Insight Editions · No. 348
Kashmir Shaivism
The Secret Supreme
Swami Lakshmanjoo · edited by John Hughes
An Insight Edition of Swami Lakshmanjoo's Kashmir Shaivism: The Secret Supreme: all nineteen chapters on the 36 tattvas, the alphabet, the upayas, the seven perceivers, grace, the states of turya, kundalini and the schools of Trika, with tables, critical notes, glossary and a safe practice path.
A study guide to Kashmir Shaivism: The Secret Supreme by Swami Lakshmanjoo, edited by John Hughes (Lakshmanjoo Academy). Shared free for personal reading; not for sale and not endorsed by the author or publishers. Please read and buy the original.
CORE CLAIM
There is one reality, Parama Shiva, pure free consciousness. The universe of 36 tattvas is His own real expression, not an illusion, and the bound person is that same consciousness in contracted form. Liberation is recognising this and living it in action, and the tradition maps every stage of the way.
SCOPE
The prefaces and introductions and all nineteen chapters of Swami Lakshmanjoo's 1971 to 1972 lectures (Lakshmanjoo Academy, 2015 edition), with tables, diagrams, critical notes, a glossary and a graded practice path: about 19,500 words.
KEY FIGURES
Swami Lakshmanjoo (1907 to 1991) and editor John Hughes; the classical masters Vasugupta, Somananda, Utpaladeva, Abhinavagupta and Kshemaraja; the sage Durvasa; and, as foils, Shankara, the Vaishnavas and the Buddhist schools.
BEST FOR
Anyone who wants the whole technical map of Kashmir Shaivism in one place: tattvas, the sixfold path, the alphabet, the upayas, the seven perceivers, grace, the states of turya and kundalini, as taught by the tradition's last living master.
The Book on One Page
Kashmir Shaivism: The Secret Supreme is a set of lectures that Swami Lakshmanjoo gave in his ashram in Srinagar in 1971 and 1972 to an American student, John Hughes, who recorded them on tape. It is not a commentary on a single text. It is the whole system laid out as a sequence of maps: how consciousness becomes the universe, how the universe is spoken, how the bound person is built, how grace falls, and how a yogin climbs back. This guide follows the book in its own order and explains every chapter.
For each chapter the guide gives:
- The argument: what Lakshmanjoo sets out to establish, in the order he establishes it.
- Teaching notes: every technical term unpacked when it first appears, with the lists turned into tables.
- Insights: what is distinctive, subtle or easy to miss, and how the chapter links to the rest of the system.
- Critical lens: where the book asserts rather than argues, where it caricatures a rival school, where traditional history differs from modern scholarship, and where a modern reader might soften what is actually said.
How to read it
The book is short (about 44,000 words of teaching) but compressed. Almost every paragraph is a list: thirty-six tattvas, six paths, fifty letters, four means, four levels of speech, three impurities, seven perceivers, nine grades of grace, five states with sixteen sub-states, seven joys, six piercings. Lakshmanjoo gives each list quickly, often with one vivid example, and moves on. The trick is to see that almost every list is the same ladder seen from a different side.
The book has one spine. The 36 tattvas in Chapter One are a ladder from earth to Parama Shiva. Every later list (the five kalas, the vowels and consonants, the seven perceivers, the processes, the states of turya) is pinned to a rung of that ladder. Learn the ladder first and the rest of the book becomes a set of overlays on one map.
The argument in five movements
- What reality is (Chapters 1 to 4). One free consciousness, Shiva, manifests the universe as 36 levels; the universe can be described as six "paths" of objects and words; its sound-structure is the alphabet; and the whole of it is a reflection in consciousness, with no original outside.
- How to return (Chapters 5 and 6). There are three means (upayas) and a fourth that is no means at all, matched to four levels of speech, from the gross word to the supreme word.
- What binds and who is bound (Chapters 7 to 11). Three impurities (malas) produce seven kinds of perceiver; Shiva's five acts include the grace that frees them, in nine grades; and every person passes through five states of consciousness, each read three ways.
- Where the teaching comes from (Chapters 12 to 15). The master-disciple chain from Shiva to humans, the birth of the Tantras and the Kashmiri lineage, and two polemical chapters ranking other Indian philosophies and contrasting Shaivism with Advaita Vedanta.
- What the yogin actually experiences (Chapters 16 to 19). The seven joys inside turya, the rise of kundalini in its three forms, six variations of that rise, and a closing sketch of the four schools that make up Kashmir Shaivism.
Chapter map
| Part | Topic | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Front matter | Prefaces and introductions | How the lectures came about (1969 to 1972); publication history; the claim of an oral "secret" tradition |
| 1 | Thirty-six tattvas | The ladder of reality from earth to Parama Shiva; the limited person and the five sheaths |
| 2 | Sixfold path | The universe as three paths of objects and three paths of words; the five kalas |
| 3 | Alphabet (matrikacakra) | The fifty Sanskrit letters mapped onto the tattvas; aham as the code of the whole |
| 4 | Theory of reflection | The universe as a reflection in consciousness with no external original |
| 5 | The means (upayas) | Shambhava, shakta, anava and anupaya; the five grades of realisation |
| 6 | Speech (vak) | Para, pashyanti, madhyama and vaikhari, each gross, subtle and subtlest |
| 7 | Three impurities | Anava, mayiya and karma malas and where they sit |
| 8 | Seven perceivers | Sakala to Shiva; how I-ness and this-ness balance at each level |
| 9 | Seven processes | How many tattvas each perceiver has to work through; when effort ends |
| 10 | Five acts and grace | Creation, protection, destruction, concealing and revealing; nine grades of shaktipata |
| 11 | Five states | Waking, dreaming, sleep, turya, turyatita, each in four sub-states and three vocabularies |
| 12 | Master-disciple contacts | Five kinds of transmission from Shiva to humans |
| 13 | Birth of the Tantras | The 92 agamas, Durvasa's three sons, the Kashmiri lineage to Lakshmanjoo |
| 14 | Moksha compared | Other schools ranked on the ladder of perceivers |
| 15 | Against Advaita Vedanta | Five points of difference |
| 16 | Seven states of turya | Seven joys and the transition from closed-eye to open-eye samadhi |
| 17 | Kundalini | Para, cit and prana kundalini; signs, dangers, reverse rise |
| 18 | Six piercings | Mantra, nada, bindu, shakta, bhujanga, bhramara variations |
| 19 | Kashmir Shaivism | Trika and its four schools: Pratyabhijna, Kula, Krama, Spanda |
This is a teaching from inside a lineage, delivered orally to a student and edited for print by that student's organisation. It carries the tradition's own history, its rankings of rival schools and its claims about yogic experience as settled fact. That is exactly why it is valuable: it records the living oral reading. It also means a reader should keep two questions open throughout. Is this argued or announced? And does modern scholarship see it the same way? The critical notes in each chapter take up those questions where they matter.
Prefaces and Introductions
The book opens with four short pieces: John Hughes's preface to the fourth edition, Lakshmanjoo's own preface to the first edition (dated 1984), and Hughes's introductions to the third and first editions. Together they tell you where the text came from, who shaped it and what it claims to be.
How the lectures happened
Lakshmanjoo's preface tells a small, human story. In 1969 Maharishi Mahesh Yogi came to the Kashmir valley with Western disciples, heard of Lakshmanjoo and asked him to speak to them. Among the audience were John and Denise Hughes. They came back on their own in 1971 and John asked to be taught. Lakshmanjoo told him to come on Tuesday; he arrived with his tape recorder. The lectures started with introductory topics and grew as Lakshmanjoo "became fond of him" and wanted to tell him "Shaivism's secrets". Only after these lectures did he move on to teaching the scriptures themselves.
- Swami Lakshmanjoo (born 9 May 1907, died 27 September 1991): the teacher; the book calls him the last master of an unbroken oral line (Lakshmanjoo Academy).
- John Hughes: student, recordist and editor; founder of the Universal Shaiva Fellowship that publishes the lectures.
- Denise Hughes: attended every lecture with her husband.
- Maharishi Mahesh Yogi: the indirect cause; his 1969 visit brought the Hugheses to Kashmir.
Publication history
| Edition | Year | What changed |
|---|---|---|
| First | 1985 | Lectures corrected under Lakshmanjoo's supervision |
| Second | 1988 | Spelling and printing errors corrected |
| Third | 2000 | Clarity edits, grammar revised, index added |
| Fourth | 2015 | "Final careful scrutiny"; declared the last revision |
The third-edition introduction adds that by 1985 Lakshmanjoo had translated and explained, and Hughes had recorded, more than 450 hours of teaching across seventeen texts, including the Shiva Sutra Vimarshini, Spanda Karika, Vijnana Bhairava, Paramarthasara, Shivastotravali, Bhagavad Gitarthasamgraha and eighteen chapters of the Tantraloka. Those recordings are the source of most of the other Lakshmanjoo books, which is why this one works as the map to the whole series.
What the book says it is
Hughes's first introduction makes three claims. The tradition has been concealed for eight hundred years; Lakshmanjoo is "the last and the greatest" of its masters; and the secret keys to the texts have been passed only orally, master to disciple, so that this book records something the written texts alone cannot give. He also stresses that Lakshmanjoo insisted the teaching is open to everyone, "without the restriction of caste, creed, color, or sex".
The phrase "secret supreme" is not a promise of hidden techniques. It means the oral interpretation that tells you how the scattered technical lists of the Tantras fit together. The book's value is that it gives the whole architecture at once, in the voice of someone trained inside it.
"Concealed for eight hundred years" is tradition-speak. The Sanskrit texts were never lost: many were printed from 1911 in the Kashmir Series of Texts and Studies, and Lakshmanjoo studied them; what thinned out was the living teaching lineage after the political upheavals of the fourteenth century (Sanatana Rahasya). The superlatives ("last and greatest") are devotional statements by a disciple, not historical findings. Notice too that the book's frame is set by its editor-publisher, who is also the custodian of the recordings. None of this lowers the teaching's worth, but it tells you how to weigh its historical claims.
The Thirty-Six Elements (Tattvas)
The opening chapter builds the ladder of reality. Lakshmanjoo lists the 36 tattvas (elements, levels) not from the top down, as creation, but from the bottom up, as a yogin climbs: starting with earth and ending with Shiva, with Parama Shiva standing outside the count as the reality that is everywhere and in none of the levels. Every later chapter hangs from this ladder.
Why the order is from earth upward
Counting upward from the grossest, the way the chapter does, tells the practitioner which layers they have to cross, and in which order; the creative order (from Shiva down) is the same list read backwards. Lakshmanjoo stresses that Shaivism counts 36, against the 25 he attributes to Vedanta. After listing the first 25 he says: "This is the limit of the Vedantin's understanding of the tattvas... Yet in Shaivism, nothing as yet has happened." The extra eleven are the five sheaths of limitation, maya, and the five pure tattvas that the other schools never reach.
The five gross elements and their subtle forms
- The five great elements (mahabhutas): earth (prithvi), water (jala), fire (tejas), air (vayu) and ether or space (akasha). These are the "body" of the objective world.
- The five subtle elements (tanmatras): smell (gandha), taste (rasa), form (rupa), touch (sparsha) and sound (shabda). Each is the subtle root of one gross element: smell of earth, taste of water, form of fire, touch of air, sound of ether.
Senses, organs of action and the inner instrument
- Five organs of action (karmendriyas): speech, hand, foot, excretion and procreation (vak, pani, pada, payu, upastha).
- Five organs of cognition (jnanendriyas): nose, tongue, eye, skin, ear. Lakshmanjoo is precise that these are the powers of smelling, tasting and so on, not the physical organs.
- The inner instrument (antahkarana): manas (mind, which gathers and sorts impressions), buddhi (intellect, which decides) and ahamkara (ego, the sense of "I am doing this").
- Prakriti (nature) holds the three gunas, sattva, rajas and tamas, in balance; purusha is the individual subject who experiences her.
The five sheaths and maya
Here the system departs from Sankhya. Above purusha, Kashmir Shaivism places maya and her five kancukas (coverings), which turn Shiva's unlimited powers into the limits that define a person:
Lakshmanjoo names them in rising order, each with an example from the room he was teaching in:
| Kancuka | Limits Shiva's | Effect on purusha, in his words |
|---|---|---|
| Niyati | All-pervasiveness | You live "in a houseboat near the First Bridge", not at Nishat; in Kashmir, not in Australia |
| Kala (time) | Eternity | "You are 25 years old, I am 64 years old, and he is 43" |
| Raga | Fullness | The sense of not being full, "that he must have this or that to become full" |
| Vidya | All-knowing | "He knows only some limited things" |
| Kalaa | All-doing | "Some particular creativity, some particular artistic talent": writing, music or medicine, not everything |
(He was born in 1907, so the "64" dates the lecture to 1971.) Maya herself is the sixth covering: purusha's ignorance of his own nature, which creates the five kancukas. In this system purusha is not a realised soul; he is as bound as ahamkara, the only difference being that purusha belongs to the subjective side and ahamkara to the objective.
Think of the five kancukas as the five settings of a lens placed over infinite light. None of them adds anything. Each one subtracts: power becomes a little power, knowledge a little knowledge, fullness becomes desire, eternity becomes a lifespan, everywhere becomes here. A person is Shiva seen through all five at once.
The five pure tattvas
Above maya lies the pure path (shuddhadhva), where there is no forgetting, only differing balances of I-ness (aham) and this-ness (idam):
- Shuddhavidya: purusha realises his nature, but the realisation flickers: "sometimes you realize it, sometimes you forget it." Its experience: "I am Shiva, this universe is in duality. This universe is unreal, I am Shiva."
- Ishvara: "This universe is my own expansion. This universe is not an illusion."
- Sadashiva: "I am this whole universe." The same realisation as Ishvara, more refined.
- and 5. Shakti and Shiva, the two "interdependent tattvas": "just I, pure I, universal I", with no universe left in the statement at all.
Parama Shiva is not a 37th level. "It is all levels, and therefore no level. It is everywhere, that is why It is nowhere."
The pure tattvas are not "above" the world in the sense of being elsewhere. They are ways of holding the same world: as unreal beside me (shuddhavidya), as my expansion (Ishvara), as myself (Sadashiva), or with no object left at all (Shiva). Liberation in this system is not leaving the universe; it is changing the grammar in which "I" and "this" are related.
The 25-tattva scheme is really Sankhya's; Advaita Vedanta uses it only provisionally and does not climb it, so "the Vedantin's understanding" is a loose attribution. The claim that Shaivism's 36 "complete" the 25 is presented as a ranking: the others stopped short. That is the tradition's own self-understanding, and it is consistent within its terms. A Sankhya or Advaita philosopher would reply that the extra tattvas are not discovered but posited, and that the purusha-prakriti scheme was never meant to be climbed in this way. The 36-fold list was shared with the dualist Shaiva Siddhanta, so it is a common Shaiva inheritance rather than a uniquely Kashmiri insight.
The Sixfold Path of the Universe (Shadadhvan)
The second chapter describes the same universe in six ways at once. Three paths describe it as objects (what is referred to); three describe it as words (what refers). This is the backbone of Tantric ritual and initiation, and Lakshmanjoo gives it in compressed form.
Objective and subjective paths
The six paths (adhvan) fall into two groups of three:
| Group | Path | Unit | Corresponds to |
|---|---|---|---|
| Vacya (the referred, objective) | Bhuvanadhva | 118 worlds | The grossest; "body" |
| Tattvadhva | 36 tattvas | Subtle | |
| Kaladhva | 5 kalas | Subtlest | |
| Vacaka (the referring, subjective) | Padadhva | Sentences | Gross |
| Mantradhva | Words | Subtle | |
| Varnadhva | Letters | Subtlest |
Two details matter. First, one "world" (bhuvana) is not one planet: "this whole cosmos, including suns, moons, stars, and planets, is called one world", and Lakshmanjoo says yogins "in samadhi" found 118 such cosmoses. Second, the word-paths are not a commentary on the object-paths; they are their creator and observer. His example is a pot: the pot itself falls in the objective paths as an offshoot of the 36 tattvas; the word "pot" is its subjective counterpart. The universe of things and the universe of language are one structure, seen from two sides.
The five kalas
The kalas are the five "enclosures" that group the tattvas:
- Nivritti kala: the earth element alone.
- Pratishtha kala: 23 tattvas, from water up to prakriti.
- Vidya kala: 7 tattvas, from purusha up to maya.
- Shanta kala: 4 tattvas, from shuddhavidya up to shakti.
- Shantatita kala: Shiva alone.
1 + 23 + 7 + 4 + 1 = 36. The kalas are not a new list but a grouping of the tattvas into five zones, each marked by a kind of release: nivritti ("withdrawal"), pratishtha ("establishment"), vidya ("knowledge"), shanta ("peace"), shantatita ("beyond peace").
Why the path must be dropped
The chapter turns on a play on the word adhvan, "path". It means both the path you tread and the path you must dispose of. Lakshmanjoo is blunt: "There is no question of realizing God through treading on this path. You may tread for centuries and centuries and still you will be treading." The path has to be discarded, and that can be done only by the grace of the Master, "who is the embodiment of Parama Shiva". When it is discarded, you reach Parama Shiva. The map is given so that the student knows what is being dropped, not so that he walks it step by step.
The sixfold path explains why mantra works in this system. If letters, words and sentences are the same reality as kalas, tattvas and worlds, then working on the level of sound is working on the level of the universe. Chapter Three develops exactly this idea.
Two claims here rest on authority alone. The count of 118 worlds is said to be "found by yogins in samadhi"; it is one count among several in the Shaiva sources, and Abhinavagupta's Tantraloka works with longer lists of bhuvanas drawn from different scriptures. And the statement that the path can be dropped only through the Master's grace makes the guru structurally necessary. Both are coherent inside the system; neither is argued in the chapter.
The Theory of the Alphabet (Matrikacakra)
This is the longest and most technical chapter, and it repays slow reading. Lakshmanjoo shows that the fifty letters of the Sanskrit alphabet are not arbitrary sounds but the sound-form of the 36 tattvas. The alphabet, the "wheel of the little mothers" (matrikacakra), is the universe spelt out.
The mirror shaped like a cup
He begins with an image. If you hold a cup-shaped mirror before an object, the reflection is reversed. The universe is a reflection of Shiva in his own freedom, so its order is reversed relative to the source. That is why, when the alphabet is mapped onto the tattvas, the consonants run from earth upward in the reverse of their alphabetical order inside each group: the first consonant group (ka to nga) gives the five elements with ka = earth and nga = ether, and so on.
The sixteen vowels: Shiva's energies
All sixteen vowels belong to the Shiva tattva itself. They spell out his five energies and their movement into creation:
| Vowel | Energy | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| a | Cit | Consciousness, anuttara, the supreme |
| aa | Ananda | Bliss, consciousness resting in itself |
| i / ii | Iccha | Will: i unagitated, ii agitated (ishana, mastery) |
| u / uu | Jnana | Knowledge: u is the opening (unmesha), uu the sense of lack (unata) that will lead to objects |
| ri rii li lii | Rest in cit and ananda | Shiva sets the universe aside and rests in consciousness and bliss; creation stops. This state is called anashrita Shiva, Shiva who has not yet accepted the universe |
| e ai o au | Kriya | Action, from unclear (e) to clearest (au) |
| am (bindu) | The dot: knowing everything as one point | |
| ah (visarga) | Two dots: the "two cups" of creative outpouring |
The vowels are a slow-motion film of creation inside Shiva. Consciousness (a) tastes its own bliss (aa), stirs as will (i, ii), opens as knowing (u) and senses something missing (uu), pauses in four vowels where he sets the universe aside, then acts with increasing clarity (e, ai, o, au), gathers itself into a point (am) and pours outward (ah). Only then do the consonants, the objective world, begin.
The consonants: the 34 lower tattvas
| Letter group | Tattvas | Order |
|---|---|---|
| ka kha ga gha nga (gutturals) | 5 gross elements | ka = earth ... nga = ether |
| ca cha ja jha nya (palatals) | 5 tanmatras | smell ... sound |
| ta tha da dha na (cerebrals) | 5 organs of action | |
| ta tha da dha na (dentals) | 5 organs of cognition | |
| pa pha ba bha ma (labials) | manas, ahamkara, buddhi, prakriti, purusha | ma = purusha |
| ya ra la va (antahstha, "standing within") | ya = kala and kalaa (time, creativity); ra = vidya; la = raga with niyati; va = maya | the six limitations reduced to four |
| sha sha sa ha (ushma, "heated") | shuddhavidya, Ishvara, Sadashiva, Shakti | the pure tattvas |
Lakshmanjoo connects the groups to the places of articulation described in the Paninian grammatical tradition (throat, palate, roof of the mouth, teeth, lips), quoting traditional rules such as "a, ka-group, ha and visarga are from the throat". His point is that the body's own mouth already traces the descent of consciousness.
Aham: the code of the whole
The climax is the word aham, "I". Sanskrit grammar uses pratyaharas, abbreviations made of a first and last letter that include everything between. A is the first letter, ha the last; m (the bindu) seals them. So a + ha + m = aham contains the entire alphabet, and therefore the entire universe, held in one point of I-consciousness. This is the Shiva pratyahara.
There is also a Shakti pratyahara: the first consonant ka joined with the last consonant of the energies (sa in the lecture) gives the mantra ksha, which spans the consonants, the objective world. Here Shakti "wants to become independent of Shiva" and creates a world of her own. Lakshmanjoo's analogy is from the hive: when the queen bee stops laying, worker bees lay eggs without mating. Shakti combines with Shakti, and Shiva is set aside.
"I am" (aham) is, in this reading, not a thought among others but the whole alphabet folded into one syllable. When the tradition says the universe is Shiva's I-consciousness, it means this quite literally: every letter, and therefore every word and thing, lies between the a and the ha of "I".
The three visargas
The chapter closes with the visarga (the two dots, the "outpouring") read at three levels:
- Shambhava visarga, located at the letter aa (bliss): cittapralaya, the dissolution of mind, a thoughtless flow; the supreme (para) visarga.
- Shakta visarga, located at the visarga ah: cittasambodha, awareness held in one-pointedness; the middle (parapara) visarga.
- Anava visarga, located at ha: cittavishranti, the mind taking a permanent seat in concentration; the lower (apara) visarga of the individual.
These anticipate the three upayas of Chapter Five.
The letter-tattva correspondences are revelation, not linguistics. Phonetics did not produce this mapping; the Tantras assigned it, and Abhinavagupta systematised it. The quoted rules on places of articulation belong to the later grammatical literature (for example the Siddhanta Kaumudi tradition) rather than to Panini's sutras proper. And the symmetry is not perfect: the semivowels have to cover six limitations with four letters, so niyati is folded into raga and time into kalaa. Read the chapter as a contemplative key, a way of hearing the world in sound, not as a claim that Sanskrit is physically the structure of the cosmos.
The Theory of Reflection (Pratibimbavada)
Chapter Four is short and philosophically dense. It argues that the universe is a reflection in consciousness with no original outside it: what appears in the mirror is real, but there is nothing "out there" being reflected. The only cause is Shiva's freedom, svatantrya.
Five senses, one mirror
Lakshmanjoo starts with ordinary perception. Each sense datum has an outer and an inner reflector:
| Datum | Reflected outwardly in | Reflected inwardly in |
|---|---|---|
| Sound | Ether | Ear |
| Touch | Air | Skin |
| Form | Fire, and a mirror | Eye |
| Taste | Water | Tongue |
| Smell | Earth | Nose |
Every such reflector takes only one kind of reflection: a mirror shows form, never taste or sound. Only consciousness reflects all five at once. And even the single-sense reflections "could not even be observed if consciousness were not there. Awareness is needed and this is found in consciousness, not in the organs." So the real reflector of the universe is consciousness; the organs and elements are "merely tattvas".
The argument from causes
Here the chapter becomes an argument in the strict sense. A potter's work has two kinds of cause:
- Material cause (upadana-karana): the clay, which travels with the effect and is never separate from it.
- Formal or instrumental cause (nimitta-karana): the potter, stick, string and wheel, which do not travel into the pot.
Ordinarily we think the object (bimba) causes its reflection (pratibimba). If the universe is a reflection in God Consciousness, what kind of cause is the object? It cannot be a material cause, because that would mean something outside God Consciousness travelling into it, and "nothing can exist outside of God Consciousness". So there is no external original. "There is only the mirror." The cause is svatantrya, Shiva's absolutely independent will, acting as a formal, not a material, cause: "It is His free will that He wills and what He wills appears in the mirror of His Consciousness."
Picture a mirror that produces its own images from its own will. There is no face in front of it. The images are real as images, and the mirror is never stained by them. In ordinary reflection the face is primary; in this theory the mirror is primary, and "original" is just a name for the mirror's freedom.
Lakshmanjoo's footnote closes a loophole: svatantrya is not a second thing beside consciousness. "The mirror, which is the absolutely independent will of God, is God Consciousness." Mirror, image and the will that makes the image are one reality. This is how Kashmir Shaivism can call the world fully real and still say that only Shiva exists.
A practice for advanced yogins
The theory is more than metaphysics. It is "meant for advanced yogins", who learn to see "each and every action in their God Consciousness" while talking, walking, tasting, touching, hearing and smelling. Their perception "heretofore limited, becomes unlimited", and they live in the state of Sadashiva, "I am this whole universe". Each action of life "becomes glorious".
The argument is valid only on its premise: that nothing can exist outside consciousness. Lakshmanjoo states this ("It is our theory in Shaivism") rather than defending it here. A realist would simply deny that the world is a reflection at all, and the Advaita schools that also use the reflection image (see Chapter Fifteen) would deny that the reflection is real. The chapter shows how Shaiva idealism keeps the world real; it does not prove idealism. The defence of that premise lives in the Pratyabhijna texts of Utpaladeva and Abhinavagupta, cited here only in a verse of the Tantraloka (III.50).
The Explanation of the Means (Upayas)
This chapter answers the practical question: how does individual consciousness enter universal consciousness? Kashmir Shaivism gives three means (upayas) and a fourth that is "no means". The scheme is the system's best-known contribution to the theory of practice, and every other Lakshmanjoo book refers back to it.
The three upayas at a glance
| Upaya | Energy | World | Support needed | Practice | Length of road |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Shambhavopaya (supreme) | Iccha (will): icchopaya | Pure monism: abhedopaya | None | Preserving thoughtlessness; the Master's grace | Shortest |
| Shaktopaya (medium) | Jnana (knowledge): jnanopaya | Duality with non-duality: bhedabhedopaya | One point: the centre | Centring between two thoughts, breaths or actions | Shorter |
| Anavopaya (inferior) | Kriya (action): kriyopaya | Duality: bhedopaya | Two points and many aids | Breath, sense organ, contemplation, location | Long |
| Anupaya ("no means") | Ananda (bliss): anandopaya | Nothing to do | "Be as you are" | No road |
Shambhavopaya: residing in the meant
The Malinivijayottara Tantra defines the shambhava entry as that which arises "for one who thinks of nothing, through the awakening given by the guru". By keeping a continuity of thoughtlessness and through the Master's grace, the yogin finds the whole universe coming out of sentences, sentences from words, words from letters, and letters from the real "I", Parama Shiva: the matrikacakra of Chapter Three lived from inside. This upaya "functions in matrikacakra, pratyahara and pratibimbavada".
Its peculiarity is that it is not really a means. "It is the meant. There is nowhere to go." Something remains to be done, but only one thing: to reach the point of resting in the meant by keeping thoughtlessness unbroken. After that, "it is then the grace of your Master that carries you". Lakshmanjoo puts it starkly: "You must merge in your Master's consciousness. In this state, you do not exist; only your Master exists." Masters accept for this upaya only disciples "highly developed in awareness". Here the Master does more than the disciple.
Tantraloka XIII.159 grades realised yogins by how far their light reaches: the firefly lights only itself; jewels light a few around them; stars more; the moon still more; the sun the whole universe. The yogin established in shambhavopaya "shines like the midday sun for the whole universe".
Shaktopaya: centring
In shaktopaya the aspirant is more important than the Master, because he must make himself fit to receive grace. He works until he reaches "the feet of the Master", which Lakshmanjoo glosses as the state "where the aspirant is capable of receiving the grace of the Master", not physical feet.
The method is centring, as taught in Vijnana Bhairava Tantra verse 61: no mantra, no breath technique, no fixed spot. The yogin sees "that Supreme Being that is found in two actions without actions": between one thought and the next, one step and the next, one breath and the next, between waking and dreaming. Everything depends on the velocity of awareness, which Lakshmanjoo defines as firmness: "Awareness must not become loose." If it does, the yogin "will be forced out of shaktopaya into the lowest upaya" and loses the right to tread this path.
Anavopaya: the four supports
Anavopaya belongs to anu, the individual soul. It works by four kinds of support:
- Uccara (breath): deep breathing while finding the centre between the incoming and outgoing breath. In the practice called cakrodaya, the beginning and ending points of the breath predominate. It may be done with or without sound.
- Karana (sense organ): one-pointedness through a sense, chiefly sight: look at one point without blinking, with unbroken awareness, until "that point vanishes", which "it should and will" when you enter the vastness of the centre. With the other senses, stay aware of where the sensation first arises.
- Dhyana (contemplation): on the lotus of the heart, or on the meaning of a mantra such as so'ham or shiva. Contemplation without form is the higher form; Shiva with a shape is the lower. Lakshmanjoo adds that "all mantras have meaning".
- Sthana prakalpana (location): the higher form finds the whole cosmos inside one breath (the places of the gods, of dawn, midday, sunset and midnight, of the sun's northern and southern courses); "simply to see the vastness of the universe in one breath". The lower form fixes attention on three places in the body: between the eyebrows, the pit of the throat and the heart.
The three upayas differ in how much support awareness needs. In anava you need two points (two breaths, a sense and its object) to find the centre between them. In shakta you begin with the centre itself. In shambhava you need no point at all; you are already there. "Anavopaya will carry you in a long way, shaktopaya in a shorter way, and shambhavopaya in the shortest way. Although the ways are different, the point to be achieved is one."
Anupaya: be as you are
Above all three is anupaya, "no means", attributed to Shiva's ananda shakti. "The aspirant has only to observe that nothing is to be done. Be as you are. If you are talking, go on talking. If you are sitting, go on sitting. Do not do anything, only reside in your being."
The ladder of upayas runs opposite to effort. The lowest means needs the most technique; the highest needs none. This is why Kashmir Shaivism can teach elaborate breath practices and also say "be as you are" without contradiction: technique is scaffolding for an awareness not yet strong enough to stand on its own.
Three things deserve a careful reader's attention. First, the eligibility is decided by the Master: who is "highly developed in awareness" is not something the disciple judges. Second, "you do not exist; only your Master exists" is a strong guru-merger teaching; it is classical in Tantric Shaivism, but modern readers who quote "be as you are" often leave it out. Third, anupaya is described in four sentences; it reads as a description of a realised state, not as an instruction a beginner can follow. Read as a technique, it easily becomes an excuse for doing nothing.
The Theory of Speech (Vak)
Chapter Six maps the levels of speech onto the upayas. Sound, in this system, is more than a medium for meaning; it is a ladder of consciousness from the soundless "I" down to words in the mouth. The yogin who has climbed it can travel up and down without losing his state.
Four levels of speech
- Para vak, supreme speech: "that soundless sound which resides in your own universal consciousness". It is the life of the other three and not itself one of them; "in your journey you do not travel to para because para is supreme". The shambhava yogin resides here, in complete I-ness (purnahanta).
- Pashyanti vak, "seeing" speech: perception without differentiation (nirvikalpa).
- Madhyama vak, middle speech: purely mental, thought without letters, words or sentences; "when you are asleep and dreaming, you are residing in madhyama vak".
- Vaikhari vak, gross speech: ordinary speech, using "your tongue and lips".
The watch and the town
Lakshmanjoo's two examples of pashyanti are among the most useful passages in the book.
The watch. You look at a watch and know "watch". Go back one step: before that you saw "something white", partly undifferentiated, partly differentiated. Go back further: there is only "some sensation of seeing. You will not see anything." That first flow, "observing, looking, but not seeing anything", is pashyanti.
The town. From a hilltop you see "the town of Srinagar" as a whole, not as tree, path, car and people one by one. The texts call this shikharastha jnana, "knowing from the summit": perception of the whole without thought.
A footnote adds a picture of a life: a baby lives in the nirvikalpa state; a growing child in both; an old person only in differentiation, "barking, do this, do this, do this", with "no strength in doing this". To regain the lost charm, "one must gain the nirvikalpa state in this savikalpa state", thought-free awareness inside ordinary thinking, and only then does it become permanent.
Nine grades of sound
Each of the three lower speeches is itself gross, subtle and subtlest, giving nine grades:
| Pashyanti | Madhyama | Vaikhari | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gross | Sound of a metal-string instrument (sitar) | Sound of a leather-covered drum | All sounds made by lips and tongue |
| Subtle | The inclination "I will play this string instrument" | The inclination "I will play this drum" | The inclination "I will speak to you" |
| Subtlest | The first stirring of that inclination, "before desire", in the thoughtless world | Same, for the drum | Same, for speech |
On the string instrument he is uncompromising: those who cannot enter their real nature while listening to it "are worthless. They have no capacity." Gross pashyanti is easier to enter than gross madhyama but harder to remain in without the Master's grace. No one can enter samadhi through gross vaikhari, ordinary talk, except the yogin already in the shambhava state, who "enters into samadhi through ordinary talk".
Who can travel where
| Yogin | Levels of speech available |
|---|---|
| Shambhava | All nine; ascends and descends "without varying his consciousness" |
| Shakta | Subtle and subtlest only; gross speech scatters him |
| Anava | Gross only, since he has no experience of the others; in time this carries him to shaktopaya |
The chapter turns music into method. Because a sitar's sound lives at the level of pashyanti, listening to it is a ready-made doorway to thought-free perception. The theory explains why Indian contemplative traditions give sound such a central place: the ear touches a level of speech that the tongue never reaches.
The four-level speech theory is older than Kashmir Shaivism: Bhartrihari's grammar-philosophy gives three levels (pashyanti, madhyama, vaikhari), and the Shaivas add para above them and argue, notably Somananda, that pashyanti is not the highest. Lakshmanjoo presents the fourfold scheme as simply "the theory of speech" without that history. The instrument-to-level mapping (string = pashyanti, drum = madhyama) is a traditional assignment, not a claim that can be tested, and "worthless" is the voice of a teacher's challenge, not a philosophical result.
The Three Impurities (Malas)
The diagnosis begins. Chapter Seven names the three impurities (malas) that make Shiva appear as a bound individual. Its first move is to say where they live.
Maya and svatantrya: one energy, two views
The malas reside in maya, not in svatantrya. And yet "svatantrya shakti and maya are one". The difference is in what they allow: svatantrya gives "the power of going down and coming up again, both at will"; maya "will only give you the strength of going down and not the ability of rising up again". Owned by the universal being, the energy is svatantrya; owned by the individual, it is maya. "When you experience svatantrya shakti in a crooked way, it becomes maya shakti for you. And when you realize that same maya shakti in Reality, then that maya shakti becomes svatantrya shakti."
Bondage is not a second power opposing God; it is God's own freedom seen crookedly. This is the mechanism behind the book's claim that the world is real: nothing has to be destroyed for liberation, only re-seen.
The three malas
| Mala | Grade | Nature | Example |
|---|---|---|---|
| Karma mala | Gross | Shubhashubha-vasana: impressions of pleasure and pain left by action | "I am happy, I am not well, I have pain, I am a great man, I am really lucky" |
| Mayiya mala | Subtle | Bhinna-vedya-pratha: the sense that I and others are different; ignorance (avidya) | "This house is mine, that is not; this man is my friend, that one my enemy" |
| Anava mala | Subtlest | Apurnata: non-fullness, the feeling of being incomplete | Coming near Shiva-consciousness but being unable to hold it; the fading of a realisation |
Anava mala: the gap you cannot fill
Anava mala gets the most attention. It produces abhilasha, the desire for completion: "if I have the desire for some particular thing, then it means that I feel that I do not have this thing". Worse, "you do not know what this lack really is. You want to hold everything, and yet no matter what you hold, you do not fill your sense of lacking, your gap." It cannot be filled "unless the Master points it out to you and then carries you to that point".
Two clarifications close the chapter. Anava and mayiya malas are not in action, only in perception and experience; only karma mala is in action. And a footnote: a yogin in anupaya or the shambhava state has no malas. If he hurt himself he would not feel pain as a bound person does but "a sensation of consciousness", not attached to it, which "would take him in, into his own Being".
Read the three malas as three depths of the same error. Karma mala is the surface story ("I am lucky"). Mayiya mala is the map of separation that story assumes ("mine, not mine"). Anava mala is the felt hole underneath both ("something is missing"). Removing the surface leaves the map; removing the map leaves the hole; only grace fills the hole.
The description of anava mala is psychologically sharp and will be recognised by many readers. The remedy, however, is not argued: only "the Master" can point the lack out. The footnote on pain, that a realised yogin feels injury as "a sensation of consciousness", is a first-person claim about advanced states; it should not be taken as a reason to ignore pain or medical care. Note also that in the classical texts the malas are a central point of dispute with the dualist Shaiva Siddhanta, which treats anava mala as a real substance removed by ritual; the book's "one energy seen two ways" is the monist answer, given here without the debate.
The Seven States of the Seven Perceivers (Pramatrin)
With the impurities named, Chapter Eight describes who is bound by them, and how far. It lists seven kinds of perceiver (pramatri), from the person lost in objects to Shiva himself. This is the book's most useful single diagnostic: each level is defined by which malas remain and by how I-ness and this-ness are related.
The seven perceivers
| No. | Perceiver | Malas active | Experience | Formula |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Sakala | All three | Perception only in the objective world; the state of the object (prameya) | |
| 2 | Pralayakala | Anava, mayiya | Negation, a void not even experienced as void; like a coma (murccha) or heavy dreamless sleep | |
| 3 | Vijnanakala | Anava only | The yogin's state: awareness without action, or action without awareness | |
| 4 | Mantra (shuddhavidya) | None | Real state of Shiva but unstable; it comes and goes | aham aham, idam idam |
| 5 | Mantreshvara (Ishvara) | None | More stable; "this whole universe is the expansion of my own nature" | idam aham |
| 6 | Mantramaheshvara (Sadashiva) | None | "No question at all of falling from it"; "I am this universe" | aham idam |
| 7 | Shiva | None | State and observer are one; this-ness "melted in His I-ness" | aham |
The first two are "states of worldly people, not spiritual aspirants". The third is where the path of yoga begins. Lakshmanjoo backs the description of vijnanakala with Utpaladeva (Ishvarapratyabhijna Karika III.2.4): anava mala is twofold, the loss of awareness of one's freedom and the loss of freedom itself.
Reading the formulas
The formulas are the clearest way into the pure levels:
- Aham aham, idam idam (mantra): "I am the reality", and also "this universe is false". The two sides alternate: "Sometimes he experiences only aham aham. Sometimes, when his consciousness is a little damaged, he experiences only idam idam."
- Idam aham (mantreshvara): the universe is no longer false; it is my expansion. This is "the unification of jiva, the individual, with Shiva, the universal". He finds the universe in his Self.
- Aham idam (mantramaheshvara): "I am this universe". He finds his Self in the universe. "This is the difference."
- Aham (Shiva): only the universal I.
The jump from level 4 to level 5 is the turning point of the whole system. At shuddhavidya the yogin is free of every mala and still thinks the world is false. Kashmir Shaivism places "the world is unreal" one step below full realisation, not at its summit. This is exactly the point it will press against Advaita Vedanta in Chapter Fifteen.
Seven energies, and why one must descend
Each perceiver has its energy (pramatri shakti), the power that holds one in that state, from sakala shakti (the power to live in all three malas) to Shiva shakti, which "strengthens the state which is already established". Seven perceivers, seven energies and the object make fifteen, the basis of the fifteen-fold process (pancadashavidhi) of the Malinivijaya Tantra, explained in the next chapter.
The theory is meant "not only for rising but also for descending". "The one who rises and cannot descend is incomplete." Shiva's state is the one in which he "can rise and descend, and after descending, can rise again"; individuality is descent without the power to rise. This is the same definition that Chapter Seven gave for maya against svatantrya.
A footnote glosses the word mantra from its roots manana (awareness, complete knowing) and trana (protection): mantra is "that knowledge by which we are protected". So the "mantra perceivers" are not people chanting. They are perceivers whose awareness protects them from falling back into the void. The three pure levels differ only in how stable that protection is.
The seven-perceiver scheme is classical (it is set out in the Malinivijayottara Tantra and in Kshemaraja's Pratyabhijnahrdayam). What is the book's own emphasis is the claim of irreversibility at mantramaheshvara: "no question at all of falling". That is a statement about advanced experience that cannot be checked from outside, and in practice it puts great weight on the teacher's judgement about who has reached which level. Chapter Fourteen will use this ladder to rank whole philosophies, which is a much bolder move than describing a meditator's progress.
The Seven Processes of the Seven Perceivers
Chapter Nine turns the ladder of perceivers into a training programme. It first places each perceiver on the 36 tattvas, then describes a series of ever shorter processes of rising, each of which starts one level higher. The surprise of the chapter is where effort stops.
Where each perceiver lives
| Perceiver | Location on the tattva ladder |
|---|---|
| Sakala | Earth up to and including purusha |
| Pralayakala | Maya tattva, "simply voidness, a gap"; karma mala present only as a seed |
| Vijnanakala | Mahamaya, a "semi tattva" in the gap between maya and shuddhavidya, not counted among the 36 |
| Mantra | Shuddhavidya |
| Mantreshvara | Ishvara |
| Mantramaheshvara | Sadashiva |
| Shiva | Shiva, where "the state and the state holder" are no longer two |
The fifteen-fold process: starting from a pot
The practice is described concretely. Take an earthen pot and keep looking at it. While perceiving it "you yourself become the pot. You are completely unaware of your own consciousness." That is complete objectivity, the fifteenth element. From there:
- Develop awareness of the perceiver while seeing the pot: sakala pramatri, by means of its energy.
- Let the pot go; only the perceiver remains. But the perceived still lingers "in the background, not vividly".
- Remove the thought of being the perceiver. You fall into voidness: pralayakala. "It is almost certain that you will lose consciousness."
- If you do not lose consciousness in that void, you are in vijnanakala.
- From there "you are carried automatically" through mantra, mantreshvara and mantramaheshvara to Shiva.
"You must apply effort only up to the crossing of maya. Maya is the borderline." After the void is crossed with awareness intact, "everything is automatic". A footnote adds that grace was present all along: "if it were not there you could not do anything." Effort carries you to the edge of the void; grace carries you beyond it.
The process can be done on any tattva from earth to purusha: on earth alone, or on the organs, and "all the processes will be complete".
The shorter processes
Each later process begins one perceiver higher, so it has fewer members (perceivers plus their energies plus the object):
| Process | Members | Object (starting point) | Perceiver | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fifteen-fold | 7 + 7 + 1 | The pot, complete objectivity | Sakala | Rise from objectivity |
| Thirteen-fold | 6 + 6 + 1 | Sakala pramatri itself | Pralayakala | Rise from individuality; for "highly qualified yogins" |
| Eleven-fold | 5 + 5 + 1 | Pralayakala, "complete and utter voidness" | Vijnanakala | Rising from the void: "extremely difficult" |
| Nine-fold | 4 + 4 + 1 | Vijnanakala | Mantra | Maya has completely disappeared; automatic |
| Seven-fold | 3 + 3 + 1 | Mantra | Mantreshvara | Automatic |
| Five-fold | 2 + 2 + 1 | Mantreshvara | Mantramaheshvara | Automatic |
| Three-fold | Sadashiva as object, Shiva as perceiver | Mantramaheshvara | Shiva | The last; "there is no onefold process" |
Why repeat at all, if the first process already reaches Shiva? Because "even though you have attained Universal Being in the fifteen-fold process, you do not have the capacity to maintain that universal state". The later processes are done "only to strengthen your awareness", and from the nine-fold onward they "have only to be done once".
15, 13, 11, 9, 7, 5, 3. Each step removes one perceiver and its energy (two members). The series ends at three because at the top "Shiva sakshat na bhidyate": upon realising Shiva, no other process remains.
Where you started
The chapter ends with a reversal. At the three-fold level "you rise from Shiva to Shiva": "thisness is found in Shiva and Shiva is found in thisness". The maxim is "see duality in unity and unity in duality". And then: "the point from which you have to start is the ending point... There is really nowhere to go and nothing to be done." The whole fifteen-fold apparatus exists to make that sentence lived rather than merely believed.
The pot exercise is the most concrete practice in the book and is safe as a concentration exercise. The stage of "falling into voidness" where you will "almost certainly lose consciousness" is not something to force alone; it is presented as a stage under a teacher. The book's sequence (from the fifteen-fold to the three-fold) follows the Malinivijayottara Tantra as Lakshmanjoo reads it; the Tantra's own presentation is more ritual and less phenomenological, and this experiential reading is part of the oral interpretation the book claims to preserve.
The Five Great Acts of Lord Shiva and His Grace (Shaktipata)
Chapter Ten widens the lens from the yogin to God. Shiva performs five acts, and the fifth, grace, comes in nine intensities that produce masters and disciples. The chapter also contains the book's clearest statement on moral responsibility.
Five acts, and the difference between "act" and "action"
The five acts (pancakrityavidhi) are srishti (creation), sthiti (protection), samhara (destruction), tirodhana (concealing his nature) and anugraha (revealing it, grace). The individual performs all five too, but in his case they are called actions, not acts, "because this kind of act is dependent on the will of God". Only God is completely independent.
Does this remove responsibility? Lakshmanjoo answers directly: "If you believe that... he has no freedom and, therefore, cannot be held responsible for his actions, you are wrong." The individual "does have ego and feels that he is acting himself. When he feels that he is acting himself, then he is responsible." Only if he truly felt that Shiva is the actor would he not be responsible, "but then, of course, he could do no wrong."
Nine intensities of grace
Grace (shaktipata, "descent of energy") comes in three bands of three. The supreme band makes masters; the medium and inferior bands make disciples.
| Grace | Name | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| Tivra-tivra | Super supreme | Perfect self-recognition; the body cannot bear it, so he dies. He becomes a master who works invisibly "in the deserving hearts of disciples" |
| Tivra-madhya | Supreme medium | Perfectly illumined and keeps the body: a pratibha guru, enlightened spontaneously, not by another's initiation |
| Tivra-manda | Inferior supreme | Longs for a master, finds a perfect one, and is freed by a touch, a glance or an embrace, without japa or dhyana |
| Madhya-tivra | Medium supreme | Needs formal initiation with a mantra; enlightened but "not completely satisfied" until death, when he becomes one with Shiva |
| Madhya-madhya | Medium middle | Wants Shiva and worldly pleasure, Shiva predominant; after death enjoys heaven (svargaloka), is initiated there and merges from heaven |
| Madhya-manda | Medium inferior | Same mix, pleasure predominant; heaven, then one more short birth in which he completes the path |
| Manda-tivra, manda-madhya, manda-manda | Inferior | People of lokadharma, worldly life, who want liberation only "when the pains and pressures of this world become too much to bear"; it may take many lifetimes |
The medium band belongs to aspirants of Shivadharma, who turn toward realisation regularly through the day and "at least twice during the night" and keep the rest for worldly pleasure.
The five signs of Rudra's energy
A master filled with this grace is Rudra-shakti-samavishta, "entered into the trance of Rudra's energy". He shows five signs that others can see:
- Intense love for Lord Shiva.
- Mantrasiddhi: when he recites a mantra, its deity appears at once.
- Control over the five elements.
- Whatever work he begins, he completes without defect.
- He is master of all the scriptures, or becomes a great poet.
The final sentence of the chapter is its theological heart: "This is the greatness of Lord Shiva's grace, that no matter what intensity of His grace is with you, it will carry you to his nature in the end." The nine grades are not a verdict on who is saved; they are a measure of how long the road is. Every grade arrives.
The grading follows Abhinavagupta's account of shaktipata in Tantraloka chapter 13, so it is classical, not invented. But two features call for care. The highest grace makes a person die, and the visible master is defined by signs that include supernatural powers (deities appearing on demand, control of the elements). Those signs are a traditional test; they are also the kind of claim a reader cannot verify and that has been used, in many traditions, to authorise teachers. The heaven-and-rebirth itineraries of the middle grades are stated as fact, without argument.
The Five States of the Individual Subjective Body
This is one of the two longest chapters, and it is a small treatise in itself. It takes the ordinary states of waking, dreaming and deep sleep, adds turya (the fourth) and turyatita (beyond the fourth), splits each into sub-states, and names every state from three viewpoints: worldly people, yogins and jnanis (the enlightened).
One subject travelling
The chapter opens with a striking claim: "All subjects (jivas) are actually only the one subjective body of God." When that one subject travels in earth, it becomes earth and loses its subjectivity; when it reaches Shiva, it becomes Shiva. The individual subjective body travels in five states:
| State | Travels in | Character |
|---|---|---|
| Jagrat (waking) | Objectivity: elements, names, forms, words, sounds | Becomes one with the object |
| Svapna (dreaming) | Impressions (samskaras) of the objective world | Becomes one with impressions |
| Sushupti (deep sleep) | Complete void; impressions "as if dead" | Aware of nothing |
| Turya (the fourth) | Subjective consciousness, with full awareness, "by the grace of a master" | Illumined in its Self |
| Turyatita (beyond) | Firm hold of turya in every state | Never loses consciousness, "even at the time of death" |
Sixteen sub-states
Waking, dreaming and deep sleep each contain all four (waking, dreaming, sleep, turya). Turya contains three. Turyatita "is not found mixed with any other state". Each sub-state has a technical name from the Malinivijaya Tantra:
| Waking mode | Dreaming mode | Sleep mode | Turya mode | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| In jagrat | Abuddha: totally given to objects, never asks "Who am I?" | Buddha: daydreaming, lost in thought; some awareness | Prabuddha: loses both outer objects and inner impressions; "very near" | Suprabuddha: moves in the world while residing in Self-consciousness |
| In svapna | Gatagata: "you come and you go"; the dream pencil turns into a knife and you do not notice | Suvikshipta: "absolutely dispersed"; pencil, book, flying, driving, all seems normal | Samgata: "touched"; you notice the pencil became a knife and realise you are dreaming, then lose it | Susamahita: you know you are dreaming and enter samadhi, fall back into a dream, re-enter |
| In sushupti | Udita: "I was asleep and I observed nothing"; rising out of impressions | Vipula: some impression of being in subjectivity, growing stronger | Shanta: that faint awareness is uninterrupted; peace without agitation | Suprasanna: positive bliss of the state, entering samadhi |
| In turya | Manonmana: "beyond the span of the mind"; turya in the background | Ananta: unlimited Being, more vivid | Sarvartha: unlimited, yet holding all the universe's limitations | (none: "turya turya is not possible") |
The dream sequence is the chapter's best teaching device. In one dream you see a pencil; next moment it is a knife. Not noticing is gatagata. Noticing nothing at all as you fly and drive is suvikshipta. Noticing and asking why, then forgetting, is samgata. Noticing, knowing you dream, and dropping into samadhi is susamahita. The same four-step climb is available in every state.
Three vocabularies
The states also receive three sets of names, reflecting three kinds of observer:
| State | Worldly people | Yogins | Jnanis |
|---|---|---|---|
| Waking | Jagrat | Pindastha: one with whatever you perceive | Sarvatobhadra: "everywhere divine" |
| Dreaming | Svapna | Padastha: "established where you are"; half the struggle of waking | Vyapti: "pervasion"; they pervade the dream body, the car, the road |
| Deep sleep | Sushupti; for them tushnimbhava, "absolute silence" | Rupastha: "established in one's own Self" | Mahavyapti: "the great pervasion" |
| Turya | Turya, "the fourth", for lack of a better name | Rupatita: beyond the "touch" of Self, its establishment | Pracaya: undifferentiated totality |
| Turyatita | Turyatita | No name, "outside of their experience"; they imagine satatodita, "no pause, no break" | Mahapracaya: "the unlimited and unexplainable supreme totality" |
Two practical remarks stand out. Dreaming is easier for samadhi than waking: "When you are in the state of svapna, you only have to struggle half as much." And children live mainly in svapna; "if illuminating power is put into them by some master... they will enter into samadhi in an instant".
Turya and turyatita
Turya is the state of pramiti rather than pramatri: subjective consciousness without the agitation of objects. His example is from his own work: a man lecturing, "full of those objects which he is explaining", is a pramatri; the same man without the agitation of lectures, with "no objective world before him", is in pramiti. Turya holds all energies at once, not in succession: it is savyapara (all energies get their power there) and anamaya (unagitated by them).
Turyatita is "the absolute fullness of Self", found in samadhi and also "in each and every activity of the world". Here "there is no possibility for the practice of yoga. If you can practice yoga, then you are not in turyatita."
In Trika terms, waking and dreaming are the kingdom of apara shakti (lowest energy), deep sleep of parapara (middle), and turya of para (supreme). Deep sleep, which worldly people treat as blankness, is for the yogin a higher state than waking: "the touch of one's self". The chapter's real lesson is that the familiar daily cycle is already a ladder.
Two schools, one definition
The Pratyabhijna masters define the first three states slightly differently: waking is consciousness turned outward (bahirvritti), dreaming the sphere of thoughts (samkalpa nirmana), deep sleep "absolute destruction" like dissolution (pralayopama). Turya and turyatita are defined the same. Abhinavagupta's general definition reconciles them: waking is vividness of objectivity; dreaming, vividness that is shaky; deep sleep, vividness gone; turya, super-observation by an observing agency; turyatita, objectivity "individually dead and found full of life in totality".
The sub-state names are textual (Malinivijaya Tantra II.38 to 46; Tantraloka X), but the examples are Lakshmanjoo's, and they are the most valuable part. Two remarks are worth flagging. The idea that yogins "imagined" a name for turyatita through "guesswork" is a ranking of yogins below jnanis that the texts present more neutrally. And "Abhinavagupta, the greatest master of Shaivism and the greatest philosopher the world has ever known" is devotional praise, not a scholarly judgement; Abhinavagupta is widely regarded as one of the major philosophers of South Asia (Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy), which is a strong enough claim on its own.
The Fivefold Contacts of Masters and Disciples
The shortest chapter in the book establishes where teaching comes from. Before any human lineage, initiation passes down a chain of divine beings, in five kinds of "contact" (sambandha).
Five contacts
| Contact | Master | Disciple |
|---|---|---|
| Mahan sambandha (great) | Lord Shiva | Sadashiva |
| Antarala sambandha (intermediate) | Sadashiva | Anantabhattaraka |
| Divya sambandha (divine) | Anantabhattaraka | Shrikanthanatha |
| Divyadivya sambandha (partly divine) | Shrikantha | Sanatkumara Rishi |
| Adivya sambandha (not divine) | Masters in the line of Sanatkumara | Mortal beings |
The fifth contact "has occurred many times". Its latest instance: Durvasa Rishi, of Sanatkumara's school, as master, and Tryambakanatha as disciple. That is the bridge to Chapter Thirteen.
The supreme contact
Above all five is para sambandha, the supreme contact, which "can take place in any state of these five contacts". It is the only "real initiation": at the moment of initiation "the master becomes one with the disciple and the disciple becomes one with the master". It must take place "between each and every master and each and every disciple".
For this supreme contact to take place, the disciple should never find any fault in his master or his master's activity. If he does, then he is lost.
Swami Lakshmanjoo, Chapter 12The divine chain is mythic genealogy: its purpose is to give human teaching the authority of Shiva himself, and it should be read that way. The rule that the disciple must "never find any fault in his master or his master's activity" is classical in guru traditions, and it is also the rule that makes abuse of authority hard to name. A reader can honour the ideal of complete trust in initiation without accepting it as a ban on judgement in ordinary life. The text itself says nothing about what a disciple should do if a master does act wrongly.
The Birth of the Tantras
Chapter Thirteen is the book's sacred history. It tells how the Tantras came out of Shiva's five mouths, how the teaching was lost in the dark age and recovered through the sage Durvasa, and how it passed through a chain of mind-born sages to Kashmir, Abhinavagupta and finally Lakshmanjoo himself.
Svacchandanatha and the 92 Tantras
At the start of the first age (satyuga) Shiva appeared as Svacchandanatha, with five heads and eighteen arms. The five heads are his five energies (cit, ananda, iccha, jnana, kriya), named Ishana, Tatpurusha, Aghora, Vamadeva and Sadyojata. The Tantras came out of these mouths singly and then in every combination of two, three, four and five.
| Class | Number | Doctrine | Relation to Kashmir Shaivism |
|---|---|---|---|
| Shiva Tantras | 10 | Dualist (dvaita) | Not connected |
| Rudra Tantras | 18 | Monism cum dualism (bhedabheda) | Not the main basis |
| Bhairava Tantras | 64 | Pure monism (abheda) | The basis of Kashmir Shaivism |
The Bhairava Tantras arose when each mouth was simultaneously filled with the other four, "no one energy... in predominance, all were equal". In them Shiva is "equally present in everything and everywhere. You cannot say that something is closer to Him and something else is farther away."
The Tantras also descended through the four levels of speech of Chapter Six: first felt in para vak, where speaker and spoken, master and disciple, were not yet differentiated; then held in pashyanti; then differentiated as thought in madhyama; finally spoken as "words, sentences, and verses" in vaikhari.
Loss and recovery
In the first three ages, masters and disciples needed no writing; "the power of memory in them was so great". When kaliyuga began they "were so disappointed that they hid themselves in unknown places", and the teaching was lost. Shiva reappeared on Mount Kailasha as Shrikanthanatha and taught the Bhairava Tantras to Durvasa Rishi, a lifelong celibate (urdhvaretas), instructing him to spread them "without restriction to caste, color, or creed".
Durvasa could find no one fit for his "practical initiation", which enlightened the disciple at once. So he created mind-born children:
- Tryambakanatha: initiated into the monistic Bhairava Tantras; founder of the monistic line.
- Amardakanatha: initiated into the dualistic Shiva Tantras.
- Shrinatha: initiated into the mono-dualistic Rudra Tantras.
- Ardhatryambaka, a daughter, "for the upliftment of women", fully initiated in monism; her school passed "from one woman to another secretly", so it has no recorded history.
The monistic line then runs: Tryambakanatha (who disappeared into a cave, Tryambaka Guha) → Tryambakaditya → mind-born sons for fifteen siddhas in all. The fifteenth was "not fully introverted" and could not create a mind-born son, so he married. Then: Sangamaditya (who came to Kashmir) → Varshaditya → Arunaditya → Ananda → Somanandanatha, author of the Shivadrishti and founder of Pratyabhijna. Up to Somananda transmission was father to son; from him on, master to disciple: Somananda → Utpaladeva → Lakshmanagupta → Abhinavagupta → Kshemaraja → Yogaraja; then, "after many centuries", Swami Ram → Swami Mahatabakak → Lakshmanjoo.
Atrigupta and the name "Kashmir Shaivism"
A second strand explains Abhinavagupta's family. King Lalitaditya of Kashmir, travelling in Antarvedi (the land between the Yamuna and the Ganges), met the Shaiva teacher Atrigupta, brought him to Kashmir and housed him in the old palace of Pravarasena. "After he moved to Kashmir, there was no authority on Kashmir Shaivism left in India." From then on the teaching of the Bhairava Tantras is called Kashmir Shaivism. Generations later came Varahagupta, his son Narasimhagupta, and his son Abhinavagupta, who had "many disciples, both men and women".
The story carries three doctrinal messages: the monist Tantras are the fullest revelation (all five energies equal); the teaching was always meant to be open across caste and gender (Durvasa's instruction, Ardhatryambaka); and the living tradition depends on unbroken initiation, father to son and then master to disciple, down to the speaker himself.
This is sacred genealogy, and it should be read the way the tradition itself reads it: as a statement of authority, not as history. The mind-born sons, the vanishing siddhas (a footnote says they "did not die; they simply disappeared") and the age-cycle chronology are not historical claims a scholar can test. Parts of the story are old: Somananda's own Shivadrishti closes with an account of his descent from Tryambaka. The Atrigupta episode comes from Abhinavagupta's own autobiographical verses at the end of the Tantraloka, and King Lalitaditya is a historical eighth-century ruler. Two details deserve a second look: the claim that after Atrigupta "no authority... was left in India" is a Kashmiri boast, since Shaiva Tantric traditions flourished well beyond the valley; and the footnote explaining "Ardhatryambaka" (because "the daughter is considered to be only one-half the property of her father") sits uneasily beside the chapter's claim that the system does not regard women as degraded.
Moksha in Kashmir Shaivism and Indian Philosophy
Chapter Fourteen is the first of two comparative chapters. All Indian schools agree that ignorance binds and knowledge frees, but, Lakshmanjoo says, "these philosophers have not completely understood knowledge and ignorance". He summarises four rival accounts of liberation and then places them on the ladder of perceivers.
Four rival views
| School | Liberation is... |
|---|---|
| Vaishnavas | Union with paraprakriti, the higher nature of the Bhagavad Gita, attained by seeing that the universe's apparent differentiation is unreal |
| Advaita Vedanta | Bliss (ananda) only: removing five veils by negation, "neti, neti, I am not the body, not the mind, not prana", and resting in what remains |
| Vijnanavada (Buddhist idealists) | The mind detached from all objects, remaining "only as mind, pure and perfect" and luminous |
| Vaibhashika (Buddhist realists) | The chain of thoughts extinguished like a lamp's flame when the oil runs out: it "does not go anywhere... it simply disappears" |
The verdict: stuck in the void
"From the Shaivite point of view, these philosophical traditions remain either in apavedya-pralayakala or in savedya-pralayakala." Both are forms of the pralayakala perceiver of Chapter Eight, the void below vijnanakala. The difference is shown with deep sleep:
- Waking and thinking "I was sleeping and I didn't know anything" is apavedya (without object).
- Waking and thinking "I was sleeping peacefully without dreaming" is savedya (with an object): "sweetness" was the object.
Their yogins "do not move above the pralayakala state and are not, therefore, situated in real moksha".
Two kinds of knowledge
The constructive half of the chapter is more interesting than the polemic. Shaivism defines knowledge as knowing one's nature as being, consciousness and bliss (sat, cit, ananda), and distinguishes two kinds of ignorance and knowledge:
| Paurusha (of the person) | Bauddha (of the intellect) | |
|---|---|---|
| Ignorance | Not realising one's nature in samadhi | Not knowing the philosophical truth of Shaiva monism |
| Removed by | The master's grace and meditation on the Self | Studying the monistic Shaiva texts |
| Alone gives | Liberation after death | Nothing: "useless and will not take you anywhere" |
| Together | Jivanmukti, liberation while living |
So far, practice outranks study. Then comes the twist. Practice without study is unstable: paurusha jnana "may decrease day by day, slowly fading away". "It is the greatness of bauddha jnana that, with its power, it firmly establishes paurusha jnana. In this respect, therefore, bauddha jnana is more important."
The practical rule follows: seek a master with both kinds of knowledge. If none can be found, prefer a master with only intellectual knowledge over one with only practical realisation, "because intellectually he will carry you by and by to the end point". For a tradition that values grace and experience so highly, this is a strong, unexpected defence of study and philosophy.
The summaries of rival schools are sketches drawn to be ranked, and some are inaccurate. The "fivefold veils" attributed to Advaita (avidya, asmita, raga, dvesha, abhinivesha) are the five kleshas of Patanjali's Yoga Sutra, not an Advaita doctrine; the book's own footnote assigns them to "Yoga philosophy". Advaita does not say liberation is "only bliss"; it identifies liberation with knowledge of Brahman, whose nature is described as being, consciousness and bliss, which is the very formula Shaivism uses here. The Vaishnava account (union with paraprakriti) fits none of the major Vaishnava theologies, which centre on devotion to a personal Lord. And the verdict that all of them stall in pralayakala is asserted from inside the Shaiva ladder: no argument is given that a Buddhist or Vedantin realisation is really the deep-sleep void. This is classical sectarian doxography in the tradition of Kshemaraja's Pratyabhijnahrdayam, sutra 8, which assigns each rival philosophy to a lower level of the Self.
Kashmir Shaivism and Advaita Vedanta
Both systems are non-dual (advaita), "yet there are many important differences in their thinking". Chapter Fifteen lists five, and they are the clearest statement in the book of what makes Kashmir Shaivism distinctive.
The five differences at a glance
| Point | Advaita Vedanta (as presented) | Kashmir Shaivism |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Karmayoga | Nishkama karma: actions done without asking for reward | Contemplation kept unbroken in action, in three stages of speech |
| 2. The individual | Brahman reflected in the intellect (buddhi) becomes the jiva | Shiva reflects buddhi in his own svatantrya; the purer holds the impure, not the reverse |
| 3. The world | Unreal, a creation of maya | As real as Shiva: "how could an unreal substance come out from something that is real?" |
| 4. Kundalini | Not recognised; "for those treading on the inferior path" | "The most important yoga in this system": para, cit and prana kundalini |
| 5. Eligibility | Brahmins with good qualities; Shankara restricts it to samnyasins; women and other castes excluded | Anyone, man or woman, of any caste, creed or colour; "more fruitfully by women than by men" |
Yoga in action
The first difference is developed as a practice, and it is the most practical passage in the book. Shaiva karmayoga "does not mean carrying out all of the activities of the world. Yoga in action is pure yoga and nothing else." It is one-pointedness developed in three levels of speech, in a fixed order:
- Madhyama first, in silence. "When you are seated in a bus, or when you are walking on the road, you must observe silence... Continue your practice of contemplating Lord Shiva as you were instructed by your Master, without talking to anybody." "In the beginning, you have to start with silence."
- Then para. After the activity, for example a ten-mile walk, you sit to meditate and "automatically enter the para state". It cannot be made to happen. If the contemplation broke during the walk, para will not come, "and you will have to begin again".
- Finally vaikhari. You remain established in your own being "while talking, while laughing, while carrying out all of the actions of the world". This is possible only when the first two stages are complete. Krishna is the model: "very active, doing everything while remaining established in his own nature."
Lakshmanjoo's most quoted claim: "if you were to continue your practice of contemplation for just fifteen minutes while walking, the benefit will be the same as you would acquire if you were to continuously practice contemplation in your meditation room for two or even three years." The reason he gives: yoga in action "makes your practice of contemplation more firm, solid, and substantial".
The reflection argument
The second difference reverses the image of Chapter Four. Vedanta, he says, makes the individual a reflection of Universal Being in the intellect. But buddhi is impure and covered by veils; "it is the purer and more refined reality which will take the reflection of that which is less pure... Buddhi cannot hold Universal Being." And how could buddhi exist before the world in which it is supposed to receive the reflection? The Shaiva answer: individual being is the reflection of Shiva in his own freedom.
Vedanta's mirror is the individual mind, and God's light falls into it. Shaivism's mirror is God's own freedom, and the individual mind appears in it. In the first, liberation means the reflection recognises it is only a reflection. In the second, the reflection was never anything but the mirror's own play, so nothing has to be negated, only recognised.
The verse on women
The fifth difference cites a verse quoted by Jayaratha on Tantraloka I.13: "That attainment which is said to be achieved in one year's time by those terrified is achieved in twelve days by those divine ladies who are established in the true path of Shaivism." The chapter ends: "Kashmir Shaivism, therefore, is a universal system, pure, real, and substantial in every respect, which can be practiced by all."
This chapter is partly fair and partly a caricature. On eligibility the critique has real textual support: in his commentary on Brahma Sutra 1.3.34 to 38, Shankara denies Shudras access to Vedic study and to Brahman-knowledge through the Veda, while allowing that knowledge through the epics and Puranas is open to all four varnas (Lulla commentary on the Apashudra section). On the other points the picture is thinner. The "reflection in buddhi" theory is one Advaita model, the pratibimba-vada of the Vivarana school; the rival Bhamati school prefers a limitation model (avaccheda-vada), the pot-space analogy (Hindupedia on avaccheda-vada). Advaita does not call the world simply "unreal": it is mithya, real at the transactional level and not ultimately, which is a more careful position than "untrue". And the "fifteen minutes equals three years" figure is a teacher's exhortation, not a measured result. Modern presentations often quote the generous line on women and leave out that, in Chapter Thirteen, the same tradition explains a woman's name by her being "one-half the property of her father".
The Seven States of Turya
The last four chapters move from theory to what the yogin goes through. Chapter Sixteen describes the seven states of turya, also called the seven states of ananda (bliss), a teaching Lakshmanjoo says Abhinavagupta received from his master Shambhunatha. It is the most experiential and the most demanding chapter in the book.
This chapter describes breath stopping, choking sensations, terrifying visions and the apprehension of death, and it instructs the yogin at one point to "stop your breath at once", with the note that "if your master is there, he will tell you" when. These are Guru-only practices inside a lineage. Do not attempt breath retention or force these states from a book. Anyone with heart, respiratory, neurological or psychiatric conditions should treat this chapter as description, not instruction.
The gap between states
Between waking and dreaming, dreaming and deep sleep, deep sleep and waking, there is a junction, and "this junction is actually the fourth state, turya". Everyone passes through it every night, unaware. It cannot be caught by watching for it: "whenever you gaze on this junction, waiting for it to happen, it will never happen." The only way is indirect: centre on the point between any two breaths, movements or thoughts during the day. When that is established, at bedtime you will "be aware at that point, at that junction".
The seven joys
| No. | State | What happens | Tantraloka V |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Nijananda, bliss of one's own Self | Awareness at the junction between waking and dream; only "a gate, the entrance to turya" | V.44 |
| 2 | Nirananda, devoid of limited bliss | Breath becomes fine and slow; an intoxicating giddiness; keep alertness and it stabilises; the aspirant "falls asleep" into the junction: organs stop, he cannot move, only the eyelids slightly | V.44 |
| 3 | Parananda, bliss of breathing | Hideous sounds and furious forms (the house collapsing, a fire); then pulling and pushing in the breath, a choking sensation; tolerate it, breathe with the mantra and "more love and affection" | V.45 |
| 4 | Brahmananda, all-pervading bliss | The breath whirls at one point where four passages meet at lambika sthana, the soft palate; neither in nor out; yawning, the mouth "crooked... as at the moment of death"; apprehension of dying; "shed tears of devotion"; at the extreme of whirling, stop the breath | V.47 |
| 5 | Mahananda, great bliss | The breath is "sipped" down the central vein to muladhara, with an audible sipping sound. After this "no effort is required" | V.48 |
| 6 | Cidananda, bliss of consciousness | Bhramavega, "the unknowing force" of devotion, pierces muladhara; cit kundalini rises to brahmarandhra, "like the blooming of a flower" | V.49 |
| 7 | Jagadananda, universal bliss | Brahmarandhra pierced; a single out-breath, eyes open, then closed: krama mudra; when it is established, "the whole of the universe is experienced as one with your own Transcendental I Consciousness" | V.50 to 52 |
Two lines in this chapter are psychologically exact. The terrors of parananda arise "because individuality has to be shaken off". And after mahananda, the yogin "should not think that everything is now automatic. The more he thinks that everything will be automatic, the more surely he will remain at the state of mahananda. This is why masters never tell the aspirant what will take place after mahananda." Expectation itself becomes the last obstacle.
From closed-eye to open-eye samadhi
States 1 to 6 are phases of nimilana samadhi, inward, eyes-closed absorption, which grows firmer at each stage. With krama mudra it turns into unmilana samadhi, "extroverted samadhi, where you experience the state of samadhi at the same time you are experiencing the objective world". When unmilana samadhi becomes permanent, that is jagadananda.
Lakshmanjoo correlates the seven joys with the perceivers of Chapter Eight:
| Joy | Nijananda | Nirananda | Parananda | Brahmananda | Mahananda | Cidananda | Jagadananda |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Perceiver | Sakala | Vijnanakala | Shuddhavidya | Ishvara | Sadashiva | Shiva | Parama Shiva |
A long footnote adds a distinction that applies to every level. Entering a state unknowingly, without control, is being in the "state"; having "full authority of going to that state and returning from it whenever you wish" is being its pramatri. Vijnanakala, once touched, "leaves a permanent impression" and is never lost.
There is a point twixt sleep and waking / Where thou shalt be alert without shaking. / Enter into the new world where forms so hideous pass; / They are passing, endure, do not be taken by the dross.
Swami Lakshmanjoo Brahmachari, closing poem of Chapter 16The rest of his short poem walks through the stages: the "pulls and the pushes about the throttle", "close all ingress and egress", "yawnings there may be", "shed tears, crave, implore", "a thrill passes, and that goes down to the bottom; it riseth, may it bloom forth, that is Bliss".
The seven names and their order come from Tantraloka V.44 to 52, so the framework is classical. The vivid phenomenology (choking, death-like faces, the instruction to stop the breath at the peak) is Lakshmanjoo's oral expansion, and it is the part a reader most needs to handle carefully: it is also a description that overlaps with sleep paralysis (inability to move, frightening sounds and figures at the edge of sleep), which a modern reader might reasonably raise. The text does not discuss that overlap. Two textual points: the printed name of the fourth state, "bhramananda", is glossed as "all-pervading bliss" but the quoted verse reads brahmananda, so the guide uses that form; and the correlation table skips pralayakala, matching the sakala perceiver to the first joy and vijnanakala to the second, without explaining why.
Kundalini and Its Purpose
Chapter Seventeen defines kundalini as Shiva's own energy of revealing and concealing, "not different from the existence of Lord Shiva, just as the energy of light and the energy of heat are not separate from the fire". It then divides it three ways and describes the rise of each. The chapter is one of the most quoted in modern writing on kundalini, and one of the most easily misused.
Everything in this chapter and the next is presented by Lakshmanjoo as something that happens "through the grace of your master" and that "is out of your hands". None of it is a technique to be practised from a book. Breath stopping, forced retention and attempts to "raise" energy carry real risks, and the text itself warns of a fruitless reverse rise. Treat these chapters as Guru-only material and as a map for recognising experience, not producing it.
Three kundalinis
| Kind | Experienced by | How it arises | Outcome |
|---|---|---|---|
| Para kundalini | No yogin; "only experienced at the time of death" | It is "the heart of Shiva"; the universe is created, held and consumed in it | Creation and dissolution themselves |
| Cit kundalini | Yogins attached only to spirituality | Centring between two breaths, thoughts or actions | Self-recognition, krama mudra, jivanmukti |
| Prana kundalini | Yogins attached to spirituality and to worldly pleasures | The same centring; the difference appears after muladhara | Spinning cakras, possibly the eight siddhis |
Para kundalini is the supreme visarga of Chapter Six. Its two points are "not Shiva and Shakti; they are the revealing point and the concealing point". The same energy that creates the universe conceals Shiva, and the energy that dissolves the universe reveals him: "the creative energy for the universe is the destructive energy for Shiva."
The rise of cit kundalini
The sequence repeats the last stages of Chapter Sixteen:
- Centring maintained "with continuity"; the breath coagulates, stops, whirls about one point.
- It turns from prana (breath) into pranana (life) and rushes down the central vein to muladhara, near the base of the spine.
- A brief crawling sensation, compared to the moment just before sexual climax (the footnote quotes "sparsho yadvat pipilika", a touch like an ant's).
- It rises "in one flash"; bliss in which "sexual happiness is one millionth part", together with the recognition "I am only bliss and consciousness".
- It pierces bhrumadhya (between the eyebrows): one abrupt out-breath; then on to brahmarandhra (crown); out-breath, eyes open, the world "full of ecstasy", then back inside, again and again: krama mudra.
- Established in krama mudra, the bliss continues in eating, talking, walking: jivanmukti.
"The full rise... can take place in one day, one life, or one hundred lifetimes."
The rise of prana kundalini
Up to the crawling sensation the two are identical. In prana kundalini, the cakra at muladhara begins spinning clockwise with an audible sound; the force rises "twelve finger-spaces" to the navel, then the heart, throat and eyebrows, each wheel spinning, so that the yogin "even experience[s] the spokes". At the crown (sahasrara) the wheel does not turn; it is pierced, and only by those without worldly attachment, who then pass into cit kundalini. A householder seeking the full experience "has to give your full life to it".
Siddhis and the reverse rise
If sahasrara is not pierced, the yogin returns from the eyebrow centre with the eight great powers (ashtasiddhi): anima (invisibility, in his gloss), laghima (lightness, moving through the air), mahima (an enormous body, "as Hanuman did"), garima (immovable weight), ishitva (control over the cosmos, "to make it rain"), vashitva (attractiveness), prakamya (control over one's own bodily system, such as hunger) and vyapti (pervading and knowing the universe). Their danger: "by and by, you will be deprived of some portion of your spirituality", because their charm draws you further into worldly pleasure.
Worse is the reverse rise: the force crosses all the wheels unfelt, starts the eyebrow centre spinning and then works downward to muladhara. This is pishacavesha, "trance of ghosts", "a fruitless and valueless process" that "leads you from right to wrong".
The chapter's real teaching is about motive, not mechanics. Whether energy rises as cit or prana kundalini, whether the crown is pierced, whether powers appear, all depend on one variable: attachment to worldly pleasure alongside spirituality. "There is nothing you can do to determine how the rise of kundalini will take place. It rises in its own way, depending on your attachments."
Three claims need flagging. First, the reverse rise "only happens when your master is not on good terms with you or is angry with you. He puts you in this process." Read literally, this gives a teacher the power to inflict harmful states on a disciple, a claim that sits badly with modern concern about abuse of authority in guru relationships, and that a reader is entitled to question. Second, a footnote says that when ida is active "you breathe more through the right nostril" and when pingala is active, the left. Standard hatha-yoga teaching says the opposite: ida is the left, lunar channel and pingala the right, solar channel (Sivananda on the nadis; Himalayan Institute on nostril dominance). Whether this is a transcription slip or a deliberate departure, the footnote's main point stands: in this system the ida-pingala scheme "has nothing to do with kundalini", and the cakras have no lotus petals. Third, the gloss of anima as "invisibility" departs from the usual meaning, becoming minute or atomic. The comparisons with sexual climax are the text's own; the footnote insists the "real love" meant is "not... sexual love".
Variations in the Rise of Prana Kundalini
Chapter Eighteen is short and strange. Prana kundalini, it says, takes six forms of "penetration" (vedha), and which one occurs is decided by the yogin's deepest desire. Each moves through the same cakras, muladhara to eyebrows; what changes is how it feels.
| Vedha | Desire of the yogin | Felt as |
|---|---|---|
| Mantravedha | Intense longing for the Supreme "I" through the mantra aham ("I am") | The blissful breath rising as the mantra, one with oneself |
| Nadavedha | To uplift mankind and explain reality to others | Nada: "I am meant for the upliftment of mankind" |
| Binduvedha | Ease, comfort, peace of mind and nothing else | A fountain of semen rising to brahmarandhra and spreading through the body; all taste for worldly pleasure is lost at once |
| Shaktavedha | To be strong and teach tirelessly | Rising like an ant; becoming "the embodiment of energy" |
| Bhujangavedha | The impression that kundalini is serpent power | A cobra, tail in muladhara, body stretched to brahmarandhra |
| Bhramaravedha | To secretly initiate a few disciples | The buzzing of a black bee, with intense bliss |
Lakshmanjoo states his own preference plainly: "I would appreciate experiencing only two of them, mantravedha and binduvedha. I would give everything for the experience of these two." And again: "Whether or not you experience a particular kind of penetration... is out of your hands." The lesson repeats Chapter Seventeen: experience follows desire, so the work is on desire.
The six vedhas are a classical scheme (they appear in Tantraloka 29 and in Jayaratha's commentary), but the mapping of each to a particular desire is given here without a source and reads as Lakshmanjoo's own oral teaching. The bhujangavedha entry is quietly revealing: the cobra appears only for yogins who already believe kundalini is a serpent, which suggests that, in his view, the popular serpent image is a product of expectation. Read that way, the chapter undercuts much of the modern kundalini literature that treats the serpent as literal. The binduvedha imagery is sexual and physiological; it belongs to a tantric idiom of retained and sublimated seed, and should not be read as a practice instruction.
The Schools of Kashmir Shaivism
The book ends with a map of the schools. Kashmir Shaivism as a whole is "the Pure Trika System", the threefold science of man and his world, built on three energies: para (supreme), apara (lowest) and parapara (the combination). It is "meant for any human being without restriction of caste, creed, or color", and it contains four sub-systems that share the same 92 agamas.
Pratyabhijna: recognition
Pratyabhijna means "to spontaneously once again recognize and realize your Self". "Here you have only to realize, you do not have to practice. There are no upayas." Its image, from Ishvarapratyabhijna Karika (cited as IV.2), is the bride: a girl longs to see the husband she has only heard praised; by chance she meets him on a pilgrimage and feels nothing; when a friend tells her "this is the man", she is filled with joy and realises he was the man she had already seen. "The moment recognition dawns, not only do you instantaneously become divine, but you also realize that you were already divine." It is the master who plays the friend; the school sits chiefly in anupaya.
Kula: totality
Kula teaches living in universal consciousness in both ascent and descent, with "no break in the realization of your own nature either in the highest or in the lowest circle". Kula means totality, and its practice is to realise "the totality of the universe in one particle": "in any one element, you will find all of the thirty-six elements." A footnote defines totality as the state where knowledge and ignorance exist together, "both... digested in the totality; nothing is excluded". Shiva realised in the earth tattva is the same Shiva realised in the Shiva tattva.
Krama: succession
Krama "does not recognize the ways" of the other two: you rise step by step, and "step-by-step realization makes your realization firm". It therefore deals with space and time, transcending them only at the end. It belongs to shaktopaya and to the twelve Kalis, "the twelve movements of any one cognition": perception travels from thought to the pot and back, and "you realize this pot in your mind", not at the pot. Prana kundalini, rising cakra by cakra, is "also described in the Krama System". Because the system gives predominance to Shakti, its founder's three chief disciples were women, Keyuravati, Madanika and Kalyanika, who later initiated men and women; a footnote adds that some of its Tantras show Parvati initiating Shiva.
Spanda: vibration
Spanda means movement: "where there is movement, there is life", in waking, dream, deep sleep and turya alike, against "some thinkers [who] argue that there is no movement in deep sleep". Its teachings are found in the Vijnana Bhairava, the Svacchanda Tantra and Tantraloka chapter 6. It was introduced by Vasuguptanatha in the early eighth century, author of both the Shiva Sutras and the Spanda Karikas; his disciple was Kallata.
Book's dates: Kula introduced by Macchandanatha, early 5th century; Krama reintroduced by Erakanatha (Shivananda), late 7th century; Spanda by Vasugupta, early 8th century; Pratyabhijna reintroduced by Somananda, end of the 8th century; Kula reintroduced by Sumatinatha, 9th century (Sumatinatha → Somanatha → Shambhunatha → Abhinavagupta). Scholarly dates run later: Vasugupta c. 800 to 850 (Wikipedia on Vasugupta); Somananda c. 900 to 950 (Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy); Krama founder Jnananetra c. 850 to 900 by Sanderson's generation count (Sanderson, The Shaiva Exegesis of Kashmir).
This chapter is the clearest case of tradition and scholarship parting company. (1) Dates. The book's dates are generally earlier than modern estimates, which count back from Abhinavagupta's fixed dates at about 25 years per generation; Sanderson himself calls that "this crude calculation", and Rastogi's version runs fifty years earlier (Sanatana Rahasya on the Krama). Even so, Somananda at the "end of the eighth century" is a century early on most reckonings. (2) Krama lineage. In the scholarly reconstruction, Jnananetra alias Shivananda taught the three yoginis, and Eraka was one of the three men who received the teaching from them (Sanatana Rahasya; Springer article on the twelve Kalis). The book's "Erakanatha, who was also known as Shivanandanatha" merges teacher and grand-pupil. (3) Spanda authorship. The footnote calls the view that Kallata wrote the Spanda Karikas "absolutely incorrect". That view is not a modern invention: Kshemaraja credits Vasugupta, but Bhaskara and Utpala Vaishnava credit Kallata, and modern scholarship remains divided (Spanda Karikas, ed. Dyczkowski). (4) "Four sub-systems of Trika" is Abhinavagupta's unifying view. Historically, Krama and Kula were independent Shakta traditions that Trika later absorbed, and Spanda and Pratyabhijna were exegetical schools, not separate cults.
Twenty-Two Lessons from the Book
The Secret Supreme is a dense map, and these are its load-bearing ideas, in roughly the order the book builds them.
- One reality, free. Parama Shiva is consciousness that is also svatantrya, absolute freedom; the universe is his free self-expression (Ch. 1).
- The world is real. Creation is Shiva's play, not illusion; "how could an unreal substance come out from something that is real?" (Ch. 1, 15).
- Thirty-six tattvas run from Shiva down to earth: five pure, the six kancukas with maya, and the twenty-five of Samkhya (Ch. 1).
- Limitation is self-chosen. The five kancukas contract Shiva's five powers into time, limited knowing, desire, limited action and place (Ch. 1).
- Everything is a path. The sixfold path (shadadhva) arranges the cosmos as objects, cognitions and words, so any of them can lead back (Ch. 2).
- Sound comes first. The fifty letters (matrika) map the descent of consciousness from Shiva to earth (Ch. 3).
- The world is a mirror. Shiva holds the universe as a reflection in himself, as a mirror holds a city; the reflection needs no outside cause (Ch. 4).
- Three means and no means. Anavopaya, shaktopaya, shambhavopaya, and anupaya beyond them, matched to action, knowledge, will and bliss (Ch. 5).
- Four levels of speech. Para, pashyanti, madhyama and vaikhari, in nine grades of sound (Ch. 6).
- Three impurities. Karma, mayiya and anava mala explain bondage; anava mala, the feeling of incompleteness, is the subtlest (Ch. 7).
- Seven perceivers. Sakala to Shiva: a ladder of subjects, not objects, climbed through the processes of Chapter 9 (Ch. 8, 9).
- Grace has degrees. Shiva's five acts include grace, and shaktipata comes in nine intensities, from super supreme to inferior (Ch. 10).
- One subject travelling. Waking, dream, deep sleep, turya and turyatita are states of one subject; turyatita never loses consciousness, "even at the time of death" (Ch. 11).
- Teaching descends by contact. The five contacts trace the teaching from Shiva to mortal masters (Ch. 12).
- Study and practice need each other. Bauddha jnana stabilises paurusha jnana; prefer an intellectual master to a merely practical one (Ch. 14).
- Yoga in action. Silent contemplation while walking or travelling outweighs years of sitting (Ch. 15).
- Open to all. The system claims no restriction of caste, creed, colour or gender (Ch. 13, 15, 19).
- The junction is the door. Turya is the gap between waking, dream and sleep, entered by centring between breaths and thoughts (Ch. 16).
- Seven joys carry the yogin from nijananda to jagadananda, closed-eye to open-eye samadhi (Ch. 16).
- Do not expect. Masters do not describe later stages because expectation itself blocks them (Ch. 16).
- Motive shapes experience. Cit or prana kundalini, siddhis or not, and the six vedhas all follow the yogin's attachments and desires (Ch. 17, 18).
- One Trika, four doors. Recognition, totality, succession and vibration are four approaches within one system (Ch. 19).
The Book's Key Schemes in One Table
| Framework | Elements | Chapter |
|---|---|---|
| 36 tattvas | 5 pure (Shiva to shuddhavidya), maya + 5 kancukas, 25 of Samkhya | 1 |
| Sixfold path | Varna, mantra, pada (word side); kala, tattva, bhuvana (object side) | 2 |
| Five energies / five heads | Cit, ananda, iccha, jnana, kriya; Ishana to Sadyojata | 1, 13 |
| Matrika | 16 vowels (Shiva), 25 consonants, semivowels, sibilants, ksha | 3 |
| Pratibimbavada | The universe as reflection in Shiva's mirror | 4 |
| Four levels of speech | Para, pashyanti, madhyama, vaikhari; nine grades of sound | 6 |
| Upayas | Anava, shakta, shambhava, anupaya | 5 |
| Seven perceivers | Sakala, pralayakala, vijnanakala, shuddhavidya, Ishvara, Sadashiva, Shiva | 8 |
| Processes of ascent | Fifteen-fold down to three-fold | 9 |
| Five acts | Creation, preservation, destruction, concealment, grace | 10 |
| Three malas | Karma, mayiya, anava | 7 |
| Grades of shaktipata | Nine: intense, medium, mild, each subdivided | 10 |
| Five states | Jagrat, svapna, sushupti, turya, turyatita, with sub-states | 11 |
| Five contacts | Mahan, antarala, divya, divyadivya, adivya | 12 |
| 92 agamas | 10 Shiva (dualist), 18 Rudra (mono-dualist), 64 Bhairava (monist) | 13, 19 |
| Two knowledges | Paurusha jnana, bauddha jnana | 14 |
| Three stages of yoga in action | Madhyama (silence), para, vaikhari | 15 |
| Seven states of turya | Nijananda to jagadananda | 16 |
| Three kundalinis | Para, cit, prana | 17 |
| Eight siddhis | Anima, laghima, mahima, garima, ishitva, vashitva, prakamya, vyapti | 17 |
| Six vedhas | Mantra, nada, bindu, shakta, bhujanga, bhramara | 18 |
| Four systems of Trika | Pratyabhijna, Kula, Krama, Spanda | 19 |
Reading the Whole Book
This closing assessment pulls together the chapter-by-chapter notes: what kind of authority the book claims, where it argues and where it asserts, how fairly it treats rival schools, and how its history compares with modern scholarship.
What kind of book this is. The Secret Supreme is oral teaching, edited from lectures given in 1971 to 1972, by a master speaking from within his lineage. Its authority is the authority of transmission: claims are stated, not argued, and sources are cited as verses rather than defended. That is a strength for anyone who wants the tradition's own voice, and a limit for anyone who wants history.
Assertion vs argument. The strongest arguments are philosophical: the reality of the world (an unreal effect from a real cause), the direction of reflection (the purer holds the less pure), and the complementarity of study and practice. Most of the rest, especially the stages of turya, kundalini and the vedhas, is testimony offered as a map. A reader can find it illuminating without being able to test it.
Rival schools. The comparative chapters rank Vedanta, Vaishnavism and Buddhism on a Shaiva ladder, and the summaries are compressed to fit: Patanjali's kleshas are assigned to Advaita, Advaita's mithya becomes plain "unreal", and Buddhist nirvana becomes a deep-sleep void. On caste the criticism of Shankara has real support; elsewhere the reader should check the rival school's own texts.
History. The dates and lineages are traditional. They usually run earlier than scholarly dating, which itself rests on generation counts (Sanatana Rahasya on Krama dating). Specific points, such as Spanda authorship and the Krama founder, are disputed or differ from the scholarly reconstruction.
Modern softening. Popular presentations quote the universalist lines (open to all castes and to women) and the bliss passages, and tend to drop the harder material: the grading of grace, the warnings about siddhis, the claim that an angry master can put a disciple into a harmful reverse rise, and the explanation of a woman's name as "one-half the property of her father". Read whole, the book is both more demanding and more traditional than its reputation.
Why it still matters. Lakshmanjoo (1907 to 1991) was the last master of the living oral tradition of Kashmir Shaivism (Lakshmanjoo Academy), and this book is the most compact statement of the whole system he taught: a technical summary of Abhinavagupta's world in plain spoken English.
People in the Book
| Person | Role in the book |
|---|---|
| Swami Lakshmanjoo (1907 to 1991) | The speaker; last master of the oral lineage; disciple of Mahatabakak |
| John Hughes | Editor; recorded and published Lakshmanjoo's lectures through the Lakshmanjoo Academy |
| Svacchandanatha / Shrikanthanatha | Forms of Shiva who reveal the Tantras (Ch. 13) |
| Durvasa | Sage who receives the Tantras in kaliyuga and creates mind-born children; also credited with the Krama (Ch. 13, 19) |
| Tryambaka, Amardaka, Shrinatha, Ardhatryambaka | Durvasa's mind-born children, founders of the monist, dualist, mono-dualist and women's lines |
| Sangamaditya | First of the line to come to Kashmir |
| Somananda | Author of the Shivadrishti; founder of Pratyabhijna |
| Utpaladeva | Somananda's disciple; author of the Ishvarapratyabhijna Karika |
| Lakshmanagupta | Utpaladeva's disciple; Abhinavagupta's teacher in Pratyabhijna |
| Abhinavagupta | The great synthesiser; author of the Tantraloka |
| Kshemaraja, Yogaraja | Abhinavagupta's successors and commentators |
| Atrigupta | Abhinavagupta's ancestor, brought to Kashmir by King Lalitaditya |
| Varahagupta, Narasimhagupta | Abhinavagupta's grandfather and father |
| Shambhunatha | Abhinavagupta's Kula teacher; source of the seven states of turya |
| Macchandanatha, Sumatinatha, Somanatha | Founders and transmitters of the Kula |
| Erakanatha (Shivanandanatha) | Credited with reintroducing the Krama |
| Keyuravati, Madanika, Kalyanika | The three women disciples of the Krama founder |
| Vasugupta, Kallata | Recipient of the Shiva Sutras and his disciple, of the Spanda school |
| Jayaratha | Commentator on the Tantraloka, quoted on women's attainment |
| Shankara | Founder of Advaita Vedanta; the main comparative foil |
| Swami Ram, Mahatabakak | Lakshmanjoo's predecessors in the modern line |
Key Terms
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Agama | Revealed scripture; the 92 Shaiva Tantras |
| Aham / idam | "I" and "this", subject and object |
| Anupaya | The "means without means"; pure recognition |
| Bauddha jnana | Intellectual knowledge of the doctrine |
| Bhrumadhya | Centre between the eyebrows |
| Brahmarandhra | Opening at the crown of the head |
| Cakra | Wheel; energy centre that spins in prana kundalini |
| Jivanmukti | Liberation while living |
| Kancuka | One of five "coverings" that limit Shiva's powers |
| Krama mudra | Alternation of inner absorption and outer bliss with eyes open |
| Kundalini | Shiva's revealing and concealing energy; para, cit, prana |
| Lambika sthana | Point at the soft palate where breath whirls |
| Mala | Impurity: anava, mayiya, karma |
| Matrika | The alphabet as the mother of all words and worlds |
| Muladhara | Base centre, near the rectum |
| Nimilana / unmilana samadhi | Closed-eye, inward absorption / open-eye absorption in the world |
| Paurusha jnana | Realised knowledge of one's own nature |
| Pishacavesha | "Trance of ghosts"; the reverse rise of prana kundalini |
| Pramatri | Perceiver, subject |
| Pratyabhijna | Recognition |
| Shaktipata | Descent of grace |
| Siddhi | Yogic power |
| Spanda | Vibration, the movement of consciousness |
| Svatantrya | Absolute freedom of Shiva |
| Tattva | Principle or element of reality; 36 in all |
| Trika | The "threefold" system: para, parapara, apara |
| Turya | The fourth state, the junction between the other three |
| Upaya | Means, path |
| Vedha | "Penetration"; the six forms of prana kundalini's rise |
| Visarga | The two-point emission; Shiva's creative energy |
Living the Teaching Safely
The book is clear that the higher stages come by grace and cannot be forced. What a reader can safely take into daily life is the ground the book lays before them: study, attention and the quality of desire.
Steps 1 to 4 below are ordinary contemplative habits. Everything beyond them in the book (breath stopping, the whirling of breath at the palate, kundalini, the vedhas) is Guru-only and is not offered here as practice. If unusual physical or emotional states arise during meditation, stop, ground yourself in ordinary activity, and seek a qualified teacher and, where needed, medical advice.
- Study first (bauddha jnana). Read one chapter a week with the frameworks table beside you. The book's own claim is that understanding stabilises experience.
- Notice the junctions. Several times a day, rest attention for a few natural breaths on the gap between one breath and the next, or between one thought and the next. No retention, no force; just noticing.
- Silent contemplation in motion. On a walk or a commute, keep a simple remembrance (a name of Shiva, or "aham") going silently, without talking. This is the madhyama stage of Chapter Fifteen, and it is the most practical advice in the book.
- Recognise, do not chase. When a moment of quiet or joy comes, do not try to reproduce it. Chapter Sixteen's warning about expectation applies at every level.
- Watch your desires. Chapters Seventeen and Eighteen say experience follows attachment. Notice what you want from practice: powers, comfort, influence, or simply the Self.
- Seek a lineage. For anything further, the book is explicit: it happens "through the grace of your master". Treat the later chapters as a description of a road that should be walked with a guide.
The secret supreme, in this book's sense, is not a hidden technique; it is that you are already what you seek. Everything else, from the 36 tattvas to the seven joys, is a map for recognising it.