta | The Twelve-finger Space where breath rests |
| pratimilana | Merging again |
Reflect and practise. Sit and follow the breath to the point where the exhalation ends, about a hand's breadth outside the body, and where the inhalation ends within. Rest attention there, without forcing a pause. Then, once a day, when you notice a desire, ask the question of 3/41: is this from fullness or from a felt gap?
Appendix: The Stanzas on Vibration
The book closes (pp. 181 to 188) with Dyczkowski's complete translation of the Spandakarika, the Stanzas on Vibration, without commentary. It is printed because both Bhaskara and Ksemaraja constantly cite it: almost every exposition in this book refers to a stanza by number. Here it serves as a reference text, and this guide offers a map of it keyed to the Aphorisms.
Why the Stanzas Are Here
Tradition holds that the Stanzas were written by Vasugupta or his disciple Kallata to explain the Aphorisms. Dyczkowski's Introduction treats them as closely linked, and his expositions show each commentator choosing different stanzas to support his reading. Having the full text at the back lets the reader check those cross-references directly. For the full study, see Dyczkowski's The Doctrine of Vibration (published in this series as Insight Edition No. 351).
A Map of the 52 Stanzas
| Stanzas | Theme | Cited in this book at |
|---|---|---|
| 1 to 2 | Praise of Sankara, source of the Wheel of Energies, by whose expansion and contraction the universe arises and dissolves; that reality is nowhere obstructed | 1/6 |
| 3 to 5 | The perceiving subject extends through the waking and other states; "I am happy", "I am miserable" reside elsewhere; reality is beyond pleasure and pain, subject and object | 1/7, 3/33, 3/34 |
| 6 to 8 | Examine that principle with effort and reverence: the senses behave "as if conscious" by its freedom; the soul acts through contact with its own strength (bala) | 3/14 |
| 9 to 11 | When the disruption of the false ego ceases, the soul knows its agency; one who beholds his own nature "as if astonished" cannot be bound | 1/12, 2/8 |
| 12 to 13 | Nothingness is not an object of contemplation; it is "an artificial state similar to deep sleep" | 1/15 |
| 14 to 16 | Agent and product of action: the product decays, agency is imperishable; the unenlightened think they cease when effort ceases | 3/33 |
| 17 to 20 | The fully awakened perceive reality in all three states; the pulsations of the gunas are grounded in universal vibration; for those whose intuition slumbers, they disrupt and cast down | 3/3 |
| 21 to 22 | Strive constantly to discern Spanda; it is stable "when extremely angry, intensely excited, running or wondering what to do" | 2/10, 3/6 |
| 23 to 25 | Sun and moon set into Susumna; in the great sky, "the dull minded is cast down into a state like that of deep sleep. The awakened, however, remains lucid" | 1/15 |
| 26 to 27 | Seizing that strength, mantras gain omniscience; they dissolve there with the adept's mind | 1/23, 2/1 |
| 28 to 32 | No state in words or meanings that is not Siva; who sees the universe as play is liberated in life; identity with the object of meditation is "the attainment of the nectar of immortality" | 2/2, 3/9 |
| 33 to 35 | The fruits of joining one's will to the universal; otherwise images arise involuntarily "as happens to the worldly" | 1/15, 1/20, 2/10 |
| 36 to 40 | What is unclear becomes evident through one's own strength (svabala); even a weak man achieves his goal; lassitude comes from ignorance and is removed by expansion | 1/21, 3/14 |
| 41 to 44 | The expansion between thoughts is the source of the next; "At all times (the yogi) should remain well awake", observing the field and depositing all "in one place" | 1/22, 2/9, 3/8 |
| 45 to 51 | The fettered soul, victim of the powers of the mass of sounds; mental representation makes the nectar's flavour disappear; Siva's power of action binds, but when understood, bestows siddhi; the City of Eight binds; established "in one place" he becomes Lord of the Wheel | 3/20, 2/4 |
| 52 | Praise of the Master's speech: "the boat which carries one across the fathomless ocean of doubt" |
The digital copy used for this guide drops Stanzas 33 and 34 (the numbering jumps from 32 to 35) and truncates some long stanzas. The summary of 33 to 34 above is therefore based on how the expositions describe them (1/15, 1/20). Dyczkowski also notes that Bhagavadutpala reads Stanza 48 differently: Siva's power of action "is completely under his control" (pasuvartini), rather than "residing in the fettered soul".
Read alongside the Aphorisms, a handful of stanzas carry most of the practice: 22 (Spanda in intense states), 25 (remain lucid, do not fall into sleep), 41 (the gap between thoughts), and 44 (remain well awake at all times). Bhaskara and Ksemaraja, whatever their differences, both return to these.
Reflect and practise. Read Stanzas 21, 22 and 44 slowly and compare them with Aphorisms 3/6 and 3/8. Then, for a single day, take Stanza 44 as your only instruction: remain well awake, observe the field, and gather everything into one place.
Synthesis: Reading the Sivasutra Through Two Lenses
Having gone through all 79 aphorisms, we can step back. This closing section brings together the two commentators' differences, the critical points raised along the way, a glossary, and a practice path drawn from the whole text.
Bhaskara and Ksemaraja: The Full Comparison
| Aphorism | Bhaskara | Ksemaraja |
|---|---|---|
| 1/1 Consciousness is the Self | Freedom of knowing and doing | Reflective awareness of the absolute ego |
| 1/2 Knowledge is bondage | Mayiyamala, "I" and "mine" in speech | Anavamala, the root contraction |
| 1/3 The womb and body of parts | Four powers (Vama, Jyestha, Raudri, Ambika) and fifty phonemes | Mayiya and karma impurities |
| 1/11 Lord of the Heroes | States mapped to gunas | Master of the senses; Churning Bhairava (Dyczkowski prefers this) |
| 1/12 Wonder | Stages of yoga, starting with visions of light | Only the highest level, ever-renewed rapture |
| 1/13 The Virgin | Kumari, destroyer of rebirth | Variant icchasaktir uma kumari |
| 1/15 The Heart | Emptiness of deep sleep, breath suspension, udana | Light of consciousness |
| 1/16 to 1/17 | Two aphorisms: Siva and Sakti planes | One aphorism: "free of the binding power" |
| 1/19 Bliss of loka | Light | World and people; transmission of bliss |
| 1/20 Union of energies | A new yogic body | Contemplation of the will |
| 1/21 Union of elements | Cosmogony: eight forms of Siva | Three yogic powers: health, healing, vision |
| 1/23 Great Lake | Kundalini stimulated by inner strength (bala) | "I" consciousness is the Great Mantra |
| 2/4 Expansion in the womb | Ends ignorance: a fruit | Satisfaction with petty powers: a warning |
| 2/6 The Master | The power of grace, the Goddess | The teacher who reveals oneness |
| 2/10 Withdrawal of knowledge | Ordinary knowledge withdrawn: freedom | Pure Knowledge withdrawn: a fall |
| 3/4 Withdrawal of forces | Gradual or sudden | Only gradual at this level |
| 3/6 Perfection through delusion | Supreme perfection at the edge of emotion | Lower powers: a warning |
| 3/7 Conquest of delusion | "Infinite expanse" | "Up to the end", from the Svacchandatantra |
| 3/15 Emission and the non-external | Present | Absent from his recension |
| 3/17 Seated in the lake | Seat is udana, breath retention | Seat is power of consciousness; nothing to do |
| 3/21 Fourth into the three | Three energies of the phonemes | Three states of waking, dream, sleep |
| 3/24 Uniform breath | Awareness with breath rhythm empowers speech | Slow exhalation on rising from samadhi |
| 3/45 Centre within the nose | The Twelve-finger Space | Nasika = power of breath |
Three patterns run through this table. First, Bhaskara is more literal and more yogic: breath, Kundalini, bodies and powers. Second, Ksemaraja is more interior and more cautious: he repeatedly reads Bhaskara's fruits as warnings (2/4, 2/10, 3/6) and replaces techniques with contemplation. Third, Ksemaraja brings in outside systems: the universal "I" from Utpaladeva, Krama theology, and the Svacchandatantra. Dyczkowski does not choose between them, but his sympathy for Bhaskara as the older voice is clear throughout.
The Critical Points, Collected
- Dates. The Introduction's dating of Abhinavagupta to the eleventh and twelfth centuries is about a century too late; standard dating is c. 950 to 1016 (Wikipedia on Abhinavagupta). Bhaskara's date shifts accordingly.
- The origin myth is presented by Muller-Ortega as symbolic, and should be read that way.
- Two recensions. Bhaskara has 79 aphorisms, Ksemaraja 77. Neither text can simply be assumed original.
- Parentheses. Dyczkowski's English places much of the commentary's meaning inside the aphorisms. The Sanskrit is much barer.
- Syntheses. The essays on the nine states, Kundalini, Mudra, the guru, Kali and time, and the channels are Dyczkowski's own drawing-together of many sources.
- Powers. Claims about siddhis, new bodies and public miracles are reported as doctrine, not argued.
- Ethics. "Beyond good and evil" (3/24) means equal vision, not licence; the book's own moral centre is Abhinava's verse on acting for the world's benefit.
- Hegelian gloss. "Thesis, antithesis, synthesis" (3/45) is Dyczkowski's analogy, not a Sanskrit category.
A Practice Path from the Whole Text
The Aphorisms are a yoga manual as much as a philosophy. Drawing their methods together gives a path in seven stages:
| Stage | Practice | Source |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Orientation | Hold the first aphorism: consciousness, Self. Read and recall the teaching repeatedly | 1/1, 2/1 |
| 2. The gap | Notice the moment between two thoughts; let the upsurge carry you | 1/5, Stanza 41 |
| 3. Mantra with breath | Repeat a mantra synchronised with breathing; attend to the pause where breath and mantra arise | 1/23, 2/2, 3/24 |
| 4. Edges | Catch emotions, sounds and breaths at their beginning and end | 3/6, 3/23, Stanza 22 |
| 5. Junctions | Attend to falling asleep and waking; sprinkle the Fourth into the three like oil | 1/7, 3/21, Stanza 25 |
| 6. Outflow | Carry inner stillness out into body, senses and world; live as the alert actor | 2/9, 3/9, 3/40, Stanza 44 |
| 7. Remembering | Recognise that nothing new was gained: merging once again | 3/46 |
Morning: before rising, notice the transition from sleep (stage 5). Sitting: ten minutes of mantra with breath, resting in the pauses (stage 3). During the day: catch one strong emotion at its start (stage 4); speak one sentence with attention to its first and last instant. Evening: review using the nine-state table (1/10); note which states you were in. Falling asleep: watch the first dream images arise.
The Aphorisms and their commentators name their own risks, and a responsible practice keeps them in view: falling into dull sleep instead of the Fourth (1/15, Stanza 25); satisfaction with visions and powers (2/4, 3/6, 2/10); outward religious display (3/27); and a bad teacher who clouds consciousness with doubt (2/6). Breath retention and Kundalini practices described here are traditionally taught under a qualified teacher.
Glossary
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| abhava / sunya | Nothingness, void; for the Stanzas, an artificial state like deep sleep |
| aham | "I"; universal egoity, Utpaladeva's doctrine |
| anava, sakta, sambhava | The three means: individual, empowered, Siva's |
| anupaya | "No means": simply being |
| atma | Self |
| bala / svabala | Strength; one's own inner strength |
| bhairava | Siva as the upsurge of consciousness |
| bija / yoni | Seed and womb; vowels and consonants |
| bindu | Point; vision of light; inhaled breath |
| caitanya | Consciousness |
| camatkara | Aesthetic wonder |
| diksa | Initiation |
| guna | The three qualities: sattva, rajas, tamas |
| guru | Master; for Bhaskara, the power of grace |
| hrdaya | Heart |
| jivanmukti | Liberation in this life |
| kala | A force or part; limited agency |
| kala | Time (long a) |
| kancuka | The five coverings of the soul |
| khecari | Moving in the sky of consciousness |
| Kundalini | The coiled power of consciousness |
| mala | Impurity: anava, mayiya, karma |
| Matrka | The power of the phonemes |
| mudra | Seal, stance, gesture |
| nada | Resonance; exhaled breath |
| nimilana / unmilana | Closing and opening the eyes; inward and outward absorption |
| prakasa | Light; also each of the three sections |
| pratyabhijna | Recognition |
| puryastaka | The subtle body, "City of Eight" |
| saktipata | Grace |
| siddhi | Perfection; yogic power |
| spanda | Vibration, pulse of consciousness |
| susumna | The central channel |
| svasvabhava | One's own nature |
| turya / turiyatita | The Fourth; Beyond the Fourth |
| udana | The Upward Breath |
| unmesa / nimesa | Expansion and contraction |
| vikalpa | Thought construct |
| vimarsa | Reflective awareness |
The Final Insight
The Sivasutra begins with consciousness and ends with merging again. In between it describes, in seventy-nine short lines, how infinite awareness binds itself by its own knowledge, plays every role like an actor, and recovers itself at the edges of breath, sound, emotion and sleep.
Dyczkowski's achievement is to let us hear an older voice. Ksemaraja's reading, centred on the universal "I", is powerful and has shaped the tradition for a thousand years. Bhaskara's reading, centred on Light and one's own nature, is quieter, more physical, and in Dyczkowski's view closer to what Vasugupta's circle taught. Reading both, we see that a text this terse is always read through someone, and we can choose more freely how we read it.
The book's own last word, from the Introduction, is the right one to end on: "whatever level of development we have reached, we must keep on growing."
About This Edition
This Insight Edition is an independent study guide to Mark S. G. Dyczkowski's The Aphorisms of Siva: The Siva Sutra with Bhaskara's Commentary, the Varttika (State University of New York Press, 1992; SUNY Series in Tantric Studies; Foreword by Paul E. Muller-Ortega). It summarises and explains the book's contents section by section, with original commentary, comparison tables and critical notes. Short quotations are used for discussion. It is not a substitute for the book, which contains the full translation of Bhaskara's Varttika and the anonymous commentary, Dyczkowski's complete expositions, and extensive notes. Readers are encouraged to obtain the original from the publisher.