Insight Editions · No. 351
The Doctrine of Vibration
An Analysis of the Doctrines and Practices of Kashmir Shaivism
Mark S. G. Dyczkowski
Dyczkowski's classic study of the Spanda school of Kashmir Shaivism: consciousness as Light and Awareness, vibration as movement without motion, Siva and Sakti, the Wheel of Energies, the divine body of the senses and the four means to liberation. Every chapter, a master synthesis, glossary and practice path, with critical notes on where later commentators shaped the doctrine.
A study guide to The Doctrine of Vibration by Mark S. G. Dyczkowski (SUNY Press, 1987; Motilal Banarsidass). Shared free for personal reading; not for sale and not endorsed by the author or publishers. Please read and buy the original.
CORE CLAIM
Reality is one consciousness that is never static. Its vibration (spanda) is the pulse by which it creates, sustains and withdraws the world while remaining itself. Each of us is that consciousness in contracted form, and liberation is catching hold of the pulse, in this life, in every perception and state.
SCOPE
Dyczkowski's Introduction and all seven chapters, including the long final chapter on the four means of liberation, in the book's own order, with key terms, critical notes, a master synthesis, a glossary and a practice path: about 41,000 words.
KEY FIGURES
Vasugupta and Kallata, the root teachers; the commentators Ksemaraja, Bhatta Bhaskara, Utpalavaisnava (Bhagavatotpala) and Rajanaka Rama; Somananda, Utpaladeva and Abhinavagupta of the Recognition school; and, as foils, Sankara's Vedanta, the Buddhist schools and Saiva Siddhanta.
BEST FOR
Readers who want to understand what "Spanda" actually means: the difference between Light and Awareness, why Siva and Sakti are one, the Wheel of Energies, the divine body of the senses, and how all this turns into practice, with notes on where the commentators read later ideas back into the root text.
How to Use This Guide
Mark S. G. Dyczkowski's The Doctrine of Vibration (SUNY Press, 1987; Motilal Banarsidass edition 1989) is the first full study in English of the Spanda school of Kashmiri Saivism, built on the Stanzas on Vibration (Spandakarika) and their commentaries. It was researched and written at Oxford and still reads like a thesis in places: dense, heavily footnoted, full of untranslated technical terms. This guide follows the book chapter by chapter and explains every part, so that the argument can be followed without the Sanskrit.
What the Book Is
Spanda means "vibration", "pulse" or "throb". The Spanda school, starting with the Stanzas on Vibration in the ninth century, holds that ultimate reality is consciousness, and consciousness is dynamic: it is not a still witness, as in much of Vedanta, but a living pulse that is the world and knows the world at once. Dyczkowski's aim is to reconstruct this doctrine as it was taught, distinguishing it from the better-known Recognition (Pratyabhijna) philosophy of Utpaladeva and Abhinavagupta, with which it was later merged.
He does three things the book is valued for:
- Separates the strands. He shows where the Spanda texts end and where the commentators, especially Ksemaraja, add Pratyabhijna and Trika ideas. Much of this guide's critical commentary follows his own cautions on this.
- Explains the key pairs. Light (prakasa) and Awareness (vimarsa); Siva and Sakti; expansion (unmesa) and contraction (nimesa); Being and Becoming.
- Links metaphysics to practice. Every chapter ends in the yogi's experience, and the last chapter maps the whole path.
Dyczkowski researched the book at Oxford under Richard Gombrich and Alexis Sanderson, after reading his first Kashmiri Saiva texts in India, where he had lived for more than fifteen years. He writes as a sympathetic insider as well as an Oxford-trained Indologist. The result is careful with texts but often states the tradition's claims in its own voice ("the yogi realises...", "Siva binds Himself"). This guide marks where a statement is doctrine reported rather than argument made, where Dyczkowski's modern glosses (comparisons with physics, psychology or physiology) are his own, and where a later commentator's reading is being presented as the root text's meaning.
How the Book Is Laid Out
| Part | Pages | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Introduction | 1 to 32 | Kashmir as a learning centre; the Saiva scriptures; the Spanda and Pratyabhijna schools; the Spanda literature; method |
| I. Integral Monism | 33 to 58 | Integral monism against Samkhya and Advaita Vedanta; Saiva idealism and realism; the atomic theory of appearances |
| II. Light and Awareness | 59 to 76 | Prakasa and vimarsa; the mirror of consciousness; the integral absolute |
| III. Spanda | 77 to 98 | Being and Becoming; three moments in the vibration of consciousness; will, knowledge and action |
| IV. Siva and Sakti | 99 to 116 | The power-holder and his power; Sankara, the personal absolute; the nature of Sakti |
| V. Sakti Cakra | 117 to 138 | The void at the hub; the debate with Buddhism; the Wheels of Vamesvari and of the Senses |
| VI. The Divine Body | 139 to 162 | The body as cosmos and shrine; the goddesses of the senses; aesthetic rapture; Bhairavimudra and Kramamudra |
| VII. The Path to Liberation | 163 to 218 | Teacher, reason, the four means, Mantra, speech, yoga, the Fourth State |
Chapter VII is nearly a quarter of the book, so this guide divides it into two parts.
What Each Section of the Guide Gives
- The argument, in Dyczkowski's order, with each Sanskrit term explained the first time it matters.
- Insight boxes for what is subtle or easy to miss; model boxes for schemes and tables; case boxes for the book's images and examples; contrast boxes where two views are set side by side.
- Critical lens notes in red, where a claim is contested, sectarian, anachronistic or Dyczkowski's own interpretation.
- Quotations kept short, in boxes, with the speaker named.
- A key-term table and a reflect and practise paragraph at the end of every chapter.
If you keep one sentence in mind while reading, make it this: consciousness is not a thing that has activity, it is activity that knows itself. Utpaladeva said that light without reflective awareness would be "as inert and lifeless as the light of a crystal"; awareness is what makes the light alive, and that aliveness, at every level from the absolute to a single breath, is Spanda.
Names and Spellings
Sanskrit terms are given without diacritics (Ksemaraja, not Kṣemarāja; Siva, not Śiva) for ease of reading on screen. The root text is called the Stanzas on Vibration, as Dyczkowski calls it; Sanskrit Spandakarika. The Aphorisms of Siva are the Sivasutra. Utpalavaisnava and Bhagavatotpala are the same commentator. The author's name is Dyczkowski, pronounced roughly "dich-KOV-ski".
Introduction: Kashmir, Its Saivism and the Spanda School
Dyczkowski opens with a long historical introduction (pp. 1 to 32 of the printed book) that does three jobs. It places Kashmir as one of the great learning centres of Asia; it sorts the Saiva scriptures (Agamas) into the currents and groups from which "Kashmiri Saivism" was later built; and it separates the two schools that did not grow straight out of scripture, the Recognition school (Pratyabhijna) and the Doctrine of Vibration (Spanda), which is the subject of the book. A closing section on method lays out what each of the seven chapters will do.
The Land of Kashmir
The heart of Kashmir is the valley of the river Vitasta, about 5,000 feet above sea level. Before Islam arrived in the thirteenth century, the valley had an "unparalleled reputation" among both Buddhists and Hindus, in Sanskrit literature, poetics, grammar, medicine, astronomy and mathematics. Dyczkowski singles out Kalhana's twelfth-century chronicle of the kings, the Rajatarangini, as "virtually the only history of its kind in India", evidence of an unusually realistic sense of history.
Buddhism came early, possibly in the third century BC, and by the first century AD was strong enough for the Kushan king Kaniska to hold a Buddhist Council there with more than 500 monks. Dyczkowski lists the details that show how central Kashmir was:
- The council codified the uncodified discourses and the Abhidharma, and the whole early canon was inscribed on copper plates and placed in a stupa.
- The Sarvastivada, the Madhyamaka and the idealist Yogacara all flourished; Kashmir produced logicians in the line of Dignaga and Dharmakirti, notably Vinitadeva and Dharmottara (eighth century).
- Through the Swat and Chitral routes, Kashmir was the first great contributor to Buddhism in Central Asia from about the fourth century. Kumarajiva (334 to 413) studied there before going to China; Buddhabhadra did the same; Buddhasena translated the Yogacarabhumi into Chinese.
- Hsuan Tsang spent two years in Kashmir from 631. Tibet's first king, Srong-btsan-sgampo, sent Thon-mi Sambhota to Kashmir (reign of Durlabhavardhana, 616), who brought back a thirty-letter adaptation of the Kashmiri script.
The point of this survey is that Tantra grew up in this rich setting. From about the middle of the first millennium, huge bodies of scripture calling themselves Tantric appeared, and Kashmir was a major centre of both Hindu and Buddhist cults. Naropa and even Padmasambhava sometimes appear in Tibetan sources as Kashmiris, and Uddiyana, Padmasambhava's birthplace, was probably in the nearby Swat valley. Kashmir contributed to the Vaisnava Pancaratra as well: the earliest known citations of Vaisnava Tantras are in Kashmiri authors, and the South Indian Pancaratra looked to Kashmir as an old seat of learning. Still, Saivism remained the dominant Hinduism of the valley.
The Saivism of Kashmir and "Kashmiri Saivism"
Dyczkowski draws a distinction that runs through the whole book. The Saivism of Kashmir means every Saiva group active in the valley. Kashmiri Saivism in the modern sense means the specific monistic schools that produced the famous literature from the ninth century on, of which the Spanda school was the first. All Saiva groups accepted the Saiva Tantras (Agamas) as revealed scripture, and they organised themselves into lineages of initiating masters, each centred on a chosen group of Tantras. Because the Agamas both shaped these groups and were added to by them, the way the Tantras classify themselves is a map of the groups.
The scheme Dyczkowski follows divides the Agamas into five currents, each spoken by one of the five faces of Sadasiva:
- Upper current: the Siddhanta.
- Western and Eastern currents: the Bhuta and Garuda Tantras.
- Northern (left) current: the Vama Tantras. "Left" here is a direction of the face, not the later Tantric "left-hand path".
- Southern current: the Bhairava Tantras.
The Saivasiddhanta
The Agamas agree on 28 principal Siddhanta Agamas and about 200 secondary scriptures (Upagamas). All main Agamas and many secondary ones survive in South India, though few were edited when Dyczkowski wrote. Their cult centres on Sadasiva worshipped in public temples through the Linga, and they deal mostly with temple building, iconography, daily and occasional rites, consecrations, festivals and initiation. They say little about philosophy or yoga, and their stance is a tempered, not wholly consistent dualism. The later philosophical school of the same name made this explicit: three realities, Siva (pati), the fettered soul (pasu) and the bonds (pasa).
The people and orders matter for later chapters:
- Amardaka, remembered as founder of dualist Saivism (eighth century), founded the Amardaka monastic centre at Ujjain.
- His successor Purandara founded the Mattamayura order, named after a Calukya capital in the Punjab.
- Pavanasiva founded the Madhumateya order, preceptors of the Kalacuri kings of Central India.
Siddhanta ascetics, "full of missionary zeal", used royal patrons to spread into Maharashtra, the Konkan, Karnataka, Andhra and Kerala. The school declined in the north with the Muslim invasions from the eleventh century, but survived in the south by moving from Sanskrit to Tamil. Several of the earliest Siddhanta commentators were Kashmiris, and the monists quote them "with great reverence", even when they disagree. Kashmiri Saivism largely adopted the Siddhanta and reshaped it on non-dualist lines.
Bhuta and Garuda Tantras
Almost entirely lost. They dealt with magical cures (especially snakebite), exorcism, protection of children from spirits and the gaining of powers. The Kashmiris knew of them, but by the ninth century they were already in decline in Kashmir.
The Vama Tantras and Tumburu
The only Vama Tantra recovered when Dyczkowski wrote was the Vinasikhatantra, edited by Teun Goudriaan from two Nepalese manuscripts. The chief deity was Tumburubhairava, four-faced, each face speaking one of four Tantras: the Sirascheda ("Severed Head"), Vinasikha ("Crest of the Vina"), Sammohana ("Delusion") and Nayottara ("Higher Law"). The cult reached Southeast Asia before the end of the eighth century:
The Sdok Kok Thom inscription (1052) records a lineage of royal priests founded by Sivakaivalya, priest of Jayavarman II, who returned from exile in Java in 802. A Brahmin, Hiranyadama, taught the four Tantras to Sivakaivalya, and rites from them were performed for the king. Tumburu also appears in Sanskrit hymns from Bali. In both India and Southeast Asia the cult seems not to have outlived the eleventh century.
The Bhairava Tantras
These were the main sources of the Kashmiri monists. Bhairava, "the Terrible One", is the wrathful form of the peaceful Siva. Abhinavagupta gives a string of Tantric etymologies of the name, which Dyczkowski lists in full because they compress the theology:
- He who bears all things and is supported by the universe, filling and sustaining it, while uttering or conceiving it.
- He who protects those frightened by rebirth.
- He who is born in the heart of those who, terrified of transmigration, call on Him.
- He who by grace arouses a fear of transmigration.
- He whose light shines in yogis intent on assimilating time (kalagrasa) into the eternal present, exhausting the energy that drives "the machine of the galaxies".
- The Lord of the powers of the senses, whose shouting (ravana) frightens bound souls.
- The Lord who halts transmigration and is therefore very terrible.
Mahakalabhairava, dark blue or black, is protector of Ujjain, Benares and Kathmandu, and as a Buddhist deity, guardian of Lhasa. He carries Brahma's skull as penance for cutting off the creator's head. His drunken fury and burning body served many cults as an archetype of liberation: freedom beyond good and evil, an expanded, inebriated consciousness that holds both opposites.
In Kashmiri Saivism, Bhairava is the absolute experienced as the exertive force (udyama) that drives the senses and mind in the microcosm and the universe in the macrocosm. Much of Spanda practice is about laying hold of this inner force and identifying with it. In the Bhairava cults the means included rituals in cremation grounds for a few initiates, with meat, wine and at times ritual intercourse. Not all Bhairava Tantras stressed this: the Svacchandabhairavatantra allows such rites but usually prefers "tamer" ones close to the Siddhanta. The Bhairava Tantras are said to number sixty-four, but were many more.
Other Saiva groups: Pasupatas, Kapalikas and Kaulas
- Pasupatas are the earliest known Saivas, mentioned in old parts of the Mahabharata and in Patanjali's commentary on Panini (second century BC). The only surviving text, the Pasupatasutra (earlier than the tenth century), tells adepts to behave contrary to norms: laugh and cry like madmen, make lewd gestures, invite abuse, in order to destroy the ego and gain power through transgression. They followed the Great Vow (mahavrata).
- Kapalikas, skull-bearing ascetics, also kept the Great Vow; with others they formed the Higher Path (atimarga).
- Kaulas are in a sense the heirs of the Higher Path, close to the Bhairava Tantras, monist and strongly Sakta in tone. Kula itself means the power of consciousness, Sakti, the emission (visarga) of the absolute (Akula) through which the universe is made. The Kaulas are the precursors of the later Sakta Tantra.
Of the Kaula schools, two mattered most to the Kashmiris:
- Krama: the most secret doctrines and practices, centred on Kali. The Kashmiri Krama turned outer ritual into an inner process of realisation, in which the initiate discovers identity with Kali as the flow (krama) of consciousness through subject, means of knowing and object, as they arise and fall in each perception. Combined with the arousing of kundalini, this is "the most esoteric practice of Kashmiri Saivism". The Krama permitted meat, wine and ritual intercourse as possible means.
- Trika: the school Abhinavagupta made the summit of the whole tradition (below).
Abhinavagupta and the Flowering of Trika
Abhinavagupta lived from about the mid-tenth century into the eleventh and wrote more than sixty works. Dyczkowski divides his career into three periods:
| Period | Main works | Aim |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Tantric (to early forties) | Tantraloka ("Light of the Tantras") | Prove Trika's superiority over all Agamic schools; expound Saiva ritual in Pratyabhijna philosophy |
| 2. Poetics and drama | Commentaries on the Natyasastra (the only one preserved) and Anandavardhana's Dhvanyaloka | The theory that the soul of poetry is suggestion (dhvani), conveying sentiment |
| 3. Philosophical | Two commentaries on Utpaladeva's Isvarapratyabhijnakarika | The Doctrine of Recognition proper |
Biography in brief. Abhinava was a Brahmin of the Atrigotra; his ancestors were scholars at Kanauj, brought to Kashmir by King Lalitaditya around the mid-eighth century. His grandfather was Varahagupta, his father Narasimhagupta (Cukhala), an ardent Saiva despite his Vaisnava name, who taught him grammar, logic and literature. His mother died when he was a child. He "lived a solitary life devoted to the quest for truth". He wrote the Tantraloka for a small circle, mostly family: his brother Manoratha; Karna, husband of his sister Amba (after Karna's early death Amba devoted herself to Siva and to serving her brother); Karna's cousin Mandra, in whose town near Pravarapura (Srinagar), in the house of his aunt Vatsalika, the Tantraloka was written. A cousin named "Ksema" may have been Ksemaraja, his greatest disciple. An aged South Indian ascetic, Madhuraja, wrote a eulogy, the Gurunathaparamarsa, describing the young Abhinava enthroned among preceptors and female ascetics (yogini) who saw him as foremost teacher of the Siddhanta, Vama, Bhairava, Kaula and Trika.
Trika was not originally Kashmiri. Abhinava learnt it from Sambhunatha, who came from Jalandharapitha (Punjab or Himachal), whose teacher Sumati came from "some sacred place in the southern land". Trika is named for the triads that run through it, and looks to three scriptures: the Malinivijayottaratantra, the Siddhayogesvarimata and the (A)namakatantra. Its three goddesses, Para, Parapara and Apara, were already known in Kashmir. Abhinava made Trika the focal point of non-dual Kashmiri Saivism.
Dyczkowski warns against treating Kula, Krama and Trika as three parallel "systems". Kula is a broad term for several major traditions with their own branches, and in the Tantraloka it also names a ritual pattern, the Kula method (kulaprakriya), contrasted with the standard Tantric method (tantraprakriya). Krama rites (meat, wine, intercourse) follow the Kula pattern; Trika contains both. Trika and Krama share Kaula roots: the masters said to have brought the Kula scriptures to earth are honoured in both. For Abhinava, Trika completes Kula "as its finest flower", heading a hierarchy in which higher systems include the lower.
The Kashmiri synthesis therefore pulls in far more than three strands. The dualist Siddhanta is the backbone of Trika ritual, blended with the Malinivijaya, the Svacchanda and Tantras such as the Trisirobhairava and Devyayamala. The Bhairava current matters because the Siddhayogesvarimata, one of Trika's three root scriptures, belongs to it. This is why Abhinava insists that a student of Kashmiri Saivism must know grammar, logic, the orthodox systems and the Agamas. His grand-teacher Sumati was said to know all five currents and the Pasupata schools of the Higher Path.
Tantra and Kashmiri Society in the Eleventh Century
Kalhana, though a Saiva, ignores the non-dual teachers altogether, with one exception: Kallatabhatta, a key Spanda figure. Abhinava himself says it is very hard to find even one person qualified for the Saivism of the Tantraloka. Dyczkowski reads this as evidence that the monistic schools were a minority within a minority: a select group inside the Kaula and Bhairava followers, who were themselves a minority of Hindus but still a visible part of society.
Kalhana's silence has two causes. He was a minister's son interested in court history, and Abhinava kept away from court. More tellingly, the refined Saiva culture of these authors sat close to cults that were a source of scandal. The book gives three contemporary witnesses:
- Kalhana on King Kalasa (1063 to 1089), who surrounded himself with rogues, procurers and Tantric teachers. A figure called the "Cat Merchant", posing as physician and guru, made learned men "who knew how to behave fearlessly at great rites" fall to the ground before him, and became "the Guru of dyers and other craftsmen".
- Ksemendra, poet and younger contemporary of Abhinava, satirised a Kaula rite in the Narmamala ("Garland of Satire"): the drunken Bhairava-teacher Trighantika, mutilated and goitrous, surrounded by low-caste reprobates, dogs and mad women, "knows the Mantras, practices alchemy, magic and ritual intercourse". He mocks a learned Brahmin who, freed by Kaula doctrine from caste shame, drinks all night, vomits, has his face licked by a dog, and is "purified" in the morning by prostrating among scholars.
- Somadeva, a Jain monk in tenth-century South India, attacks the Kaulas he identifies with Trika in the Yasastilaka: if salvation came from reckless living, thugs and butchers would reach it before Kaulas.
Dyczkowski adds Cakrabhanu, a Krama master branded by the state with the mark of a dog's foot. A work of his in Nepal, possibly written in prison, longs for release so he can go by night to the cremation ground to offer human sacrifice to Kali. Against all this stands Abhinava's own picture of Kashmir: adepts meeting to drink the valley's famous wine, "inspiring timid lovers with confidence", in gardens of saffron growing as an offering to the Three Goddesses.
The polemical witnesses are outsiders or satirists, and Dyczkowski reads them as evidence of how the cults appeared, not as neutral ethnography. The useful conclusion is narrower than it first looks: Somadeva is one of the few independent attestations of Trika as a distinct school, and shows it existed well beyond Kashmir; and the gap between scriptural Trika and Abhinava's refined Trika was real enough for contemporaries to notice. The book does not resolve how far the refined authors themselves practised the transgressive rites; it leaves that open.
Recognition and Vibration: The Two Non-Scriptural Schools
Kula, Krama and Trika come straight from the Agamas. The Pratyabhijna and the Spanda do not; both were made in Kashmir by known authors, and they influenced each other deeply.
The Recognition school
The Pratyabhijna is "the fullest expression of Saiva monism", a rational theology of Siva and philosophy of absolute consciousness. It is named for Utpaladeva's Isvarapratyabhijnakarika ("Stanzas on the Recognition of God", early tenth century). For Utpaladeva, enlightenment is an irreversible recognition that one's own identity is Siva: the man "blinded by ignorance (Maya) and bound by his actions (karma)" is liberated "when knowledge inspires the recognition of his divine sovereignty (aisvarya)". The soul then knows itself as master (pati), not slave (pasu), of creation.
Utpaladeva's own image. A young woman is promised to a man she has never seen; she loves him from hearsay. When they meet she is indifferent, until she notices he has the qualities she was told of, and recognises him, to her great delight. The soul already "knows about" Siva; liberation is the moment of matching what is present to what is known.
Somananda, Utpaladeva's teacher, wrote the first Recognition work, the Sivadrsti ("Vision of Siva"), late ninth century. He claimed to be nineteenth in line from Tryambaka, mind-born son of Durvasas, who learnt monism from Srikantha on Mount Kailasa. A parallel myth has Durvasas generate three yogis, Tryambaka, Amardaka and Srinatha, teaching monism, dualism and unity-in-difference; Tryambaka's line is identified with Trika.
J. C. Chatterjee called the Pratyabhijna "the philosophy proper of the Trika", and K. C. Pandey agreed, treating Trika as the original monism of which the Pratyabhijna was a later phase. Dyczkowski thinks it more likely that Trika was identified with monism as a whole to enhance its prestige, and that Somananda borrowed an existing myth to give his new system scriptural pedigree. Utpaladeva himself calls Somananda's teaching a "New Path", and Jayaratha says this "doctrine of the oneness of the Lord" (isvaradvayavada) spread from Kashmir as a product of that land, "as precious and unique to it as saffron".
Three points about the Pratyabhijna's sources:
- Its great innovation was the Superego: ultimate reality as Siva, the identity of all beings as pure "I" consciousness.
- Much that is less original in it comes from earlier philosophy, not from the Agamas, especially the dualist Saivasiddhanta philosophy, which already held that the world is real, that consciousness is the essence of God and soul, and that consciousness is experience-as-such (anubhava) free of thought-constructs.
- Somananda argued against rival Hindu schools; Utpaladeva built the system as a critique of the Buddhist no-self doctrine (anatmavada), following the Siddhanta, which had already used recognition to prove that objects are not momentary and that a persisting conscious self must link past and present perception. In Somananda "recognition" appears once, without the technical sense; Utpaladeva first makes it consciousness's intuitive grasp of its own nature.
The Spanda school
The Spanda school is best understood as practical: an application of the yogic doctrines of the esoteric Agamic traditions. Where the Pratyabhijna stresses recognition, the Spanda stresses experiencing Spanda, the vibration or pulse of consciousness. Every activity in the universe, and every perception, notion, sensation or emotion in the individual, "ebbs and flows as part of the universal rhythm" of Siva, the one conscious agent and perceiver.
- First half of the ninth century: Vasugupta, a Saiva ascetic, is told in a dream (so Ksemaraja reports) that a message for mankind lies on Mount Mahadeva; he finds a boulder inscribed with the Sivasutra ("Aphorisms of Siva"), about eighty short statements of monistic Saiva yoga. Traditionally Siva's own words, it is nonetheless the first Kashmiri Saiva work.
- Four commentaries survive: Ksemaraja's Vimarsini (most extensive, often translated), Varadaraja's (largely based on Ksemaraja, with a few new ideas), an anonymous Sivasutravrtti, and Bhaskara's, which predates Ksemaraja, represents an independent tradition, and was then untranslated.
- Kallatabhatta, Vasugupta's leading disciple, lived under King Avantivarman (855 to 883). Some authors credit him with the Spandakarika ("Stanzas on Vibration"), written to summarise the Sivasutra; Ksemaraja attributes them to Vasugupta. Kallata certainly wrote the first commentary (vrtti).
- Ksemaraja wrote the Spandasamdoha ("Essence of Vibration") on the first verse, probably his first work, and later the Spandanirnaya ("Determination of Vibration") on all the stanzas.
- Two other commentaries, Bhagavatotpala's Spandapradipika ("Lamp of Spanda") and Rajanaka Rama's Vivrti, postdate Utpaladeva (they quote him) and predate Ksemaraja: latter half of the tenth century.
Method and Synopsis
The book can be read as an introduction to the Spanda school or to Kashmiri Saivism as a whole. It presents the doctrine in its most complete form, Ksemaraja's, who treats the fifty-one Stanzas as a concise statement of all of Kashmiri Saivism and boasts that rival commentators missed this synthesis. Dyczkowski therefore cuts across the school boundaries and treats Spanda as the meeting point of the systems. The companion volume (The Stanzas on Vibration) does the opposite: it is historical and particular, tracking how each commentator bent the original doctrine.
The Pratyabhijna is used heavily in Chapters One and Two because, in the hands of Rajanaka Rama and Ksemaraja, it became the philosophical defence of Spanda. The shared ground is idealism: consciousness, not Being, is the best image of the absolute, and it is active, perceiving itself as its object in each act of perception. Spanda is both the outer rhythm of arising and subsiding of every detail of the cosmic picture and the inner vibration of consciousness as pure perceptivity (upalabdhrta), equal to knowing subjectivity (jnatrtva) and agency (kartrtva).
This is one of the most important scholarly claims in the book, made here and returned to later. The terms light (prakasa) and reflective awareness (vimarsa) are entirely absent from the Sivasutra and the Spandakarika, which predate Somananda. A "careful, unprejudiced reading" of the Stanzas without commentaries shows that the Superego the commentators found there "was not really there". The original Self is one's own being (svabhava, svasvabhava), one's own fundamental state (svasthiti), the living soul (jiva) who is Siva, whose inherent attribute (akrtrimadharma) is knowing plus agency. The ego appears only as a notion of oneself (ahampratyaya) inside thoughts like "I am happy, sad or dull". Of the commentators, only Bhagavatotpala respects this, partly because his monistic Vaisnavism fits the original better than the Pratyabhijna does. This erosion was so complete that K. C. Pandey called the Spandakarika "a minor treatise" on Pratyabhijna vimarsa: Dyczkowski says Pandey was misled by the commentators' equations, such as Abhinava's equation of sphuratta ("radiant pulse") with Spanda.
Dyczkowski also flags how commentators reshaped Spanda as power. In the original, "Spanda" is neutral, the recurrent activity of the supreme principle (male pole) or of its power (female pole). Ksemaraja coins Spandasakti, unknown to the others, and reads it as the Krama Goddess of Consciousness (samviddevi). Rajanaka Rama, drawing on the Saktism of Pradyumnabhatta, makes universal Spanda the principle of power (saktatattva), the Supreme Goddess who manifests as all the tattvas, Siva included. Hence some modern scholars call Spanda Sakta-oriented. Views of the reality of the world also vary: Somananda is a thorough realist (even illusions are real as appearances); Abhinava's Paramarthasara grades levels of reality; Bhagavatotpala says the universe is both a real and an apparent transformation (parinama and vivarta); Rajanaka Rama separates the real ultimate from the unreal (asat) experience of pleasure, pain and dullness; Ksemaraja says "nothing arises or falls away" yet manifestation is real as the shining of consciousness's power.
The plan of the seven chapters
| Chapter | Subject | Main source frame |
|---|---|---|
| I | Saiva integral monism against a Sankara-type transcendental monism | Pratyabhijna; abhasavada |
| II | Consciousness as Light (prakasa) and awareness (vimarsa) | Pratyabhijna |
| III | Spanda in its own terms: movement from inner unity to outer manifestation and back | Spandakarika and commentaries |
| IV | Siva and Sakti: Sankara and His Spanda nature as power-holder and power | Agamas, Kashmiri authors |
| V | The Wheel of Energies (sakticakra): the Twelve Kalis, Vamesvari, the senses | Ksemaraja, Krama |
| VI | The divine body and the senses; nimilana and unmilana samadhi | Ksemaraja |
| VII | Bondage and the four means (upaya) | Abhinava's scheme from the Malinivijaya, via Sambhunatha |
Two last flags. The paired absorptions "with eyes closed" and "with eyes open" (nimilana, unmilana samadhi) are Ksemaraja's terms alone, found in no earlier author, not even Abhinava, though the idea is older. And the classification of means (upaya) has no trace in works before Abhinava: he learnt it orally from Sambhunatha, citing the Malinivijaya, and Ksemaraja then read the three sections of the Sivasutra as the three means.
| Key term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Spanda | Vibration, pulse: the recurrent creative activity of consciousness |
| Agama / Tantra | Revealed Saiva scripture |
| Srotas | "Current" of scripture, spoken by a face of Sadasiva |
| Kula / Akula | Power of consciousness / the absolute as its source |
| Krama | "Sequence": the Kali-centred Kaula school; the flow of consciousness |
| Pratyabhijna | Recognition; the school of Somananda and Utpaladeva |
| Udyama | Exertive force: Bhairava as the inner drive of mind and cosmos |
| Svabhava / svasthiti | One's own nature / fundamental state: the original Spanda term for the Self |
| Upalabdhrta | Pure perceptivity |
Reflect and practise. (1) Note one moment today when a thought arose and passed: Spanda doctrine says that rise and fall is the pulse of consciousness itself. (2) Why might a practical, yogic school need a philosophical school to defend it, and what might be lost in the borrowing?
The Integral Monism of Kashmiri Saivism
Chapter One sets the frame for the whole book by contrasting two ways of being a non-dualist. Advaita Vedanta keeps the absolute pure by excluding everything that changes; Kashmiri Saivism keeps it absolute by including everything, so that the world is the real, dynamic self-expression of consciousness. Dyczkowski calls this integral monism, and argues that its key is Spanda, the pulse by which the absolute moves without ceasing to be itself.
Metaphysics as a Path
Dyczkowski starts with a claim about Indian thought in general: metaphysics supports a spiritual discipline and is never mere speculation. A metaphysical view is an attitude to one's own experience, and acting on it turns philosophy into religion. The goal is gnosis, "insight into the essential nature" of things, which is "essentially a state or experience of recognition". He names three paths to it:
- Wisdom (jnanamarga): intuiting the Real through meditation and disciplined reasoning (viveka).
- Devotion (bhaktimarga): awe and wonder before truth embodied as Deity.
- Yoga: freedom through mastery (aisvarya) of the Self and of the All it contains. For the yogi this is the most direct path, since all paths tend toward it.
He quotes Karl Potter: the ultimate value of classical Hinduism "is not morality but freedom", "complete control over one's environment", including control of others and of the physical sources of power. In Kashmiri terms the goal is freedom (svatantrya), both as autonomy (kaivalya) and mastery (aisvarya). That freedom requires identification with one all-embracing reality that excludes nothing, neither world nor self. Devotional dualism, however tempered, rules out ultimate release.
The Foil: Samkhya and Advaita Vedanta
Samkhya dualism
Advaita grew largely as a critique of classical Samkhya, which posits two eternal opposed realities: Purusa ("the Person"), pure sentient witness, and Prakrti ("Nature"), everything objective, including body and mind. Nature is like the blind man, active but unseeing; the Person like the lame man, seeing but inactive; together they make experience possible. The Person suffers by taking Nature's changes as his own and is freed by discriminating himself from her, at which point she withdraws, as Isvarakrsna says, "just as a dancing girl retires from her dance after performing for the audience". Yet since the Person was always separate, "no one is actually bound, no one released"; it is Nature that transmigrates. Dyczkowski's point: two eternal realities cannot be related unless the relation is also eternal, so to protect the Person, Nature's reality must be denied.
Advaita: the Brahman is what the world is not
Advaita takes that step and also denies many Persons: nothing distinguishes one self from another, so the Self is one, and is Brahman, free of all specification and graspable only by negation. Ksemaraja's summary is sharp: "the Brahman is what the world is not." Brahman is always unmanifest (avyakta), the witness (saksin), never an object ("who can know the knower?"), "that from which speech and mind turn back".
Sankara quotes a lost Upanisad in his Brahmasutra commentary. A disciple asks the sage Baskali about the absolute; he sits silent. Asked a second and third time he says: "I am teaching, but you do not follow. The Self is silence."
The logic of Advaita follows from its criterion of reality: immutability. Dyczkowski sets out the chain:
- Reality never changes; only the less than real appears to.
- What does not exist before a change and after it must be equally non-existent in between, so change itself is impossible.
- Change implies loss of identity; the immortal cannot become mortal.
- So all change is merely apparent (vivarta), a false superimposition (adhyaropa, adhyasa) on Brahman, like the snake on the rope.
- The cosmic mistake (bhranti) is taking the real Brahman for the unreal world and vice versa; the personal mistake is taking body, mind or personality for the Self.
- The cause is Maya, a cosmic principle of ignorance, undefinable (anirvacaniya): not Brahman, yet not non-existent like a hare's horn or a barren woman's son.
- Knowledge of Brahman cancels (badha) the empirical, as seeing the rope cancels the snake.
So, for Advaita, "appearance implies the real, while the real need not imply appearance". This is backed by a critique of experience showing that space, time and the other categories cannot be absolute, which forces a doctrine of two truths, relative and absolute.
The Saiva Reply: Integral Monism
The Saiva absolutist rejects any theory that makes the universe less than real. A doctrine of two truths, he says, endangers monism itself. The Saiva approach is integral: "everything is given a place in the economy of the whole". It is equally wrong to call reality only one or only many; it is neither, and both.
We do not base our contention that [reality] is one because of the contradictions inherent in saying that it is dual. It is your approach that accepts this [method]. [While], if [duality and oneness] were in fact [to contradict each other], they would clearly be two [distinct realities].
Abhinavagupta, quoted by Dyczkowski
The barb is that the Vedantin, by rejecting duality as provisional, is "landed in a dualism between the real and the illusory" by "the foolishness of his own excessive sophistry". Oneness is the co-extensive unity (ekarasa) of both duality and unity. Gopinath Kaviraj puts the contrast plainly: Sankara cannot accept Maya as real, so his non-dualism is exclusive, "based on renunciation and elimination"; the Tantra accepts Maya as Brahman-made, eternal and real, so Brahman and Maya become one and coextensive.
Two routes to the same summit
| Advaita Vedanta | Kashmiri Saivism | |
|---|---|---|
| Protects the absolute by | Freedom from all predication | Being self-subsistent (svatantra) and full (purna) |
| Method | Exclusion (nisedha) of all that fails the test of absoluteness | Ever-widening inclusion of what was wrongly thought outside |
| Attitude | Negation; renunciation from dispassion (vairagya) born of discrimination | Affirmation; transcendence through active participation |
| The world | A magic show that never existed | A real level of manifestation within the absolute |
| Freedom | Freedom "from" | Freedom "to" |
| Desire | Denied, as it scatters attention among unreal objects | Elevated to the pure will (iccha) of the absolute |
| Ignorance | Thinking there is a real relation between finite and infinite | Failing to experience the intimate connection (sambandha) between them |
| Movement | Return (nivrtti) to the infinite | Return and outward journey (pravrtti): finally moving "through" the absolute |
Both agree on one thing: nothing stands outside the absolute to qualify it. They arrive "from opposite directions". Gaudapada, Sankara's teacher, gives the Advaitic discipline: reflecting that "everything is full of misery (sarvam duhkham)", withdraw the mind from desire; recalling that "the birthless Brahman is all things", one no longer perceives creation.
Dyczkowski reduces the Advaita position to a neat formula. There are (A) determinate knowledge of qualities through vikalpa, which involves an illusory subject-object split, and (B) direct, non-conceptual experience (saksatkara) of the unqualified (nirguna). A and B are not truly opposed, because A is unreal, so even the contrast between them falls under A. Spiritual ignorance is the false belief that finite and infinite are really related, and that justifies detachment.
The New Way: freedom "to"
Against this, the Kashmiri "New Way" (navamarga) is transcendence through participation:
- Desire for (akanksa) must go; desire to (iccha) is the pure will of the absolute.
- Matter cannot sully the absolute, nor is it unreal. Ignorance of spirit is ignorance of the true nature of matter.
- The finite is a symbol of the infinite. The infinite stamps its seal (mudra) on its own nature, full of all possible finite forms.
- Reality is eternal emergence (satatodita): expanding the distinction (bheda) between parts equals contracting the undivided (abheda) awareness of the whole, and vice versa. Both belong to the fullness (purnata) of Spanda.
- True knowledge (sadvidya) is knowing that the usual opposites (subject and object, unity and diversity, absolute and relative) are aspects of one reality.
The Vedantin's withdrawal from the finite is, for the Saiva, only the first stage. The second is the outward journey from infinite to finite. When both are perfected, a person "no longer travels 'to' and 'from' but eternally 'through' the absolute". The highest dispassion (paravairagya) is not turning away from appearance; it is realising that the absolute manifests as all things. Dyczkowski's images: the absolute at the summit of Being (parakastha) is "brimming over with phenomena", its streams flowing out "as does water from a tank full to overflowing", and in flowing out it "flows only into itself".
The pulse of passion and dispassion
The absolute will (iccha) is the force behind cosmic expansion: a pure intent to act and exist, like mundane desire but unsullied by any object (isyamana). The absolute "yearns for nothing other than itself". Desire is raised to pure will (icchamatra) not by suppression but by merging it with the divine will. Jayaratha puts it: "Those who went before said that [desire] is checked by the practice of dispassion; we teach that this is achieved by desisting from all effort."
The absolute oscillates between a "passion" (raga) to create and "dispassion" (viraga) from the created. This is Spanda. Both poles are equally real and equally absolute, and so the Saiva absolute is called the Great Oneness (mahadvaya).
An experienced music lover hearing a fast run of notes on the vina can still tell whether the microtones are high or low. In the same way the practised yogi discerns unity while phenomena are present. If unity and duality were true contraries, they would cancel each other as soon as they appeared together; they do not, since daily life goes on.
Abhinava's statement of Supreme Unity:
Where duality, unity and both unity and duality are equally manifest is said to be [true] unity. To those who object that in that case diversity must also exist, [we say:] so be it: we do not want to speak overmuch. We neither shun nor accept [anything] that [manifests to us] here as you do.
Abhinavagupta
Unity and diversity need each other. Without unity, diversity would be unrelated units, not diversity. "Just as everything that falls into a salt mine becomes salty", all diversity grounded in unity shares the "single flavour" of oneness. Distinction (bheda) is real but external: a relation between manifest forms, not a split in their inner nature. "While there is [an external] difference between phenomena, there is none [inwardly]." Mahesvarananda adds that the basis of duality is a phase (vibhaga) of reality, not an adventitious adjunct (upadhi).
The graded hierarchy and the blind men
Reality is a graded hierarchy (taratamya) of principles corresponding to planes (dasa): up to Maya we experience division; at the top, unity (abheda) contains all the rest. This lets Kashmiri Saivism treat every school's liberation as a real level. The absolute itself takes the form of all the levels of realisation (bhumika) each system upholds. Dualism is not wrong; it is one level within the absolute. Abhinava cites the Jaina parable of the blind men and the elephant: they disagree not completely but because their agreement is partial. The system-builders are "children of feeble intellect (sukumaramati)" who have not reached the summit and cannot yet look down and see each view's place in the whole.
The generosity here has a second edge, and Dyczkowski reports it straight. Calling rival schools partial truths held by "children of feeble intellect" places Trika at the top of a hierarchy by definition; no rival can object without proving that it has not reached the summit. Note also that Dyczkowski himself says the Kashmiri authors did not know Sankara's Advaita (Introduction). Sankara here is a typological foil for the transcendental monisms they did know, such as the "illusionists" (bhrantivadin) Somananda refutes. Readers who know Advaita well will note that its own tradition rejects the label "world-denial" and has resources (vyavaharika reality, Isvara) that this contrast leaves out.
Consciousness Is Being
Why does a hierarchy of planes not split the absolute? Because the absolute is wholly consciousness (samvid). Consciousness and Being are synonymous, and experiencing their identity is bliss (ananda). Here Dyczkowski draws the most basic contrast of the chapter:
- Advaita models consciousness on Being: an absolute substance, perfectly inactive, "a pure noetic plenum", knowledge without object or even self-awareness.
- Saivism models Being on consciousness, and consciousness is active.
Both agree consciousness does not depend on body or mind. Abhinava "pours scorn" on the materialists: the notion that nothing exists apart from the body, whose property is consciousness, is a view "peculiar to... children, women and idiots" that the materialists "elevated to the status of a system".
Dyczkowski quotes Abhinava's insult without comment. It is worth registering as what it is: a conventional polemical sneer of the period, grouping women with children and fools. It tells us about the rhetoric of Sanskrit debate and its assumptions, and it is not an argument against materialism.
Consciousness is an eternal, all-pervasive principle, "a psychology of absolute consciousness". All things are its manifestation (cidvyakti), and reality is "a compact mass of consciousness and bliss" (cidanandaghana) with "no holes or gaps" anywhere. It rests in itself (svatmavisranta), craves nothing (nirakanksa), depends on nothing (nirapeksa), "looks to none other but itself". As supreme subject it is the Great Light (mahaprakasa), uncreated and unteachable (asrauta), a sun of consciousness making all things the mandala of its rays. It is also God: Siva, Lord of consciousness (cinnatha), the atman of all beings and the supreme object of worship. Omnipotence and omniscience are simply attributes of consciousness.
Spanda makes God God
Consciousness is not a passive witness (saksin) but full of conscious activity (citikriya) by which it emits and reabsorbs the universe in each cycle. This freedom is its sovereignty (aisvarya), and the sovereignty of the Lord is "pure agency (kartrta) whose essence is the divine pulsing radiance (sphuratta)". That dynamic power is Spanda.
Thus God (bhagavat) is always the Spanda principle with its dependent categories. He is not motionless (aspanda) as those who say, "the supreme reality is perfectly inactive". If that were so, His nature would be a self-confined stasis and so He would not be God at all.
Ksemaraja, Spandanirnaya
The inactive absolute is the Vedantin's Brahman, which cannot really be a creator, since its creation is unreal. Sankara himself says God's rulership, omniscience and omnipotence depend on adjuncts conjured by nescience. Kashmiri Saivism instead holds a personal absolute God who is the one reality (isvaradvayavada). The planes within the absolute are ruled by a hierarchy of deities, empowered by the supreme deity, consciousness, reached by ascent through ever more expanded states to the fullest expansion (purnavikasa), the supramental (unmana).
The supreme has different names in the traditions Kashmir absorbed:
| Tradition | Male principle | Female counterparts |
|---|---|---|
| Kaula, Trika, Krama (in Abhinava) | Bhairava | Kali, Kalasamkarsini ("Attractress of Time"), Matrsadbhava ("Essence of Subjectivity"), Para ("the Supreme") |
| Spanda | Siva, called Sankara | Spanda, identified by some with the Goddess |
| Non-sectarian | Paramesvara, Paramasiva, Siva |
Saiva Idealism
Interiority (antaratva) is the keynote of both metaphysics and practice: a doctrine that "everything is internal" (antararthavada). Consciousness is "the great abode of the universe". Utpaladeva: "some, greatly troubled, move perplexed within themselves while others, well established, wander in that which is their own Self alone". For Somananda, only what supposedly exists outside consciousness is non-existent (avastu); daily life lived without knowing that all is manifest within consciousness is "illusory" in that sense alone. Things become more real, more tangibly experienced, the more we recognise them as appearances (abhasa) within consciousness.
Jayaratha uses the mirror image: phenomena are like reflections and, as external, have no being of their own. But he adds that the Lord says this to raise the consciousness of those attached to outer things, not to deny their reality. Two ways to discover interiority:
- Merge the outer into the inner subject, or
- See the outer as a gross form of the inner.
Either way, all things reside in our consciousness "just as consciousness resides within them". This requires an essential identity between the universe and consciousness. If an object were truly material and independent, it could never be experienced.
The existence or non-existence of phenomena within the domain of the empirical cannot be established unless they rest within consciousness... the fact of their appearing is itself their oneness with consciousness because consciousness is nothing but the fact of appearing (prakasa).
Abhinavagupta
The universe is an attribute (dharma) of consciousness, which bears it (dharmin) as substance. "Now, if you don't get angry", Abhinava writes, the whole class of worlds, entities and tattvas rests in consciousness. So consciousness is the ground (adhara), being (satta) and substance of things, but, unlike Brahman, not the substrate (adhisthana) of an unreal projection. Consciousness and its contents are equally real.
The argument against realism
Here the Kashmiri Saiva is "frankly and without reserve an idealist". Dyczkowski sets out the case:
- The realist says content is independent of the act of perceiving and unchanged by it. But that is unverifiable: we would have to know an object without perceiving it.
- Unknown objects may exist, but they are knowable only in relation to a subject. No subjects, no objects.
- The subject is self-luminous (svaprakasa), apparent to itself.
- The object is a form of awareness (vijnanakara); its objectivity "is cognition itself". It appears only when perceived.
- If "blue" existed apart from the cognition of blue, two things would appear, blue and its cognition, which is not the case.
- An object cannot make another appear, or one object could produce others in its likeness: "a crow does not become white because a swan [next to it] is white".
- Borrowing the Yogacara principle that what is always perceived together is identical (sahopalambhaniyama), the Saiva concludes that perceived and perception are one.
Consciousness is essentially active. In perception it manifests itself outwardly as its object, and when the act ends it reabsorbs the object and returns to its undifferentiated inner nature.
Against Yogacara: the world is a real creation
| Yogacara Buddhist | Kashmiri Saiva | |
|---|---|---|
| Perceived equals perception, so... | there is no object; the "world" is a flux of cognitions | the object is a real creation of consciousness |
| Analogy | Vasubandhu: like a man with bad eyes seeing hairs or a double moon; dreams | Sugarcane juice boiled into treacle, brown sugar and candy, keeping its sweetness |
| Reality of the world | Unreal; a doctrine of illusion | Absolutely real, as "congealed" (styana) or "contracted" (samkucita) consciousness |
Ksemaraja: "This God of consciousness generates the universe and its form is a condensation of His own essence (rasa)." The effect is identical to the cause and shares its reality. No object is wholly insentient: even stones bear a trace (vasana) of consciousness, unclear only because there is no vital breath (prana) or psycho-physical organism. Somananda goes further: physical objects exist only insofar as they are aware of themselves as existing; "the jar performs its function because it knows itself to be its agent".
The jar knows because it is of my nature, and I know it because I am of the jar's nature. I know because I am of Sadasiva's nature and He knows because He is of my nature.
Somananda, Sivadrsti
The non-dualism of direct perception
Narasimha's doctrine of pratyaksadvaita holds that consciousness is essentially perceptive and its perception runs through the universe. Since phenomena are evident (sphuta) to us, all is directly perceived by absolute consciousness, identical with ours, "alone and without rival (nihsapatna)", able to see distinctions without being divided. Two things are distinguished by mutual exclusion (anyonyabhava), yet both are united in one cognition, their common essence (rasa) or own nature (svabhava).
When an emerald and a ruby reflect each other's light, the ruby looks reddish-green and the emerald greenish-red. So everything is linked with everything else in the single variegated (vicitra) cognition of absolute consciousness. Mahesvarananda calls the brilliance of the universe "the single flavour of the essence of Beauty which is the vibration of the bliss of one's own nature".
Kashmiri Saiva Realism
Scholars have called the system "realistic idealism", "monistic idealism", "idealistic monism" and "concrete monism". Why "realistic"? Dyczkowski says the answer is "of no small importance" because it reveals the central role of Spanda in this "seemingly impossible marriage between monistic idealism and pluralistic realism".
The world is a symbol of the absolute, the way it presents itself. Advaita's Being is the never-manifest unity under appearances, "being-in-itself". The Saiva position reverses this:
- The absolute, and Being, are eternal becoming (satatodita), a dynamic flux, Spanda, "the agency of the act of being".
- Appearance (abhasa) alone is real; appearing (prakasamanatva) equals existing (astitva).
- Ksemaraja: "all things are manifest because they are nothing but manifestation". The absolutely unmanifest has less existence than "the space in a lattice window of a sky-palace", since even that can appear as an imagined image.
- Everything is real according to the way it appears, even an illusion. "Whenever and in whatever form [an entity] appears, that then is its particular nature" (Abhinava, calling this "the supreme doctrine (upanisad)").
The Heidegger comparison
Dyczkowski draws an explicit parallel with Heidegger. For Heidegger reality is intelligible as "phenomenon", "that-which-shows-itself", and "logos", "letting-be-seen". The later Heidegger prefers "phainesthai", "lighting-up, self-showing, coming-out, appearing-forth", rooted with physis in "the rising-up or upsurge". He separates phenomenon from semblance (Schein), as when fool's gold shows itself as gold, but insists semblances are grounded in showings: "however much seeming, just that much being". Abhinava makes the same move: all semblances have a real basis.
The practical upshot: the reality of the world demands recognition. "If practical life, which is useful to all persons at all times, places and conditions were not real, then there would be nothing left which could be said to be real" (Abhinava). "A thousand proofs" cannot make blue other than blue. An entity appearing in its own form is a fact at one level of consciousness; the same entity seen as a direct representation of the absolute is a fact at another, and "no more or less real". "As is the state of consciousness, so is the experience."
"Liberating knowledge is gained not by going beyond appearances but by attending closely to them." Abhinava: once an entity's form is clearly determined in direct perception, "one should, with effort, induce it to penetrate into its pure conscious nature". Mahesvarananda: "the secret is that liberation while alive (jivanmukti) is the profound contemplation of Maya's nature." This is the hinge between the metaphysics of this chapter and the practice of Chapter Seven: the very act of knowing (pramiti), whatever its content, is "the vibrant (spanda) actuality of the absolute".
Below and above Maya
- Within Maya, each thing's own nature (svabhava) is its specific manifest form, what distinguishes it from all else.
- Above Maya, in the domain of the subject, everything is part of the experiencer's fullness. Each category contains all the categories; every particular is all things. This is the co-extensive unity (samarasya) of all things. Abhinava: "just as sweetness is present in its entirety in every atom of the sugarcane, so each atom bears within itself the emanation of all things." Here the absolute reflects on itself with wonder (camatkara), and diversity is experienced "in a new mode of awareness free of time and space in the eternal omnipresence of the Here and Now".
The image of feather and markings: "just as the markings [on a feather] are nothing apart from the feather, the feather [is nothing apart from] them", so when the light of consciousness is manifest, all phenomena are manifest as that light.
The Atomic Theory of Appearances
The chapter ends with a compact theory of perception built from "atomic" appearings (abhasa):
- Every object is a momentary collocation of appearances combined "like a row of altar lamps (dipavali)". A jar is "round", "fat", "earthen", "red" and so on, together serving one function (arthakriya): carrying the appearance "water". They unite as scattered rays of a lamp focus, or as sea currents form a wave.
- They combine freely within limits set by natural law (niyati): "form" cannot combine with "air".
- A cluster forms one whole because it shares a common basis (samanadhikaranya), its most prominent member ("jar"). The result is the awareness "here this is such", tied to place and time: "I now see this here".
- Context changes function. Abhinava's example: the beloved seen without the appearance "embracing", and with the appearance "far away", turns her power to give pleasure into its contrary.
Abhinava shows the same golden jar appearing differently to different minds:
- A depressed person, feeling nothing in the world has value, sees only "it is": bare existence.
- Someone who wants to fetch water sees "jar".
- Someone who wants a thing to carry and bring back sees "thing".
- Someone who wants money sees "gold".
- Someone who wants a pleasing object sees "brightness".
- Someone who wants something solid sees "hardness".
Either the object stays the same and a different component comes forward, or the object is different for each perceiver. Both readings fit the theory.
Daily life (vyavahara) runs on this "ever renewed flux" of appearances, which hold together because they appear in one universal subject, like sprouts in a rice field, each from its own seed yet seen as one crop. "Externality" is itself just another appearance, produced by Maya, which separates individual subject from object. The split is necessary: only external appearances can function; merged in the subject, they cannot.
- Each appearance rising from and sinking back into pure consciousness is a particular pulsation (visesaspanda).
- All of them together are the universal pulse (samanyaspanda) of cosmic creation and destruction.
- Every single thing is part of the radiant vibration (sphuratta, sphurana) of the light of absolute consciousness.
| Key term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Integral monism | Non-duality that includes, rather than excludes, the world |
| Vivarta / adhyasa | Apparent change / superimposition (Advaita) |
| Satatodita | "Eternally arisen": reality as unceasing emergence |
| Mahadvaya | The Great Oneness, embracing unity and duality |
| Abhasa / abhasavada | Appearance as real manifestation / the doctrine of it |
| Sahopalambhaniyama | What is always perceived together is identical |
| Pratyaksadvaita | Narasimha's non-dualism of direct perception |
| Samarasya / ekarasa | Co-extensive unity; single flavour |
| Visesaspanda / samanyaspanda | Particular / universal pulsation |
Reflect and practise. (1) Take an object on your desk and list which "appearances" come forward when you want different things from it, as in the golden jar. (2) Notice the difference between "desire for" a thing and "desire to" act: which one leaves you restless? (3) Write two sentences explaining to an Advaitin why "the world is real" need not compromise non-duality.
Light and Awareness: The Two Aspects of Consciousness
If Chapter One argued that everything is consciousness, Chapter Two asks what consciousness is like. The answer comes in a pair of terms borrowed from the Recognition (Pratyabhijna) school: Prakasa, the Light that makes all things appear, and Vimarsa, the reflective awareness by which that Light knows itself. Together they form the fullness (purnata) of consciousness, and their living relation is Spanda.
Why a Recognition Concept Belongs Here
Dyczkowski flags a historical point at the start. Neither "Prakasa" nor "Vimarsa" appears in the Stanzas on Vibration or the Aphorisms of Siva. The pair is developed in Utpaladeva's Stanzas on the Recognition of God and enters the Spanda tradition through its commentaries. So the Doctrine of Vibration "was extended in the course of its development" to absorb the Pratyabhijna model. He thinks this was justified, because the two schools' absolutes do not differ essentially; one can be explained through the other, as the Kashmiri authors themselves did.
This is worth keeping in mind for the whole book. Much of what is presented as "the Doctrine of Vibration" is the Spanda school as read by Ksemaraja and others after Utpaladeva. Dyczkowski is open about this, but a reader who wants the earliest Spanda teaching on its own terms should notice how often the evidence in this chapter comes from commentators and from Abhinavagupta rather than from the Stanzas.
Prakasa: The Light of Consciousness
Prakasa is the pure luminosity (bhana) or "self-showing" that is the essence and ultimate identity (atman) of phenomena. That things appear at all is due to this Light, and their appearing is itself the Light. Whatever supposedly does not rest in it is "as unreal as a sky-flower".
Its properties, gathered from the sources:
- Source as well as revealer. Unlike sunlight, says Rajanaka Rama, this Light both shows things and produces them.
- Active. Full of divine vibration, it manifests things and withdraws them. Without this supratemporal activity "it would be no better than an inert physical phenomenon".
- Collective whole. It is the conjunction (slesa), oneness (aikatmya) and collective whole (sampindana) of all its forms and categories. "The universe is nothing but the shining of the Light within itself."
- Undivided by its objects. It penetrates each object individually and collectively yet is not "merged" (magna) so as to suffer division. The experience is "I see this": not itself an object.
- Never obscured. "Objectivity can never cast a shadow on the light of consciousness." The Stanzas say it is "nowhere obstructed because it is unconditioned by [its very] nature".
- Ancient and new. It is the "Ancient Light" (puranaprakasa) that makes things fresh every moment, "always new and secret, ancient and known to all", the form of the Present (vartamanarupa). Time and space are relations between the contents of consciousness and cannot divide it.
- Personal. It is "the living Light of God, indeed it is God Himself", Siva as the "auspicious lamp", revealing both "light" and "darkness".
Abhinava's hymn to Bhairava as the Light condenses all this: self-evident (svatahsiddha), without beginning, the Eternal Present, illumining the unfolding of the categories as his own expansion and, "because He illumines Himself, so too He reflects on His own nature" without his wonder (camatkara) diminishing. The last clause already points to Vimarsa.
Light as the mystic's symbol
Dyczkowski compares the Saiva idea of consciousness to the Christian mystics' idea of God rather than to Western philosophy of mind, citing Dionysius the Areopagite: God "communicates His unity into every part of the world and also unto the Whole", "indivisible plurality, insatiable, yet brimful". The vision of light is "one of the most characteristic features of higher mystical experiences". The mystic "must die to the profane condition" to be reborn into a world "he recognises to be full of light", and the gain is more consciousness, symbolised as more light.
[This] Bliss is not like the intoxication of wine or that of riches, nor similar to union with the beloved... When one frees oneself from accumulated multiplicity, the state of bliss is like that of putting down a burden; the manifestation of the Light is like the acquiring of a lost treasure.
Abhinavagupta
Philosophy as systematic symbolism
This leads to a methodological claim that frames the whole book. Philosophy can only describe. It is a "systematic symbolism" whose job is to generate insight by elevating the power of recognition (pratyabhijna), letting the reader couple a concept with the experience behind it. "No metaphysical concept is entirely intelligible without reference to the spirit." The system has many such symbols, Light (prakasa), Sound (nada), Vibration (spanda), Taste (rasa), and two are prominent:
| Symbol | Light (prakasa) | Vibration (spanda) |
|---|---|---|
| Represents | Things as parts of the absolute in static juxtaposition and mutual interpenetration | The dynamic, self-regenerative character of the absolute |
| Model | Space | Time |
| Power | Knowledge (jnanasakti): the unchanging witness | Activity: infinite becoming finite, finite returning to infinite |
Dyczkowski is candid that the metaphysics rests on "direct experience of the Real", which "is more important to the mystic than any concept". This is honest, and it also means the arguments in Chapters One and Two cannot finally be checked from outside the experience. The comparisons with Dionysius and later with Jung and Heidegger are illustrative parallels, not evidence that these thinkers say the same thing. Dionysius's God, for instance, is beyond being and is not identified with the soul's own consciousness, which is the heart of the Saiva claim.
The Triad of Knowing
In perception the Light's dynamic side appears as the flux of cognitions, the pulsation (Spanda) of its noetic activity (jnanatmikakriya), of which it is both agent and perceiver. Knowledge cannot exist apart from the knower; the subject binds object and knowledge together "like a powerful glue". Ultimately all three are one:
Nothing perceived is independent of perception and perception differs not from the perceiver, therefore the universe is nothing but the perceiver [himself].
Verse cited by Dyczkowski
So there are three aspects of the one consciousness: illuminator (prakasaka), illumined universe (prakasya) and the light of knowledge (prakasa). "The universe, Light and Self are one." When they operate, the universe appears; when the tension between subject and object resolves, it is withdrawn. A devotional verse puts it lightly: "Your playful desire is the cause of the diversity between the perceiver, perceiving, perception and perceptible; when Your playful desire is over, that diversity disappears somewhere. Seldom does man realise this."
United, the triad is the supreme subject (parapramatr) in the state of pure awareness (pramitibhava): Paramasiva, who takes on the three aspects by self-limitation (samkoca) while remaining undivided.
| Luminary | Stands for | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Sun | Means of knowledge | It illumines the object |
| Moon | Object | It shines by reflected light, and like the moon "exudes nectar", delighting the senses |
| Fire | Subject | Fire has three abodes (earth, lightning, heaven) as the subject contains all three aspects; and it flames upward, consuming and "digesting" all within its field when perception ends |
Consciousness is self-revealing. If it needed another consciousness to reveal it, that would need another, and so ad infinitum. The Light "does not require a second for its own revelation".
Formless and Omniform
Siva imposes on himself countless limiting conditions (upadhi), appearing diverse "just as a light shining through a lattice window appears diverse", while remaining the supreme experiencer. But the Saiva rejects the idea that this diversity is just like coloured crystal reflecting outer colours. Rajanaka Rama: only if we could ever conceive of You apart from manifestation could we say Your diversity is due to outer conditions.
Dyczkowski sets out the problem precisely:
- We see many objects in one act of perception, so the Light must be one for all of them.
- But consciousness does not see all things equally; some are clearer than others.
- If the Light were wholly homogeneous, "blue" and "yellow" would be indistinguishable and perception would collapse into chaos (samkara).
- So the Light must be both formless and omniform.
- It cannot be only one or only many, or a second reality would be needed to supply the missing aspect.
Advaita solves this by making unity real and diversity apparent. The Saiva solves it through freedom: the Light is free of the limits of relative things, and "pure consciousness is equivalent to absolute freedom". A lifeless object is "hemmed in on every side" and cannot be other than it appears.
The Samkhya alternative, that matter takes diverse forms while staying one like clay in different pots, fails, because anything objective cannot be both one and diverse; "the states of unity and division are distinct in all objective phenomena". Abhinava: both characteristics are found only in what does not fall to the level of an object, consciousness, which is the perfect medium of reflection (svaccha).
The Mirror of Consciousness
Hence the master image: Siva's consciousness is an infinite, perfectly polished mirror in which the universe is reflected. A Tantra quoted by Abhinava: "Deity is both formless and omniform, pervading all things... as does water or a mirror." The mirror does three things:
- It shows things separate from it as if one with it, without being affected.
- It shows its reflections as if distinct from it, though they are not.
- Its many images appear separate from each other without dividing it.
Where the mirror analogy breaks
In one respect the analogy fails, and the failure is the point. An ordinary mirror reflects outer objects; consciousness does not. "The All (visva) is entirely a reflection (pratibimbamatra)." From consciousness's side the "original" is as much a reflection as the image. Abhinava: an image is deposited by an external object, but "if this too is a reflected image, what remains of the original object?"
The supporting arguments:
- Perception is never immediate. It comes through a chain of causes, so what we perceive is always a reflection in mind and senses. "An outer world may indeed exist", but never appears as the original.
- To the objection that no reflection without an original: true of mirrors, not of consciousness.
- Even with mirrors, object and image are not one, nor one as a particular is with its universal. They are not perceived simultaneously: an echo is heard after the sound stops, a shadow seen without the hand.
Abhinava's example: the bashful maiden can secretly look at her lover standing behind her in a mirror, without looking at him directly. Image and original are apprehended separately. Then he cuts the argument short: if you still insist on calling the universe the original object although it has every mark of a reflection, "go ahead. The wise attend to the facts, not to commonly accepted convention."
So the only way to account for the cosmic reflection is that consciousness creates it spontaneously, as "the agent of the act of manifestation" and the cause of both original and reflection. Otherwise we would need a second reality to deposit the images, and nothing would appear at all. Abhinava: "the Supreme Lord manifests freely (anargala) all the varied play of emissions and absorptions in the sky of His own nature."
The Goddess Spanda as mirror and maker
Ksemaraja personifies this power as the Goddess Spanda. She is the womb from which all things are born and in which they rest, and she is both the power that generates the reflection and the mirror in which it appears: "the Lord's power of freedom that, although undivided, displays on the screen of Her own nature all the cycles of creation and destruction... like a city reflected in a mirror... Therefore, the Supreme Being is always one with the Spanda principle." Thoughts, memories, cognitions, objects, universals and words are all forms of this vibration.
The mirror chapter ends where it must for a Spanda book: a mirror that produces its own images is not a passive surface. The power that both generates forms and is conscious of them is the absolute's self-awareness. That is Vimarsa, and that is also Spanda.
Vimarsa: Self-Awareness
The Light explains why things appear at the first instant of perception, while still one with the subject and before thought-constructs (vikalpa) degrade them to objectivity. It does not explain experience. "No experience is possible without self-awareness. Experience must be personal to be experience at all." Dyczkowski cites Jung: experience is impossible without reflection, since it is a process of assimilation.
Consciousness must "bend back" on itself to know itself and its contents:
The Supreme Lord bears within Himself the reflection of the universe and the [reflection] is His nature as all things. Nor is He unconscious of His nature as such because that which is conscious necessarily reflects on itself.
Source cited by Dyczkowski
The word. Vimarsa comes from the root mrs: to touch, feel, understand, perceive, reflect, examine. It is the power by which consciousness can perceive itself and "behave like a limitless, living being". It is the Light's most specific characteristic and "the very life of its sentient nature". Without it the Light would be appearing unknown to anyone, like light in a common mirror or crystal.
What self-awareness gives the absolute:
- It rests in itself, though not as a lifeless object does, and is satisfied (caritartha) in knowing it is all that exists.
- It is God's omniscience, fullness, bliss (ananda) and aesthetic rapture (camatkara).
- It is the pulse of pure contemplation, the inner activity of the power of action (kriyasakti), in which all powers merge as the uncreated "I" consciousness (aham), whose radiant vibration (sphurana) is the emanation and reabsorption of the universe.
- It is creative freedom either to turn inward, free of outer forms, or move outward to view them. With this oscillation "the universe of manifestation is incessantly renewed".
The vibration of awareness explains manifestation without material cause and without essential change in consciousness.
| Internal | External | |
|---|---|---|
| Name | Pure awareness of "I" (ahamvimarsa) | Awareness of "this" (idamvimarsa) |
| Character | Free of thought-constructs (nirvikalpa), "total freedom and unsullied wonder" | Directed to the object as separate; open to discursive representation (vikalpa) |
| Vision | The Whole; the subject as unity of all things | The part: a specific "this" set against all it is not |
In reality, awareness is always awareness of "I"; even as "this"-awareness it never objectivises. "The experience we have of things existing outside consciousness is due to a lack of self-awareness." Every drop of water, even one drunk from the ground by the sun, returns as rain to the ocean; so all knowledge and action merge in the ocean of Siva, directly or through intermediate processes.
Individual and Universal Are One Process
Individual and universal consciousness are the same process, contracted (samkucita) or fully expanded (vikasita). The mind's activity is consciousness's reflective awareness, the power of Spanda. On the individual level Dyczkowski quotes a modern summary listing what Vimarsa does:
- Know itself in purity, free of all affections.
- Analyse its affected states, inner or outer.
- Retain them as residual traces (samskara).
- Retrieve any trace at will: memory.
- Select from the stock to create a new state: free imagination.
When conditioned by objects and by the laws of the physical world (all aspects of Maya), "I"-awareness operates as cognition, memory and the other mental functions. Freed from outer objects, the individual shares God's bliss. This blissful self-awareness is the abiding condition of the subject even while he perceives and reacts, the inspired wonder from which will, knowledge and action flow as phases of its rhythm.
The ordinary person does not see the creative nature of this flow of awareness (jnanadhara); he does not know that he fashions the forms of his world from his own consciousness. At the universal level the same movement from inner to outer is the creation and destruction of the universe.
Knowledge and action
So Vimarsa is action (kriya), the flux of Becoming, while Prakasa is knowledge (jnana), passive Being. "Awareness is the creative act of making reality known, while the Light is the actuality of its being known." Without Vimarsa the Light would be "a state of pure potential that could never actualize".
| Aspect of awareness | Direction | State |
|---|---|---|
| Karma Vimarsa | Directed outward, with the unfolding (vikasa) of the universe | Action with a goal |
| Kriya Vimarsa | Wholly internal, the absolute's agency (kartrtva) | The pure stir (samrambha) of consciousness, undisturbed by any goal |
The Saiva rejects the Vedantin view that knowledge and action are incommensurable. They always work together: at the universal level action evolves forms and knowledge manifests them; individually they are the objective and subjective poles of sentient life. The knowing "I am" persists through all action; if it did not, running would be impossible, nor could we understand a sentence spoken in haste. Together, "I know" and "I act" are the pure "I" which is the inner Spanda nature of consciousness.
Awareness and the Integral Absolute
The last section explains how the one Light becomes a differentiated universe. Appearances share a common nature as appearances, so they cannot divide themselves; the Light must differentiate them by the ways it reflects on itself. The Light is always undivided, even within Maya; its reflective awareness is what differentiates. At the micro level: "this is a jar", "this is a cloth", "these two are divided from each other and from me". At the macro level, the Light spans the categories from Earth to Paramasiva, and the unfolding (unmesa) of the awareness of the Heart distinguishes them.
This does not make Vimarsa itself diverse. It is "the freedom [of consciousness] to unite, separate and hold things together", which inert objects lack.
| Operation | Level of awareness | Appearing |
|---|---|---|
| (1) Negates its true nature and (2) identifies with something else | Awareness of separation: consciousness identifies with the psycho-physical organism, producing seemingly individual centres | Division (bheda) among objects |
| Holds subject and object together | Awareness of holding together in one field during cognition | Unity-in-difference (bhedabheda): the means of knowledge linking subject and object |
| (3) Merges both into one and (4) denies both once merged | Awareness of union in the universal subject | Undivided unity (abheda): the pure subject |
The wave of Spanda moves through these levels in two directions: ascent (arohakrama) from diversity to unity and descent (avarohakrama) from unity to diversity. It can be read:
- Vertically, as emanation (srsti) and withdrawal (samhara) of the cosmos; and
- Horizontally, as awareness moving toward and away from the object in each perception.
Perception is therefore both a paradigm of cosmogenesis and a means of realisation. At each level a power operates: will (para, supreme), knowledge (parapara, middling), action (apara, inferior), all aspects of the one "I-ness" of reflective awareness.
Self-realisation is recognising that integral "I-ness" (purnahanta) manifests on all three levels and is the yogi's own Siva-nature. Spanda is the wave of energy released by the act of self-awareness, carrying consciousness from contraction to full expansion and "freeing the unawakened from the torments of limitation".
| Key term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Prakasa | The Light: consciousness as the ground and fact of appearing |
| Vimarsa | Reflective self-awareness; consciousness "bending back" on itself |
| Pratibimba | Reflection; the universe as image in the mirror of consciousness |
| Svaccha | Perfectly clear, the mirror-like quality of consciousness |
| Ahamvimarsa / idamvimarsa | Awareness of "I" / of "this" |
| Purnahanta | Integral "I-ness" |
| Arohakrama / avarohakrama | Ascent / descent of awareness |
Reflect and practise. (1) Notice the moment just before you name an object you look at: is there an instant of seeing without "this is a..."? (2) Recall a memory, then deliberately alter one detail in imagination; watch Vimarsa select and display. (3) While walking, keep a light sense of "I am" running underneath the movement, as Dyczkowski's running example suggests.
Spanda: The Universal Activity of Absolute Consciousness
This is the chapter where the book's title term is defined in full. Spanda is consciousness moving without moving: the absolute's perpetual passage from inner Being to outer Becoming and back, which is at once the creation of the cosmos and the structure of every act of perception. Dyczkowski explains how motion can belong to a timeless absolute, why creation is real but not a change of substance, and then analyses Spanda into three moments, will, knowledge and action, each of which the yogi can use as a doorway. The section on the first moment of will is one of the most practical passages in the book.
Being and Becoming
Being is in perpetual Becoming (satatodita). The shining of inner Being is the manifestation of outer Becoming, and the universal character of Being shows itself in the radiant form (sphuratta) of each phenomenon. Being and Becoming are the inner and outer faces of one consciousness:
- The inner face (antarmukha) is the pure subject, without objective content, beyond time and space. The Stanzas: "That inner being is the abode of omniscience and every other divine attribute. It can never cease to exist because nothing else can be perceived [outside it]."
- The outer face is the diverse, changing universe, the object. It appears set apart from the inner, yet the inner contains it. Utpaladeva: "Internality is a state of oneness with the subject, while externality is the state of separation from it."
The world-thought
Each object that emerges in awareness comes with a mental representation that identifies and distinguishes it. So the objective world is governed by the same principles as thought: phenomena follow one another in a causal chain much as thoughts follow in a chain of associations (prapanca). Cosmic manifestation is the emergence of thought in universal consciousness. Consciousness, though itself free of dichotomising activity, conceives the world-thought (visvavikalpa) through its inner vibration, and in thinking turns from pure "I-ness" (ahanta) to its opposite, "thisness" (idanta), the basis of all empirical distinction. In the supreme state there is no inner or outer, only "one, undivided compact mass of consciousness (samvidghana)".
Maya as creative power
When the power of awareness generates a sense of separation between subject and object, it is called Maya. Here the Saiva parts company with Advaita again:
| Advaita | Kashmiri Saivism | |
|---|---|---|
| Maya is | An undefinable principle projecting an illusory multiplicity | The absolute's power to appear in diverse forms |
| Subject-object split | Illusion | The product of a creative act |
| Relation to freedom | Opposed to Brahman's truth | Identical with the absolute's freedom (svatantrya) |
The same power has two names depending on our insight. Recognised as the spontaneous expression of the absolute, it is the pure vibration of freedom; felt as a clash of conflicting elements, it is Maya. Freedom rules the kingdom of universal consciousness; Maya rules transmigratory existence.
Creation is "the projection (ksepa) of one's own nature into the Self from the Self". Abhinava: to create is "to make that which shines within externally manifest while it still preserves its original internal nature". Destruction is the reverse movement: the object is never destroyed, only withdrawn into the subject.
Change Is Action, Not Mechanism
The Spanda teaching accepts the Buddhist doctrine of momentariness only for outer objectivity. Perception can be analysed into moments (ksana), but daily life cannot be understood purely as moment-units. Change is conscious action, not a mechanical process: one continuous motion from the agent (introverted Being) to its completion in the result (karya). "Every event is a part of the greater rhythm of the total, cosmic event."
The Lord creates and destroys only the objective aspect of the perceiver, i.e., the body, etc., but not the subjective aspect which is the light of "I" consciousness... For even when the world is emanated and absorbed [the subject] does not waver from his true nature. If he were to do so, the emanation and absorption of the world would not be manifest.
Ksemaraja
So the object perishes; the subject is immortal. Every phenomenon has two sides: its outer form, known by its behaviour, properties and pragmatic efficacy (arthakriya), open to concepts (savikalpa); and its inner nature, its pure Being as an appearance within consciousness, beyond concepts (nirvikalpa). The movement from Being to Becoming is essentially an act of perception, which links outer form and inner nature.
Movement Without Motion
How can an absolute be both changeless and full of vibration? Movement (samrambha) and rest (visranti) presuppose one another, and consciousness is free to do what reason calls impossible.
By "Vibration" (spandana) [we mean] subtle movement. It is subtle [in the sense that] although it moves not, it manifests as motion.
Abhinavagupta
The logic is tight. Ordinary motion requires two distinct points. Since all is consciousness, there are no two separate realities to move between. So Spanda is defined as "a slight movement" (kincic calana): if it moved toward another entity, it would be gross motion; if it did not move at all, it would not be motion. It is neither.
Spanda is the appearance of motion within something that has nowhere else to go. Everything else in the book is an application of this idea: the cosmos, perception, emotion and yoga are all "slight movements" of a consciousness that never leaves itself.
The cosmic cycle runs like buckets on a waterwheel, yet the pulse itself is outside time. Siva performs all phases at once and also one after another. Utpaladeva: "Salutations to the Lord Who eternally delights in emission (srsti) and is always comfortably seated in persistence (sthiti), and is eternally satisfied with the Three Worlds for His food."
Two kinds of action, three levels of time
| Level | How reality is experienced |
|---|---|
| Supreme (para) | A single, unchanging (akrama) whole |
| Intermediate (parapara) | The instant of cosmic manifestation, blossoming "with the suddenness and energy of a lightning flash" (visvasphara) |
| Lower (apara) | A sequence (krama): changing positions in space, moment following moment |
Worldly action is successive "due to the power of time"; the Lord's activity, like the Lord, is not (Utpaladeva). The Sarasvatasamgraha: "This Self has shone forth but once; it is full [of all things] and can nowhere be unmanifest." Abhinava contrasts this with a plant: the sprout comes from the seed, the stalk from the sprout, not from the seed; but consciousness is present whole in every circumstance, "everywhere emergent (udita)".
Time is a format of perception
- Succession requires difference, the presence of one appearance and the absence of another. For absolute consciousness events are not successive.
- Nor are they simultaneous, since simultaneity requires two different entities.
- "Succession and its absence are not objective properties of an entity but only formats of perception."
- Time is the perception of "prior" and "subsequent" through memory. Utpaladeva: time "is in reality nothing but the succession observable in the movement of the sun... the birth of different flowers... summer [to] winter".
- We sense time only when consciousness turns away from self-awareness and becomes extroverted. In introverted consciousness there is no time.
To think time can divide consciousness is like "seeking nourishment from lumps of sugar cut from the sky by a whirling sword". Ksemaraja insists that all talk of sequence within consciousness is teaching language, "the only manner in which language permits", not a description of the fact (vastu). Abhinava: "As there is no succession within [consciousness], there is no simultaneity; and as there is no simultaneity, there is no succession either." All things exist in Siva "just as blue rays reside in the opal".
Reality therefore presents itself to reason as a paradox, one yet diverse, changing yet changeless, and must be experienced directly. "Why speak much?" ask the Stanzas, "[the yogi] will experience it for himself!"
Dyczkowski states the paradox honestly, but readers should see what it costs. The claim that consciousness is "free to do what seems, according to reason, to be impossible" is not an argument; it stops argument. At the points where a critic would press hardest (how an unchanging absolute really produces a real world), the text moves from logic to "you will experience it for yourself". This is consistent with the book's stated view that philosophy is "systematic symbolism", but it means these sections persuade by coherence and by appeal to experience, not by proof.
The Fourth State and the Goddess
In turiya, the Fourth State beyond waking, dream and deep sleep, the yogi shares Siva's experience, personified as the Goddess:
This Goddess of Consciousness, the Fourth State, consists of the union of emission, preservation and destruction... Containing all things within Herself She is eternally "full" and, [void of all particulars], "thin". She is both as well as neither of the two.
Source cited by Dyczkowski
Creation is not mechanical. The world does not come out of the absolute "as do walnuts out of a bag". It is a transformation from one form of consciousness to another: the creation of a new experience and the destruction of the old. The inner blissful vibration (antahspanda) drives the outer cosmic rhythm (bahihspanda). Ksemaraja: the spandasakti is "the bliss which is the wonder of the one compact mass of 'I' consciousness embracing the endless cycles of creation and destruction".
Opening and Closing the Eyes
Cosmic creation is like waking from sleep; cosmic destruction like falling asleep (nimesa), when everything rests again in self-consciousness. Abhinava prays: "When Your nature expands, You, I and the entire universe come into being; when it is withdrawn, neither You nor I nor the universe [exist]." The Stanzas picture the universe arising when Siva opens His eyes to see it and dissolving when He closes them to observe His own nature.
The striking claim is that the two phases coincide:
- To expand as the universe, consciousness veils its undivided nature.
- When Siva reveals his nature, the universe is withdrawn.
- So the expansion (unmesa) of diversity is the contraction (nimesa) of unity-awareness, and the contraction of diversity is the expansion of unity-awareness. They balance "like the pans of an evenly weighted balance".
Ksemaraja: "lysis (pralaya) is the same as the genesis... and genesis is also the same as lysis." The enlightened yogi experiences the dawn of absolute reality "to the exclusion of the external world" as his own expansion.
Is Creation Real? Parinama and Vivarta
The Upanisads say the universe comes from Brahman and returns to it. Sankara, following Gaudapada, says no universe is ever created; the real is unborn (ajata), and creation happens only within illusion. He compares the world to spaces in pots, non-different from cosmic space, and water in a mirage, non-different from the desert.
The Saiva answer is carefully two-sided:
| Claim | Saiva verdict |
|---|---|
| Creation is a mere appearance (vivarta) producing unreal things | Rejected: unreal entities could never be manifest |
| Creation is a real transformation (parinama), like clay into a jar | Accepted with reservations |
| The absolute changes in substance | Rejected: the light of consciousness "has no other form" |
The Samvitprakasa, quoted by Bhagavatotpala: "In no circumstance is the All-Pervasive Lord subject... to change, either apparent or real. Even if He were subject to both His nature would remain undivided." Abhinava's argument: a real transformation obscures the prior form and brings forth another. If the Light were obscured, the universe "would be as if blind"; if the new form were other than the Light, it could not appear. Either way the world would be "as if asleep", which contradicts experience.
| Type | Example | Saiva view |
|---|---|---|
| Total change of substance (karyaparinama) | A log burnt to ashes: the cause is absorbed irreversibly | Rejected for consciousness |
| Change of qualities (dharmaparinama) | Form, texture, properties alter; the effect can revert to the cause | Accepted: this is how consciousness manifests |
The chain of tattvas
Descent into matter is progressive self-limitation (rodhana). The levels do not really appear one after another, but the only way to understand them is as a single causal chain of tattvas, each the effect of all above it and a cause of all below. Ksemaraja: when the Lord, out of "a playful desire to veil His own nature", descends, the preceding members fall into the background and serve as the substratum of the succeeding ones. Abhinava adds the decisive point: each phase contains all those before it, "forcibly" includes them in its own nature, and so each is itself full and perfect (purna).
| Direction | Process | Appears to the unawakened as | For the enlightened |
|---|---|---|---|
| Inner to outer | Coagulation (rodhana); increasingly governed by niyati | Movement into bondage | Spontaneous activity; Siva's lower (apara) immanent form |
| Outer to inner | Dissolution (dravana) of gross into subtle | Movement toward liberation | Spontaneous activity; Siva's supreme (para) transcendent form |
Three Moments in the Vibration of Consciousness
Dividing the pulse into phases is "no more than a convenient way of conceiving" it. But it is also a means of realisation. The most useful division is into will, knowledge and action: "All things come into being through an act of will, with action as its immediate instrumental cause and knowledge of its application as the intermediary."
| Power | Phase of an act | Lordship aspect |
|---|---|---|
| Will (iccha) | Intent to make the object manifest: the beginning | Lordship (isvarata) |
| Knowledge (jnana) | The act of manifestation: the middle | Agency of knowing (jnatrtva) |
| Action (kriya) | The manifest state: the end | Agency of action (kartrtva) |
In Siva's lower form these powers unfold toward their fields; in his supreme form they merge into one energy resting in Siva. Bhaskara calls this rest absorption (linata), "the light of intuition (pratibha), the solitary churner of the light of consciousness". In the supreme state Siva's knowledge is "I am full of all things (purno'ham)", and together the three powers are aspects of his bliss, his Spanda nature as enjoying subjectivity (bhoktrtva). Spanda is "the power of one's own true nature (svabala)" that joins and separates these energies.
The Conative Power: The Will
The will is both the agent and the act of Being. It is "the cause, the agent and the action" of the Lord who wills to appear as jars and cloths. It is a form of awareness directed to a goal, which restricts the generic nature of awareness to one object.
- If the potter's intent were not limited to its object, he could just as well start weaving.
- Walking down a road, we may stop to admire the scenery, but the will stays fixed (niyata) on the destination.
- Cooking involves many separate acts, yet "I cook" stays one and unbroken.
Arguments for an original will:
- Another will instigating the will would need another, giving an infinite regress.
- Without an original desire, activity would be aimless; nothing would decide that one action rather than another occurs.
- Nothing forces one perception to follow another; the will chooses where attention goes.
The two moments of will
Abhinava's image: the will does not move "step by step like the feet of the blind"; once roused, "it bounds forward with delight to forcibly lay hold of its goal like a farsighted man when walking", full and perfect at its start and at its rest.
| Moment | Character | Importance |
|---|---|---|
| First: initial intent (aunmukhya) | A tension of pure intent, free of thought-constructs, coinciding with the final rest of the previous desire | The doorway for practice |
| Second: desire for a specific object (isyamana) | Conceptual (savikalpa); the object seems outside the subject | The subject is already caught in the object |
"In reality, it is the subject who is always the object of his own desire."
The swelling seed
Before manifestation, all things lie in consciousness "as in a peacock's egg", every feather, colour and pattern present in potential. In involution they mingle in Siva's integral egoity (purnahanta). Differentiated awareness pours out heralded by "a subtle stress or vibration (ghurnana) of aesthetic delight". This is Spanda in its purest form. Bhagavatotpala: "This pulsation is consciousness free of mental constructs... the state in which the Supreme Soul actively tends towards [manifestation]", though in himself motionless (nistaranga). Subject, object and means of knowledge are one, like the clay ball before the potter shapes it; consciousness is a seed swelling to bursting point (ucchuna).
When a waveless stretch of water becomes violently agitated, one may notice, if one observes carefully, an initial tension... When the open fingers of the hand are clenched into a fist, one may notice at the outset of this action, a [slight] movement. Similarly, when the desire to create begins to unfold in consciousness... a tension [arises within it].
Somananda
This first instant (tuti) is fleeting and "full of energy as a lightning flash", not fully set in time, a link between eternal and temporal. "He who pays close attention to the initial welling up of desire when it is especially intense is afforded an opportunity to realise the fullness of consciousness by merging into the force of his intention."
Practice: using intense states
In heightened states all the powers of mind and senses are suddenly withdrawn into one's core, "just as a tortoise contracts its limbs in fright", and mental continuity breaks. The ordinary person is carried away by this flood of energy (saktivisarga). The yogi uses its intensity to reach the "firmly fixed vibration" (pratisthaspanda) of his nature. Situations named:
- The instant fear arises; depression or disgust; confusion about what to do.
- The ecstasy of love; joy at a beautiful object; seeing a close relative after a long time.
Spanda is stable in that state one enters when extremely angry, extremely excited, running or wondering what to do.
Stanzas on Vibration
Overcome by awe (vismaya) at self-realisation (atmalabha), the yogi experiences intense feelings as aspects of the aesthetic rapture of consciousness (ciccamatkara), blending "like rivers in the ocean". The unawakened believes his perceptions and actions are independent of the universal pulse and falls victim to them. The method: stop dividing the functions of consciousness (willing, exerting, knowing, acting) and see them as one pulse.
When running in fear, attend to:
- The desire to lift the foot.
- The exertion applied to lift it.
- The attention directed to where it will land.
- The act of placing it.
Do the same with each phase of producing words in an excited conversation, or the movement of the fingers on a musical instrument. "Every instant is a new beginning"; the closer we come to the moment the impulse arises, the more directly we touch "the concrete actuality of the present".
The same works for the impulse to perceive (didrksa): fix on the thought-free intent of awareness unfolding. For an instant the individual knower (ksetrajna) experiences the same identity with what he wants to perceive as the supreme subject does with all things: the Great Pervasion (mahavyapti). Abhinava calls the yogi's resulting vibration (ghurni) that Great Pervasion. The yogi's attitude (mudra) is kept secret (rahasya) in his own experience. A cited verse describes perfected yogis "relishing the objects of sense that spontaneously appear" through expanding consciousness (vikasavrtti): "the Supreme Gesture (mudra), the perfect and unobstructed expansion of the Awakened".
Result: the yogi enters universal vibration, recognises every state, mental or physical, as Siva, burns away the sense of diversity (vibhagabodha) "in the fire of awareness", and stays in the supreme flow (paradhara) through waking, dreaming and deep sleep, "and so no longer wanders in samsara".
The teaching that anger, fear and excitement are openings has an obvious risk: it can be heard as permission to indulge them. Dyczkowski's source is clear that the point is the instant they arise, held with alertness, so that the yogi "is never entangled in them". The practice is closer to catching the very first surge of energy than to dwelling in the emotion, and it presumes a stable, trained attention. For ordinary readers this is best tried first with mild states and neutral actions like walking.
The Cognitive Power: Knowledge
The will is the first movement out of the unmanifest (adyaspanda). The first movement within manifestation is knowledge: the perception of the undifferentiated totality the will projected. In the primordial emptiness, faint traces of cosmos appear as "the inner desire to know the universe [consciousness] wills to create". Awareness then unfolds from deep sleep to waking, where the world stands apart from the individual. "Phenomena become fully manifest through the persistence of cognition (jnanasthiti)."
The vibrating power of knowledge is pure cognitive awareness (upalabdhrta), with two functions:
| Aspect | Function | If it were alone |
|---|---|---|
| Quiescent | Undivided consciousness; links perceptions together | Nothing would be manifest |
| Emergent | Finite manifestations; individual emergence of each perception | Nothing could be consciously experienced |
So the apparent ontological gap between absolute and relative reduces to an epistemic distinction between two modes of knowing. The power of knowledge is the capacity to shift between them and select from its countless potential forms. The Light limits itself as the individual (mayiya) subject; perception happens when this subject is affected by the "shade" (chaya) the object casts on it. Moving from expansion to contraction "at each instant", the pulse renews the world constantly.
The Power of Action
The will is fully evident when consciousness acts on the phenomenal plane. The creative will equals the power of action (kriyasakti) and the power of fashioning forms (nirmanasakti). As "the agency of the act of Being", action is the essence of universal Being, both its efficacy and its manifest nature.
- Being can only be experienced directly within the subject, never grasped as an object.
- Only the agent is fully autonomous, so the true agent is Siva.
- The potter is free to make his pot because he shares Siva's agency. "It is Siva Himself Who fashions the jar through the potter and weaves a cloth through the weaver."
- Siva, eternally active, is never bound by activity. "The law of action and reaction (karma) binds only the ignorant."
- At the lower level, outer activity contrasts with inner awareness; at the higher, all things rise from consciousness without obscuring it. Action is "[the goddess] Siva, the inner nature, which spontaneously emerges out of itself".
In every phase, will, knowledge or action, we can glimpse our authentic identity and our freedom. "The experience of Spanda is wonder, an abiding bliss far higher than the transitory pleasures of life." Because its ground is universal consciousness, Spanda can be experienced through the senses, mind and body. The Spanda yogi "finds freedom where those who, failing to attend to the vibration of consciousness, are bound".
| Key term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Antarmukha / bahirmukha | Inward / outward face of consciousness |
| Visvavikalpa | The "world-thought" conceived by universal consciousness |
| Kincic calana | "Slight movement": the definition of Spanda |
| Unmesa / nimesa | Opening / closing of the eyes; expansion / contraction |
| Dharmaparinama | Change of qualities without change of substance |
| Rodhana / dravana | Coagulation / dissolution of consciousness |
| Aunmukhya | Initial intent of the will |
| Tuti | The fleeting first instant |
| Pratisthaspanda | The firmly fixed vibration of one's nature |
| Mahavyapti | The Great Pervasion |
Reflect and practise. (1) Before reaching for a glass of water, pause and feel the instant of intent before the arm moves. (2) Next time a strong surprise or irritation arises, try to notice only its first surge, then let it go. (3) Write down whether your sense of time slows or speeds when you are absorbed in something; relate this to "time as a format of perception".
Siva and Sakti
Chapter Four gives the metaphysics a face. The two aspects of consciousness that Chapter Three called Being and Becoming become a divine couple: Sankara, the still experiencer, and Spanda, his active power. Dyczkowski shows how the Spanda school balances the two, why it insists on a personal God, and then classifies Sakti into three spheres and three goddesses, Para, Parapara and Apara, which bind or free the soul depending on whether they are recognised.
The Divine Polarity
All Kashmiri Saiva traditions, like the Tantras behind them, describe God as "an incommensurable and perfect Identity between two contrasted principles". In the Hindu frame this is the relation between God and his power. They are inseparable, "as heat is with fire or coolness with ice". Yet to understand them we must provisionally distinguish them: first the finite vision that sees them apart, then the infinite vision of their unity. "Without the experience of duality that of unity would have no meaning. Unity is not mere negation of distinction, but the absence of difference in diversity."
The Spanda version of the couple:
| Tradition | Passive, continuous pole | Active, emergent pole |
|---|---|---|
| Spanda (Ksemaraja) | Sankara, the pure unchanging experiencer | Spanda energy |
| Trikakula (Abhinava) | Bhairava, "repose" (visrama) | His emission (visarga), his "primordial vibration" (prathamaspanda), "emergence" (udaya) |
Together they form the couple (yamala). When Siva and Sakti unite, the universe as something apart ceases; when they separate, it is created again. Spanda is the blissful relationship between them, and the cosmos pours out between the poles "just as through the bliss of orgasm (visarga) the male and female seeds mingle, and man, the microcosm, is born". The yogi who witnesses this union experiences the birth of a higher consciousness in himself. The two poles, one fixed and one moving, are like firesticks whose friction produces Sankara's Spanda energy.
The language of sexual union
Abhinava instructs the yogi with a frankly sexual image: as a mare in orgasm enters "the Temple of Bliss repeatedly expanding and contracting", so the yogi must establish himself in the Bhairava couple, expanding and contracting, dissolved and created by them again and again. Jayaratha decodes it: Sakti's contraction is the withdrawal of the universe and expansion of Siva-consciousness; Siva's contraction is Sakti's expansion as cosmos.
Dyczkowski presents this imagery plainly, which is right for a scholarly book. Two points help a modern reader. First, in these sources the sexual language is primarily a model of consciousness, describing the pulse of expansion and contraction, though Kaula ritual did also include actual sexual practice, which this book does not discuss. Second, the images come from a male yogic viewpoint in which the female figure symbolises energy. Readers should neither sanitise the passages nor assume they are only metaphor.
Each pole contains the other
The couple (yamala) is consciousness itself: "neither quiescent nor emergent, it is the flowing fount of both". Sankara is also Spandasakti; Spanda is also Sankara. Abhinava: the passive (santa) and active (udita) aspects "arise at the same time in the power and its possessor... Hence the emergent is the quiescent." Still, it is the power, not its possessor, that nurtures emission.
Mahesvarananda's gestalt image: a picture drawn so that you see either a bull or an elephant depending on how you look. Siva and Sakti are perceived the same way, awareness flipping between them, or like two mirrors facing each other, each reflected in the other. In the moment consciousness knows itself as transcendent, it also knows its immanence.
The Play of Passion: Red and White Points
Dyczkowski borrows a detailed model from the Kamakalavilasa of the Sakta Srividya tradition, in which Siva and Sakti are two transdimensional points (bindu):
- Siva = white point (suklabindu); Sakti = red point (sonitabindu). Both expand and contract.
- White Siva penetrates Red Sakti: the universe is created. Siva becomes Red Siva (transcendent ground) and Sakti becomes White Sakti (the manifest universe).
- Red Siva penetrates White Sakti and White Siva withdraws: transcendence, the universe is withdrawn. White Sakti returns to White Siva, Red Siva to Red Sakti.
- Sakti merges in Siva as his introverted "I"-awareness. When one comes forward, the other recedes as its inner nature.
The symbolism maps onto the Sanskrit alphabet:
| Symbol | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Visarga (":", pronounced "h") | The two points together: the form of Kamesvari, Mistress of Passion, the power of reflective awareness (vimarsasakti), called Kala |
| Mixed point (misrabindu, "m") | Siva and Sakti as one reality; the swollen seed (ucchuna); Kamesvara, Lord of Passion, the "Sun of Knowledge" |
| "A" | Siva, the absolute, first letter |
| "Ha" | Sakti, the last letter, the ongoing emanation (prasara) |
| "AHAM" ("I") | "A" and "Ha" united by Passion: the universal vibration of consciousness, Kamakala |
Kamesvara is called Passion (kama) because his state is sought (kamyate) by great yogis.
Power and Power-Holder: Goal and Means
Saivites stress Siva's superiority; Saktas stress the power's. The Spanda school holds them equally important, each in its own respect:
- Sankara is the source of power, so in that respect superior to the Goddess.
- Power is the means by which we discover we are Siva. "The flow of the supreme power is Sankara's path."
- So: Sankara is the goal (upeya); Spanda is the means (upaya).
"By knowing the divine energy which creates and animates the world, we know ourselves to be its possessor." But power alone is not enough: "power without a power-holder to regulate its activity is blind and potentially destructive." This balance is the Spanda school's distinctive position between the Saiva and Sakta extremes, and it sets up the method of the whole book: find the power in every moment, and through it find the one who holds it.
Sankara: The Personal Absolute
The Spanda yogi experiences the absolute in intimately personal terms. It is Nameless (nirnama) because it is never an object of thought, yet present in every named thing: "the Nameless Whose name is All-Names". People name it "to endear it to his own heart". Vasugupta and Kallata call him Sankara, Siva, Viresa, Bhairava; the commentators add Mahesvara, Paramesvara, Isa, Sambhu. "Sankara" is the Spanda teachers' preferred name, because he bestows the best of things (sam).
What Sankara gives:
- Like the Wish-fulfilling Gem, all that one desires. Abhinava: attaining the Lord's state brings all goods "just as all the jewels [in the world] are acquired by acquiring Rohana, the Mountain of Gems".
- Both liberation (apavarga) and enjoyment (bhoga): release from suffering through his withdrawal (nimesa) of Maya's binding activity, and delight through the expansion (unmesa) of consciousness, "even while delighting in the world".
- Utpaladeva, quoted by Ksemaraja: "This is Sankara's Path wherein pain becomes pleasure, poison turns to nectar and samsara becomes liberation."
He is unequalled (nihsamanya) precisely because he is the nature common (samanya) to all phenomena, found at "the summit of all summits". The gods are "mere bubbles in the vast ocean of His consciousness". Visnu and Brahma live within Maya and owe their status to "a mere spark of Siva's power"; arranged in precedence, they are like flowers on the creeper of Siva's power, racing up the garland-like ladder of practice to reach his abode.
The placing of Visnu and Brahma within Maya is standard Saiva theology and mirrors what Vaisnava texts say about Siva. It belongs to the polemics between traditions and is not a neutral description. Dyczkowski reports it without comment.
God appears as worshipped, and is finally the Self
Sankara appears in whatever form we worship him, like the Wish-fulfilling Gem. Bhatta Narayana: "even though You are seen and desired in various ways, You bestow the wonderful fruit of Supreme Reality in its entirety." Ultimately every divine name and form is "the radiant pulsation of man's own consciousness (svatmasamvitsphurana)". The most authentic form of God is the Self.
Those who meditate on other deities abandoning attention to their own nature [although] possessing great wealth, go begging. And even when they have begged [their food, still remain] hungry.
Mahesvarananda
In the end worshipper and worshipped, bound and released, are Siva: "May Siva Who has penetrated and become one with me, worship Himself thus by means of His own power."
Spanda warms the absolute
"Spanda converts the cold, impersonal absolute of monistic Vedanta into Sankara, the warm, worshipful absolute of Kashmiri Saivism." An impersonal absolute fails both metaphysically and as an answer to the need for devotion and grace. Nayaka, quoted by Ksemaraja: "O Lord, how fruitful can this neuter Brahman be without the beautiful female of Your devotion which makes of You a person?" (Brahman is grammatically neuter in Sanskrit; devotion, bhakti, is feminine.)
The pure subject can never truly be an object of meditation (adhyeya). Until we realise identity with him, Sankara is worshipped as other, and within creation he is himself a mode of appearing of the absolute. But "nothing in reality, although an object of knowledge, ceases to be Siva: this is the reason why meditation... bestows its fruit".
To the Well Awakened (suprabuddha), the world of senses and mind is a theophany, a continuous revelation of God. The Doctrine of Vibration: "there is no state in word, meaning or thought, either at the beginning, middle or end, that is not Siva." So every word is a mantra, every act part of Siva's cosmic liturgy, every movement a mudra, every thought God's thought. Ksemaraja: "The ultimate object of worship of any theistic school differs not from the Spanda principle. The diversity of meditation is due solely to the absolute freedom of Spanda."
Siva as Screen and Painter
As the static pole, Sankara holds the world's appearances together. Phenomena are patterns of cognitions projected onto self-luminous Siva-consciousness, which is like "the surface of a smooth wall (samabhittitalopama)". Inscribed on this screen (kudya), the world is as diverse and beautiful as a fossil ammonite (salagrama); Siva is the sacred ground on which the cosmic mandala is drawn.
Abhinava's argument for this unified surface:
- If perceptions of "blue" and "yellow" were isolated, each would be "insentient, mute and dumb" toward the others.
- Then we could never be aware that something is variegated.
- On a smooth wall, lines can show depths and heights, so we see a painted figure as having a deep navel and raised breasts.
- So differences can be known only if all perceptions are connected on the one wall of universal consciousness.
Siva is the perfect artist who paints without canvas or brush; the picture appears the instant he imagines it, and the colours are the shades of his own Spanda energy. Rajanaka Rama: homage to the one "Who paints the picture of the Three Worlds, thereby displaying... His amazing genius (pratibha)".
Particular and Universal Pulsation in the Person
At the micro level, the person's cognitions and emotions are particular pulsations (visesaspanda) of the universal pulse (samanyaspanda) of "I"-consciousness. Within Maya, they show up as the three gunas:
| Guna | Experience of the bound soul | As recognised by the liberated |
|---|---|---|
| Sattva | Goodness, luminosity, bliss aesthetic and spiritual | Sankara's power of knowledge: the Light (prakasa) |
| Rajas | Agitation between light and dark; painful experience | The power of action: reflective awareness (vimarsa) |
| Tamas | Torpor, delusion, inertia | The power of Maya, here meaning only the first subtle distinction of subject and object |
How Sankara becomes a person
At the lower level, the power of awareness (citisakti) is disturbed from self-absorption, generates thought-forms (vikalpa) and devolves into the thinking mind (citta). Sankara becomes a human personality (mayapramatr) in a limited world, with a subtle body (puryastaka): the three parts of the inner organ (antahkarana) and the five subtle elements (tanmatra). In this subtle body consciousness transmigrates and seems affected by the gunas. In the higher stage, the subtle body is withdrawn into "I"-consciousness and dissolves. Sankara is both simultaneously.
Ksemaraja criticises the Mimamsaka view that the Self is pure being only accidentally linked to perception: that is true only of the subtle body's functions when experienced as independent of consciousness.
Bondage and freedom in the same pulses
- The unenlightened identifies with the body and is fascinated by individual pulses, scattered by the tension of opposites. Ksemaraja says these particular pulsations "are to be totally avoided": they are the sensory fields of the phenomenal subject, ongoing streams of the type "I am happy" or "I am sad", causes of transmigration.
- The enlightened is not obstructed by them. Right and wrong, pleasure and pain merge in the universal vibration.
The streams of the pulsation of the qualities and the other [principles] are grounded in the universal vibration [of consciousness] and so attain to being; therefore they can never obstruct the enlightened. Yet for those whose intuition slumbers [these vibrations]... cast them down onto the terrible path of transmigration so hard to cross.
Stanzas on Vibration
The bound soul's ego is a thought-construct (pratyaya), limited and artificial. Sankara's is integral (purna): "I am pure consciousness and bliss; I am infinite and absolutely free." In turiya he delights that "the universe... arises out of Me, it rests within Me and once it disappears, nothing remains".
Rajanaka Rama describes the practice. By Siva's grace the alert yogi gains insight into how particular pulsations arise and what follows from them. Reflecting on the pure "I am", he distinguishes particular from generic vibration. Whenever he notices the individual pulses stirring, he turns more resolutely to his true nature. So the very disturbances become a means to liberation. Through discrimination (viveka) born of intuition (pratibha) he finds Sankara as his own pure subjectivity (upalabdhrta).
"Reality cannot be discovered if we think of it as a 'something' of which we are ignorant but may come to know through practice. Reality is an experience, the experience of the fully enlightened."
The Nature of Sakti
Sakti is Siva's freedom: freedom from the finite and freedom to become the finite while remaining infinite. Abhinava: his freedom "reduces multiplicity into unity... and of one it makes many". This is also the Self's nature. The body-bound ego is not free; it is a "non-self dependent on outer objectivity", "destitute of power (saktidaridra)", though it still shares in the Self's autonomy.
Doing the most difficult
Absolute independence must be creative, not mere aloofness. Siva's power is "to do that which is most difficult" (atidurghatakaritva), what would be logically impossible under the laws (niyati) of the empirical world. To appear as the world he must deny his own infinite nature, and "what could be more difficult than to negate the light of consciousness just when it is shining in full?" So:
- Negation is a power of the absolute. Sakti is the principle of negation by which Siva hides his nature and becomes diverse.
- As such she is Mayasakti, producing the first split between conscious (cit) and unconscious (acit), which grows into all particular distinctions.
Every thing is a bundle of powers
The Sivasutra: "The universe is the aggregate of [Siva's] powers." Each power is a channel (mukha) through which the formless becomes a particular form. An entity's very being is its capacity to function (arthakriya), its causal efficacy (karanasamarthya); that is how we say it is what it is. Powers are known only by inference from their effects. Change is one power coming forward as another recedes: when the jar comes to be, the efficacy of the clay ball gives way to that of the jar. So Sakti is always pulsing, expanding and contracting. The ignorant see the functions as separate; the enlightened see one power, undivided and one with Siva. Every power is like a pane of coloured glass through which the absolute's light shines as the world's variety.
Three spheres of power
| Sphere | Inner aspect | Outer aspect |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Siva-consciousness | Five divine attributes: omnipresence, eternality, freedom of will, omniscience, omnipotence (= powers of consciousness, bliss, will, knowledge, action) | Five cosmic functions: create, maintain, destroy, conceal, grace. Creative energies: Maya, Nirmanasakti (fashioning particulars), Kalasakti (time) |
| 2. Cognitive consciousness | Mental powers: cognition, memory, differentiating perceptions | Powers of the senses |
| 3. Individualised consciousness | The many experiencing subjects; waking and other states; forces that elevate or restrict the soul | External objectivity: categories, worlds, cosmic forces |
| All three | Speech: Siva's self-awareness at the top; inner speech of thought and articulate speech below | Sakti is everything denoted by speech and every form of it |
These match three aspects of Sakti, worshipped as three goddesses in the Trika, "one of the most essentially defining features" of this Saivism. Ksemaraja reads them as phases of Spanda.
The Three Goddesses
| Para (Supreme) | Parapara (Middling) | Apara (Lower) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Level | Supreme Summit of Being (parakastha) | Unity-in-difference | Root (mula) of consciousness, where objectivity predominates |
| Form of awareness | Universal ego (purnahanta); Light and awareness one, "like water in the sea or a flame in fire" | "I [am] this" (aham idam): like a reflection in a mirror; subject and object equal | Contracted "I", bound to the body; particulars cut off from each other |
| Energies generated | Benevolent (aghora) powers | Benevolent or Fierce (ghora) | Extremely Fierce (ghoratara) for the ignorant |
| Effect | Guides the yogi toward realisation | Dual: lights both the Pure Path and the Impure Path | Binds through Maya, or grants siddhi and mukti when understood |
Para
Two aspects:
- Pure freedom, pure intention (icchamatra) by which the absolute affirms itself unconditioned by the cosmos it creates: the primordial vibration (adyaspanda).
- When this will is aroused, the emanation of Totality "dawns on the horizon of consciousness as its potential goal", and it acts as the Lordship (isika) governing the universe. For the awakened yogi it is "the actuality of a conscious exertion to make the oneness of the absolute apparent".
Parapara
This is the sphere of relatedness, the point of contact between the absolute and its manifestations, and thus the basis of all empirical experience. Here, while still on the level of diversity, we can touch undivided consciousness. But it is ambiguous: it can also produce Fierce (ghora) energies that create attachment to the fruits of action, good or bad. "If through this power the yogi realises the oneness of consciousness and its manifestations, he is elevated, but if he fails to do so, this same power throws him down." From the absolute's view, knowing unity and knowing difference are complementary; from the relative view, knowledge of difference binds and knowledge of unity frees.
Apara
The world-picture is fully displayed, "like a [fine crop] of tender sprouts", "pleasantly various like a work of art". The Sun of consciousness is shrouded by self-imposed limits "like dark storm clouds", yet its self-awareness remains as the Lower power, "pulsing and brilliant like a streak of lightning".
This, Siva's power of action, is binding when residing in the fettered soul; [but], when [its true nature] is understood and it is set on its own path it bestows success in Yoga.
Stanzas on Vibration
Liberation is recognising that "the whole universe is the result of the activity of the [Spanda] principle"; ignorance of this binds. Without self-contemplation, Spanda works as the Lower power and produces gross action, splitting consciousness through the tension between what one wants to acquire (upadeya) or give up (heya). Universal self-awareness shrinks to "a drop of egoity (ahantavipruṭ)" animating gross and subtle bodies, pervading the body's vital forces (jivakala).
When Maya is overcome through self-awareness (svasamvedana), the yogi becomes Well Awakened, "having done all that is to be done (krtakrtya)", and gains both the supreme perfection of realising his Lordship and the lower perfections, the yogic powers (vibhuti). He recognises that even his embodied awareness is Para. Then the power is "set on its own path": resting on the plane of absolute unity where awareness moves to no other object. Apara becomes one with Para.
The harmonious union (samarasya) of the three planes is Bhairava's supreme glory, the fullness of his power. Sharing in it, the yogi realises the unsullied bliss of the absolute (anuttarananda), "the supreme form of Spanda". The practical lesson of the chapter: the same power binds or frees; what changes is recognition.
| Key term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Yamala | The divine couple, Siva and Sakti in union |
| Visarga | Emission; also the sign ":" |
| Upeya / upaya | Goal (Sankara) / means (Spanda) |
| Kamakala | The pulsing union of Siva and Sakti as "AHAM" |
| Atidurghatakaritva | Power to do the most difficult |
| Arthakriya | Causal or pragmatic efficacy |
| Aghora / ghora / ghoratara | Benevolent / fierce / extremely fierce powers |
| Para / Parapara / Apara | Supreme / middling / lower Sakti |
Reflect and practise. (1) Watch a mood such as "I am happy" or "I am sad" as a particular pulse, and ask what remains steady underneath it. (2) Look at any picture and notice that you see its variety only because one field of awareness holds it together. (3) Consider a form of the divine you feel drawn to and try to sense it as a form of your own awareness rather than as something outside.
Sakti Cakra: The Wheel of Energies
Chapter Five turns the theory of power into a map that can be meditated on. Each cycle of manifestation is pictured as a rotating wheel (sakticakra) whose spokes are energies of consciousness, and the yogi's aim is to become Lord of the Wheel, the still centre around which it turns. Dyczkowski discusses the Void at the hub and why it is not nothingness, the twelve-spoked Wheel of Kalasamkarsini, Ksemaraja's Wheel of Vamesvari with its four circles of goddesses, and finally a careful phenomenology of the senses, ego and mind.
Wheels as the Archetype of Experience
New patterns of energy form on the surface of consciousness "as do waves on the surface of the sea". Each wave follows a regular sequence (krama), so it is pictured as a wheel whose spokes are aspects of divine creative energy. The Wheels are "the primal form or archetype-field structure of all experience." They are infinite in number, and a wheel can have from one to infinitely many spokes. A scripture lists Bhairava appearing as "the Solitary Hero", as the couple, as three, four... eleven powers, "as the Lord of the great Wheel of twelve, a thousand or infinite spokes", and finally as master "of the Wheel of the All".
Key properties:
- One Act. Like the circle of light from a whirling firebrand (alatacakra), the cycles are one act; each power takes over from the last and blends into the next.
- Inner and outer. Ksemaraja: the universe "is said to be the Wheel of Energies" because its form is one with the Lord's inner Light. The Agamic deities worshipped in circles stand for the biological components of the body and the transient moods and thoughts of the mind.
- Sankara is the Lord of the Wheel (cakresa), of both macro- and microcosm.
Abhinava: we see the white, red and yellow of a peacock's feathers when the tail is spread, not when folded. If the Lord of the Wheel does not unfold his powers, he merges with his own subtle nature; by contracting one aspect and unfolding another, he appears as everything from the one-spoked wheel to the thousand-spoked wheel. To witness this and worship its aspects as goddesses seated in the circles, recognised as one's own nature, is to worship the Lord in turiya.
The Void at the Hub
Each wheel turns in its own spiritual sky (vyoman). Pure consciousness is the Great Sky (mahavyoman), also called the Sky of Siva, Abode of Brahman and Abode of the Self; it is at once Bhairava and the supreme form of Sakti (parakundalini). Abhinava: "The [dawn] sky, though one, appears radiant white, red and blue... so pure, free consciousness shines brilliantly with its countless forms, though they are nothing at all."
| Sakti | Siva | |
|---|---|---|
| Is | Fullness (purnata), the Circle of Totality (visvacakra) | The Void (sunyata): supportless (niralamba), thought-free (nirvikalpa) |
| Does | Actively manifests | Dissolves all things into himself and brings them forth |
"Fullness pours into emptiness and emptiness pervades fullness." The Vijnanabhairava: "[For the yogi who] penetrates into the non-dual Void, his true nature is there made manifest." The Void assimilates diversity; the outer personality merges in the supreme subject, and the seed of future diversification is destroyed, freeing the yogi from karmic necessity. "Well concealed, and attainable only with great effort, is the subtle Void, the chief root of liberation."
How to enter the Void
The yogi must penetrate the initial instant of perception (prathamikalocana), when he sees the object directly and no dividing thought has arisen. So he finds the centre (madhyamapada) between one thought and the next, or between two perceptions. There, in the Heart, he feels the first expansion of awareness "just as it is about to blossom into the diversity of thought", and shares the wonder (camatkara) the Lord feels at the universe about to emerge. Through "a supreme act of grace" he is absorbed into the Great Void (mahasunya) and moves freely in the Sky of Consciousness (cidakasa).
Mastery of time
When all supports fall away, the Void is experienced as "a single, undivided mass of consciousness (cidekaghana)". The rays of the wheels are drawn in, and the yogi lives in the direct actuality of the Present, free of "the tyranny of the flow of time". "Having checked the rays of one's own Wheel of Energies and drunk the incomparable nectar... one remains fully satisfied in the [eternal] present." He becomes "one who delights in the relish of devouring time (kalagrasarasika)":
Past and future are not different from the present; it is the present itself which becomes divided by the past and the future. When they no longer exist, the present also ceases to exist. The yogi, resting even for an instant in this ocean of consciousness, intent on devouring time, becomes instantly a "Wanderer in the Sky" (khecara).
Source cited by Dyczkowski
Degrees of Voidness
The Svacchandabhairavatantra describes many degrees of Voidness to be crossed:
- Lower voids, culminating in the "Void beyond Mind": the transcendental experience of Siva.
- The highest Void of Paramasiva: "transcendence in immanence and immanence in transcendence".
- Beyond all degrees: "Fullness" (asunya, "non-void"), the compact mass of consciousness and bliss, the pure dynamic Being of existent and non-existent, which pervades all voids as oil pervades sesame seeds.
"When... this Void [itself] dissolves away [like a drop of water in the sea], the Good (anamaya) alone abides."
Void Is Not Nothing: The Debate with Buddhism
In one of the rare polemical moments of the Stanzas, the author warns that the Void of Spanda must not be confused with an empty "nothing". The universe is not annihilated but recognised as one. It is "void" because it is universally manifest and so has no distinguishing features; it cannot be contrasted with anything, and since it is intuited as one's own throb of awareness, never known as an object, it is undefinable. The Svacchandatantra: "The non-void is described as the Void", while the void proper is mere nothing.
Supporting arguments:
- Nowhere in experience can we find what is not. Consciousness illumines even what we call non-existent.
- Being and non-being are conceptual overlays. The absence of a thing in a place is "just as much a positive reality as is its presence".
- The Saiva agrees with the Buddhist that reality is unspecifiable (anirdesya), but not that every determination of its emptiness is an error. Ksemaraja: the highest Void is the emptiness of reflective awareness, grounded in the Self.
The argument from deep sleep
| Step | Argument |
|---|---|
| 1 | If the Buddhist denies a perceiving subject, who experienced emptiness? A void without self-awareness is "little better than deep sleep (susupti)". |
| 2 | Even in deep sleep or ego-less absorption, some subjective awareness persists. The Stanzas call it foolish to think the subject ceases just because effort toward objects ceases. |
| 3 | If the subject vanished in sleep, there would be no one to wake up. |
| 4 | If ego-loss is an experience, someone must experience it. |
| 5 | On waking we remember we slept: something happened though we don't know what. |
| 6 | Anything that can be recalled later as past is not ultimate. |
So the "I am" pervades all states, from deep samadhi to ordinary waking (vyutthana). The supreme state is uncreated (akrtrima); lower states are transitory (kadacitka). The emptiness of ego-loss, being recallable, is a transitory, artificial state and can even be an obstacle, standing between subject-object consciousness and pure "I". The pure "I", always present, can never be recollected.
The opponent here is a generic "Buddhist" who denies any perceiving subject and treats the ultimate as blank cessation. Many Buddhist schools would not recognise themselves in this. Madhyamaka emptiness is not a state of nothingness; Yogacara and later tathagatagarbha and Tibetan traditions describe a luminous, aware nature of mind quite close to what the Saivas defend. The memory-of-sleep argument is also contested within Indian philosophy (Buddhist and Nyaya thinkers analyse the memory differently). The chapter shows the Saiva case well, but the Buddhist side is represented by its weakest version.
The Supreme Sky (paravyoman) of "I"-consciousness is, unlike the void of ego-loss, "brimming over with countless powers". Siva, whose body is consciousness (vijnanadeha), is Lord of the Wheel; its turning creates and destroys the universe.
Samsara as the Turning Wheel
The ignorant are caught in the wheel's motion and so in birth and death:
Happy is the child who sucks at its mother's breast; it is the same breast it fed from in a former life... He who was the father is today the son and that son, when tomorrow comes, will be father in his turn. Such is the flow of Samsara: men are like buckets around a waterwheel!
Verse cited by Dyczkowski
This coming and going binds only if we fail to see that all abides within consciousness. Seen as the play of the wheel, the world is no longer samsara. Abhinava: "It is Siva Himself... Who is even [now] sparkling in my heart. It is His highest Sakti Herself Who is ever playing at the edge of my senses... Indeed, I know not what the word 'Samsara' refers to."
The mechanism of bondage is thought. The Naradasamgraha, quoted by Bhagavatotpala: "All thought is samsara, there is no bondage except thought." Trapped on the periphery of the wheel, we lose its unchanging hub. When self-awareness quietens the mind, the yogi sees samsara as the Wheel of Energies and is free even while the senses and their objects are fully active.
The Wheel of the Absolute
Of the countless wheels, few matter for Spanda practice. Following Krama doctrine, Ksemaraja puts first a twelve-phase cycle, the twelve aspects of Kalasamkarsini ("the Attractress of Time"), called the Wheel of the Absolute (anuttaracakra), from which all others emerge.
| It represents | Twelve as |
|---|---|
| The cognitive cycle (pramanacakra) | The sun through the twelve signs of the zodiac |
| The twelve senses | Intellect (buddhi) + mind (manas) + 5 organs of knowledge + 5 organs of action |
| Twelve vowels (omitting r, r, l, l) | Processes within Siva-consciousness (consonants stand for Sakti, the universe) |
| Three goddesses x four phases | Para, Parapara, Apara, each in emergence (srsti), persistence (sthiti), withdrawal (samhara) and the Undefinable (anakhya) |
| Twelve Kalis in three groups of four | Subject, means of knowledge, object, each through the four phases |
Other wheels: subject = 8, means of knowledge = 12, object = 16, pure cognitive awareness (pramiti) = 4.
Ksemaraja derives a four-fold cosmic cycle:
- Initial exertion (udyoga) within the absolute.
- Manifestation (avabhasana) of the universe.
- Relishing (carvana): reflective awareness of it.
- Destruction (vilapana): withdrawal into the Undefinable power (anakhyasakti).
Abhinava's meditation on the Wheel
This is only one analysis; the wheel unfolds in many ways. By close attention (avadhana) the yogi can watch it move in each act of cognition, from the Heart out to the senses. Every sound, taste or smell then brings profound absorption. Abhinava's sequence:
- The Wheel flows from the Heart through the "void" of the eyes, ears and other senses onto each object.
- Its rays generate Fire (subject), Moon (object) and Sun (means of knowledge) through destruction, creation and persistence of the outer world.
- Like a universal monarch followed by vassals, the Wheel goes wherever it falls and the senses follow.
- When the universe has merged into it, leaving only a faint trace, contemplate the Wheel as the outpouring (ucchalatta) of one's own nature.
- When the fuel of objectivity is consumed, contemplate the Wheel on the verge of extinction, being extinguished, and extinct.
- Consciousness shines void of objects, and then, because that is its nature, a new creation arises.
"He who every instant dissolves the universe thus into his own consciousness and then emits it is eternally identified with Bhairava."
Abhinava says this pattern underlies all meditations on the absolute, and other wheels give the same fruit. The key is to identify with the Lord in the centre, the impelling force (anupranitva) of all its powers.
The Churning Bhairava
Ksemaraja names this Lord Manthanabhairava, the "Churning Bhairava", because he creates "by [arousing] and churning His own power". He whirls the energies around himself while staying unmoving (acala) in the Heart. "He, Siva, the One of unmeasured (akalita) greatness... measures out (kalayati) in the Heart, the universe from Earth to Sadasiva." In the centre he is "not a slave of its operations".
The bound soul is freed the instant he discriminates himself from the "body-world". Sambhu "like a newly wedded husband, constantly gazes at His beloved power", who dances in many forms outside her undivided nature.
But when [the mind of the fettered] is firmly established in one place, then generated and withdrawn [by him at will], his state becomes that of the [universal] subject. Thus he becomes the Lord of the Wheel.
Stanzas on Vibration
Where is that "one place"? Ksemaraja in the Pratyabhijnahrdayam: absorption in integral "I-ness", the bliss of the light of consciousness and the power of the Great Mantra, gives mastery of "the circle of the deities of his own consciousness".
Two routes to the centre
- Direct: the yogi who grasps the absolute "need not know or practice anything else, not even contemplation of the Wheel of Energies".
- Supported: one who cannot merge directly contemplates the wheel's activity as the vibration of his own nature, and through the Great Mantra "I" (aham) saturates the rays of consciousness with self-awareness. Then "whatever he perceives is filled with the pulsation of the light of his self-realisation".
Eyes closed and eyes open
Expansion of the wheel gives enjoyment (bhoga) and the bliss of cosmic consciousness; contraction gives the unconditioned freedom of pure consciousness. Yogic powers (siddhi) come from the particular waves; liberation from the universal vibration. Realisation runs unbroken through:
| Nimilanasamadhi | Unmilanasamadhi | |
|---|---|---|
| Meaning | Absorption "with eyes closed" | Absorption "with eyes open" |
| When | In deep contemplation | When he rises (vyutthana) into normal waking, now transformed |
The pulse moves between the two "like a fire-stick", generating enlightenment, and he is liberated while in the body.
A cited passage promises that if the yogi rests "without a break for three hours" in his own nature, the Mothers (Brahmi and others), the yoginis, the Heroes (Aghora and others) and the nine-fold god become manifest, and the siddhis of the Wheel are attained, with Khecari and other Sakini energies liberating him "through this very body".
The "three hours" promise and the catalogue of siddhis come from the Tantric ritual and yogic world behind these texts. Dyczkowski reports them without endorsing a literal reading. Note that the same chapter warns, via Ksemaraja, that "it is only a few" who reach lordship of the Wheel; "others, afflicted by embodied egoity, do not". Readers should take the powers as part of the tradition's self-description and keep the emphasis where the Spanda texts put it: on recognition.
The wheel's power (prabhava) becomes the Light (prabha) of the yogi's mind and the divine breath that "blows" (vati) in him as pure "I". It lets him "ascend... to ever higher levels by forsaking the lower ones". The same forces bind the ignorant and free the wise.
The Wheel of Vamesvari
Again borrowing from Krama, Ksemaraja describes the universal pulse as five concentric circles, from most inner to most outer:
| Circle | Sphere | Bound soul | Graced soul |
|---|---|---|---|
| Centre: Vamesvari | Pure consciousness; the empty hub | Source of diversity, the "reverse" of Siva | Awakened kundalini, "running counter to... transmigratory existence" |
| 1. Khecari ("moving in the sky") | The individual subject | Five coverings (kancuka): limited action (kala), limited knowledge (vidya), attachment (raga), natural law (niyati), time (kala) | Five divine attributes: omnipotence, omniscience, completeness, freedom from law, eternality |
| 2. Gocari ("go" = speech) | Inner organ: subtle inner discourse (samjalpa) | Intellect fixes distinction, ego identifies with diversity, mind builds dividing thoughts | Intellect: direct experience of unity; ego: "I am Siva"; mind: synthesis into a whole |
| 3. Dikcari ("moving in the directions") | Ten senses, symbolised by ten directions | Perceive only multiplicity | Perceive Siva's unity in the diversity of sensations |
| 4. Bhucari ("moving on earth") | Objects: form, taste, sound, smell, touch | "Display limitation everywhere" | "The body of the light of consciousness"; harmony (tanmaya) with the senses |
Who is Vamesvari
In the Void of the centre, the power of awareness is "established on the thought-free plane of the Supreme Lord's inner nature". It wanders in the void before the subject-object split, the primordial outpouring (ullasa) within the nature of all things. She is the root-consciousness of sensory perception and the source of the perceiver's positive and negative responses. She is called Vyomavamesvari, Vyomesvari or Vamesvari: the Goddess (isvari) of the Sky (vyoman) who "vomits" (root vam) the universe of personal experience out of the absolute, "much as a person suffering from cholera vomits out everything in his stomach". Ksemaraja identifies her with the Spanda principle that extends the triad of Para, Parapara and Apara.
"Vama" means "left", "perverse" or "contrary", and the name holds a double reversal. For the unenlightened, she is the reverse of Siva's unity: the source of bondage. For the enlightened, she reverses that reversal: the power that "runs counter to the normal course of transmigratory existence", the awakened kundalini. Her powers "lay hold of, and throw down from a great height the essence of diversity and bestow the perfect oneness of unity in the midst of multiplicity". The fettered soul is swept down the current from unity to division; the enlightened soul swims the current back from diversity to unity.
The Wheel of the Senses
Sensory activity is the most tangible expression of consciousness's power to know and act. The physical organs are only "doors" (dvara) and loci (golaka); they do not explain sensing. The Lord operates each body by his power of Maya, so the perceptions of all living beings are the senses of the Supreme Lord.
That principle should be examined with effort and respect because this, its uncreated freedom, prevails everywhere. By virtue of it the senses, along with the inner circle, [although] unconscious, behave as if conscious in themselves, move towards their objects, rest [there] and withdraw [from them].
Stanzas on Vibration
The senses form two circles: outer (five organs of knowledge, five of action) and inner (intellect, ego, mind). Through practice and grace the yogi becomes Awakened (prabuddha), perceiving Spanda as the impulse that drives the senses. At first this is occasional; when it becomes permanent he is Fully Awakened (suprabuddha) and liberated.
Intellect (buddhi)
The soul without sensation or thought rests in deep sleep with primordial matter (prakrti), here a power of consciousness called Sambhavisakti. Roused by the god Svatantresa (Ananta), the balance of the gunas is disturbed (praksubdha) and the intellect emerges first. Its experience is like waking up: we barely know ourselves, only that things exist around us. It illumines images projected onto it and registers their existence (satta).
Ego (ahamkara)
The ego appropriates experience as "my own". It arises from mistaking the light reflected in the intellect, coloured by objects, for the Self. Egoity (asmita) shows on six levels:
| Level | Example |
|---|---|
| Possessions | "I am wealthy" |
| Body | "I am thin" |
| Senses | "I delight in the senses" |
| Mind | "I am content" |
| Vital breath | "I breathe" |
| Deep sleep | "I am empty" |
| Pure ego (ahambhava, aham) | Impure ego (ahamkara) | |
|---|---|---|
| Rests on | Pure consciousness; freedom, "like an inward consent" | Outer objective forms |
| Status | Uncreated (akrtrima), real, not a thought-construct | Created (krtaka), "imagined into existence (kalpita)" |
| Scope | Universal subject (visvapramatrta) | Maya-subject, "hemmed in on every side" |
Yet there is only one ego working within different parameters. Liberation is recognising that "I" is Siva, not the fettered soul's; we must hold "the abiding conviction that our authentic ego and Sankara are identical". So having an ego is not bad in itself: a devotee says that without "the pride of thinking, 'I am made of You', all joy comes to nought".
The pure ego is Spandasakti, transmitting the impulse (samrambha) that drives the vital breaths. Ksemaraja: "Anointed by a drop of the nectar of egoity even the unconscious becomes conscious." The individual then falsely assumes he impels the senses. The ego is the Sun of Knowledge, around which twelve suns of the senses rotate, as in Saiva cosmology twelve zodiac suns return to a thirteenth.
Mind (manas)
The sattvic ego produces manas and the five organs of knowledge. Manas shapes clear representations of the flood of sensation:
Like a chisel cutting away stone to reveal a statue, manas excludes sensations not useful now. Without it, "a faint sound heard in the distance would be registered with the same intensity... as the music we were listening to in a concert hall".
How manas works:
- Selects a sensation from the mass reflected in the intellect.
- Compares it with traces of past sensations stored in the intellect.
- Names it by linguistic convention (sanketa).
- Holds past and present together through continuity of awareness, so recognising the class and forming a representation (vikalpa).
- Synthesises discrete moments into notions like action or relation.
Its determinative work (anuvyavasaya) rests on unity-in-difference (bhedabheda). Manas is restless (cancala), not limited to one sense, and full of will (iccha), driven by the ego's urge to appropriate.
Mahesvarananda's three waves
The three inner organs are waves (kallola) rising in the ocean of the Heart. They carry egoity out onto the object and "drag 'thisness' there [into the Heart] and project 'I-ness' out here". This two-way movement is a great wave (mahataranga), followed by the smaller ripples of the outer senses. Its three phases:
| Phase | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Primal vibration (adyaspanda) | First throb in the subject; the tendency (aunmukhya) to expand |
| Intense vibration (parispanda) | The outpouring of awareness in each act of perception |
| Vibrating radiance (sphuratta) | The fully formed cognition, the five-fold world now manifest |
The outer senses
Creation divides into conscious and unconscious appearances (cid- and acidabhasa); knowing and acting are "the very life (jivana)" of the sentient. Limited agency (kalasakti) links incoming data and outgoing responses.
- Organs of knowledge (taste, touch, smell, hearing, sight) are aspects of sphuratta, each in its locus, like "a lamp set inside a perforated jar". Against the view that they come from gross elements, the Saiva derives them from the sattvic ego, since every perception is "I hear", "I see". Without an agent there would be an infinite regress of instruments. The tamasic ego produces the subtle sensations (tanmatra) that correlate with each sense.
- Organs of action implement responses and involve movement: hand (grasping, = appropriation), excretion (= rejection), feet (locomotion, = both), sexual organ (emission, = neither), and speech, which is internal and fits none. Unlike sense organs, they are not tied to one locus: a lame man can still move, and we can pick things up without hands.
The inner and outer senses are "the vibration of the glory of consciousness". Through them the yogi glimpses the Divine in its creation and, by its Light, realises Siva's presence everywhere, which is his own presence everywhere. Practically, the chapter says: sit at the hub (the gap before thought) and watch the spokes (senses and mind) as your own power.
| Key term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Sakticakra | Wheel of Energies |
| Cakresvara | Lord of the Wheel |
| Madhyamapada | The centre between two thoughts or perceptions |
| Asunya | "Non-void": Fullness beyond all voids |
| Anuttaracakra | Wheel of the Absolute (12 Kalis) |
| Manthanabhairava | The Churning Bhairava |
| Khecari / Gocari / Dikcari / Bhucari | Energies of subject / inner organ / senses / objects |
| Vamesvari | Goddess who "emits" the universe; the double reversal |
| Nimilana / unmilana samadhi | Absorption with eyes closed / open |
| Adyaspanda / parispanda / sphuratta | Three phases of the Heart's pulse |
Reflect and practise. (1) Sit for five minutes and look for the gap between one thought and the next; do not force it, only notice. (2) Listen to a single sound and follow it inward until it dissolves, then notice what remains. (3) List your six levels of "I am" today (wealth, body, senses, mind, breath, sleep) and see which one you identify with most.
The Divine Body and the Sacred Circle of the Senses
Chapter Six is the book's most sensuous chapter and in practice its most radical. Where many Indian paths treat the senses as the source of bondage, the Spanda teaching says they are "both initially a means to self-realisation and, ultimately, the very bliss of liberation itself". Dyczkowski describes the body as a divine cosmos, the inner sacrifice that burns the false body of thought, the goddesses of the senses seated around the Heart, aesthetic rapture as a path, the inner exertion (udyama) behind all practice, the three impurities, and the culminating gestures of awareness, Bhairavimudra and Kramamudra.
A Reversal of Perspective
The seeker must undergo a complete conversion or reversal (paravrtti). "To know as man knows is the very essence of bondage; freedom is to know reality as God knows it." This is achieved by "a pure and intense act of self-awareness" in which the old mode of knowing is dropped. Then man and the world appear as an ontophany: consciousness of Being coincides with worship of Being as sacred. "To see the world with God's eyes is to witness the eternal worship of His Being." The organ of that vision is the sacred circle of the senses; its abode is the Divine Body.
The Body as Cosmos
True monism (paradvaya) requires that each part be the Whole. So every existing thing is sacred, and the human body in a special way is "the epitome of the universe", "the pure vessel of pure consciousness", the temple of God and the place of sacrifice. We do not feel our consciousness as outside the body "like a blanket or an outer garment"; likewise the universe is "an intimate extension of our own pure conscious being".
One should think of the body as full of all the Paths (adhvan)... the abode of all the movements of time and space. The body seen in this way is all the gods, and must therefore be the object of contemplation, veneration and sacrifice. He who penetrates into it finds liberation.
Abhinavagupta
As the "I" shows its presence in the body by moving the limbs, God shows his presence in the cosmic body by moving the universe. "Just as the ego in the body flings apart the two lifeless arms by a mere act of will, so [the universal ego]... [rends asunder] mountains." The yogi who sees all things "like the limbs of his own body" (svangakalpa) enters the awareness "I am this [universe]" (aham idam).
"Bondage is a false identification with the physical body and liberation a true identification with the cosmic body." The chapter's practices are all ways of shifting identification from the small body to the large one, so that inner and outer "blend together like the juices in a peacock's egg".
Bodies at each level
Each level of the "living ladder of consciousness" gives a higher mastery, and in Tantric terms the yogi becomes lord of a higher world-order (bhuvana), living in a body fitted to it. At the Parasiva level his body is the universe. Yet since Siva faces nothing outside himself, in a sense he has no body: his body is a body of consciousness (vijnanadeha), the Supreme Body (paradeha), radiant with vitality (ojas), fecund power (virya), strength (bala) and vibration (spanda). It is the Body of Power (saktadeha), made of the five powers of consciousness, bliss, will, knowledge and action.
We must drop the idea that the body is impure. Failing to contemplate the cosmic body, we miss "the sacred festival (utsava)" of Spanda's glory. A cited verse: seeing and worshipping the body "night and day as replete with [all] the categories of existence and full of the nectar of Siva's Bliss", the yogi rests in that holy image (linga) and "does not aspire to any outer Linga, [to make any] vows, [travel to] the sacred sites or practise [external] disciplines".
This chapter is often quoted as proof that Kashmiri Saivism is simply "body-positive". The text is subtler. The physical, individual body is affirmed only when recognised as part of the cosmic body; as the seat of the ego, it is still something to be "purged", and later the perfected yogi sees it as "hardly more than a corpse". The affirmation is of embodiment seen as consciousness, not of the ordinary body-identified life.
Breaking the jar
To recognise our body as the body of consciousness, we must first untie the knot of ignorance that takes the psycho-physical organism and its subtle bodies as our true body. Then the individual ego merges in the universal ego "just as the space in a broken jar merges with the space around it". The yogi sees that the Spanda energy of the true ego does everything, and he is agent only in that sense. "The action of the wise, free of false identification with the physical body, entails no Karma."
The Inner Fire Sacrifice
False identification produces thought-forms (vikalpa) based on a split between embodied subject and outer object. These thoughts are the lower embodied subjectivity and, in effect, its body. The yogi burns them in the sacred fire of consciousness (cidagni), kindled by the contemplation: "It is I, the Great Lord, Who, as pure consciousness, always shine thus as all things." That awareness is the secret power of mantra (mantravirya) that burns the body of thought. This is "the true fire sacrifice in which, as the Aphorisms of Siva declare, this body is the oblation".
Outer rites are useless without inner meaning. The inner processes (vasanakrama) corresponding to outer ritual (pujakrama) must be mastered; "whether outer rites are actually performed or not makes no difference". All of life is the great sacrifice (mahayaga) that consciousness performs in itself, to itself:
| Ritual element | Inner meaning |
|---|---|
| Sacrificial fire | The Great Void (mahasunya), free of all division and "beyond the emptiness of insentience" |
| Ladle | Awareness (cetana) |
| Offering | The whole outer universe (elements, senses, objects, worlds, categories) and the inner world of mind and thought |
| Fuel | "The forest of duality" |
| Sacrificial victim | Death itself (mahapasu) |
We must give up "all sense of 'me' and 'mine', however painful this may be", and gain a new body "not made of matter but of the spiritual essence of consciousness".
The "chilling" verse
Dyczkowski quotes what he calls "the chilling words of the Tantras": "O Goddess, by eating the body of the beloved, a relative, close friend, benefactor or dear one, one must fly upwards with the Maiden of the Sky." He reads it as meaning that the embodied subjectivity (dehapramatrta) must be assimilated into consciousness, so its thoughts no longer agitate it.
The verse comes from the Kapalika and Kaula world of cremation-ground practice, where transgressive imagery was deliberate. Dyczkowski gives the internalised reading, which is how the Spanda and Trika exegetes took it. That reading is well grounded for Ksemaraja's school, but readers should know it is an interpretation of a tradition that, at its origins, also had literal transgressive rites. The internalisation is itself a historical development, and Dyczkowski notes elsewhere in the chapter that "the original rites... have no place in the yogic teachings of the Spanda school".
When duality is burnt away, consciousness rests firmly fixed (dhruva) and free of waves (nistaranga). The yogi recognises his nature as Spanda personified as Bhairavi, and unites with Bhairava. "The first vibration or wave of activity that rises spontaneously out of this state of tranquility is the immaculate body (murti) of consciousness." He witnesses Siva's cosmic body emerging as his own perfected, divine body: the pure emanation (suddhasrsti).
The Cremation Ground of the Body
The perfected yogi (siddha) sees his physical body as "hardly more than a corpse", and the universe as "a vast cremation ground strewn with the lifeless 'corpses' of phenomena". He takes the Vow of a Hero (viravrata) to see all things, disgusting or attractive, with an equal eye. The Kapalika iconography is internalised:
| Kapalika emblem | Inner meaning |
|---|---|
| Skull-topped staff (khatvanga) | Awareness, which smashes the ego's body |
| Skull bowl | The portions of the universe in the senses' view, white with the light of consciousness |
| Wine | The essence (rasa) of the universe |
| Funeral pyres (citi) | Consciousness (citi), burning the traces of past action (a pun on the same word) |
Abhinava: the body is "the support of all the gods, the cremation ground frightening with the pyre", the "awesome playground" of siddhas and yoginis, "full of the countless pyres [of the senses]... Entering this [body], the cremation ground of emptiness, who does not achieve perfection?"
The Goddesses of the Senses
All Tantric traditions teach that the senses and body should be venerated as emissions of consciousness, "as the sun does its rays", and may be personified as deities around their master. Ksemaraja distinguishes the physical senses, "the external expansion (vijrmbha)", from the deities of the senses, who belong to the body of consciousness. The master of the circle (cakradevata) is the universal subject, seated in the Heart within the sacred seat (pitha) of the body, "playfully" turning their wheels.
Why do the deities' names and forms vary between Tantras? Abhinava: because of ritual context. Emotions change the senses, so in rites done in anger to kill an enemy, the deities are wrathful (raudra); in rites for peace and prosperity, peaceful (saumya). Dyczkowski notes that such rites have no place in Spanda yoga, though their esoteric philosophy (rahasyadrsti) survives. Jayaratha: although the Light pervades all the body, "its supreme abode is the core of the Lotus of the Heart".
Abhinava's hymn to the deities in the body
In the Dehasthadevatacakrastotra (a Krama hymn that Ksemaraja's view follows closely), the goddesses sit on the petals of the Heart-lotus around the divine couple Anandabhairava and Anandabhairavi, moving "restlessly hither and thither" to collect the most pleasing sensations as offerings.
| Deity | Is | Offers |
|---|---|---|
| Ganesa and Vatuka | Inhaled and exhaled breath (apana, prana) | Saluted first |
| Anandabhairava | The true teacher (sadguru): the yogi's attentive awareness (avadhana) | Illumines Siva's path, the universe |
| Anandabhairavi | His consort | Gives rise to (udaya), manifests (avabhasana) and relishes (carvana) the universe |
| Brahmani | Intellect | Flowers of certainty |
| Sambhavi | Ego | Flowers of egoity |
| Kaumari | Mind | Flowers of thought |
| Vaisnavi | Ear | Sounds |
| Varahi | Skin | Touch |
| Indrani | Sight | Forms |
| Camunda | Tongue | Tastes |
| Mahalaksmi | Nose | Smells |
He ends: "I venerate in this way the circle of deities eternally active (satatodita) in my own body, ever present in all beings."
Extroverted and introverted senses
At the lower level the senses are unconscious instruments, extroverted. When "the island of embodied consciousness" sinks into the ocean of consciousness, they perceive "in a new, timeless mode": introverted, recognised as spiritual forces. "The senses thus illumine the yogi after having themselves been illumined by Siva." Siva "sports in the garden of His universe delighting in the five flowers of smell, taste, sight, touch and sound", while resting in himself.
The Senses as Path, Not Obstacle
The yogi should imitate Siva. Self-absorbed but never abstracted from the world: by being mindful of himself, "he sees and hears with greater clarity", and with senses active, his meditation matures. The Spanda teachings tell him to watch the senses move, mindful that this is Siva's activity.
May the outpourings of the activity of my senses fall on their respective objects. May I, O Lord, never be so rash as to lose, even for a moment, the joy of my oneness with You, however slightly.
Utpaladeva
Pleasure is spiritual
The yogi may take pleasure in objects, and is instructed to, provided he keeps an awakened attitude (prabuddhabhava) and does not "blindly follow his natural inclinations as does an animal". The argument:
- Pleasure is the repose we enjoy when the mind's activity is briefly arrested and rests one-pointedly in its source.
- So all pleasure is essentially spiritual: a state of the subject, not a property of the object.
- It is "a drop from the ocean of Siva's bliss".
- The yogi fixes on the source of pleasure and uses it as a springboard.
"This yogi is no hedonist." Free of the idea that the body is the Self, he does not crave pleasures.
Aesthetic Rapture
"If the connection between 'worldly' pleasure and spiritual bliss is strong, the link between aesthetic experience and the rapturous delight (camatkara) of consciousness is even more so." Song, a picture, "the sight of a beautiful woman" are full of juice (rasa) the senses taste, feeding consciousness with delight.
The list "sweet song, a pleasing picture, the sight of a beautiful woman" assumes a male practitioner, as most of these texts do. The point about aesthetic rasa applies to anyone, and readers can substitute their own example without losing the teaching.
Abhinava, the great theorist of rasa in poetry and drama, explains why art gives a purer delight than sense objects: it removes obstacles like "the anticipation of possible personal gain". Then the experience is relishing (rasana), tasting (carvana), contentment (nirvrti): repose in the knowing subject, with self-awareness predominant. The sensitivity of the receptive heart (sahrdayata) comes from ignoring the objective side.
How aesthetic absorption unfolds
- The senses resonate with the aesthetic object until sensation and appreciation merge: unity (tanmayibhava).
- Heightened introversion (antahpravesa): the object no longer feels external.
- It is submerged (nimajjana) in awareness, filling it with rasa so that the subject loses his individuality.
- Consciousness expands and delights in "the untrammelled outpouring (ucchalana) of his own pulsation".
The influx of sensation "feeds" consciousness as breath feeds the limbs. Spanda is consciousness's vitality (virya) and fecund power (ojas), seen as beauty (kantata). Music, incense, a gentle caress arouse the subject from indifference (madhyasthya); this arousal of vitality (viryaksobha) is "the subtle transcendental movement of Bhairava's awareness".
"Wonder is the essence of life. To be incapable of wonder is to be as dead and insensitive as a stone." Each aesthetic experience, held with mindfulness and a disciplined intention to heighten sensitivity, brings us closer to the sustained wonder of Spanda. The training is graded: start with easily pleasing objects, and progress until "that same sense of wonder" is found "even when confronted with the foulest of things or in times of great trouble and pain".
Life as drama
Life is "the unfolding drama of cosmic manifestation staged by the creative genius (pratibha) of consciousness". Siva is the poet (kavi) who writes the plot and plays every role on the stage of the mind, with the senses as spectators; the plot's introduction, course and conclusion are creation, persistence and destruction. The difference between yogi and aesthete: only the yogi keeps this awareness constantly, so that aesthetic delight becomes religious.
Utpaladeva: "How wonderful it is that although only one sound, that is, Siva's name, is always on the tips of their tongues, yet [His] devotees can taste the ineffable relish of all the objects of the senses!" And: "Drunk am I by drinking the wine of the Elixir of Immortality which is Your worship, perpetually flowing through the channels of the senses from the goblets... of all existing things." This is the Sacred Festival (mahotsava) of non-dual worship (advayapuja).
Divine Senses and the Three Moments of Perception
At the contracted level, the senses express the soul's limited knowledge and action (vidya and kala). At the expanded level, they express pure awareness (bodha) and freedom, making the whole universe one with consciousness "the instant they behold it". These divinised senses are the deities in the inner circle, organs of Siva's omniscience and omnipotence. Yogaraja quotes the Svetasvatara Upanisad: "Without foot or hand, He is swift and a seizer! He sees without eye, He hears without ear!"
| Phase of sense perception | Description | Cosmic equivalent |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Outpouring (pravrtti) | Senses unfold toward and "face" the object; subject intent (unmukha) | Creation |
| 2. Stabilised (sthiti) | Senses clearly perceive; object rests in their field | Persistence |
| 3. Conclusion | Object abandoned; activity merges in undifferentiated awareness | Destruction |
Ksemaraja: "Even when the Supreme Lord resides in the body, He effects the creation and destruction of the five-fold universe by the expansion (unmilana) and contraction (nimilana) of the senses." The Heart, "like a vast lake full to overflowing", pours the senses out again. The senses are subsidiary cycles (anucakra) around the primary cycle (mukhyacakra), "like the feathers of a peacock unfurled and folded back in the ecstasy of its dance". It is Siva, not the individual soul, who extends and withdraws them.
Indeed the individual soul does not activate the impulse of the will by himself alone but through his contact with [his] own [inner] strength (bala) made in such a way that he identifies with it.
Stanzas on Vibration
The senses share consciousness's properties "just as a heated iron ball can burn, cook or give out light". Against Samkhya, which says the passive Purusa stimulates Prakrti merely by contact, the Spanda doctrine says consciousness that moves matter cannot itself be inactive. Its activity is "the subtle, inner outpouring of the Self within the Self (svatmocchalatta)".
Udyama: The Inner Exertion
At the centre of the circle of senses, outside time, this inner activity is the pure exertion (udyoga, udyama) of Being, the source of the first unfolding of Becoming. Ksemaraja: "'exertion' (udyama) is [meant] the emergence of the supreme [level of] intuition (pratibha), which is the sudden outpouring" of reflective awareness. Pratibha, thought-free intuition, is the supreme power of consciousness.
Finding it between thoughts
The expansion of consciousness that takes place when one is engaged in a single thought should be known to be the source from whence another arises. One should experience that for oneself!
Stanzas on Vibration
The unmesa is not intermittent: it is perpetual, the source of all thought including past, present and future, "a tiny part of which we observe as the flow of events". It can never be grasped as an object, because objectivity is fragmentation, the realm of language. We must "pierce through the outer periphery of thought and plunge into the Centre".
Ksemaraja cites: "Checking [the movement of] attention once it has quit its object, it must not [be allowed] to move to any other; contemplation then blossoms forth by [experiencing] the state in the centre between them." Left alone, attention passes from object to object, and each transition goes through a moment of pure thought-free awareness. If the yogi checks the movement, he feels thought subside into the emptiness of the Centre, which turns out to be full of pulsation and "aesthetic rapture".
Practice makes Spanda progressively clearer, "just as a distant object becomes more clearly visible by exerting an effort to perceive it". The yogi's effort to free himself is one with the force that drives his senses and mind. "This inner exertion is the basis of every means to liberation", carrying him along "like wind which blows a cloth in various directions". So the highest worship (varivasya) is contemplating one's own inner strength (bala).
The paradox of effort
The yogi must give up "the fleeting moments of petty pleasure (ksanikasukhalava)" from outer objects, and then even the desire for enlightenment itself, since reality "can never be realised through a personal act of will". He must "die to himself in an act of profound faith (sraddha) and adoration (adara)", resting beyond the split of means and goal (upeyopayabhava).
Claimed powers of the realised
Established in the unmesa, the yogi knows past, present and future; can strengthen his vitality without food or drink, or leave his body to enliven another; is "freed of disease and the infirmities of old age"; and can overcome severe obstacles.
These claims (no need of food, freedom from disease and ageing, entering another body) are reported from the sources without comment. They belong to the traditional catalogue of siddhis and should not be read as medical claims. Nothing in the book offers evidence for them, and readers should not use them to justify neglecting health.
Doubt and the Three Impurities
Lassitude ravages the body and this arises from ignorance but if this is eliminated by an expansion of consciousness, how can [ignorance], deprived of its cause, continue to exist?
Stanzas on Vibration
Doubt (sanka) is the source of every spiritual ailment. The Sarvacaratantra: "Due to ignorance the deluded man is in doubt and thus [suffers the cycle] of birth and death." Doubt swings the mind between alternatives, contracts consciousness, and is both "the root of the ancient tree of transmigration and the first sprout of its seed". "Like a thief it steals away the wealth of true knowledge". As the yogi is cured of this lassitude (glani), his nature shines "just as raw gold when heated is freed from dross".
When he recognises the unmesa, "he is projected beyond the realm of relative distinctions between virtue and vice" and penetrates the Heart of Bhairava. The Stanzas: the soul who wishes to act but cannot because of innate impurity reaches the supreme state when the disruption (ksobha) of his ego ceases, then "knows and does whatever [he] desires".
This phrase has been misused, in India and in modern guru movements, to excuse harmful conduct. In context it means the realised person acts without the doubt and conflicted self-concern that make choice agonising, because the ego's disturbance has ceased. The text assumes that what such a person "desires" is no longer ego-driven. It is not a licence, and a teacher who claims it as one is reading the doctrine backwards.
The individual soul is a mix of conscious (cit) and unconscious (acit) elements, bound by three impurities (mala):
| Impurity | What it does |
|---|---|
| Impurity of Individuality (anavamala) | Fails to recognise one's fullness; craving for experience on the "unreasoned assumption" of being incomplete (apurna); shows as desire (raga); "the cause of the sprout of transmigration". The yogi cannot enter or leave contemplation at will, and loses awareness of his nature outside meditation |
| Impurity of Maya (mayiyamala) | Limits knowledge through the organs; makes one see diversity everywhere |
| Impurity of Karma (karmamala) | Limited action driven by desires and fears for personal gain |
Eyes Closed: Withdrawal into the Heart
Freedom comes in two stages: first discover universal consciousness within; then recognise one's Spanda energy in the outer world. The first is contraction of power (saktisamkoca) through one-pointed introspection: the yogi sees the whole of existence reflected in his mind and enjoys absorption with eyes closed (nimilanasamadhi). Bhairava to the Goddess: "Merging the senses in the centre, between the upper and lower lotuses [of the Heart], in the void of the Heart, with mind unwavering, O Fair One, attain the Supreme Bliss."
A cited passage describes a "violent digestion (hathapaka)": all things thrown into the fire "of the belly of one's own consciousness" suddenly lose their distinctions and feed it; the deities of the senses devour the universe transformed into the nectar of "I", and, satisfied, rest in Bhairava. The yogi enters the Great Expansion (mahavikasa), simultaneously making all things one, savouring their essence and securing their place in the Whole.
Bhairavimudra
Absorption with eyes closed leads spontaneously to absorption with eyes open (unmilanasamadhi), and back. The yogi must unite the two from the Centre that pervades both. Ksemaraja: "having laid hold of the fire-stick (arani) of their two-fold emanation with all thought fallen away, the circle of the senses expands instantaneously." This state of simultaneous expansion and contraction is Bhairavimudra.
[If] you project the vision and all the other powers [of the senses] simultaneously everywhere onto their respective objects by the power of awareness, while remaining firmly established in the centre like a pillar of gold, you [will] shine as the One, the foundation of the universe.
Source cited by Ksemaraja
And the famous definition from an unknown Tantra: "With one's aim inside while gazing outside, eyes neither opening nor closing, this is Bhairava's Mudra kept secret in all the Tantras."
What the yogi experiences:
- Sensory awareness at two levels at once: the individual (specific objects) and the cosmic (the universal object).
- He watches the world "like a man who observes a city from a high mountain peak", attached to nothing, and "stamps" the outer on the inner.
- Ksemaraja: he sees all beings "rising from, and dissolving into, the Sky [of consciousness], like a series of reflections appearing and disappearing inside a mirror".
- He knows himself as the substratum consciousness (adhisthatr). Phenomena are void (no existence apart from him) yet far from unreal (they are consciousness). "He views the outer world yet sees it not." Beyond void and non-void he reaches the Supreme Abode (param padam).
"I" and "this" stand balanced "like the two pans of an evenly weighed balance", giving the pure knowledge (suddhavidya): "I alone am all things." He becomes master of the Wheel of Energies, free like Siva to create and destroy.
Kramamudra
Ksemaraja stresses that liberation requires first withdrawing the senses in introverted contemplation and then experiencing the Great Expansion as a spontaneous process. This is done by Kramamudra, from the lost Kramasutra: "Initially he turns inward from the outside world and [then] from within [himself] he exits into the outer world under the influence of his absorption." The yogi must fill everyday awareness (vyutthana) with the bliss of samadhi, dipping in and out until unity pervades both.
A cited verse: the best yogi, absorbed even after rising from meditation, "[inwardly] vibrating like a drunkard in blissful inebriation from the after-effects of the nectar of contemplation, sees all things dissolving in the Sky of Consciousness like a cloud in the autumn sky". He plunges in again and again until, "even when he is said to have risen from absorption, he is one with [his] experience of it".
Why "Mudra" and why "Krama"? Ksemaraja's etymology:
- Mud + ra: it fills the adept with bliss (mud), and dissolves (dra) bondage; and as a seal (mudra) it stamps the universe with turiya.
- Krama: it is the source of all sequential processes and is also their sequential appearance.
The ladder of mudras
| Stage | Practice |
|---|---|
| 1 | Low form of Bhairavimudra: conjoin outer with inner |
| 2 | Kramamudra: fill outer with inner and inner with outer |
| 3 | Highest Bhairavimudra: both merge in the absolute (anuttara), free of polarity |
| (fall back) | If awareness lapses, return to Kramamudra until all levels are merged |
| 4 | No means needed (anupaya): everything said, done, perceived or thought instantly evokes the highest consciousness |
Wonder and the Turning About
The fruit of Bhairavimudra is wonder (camatkara) or amazement (vismaya) on the plane of union (yogabhumika).
How can one who, as if astonished, beholds his own nature as that which sustains [the existence of everything] be subject to this painful round of transmigration!
Stanzas on Vibration
The yogi is astonished to find that the individual he thought he was "does not really exist at all". He undergoes a "turning about" (paravrtti) in the deepest seat of consciousness, and the sudden eruption of intuition (pratibha) draws from him "a cry of amazement" as he is liberated.
The chapter's practical teaching in three lines: (1) Shift identification from the small body to the cosmic body. (2) Use pleasure, beauty and every sense experience as a doorway, by attending to the subject who enjoys rather than the object enjoyed. (3) Learn to keep the inner centre while the senses go out: eyes open, aim within.
| Key term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Paravrtti | Reversal or "turning about" of perspective |
| Vijnanadeha / saktadeha | Body of consciousness / body of power |
| Mahayaga | The great inner sacrifice |
| Viravrata | The Hero's Vow of equal vision |
| Karanadevata | Goddesses of the senses |
| Camatkara / rasa | Wonder / aesthetic "juice" |
| Viryaksobha | Arousal of vitality |
| Udyama | The inner exertion; emergence of intuition |
| Anava / mayiya / karma mala | The three impurities |
| Bhairavimudra / Kramamudra | Inner aim with open eyes / alternating inner and outer |
Reflect and practise. (1) Listen to one piece of music with full attention and notice the moment when "you" seem to disappear into it. (2) Try Bhairavimudra lightly: eyes open, gaze soft and wide, attention resting in the sense of "I am" behind the eyes. (3) After a meditation, carry its quality into one ordinary task, such as washing a cup, and see how long it lasts.
The Path to Liberation, Part One: Teacher, Reason and the Higher Means
The final chapter, nearly a quarter of the book, turns from what reality is to how one realises it. Dyczkowski first sets out the goal (liberation in this life through expansion of consciousness), the place of teacher, scripture, reason and experience, and then frames Spanda practice using Abhinavagupta's four "means" (upaya). This first part covers the frame, the "No-Means" (anupaya) and the Divine Means (sambhavopaya), including the practice of Centering and the symbolism of AHAM. Part Two covers the Empowered and Individual Means.
Who the Teaching Is For
Spanda doctrine has two concerns: to make clear the goal (upeya), what truly benefits us and what stands in the way, and to show the means, through Siva's grace and right practice. "The Doctrine of Vibration is not meant for the spiritually dull." It is not for those whose consciousness is "as if dreaming, even during the waking state... the dream of its own thought-constructs", but for the awake (prabuddha), "full of faith and reverence, always alert".
Three ways reality is understood
| Aspect | Description |
|---|---|
| 1. Transcendental | Beyond all opposites, including subject and object. The Stanzas define reality this way first. Not an unconscious void. |
| 2. Immanent | The negation implies a positive immanence: opposites united in pure consciousness that is equally Siva and Spanda |
| 3. Own nature | The two reconciled as the "own nature" (svabhava) of each thing, and for the person, "one's own own nature" (svasvabhava): the subject who perceives, enjoys, reflects and acts |
So liberating knowledge is "regaining possession of ourselves" (svatmagraha), abiding in our fundamental state (svasthiti). "We are not freed of the trammels of perpetual change by setting it aside"; we must gain insight into the cycles of creation, persistence and destruction.
Spiritual ignorance is contracted consciousness, so it can only be cured by expansion. "The Spanda-yogi treads the Path of Consciousness Expansion." Veil after veil is lifted until consciousness is full. Abhinava: this is "the supreme limit of plenitude... Once [this] uncreated fullness has been attained, pray tell, what other fruit can there be?"
Ignorance Is Limited Knowledge
The bound soul is not wholly ignorant; "those subject to the round of birth and death are not inert clods of earth". His knowledge of diversity is not false. "Ignorance entails a form of knowledge which, although quite correct, is binding." So, against the dualist Saivas (Saiva Siddhanta), ignorance is not a defiling substance that covers consciousness "like a cloth covering a jar". It can only be consciousness in a limited state.
| Supreme Knowledge (parajnana) | Inferior Knowledge (aparajnana) | |
|---|---|---|
| Is | Revelation of one's own nature as the Being of all things | Mental representations of self and object: "I know this" (Jayaratha) |
| Effect | Liberates | Obscures the higher; breaks up direct awareness |
Operating in the field of the subtle elements, the arising of mental representation marks the disappearance of the flavour of the supreme nectar of immortality; due to this [man] forfeits his freedom.
Stanzas on Vibration
The thirty-six tattvas in brief
Rajanaka Rama maps subject, means and object onto the categories:
| Creation | Category | Awareness / content |
|---|---|---|
| Pure | Siva and Sakti | Pure "I" consciousness and its sentient subjectivity |
| Pure | Sadasiva | "I am this" (aham idam): "I" predominates; faint traces of objectivity; power of knowledge |
| Pure | Isvara | "This is me" (idam aham): "this" predominates; power of action |
| Pure | Pure Knowledge (Suddhavidya) | "I am this and this is me": equal balance |
| Impure | Maya + five coverings (kancuka) | Limited knowledge, limited action, attachment, natural law, time: the individual soul (purusa) |
| Impure | Means of knowledge | The senses and the inner mental organ |
| Impure | Object | Five subtle elements (tanmatra) and five gross elements |
The pure categories are the experience of the impure ones when recognised as one with consciousness. For the enlightened, thoughts rise and subside spontaneously; "free of all hopes and fears", he sees all as "this eternal cosmic game". The Stanzas: "there is no state in the thoughts of words or [their] meanings that is not Siva... he who has this awareness is undoubtedly liberated in this very life."
Only Living Liberation Counts
"Only liberation in this life (jivanmukti) is authentic liberation." A disembodied liberation after death (videhamukti), free of all perception of diversity, is not the goal. Ksemaraja: liberation requires realising one's identity with the whole universe, "however difficult this may be". The introverted absorption of eyes-closed contemplation must be completed by the cosmic vision of eyes-open contemplation. Ksemaraja divides the Stanzas accordingly: section one treats the first, section two the second, ending with "this is the initiation that bestows Siva's true nature".
The Teacher
"The Master (guru) is the means to realisation." For the disciple he is Siva himself, revealing through initiation, teaching and grace the secret power of practice. He does not just explain scripture; he transmits the realisation it can bestow. What makes him a true guide is Siva's power in him, the same power that led the disciple to him. He is "the ferry that transports the disciple over the ocean of thought", if the disciple is ready, meaning awake and with "no other goal to pursue except enlightenment".
The highest relationship is identity: their exchange is "an internal dialogue within universal consciousness". The disciple is consciousness contracted to a point (anu); the Master is consciousness responding. "When the disciple is liberated by his grace, it is the Master who in reality liberates himself."
The identification of the teacher with God is standard in Tantric traditions and Dyczkowski presents it faithfully. Modern readers know how this idea can be abused. The text itself offers checks: the guru is a guru only by Siva's power, and the Master is "not the only guide". Scripture and, above all, one's own experience must confirm the teaching. That last point is the safeguard worth keeping in view.
Scripture, Experience and Reason
Abhinava: knowledge from scripture and following the Master, "[when] confirmed for oneself", leads to identity with Bhairava. Scripture is a form in which God appears, teaches what to seek and avoid, and is "like a boat". But it is useful only with personal experience. Mahesvarananda: "Being well versed in the nature of Deity is one thing, but being well versed in the sacred scripture is another."
Ksemaraja ranks Vasugupta, who "found" the Sivasutra, among the best teachers because he knew means (yukti), scripture and direct experience. So the Stanzas (which Ksemaraja attributes to Vasugupta) transmit the Sivasutra's secrets "in accord with scripture, sound reasoning and personal experience". The Spanda yogi "is not interested in wasting his time in useless discussion". He may reach the experience through faith in the Master or personal insight (svapratyaya) from devotion; Ksemaraja cites the Bhagavad Gita: the best yogis are those "who fix their thoughts on Me... filled with the highest faith".
The role of reason
Reason alone cannot help, but reason (upapatti) with direct insight (upalabdhi) is a means to liberation. Rajanaka Rama says the first sixteen Stanzas establish from experience (svanubhava) that one's nature is independent of the body; the rest treat it as the unity of all things. Right reasoning "uproots... the tree of duality", protects from lower views, and is "the best limb of Yoga and, indeed, the only truly effective one"; it blossoms into Pure Knowledge: "I am this universe and this universe is me".
| Recognition (Pratyabhijna) | Vibration (Spanda) | |
|---|---|---|
| Path | Instant, direct grasp of reality, no intermediary | Path through the experience of Spanda, based on practice (abhyasa) |
| Role of argument | Key: it instils the conviction needed | Secondary |
| Audience | Philosophical | The "tender hearted", who prefer intimacy with Siva to philosophical subtleties |
Ksemaraja insists the Spanda yogi must know Recognition philosophy, but when his argument runs long he refers readers to the Pratyabhijna for proofs of the Self.
The Four Means: A Framework
Dyczkowski announces that a sequel will translate the Stanzas with untranslated commentaries (this became The Stanzas on Vibration, 1992). Here he gives only the principles of practice, using Abhinava's Tantraloka, which divides all practice into "Four-fold Knowledge" (jnanacatuska).
Dyczkowski is careful here, and the point matters. Abhinava learnt this scheme from his Trika teacher Sambhunatha, who was not a native of Kashmir and probably brought new interpretations. Three of the four means are defined in the Malinivijayottaratantra, but "there is no evidence" anyone before Abhinava used them as interpretive categories. Only Ksemaraja, Abhinava's disciple, applies them to the Sivasutra and Stanzas, even naming the Sivasutra's sections "Expansions (unmesa)". The scheme "characterises remarkably well" the earlier practices, but it is an interpretive lens, not the Spanda texts' own structure.
Kashmiri Saivism rejects no discipline that genuinely raises consciousness. It is "in a sense, a science of spirituality" that lets any practice be effective. The yogi should use the means nearest the reality he seeks; the Master tries the highest first, then lower ones.
| Means | Level | Power | Sphere | Practice | Mode | Arithmetic analogy |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| No-Means (anupaya) | Transcendental | Bliss | Beyond all | None | Instant | (Already the answer) |
| Divine (sambhavopaya) | Supreme (para): unity; Siva | Will | Pure consciousness, free of thought | Direct awakening by grace, no meditation | Instant (akrama) | Knowing 2+2=4 at once |
| Empowered (saktopaya) | Middling (parapara): unity-in-difference; Sakti | Knowledge | Mind (cetas): reconverting thought to consciousness | Contemplating reality directly, without mantra | Direct and successive (kramakrama) | Adding 2 and 2 |
| Individual (anavopaya) | Inferior (apara): multiplicity; the soul (nara) | Action | Body, breath, objects | Mantra recitation, posture, meditation on forms, mystical letters, fixed points, outer ritual | Gradual (krama) | Counting 1, 2, 3, 4 |
Each corresponds to a phase of perception: direct intuition of the object in generic form (Divine), linking subject and object through the means of knowledge (Empowered), and analysis of particulars (Individual). The Malinivijaya defines the resulting absorptions (samavesa): sambhava, from "an intense awakening of consciousness... free of all thought-constructs"; sakta, from "pondering mindfully on reality"; anava, from "recitation of Mantra, postures of the body, meditation, the mystical letters and the formation of supports".
Every means is the supreme means
Any means can give both liberation and siddhis. Abhinava: "Although the causes may be various, the result... is nevertheless one, just as a jar can be destroyed [in various ways]." The three become six (adding those mediated by others), twelve (completed or not), twenty-four (blocked or smooth), and in fact countless, as impediments are countless.
The means is not a personal choice. Reality reveals itself as ignorance is removed, "in a sense... independently of our efforts". Siva shows himself "as He chooses, whether in all its fullness at once, or successively". Progress needs the descent of grace (saktipata).
No-Means (Anupaya)
One can enter supreme consciousness directly, without any means. All means finally lead to it: "'No practice' is the only practice which conforms fully to reality." Consciousness "is ever revealed", nothing can be added or taken away. Only when it sinks below the horizon of awareness does it seem distant, "like a goal to be attained".
- "There is nothing we can do to free ourselves." All practice depends on consciousness and cannot be the means to it.
- Seeking it by practice is like "a man who tries to see the sun by the light of a firefly".
- Liberation and bondage become synonymous, "just as the words 'jar' and 'pot' indicate the same object".
Not grounded in anything, this [Light] is not energy, the Great Goddess; nor is it God, the power-holder... It is not an object of meditation because there is none who meditates, nor is it he who meditates because there is nothing to meditate on... This [reality], the Great God, is not initiation, the initiator or the initiated.
Source cited by Dyczkowski
Anupaya is "the way of bliss" (anandopaya), rest in one's own nature (svatmavisranti), consciousness "already liberated before we even begin to practice (adimukta)".
Two levels of anupaya
| Level | Who | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| Higher | Rare souls born enlightened, who come to show the way | Literally no practice |
| Lower | Most yogis, once prepared | The subtlest means (suksmopaya): taught once, it matures in an instant |
For the truly fit disciple, the Master need only say that he shines by Siva's light and his true nature is the whole universe. "When the Master utters [his instructions] with words intent on the thoughtless, [the disciple] is liberated there and then, and all that remains... is the machine [of the body]." Merely gazing at the Master, he feels "the fragrance (vasana)" of the Master's consciousness. If he cannot receive it eyes open, he is told to close them, and the Master gives him a vision of former siddhas (siddhadarsana); his consciousness then expands "like the violent and rapid spread of poison through the body".
Glimpses in deep contemplation are transitory (kadacitka); the highest realisation "happens once and need never occur again": "the Self shines forth but once". Anupaya is best exemplified in Recognition theology; Abhinava cites Somananda: once Siva "is known just once through the firm insight born of right knowledge, the scripture and the Master's words, no means serves any purpose and even contemplation [is of no further use]."
Dyczkowski notes that "the Stanzas themselves never refer directly to enlightenment as an experience of recognition". The identification of Spanda realisation with Pratyabhijna recognition is made by the commentators. He thinks it is justified ("there can be little doubt"), but this is one more place where the later synthesis is read back into the root text.
Ksemaraja's description of the moment: after countless births, the yogi's activity "is suddenly interrupted by the recognition of his own transcendent nature, full of a novel and supreme bliss. He is like one struck with awe, and in this attitude of astonishment (vismayamudra) achieves the Great Expansion", and his hold on it "never slackens".
The Divine Means (Sambhavopaya)
In anupaya only Paramasiva exists, beyond practice. A little lower, a subtle distinction appears between goal and path: this is the Divine Means. The yogi enters the universal ego directly "by the subtle exertion (udyama) of its freedom". He attends not to any partial aspect but to the whole plenitude, based on Siva's own state (sambhavavastha), where only freedom operates.
Whoever recognises thought-free consciousness as his basic state "can practice in any way he chooses; even the most common Mantra will lead him directly to the highest state." The other absorptions mature in this same awareness.
The first moment of perception
This awareness is the pure ego manifest at the initial moment of perception (prathamikalocana):
That which shines and is directly grasped in the first moment of perception while it is still free of differentiated representations and reflects upon itself is... said to be the will. Just as an object appears directly to one whose eyes are open without the intervention of any mental cogitation, so, for some, does Siva's nature.
Source cited by Dyczkowski
The Divine Means is "a 'thoughtless thought', a 'processless process', at the juncture between Being and Becoming". The yogi must catch the first moment of awareness (adiparamarsa), not move on from the first pure sensation, and return to its source in "I". Observing without labouring over particulars, he enters his own subjectivity, supportless (niralamba) and "not directed anywhere outside itself (ananyamukhapreksin)".
Just as an object, which is not seen clearly at first even when the mind attends to it carefully, becomes later fully evident when observed with the effort exerted through one's own [inherent] strength (svabala), in the same way, when [the yogi] lays hold of that same power, then whatever [he perceives manifests to him] quickly according to its true nature.
Stanzas on Vibration
When this goes smoothly, will, knowledge and action fuse into the Trident (trisula): the subject free of obscuration (niranjana), which the Kaula schools call "the stainless", and the Spanda tradition equates with the dawning of vibration (spandodaya).
Practices of the Divine Means in the Stanzas
Spanda practice is based on intent (aunmukhya) unrestricted to any object. So Spanda is directly experienced whenever a powerful intention arises, as in intense anger, joy, grief or confusion (see Chapter Three). Two further practices:
- Intense prayer. Directing full attention to Siva, "entreating Him fervently and without break", the yogi's will merges with Siva's. He sees that Siva ordains every act and perception, and unlike "the worldly man who cannot dream as he wishes", he shapes even dreams.
- Awareness through sleep. By grace he keeps awareness of his pure perceiving subjectivity in deep sleep and in turiya; when breath is suspended in higher contemplation, he "does not succumb to sleep as do less developed yogis".
Perfection in the Divine Means equals the goal of Spanda practice: constant, alert attention to the perceiving subject, unchanged in every state.
Centering
The Spanda yogi looks for the Centre (madhya) between one cognition and the next, where the thought-free unmesa is found. Abhinava:
... the expansion of [consciousness] or the creative intuition (pratibha) [experienced] in the interval which divides two [moments] of differentiated perception. It is here that they arise and disappear... None can deny that a gap exists between perceptions insofar as two moments of thought are invariably divided. This [gap] is the undifferentiated unity of all the countless manifestations.
Abhinavagupta
The same holds outwardly: each change of appearance passes through a phase of pure luminosity between the end of one form and the start of the next. The world extends from Centre to Centre; the ignorant, cut off from the Centre, experience it as Maya.
The Samvitprakasa, quoted by Bhagavatotpala: "Just as a cloth which is naturally white, once dyed, cannot change colour without [first] becoming white again, similarly the pure power of awareness, once coloured by form, is pure [again] at the Centre where that form is abandoned and from whence it proceeds to another."
The pulse of each perception
Ksemaraja's Spandasamdoha analyses every perception as a pulse whose phases reverse depending on viewpoint:
| Viewpoint | Expansion (unmesa) | Contraction (nimesa) |
|---|---|---|
| Object | Initial desire to perceive (didrksa) | Withdrawal from the previous object |
| Subject | Falling away of the previous perception | Initial desire to perceive |
| Higher level (Utpaladeva) | Isvara (external manifestation) | Sadasiva (internal manifestation) |
The unity of both is visible to everyone at every moment, but within Maya it is clearly manifest only at the juncture. There "resides the void (kha) of consciousness", digesting all psycho-physical processes. Abhinava: the self-reflective awareness "present at the beginning and end of each perception, within which the entire universe is dissolved away without residue, is called... the universal vibration (samanyaspanda)".
To reside in the Centre is to follow "the law of totality (gramadharma)" beyond mind (unmana). The power in the Centre (madhyasakti) is the eternal Present. To be established there is "to abide without a break in Rama, the supreme enjoyer", Siva, who pervades fourteen aspects of experience: moving, standing, dreaming, waking, opening and closing the eyes, running, jumping, exertion, sense-knowledge, the three aspects of mind, living beings, names and all actions.
Through the gap the yogi plunges into eyes-closed absorption, then emerges to pervade the space between Centres with Cosmic Bliss (jagadananda). The obscuring power that "hems the Centre in on both sides with thought-constructs" loses its hold. The pure ego is in all things, and all things in it.
Dyczkowski makes an important admission: "In the Spanda tradition, as recorded in the Stanzas on Vibration, no such ego is recognised." The Stanzas speak of each person's "own nature" (svasvabhava) as Siva; the later commentators identified this with the pure "I" (aham) of Pratyabhijna. He considers it a "natural development", and it may be. But it is a development, and readers comparing this book with the Stanzas themselves will find the "I" language belongs mostly to the commentaries.
AHAM: The Pulse of "I"
Abhinava's esoteric reading of AHAM ("I") describes the inner cycle of the pure ego. The reasoning: thought is inner speech; the mind is an outpouring of consciousness; consciousness itself resounds with supreme speech (para vac). So the fifty letters of Sanskrit symbolise the elements of consciousness's activity, as words build sentences and the forces (kala) build categories, then the 118 world-systems (bhuvana).
| Letter | Position | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| A | First letter of alphabet | Anuttara, the absolute; Siva, the source |
| Ha | Last letter | Completion of emanation; visarga that casts inner out and draws outer in, "like the breath"; Sakti |
| M (bindu, anusvara) | Dot after the vowels, before the consonants | The individual subject's subtle vibration; the life-force (jivakala); zero-point between the "negative" series (vowels, processes within Siva) and the "positive" series (consonants, processes within Sakti) |
Bindu is "a point without area", the pivot of the wheel from A to Ha, the Void at the centre. It holds subject, object and means in potential, and is the knower: like "a man who knows the scriptures but having no occasion to explain them to others silently bears this knowledge within himself". It is the union of Siva and Sakti "in a state of heightened potency", at the threshold of both emission and absorption.
- Emission: A → Ha → M.
- Withdrawal: M → Ha → A.
- The two alternate in the rotation (ghurnana) of "I"-awareness.
At the micro level: A is the subject beginning to rise toward the object; A to Ha is sensation emerging (the fifty letters); M is the subject at rest after perceiving, which merges back into A, from which emission flows again.
"I make the universe manifest within myself in the Sky of Consciousness. I, who am the universe, am its creator!": this awareness is the way in which one becomes Bhairava. "All of manifest creation is reflected within me, I cause it to persist": this awareness is the way in which one becomes the universe. "The universe dissolves within me. I who am the flame of the [one] great and eternal fire of consciousness": seeing thus one achieves peace.
Abhinavagupta
The Divine Means is not a technique but a recognition held steady: catch the first instant of each perception, rest in the gap between thoughts, and find there the "I" that creates, sustains and dissolves. Its fruit is called "Mastery over the Wheel of Energies" (cakresvaratvasiddhi), because the liberated soul now governs the cycle of powers as Siva does.
The Path to Liberation, Part Two: The Empowered and Individual Means
The second half of the final chapter covers the two lower means. The Empowered Means (saktopaya) works in the mind, purifying thought until it rests as pure awareness; its great instrument is Mantra, which leads into a long and rewarding analysis of speech and the "mass of sounds". The Individual Means (anavopaya), which the Stanzas themselves never teach, is drawn from Ksemaraja's reading of the Sivasutra: Tantric yoga, breath, the burning of the body in visualised fire, the Fourth State and its spread through waking, dream and sleep, and the yogi's repeated falls.
The Empowered Means (Saktopaya)
All practices taught in the Stanzas are internal. Where ritual is mentioned, it is read as inner process. Divine practice centres on one's own nature as Siva; Empowered practice on His power. "Practising the Divine Means, the yogi plunges, as it were, straight into the fire of consciousness; practising the Empowered Means he merges with its rays." Both centre on ultimate reality, since the power is no less absolute than its possessor.
The yogi attends to the powers active in life as particular pulsations (visesaspanda) within the universal pulse (samanyaspanda), rising from particular to universal until he reaches pure Being (satta), "the greatest of all universals (mahasamanya)". So Maya's creative power becomes the very means of realisation.
The second instant of perception
The Divine Means works at the first instant; the Empowered Means works at the second, when the subject forms mental representations. It operates in the mind (cetas) and aims at purifying thought (vikalpasamskara). Thought distinguishes particulars and so seems to fragment reality, clouding consciousness "like a mirror by a child's breath".
The [fettered soul] is like a dancing girl who although wishing to leave the dancehall is collared by the doorkeeper of thought and thrown back onto the stage of Maya.
Abhinavagupta
As thought-forms decrease, thought-free awareness strengthens until everything appears as pure Being (sattamatra). The purified intuition gives both siddhi and liberation; consciousness becomes "a well-polished mirror". Abhinava: like a man long ill who forgets his pain once healthy, those grounded in thought-free awareness no longer remember their former bondage.
Thought is not the enemy
Here Dyczkowski makes a point that distinguishes this tradition from many meditation schools:
- Thought-constructs do not affect consciousness. They neither break nor add to the Light; they are consciousness perceiving through its power of reflection.
- They are products of consciousness, not of the objects they represent.
- Thought is analytic and synthetic and useful; "It does not consist merely of false mental constructs... that need to be wholly rejected."
- Thought obscures only as doubt, vacillating between alternatives. Once this conflicting duality (dvaitadhivasa) is removed, it rests as "thought-less thought".
The method is certainty (niscaya), not suppression. The yogi removes every doubt that he is other than Siva by developing the thought "I am Siva", until it affirms itself as awareness beyond thought. Abhinava: "Just as the man who thinks intensely that he is a sinner becomes such, just so one who thinks himself to be Siva... becomes Siva." The certainty grows clearer until its object becomes maximally apparent (sphutatama). The yogi reflects on it repeatedly, as lovers, Abhinava says, must see and think of the beloved again and again.
| Patanjali-style cessation | Empowered Means | |
|---|---|---|
| Attitude to thought | Fluctuations to be stilled | Consciousness itself, to be purified |
| Method | Restraint | Replacing doubt with certainty |
| End | Isolation of the spirit | Thought resting as thought-less thought in the whole |
The Great Sacrificial Rite
The Empowered yogi is initiated into the Great Sacrifice (mahayaga), "eternally enacted at the interface between the inner and outer aspects of consciousness", by a direct infusion of awareness from the Master. Every element of outer ritual becomes inner:
| Ritual element | Inner meaning |
|---|---|
| Bathing (snana) | Immersing thought in the white ashes of duality burnt in the fire of consciousness |
| Worship (puja) | Uniting all that pleases the senses in the oneness of consciousness |
| Mantra | The eternal resonance of awareness, the pulse of the Heart |
| Repetition (japa) | Every activity, perception, breath or thought arising while immersed in universal awareness |
| Meditation (dhyana) | Whatever he spontaneously imagines, as the outpouring of creativity |
| Gesture (mudra) | Any posture, as he "staggers about" (ghurnita), drunk with the wine of self-realisation |
| Oblation | Offering all sensations to the fire of subjectivity, which is inflamed (uddipita) |
The outer rite of the Individual Means leads naturally into this inner rite, and when practice matures it merges with the spontaneous activity of consciousness: fullness (purnata).
Just as a horse driven here and there over plains, hills and dales follows the will of its rider, so also consciousness, driven by various expedients, quiescent or terrific, abandoning duality, becomes Bhairava. Just as by looking repeatedly at one's own face in a mirror one comes to know that it is the same, so also [one sees] in the mirror of mental representations of meditation, ritual and worship one's own Self as Bhairava.
Abhinavagupta
Beyond purity and impurity
Illumined by Pure Knowledge, the yogi transcends right and wrong, purity and impurity, convinced that consciousness is unaffected by any action. The Malinivijaya: "All here is enjoined and all prohibited. This alone... is prescribed as obligatory, namely that the mind be firmly applied to the true reality. It matters little how this is achieved." Such a one, "even if he eats poison", is unaffected, "as lotus petals by water".
- Impurity is only seeming separation from consciousness.
- Nobody is ever bound. Believing bondage exists, and contrasting it with liberation, is itself ignorance.
- "He who considers himself to be free is free indeed, while he who thinks himself bound remains so." The bound believe themselves dull, conditioned by karma, sullied by sin; countering that conviction is freedom.
- Abhinava: "Nothing new is achieved... [only] the idea is eradicated that the luminous being shines not."
- If illusion were separate from consciousness it would be "the shadow of a shadow"; if not, it is consciousness itself. Kallata: bondage, binder and bound are one. "Siva binds Himself by Himself."
Dyczkowski reports the antinomian strand of the Tantras plainly and does not comment on it. Two cautions. First, in the Malinivijaya this is a statement about the liberated mind's relation to ritual rules, not a licence for harm; the "poison" image is about rules of purity. Second, the parallel claim that thinking oneself free makes one free is meant for a yogi already well along the path, after initiation and grace. Detached from that context, both ideas have historically been used to excuse conduct the tradition itself would not accept.
Attention to the pulse
At the Divine level the yogi lays hold of his own strength (svabala), the power that moves body, senses and mind, and every thought and the ego are annulled instantly. At the Empowered level he attends (avadhana) to the recurrent movement of the powers through the cycle of perception. Thoughts are seen as part of the universal process, purified and no longer binding. Ksemaraja therefore says the Spanda teachings concern the Empowered Means most directly. The yogi alert to the pulse "is then truly awake, not only literally, but also... awake to his authentic nature".
When attention slackens, the movement happens unconsciously, and thoughts seem to have autonomous existence, as in dreams. "Man... becomes a victim of his states of consciousness."
Speech and Thought
Spanda doctrine concerns not only thought but its vehicle, speech. Since the Stanzas are for advanced yogis, they ignore outer discipline and work at the Empowered sphere and above, where speech is pure inner awareness (vimarsa).
| Level | Name | Nature | Example |
|---|---|---|---|
| Supreme | para vac | The universal pulse of consciousness; "the Heart of the Supreme Lord" (Utpaladeva); beyond language | Pure "I" |
| Intuitive | pasyanti ("the seeing") | Pure intuition (pratibha) grasping meaning before language; word, meaning and act undivided | Birds migrating, the cock crowing at dawn, infants sucking; instinctive response |
| Intermediate | madhyama | Inner discourse (antahsamjalpa) of thought; the ratiocinating mind | Silent thinking |
| Corporeal | vaikhari | Articulated sound | Spoken words |
Infant speech development mirrors the actualisation of every spoken word: instinctive response, then the link between words and objects, then concepts.
Language rests on an inborn power
"Personal experience clearly proves that thought is invariably associated with speech." "Language is the fabric from which our world of ideas is woven", including memory, emotion and the ordering of sensation. And language cannot be only convention (sanketa):
To learn a convention we need an innate ability to grasp meaning, which is not itself learned. Without it we would be trapped in an infinite chain of signs pointing to signs. Telling someone that "pot" means "jar" helps only if he can link "jar" to the object. So language must be grounded in the pure cognitive awareness (prama) of consciousness. Abhinava: one whose awareness is obscured grasps only the succession of sounds and can repeat them "as would a parrot".
This is one of the book's most contemporary-sounding passages: an argument, close to later debates about meaning and symbol grounding, that semantics cannot be reduced to rules about signs.
The mass of sounds and Matrka
- Spoken phonemes are gross forms of phonemic energies (varnagrama) held in consciousness: the "mass of sounds" (sabdarasi), the light of consciousness containing all things.
- The power through which this potential becomes speech and the world of denotation is Matrka, "the mother of the universe", who holds it "as does a pregnant woman her child". She appears at the second movement of consciousness, as it turns slightly from itself, with faint traces of objectivity (amrsyacchaya).
- The wheel of Matrka's powers (matrkacakra) consists of the energies in AHAM. Grasped whole at the source, they elevate; split up, they become the obscuring forces (kala).
He who is deprived of his power by the forces of obscuration and a victim of the powers arising from the mass of sounds is called the fettered soul.
Stanzas on Vibration
"No mental representation can arise that is not penetrated by speech", so these powers are always ready to obscure.
| Phoneme group | Presiding goddess | Faculty |
|---|---|---|
| Gutturals | Brahmani | Intellect (buddhi) |
| Palatals | Mahesvari | Ego (ahankara) |
| Cerebrals | Kaumari | Mind (manas) |
| Dentals | Narayani | Hearing |
| Labials | Varahi | Touch |
| Semivowels | Aindri | Sight |
| Sibilants | Camunda | Taste |
| Vowels | Mahalaksmi | Smell |
Known as emanations of the Lord, these energies free; unknown, they become "Mahaghora" ("greatly terrible"). Abhinava: they then conceal the wonder (camatkara) of consciousness with thought, "inducing doubt and fear"; but rightly understood, "they bestow freedom in this very life", because thoughts, though coloured by words, no longer bind.
Mantra
"A few words we may hear or read can inspire us with joy, fear or sadness." The power in language that binds through thought can free through Mantra.
- Etymology: manana (reflection, continuous awareness of universal consciousness) + trana (saving). Mantra "saves" by freeing the mind from transmigration.
- It works by "a progressive heightening of the reflective awareness which is the aesthetic rapture that threads through each state of being".
- Mahesvarananda: Mantra is reflection on one's omnipresent consciousness and protection from the fear of one's own limitations.
- Not bound to convention. Mantra is language directed inward, like the image of a deity: a symbol with no assigned meaning, so it can mean more. Rajanaka Rama: Mantras are pure because "not tainted by a conventionally accepted meaning".
Abhinava: "A waterwheel moves a series of machines connected to it... by the force of its unified impulse. In the same way, by the power of the one continuous act of awareness (anusamdhana) which corresponds to the incessant arising of Mantra, the deities of all Mantras... become automatically propitious."
Mantra moves up the levels
| Level | Mantra's form |
|---|---|
| Individual | Recited in time with the breath, as a support for concentration |
| Empowered | Energised with the pulse of consciousness; pure thought of the Mantra replaces scattered thought of objects |
| Divine | The silent consciousness of "I": AHAM, the Great Mantra, the unspoken life of all beings |
Ksemaraja: all-embracing I-ness (purnahanta) is "the mistress of all the letters from 'A' to 'Ksa'", the unstruck sound (anahata), "the great unspoken Mantra which, eternally manifest, is the life of all beings. Here [in the Spanda school] it is called the vibration of the Lord."
"Mantric energy is not to be sought in the actual sound or form of the Mantra." The arrangement of syllables is only a channel. Mantra and reciter must be rooted in one reality. Rajanaka Rama: Mantras are "a mere flux of phonemic sounds, powerless to bend even a blade of grass" unless the adept touches Siva's oneness; without that awareness they are "as fruitless as autumn clouds". Before insight, Mantric power gives only limited (niyata) results. After it, "all Mantras can do all things", because he knows how they rise and fall.
Seizing that strength, Mantras, endowed with the power of omniscience, perform their functions, as do the senses of the embodied. It is there alone that they, quiescent and stainless, dissolve along with the adept's mind and so partake of Siva's nature.
Stanzas on Vibration
At the end, "his mind is one with Mantra"; Siva's power of necessity (niyatisakti) is transcended, and the yogi's mind, the source of all Mantras, can use any of them for any end, including liberation.
The promise that the realised adept can make "all Mantras do all things" is a traditional claim about siddhi, reported by Dyczkowski without assessment. The more useful and testable part of the doctrine is psychological: repetition with full attention steadies the mind, and meaning is not in the syllables but in the awareness. Readers can take the first claim as tradition and the second as instruction.
The Individual Means (Anavopaya)
Ksemaraja admits that none of the Stanzas' practices belong to the Individual Means. Strictly, then, it is not Spanda doctrine. But Ksemaraja reads the third and longest section of the Sivasutra as an exposition of it, and since the two texts have long been linked, Dyczkowski follows him, presenting it as "a possible mystical journey of individualised consciousness".
Three first aphorisms, three selves
| Sivasutra section | Opening aphorism | Means |
|---|---|---|
| First | "The Self is consciousness (caitanya)" | Divine |
| Second | "The mind is Mantra" | Empowered |
| Third | "The Self is the mind" | Individual |
At the Individual level the processes that link subject and object take over the role of the subject. The universal Self recedes; the ego of perceptions, thoughts and emotions emerges at the juncture. This Self moves (atati) from state to state and body to body, carried by the subtle body called "the City of Eight" (puryastaka).
[The soul] is bound by the City of Eight that resides in the mind, intellect and ego and consists of the arising of the [five] subtle elements. He helplessly suffers worldly pleasure and pain which consists of the arising of mental representations born of that [City of Eight] and so its existence subjects him to transmigration.
Stanzas on Vibration
Here the mind is extroverted; its creative power is reduced to forming thoughts and resolutions (sankalpa) that issue in bodily action. So practice deals with objective contents, from breath (prana) to body and environment, and centres on the power of action.
How the means interlock
- Individual leads to Empowered, which leads to Divine; all aim to purify thought and expand consciousness.
- All three operate together as dimensions of one experience. Ksemaraja ends section one by saying the Divine Means includes mystic absorption in the vitality of Mantra, showing that "the Divine nature possesses [every] power".
- Repeated aphorisms show that one practice belongs to several means:
| Practice | Divine level | Individual level |
|---|---|---|
| Effort | None needed; the state dawns | Effort to reach the same state. (At the Empowered level, "effort achieves the goal": the effort to bring Mantra to fruition.) |
| Turiya in the three states | "Violently digesting" (hathapaka) the three states in the Fourth: sudden, complete | First at the junctures, then spreading "like oil extending slowly through a piece of cloth": gradual |
The rise and fall of the yogi
Until sudden, complete enlightenment, every yogi rises and falls, since any contemplative state is transitory (kadacitka); the lower his basic state, the more he falls. The Sivasutra's last section therefore teaches how to rise, how one falls, and how to recover.
- Rising means moving to a higher means; falling means returning to a lower one.
- The measure is attentiveness (avadhana). The last aphorism of section two warns: if Pure Knowledge slackens, he will fall "to dream the dream of thought-constructs".
- Example ladder: diverting breath into the Central Channel (susumna), where it rises as kundalini, gives the Empowered state; making it his basic state gives the Divine plane (sambhavapada).
- The Individual Means is both a starting point and "the yogi's abiding standby if he falls."
Tantric Yoga
Patanjali defines yoga as "quelling the fluctuations of the mind" (cittavrttinirodha), aiming to separate spirit (purusa) from matter (prakrti), though "yoga" means "union". Here yoga combines union and cessation: removing the traces of differentiated perception by uniting all categories (tattva) in consciousness. Jayaratha: "Yoga is the [act] of uniting [all] the metaphysical principles together within consciousness."
Ksemaraja takes his model from two Tantras he valued most, the Netratantra and the Svacchandabhairavatantra. He lists Patanjali's eight limbs (restraints, disciplines, posture, breath control, withdrawal, focus, meditation, contemplation) and rejects them as capable only of limited attainments (mitasiddhi), preferring the Netratantra's higher eight limbs, which lead to what "speech cannot express, nor the eye see".
Ksemaraja's dismissal of Classical Yoga is sectarian, a common Tantric move of ranking rival systems lower. Patanjali's goal is not small within its own terms. Dyczkowski reports the ranking without endorsing it, and readers should treat it as Ksemaraja's position.
Purifying the elements
The preliminary of all Tantric yoga is "purification of the elements" (bhutasuddhi): homologising body and cosmos so the body becomes a fit vessel for the Deity. Ksemaraja equates this with meditation (dhyana), which the Malinivijaya says characterises the Individual Means. Two methods:
| Method | Practice |
|---|---|
| Contemplation of dissolution (layabhavana) | Visualise all reality, world-systems, categories, forces, Mantras and letters arising through the body, then absorb lower into higher: gross elements → subtle elements → senses → mind → source, rising from waking to turiya. The Vijnanabhairava: meditate on the All "until, at the end, the mind dissolves away". |
| Meditation on the Fire (dahacinta) | Visualise the body burning with the Fire of Time (kalagni). Letters of the alphabet are placed on the limbs from the left toe to the crown; the fire rises with attention, burning bodily consciousness and differentiated perception to white ashes. The Vijnanabhairava: "Visualise the fortress [of your body] burning... then at the end peace manifests." |
The Fire of Time lies beneath the hell worlds at the bottom of the Cosmic Egg (brahmanda), issuing from Ananta, a form of Siva who floats on a boat in the causal waters, mind fixed on Bhairava. Its flames heat the hells and, at the end of each creation, rise to destroy the old order. At the Divine level the yogi simply witnesses objectivity withdraw into "I" "like fuel poured into a raging fire"; at the Individual level he must imagine it.
Ksemaraja's limbs of practice
| Limb | Ksemaraja's version |
|---|---|
| Posture (asana) | Attention fixed between inhalation and exhalation; awareness absorbed into the upward breath (udana) in the central channel. The firm seat is Siva's omnipresence. |
| Breath (pranayama) | Cleanse the channels with alternate-nostril breathing, then simply attend without control; breaths become equal and merge into the central current. True pranayama begins: breath moves from the Heart to twelve fingers above the head and into the void. The Viravalitantra: "Breath control which merely inflicts pain on the body is not to be practised." |
| Focus (dharana) | Breath sent to centres of the five elements: Earth in the throat, Water in the glottis, Fire at the navel, Wind in the left big toe, then Ether at the crown, giving mastery of the elements |
| Meditation (dhyana) | Stilling the gunas; the object is the pure subject, known only to himself (svasamvedya) |
| Contemplation (samadhi) | Awareness of self and surroundings become one: identity with Siva |
Dyczkowski summarises techniques, but this is description, not instruction. The placements of the element centres (Earth in the throat, Wind in the toe) follow Ksemaraja's specific texts and differ from the better-known chakra systems. Breath practice that changes breathing patterns is traditionally learnt from a teacher, and the Tantra quoted itself warns against forcing it. Dyczkowski's own physiological glosses (digestion, "anabolesis and catabolesis", circulation of gases to the cells) are his modern paraphrase, not claims of the source.
The Fourth State and Beyond
The goal of this yoga is turiya, the Fourth State, and finally turiyatita, Beyond the Fourth.
| State | Corresponds to | Siva's power |
|---|---|---|
| Waking (object predominates) | His activity (vyapara) | Action |
| Dreaming (means predominates) | His lordship (adhipatya) | Knowledge |
| Deep sleep (subject predominates) | Absence of both | Will |
| Fourth (turiya) | His exertion (prerakatva), holding all cycles of creation and destruction | |
| Beyond the Fourth (turiyatita) | His rest in his own nature | Consciousness |
The first three, cut off from the last two, are transmigratory; the last two are supramundane (alaukika).
| Turiya | Turiyatita | |
|---|---|---|
| Is | "I-ness" (ahanta), pure awareness flowing through the three states | "I" (aham), the supreme subject; Paramasiva's own state |
| Yogi | Still actively eliminating duality | Duality gone; all one with consciousness |
Proof that turiya persists in deep sleep: we recall that we slept well. If turiya stopped, all states would end. It is not merely psychological: in the Pratyabhijnahrdayam, Ksemaraja calls it "the Goddess of Consciousness", the union of creation, persistence and destruction, "eternally full [of all things] and [yet] void [of diversity]".
Names of turiya
| Name | Used by / state | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Fourth (turiya) | The common man | He knows only that it is beyond the three |
| Beyond Form (rupatita) | The yogi | Transcends the "naked form" of deep sleep |
| The Whole (pracaya) | Followers of knowledge | The universe gathered in one place |
| Supra-mental (manonmana) | Turiya in waking | Living in the world free of disturbing thought |
| Infinite (ananta) | Turiya in dream | Free of time and space limits |
| All Things (sarvartha) | Turiya in deep sleep | Freedom found in the most contracted state |
Following turiya to its peak, the yogi enters Beyond the Fourth, "the vast, waveless ocean of the consciousness and bliss", becomes Siva, the Free One (svacchanda), and "wanders freely, practising the Yoga of Freedom".
Holding the state
"He must forcefully lay hold of it within himself and not release his grip until it becomes permanent." Before that, he inevitably falls: the limiting forces, the energies of Matrka, "throw him down whenever they possibly can". Further dangers:
- Resting content with siddhis.
- Emerging from introversion. In absorption, breath, intellect, mind, senses and ego are suspended. He must rise, since "it is inherent in the very nature of reality that it should move out of itself". By attending to the pulse of the breath as it moves out of the absolute, he carries the unity into body and world; failing this, he is again bound by embodiment.
- The play of opposites. The worst fall: chasing pleasure and fleeing pain, he acts (karma) and drops to the lowest embodied subject (sakala), to climb back by grace from one order of subject to the next.
Using delight
"The remedy should suit the defect." The yogi seeks turiya in the wonder (camatkara) or delight (ananda) of intense pleasure: "the sense of satisfaction one feels after a good meal or the aesthetic delight... when listening to good music or the pleasure of sexual union with the Tantric consort or even solitary sexual excitation". In such moments he can touch his Siva nature through "empowered contact" (saktasparsa), and by holding the awareness, experience it constantly. What prevents this is craving (abhilasa), which turns attention to the circumstance rather than the state.
This passage draws on Vijnanabhairava-type teachings and is reported without moralising, which is fair scholarship. The point is precise and easy to miss: the pleasure is not the goal; the practice is to notice the awareness that is delighted and not be pulled toward the object. Without that shift, the tradition says, the same moment simply feeds craving.
The Sudden End
To be free of rising and falling, "the yogi must see reality perfectly and completely. This insight is itself liberation." The Tantra: "He who perceives reality directly, even for the brief moment it takes to blink, is liberated that very instant and never reborn again."
Body and mind go on as "mere outer coverings". "The yogi's body is the universe, the senses the energies that vitalise it, his mind Mantra, the rhythm of his breath the pulse of time." Beyond all practice, he sees he has always been free, and that "his journey through the dark land of Maya was nothing but a dream, a construct of his own imagination". The book ends there.
The four means are four distances from the same centre. The Divine catches the first instant of perception; the Empowered purifies the second through certainty and Mantra; the Individual works with breath, body and imagination, and is where everyone returns after a fall. All of them aim at one capacity: attention that does not slacken, so that the pulse of consciousness is seen in every state, including pleasure and pain.
| Key term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| upaya / upeya | Means / goal |
| anupaya | "No-Means": realisation without practice |
| sambhavopaya | Divine Means: will, first instant, no thought |
| saktopaya | Empowered Means: knowledge, purifying thought |
| anavopaya | Individual Means: action, body, breath, ritual |
| jivanmukti | Liberation while living |
| madhya | The Centre between cognitions |
| vikalpasamskara | Purification of thought |
| niscaya | Certainty, e.g. "I am Siva" |
| para / pasyanti / madhyama / vaikhari | The four levels of speech |
| Matrka | Power of speech, "mother" of the universe |
| sabdarasi | "Mass of sounds": phonemic energies in consciousness |
| mahayaga | The Great (inner) Sacrifice |
| bhutasuddhi | Purification of the elements |
| turiya / turiyatita | The Fourth / Beyond the Fourth |
| avadhana | Attentiveness, the measure of progress |
Reflect and practise. Notice one small moment of real delight today, a taste, a sound, and turn attention from the object to the one who is delighted, for a single breath. Separately, catch one recurring doubt about yourself and test the Empowered Means: replace it, firmly and repeatedly, with its opposite, and watch what changes.
Master Synthesis: The Whole Doctrine in One View
Read as a whole, The Doctrine of Vibration makes one argument in seven movements. The absolute is consciousness; consciousness is both Light and Awareness; awareness is activity; activity is Sakti, inseparable from Siva; Sakti operates as wheels of energies, including our own senses; so the body and its perceptions are already divine; and liberation is attending to this pulse until it is never lost. This section pulls the threads together.
The Argument in Seven Steps
| Step | Chapter | Claim | What follows |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | I | Integral monism: there is one reality, consciousness, and the world is real as its manifestation, not an illusion over it | The world need not be denied to be transcended |
| 2 | II | Consciousness is Light (prakasa), which makes things appear, and Awareness (vimarsa), by which it knows itself | A merely luminous absolute would be "as inert as the light of a crystal" |
| 3 | III | Awareness is Spanda: movement without motion, change without loss of identity | Being and Becoming are one; will, knowledge and action are its three moments |
| 4 | IV | Siva and Sakti are power-holder and power, never two | The goal (Siva) and the means (Sakti) coincide |
| 5 | V | Sakti works as wheels: the Wheel of Energies, of Vamesvari, of the senses, all turning round a void hub | Bondage is being turned by the wheel; freedom is being its Lord |
| 6 | VI | The senses and body are a sacred circle of goddesses around the Self | Perception, pleasure and beauty become paths, not obstacles |
| 7 | VII | Liberation is in this life, by grace and by four means that differ only in distance from the centre | Attention (avadhana) that does not slacken is the whole practice |
Five Ideas That Make Spanda Distinctive
1. The absolute moves. Against Advaita Vedanta, for which Brahman is changeless and the world an appearance (vivarta), and against Samkhya, which splits spirit from matter, the Spanda school says the highest reality is dynamic. "Movement" here is not change in space or time, but the self-reflection of consciousness, which Dyczkowski calls "movement without motion". This lets the school hold that the world is real without making the absolute less than absolute.
2. Consciousness is a person. The absolute is not an impersonal ground. It has will, knowledge and action, is called Sankara, Bhairava, Siva, and can be prayed to. Dyczkowski repeatedly stresses the intimacy of the Spanda yogi's relation to Siva, which is part of why Ksemaraja calls this path suited to the "tender hearted".
3. The gap is the gate. Every perception, every breath, every thought has a beginning and an end, and between them a Centre (madhya) where consciousness is briefly free of content. The practices of Chapters VI and VII (unmesa, Bhairavimudra, Kramamudra, catching the first moment of perception) all exploit this one fact.
4. Thought is not the enemy. Thought-constructs are consciousness itself. They bind only as doubt. The method is purifying thought into certainty ("I am Siva"), not stopping it. This sets the school apart from the cessation model of Patanjali and from Buddhist schools that treat conceptualisation as the root error.
5. Everything is usable. Anger, joy, fear, confusion, a good meal, music, sexual pleasure are moments where the pulse is unusually vivid. The yogi is not told to avoid them but to turn attention from the object to the awareness that is moved.
| Advaita Vedanta | Yogacara Buddhism | Spanda / Kashmiri Saivism | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ultimate | Brahman: pure being-consciousness, inactive | Mind-only; momentary cognitions; finally empty | Siva: consciousness that is Light and Awareness, active |
| World | Appearance (vivarta) | Projection of consciousness | Real manifestation of consciousness |
| Self | Witness (saksin) | No permanent self | Universal "I" in every subject |
| Practice | Discrimination, renunciation | Insight into emptiness | Attending to the pulse in all states |
| Goal | Release from appearance | Nirvana | Liberation in life, with the world embraced |
Where the Synthesis Is Later Than the Texts
A thread running through the book, and through this guide's critical notes, is that "Spanda doctrine" as usually presented is a composite. Dyczkowski is admirably frank about this:
- The Stanzas never call enlightenment "recognition"; that is Pratyabhijna language.
- The Stanzas recognise no "pure ego"; they speak of each person's "own nature" (svasvabhava). The "I" (aham) language is the commentators'.
- The four means were learnt by Abhinava from Sambhunatha, a non-Kashmiri, and there is no evidence they were used before him. Only Ksemaraja reads them into the Stanzas and Sivasutra.
- None of the Stanzas' practices belong to the Individual Means; that section of Chapter VII is built entirely from Ksemaraja's reading of the Sivasutra.
- Ksemaraja attributes the Stanzas to Vasugupta; other commentators credit Kallata. The Introduction discusses this, and the question remains open.
None of this makes the book less useful. It makes it more honest than many popular accounts that present Kashmir Saivism as one seamless system. But it means the reader should treat the book as two things at once: a reconstruction of an early ninth-century doctrine, and a sympathetic presentation of the eleventh-century synthesis that absorbed it. Later scholarship, notably by Dyczkowski's own Oxford teacher Alexis Sanderson and his students, has done much more to map the Tantric sources and lineages, and on several historical points the Introduction's account is now dated. Dyczkowski's own later work, including his translation of the Stanzas with four commentaries promised in Chapter VII, extends this book.
Glossary of Key Terms
The terms below recur across the book. Each is given with the meaning it has in the Spanda school, which can differ from its use elsewhere in Indian thought.
| Term | Meaning in this book |
|---|---|
| Spanda | Vibration, pulse: the self-reflective activity of consciousness; "movement without motion" |
| samanyaspanda / visesaspanda | Universal pulse / particular pulses within it |
| prakasa | Light: consciousness as what makes things appear |
| vimarsa | Awareness: consciousness reflecting on itself; the life of the Light |
| Siva / Sakti | The power-holder and his power; one reality |
| svatantrya | Freedom, autonomy of consciousness |
| unmesa / nimesa | Opening / closing of the eyes: expansion and contraction, emanation and withdrawal |
| icchha, jnana, kriya | Will, knowledge, action: the three powers and three moments of Spanda |
| abhasa | Appearance, manifestation, real as consciousness |
| vikalpa | Thought-construct, mental representation |
| nirvikalpa | Free of thought-constructs |
| madhya | The Centre, between cognitions or breaths |
| sakticakra | The Wheel of Energies |
| cakresvara | Lord of the Wheel: the liberated person or Siva |
| Vamesvari | The goddess who "emits" the world and governs the wheel of bondage and freedom |
| khecari, gocari, dikcari, bhucari | The four groups of energies of Vamesvari, active in the subject, inner organ, senses and objects |
| karanesvari | Goddesses of the senses |
| camatkara | Wonder, aesthetic rapture |
| udyama | The upsurge or inner exertion of consciousness; Bhairava |
| Bhairavimudra | Gaze open outward while attention rests within |
| Kramamudra | Alternation of inward absorption and outward pervasion until both are one |
| mala (anava, mayiya, karma) | The three impurities: sense of smallness, sense of difference, sense of doership |
| puryastaka | "City of Eight": the subtle body that transmigrates |
| Matrka | The power of speech, "mother" of the universe |
| sabdarasi | "Mass of sounds": phonemic energies in consciousness |
| para, pasyanti, madhyama, vaikhari | Supreme, intuitive, intermediate and corporeal levels of speech |
| AHAM | "I": A (Siva) + Ha (Sakti) + M (the individual point); the Great Mantra |
| anupaya, sambhava, sakta, anava | The four means: none, Divine, Empowered, Individual |
| saktipata | Descent of grace |
| turiya / turiyatita | The Fourth State / Beyond the Fourth |
| jivanmukti | Liberation while living |
| avadhana | Attentiveness |
A Practice Path from the Book
Dyczkowski does not give a programme, and nothing here replaces a teacher. But the book's practices can be ordered from most accessible to most subtle, matching the descent from Individual to Divine. Each step uses a practice the book actually describes.
- Mantra with breath (Individual). Repeat a short Mantra in time with breathing, with full attention, remembering Rajanaka Rama's warning that without awareness it is "a mere flux of phonemic sounds". Aim: steadiness.
- Watch the breath without controlling it (Individual). Follow Ksemaraja's version of pranayama: simply attend until in-breath and out-breath even out. Note the pause between them.
- Purify one doubt (Empowered). Choose one recurring belief that you are small, stuck or unworthy. Replace it, deliberately and repeatedly, with its opposite, following the "I am Siva" method of certainty.
- Catch the pulse in strong states (Empowered). In a moment of anger, joy or surprise, turn attention to the energy itself rather than its cause, as Chapter III teaches.
- Rest in the gap (Divine). Between two thoughts, or at the first instant of seeing something, do not move on; stay with the bare awareness before naming. This is the Centre.
- Eyes open, attention within (Divine). Practise Bhairavimudra: let the senses work as usual while awareness rests in its source; then alternate inward and outward as in Kramamudra.
- Carry it through the day (toward turiya). Bring the same attention into waking tasks, the edge of sleep, and waking up. The book's test: does attention slacken?
The tradition is explicit that initiation, grace and a teacher matter, and that one's own experience must confirm what one is taught. The steps above are reflective exercises drawn from the text, not Tantric initiation. Breath practices in particular should stay gentle; the Tantra Dyczkowski quotes itself says breath control that "inflicts pain on the body is not to be practised". Anyone with a medical or psychiatric condition should be careful with intensive meditation.
Final Insight
The book ends with the yogi discovering that "his journey through the dark land of Maya was nothing but a dream". This guide ends with what that line does and does not mean.
The Spanda school does not say the world is a dream. It says the opposite: the world is real, as the play of a consciousness that is also you. What is dreamlike is the sense of separation, the belief that the pulse of awareness belongs to someone small, cut off and bound. That belief is made of thought, and thought is made of consciousness, so it can be seen through at any moment, in any state, including the ordinary ones.
This is why the book can move, without contradiction, from abstract metaphysics to a good meal and a piece of music. If consciousness is activity that knows itself, then every activity is a place where it can be known. The practices differ only in how directly they point. The four means, the Mantras, the wheels and goddesses are all ways of saying one thing: notice what is noticing, and keep noticing.
Reality pulses; you are that pulse; attention is how you find it. Everything else in The Doctrine of Vibration, more than two hundred pages of it, is the working out of those three clauses.
About this edition. This is an independent study guide to The Doctrine of Vibration: An Analysis of the Doctrines and Practices of Kashmir Shaivism by Mark S. G. Dyczkowski (State University of New York Press, 1987; Motilal Banarsidass, 1989). Quotations are brief and for commentary. Please read and buy the original.