Insight Editions · No. 346
Pratyabhijnahrdayam
The Secret of Self-Recognition
Kshemaraja · translated by Jaideva Singh
Kshemaraja's twenty-sutra digest of the Recognition school of Kashmir Saivism in Jaideva Singh's translation: consciousness as free power, the 36 tattvas, the five divine acts in every perception, the means of unfolding the centre and krama-mudra. Every sutra, the introduction, key notes and a graded practice path, with critical notes.
A study guide to Pratyabhijnahrdayam by Kshemaraja, in the translation by Jaideva Singh (Motilal Banarsidass). Shared free for personal reading; not for sale and not endorsed by the author or publishers. Please read and buy the original.
CORE CLAIM
Citi, consciousness as free power, is the cause, the means and the goal of everything. The bound person is Siva in contracted form, still performing the five divine acts; liberation is simply recognising this, and living it in the world.
SCOPE
Jaideva Singh's prefaces and Introduction, the Analysis of Contents, the opening verses, all twenty sutras with Kshemaraja's commentary, the key notes, a glossary and a master synthesis: about 28,000 words.
KEY FIGURES
Kshemaraja and his teacher Abhinavagupta; Utpaladeva, Vasugupta and Kallata; translator Jaideva Singh and Swami Lakshman Joo; and, as foil, Sankara and the earlier translator Kurt Leidecker.
BEST FOR
Readers who want the shortest complete map of Kashmir Saivism: the 36 tattvas, the malas and upayas, vikalpa-ksaya, krama-mudra and the meaning of aham, with critical notes on polemic and modern sanitisation.
How to Use This Guide
Pratyabhijnahrdayam means "the heart of recognition". In twenty short sutras, each with his own commentary, Kshemaraja condenses the whole Recognition (Pratyabhijna) philosophy of his teacher's teachers into one claim: you are already the free, creative consciousness that is doing everything, and liberation is nothing but recognising this. Jaideva Singh's edition surrounds those twenty sutras with a long Introduction, an Analysis of Contents, 185 notes and a glossary. This guide follows the book in its own order and explains every part.
For each section the guide gives:
- The core argument: what Kshemaraja or Singh is trying to establish, in the order he establishes it.
- Teaching notes: the ideas unpacked one at a time, with every Sanskrit technical term explained when it first appears.
- Insights: what is distinctive, subtle or easy to miss, and how the idea links to the rest of the system.
- Critical lens notes: where a claim is assertion rather than argument, where the text is doing sectarian work against rival schools, or where the translator's frame shapes what you read.
- Key terms and reflection: a short glossary per section and practical questions or exercises.
Two warnings before starting. First, the Sanskrit verses in this edition are printed in Devanagari, and many of them do not survive in the digital copy; where a verse is missing, this guide works from Singh's English rendering, which is printed below each passage. Second, the book is short but dense. Kshemaraja wrote it, in his own words, for devoted people "undeveloped in reflection" who have not studied logic and dialectics. That is a statement about the reader's training, not about the difficulty of the ideas. Every sentence of the commentary carries a technical load, and Singh's notes are needed to read it.
The Shape of the Whole Book in One Page
The twenty sutras form a single arc, from the nature of reality down to the bound person and back up to freedom:
- What reality is (Sutras 1 to 4). Consciousness (citi), free and self-willed, is the cause of the universe; it unfolds the world on its own screen; the world is manifold because of matched pairs of subjects and objects; the individual is the same consciousness in contracted form.
- How consciousness becomes a person (Sutras 5 to 7). Universal consciousness descends and contracts into the individual mind (citta); the bound experient is made of that mind; the one Self appears as two, three, four and thirty-five-fold.
- Every philosophy is a role of the Self (Sutra 8). The rival schools, from the materialist Carvakas to the Vedantins and Buddhists, each mistake one layer of the Self for the whole.
- Bondage (Sutras 9 to 12). Contraction of the divine powers produces the three impurities (malas) and the five sheaths (kancukas). Yet even the bound person performs God's five acts. Not knowing this, he is deluded by his own powers.
- Liberation (Sutras 13 to 16). Knowing the five acts, the mind turns inward and becomes universal consciousness again; even in bondage the fire of consciousness partly burns up its objects; regaining its power, it absorbs the world; the stable state is liberation while living (jivanmukti).
- Method (Sutras 17 to 19). Develop the centre (madhya); the means are dissolving thought-constructs, contracting and expanding power, stopping the two breaths, and fixing attention at the start and end of the breath; then carry the absorption into ordinary life through krama-mudra.
- The result (Sutra 20). Entering the perfect I-consciousness, one becomes lord of the circle of one's own powers. "All this is Siva."
Why This Book Matters
The Isvarapratyabhijnakarika of Utpaladeva, with Abhinavagupta's two great commentaries, is the philosophical core of non-dual Kashmir Saivism, and it is hard reading: it argues against Buddhist logicians point by point. Kshemaraja's digest strips out the debate and keeps the conclusions, adding practice instructions drawn from the Spanda, Krama and Tantric sources that Utpaladeva did not include. Singh's introduction quotes the common judgment that this little book holds the same place in Saiva literature as the Vedantasara holds in Vedanta. For a reader who wants one text that states the whole non-dual Saiva view, from metaphysics to meditation, this is the one.
Kshemaraja is usually dated to the late tenth to early eleventh century, as a direct disciple of Abhinavagupta (Wikipedia on Kshemaraja); a study of the Svacchanda Tantra places him at about 1000 to 1050 CE on the basis of Abhinavagupta's dates (Wisdom Library). Singh says simply "the tenth century". The difference does not affect the doctrine, but it matters when you read Kshemaraja as a systematiser of a school that was, by his time, already more than a century old.
How the Book Is Laid Out
| Part | Pages | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Prefaces | vii to x | Four prefaces (1963 to 1982); the case against the earlier Leidecker translation |
| Introduction | 1 to 33 | Saiva literature; ultimate reality; the 36 tattvas; svatantrya and abhasa; sadadhva; comparison with Sankara; the individual; bondage; liberation; grace; the four upayas; the seven experients |
| Analysis of Contents | 34 to 43 | A one-paragraph summary of each sutra |
| Text and translation | 45 to 115 | Benediction, twenty sutras, commentary, closing verses |
| Notes | 117 to 159 | 185 notes, two charts (the seven experients; the five kalas and 118 bhuvanas) |
| Glossary | 160 to 172 | Technical terms |
The Translator, His Teacher and the Leidecker Problem
Singh's prefaces make one argument that shapes the whole book: this text cannot be translated with a dictionary and a grammar alone; it has to be read with a teacher who lives inside the tradition. He makes the argument by pointing to the errors of the only earlier English version, and he backs it with the authority of Swami Lakshman Joo, whom he calls "practically the sole surviving exponent of this system in Kashmir".
The Four Prefaces
First edition (1963). Singh explains why he made a new translation: the existing one by Prof. K. F. Leidecker "bristles with mistakes, some of which are quite serious". He read the book with Lakshman Joo, who explained the technical terms and traced the sources of most of the quotations. Singh adopted the Kashmir Sanskrit Series text, gave the translation below each page of Sanskrit, kept some technical terms untranslated and explained them in the notes. While the book was in proof, he took difficult sutras to Mahamahopadhyaya Gopinath Kaviraj and used his suggestions; Acharya Pandit Rameshwar Jha helped with some passages.
Second edition (1977). The introduction and notes were "considerably enlarged". Three new topics were added to the introduction: Svatantryavada and Abhasavada, Sadadhva, and the comparison with Sankara's Advaita. These three sections are among the most useful in the book.
Third edition (1980) and fourth edition (1982). Misprints corrected, the translation altered "at two or three places" and "a few places" for clarity, notes improved.
Who Was Jaideva Singh
The back cover gives the outline: Jaideva Singh (1893 to 1986), scholar of musicology, philosophy and Sanskrit, former principal of Y. D. College, Lakhimpur-Kheri, chairman of the U. P. Sangit Natak Akademi, awarded the Padma Bhushan in 1974. His other books in this field are the Siva Sutras, the Spanda Karikas, the Vijnanabhairava and the Paratrisika Vivarana, and before these he wrote on Buddhist Nirvana and Madhyamaka. That Buddhist background shows in his notes: he compares the breath practice of Sutra 18 to Buddhist anapana-sati, and he is careful with Madhyamaka terms.
The Leidecker Problem
Throughout the commentary, Singh adds footnotes that correct Leidecker. They are worth collecting, because together they teach you how the technical vocabulary works. A few examples, all from the footnotes:
| Sanskrit | Leidecker's reading | Singh's correction |
|---|---|---|
| vimarsa | "reason" | the self-awareness of consciousness, its power to know itself and act |
| sukhopaya | "way to happiness" | an easy means |
| cidvat | "cit-like" | full of consciousness; Siva is not like consciousness, he is consciousness |
| tanuta (of contraction) | "corporeality" | attenuation; the less contraction, the higher the experient |
| cit-rasa, asyanata | "savour of cit", "non-distinction" | the essence of consciousness, and its solidification into concrete forms |
| bhuti (Sutra 14) | "great power" | ashes, the image for maya covering the fire of consciousness |
| grasamanah | "are being devoured" | "go on devouring", an active verb; all beings assimilate their experience |
| eka-sad-bhava | "the only reality" | one-ness of being with prakasa |
| pratyahara (Sutra 20) | withdrawing the mind from the elements | the grammarian's technical term for compressing a range of letters into one syllable |
| Sivadharminah | "those who walk in the law of Siva" | having the nature of Siva (said of mantras) |
Some corrections are strong. Of one verse in Sutra 18, Singh writes that Leidecker's rendering is "a deplorable sample of many such meaningless translations with which the book is replete". Of another he says, "It is impossible to work away the translation of such passages without understanding their import from a teacher who is initiated in the tradition of the school."
The corrections are not pedantry. Almost every one of them turns on the difference between a passive reading of consciousness and an active one. "Reason" for vimarsa, "cit-like" for cidvat, "are being devoured" for an active verb: each time, the earlier translation made consciousness a thing that is acted on, and Singh restores it as the agent. That is the central teaching of the book in miniature.
The 1938 Adyar Library edition that Singh criticises was not a direct translation from Sanskrit. It was Leidecker's authorised English translation of a German translation by Rev. Emil Baer, with the Sanskrit sutras added by the Adyar staff (Adyar edition front matter on Scribd; GRETIL edition notes). Some of the errors may therefore have arisen in two steps. Singh's corrections hold on their merits, but his framing ("the book is replete" with meaningless renderings) is polemical, and his remedy, reading with a living teacher, is itself an authority claim. Lakshman Joo's reading is one lineage's reading. Singh shows this himself in a note to Sutra 20, where he prefers Lakshman Joo's interpretation of one word to the interpretation Kshemaraja actually gives in the text.
Key Terms from the Front Matter
- Pratyabhijna: recognition; re-cognising what was always known but appeared forgotten.
- Hrdaya: heart, essence, secret; also, in the system, the deepest centre of consciousness.
- Kashmir Sanskrit Series: the early twentieth-century printed series of Kashmir Saiva texts on which Singh's Sanskrit is based.
Reflection
- Singh claims that some texts cannot be understood without a teacher. Is that a claim about language, about experience, or about both? What would count as evidence for it?
- Pick one of the Leidecker corrections above and ask: what would a meditator actually do differently under each reading?
Saiva Literature and the Place of This Digest (pp. 1–4)
Singh opens by placing Kashmir Saivism in the wider Saiva world and in the Indian idea of philosophy as a lived discipline. He then lays out the three classes of Kashmir Saiva literature and shows where Kshemaraja's book fits: it is the digest of the Pratyabhijna class, written for people who want the conclusions of a difficult argument and the practice that goes with them.
1. The Antiquity Claim and the Three Saivisms
Singh begins with Sir John Marshall's claim, from the Mohenjo-daro excavations, that Saivism goes back to the Chalcolithic age and is "the most ancient living faith in the world". He then distinguishes three main forms in India: Vira-Saiva in Karnataka, Saiva Siddhanta in Tamil Nadu, and Advaita Saiva in Kashmir. All share some features; the Kashmir form is the non-dual one.
Marshall's reading of the so-called "Pasupati" seal as a proto-Siva is an old and much disputed hypothesis. Nothing in the philosophy of this book depends on it. Treat the opening paragraph as the translator's devotional preface, not as historical evidence.
2. Philosophy as a Way of Life
Singh's next point is the one that frames the rest of the book: in India there is no armchair philosophy. The philosopher was not a professor "weaving cob-webs of theory in his study" but someone driven by an inner urge, who lived through years of discipline and "saw the light by the transformation of his life", then explained what he had seen to the logical reason of others. Kashmir Saivism was of this type. It was taught for centuries as a secret doctrine to aspirants who had to "test it in the laboratory of the Self". Over time only cult and ritual remained, and the philosophy survived in oral tradition, until Vasugupta (late eighth or early ninth century) first wrote the principles down. Writing then continued for nearly four centuries.
3. The Three Classes of Literature
| Class | Character | Main works named by Singh |
|---|---|---|
| Agama Sastra | Held to be revelation, handed from teacher to pupil | Malinivijaya, Svacchanda, Vijnanabhairava, Mrgendra, Rudrayamala, Siva Sutras (with the Vrtti, Bhaskara's Varttika and Ksemaraja's Vimarsini) |
| Spanda Sastra | States the main doctrines, develops the Siva Sutras | Spanda Karikas (Spanda Sutras), with Ramakantha's Vivrti, Utpala Vaisnava's Pradipika, Ksemaraja's Spandasandoha (on the first verse only) and Spandanirnaya |
| Pratyabhijna Sastra | Argument and counter-argument; addresses the logical reason | Somananda's Sivadrsti; Utpala's Isvarapratyabhijna with his own Vrtti and Abhinavagupta's Vimarsini and Vivrti-vimarsini; Ksemaraja's Pratyabhijnahrdayam |
Above all three stand Abhinavagupta's Tantraloka (in twelve volumes in the printed edition) and his Tantrasara, which treat every doctrine and discipline of the system. Singh acknowledges that this historical sketch follows J. C. Chatterji's Kashmir Shaivism.
4. Kshemaraja and His Purpose
Kshemaraja was the brilliant pupil of Abhinavagupta, "a peerless master of tantra, yoga, philosophy, poetics, and dramaturgy". Very little is known of his life. Singh lists his works: Pratyabhijnahrdayam, Spandasandoha, Spandanirnaya, Svacchandodyota, Netrodyota, Vijnanabhairavodyota, Sivasutra-vimarsini, Stavacintamani-tika, Parapravesika, Tattvasandoha.
Kshemaraja states his own audience in the opening lines: "some devoted people who are undeveloped in reflection and have not taken pains in studying difficult works (like Logic and Dialectics), but who nevertheless aspire after samavesa with the Highest Lord which blossoms forth with the descent of Sakti". He wrote both the sutras and the commentary.
The audience is defined by two things together: grace already received (the descent of Sakti has begun) and no training in logic. The book does not try to produce the longing for liberation; it assumes it. It does not try to defeat the Buddhist logician; it skips him. That is why it can be short. If you come to it without the longing, it will read like assertion; if you come with it, it reads like a map.
5. What Recognition Means
The word pratyabhijna means re-cognition. The individual self (jiva) is Siva, but has forgotten this and identified with his "psycho-physical mechanism". The teaching aims to help him recognise his real nature and to point out the discipline by which he can attain "at-one-ment" with Siva. Singh then announces the eight heads of his introduction: ultimate reality; the universe; svatantryavada and abhasavada; sadadhva; comparison with Sankara; the individual; bondage; liberation.
Key Terms
- Agama: scripture received by tradition; here, the Saiva Tantras.
- Spanda: vibration, pulsation; the dynamic aspect of consciousness.
- Samavesa: absorption, immersion of the individual into the divine.
- Saktipata: descent of Sakti; grace.
Reflection
- Singh says every Indian philosophy is also a religion. Does that make it less philosophical, or differently philosophical?
- Kshemaraja assumes his reader has already received grace. Ask yourself honestly what brought you to this text.
Ultimate Reality: Prakasa and Vimarsa (pp. 4–7)
Ultimate reality is Cit or Para-samvit: not consciousness as we normally use the word, with a knower set against a known, but the non-relational ground of all experience, in which "I" and "this" are not yet distinguished. It has two inseparable aspects: prakasa, the light by which everything appears, and vimarsa, the light's awareness of itself. Without vimarsa, the light would be inert like a diamond. This one distinction separates Kashmir Saivism from Sankara's Vedanta and drives everything that follows.
1. Why "Consciousness" Is the Wrong Word
Singh admits that he translates Cit as "consciousness" "for want of a better word". The trouble is that "con-sciousness" implies a relation: subject knowing object. Cit is not relational. It is "the changeless principle of all changing experience", with "the immediacy of feeling where neither the 'I' nor the 'This' is distinguished", the "coalescence into undivided unity" of the two. He suggests the coinage "sciousness", and with it a verb: ultimate reality is "the Self sciring Itself".
2. Prakasa: The Light
Prakasa literally means light or illumination. "Just as light makes every thing visible, even so that being there, every thing else is." Singh quotes the Katha Upanisad: "It shining, every thing happens to shine. By its light alone does all this appear." Sankara's Vedanta also calls the ultimate prakasa. But, Singh asks, the sun is prakasa, and so is a diamond. What separates the Absolute from a very bright object?
3. Vimarsa: The Light Knowing Itself
The Saiva answer: ultimate reality is not simply prakasa; it is also vimarsa. Vimarsa comes from the root mrs, "to touch"; vi-mrs is "to touch mentally". The light does not lie "inert like a diamond", it surveys itself. Kshemaraja, in his Parapravesika, defines it as akrtrimaham iti visphuranam: "the non-relational, immediate awareness of I", the uncontrived flashing of "I". He adds the decisive sentence: "If it were without vimarsa, it would be powerless and inert."
This pure I-consciousness is responsible for manifesting, maintaining and reabsorbing the universe. Vimarsa therefore has many names: parasakti, paravak, svatantrya, aisvarya, kartrtva, sphuratta, sara, hrdaya, spanda. All of them mean the active, self-aware power of consciousness.
The whole difference between a mirror and a mind is vimarsa. A mirror shows everything and knows nothing. Consciousness shows everything and knows that it is showing. The Saiva claim is that this self-knowing is not added on top of awareness later, in the individual; it is there at the root. And because knowing is already a kind of doing, the root of reality is agency. That is why the system can say the world is God's act, not God's mistake.
4. Universal Consciousness Is Also Universal Power
So reality is "not only Universal Consciousness but also Universal Psychic Energy or Power". This all-inclusive consciousness is called Anuttara, "that than which there is nothing higher". It is both visvottirna, transcending the universe, and visvamaya, made of the universe.
5. Not "Realistic Idealism"
Some writers had called the Saiva system "Realistic Idealism". Singh rejects the label. The Western idealists started from a different problem, and "the word 'idea' has played havoc in Western philosophy". Ultimate reality "is not a mere 'idea' whatever that may mean, but Self underlying all reality".
Singh's rejection is understandable, but the comparison is not empty. The Pratyabhijna system does argue, against Buddhist logicians, that nothing can be established outside consciousness, and modern scholars routinely compare it with Western idealism. What Singh rightly resists is the import of a representational model in which ideas stand between a mind and a world. In this system nothing stands between: the "idea" and the "thing" are the same act of the same consciousness.
Key Terms
- Cit / Para-samvit: supreme, non-relational consciousness.
- Prakasa: the light of consciousness, by which anything appears.
- Vimarsa: the self-awareness of that light; its power of knowing and acting.
- Akrtrima aham: the uncontrived, natural "I".
- Anuttara: the unsurpassable, the Absolute.
- Visvottirna / visvamaya: transcendent of the universe / constituted as the universe.
Reflection and Practice
- Notice a moment of plain seeing: a colour, a sound. Then notice that you know you are seeing. The first is the model of prakasa, the second of vimarsa. Can you find any moment of experience that has the first without the second?
- Sit quietly and look for the sense "I am" before any content attaches to it ("I am tired", "I am here"). Kshemaraja's phrase for this is the "uncontrived I". Do not try to hold it; just notice whether it is there.
The Universe and the Thirty-Six Tattvas (pp. 6–16)
It is the nature (svabhava) of ultimate reality to manifest. A consciousness that did not manifest would not be consciousness at all but "something like a jar". The universe is the opening out (unmesa) of Siva as Sakti, and it unfolds in thirty-six tattvas or principles, from Siva at the top down to earth. The first five are the "pure order", in which the world is still felt as one with the Self; from Maya downward the world is felt as separate. Learn this ladder well: every later sutra assumes it.
1. Why Reality Must Manifest
Singh quotes Abhinavagupta's Tantraloka (III.100): "If the Highest Reality did not manifest in infinite variety, but remained cooped up within its solid singleness, it would neither be the Highest Power nor Consciousness, but something like a jar." In the Absolute, "I" and "this" are one; the "I" is the prakasa side and the "this", its consciousness of itself as itself, is the vimarsa side. That vimarsa is svatantrya, absolute will, or Sakti, which Kshemaraja calls "the heart of the Supreme Lord".
Sakti is not empty. "As the great banyan tree lies only in the form of potency in the seed, even so the entire universe ... lies as a potency in the heart of the Supreme" (Paratrisika, 24). The other stock image is the peacock's egg: the whole plumage is present in the yolk as undifferentiated fluid.
2. The Five Main Powers
Parama Siva has infinite powers, but five are primary:
| Power | Meaning | Aspect of the Supreme |
|---|---|---|
| Cit | self-revelation; shining by itself | Siva |
| Ananda | absolute bliss, also called svatantrya | Sakti |
| Iccha | will to manifest | Sadasiva |
| Jnana | knowing | Isvara |
| Kriya | the power to assume any form | Sadvidya (Suddhavidya) |
Cit and ananda are the very nature of the Supreme; the other three are "His Saktis" in the narrower sense.
3. The Pure Order: Tattvas 1 to 5
Siva tattva (1) is the first creative throb (prathama spanda) of Parama Siva. When the Absolute "feels like letting go the Universe contained in Him, the first vibration or throb of this Will is known as Siva".
Sakti tattva (2) is the energy of Siva. In her knowing aspect she is the principle of negation: she first negates the "this", so that only the "I" remains. Kshemaraja calls this state Anasrita-Siva, "Siva unrelated to anything", "more void than the void". This break in the unitary experience is a necessary passing phase: only when subject is disengaged from object can the world be presented again as an "I-This", distinguishable but not separable. Sakti is Siva's unmukhata, his "intentness to create". Singh quotes Mahesvarananda's Maharthamanjari: Siva, "full of joy enhanced by the honey of the three corners of his heart, viz., Iccha, Jnana, Kriya, raising up His face to gaze at His own splendour, is called Sakti". Siva and Sakti are never apart; strictly speaking the Siva-Sakti pair is "not an emanation, but the Seed of all emanation".
Sadasiva or Sadakhya tattva (3): will predominates. The experience is "I am this", but the "this" is hazy (asphuta), like the vague first idea of a picture in an artist's mind. Because "being" (sat) is first affirmed here, it is called Sadakhya.
Isvara tattva (4): knowledge predominates. The "this" becomes distinct (sphuta); the experience is "This am I". This is unmesa, the clear blossoming of the universe.
Sadvidya or Suddhavidya tattva (5): action predominates. "I" and "this" are equally balanced "like the two pans of an evenly held balance". The experience is diversity-in-unity: "I am I, this is this", yet both still refer to the same Self.
| Tattva | Experience | Emphasis |
|---|---|---|
| Siva | Aham (I) | I alone |
| Sadasiva | Aham-idam (I am this) | on I |
| Isvara | Idam-aham (This am I) | on this |
| Suddhavidya | Aham-aham, idam-idam (I am I, this is this) | equal |
Up to this point all experience is ideal, and the real nature of the Divine is not veiled. This is the suddhadhvan, the pure order.
Singh repeatedly uses the image of the artist. "The Saiva philosophy does not conceive of the Supreme as a logomachist but as an Artist." The artist cannot keep his delight to himself and pours it into a song or picture. Kshemaraja's line on Utpaladeva's hymns says the same: "Sakti thrown up by delight lets Herself go forth into manifestation." The model of creation is not a craftsman shaping clay but an overflow of joy. Hold on to this; it is what makes the system's ethics of the world (affirm it, do not flee it) consistent with its metaphysics.
4. Maya and the Five Sheaths: Tattvas 6 to 11
At Maya (6) the play of concealment begins. The word is derived from ma, "to measure". Maya makes experience measurable: it severs "this" from "I" and things from one another. Before Maya, "this" meant "all this", the whole universe. After Maya, "this" means merely this, different from everything else. Here sankoca, contraction, begins.
Maya's products are the five kancukas, cloaks or sheaths:
| Kancuka | Divine power it reduces | Resulting limitation |
|---|---|---|
| Kala (7) | sarvakartrtva, universal authorship | limited agency |
| Vidya (8) | sarvajnatva, omniscience | limited knowledge |
| Raga (9) | purnatva, all-fulfilment | desire for this or that |
| Kala (10) | nityatva, eternity | time: past, present, future |
| Niyati (11) | svatantrata and vyapakatva, freedom and pervasiveness | restriction of cause and space |
(The Sanskrit distinguishes kala with a short final vowel, limited agency, from kala with long vowels, time; in unaccented transliteration they look alike.)
5. Purusa and Prakrti: Tattvas 12 and 13
Siva, subjecting himself to Maya and putting on the five cloaks, becomes Purusa (12), the individual subject. Purusa means not only humans but every sentient being thus limited. He is also called anu, "point", not a spatial point but a contraction of divine fullness.
Prakrti (13) is the objective counterpart, "the barest objectivity" in contrast to Purusa the knower. Here Kashmir Saivism departs from Sankhya: Sankhya holds there is one Prakrti for all Purusas, but Trika holds that each Purusa has his own Prakrti. Prakrti's three gunas, sattva, rajas and tamas, are the gross forms of Siva's powers of jnana, iccha and kriya.
6. The Inner Instrument, Senses and Elements: Tattvas 14 to 36
- Buddhi (14): ascertaining intelligence; it reflects both external objects and inner images built from impressions (samskaras).
- Ahamkara (15): I-making and self-appropriation.
- Manas (16): cooperates with the senses to build perceptions, images and concepts.
- Five jnanendriyas (17 to 21): smell, taste, sight, touch, hearing. Singh insists these are powers working through organs, not the organs themselves.
- Five karmendriyas (22 to 26): speech, handling, locomotion, excretion, sex and rest.
- Five tanmatras (27 to 31): sound-as-such, touch-as-such, colour-as-such, flavour-as-such, odour-as-such: the general elements of perception.
- Five mahabhutas (32 to 36): ether, air, fire, water, earth, each produced from its tanmatra.
The lower twenty-five tattvas are inherited from Sankhya. What Kashmir Saivism adds is the eleven above them (Siva to Purusa) and, above all, a different meaning for the whole structure. In Sankhya the ladder is a description of two eternally separate principles; here it is a description of one consciousness progressively hiding itself. Read the lower list quickly; read the top eleven slowly.
Key Terms
- Tattva: "thatness"; principle. Singh: "the nearest English word is 'principle'".
- Unmesa / nimesa: opening / closing of the eye; manifestation / withdrawal.
- Suddhadhvan / asuddhadhvan: pure order (tattvas 1 to 5) / impure order (6 to 36).
- Kancuka: sheath, cloak of Maya.
- Anu: the atomic, limited self.
Reflection
- Trace one perception (say, seeing a cup) down the ladder: which tattvas are at work in it? Then trace it up: where does the "this" begin to feel separate from you?
- Raga is "limitation of fullness": desire as the feeling that something is missing. Watch one desire today and ask what fullness it is reaching for.
Svatantryavada, Abhasavada and Sadadhva (pp. 16–21)
From the side of its creativity, the system is svatantryavada, the doctrine of the absolute freedom of consciousness. From the side of what is created, it is abhasavada, the doctrine that everything is a manifestation (abhasa) of consciousness, like images in a mirror that knows its own images. A third description, sadadhva, the six-fold path, describes creation as a descent of word and object from a single source. These are three angles on one view.
1. Svatantryavada: The Freedom of Consciousness
The Absolute is called Mahesvara, the Great Lord, not as a first cause inferred from the design of nature, but because of its absolute sovereignty of will (svatantrya). This freedom "is not a blind force but the svabhava (own being) of the Universal Consciousness". It depends on nothing external; it is "beyond all the categories of time, space, causality etc., for these owe their origin to it".
Singh quotes the Isvarapratyabhijna-vimarsini: the divine power is Citi; its essence is self-consciousness; it is also called Para Vak; "it is svatantrya. It is the main Power of the Supreme Self." Another passage calls it "the inner, creative flash which, though in itself unchanging, is the source of all apparent change", mahasatta or absolute being, "the very heart or nucleus of the Divine Being".
Abhinavagupta's definition: Parama Siva, whose being is prakasa and vimarsa, appears as subjects "from Rudra down to immovable entities" and as objects "like blue, pleasure etc. which appear as if separate, though in essence they are not", "through the glorious might of Svatantrya ... which does not conceal in any way the real nature of the Supreme".
2. Abhasavada: Everything Is a Manifestation
Abhasa = a (slightly, with limitation) + bhasa (shining): "manifestation or appearance in a limited way". Every object, subject, means of knowing and sense is an abhasa; every thing is "a configuration of abhasas".
The governing image is the mirror. From Paramarthasara (12 to 13): "Just as in a clear mirror, varied images of city, village etc. appear as different from one another and from the mirror though they are non-different from the mirror, even so the world ... appears as different."
Singh notes two places where the analogy breaks, and these breaks are the point:
- A mirror reflects an external object by an external light. Consciousness reflects its own ideation by its own light.
- A mirror does not know its reflections. Consciousness knows its own images, because of vimarsa.
Abhasas rise and fall "like waves in the sea"; the sea neither gains nor loses. The Divine "makes the collection of objects that are internally contained appear outside by His Will without any external material even as a Yogi makes his mental objects appear outside by his mere will" (Isvarapratyabhijna I.5.7). Creation is not a potter shaping clay; srsti only means manifesting outside what is contained within.
Hence the conclusion: since it is consciousness that appears as subjects and objects, the appearance cannot be called false. Singh sums up: svatantryavada stands against vivartavada (the Advaita view that the world is an illusory superimposition), and abhasavada stands against parinamavada (the Sankhya view that the cause really transforms into the effect).
The mirror analogy is used by Advaita too, but to opposite effect. For the Advaitin, the city in the mirror shows that the city is not really there. For the Saiva, the city in the mirror shows that the mirror is really the city, that the content is the mirror's own self-display. Same image, opposite lesson. When you meet the mirror image in any Indian text, ask which lesson it is drawing.
3. Sadadhva: The Six-Fold Path
From the side of para-sakti, creation is described as a descent through sound. There is an unbounded continuum of power called nada, which condenses into a dynamic point, bindu (not a process in time or space). At the highest stage, vacaka and vacya, word and object, are one. Then six "paths" (adhvas) appear in three pairs:
| Vacaka (word side) | Vacya (object side) |
|---|---|
| Varna (function-form) | Kala (phase of creativity) |
| Mantra (basic formula) | Tattva (principle) |
| Pada (formulation by mind and speech) | Bhuvana (world as experienced) |
The word side as a group is kaladhva, the path of time; the object side is desadhva, the path of space. Singh follows Svami Pratyagatmananda Sarasvati in reading varna not as "letter" but as "function-form": the characteristic measure-index of an object projected from bindu. Varnas are of two kinds: non-mayiya (pure, natural, unlimited) and mayiya (conventional); the indicating power of the non-mayiya varnas is present in the mayiya ones "even as power of heating is inherent in fire".
The five kalas are Nivrtti, Pratistha, Vidya, Santa and Santyatita. According to Abhinavagupta there are 118 bhuvanas (worlds) across them; others count 224. (The chart at Note 174 gives the details; see the Notes section of this guide.)
The sadadhva material is the most technical part of the introduction, and Singh's source here is a twentieth-century Tantric theorist, not Kshemaraja. Kshemaraja's own text uses only fragments of this scheme (the letters "a" to "ksa", paravak, pasyanti, madhyama, the kalas in Sutra 20). It is worth knowing because it explains why mantra has power in this system: if word and object come from the same root, working with the root of the word works on the object.
Key Terms
- Svatantrya: absolute freedom of will; the defining property of consciousness.
- Abhasa: manifestation, limited shining.
- Vivartavada / parinamavada: doctrine of illusory appearance / of real transformation.
- Nada, bindu: primal sound-continuum; its condensation into a point.
- Vacaka / vacya: word, indicator / object, indicated.
Reflection
- Look at any object and say, silently, "this is consciousness appearing as this". Then say, "this is an illusion". Notice the difference in how you feel toward the object. That difference is the practical difference between the two systems.
- Singh says a yogi can make mental objects appear outside by will. You do this nightly in dreams. What does the dream teach about abhasa?
Kashmir Saivism and Sankara's Advaita (pp. 21–26)
Added in 1977, this section sets the Saiva system, which its authors call Isvaradvayavada ("non-dualism of the Lord"), against Sankara's Advaita, which the Saivas call Santabrahmavada ("doctrine of the inactive Brahman"). The core difference: for Sankara, Brahman is light alone, without activity; for the Saivas, consciousness is light and self-awareness, knowing and doing. Everything else follows: the status of Maya, the reality of the world, and the content of liberation.
1. Knowledge and Activity
For Sankara, the characteristic of Brahman is prakasa or jnana only; activity (kriya) belongs to the empirical self. Singh says Sankara "takes kriya in a very narrow sense". The Saiva view takes activity broadly: even knowing is an activity of the Divine. "Since Parama Siva is svatantra ... therefore is he a karta (doer)." Singh cites Panini's grammatical rule that "only a free-willed being is a doer": svatantrya and kartrtva are practically the same.
2. Who Acts
For Sankara, Brahman becomes Isvara, and gains the power to act, only through association with avidya; "the real activity belongs to avidya". Singh quotes the Brahma Sutra Bhasya (2.1.14): Isvara's omniscience and omnipotence "are contingent upon the limitation caused by ... avidya"; when vidya removes all conditions, "the use of potency, omniscience etc. would become inappropriate". For the Saivas, knowing and doing are the very nature of the Supreme, who always performs the five acts (emanation, maintenance, withdrawal, concealment, grace), even as an individual. Mahesvarananda goes further: an inactive Brahman "would be as good as unreal".
3. The Status of Maya
Both systems accept Maya. For Sankara, Maya is anirvacaniya, indefinable, neither real nor unreal, and the world it produces is mithya. For the Saivas, Maya is Siva's own Sakti, his "voluntarily self-imposed limitation", and therefore real; the world it brings about is "perfectly real; it is simply a display of Isvara's power". Singh draws the sharpest conclusion: if Brahman is real and Maya is an indeterminate force alongside it, there would be "a tinge of dualism" in Sankara.
4. The Comparison Table
| Point | Santabrahmavada (Sankara) | Isvaradvayavada (Kashmir Saivism) |
|---|---|---|
| Nature of Cit | prakasa or jnana only; niskriya (inactive) | prakasa and vimarsa; both knowing and doing; the five-fold act |
| Who acts | only Maya or avidya; Isvara acts only when affected by it | Mahesvara, by svatantrya; Maya is his own Sakti |
| Status of Maya | anirvacaniya, indefinable | real, as the Sakti of the Divine |
| Relation to Isvara | loosely associated, finally unreal; seems a separate principle, so the non-dualism is exclusive | Siva-mayi or cinmayi; not a separate principle; non-dualism is inclusive and integral |
| The self in the jiva | inactive; activity belongs to buddhi | the five-fold act never ceases |
| The universe | mithya; mere name and form | Siva-rupa, real, a display of divine glory; abhasas cannot be false |
| In liberation | the universe is annulled | the universe appears as Siva-consciousness, as the real "I" |
| Removing ignorance | avidya removed by vidya through sravana, manana, nididhyasana | two ignorances: bauddha (intellectual) and paurusa (innate); vidya removes only the first; the second needs saktipata through initiation or direct grace |
5. The Two Ignorances
The last row deserves its own heading because it is the practical heart of the comparison. Saiva philosophy distinguishes:
- Bauddha ajnana: intellectual ignorance, wrong ideas about the self. This can be removed by study and reflection.
- Paurusa ajnana: ignorance inherent in the person (purusa or anu), the felt contraction itself. Study cannot touch it.
A person who removes only the first will be "landed only in blank abstractions"; he "will not realize Sivatva or divinization". The second is removed only by saktipata, grace, "either by the diksa (initiation) imparted by a self-realized guru or by direct divine grace".
This is the strongest claim in the comparison and the one most worth testing. It says that understanding non-duality is not the same as being non-dual, and that the gap is not closed by more understanding. Many students of Advaita and of modern non-dual teaching will recognise the experience it describes: a clear intellectual grasp that "I am awareness" which changes nothing in how contraction feels. The Saiva diagnosis is that the contraction is pre-intellectual, and so its release must be too.
This is a Saiva account of Advaita, written by its rivals and repeated by a Saiva translator. An Advaitin would dispute several entries. Sankara does not call the world simply "unreal" but mithya, neither real nor unreal, and grants it full empirical reality (vyavaharika satta). His "inactivity" of Brahman is a claim that change cannot belong to the changeless, not a claim that Brahman is dead matter like a diamond; Advaitins would say the Saiva "vimarsa" quietly reintroduces change into the Absolute. And Advaita also has its doctrine of grace and of the guru. The table is useful for seeing what the Saivas thought was at stake; it is not a neutral comparison.
Key Terms
- Isvaradvayavada: non-dualism of the Lord; the Saiva self-description.
- Santabrahmavada: the Saiva name for Advaita, "doctrine of the quiescent Brahman".
- Kartrtva / jnatrtva: doership / knowership.
- Mithya / anirvacaniya: falsely appearing / indefinable.
- Bauddha ajnana / paurusa ajnana: intellectual / innate ignorance.
Reflection
- Which do you find more coherent: a changeless Absolute in which all change is appearance, or a free Absolute whose nature includes the act of appearing? What does each cost?
- Have you ever understood something clearly and found it changed nothing? What, if anything, did change it later?
The Individual, Bondage, Liberation and the Means (pp. 26–33)
The individual is a layered being: gross body, subtle body, prana, a dormant kundalini, and Siva at the centre. He is bound by three malas. Liberation is the recognition of one's true nature, the regaining of the pure I-consciousness in which the world is one's own expression. It comes through grace, which comes in degrees and is prepared for by four upayas (means). Singh then summarises the practice teaching of the book (the centre, the five-fold act, dissolution of thought, krama-mudra) and the ladder of seven experients.
1. The Individual
The individual is not only psycho-physical. His layers:
- Sthula-sarira: the gross body of the five elements.
- Antahkarana: the inner instrument, buddhi, ahamkara and manas.
- Puryastaka: "the city of eight", buddhi, ahamkara, manas and the five tanmatras; this is the subtle body in which the soul leaves the body at death.
- Prana-sakti: the divine power working in both universe and individual, by which everything is sustained.
- Kundalini: a form of Sakti, dormant in the normal person.
- Caitanya or Siva: "in the centre of his being", his very Self.
He becomes an anu, a limited individual, through anava mala.
2. Bondage: The Three Malas
- Anava mala: innate ignorance, the "primary limiting condition which reduces the universal consciousness to an anu". It arises from the limitation of the iccha-sakti (will). Through it the jiva feels himself a separate entity cut off from the universal stream; "it is consciousness of self-limitation".
- Mayiya mala: brought about by Maya; bhinna-vedya-pratha, the experience of difference due to the differing adjuncts of bodies. It arises from limitation of jnana-sakti.
- Karma mala: (detailed in Sutra 9) arising from limitation of kriya-sakti; the impressions of action that carry the jiva from life to life.
3. Liberation
Liberation is re-cognition (pratyabhijna) of one's own nature, the attaining of akrtrima-aham-vimarsa, the original, innate, pure I-consciousness. Singh is careful: this pure "I" is not a vikalpa (a thought-construct), because every vikalpa is relational and needs a second; the ordinary psychological "I" is defined against a not-I. The pure "I" is "immediate awareness". Abhinavagupta: "Moksa is nothing else but the awareness of one's true nature."
With this, the individual mind (citta) becomes universal consciousness (cit) (Sutra 13), and the highest bliss is jagadananda, "the bliss of the world in which the whole world appears to the liberated soul as Cit or Siva".
4. Grace (Saktipata)
Liberation "cannot be achieved by mere logic-chopping or intellectual pyrotechnic". It comes by saktipata or anugraha. Grace has three intensities:
| Intensity | Who receives it | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| Tivra (intense) | very advanced souls, by samskaras of past lives | liberated without much practice |
| Madhyama (middling) | less qualified | moved to seek a guru, receive initiation and practise yoga; liberated in due course |
| Manda (mild) | still less qualified | genuine eagerness for knowledge and meditation; liberated in time |
"But grace is not the outcome of caprice. It has to be earned by moral and spiritual discipline." This sentence is Singh's, and it sits in some tension with the system's insistence that grace is free (see the critical note below).
5. The Four Upayas
| Upaya | Other names | Instrument | Method |
|---|---|---|---|
| Anavopaya | kriyopaya, bhedopaya | senses, prana, manas | regulation of prana, ritual, concentration on a chosen deity, mantra repetition; unfolds the central channel (susumna); begins from a sense of difference |
| Saktopaya | jnanopaya, bhedabheda-upaya | manas only | contemplative transformation of inner forces through mantra-sakti; meditations such as "I am Siva", "the universe is an expansion of my Self"; kundalini rises without much effort over prana |
| Sambhavopaya | direct awareness | for advanced aspirants: "the path of constant awareness"; begins with analysis of the five acts, dissolution of thought, and seeing the universe as a reflection of consciousness, and later gives even these up | |
| Anupaya | anandopaya | grace alone | "hardly an upaya"; one word of the guru, or direct grace, or even the sight of a realised person, and realisation dawns; "an" may mean "very little" effort |
6. The Centre in Three Registers
Kshemaraja's key practice word is madhya, the centre. Singh shows that it means something different in each upaya:
- In anavopaya, madhya is the susumna nadi between ida and pingala.
- In saktopaya, it is para-samvid, supreme consciousness, to be reached.
- In sambhavopaya, it is akrtrima aham, the pure I-consciousness that is the centre of everything.
The means for unfolding the centre (Sutra 18) map onto the upayas: vikalpa-ksaya is sambhava; sakti-sankoca and vikasa are sakta; vaha-ccheda and adyanta-koti-nibhalana are anava.
This three-register reading is one of the most useful keys in the book. Whenever Kshemaraja says "centre", "heart" or "middle", ask which register he means. A beginner who reads only the anava register will think the teaching is about channels and breath. A reader who sees only the sambhava register will dismiss the breath material as a concession. Kshemaraja means all three at once: the same centre, seen from the body, from energy, and from awareness.
7. The Two Main Practices
Meditation on the five-fold act. The five acts of Siva go on constantly in the individual. Perception of an object in a particular place and time is srsti; holding and enjoying it is sthiti; its absorption into consciousness at the moment of delight in I-consciousness is samhara; when its impression is about to rise again, that is vilaya; when it is fully absorbed into the true Self "by the process of hatha-paka", that is anugraha. (Detail in Sutra 11.)
Vikalpa-ksaya, dissolving thought-constructs. "The mind is the happy hunting-ground of all kinds of ideas that rise one after another like waves upon the sea." This "cannot be done by force, for that creates resistance". It is achieved only "by alert passivity, by relaxing the citta or mind, by not thinking of anything in particular, and yet not losing awareness".
8. Krama-mudra and Jivanmukti
Absorption (samavesa) that lasts only while one sits in meditation is not complete in this system. Through krama-mudra (Sutra 19) the identification must be carried into the outer world, until the world appears "apparelled in celestial light" (Singh quotes Wordsworth) and is "no longer something to be shunned, but an eternal delight". That is jivanmukti. "The task of man is to re-capture that pure I-consciousness in which it and the universe are one."
9. The Ladder of Experients
The stage cannot be reached all at once. The system describes a hierarchy:
- Sakala: the ordinary person, with all three malas. "After many rebirths during which he is the plaything of Nature ... he is seized with psychic fever and tries to know the whence and the whither of this life. This is the first expression of the anugraha of Siva."
- Pralayakala: free of karma mala, with mayiya and anava. One can fall into this state by indulging in "lower kinds of yoga"; it has neither knowledge nor action, "not a desirable state". At cosmic dissolution every sakala becomes a pralayakala.
- Vijnanakala: above Maya, below Suddhavidya; only anava mala; knowledge and will, but no action.
- Mantra, Mantresvara, Mantra-mahesvara, Siva-pramata: free of all three malas, with increasing unity-consciousness. "It is only to the Siva-pramata that every thing appears as Siva."
The introduction closes with the pilgrim returning home "enriched with the experience of the splendour of Siva he has had on the way", and a verse of Abhinavagupta: "It is Siva Himself, of unimpeded Will and pellucid consciousness, who is ever sparkling in my heart. It is His highest Sakti Herself that is ever playing on the edge of my senses. The entire world gleams as the wondrous delight of pure I-consciousness. Indeed I know not what the sound 'world' is supposed to refer to."
Two tensions are worth naming. First, grace: the system says grace is Siva's free act (anugraha is one of his five acts, and saktipata is not caused by merit), yet Singh writes that grace "has to be earned". Abhinavagupta's own position is closer to the first: the intensity of grace is not determined by karma. Singh's sentence reads like a teacher's encouragement to practise more than a doctrinal statement. Second, the warning about pralayakalas: the claim that "lower yoga" leads to a blank void-state is a polemical point against rival yogas (Sankhya-Yoga's isolation, some Buddhist absorptions) as much as a description of a risk. It does carry a real warning, though: absorption into blankness is not the goal here.
Key Terms
- Puryastaka: the subtle body of eight.
- Anava, mayiya, karma mala: the three impurities.
- Saktipata (tivra, madhyama, manda): descent of grace, in three intensities.
- Upaya: means; anava, sakta, sambhava, anupaya.
- Madhya: the centre.
- Vikalpa-ksaya: dissolution of thought-constructs.
- Jagadananda: the bliss of the world as one's own self.
- Sakala, pralayakala, vijnanakala: the lower three experients.
Reflection and Practice
- Try Singh's "alert passivity" for ten minutes: do not suppress thoughts and do not follow them; keep awareness and let the mind relax. Note when you slip into either effort or dullness.
- Which upaya fits you now? The answer is usually not the highest one you admire, but the one whose instrument (body, mind, or bare awareness) you can actually work with today.
The Book's Own Map (pp. 34–43)
Before the text, Singh gives a one-paragraph summary of each sutra. It is a good map, and two of its points deserve emphasis here because they are easy to miss in the full commentary: Sutra 1 has three readings at once, and Sutra 12 contains all three upayas.
Points to Carry into the Text
- Sutra 1 "strikes the key-note of the entire book": Citi is the cause of manifestation, the means of rising to Siva, and the highest end. The word hetu is read as both cause and means; siddhi as both effectuation and attainment (bhoga and moksa).
- Sutra 3: the six levels of experients (Mantra-mahesvara to sakala), with Siva transcending all and "actually it is Siva who flashes forth in various forms".
- Sutra 5: the three gunas are the contracted forms of Siva's jnana, kriya and maya.
- Sutra 8: thirteen schools, each placed at one level of the Self. (Singh's summary list includes the Kaulas, who hold the universe to be the Atman, and the Trika, who hold it to be both immanent and transcendent.)
- Sutra 12: the commentary presents sambhavopaya (the deities of the letters, Brahmi and the rest), saktopaya (Vamesvari and the four cakras) and anavopaya (the five pranas and the states of waking, dream and sleep).
- Sutra 15: the practice is not to attain consciousness, which is always shining, but to remove the false identification with the body.
- Sutra 18: the main method is vikalpa-ksaya; the others "do not belong to Pratyabhijna but are recommended for their utility".
- Sutra 20: the perfect I-consciousness is "the fons et origo of all the mantras"; by it one masters the powers that emanate and absorb the universe.
The Benediction and the Promise (pp. 45–46)
The book opens with an adoration of Siva and a statement of purpose. Each phrase is chosen to state the doctrine in advance: Siva always acts; what he reveals is both reality and value; that reality is his Self and yours; and the aim is practical, to cure the poison of samsara.
1. The Benediction
"Adoration to Siva who eternally brings about the five processes, who makes manifest the Highest Reality which is at the same time the Highest Value, viz., His Self (which is also the Real Self of each individual) that is a mass of consciousness and bliss."
Singh's notes unpack each word:
- Satatam (eternally) can go with "adoration" or with "who brings about the five processes". Singh prefers the second: it shows that Siva's activity is incessant (Note 3).
- Pancakrtya, the five acts (Note 4): srsti, "letting go", projecting out of oneself. Singh insists the usual translation "creation" misleads, since it implies working on an external material; "the world is not a creation, but an emanation; it is a theophany". Sthiti, maintenance. Samhara, withdrawal or re-absorption, not destruction. Vilaya or pidhana, concealment. Anugraha, grace. The first four are cosmological, the last soteriological; but they are not an artificial mixture: "anugraha is the raison d'etre of the first four ... It expresses the abounding love of Siva."
- Paramartha (Note 5): artha means both reality and value; the highest reality is also the highest goal of human life.
- Svatma (Note 6): a double meaning, "His Self" and "one's own Self", "the implication being that His Self is identical with the Real Self of each".
- Cidanandaghana (Note 7), "a mass of consciousness and bliss". Sankara's Vedanta says sac-cid-ananda; here sat is dropped as superfluous, because consciousness alone is real. Singh even quotes Sankara: "Existence itself is consciousness, and consciousness itself is existence."
2. The Second Verse
"Out of the great ocean (of the doctrine) of Recognition which is the quintessence of the secret doctrine concerning Samkara is brought out the cream by Ksemaraja to nullify the poison of samsara."
- Upanisat (Note 8): secret or esoteric doctrine, from sitting near a teacher.
- Samkara (Note 9): not the philosopher, but Siva, "one who brings about happiness and welfare".
- Samsara as visa, poison (Note 10): "It is not the world qua world which is poison, but the 'wandering through' of the jiva as a being disintegrated from Reality, cut off from his Innermost Centre." Singh adds a second root sense of vis, "to separate": samsara is poison because it disjoins us from Siva.
3. The Purpose
Then comes the audience statement already discussed, and a three-part promise for Sutra 1: it will explain "the universal causality of the divinity that is the Self (of all), its attainability by easy means, and the high reward".
Note 10 is worth memorising. The tradition does not call the world poison; it calls the condition of wandering cut off from the centre poison. This changes the cure: you do not need to leave the world, only to stop being disjoined from its source. Every later instruction to "see the world as Siva" depends on this distinction.
Key Terms
- Pancakrtya: the five acts: srsti, sthiti, samhara, vilaya (pidhana), anugraha.
- Cidanandaghana: a solid mass of consciousness and bliss.
- Samsara-visa: the poison of disjoined wandering.
Reflection
- Read "creation" as "letting go" for a day. When you speak or act, notice it as something released from within rather than made from outside material.
- Where in your own life does the world feel like poison? Is it the world, or the disconnection?
Consciousness Is the Free Cause of Everything (pp. 46–50)
The first sutra is the whole book in one line. Citi, consciousness as active power, is svatantra, free, and is the hetu of the siddhi of the universe. Kshemaraja reads these words three times: as cause of the universe's manifestation, as cause of experience and liberation, and as the means by which one rises back to Siva. Singh: "This Sutra strikes the key-note of the entire book." Read it until you can hear all three readings at once.
The Sutra
citih svatantra visva-siddhi-hetuh
"The absolute Citi of its own free will is the cause of the Siddhi of the universe."
Word by Word
| Word | Meaning | Note |
|---|---|---|
| citih | consciousness-power; feminine, active | not cit as a static substance but cit as power (Note 15) |
| svatantra | free, self-dependent, absolute | rules out any outside cause and any inactive Absolute |
| visva | the universe | "from Sadasiva down to the earth" |
| siddhi | effectuation; also attainment, fruition | srsti, sthiti, samhara; or bhoga and moksa |
| hetuh | cause; also means | the double reading is deliberate |
Commentary Walkthrough
First reading: cause of the world. "Of the universe" means everything from Sadasiva to earth. Siddhi means effectuation: bringing about srsti (manifestation), sthiti (continued existence) and samhara, which Kshemaraja defines not as destruction but as "resting in the Highest Experient". The cause is the Highest Sakti, divine consciousness-power, "absolute and of free will", consisting of the highest vimarsa, and not distinct from Siva.
The image is physiological: when Citi comes into play, the universe "opens its eyelids" and continues; when Citi withdraws its movement, the universe "shuts its eyelids". Kshemaraja appeals directly to experience: "One's own experience would bear witness to this fact."
Why nothing else can be the cause. Maya, Prakrti and the rest are supposed to be different from the light of consciousness. If so, they cannot appear, and what cannot appear is "as good as non-existent". If they do appear, they are one with the light. Either way, only Citi is the cause. Space, time and form are brought into being by it and "are not capable of penetrating its real nature", because it is all-pervading, "ever risen", and complete.
The objection about causality. If everything is consciousness, either the universe is nothing (being different from consciousness), or it is identical with consciousness, in which case how can there be cause and effect? The answer: "It is the divine consciousness alone ... which flashes forth in the form of innumerable worlds." Causality here is used "in its highest sense". Singh's footnote: "In the highest sense, the causal relation does not mean succession, but simultaneous expression. The flutter of Citi is simultaneous manifestation of the universe."
Why consciousness cannot be proved. Since Citi is the cause of knowers, knowing and known, "poor means of proof (pramana), whose main function is to bring to light new objects", cannot prove it. Kshemaraja quotes the Trikasara: "Just as when one tries to jump over the shadow of one's head with one's own foot, the head will never be at the place of one's foot, so also is it with baindavi kala", the knower's own power of knowing.
Second reading: cause of experience and liberation. Because Citi brings about samhara, which is samarasya, identity with the highest non-dual consciousness, it is called svatantra. When its freedom is recognised, it becomes the cause of siddhi in the sense of attainment, which is both bhoga (experience) and moksa (liberation).
Third reading: the means. Now hetu means means, and visva means everything we meet: blue, pleasure, the body, prana. The siddhi of these, their "fulfilment", is the means of awareness of Citi. This fulfilment is avesa, merging into the Self as vimarsa, "by gradual mounting, beginning with pramana (knowledge) and coming to rest in the pramata (knower)". And "by 'means' is meant here easy means" (sukhopaya). Kshemaraja quotes the Vijnanabhairava (v. 106): "The consciousness of object and subject is common to all the embodied ones. The Yogins, however, have this distinction that they are mindful of this relation."
What each word refutes. Citi in the singular shows it is not limited by space and time, and "shows the unreality of all theories of dualism". Svatantra distinguishes the doctrine from Brahmavada, Sankara's Vedanta, where Cit is inactive. Visva shows that Citi has unlimited power, is an easy means and is the great reward.
The Leidecker Corrections
- Leidecker translated vimarsa as "reason". Singh: "This is entirely erroneous. It is not reason which brings about this world, nor is it absolute and of free will."
- He took Isvara-pratyabhijna in the opening as a general term, missing that Kshemaraja is naming Utpaladeva's treatise and offering a summary of it.
- He took sukhopaya as "way to happiness". It means "easy means".
The Practice Hidden in the Third Reading
Kshemaraja's "easy means" is not a technique added from outside. It is the ordinary act of perception, followed backward. Every experience has three moments: the object (prameya), the knowing (pramana) and the knower (pramata). Normal attention stops at the object. The yogi, in the Vijnanabhairava's phrase, is "mindful of this relation": attention slides from the object to the act of knowing, and from the act of knowing to the knower, and rests there. That resting is avesa.
Note how the three readings form a loop. Citi causes the world (first reading); the world, rightly seen, gives experience and liberation (second); and the world is itself the means of returning to Citi (third). The same object that binds is the stairway out. This is why the system never asks you to renounce the world as a precondition: the thing you would renounce is the ladder. It also explains why Kshemaraja calls this method easy. The material for practice is always present, because there is never a moment without an object.
The argument that Maya and Prakrti cannot be causes because whatever appears must be one with the light is the system's master argument, borrowed from Utpaladeva. It is strong against a dualist who claims to know an unknowable matter. It is weaker than it looks against a realist, who may answer that "appearing" is a relation between a knower and an independent thing, not proof that the thing is made of light. Kshemaraja does not argue this in the text; for the full debate the reader must go to the Isvarapratyabhijnakarika, which this book summarises. As Singh's opening verse warns, the book is written for those "who have not taken pains in studying difficult works like Logic". It asserts the conclusions that Utpala argues.
Key Terms
- Citi: consciousness as free, active power.
- Svatantrya: absolute freedom.
- Siddhi: effectuation; attainment.
- Hetu: cause; means.
- Samhara: withdrawal, defined as resting in the Highest Experient.
- Samarasya: identity of taste, unity.
- Pramata, pramana, prameya: knower, knowing, known.
- Avesa / samavesa: absorption, merging.
- Sukhopaya: easy means.
- Baindavi kala: the power of the knower, which cannot be made an object.
Reflection and Practice
- Choose any object in front of you. Notice it, then notice the seeing of it, then notice what is seeing. Do not try to find the knower as another object; simply rest in the fact of knowing. This is the "gradual mounting" of the third reading.
- Try to "jump over the shadow of your head": try to see the seer. What happens? What does that failure show?
- Kshemaraja says the universe "opens its eyelids" when consciousness comes into play. Notice the moment of waking tomorrow. Is the world there before you are aware of it?
She Unfolds the Universe on Her Own Screen (pp. 50–52)
If Citi is the cause of the universe, does she need a material cause, some stuff to make it from? If so, dualism comes back. Sutra 2 answers: no. She acts by her own will, on her own screen, unfolding what is already within her.
The Sutra
svecchaya svabhittau visvam unmilayati
"By the power of her own will (alone), she (Citi) unfolds the universe upon her own screen (i.e. in herself as the basis of the universe)."
Word by Word
| Word | Meaning |
|---|---|
| svecchaya | by her own will |
| svabhittau | on her own wall, screen, ground |
| visvam | the universe |
| unmilayati | she opens out, unfolds, makes explicit |
Commentary Walkthrough
Svecchaya. Not by the will of another, "as is maintained by the Brahman doctrine and similar systems". In Advaita, as the Saivas read it, Brahman is the ground but avidya or Maya does the work; here Citi acts herself. And the phrase also means "by her power alone, not by means of any extraneous material cause". If free will were denied to her, "her Cit-ness itself would not be possible": consciousness and freedom are inseparable.
Svabhittau. On her own screen, "not anywhere else". She unfolds the universe "like a city in a mirror, which though non-different from it appears as different".
Unmilana. "Making explicit what is already lying implicit in Citi." The universe exists in Citi as identical with the light of Citi.
Insight
The word bhitti, "wall", is a painter's word: the wall on which a mural is painted. Together with unmilana, "opening the eyes", it gives two images at once: a painter on her own wall, and a sleeper waking to a world that was already there in her. Neither involves bringing in anything from outside. The difference from the Gita's image of Prakrti as the Lord's "womb" or Sankhya's real transformation is precise: here there is no stuff at all, only consciousness displaying its own content.
"City in a mirror" can be read as making the world unreal, which is the opposite of Kshemaraja's intention. The Saiva point is that the reflection is the mirror's own form, and so as real as the mirror. When teachers of this text say "the world is a reflection", ask whether they mean "the world is unreal" (an Advaita reading slipped in) or "the world is consciousness itself" (Kshemaraja's).
Key Terms
- Svecchaya: by own will.
- Bhitti: wall, screen, ground of manifestation.
- Unmilana / nimilana: opening / closing the eyes; manifestation / withdrawal.
Reflection
- In a dream, what is the screen, and who is the painter? When you wake, where did the dream city go?
- "Her Cit-ness itself would not be possible" without free will. Do you experience your own awareness as passive, or as an act?
Manifold Through Matched Subjects and Objects (pp. 52–54)
The universe is one, yet it appears as many. Why? Because at each level of manifestation there is a matched pair: a type of knower and the type of world it knows. Sutra 3 lays out the ladder of these pairs, from the subtlest experients to ordinary humans, and ends by saying that in truth there is neither subject nor object, only Siva appearing so.
The Sutra
tan nana anurupa-grahya-grahaka-bhedat
"That (i.e. the universe) is manifold because of the differentiation of reciprocally adapted (anurupa) objects (grahya) and subjects (grahaka)."
The Ladder of Matched Pairs
| Level | Experient (grahaka) | Governing deity | Object (grahya) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sadasiva | Mantramahesvaras | Sadasiva | the total universe as "I am this", I dominant, "this" incipient |
| Isvara | Mantresvaras | Isvara | the universe with I and "this" equally distinct |
| Suddha Vidya | Mantras | Anantabhattaraka | one universe "whose sole essence consists of differentiations", though still belonging to the Self |
| Above Maya | Vijnanakalas, "devoid of agency", "pure awareness" | sakalas and pralayakalas known in past states, identical with them | |
| Maya | Pralayakalas, "experients of the void" | "the insensible", fitting their state | |
| Maya to earth | Sakalas, "different from everything and limited" | a world as limited and different as themselves |
Above all of these is Sivabhattaraka, "constituted only of prakasa", whose states are "only of the form of prakasa". In Paramasiva, who "both transcends the universe and is the universe", the whole universe from Siva to earth flashes "in identity". "Actually (in that state), there is neither any other subject nor object." What is really meant is "that in actuality the highest blissful Siva alone manifests himself in this way in numerous forms of multiplicity".
Commentary Walkthrough
The key word is anurupa, "reciprocally adapted", "corresponding". There is no level at which a subject meets an alien object. Each kind of knower lives in exactly the world it is fit to know, and each world appears only to its matching knower. Grahya and grahaka literally mean "to be grasped" and "grasper". The multiplicity of the world is thus not a multiplicity of things, but a multiplicity of knower-known pairs.
This is a powerful phenomenological claim, and you can test it. Your world changes with your state. When you are anxious, the room is full of threats; when you are absorbed in love, the same room glows. The Saiva model generalises this: the world you live in is the "this" that matches the "I" you currently are. Change the knower, and the world changes with it. The practice teachings later in the book all work on this principle: they do not alter objects, they alter the grade of the knower.
The upper rungs (Mantramahesvaras, Mantresvaras, Mantras, Anantabhattaraka) come from the Saiva Siddhanta and earlier Tantric cosmology, where they are real classes of beings with real offices. Kshemaraja reads them as grades of consciousness a human practitioner can pass through. Both readings are present in the tradition; modern teachers usually adopt only the psychological one.
Key Terms
- Grahya / grahaka: object / subject.
- Anurupa: corresponding, reciprocally adapted.
- Mantramahesvara, Mantresvara, Mantra: the three experients of the pure order.
- Vijnanakala, pralayakala, sakala: the three experients of the impure order.
Reflection
- Describe your world in your worst mood and in your best. Which elements changed? Which did not?
- Where in the ladder would you place your ordinary waking state, and where your deepest moment of meditation?
The Individual Is the Universe in Contracted Form (pp. 54–58)
As the Lord has the universe for his body, so does each individual, only contracted. The individual is not a fragment of the whole, cut off from it; he is the whole in miniature, as a banyan tree is in its seed. Kshemaraja argues that even contraction is made of consciousness, so there is no state, anywhere, that is not Siva. Knowing this is liberation; not knowing it is bondage.
The Sutra
citi-sankocatma cetano'pi sankucita-visvamayah
"The (individual) experient also, in whom citi or consciousness is contracted, has the universe (as his body) in a contracted form."
Commentary Walkthrough
How Siva becomes the many. Desiring to manifest the universe which lies in him as himself, Siva "flashes forth at first as non-different from the light", but "not experiencing the unity of consciousness": this state is Anasrita-Siva, "more void than the void itself" (from the point of view of objective manifestation). Then "He unfolds Himself in the totality of manifestations, viz., principles (tattvas), worlds (bhuvanas), entities (bhavas) and their respective experients, that are only a solidified form (asyanata) of Cit-essence."
The individual as seed. As the Lord is "universe-bodied", so the individual experient, "because of consciousness being contracted, has the body of the entire universe in a contracted form, even as the vata tree is in a contracted form in its seed". The Siddhanta: "One body and embodied really include all the bodies and the embodied."
The Trisiromata. "The body is of the form of all gods ... It is called earth because of its solidity, and water because of its fluidity", ending: "The three-headed Bhairava is present in person, pervading the entire universe."
Contraction is consciousness too. The experient appears contracted only by Siva's Maya-sakti. But "contraction also, on close consideration, consists of cit only", since it is manifested only as consciousness; otherwise it would be nothing at all. Kshemaraja quotes his own verse on akhyati, nescience: "If it be said that akhyati is that which never appears, then appearance, or knowledge alone remains. If it be said that akhyati does appear, then, being of the nature of knowledge, knowledge alone remains."
Spanda II.3–4. "Because the jiva is identical with the whole universe ... Hence whether in the word or object or mental apprehension there is no state which is not Siva."
The result. "Knowledge of this truth alone constitutes liberation; want of the knowledge of this truth alone constitutes bondage."
The Leidecker Corrections
- Leidecker rendered the sutra "has cetana, which is qualified by the contraction of Citi, been formed of the contracted universe", which Singh says "hardly makes any sense".
- He rendered cit-rasa as "savour of cit" and asyanata as "non-distinction". Singh: rasa here is sap or juice, and asyanata is solidification: "as liquid juice may be solidified, even so cit may assume concrete manifestation".
- He mistranslated the Spanda line as "this is not the condition, not the one that is Siva", and then called the text unintelligible. Singh: "The simple meaning is 'There is no state which is not Siva'."
Insight
The akhyati argument is the most elegant two lines in the book. Whatever ignorance is, either it is experienced or it is not. If it is not experienced, it does not exist for us at all. If it is experienced, it is a content of awareness, and so, like any other content, it is awareness. Ignorance cannot be an outside power fighting consciousness; it can only be consciousness in a mode of not recognising itself. This makes the problem of bondage a problem of recognition, which is the whole thesis of the Pratyabhijna.
Asyanata, "solidification of sap", gives a concrete image: matter is consciousness congealed, as syrup thickens to sugar or water to ice. It is a better image than "illusion" for Kshemaraja's meaning: ice is really water, and really ice.
The akhyati argument proves less than it seems. It shows that ignorance, insofar as it is experienced, is a content of consciousness. It does not show that the objects ignorance hides (or the bodies, rocks and stars) are contents of consciousness, unless one already accepts the idealist premise that to be is to appear. The argument works inside the system; it does not establish the system.
Key Terms
- Sankoca: contraction.
- Anasrita-Siva: Siva unrelated to anything; the first moment of differentiation.
- Asyanata: solidification.
- Cit-rasa: the sap or essence of consciousness.
- Akhyati: non-recognition, nescience.
- Visvasarira: having the universe as body.
Reflection and Practice
- Feel the body as a whole: its solidity as earth, its fluids as water, its warmth as fire, its breath as air, its space as ether. Then ask: what is aware of all five?
- Try the akhyati test on a moment of confusion: is the confusion itself known? By what?
Universal Consciousness Contracts into Mind (pp. 58–62)
An objector says: the individual thinks through citta, the mind, and mind is made of thought-constructs (vikalpa). How can such a being be Siva, who is free of thought? Sutra 5 answers: citta is citi itself, contracted by its objects. Mind is not a different substance from universal consciousness; it is that same consciousness, descended and narrowed. This reopens the door: what has contracted can expand.
The Sutra
citir eva cetana-padad avarudha cetya-sankocini cittam
"Citi (universal consciousness) itself descending from (the stage of) Cetana (the uncontracted conscious stage) becomes Citta (individual consciousness) inasmuch as it becomes contracted (sankocini) in conformity with the objects of consciousness (cetya)."
Word by Word
| Word | Meaning |
|---|---|
| citir eva | Citi itself, Citi alone |
| cetana-padat | from the stage of cetana, uncontracted consciousness |
| avarudha | having descended |
| cetya-sankocini | contracting according to the objects of consciousness |
| cittam | individual mind |
Commentary Walkthrough
Two aspects of contraction. When Citi conceals its nature and accepts limitation, it has two aspects: sometimes cit predominates, subordinating the limitation; sometimes limitation predominates.
When cit predominates (natural):
- prakasa alone predominates, without vimarsa: the experient is Vijnanakala;
- prakasa and vimarsa both predominate: the experient is Vidyapramata;
- within this, as contraction becomes thinner (tanuta), there are the stages of Isa, Sadasiva and Anasrita-Siva.
When cit predominates through samadhi: "the knowership of the pure path reaches the highest degree by stages". Singh's footnote clarifies: the predominance of cit can be sahaja (natural) or samadhi-prayatnoparjita, acquired by the effort of meditation.
When contraction predominates: the knowership of the void (sunya) and below.
The descent. Citi, "disposed towards comprehending objects", limited by "blue" (outer objects) and "pleasure" (inner objects), becomes citta. Kshemaraja quotes Utpaladeva (Isvarapratyabhijna I.4.3, per Singh's footnote): "Jnana, Kriya and the third Sakti Maya of the Lord appear as sattva, rajas and tamas in the case of Pasu." The three gunas, then, are not an independent nature; they are the Lord's own powers seen through contraction.
The encouragement. Because individual consciousness, "even in the state of vikalpa", is of the nature of the highest real, Kshemaraja quotes the Tattvagarbha-stotra: "Therefore in all those who are pursuers of the Highest Truth, the self-luminous character of their inmost nature never disappears (in any condition)."
The Leidecker Corrections
- Leidecker translated prakasa-paramarsa-pradhanatve as "but when the divine light is being impaired". Singh: it means "in the case of prakasa and vimarsa both being predominant"; paramarsa is a synonym of vimarsa.
- He took tanuta as "corporeality", which would make Isa and Sadasiva "more and more corporeal", "the height of absurdity". It means attenuation.
Insight
The pun at the heart of the sutra is cit, citi, cetana, cetya, citta, all from the same root cit, "to be aware". Kshemaraja builds the doctrine into the vocabulary: the mind (citta) is not an alien instrument but the same awareness (cit) in a narrowed form, shaped by what it attends to (cetya). In practical terms: you become like what you attend to. Contraction is not a fixed state but a habit of attention, and the next sutras use this to show that the habit can be reversed.
The distinction between natural predominance of cit and predominance acquired through samadhi matters for practice. It means meditative attainments are real stages on the pure path, but they are not the only route, and they are not the same as the natural state. This prepares Sutra 19's teaching that samadhi must become permanent even in activity.
Placing the Vijnanakala, a being of pure knowing without agency, below the Vidyapramata is a quiet polemic: in Sutra 8 Kshemaraja will say the Sankhya goal is the Vijnanakala state. A tradition that prizes pure witnessing (Sankhya's isolated purusa, and arguably some Advaita) is here ranked as an incomplete realisation: light without self-awareness.
Key Terms
- Citta: individual mind.
- Cetana: uncontracted consciousness.
- Cetya: object of consciousness.
- Tanuta: attenuation.
- Sahaja / samadhi-prayatnoparjita: natural / acquired by the effort of meditation.
- Sunya-pramata: the experient identified with the void.
Reflection
- Spend an hour noticing how your mind takes the shape of its objects: a screen, a worry, a conversation. What is it like before the next object arrives?
- Is there a "self-luminous character" in you that has never disappeared, even in your worst moments? How would you know?
The Empirical Self Is Made of Mind (p. 62)
A short sutra with a sharp point: the maya-pramata, the empirical knower, is citta through and through, including in the blank state of deep sleep or meditative void.
The Sutra
tanmayo mayapramata
"The Mayapramatr consists of it (i.e. Citta)."
Commentary Walkthrough
Citta predominates in the spheres of prana and body. And the void state too "consists of the samskaras (impressions, dispositions) of the Citta, otherwise one who awakes (from the experience of the void) would not be able to follow one's duties." Kshemaraja cites the Siva Sutras: when discussing reality, it says "caitanyam atma" (universal consciousness is the Self, SS I.1); when discussing the empirical knower, it says "cittam atma" (the mind is the Self, SS III.1).
This is an acute observation. A blank meditative state, or dreamless sleep, feels like freedom from mind. But when you come out of it, you know your name, your tasks and your grudges. Something carried them through. Kshemaraja's point is that a void that preserves your samskaras has not touched your samskaras: it is still the mind, only quiet. This is the system's standing objection to any absorption that is merely blank, and it is why the later sutras demand a realisation that transforms the impressions, not one that only suspends them.
Key Terms
- Maya-pramata: the empirical knower under Maya.
- Samskara: latent impression, disposition.
- Caitanyam atma / cittam atma: "consciousness is the Self" / "mind is the self" (two levels of the Siva Sutras).
Reflection
- After your next deep sleep or deep meditation, notice exactly what returns first. What does that tell you about what was there all along?
One Self, Two, Three, Four and Seven Pentads (pp. 63–65)
To be liberated one must know the Self rightly, so Kshemaraja analyses it "bit by bit". The Self is one: Siva alone, since light cannot be divided by space and time, and the inert cannot be a subject. Yet through free will it becomes two-fold, three-fold, four-fold, and the seven pentads. Recognising this as the play of the one Self liberates; not recognising it binds.
The Sutra
sa caiko dvirupas trimayas caturatma saptapancakasvabhavah
"And (though) he is one, he becomes of twofold form, threefold, fourfold, and of the nature of seven pentads."
The Numbers
| Count | What it refers to |
|---|---|
| One | Siva, the single Atman, "the light of consciousness cannot be divided by space and time, and the merely inert cannot be a subject" |
| Two | the manifester (the light of consciousness) and limited manifestation |
| Three | covered by three malas: anava, mayiya, karma |
| Four | identified with sunya (void), prana, puryastaka (subtle body) and the gross body |
| Seven pentads | the thirty-five tattvas from Siva down to earth (7 × 5) |
| Seven and five (alternative reading) | seven experients (Siva-pramata, Mantra-mahesvara, Mantresvara, Mantra, Vijnanakala, Pralayakala, Sakala) and five powers (cit, ananda, iccha, jnana, kriya) which become the five kancukas (kala, vidya, raga, kala, niyati) through akhyati |
Commentary Walkthrough
The commentary is a compressed table of contents for the whole system. Kshemaraja's last sentence is the key: "Only when it is recognized that the one Reality which is only Siva becomes thirty-five principles, seven experients, a pentad of five powers ... only then does it become a bestower of (spiritual) liberty; otherwise it is the cause of samsara."
The four-fold list is the practical one. It names the four layers with which the empirical self identifies, from outermost to innermost:
- The gross body: "I am this body."
- The puryastaka, the subtle body of mind and tanmatras: "I am my thoughts and feelings."
- Prana, the life-force: "I am this living, breathing being."
- Sunya, the void: "I am the blank space in which nothing appears", the subtlest false identification.
The same facts, two outcomes. The thirty-five tattvas, seven experients and five sheaths are equally present in the bound and the free; the only difference is whether they are recognised as the one Self. This is the Pratyabhijna in a sentence: liberation is not a change in what is there, but a change in how what is there is known.
Kshemaraja's four layers are a strong map for self-enquiry, but note that the void is placed among the false selves. A reader coming from Madhyamaka Buddhism would object that their "emptiness" (sunyata) is not a blank state with which one identifies, but the absence of inherent existence in every state. Kshemaraja's attack on the "void" here and in Sutra 8 is aimed at a meditative blankness, and it does not engage the Buddhist philosophical concept.
Key Terms
- Sunya, prana, puryastaka, sthula sarira: the four layers of false identification.
- Saptapancaka: seven pentads, thirty-five tattvas.
- Sapta pramatarah: the seven experients.
Reflection and Practice
- Work down the four layers in a sitting: notice the body; then thoughts and feelings; then the breath and life-sense; then the stillness behind them. At each, ask: "Is this known?" If it is known, it is not the knower.
Every Philosophy Is a Role the Self Plays (pp. 65–71)
The settled views of all the schools are "roles" which the one Self takes on, "like the roles accepted by an actor". Each school has grasped one level of the Self and taken it for the whole. Kshemaraja gives a grand doxography that maps thirteen schools onto the levels of the ladder, from the body (Carvaka) to the immanent-transcendent Self (Trika). He then gives a second, entirely contemplative reading of the sutra.
The Sutra
tadbhumikah sarvadarsana-sthitayah
"The positions of the various systems of philosophy are only various roles of that (Consciousness or Self)."
The Ladder of Schools
| School | What it takes as the Self or highest | Level in Kshemaraja's scheme |
|---|---|---|
| Carvaka | the body characterised by consciousness | gross body |
| Nyaya, Vaisesika | buddhi in worldly life; in liberation "almost identical with the void" | buddhi; then sunya |
| Mimamsa | the "I" known in cognition, veiled by pleasure and pain | buddhi |
| Buddhists (Saugatas) | a continuum of cognitions | functions of buddhi |
| Some Vedantins | prana | prana |
| Brahmavadins ("all this was originally non-being") and Madhyamikas | non-being (abhava) | the void |
| Pancaratra | Vasudeva as highest cause; souls as sparks; the non-manifest | avyakta (prakrti) |
| Sankhya | pure, inactive knowing | Vijnanakala |
| Other Vedantins ("Being alone was there in the beginning") | Isvara | Isvara |
| Grammarians (Vaiyakaranas) | Sabda-brahman as pasyanti | Sadasiva |
| Tantrikas | the Self as transcending the universe | transcendent |
| Kaulas | the Self as steeped in the universe | immanent |
| Trika | the Self as both immanent and transcendent | the whole |
Kshemaraja supports this with an Agama verse: "The Buddhists rest content with the Buddhi principle, the Arhatas with the gunas, the Veda-knowers with the Purusa, and the Pancaratrikas with avyakta."
Why the Others Cannot See
The differences among the roles are "due to the various gradations in which that absolute free will either chooses to reveal or conceal itself". Those of limited vision cannot comprehend the "great pervasion" "unless the Sakti of the Highest descend upon them". Three quotes reinforce the point:
- "The Vaisnavas and others who are coloured by the attachment of Vidya do not know the highest God."
- Svacchanda Tantra (X.1141): "It is only Maya which whirls these round who desire to obtain liberation in non-liberation."
- Netra Tantra (VIII.30): "Those who are attached to the limited as the Self do not reach the highest stage of Siva." (Leidecker's "worshippers of atman do not reach the highest place" is, says Singh, "highly misleading".)
The Second Reading: Inward Rest
Then Kshemaraja turns the sutra inside out. Take darsana not as "philosophical system" but as any cognition, sthiti not as "position" but as inward cessation, and bhumika not as "role" but as means. The sutra then says: the inward resting of every cognition (of blue outside, of pleasure inside) is a means to the manifestation of Siva.
Whenever the outer form of consciousness comes to rest in the knower, there is the withdrawal of the external thing, a resting in inner peace, and then the start of a new series of experiences. This "venerable turiya consciousness", which holds together emanation, maintenance and withdrawal, "flashes forth ceaselessly, now sending forth diversities, and now withdrawing them, always emaciated and yet always full, of both forms, and also not undergoing any of these forms". The Pratyabhijna-tika: "When re-absorbing the objects, she flashes in her nature, and so she is full." And: "This venerable power being resorted to more and more makes her devotee her own step by step."
Singh defends the reading avaleha ("licking, devouring") in the tika against Leidecker's emendation: space, time and objects are "devoured by Turiya, in which only I-consciousness remains".
Insight
The two readings of Sutra 8 are a perfect example of Kshemaraja's method. The first is outward and intellectual: a map of philosophies. The second is inward and experiential: a practice in every perception. The first tells you where every view is partly right; the second tells you how to stop clinging to any view at all, by letting each cognition come to rest. The juxtaposition suggests that the doxography is not meant as a final ranking but as a preparation: once you see every view as a role, you can let all of them rest in the knower.
The phrase "always emaciated, always full" captures the felt rhythm of practice in daily life. Each time an experience dissolves, you seem to lose something; each time it dissolves into the knower, you are filled. The fourth state, turiya, is not a separate state between the others; it is the hinge on which every experience turns.
The doxography is inclusivism as polemic. Placing every rival school below one's own, as a partial truth, is a standard move in Indian philosophy (Madhva, Vedanta Desika and the Buddhist tantras all do it in their own favour). It is generous in tone and dismissive in substance: no rival is allowed to say what it would say about itself. Several entries are caricatures:
- Madhyamaka did not hold that "non-being" is the fundamental principle; Nagarjuna rejects both being and non-being.
- The Buddhist "continuum of cognitions" view is Yogacara or Sautrantika, not "all Buddhists".
- Singh himself notes (Note 70) that Kshemaraja's account of the Pancaratra is confused: the Pancaratra did not take avyakta as the highest principle.
- The "Brahmavadins" who hold "all this was originally non-being" (a Chandogya and Taittiriya line) are not a recognisable school.
Read the table as a map of Kshemaraja's sense of the levels of the Self, not as an accurate history of Indian thought.
Key Terms
- Darsana: view, system; also cognition.
- Sthiti: position; also inward rest.
- Bhumika: role (as of an actor); also stage, means.
- Turiya: the fourth state, the witness that holds the other three.
- Avaleha: licking, devouring; the re-absorption of objects.
Reflection and Practice
- Which school in the table are you, most days? Be honest: most of us are Carvakas in our habits whatever we believe.
- Practise the second reading: as each perception ends (a sound fades, a sight is gone), notice the moment it rests in you before the next arises. Do this ten times. That moment is the "always emaciated, always full" turiya.
Limited Powers Make the Bound Soul (pp. 71–73)
If the Self has this greatness, how can it be an anu covered by malas, wrapped in the kancukas, wandering through births? Sutra 9 answers: the Lord, by free will, contracts his own powers, and each contracted power becomes a mala and a sheath. The bound soul is not a separate being but Siva, poor in power. When the powers unfold, "he is Siva himself".
The Sutra
cidvat tac-chakti-sankocat malavrtah samsari
"In consequence of its limitation of Sakti, reality which is all consciousness, becomes the mala-covered samsarin."
Commentary Walkthrough
When the highest Lord "conceals by His free will pervasion of non-duality, and assumes duality all round", his powers, "though essentially non-limited, assume limitation". Then:
| Divine power | Contracted, becomes | Mala | Character |
|---|---|---|---|
| Iccha (will), unrestricted sovereignty | considers itself imperfect | anava mala | the sense of being incomplete |
| Jnana (knowledge), omniscience | knowledge of a few things, beginning with inner organ and senses | mayiya mala | apprehension of all objects as different |
| Kriya (action), omnipotence | doership of a few things, beginning with organs of action | karma mala | doing good or evil |
And the five universal powers become the five kancukas:
| Universal power | Kancuka |
|---|---|
| sarvakartrtva, omnipotence | kala, limited agency |
| sarvajnatva, omniscience | vidya, limited knowledge |
| purnatva, perfection | raga, desire |
| nityatva, eternity | kala, time |
| vyapakatva, omnipresence | niyati, restriction of space and cause |
"Thus constituted this Self is called samsarin, poor in Sakti. With the full unfoldment of his saktis, however, he is Siva himself."
The Leidecker Correction
Leidecker translated cidvat as "cit-like". Singh: the suffix -vat here means "full of", not "like". Siva is not cit-like but all cit, and Kshemaraja himself glosses cidvat as cidatma.
Insight
The anava mala is the first and subtlest, and Kshemaraja defines it psychologically: "considering itself imperfect" (apurnamanyata). Before any particular desire, fear or error, there is a basic felt sense of incompleteness. This is the root impurity. The diagnostic value is high: notice how many of your actions are attempts to fill this felt lack. The system says the lack is not a fact about you but a contraction of will, and so it cannot be filled from outside, only released.
The table of kancukas reverses neatly into a practice. Each limitation is a specific contraction of a specific divine power. Feeling powerless (kala), ignorant (vidya), wanting (raga), hurried (kala), or confined (niyati) is in each case a signal pointing to the power it contracts: agency, knowledge, fullness, eternity, freedom. The sheath points to what it sheathes.
Key Terms
- Cidvat: full of consciousness.
- Apurnamanyata: the feeling of being incomplete; anava mala.
- Bhinna-vedya-pratha: experience of objects as separate; mayiya mala.
- Samsarin: transmigrating being.
Reflection
- Find the felt sense of "something missing" in yourself right now. Do not try to fill it. What happens when it is simply known?
Even Bound, He Does Siva's Five Acts (pp. 73–76)
Is there any mark by which the Self, even as a bound soul, can be recognised as Siva? Yes: he still performs the five acts. Every moment of ordinary perception is emanation, maintenance, withdrawal, concealment and grace. This is what distinguishes the Saiva non-dualism from the Brahmavada: the Divine never loses its authorship, even in bondage. To see this steadily is to be liberated in this life.
The Sutra
tathapi tadvat panca krtyani karoti
"Even in this condition (of the empirical self), he (the individual) does the five krtyas (deeds) like Him (i.e. like Siva)."
Commentary Walkthrough
The distinction from the Brahmavadins. The divine whose essence is consciousness "always retains his authorship of the fivefold act". Kshemaraja cites Svacchanda Tantra (I.3): "I bow to the Divine who brings about emanation, re-absorption, concealment, maintenance, who dispenses grace, and who destroys the affliction of those who have bowed down to Him."
The Isvarapratyabhijna. "Even in the empirical state, the Lord, entering into the body etc., causes the collection of objects to appear outwardly by His Will, though appearing within Himself."
The five acts in perception. When the Lord, entering the body and prana, with attention turned outward, makes "blue" appear in a definite place and time:
| Moment in perception | Act |
|---|---|
| the object appears in a definite space and time | srsti, emanation |
| it appears in another space and time (and so vanishes from the first) | samhara, withdrawal |
| the continuity of its appearance | sthiti, maintenance |
| its appearance as different | vilaya, concealment |
| its appearance as identical with the light of consciousness | anugraha, grace |
Kshemaraja says he has shown this at length in his Spandasandoha. Then the decisive claim: "This authorship of the fivefold act occurring within one's own personal experience, if pursued steadily with firm understanding, reveals the Lord's greatness to the devotee. Therefore, those who always ponder over this, knowing the universe as an unfoldment of the essential nature of consciousness, become liberated in this very life. ... Those who do not ponder like this, seeing all objects of experience as essentially different, remain for ever bound."
The Leidecker Corrections
- Leidecker translated pranatarti-vinasanam ("who destroys the affliction of those who bow down") as "him whom destruction of sorrow is subordinated", which Singh says "hardly makes any sense".
- He took the last sentence to mean the opposite of its meaning, missing a comma after tatha (Singh follows the Kashmir Sanskrit Series reading).
Insight
This is the most democratic sutra in the book. It says that the five cosmic acts of God are happening in your ordinary perception right now. You do not have to imagine Siva creating galaxies; you have to notice that you are emanating, holding, releasing, concealing and revealing every object you see. The one act that makes the difference is the fifth: whether the object appears as separate (concealment) or as one with the light (grace). Both are your own acts. Concealment and grace are not a God's decision about you; they are two ways you yourself are seeing.
Kshemaraja's mapping of withdrawal to "appearance in another space and time" is a little forced: it makes samhara a matter of an object moving, not dissolving. The esoteric version in Sutra 11 is more satisfying, and Kshemaraja seems to know it, since he introduces that version as the "other" mode.
Key Terms
- Srastrta, sthapakata, samhartrta, vilayakarita, anugrahitrta: the agent-nouns of the five acts.
- Brahmavada: Saiva term for Advaita Vedanta.
- Spandasandoha: Kshemaraja's commentary on the first verse of the Spandakarika.
Reflection and Practice
- Watch one object for a minute: its appearing, its staying, its going. Then notice whether it appears as "out there, other than me", or as "shining in awareness". Can you shift between the two deliberately?
The Five Acts from the Yogin's View (pp. 76–78)
There is "another esoteric mode" of the five acts. From the yogin's view, the five acts are five phases of any experience: manifesting, relishing, inner assimilation, seeding, and dissolving. The practice is to complete the cycle: not to leave an experience half-digested, as a seed of future bondage, but to burn it to sameness in the fire of consciousness.
The Sutra
abhasana-rakti-vimarsana-bijavasthapana-vilapanatas tani
"As manifesting, relishing, experiencing as self, settling of the seed, dissolution, these (are the five acts)."
The Five Phases
| Phase | Sanskrit | Act | What happens |
|---|---|---|---|
| Manifesting | abhasana | srsti | whatever appears through the "goddess of sight" and the other senses is emanated |
| Relishing | rakti | sthiti | the Self, "without shutting of the eye", relishes it for some time |
| Experiencing as self | vimarsana | samhara | it is withdrawn at the moment of vimarsa, a "sudden flash of delight" (camatkara) |
| Settling of the seed | bijavasthapana | vilaya | if it leaves samskaras of doubt, it becomes samsara in germ, bound to sprout again |
| Dissolution | vilapana | anugraha | if it is "burned to sameness with the fire of consciousness" by hathapaka and alamgrasa, the yogin enters grace |
Commentary Walkthrough
Kshemaraja calls this the view maharthadrstya, "from the point of view of the highest end" (Singh's Note 97 connects it to the Mahartha or Krama tradition). He quotes Rama: "The mountain of manifoldness which cannot be split by others even by the thunderbolt of samadhi is experienced as oneself and thus destroyed by those who are endowed with the power that accrues from devotion to you."
Hathapaka (Note 100): literally "forcible digestion", persistently assimilating experience into consciousness. Alamgrasa (Note 101): "devouring completely", swallowing the experience so that no residue remains.
Then a sharp warning: "This kind of authorship of the fivefold act, though always near at hand to every body, does not become manifest without the instruction of a good guru. One should, therefore, take to the reverential service of a good guru." The one who lacks such guidance "remains deluded by his own powers".
Insight
This is the deepest psychology in the text. Every experience either completes or leaves a residue. An experience fully relished and fully known as oneself leaves nothing behind: it is dissolved. An experience that leaves doubt, aversion, craving or "unfinished business" plants a seed (bija) that will sprout as future experience. Much of what modern therapy calls unprocessed experience, Kshemaraja calls bijavasthapana. And his remedy is not to suppress or analyse the residue but to digest it (hathapaka) in awareness until it is "of the same taste" as consciousness.
Note Rama's line: the mountain of manifoldness cannot be split even by samadhi. Withdrawal into meditative absorption does not dissolve the world's seeds; only experiencing it as oneself does. This is a deliberate rejection of a purely withdrawn yoga, and it anticipates Sutra 19.
The requirement of a "good guru" appears here precisely where the method is easiest to describe and hardest to do. It is both a genuine pedagogical point (the digestion of experience is easy to fake) and a structural feature of the tradition, which depends on initiatory lineage. Readers should take it seriously without assuming that any self-styled guru qualifies; the text says sadguru, a teacher who has himself completed the cycle.
Key Terms
- Abhasana, rakti, vimarsana, bijavasthapana, vilapana: the five esoteric acts.
- Camatkara: a flash of wonder or delight; aesthetic and mystical savouring.
- Hathapaka: forcible digestion of experience.
- Alamgrasa: complete swallowing.
- Mahartha / Krama: the Kashmiri tradition of the phases of consciousness.
Reflection and Practice
- Take a strong experience from today, pleasant or unpleasant. Did it complete, or did it leave a seed? Sit with the residue: let it be fully felt and fully known, without commentary, until it has "the same taste" as the awareness in which it appears.
- Notice the camatkara in a small pleasure: a taste, a sound. Where does the delight happen, in the object or in you?
Bondage Is Being Deluded by One's Own Powers (pp. 78–85)
To be a samsarin is to be deluded by one's own powers, because one does not recognise one's authorship of the five acts. This is the longest commentary in the book. Kshemaraja explains "one's own powers" three times, in the language of each upaya: as the powers of speech (sambhava), as the four wheels of Vamesvari (sakta), and as the powers of breath and state (anava). In each case the same power that binds, when recognised, liberates.
The Sutra
tad-aparijnane svasaktibhir vyamohitata samsaritvam
"To be a samsarin means being deluded by one's own powers because of the ignorance of that (authorship of the fivefold act)."
First Reading: The Powers of Speech (Sambhavopaya)
Aparijnana, ignorance, means "not flashing forth" of one's own power, which becomes effective only through saktipata. Vyamohitata, delusion, means "being nailed by various doubts created by the sastras and worldly opinions". The Sarvavira-bhattaraka: "Through ignorance people are subject to uncertainty; hence follow birth and death." And: "The essence of all mantras consists in letters or sounds, and the essence of all letters or sounds is Siva."
Para vak, supreme speech, is identical with Siva, is "the great mantra that is eternally sounded", is the consciousness of the perfect "I", and is "pregnant with" all the powers of the letters from "a" to "ksa". Through pasyanti and madhyama she brings forth the limited subject. In him she conceals her nature as para and produces "ever-new vikalpa-activity every moment", showing objects that are "obscure and particular", and presenting even the avikalpa state "as veiled by that vikalpa-activity, though in itself it is quite pure".
Deluded by the powers of the consonants, presided over by Brahmi and the other mother-goddesses, the deluded man "helplessly considers the body, pranas etc., which are limited, as the Self."
Pasu and pati. The same deities work in two directions:
| Stage | Emanation and maintenance of | Withdrawal of | Result |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pasu (bound) | difference | non-difference | fitness only for limited vikalpas |
| Pati (lord) | non-difference | difference | vikalpas reduced, the great avikalpa stage disclosed, entry into bhairava-mudra, and the appearance of pure vikalpa |
The pure vikalpa is a thought that does not bind, illustrated by Utpaladeva (Isvarapratyabhijna, Agamadhikara II.12): "He who knows that all this glory is mine, who realizes that the entire cosmos is his Self, possesses mahesata (lordship) even when the vikalpas have their play."
Second Reading: The Four Wheels (Saktopaya)
Citi-sakti is called Vamesvari, "because she emits (vam) the universe and also because she has to do with the contrary (vama) course of samsara". She displays herself in four groups (cakras, which Singh says suggest "an array of forces like an army ... which has to be pierced through"):
| Group | In the pasu, she appears as | In the pati, she appears as |
|---|---|---|
| Khecari ("moving in the sky") | the limited subject, with kala and the other kancukas | cid-gagana-cari, moving in the sky of consciousness, universal doership |
| Gocari | the inner organ: ascertainment of difference (buddhi), identification with different things (ahamkara), ideation of difference (manas) | ascertainment of non-difference |
| Dikcari | the outer senses, perceiving difference | perception of non-difference |
| Bhucari | knowable objects as differentiated all round | objects as "non-different like limbs of oneself" |
Kshemaraja quotes Damodara's Vimuktakas: the goddesses in subject, inner organ, senses and objects "bring about liberation by full knowledge, thus making him whole, and bondage by ignorance, thus making him limited".
Third Reading: Breath and States (Anavopaya)
The Lord has his own aisvarya-sakti, sovereignty, "whose essential nature consists in doership", a sphuratta or flashing of divine light. In the pasu state, she deludes by:
- the phases of prana, apana and samana;
- the states of waking, dream and deep sleep;
- the "kalas" of body, prana and puryastaka.
When she unfolds udana in the madhyadhama (the central channel), as the turya state, and vyana, which pervades the universe, as turyatita, "both of which are a mass of consciousness and bliss", then "even in the state of body etc. one reaches the stage of pati and attains liberation while still living."
The Conclusion
Kshemaraja notes that Sutra 9 said consciousness becomes a samsarin by limiting itself; Sutra 12 says it becomes a samsarin by being deluded by its own powers. Conversely, one who is not so deluded, "in spite of his having prana and other limitations", is "the Lord Himself with a body". The Agama: "They are the highest Lord in a veiled form, having entered a human body." And a commentary on the Pratyabhijna: "They also attain to perfection who consider the body or even the jar etc. consisting of the thirty-six tattvas as a form of Siva."
Insight
The three readings show the upayas are not different doctrines but different levels at which the same truth can be practised:
- At the level of speech and thought (sambhava): notice that thought is the play of supreme speech. Thought itself is not the enemy; thought that emanates difference is. The goal is not no-thought but pure vikalpa, thought that knows "all this glory is mine".
- At the level of the psychic apparatus (sakta): the same faculties of knower, mind, senses and objects work either to separate or to unify. You do not need new faculties; you need the same ones turned.
- At the level of breath and states (anava): the breath and the three states bind when unattended, and become turya and turyatita when the central breath is awakened.
The constant message: your powers are not your enemies. You are deluded by them only as long as you do not recognise them as yours.
The "deities of the letters" (Brahmi, Mahesvari and the other mothers, over the classes of consonants) and the four "-cari" goddesses are the residue of a Kaula ritual world: in the Krama and Kaula cults they were worshipped as fierce goddesses, often with offerings and practices that Kshemaraja's contemplative reading does not mention. His treatment is a classic example of internalisation: the external goddesses of the cult become powers of cognition. That is a genuine philosophical achievement, but it is also an act of selection. A reader should know that "the wheel of the goddesses" was once a literal circle of worship.
Key Terms
- Para, pasyanti, madhyama, vaikhari: the four levels of speech (Note 75).
- Matrka: the "little mothers", the deities of the letters.
- Pasu / pati: bound soul / lord.
- Bhairava-mudra: the seal of Bhairava; eyes open, attention inward.
- Suddha vikalpa: pure thought, which affirms unity.
- Vamesvari: the goddess who emits and reverses.
- Khecari, gocari, dikcari, bhucari: the four wheels of power.
- Aisvarya-sakti: the power of sovereignty.
- Udana, vyana: the upward and pervasive breaths; turya and turyatita.
Reflection and Practice
- For one day, practise "pure vikalpa": when a thought arises, add silently, "this too is my own glory". Notice whether thought binds less when it is owned.
- Run the four wheels: as you look at an object, notice the knower (khecari), the mind (gocari), the senses (dikcari) and the object (bhucari). For each, ask: is it working to separate, or to unify?
Mind Turns Inward and Becomes Consciousness (pp. 85–86)
Sutra 13 is Sutra 12 "put conversely, in order to show the essential truth". When the authorship of the five acts is fully known, the cause of delusion is removed, and citta becomes citi: the mind, turning inward, rises to the status of the knower and recovers its nature as universal consciousness.
The Sutra
tat-parijnane cittam eva antarmukhibhavena cetana-padadhyarohat citih
"Acquiring the full knowledge of it (i.e. of the authorship of the five-fold act of the Self), citta itself (i.e. the individual consciousness) by inward movement becomes citi (i.e. universal consciousness) by rising to the status of cetana."
Commentary Walkthrough
After full knowledge, the lack of knowledge is removed; the delusion by one's own sakti ceases; because of the attainment of svatantrya, the citta (as defined in Sutra 5) "giving up the limiting tendency of extroversion, becoming introverted, rises to the status of cetana". That is, it rises gradually to the status of the knowing subject, where "by the dissolution of the aspect of limitation, and attaining its real nature, it becomes citi."
Note the symmetry with Sutra 5:
| Sutra 5 (descent) | Sutra 13 (ascent) |
|---|---|
| citi descends from cetana | citta rises to cetana |
| contracted by objects (cetya) | through inward movement (antarmukhibhava) |
| becomes citta | becomes citi |
Leidecker misread sakala-bheda-kavalana-svabhava ("whose nature is to devour all difference") and so mistranslated the passage.
The whole spiritual path in this book is one movement reversed. The same consciousness that descended by attending outward to objects returns by attending inward to the knower. There is no other substance to reach, no distant goal. What changes is the direction of attention. This is why the system can call its method "easy": the instrument and the goal are the same thing.
Key Terms
- Antarmukhibhava: becoming inward-facing, introversion.
- Parijnana: full knowledge.
- Adhyaroha: rising up.
Reflection
- In the middle of an activity, turn attention for a moment from what you are doing to the one who is doing it. Notice the shift in the "taste" of the moment.
The Fire of Consciousness Burns Even When Covered (pp. 86–88)
An objection: if consciousness at its highest devours all difference, it should go on doing so even in the sphere of Maya, as the sun lights objects even behind clouds. Why then do we experience difference? Answer: it does go on devouring, even here, but only partly, like a fire under ashes, because the impressions of objects make them rise again.
The Sutra
citi-vahnir avaroha-pade channo'pi matraya meyendhanam plusyati
"The fire of citi even when it descends to the (lower) stage, though covered (by maya), partly burns the fuel of the known (objects)."
Commentary Walkthrough
Citi is called fire "because it devours the phenomenal universe". Even in the descended state, covered by Maya, "because of its inherent freedom", it partly burns the fuel of objects like blue and yellow, "even as fire burns the fuel though covered by copious ashes". As knowledge, objects are "part and parcel of consciousness".
Why "partly" (matraya)? "Though devouring the object of knowledge, it does not consume it wholly, but only partly, because it again makes it rise by means of the samskaras."
Everyone devours. "That all experients have the power of devouring is proved by one's own experience." Utpaladeva (Sivastotravali XX.17): "Since all the creatures, even Brahma, Indra and Visnu, go on devouring, therefore, O God, I adore the universe that is of your own form."
The Leidecker Corrections
- Bhuti here means "ashes", not "great power".
- Grasamanah means "devouring", active, not "being devoured", which is "grammatically indefensible".
Insight
The image of eating is everywhere in this tradition, and it is meant literally. Every act of knowing eats its object: what was outside becomes part of you. You have never known an object that was not, in being known, assimilated into awareness. Utpaladeva's verse turns this into worship: the universe is God's form precisely because every creature constantly eats it into consciousness. The practice consequence is that even the bound soul is already practising, partially. Liberation is not starting the fire; it is clearing the ashes so that the fire burns completely, leaving no samskaras to regenerate the object.
Key Terms
- Citi-vahni: the fire of consciousness.
- Meyendhana: the fuel of objects.
- Matraya: partly.
- Bhuti: ash.
- Grasa: devouring.
Reflection
- Notice an object being "eaten" by attention: a sound arises, is heard, becomes part of your experience. Where is the sound now?
With Power Regained, the Universe Becomes One's Own (pp. 88–91)
When the aspirant practises prasara (the going-forth of the senses) as emanation and sankoca (their withdrawal) as reabsorption, the power of Citi re-emerges. Then he "makes the universe his own". And Kshemaraja adds one of the most important clarifications in the book: this inclusiveness is not a temporary attainment; it is always the case. Practice does not produce it; practice only removes the false identification that hides it.
The Sutra
balalabhe visvam atmasat karoti
"In acquiring the (inherent) power of citi, he, the aspirant assimilates the universe to himself."
Commentary Walkthrough
The practice that leads in. Singh's footnote: here prasara and sankoca of the senses are connected with sarga (emanation) and samhara (withdrawal) of objects. Sankoca here means closing, withdrawing, not contraction.
Bala, power, means the emergence of Citi's essential nature by the submergence of the covering of body and prana. "Then having resorted to that power, the mantras acquire the power and efficiency of the all-knowing" (Spandakarika II.10, per Note 136). When one "betakes to one's real nature", one "makes the universe from the earth to Sadasiva one's own". The Kramasutras: "Just as fire set ablaze consumes the fuel, even so should one consume the objects of sense which act like fetters."
The objection. "The all-inclusive role of citi is only temporary. How then can it be accepted?" The answer: the inclusive nature only appears temporary because of the emergence and immergence of the body. "This all-inclusive role, however, is ever in manifestation. Otherwise even the body etc. would not be manifested." Hence: "The practice is recommended in order to remove the false identification of the experient with the body etc., not for attaining the status of the experiencing consciousness that by its very nature is always luminous."
Insight
This is the sentence to carry from the book into practice. It answers the most common confusion in all non-dual teaching: if I am already consciousness, why practise? Kshemaraja's answer is clean. You do not practise to become consciousness; you practise to stop identifying with the body. The first would be impossible (you cannot become what you already are), and the second is a real, effortful undoing of a habit. This preserves both the "always already" and the need for discipline.
The proof offered is elegant. If consciousness were not already all-inclusive, it could not even contain the body as an object. The very fact that the body is known shows that consciousness is wider than the body.
Key Terms
- Bala: power, the emergence of Citi.
- Atmasat karoti: makes one's own.
- Prasara / sankoca: going forth / withdrawing of the senses.
Reflection and Practice
- Sense-gate practice: let the senses go out to their objects (prasara), and feel this as emanation. Then withdraw them (sankoca), and feel this as reabsorption. Alternate slowly. What remains constant through both?
Firm Identity with Consciousness Is Living Liberation (pp. 91–92)
When the bliss of cit is attained, the identity with cit becomes firm even while the body and the world are being experienced. That firmness is jivanmukti, liberation while alive.
The Sutra
cidananda-labhe dehadisu cetyamanesv api cidaikatmya-pratipatti-dardhyam jivanmuktih
"When the bliss of cit is attained, there is stability of the consciousness of identity with cit even while the body etc. are being experienced. This state is jivanmukti."
Commentary Walkthrough
The bliss of cit is samavesa, the contemplative experience of unity in which the universe is identical with the Self. The test is vyutthana, the state of emergence from meditation, in which body, prana, blue and pleasure are experienced "like so many coverings". If, in vyutthana, there is firmness of the identity with cit, due to the force of the impressions left by contemplation, strengthened by the means to come, that is jivanmukti. It is liberation "of one who still breathes and lives in the body", because the fetters are dissolved "on the recognition of one's true nature".
Spanda II.5: "He who knows thus and regards the whole world as a play, being ever united, is without doubt liberated even while alive."
Insight
Kshemaraja's definition of liberation is operational: it is the stability (dardhya) of a recognition while the body is being experienced. It is not a special state of trance, and it is not a feeling of bliss in meditation alone. The test is what happens when you get up. A recognition that vanishes in activity is samavesa, not yet jivanmukti. This sets up the next three sutras: the centre (17), the means (18) and the carrying of samadhi into activity (19).
Key Terms
- Cidananda: the bliss of consciousness.
- Samavesa: immersion, absorption into unity.
- Vyutthana: emergence from meditation.
- Dardhya: firmness, stability.
- Jivanmukti: liberation while alive.
Reflection
- After your next meditation, notice how long the sense of unity lasts in activity. What tends to end it?
The Bliss Comes Through the Unfolding of the Centre (pp. 92–94)
How is the bliss of cit attained? Through madhya-vikasa, the unfolding or development of the centre. The centre is samvit, consciousness itself, the innermost ground of everything. In the embodied person it is present as the central channel. When either the centre of consciousness or the central channel unfolds, bliss follows, and with it jivanmukti.
The Sutra
madhya-vikasac cidananda-labhah
"By the development of the madhya (centre) is there acquisition of the bliss of the cit."
Commentary Walkthrough
Samvit is the centre because it is "the innermost of all" and because "the form or nature of anything whatsoever cannot be possible without its being attached to it as the ground".
How the centre is hidden. "At first samvit is transformed into prana." Concealing its nature in Maya, it takes on the role of prana-sakti, rests in buddhi, body and so on in descending order, and follows "the course of the thousand nadis". Even so, it remains principally as the madhyama-nadi, "from brahmarandhra down to adhovaktra, like the central rib of a palasa leaf". It is called central "because all the functions arise from that and come to rest there". But its nature remains hidden from the pasus.
How the centre unfolds. When samvit develops through the practice of pancakrtya (the five acts, as taught above), or when the central brahma-nadi develops (as about to be described), the bliss of cit is attained. "Then comes liberation while one is alive."
Insight
The image of the midrib of a leaf is exact. The midrib is not a separate thing laid on the leaf; it is the leaf's own structure, from which all the veins branch and to which they return. The central channel is similarly not an anatomical tube to be built, but the structure of experience: every function arises from consciousness and returns to it. This is the three-register reading of madhya from the introduction in concentrated form. In the anava register it is the susumna; in the sambhava register, the knower in every act of knowing.
"At first samvit is transformed into prana" is a quotation the tradition attributes to older sources (often traced to the Krama and to Kallata); its exact source is not given. It is a powerful formula, and it has been central to modern teachers such as Lakshman Joo, who built breath-based practices around it. But note that in Kshemaraja's own ordering, the breath method comes second: first the five acts, "or" the brahma-nadi.
Key Terms
- Madhya: centre.
- Vikasa: unfolding, development.
- Samvit: consciousness.
- Madhyama-nadi / brahma-nadi / susumna: the central channel.
- Brahmarandhra / adhovaktra: the crown aperture / the lower "mouth" at the base.
Reflection
- Feel for a "midrib" in your experience: the one thing from which every perception and thought branches. Do not imagine a channel; feel for the centre that does not move.
The Means for Unfolding the Centre (pp. 94–103)
Sutra 18 names the practical methods for developing the centre. The chief method, and the only one Kshemaraja says belongs to the Pratyabhijna proper, is vikalpa-ksaya, the dissolution of thought-constructs. Three further methods come from "the sacred tradition": sakti-sankoca and vikasa (withdrawal and expansion of power), vaha-ccheda (cutting the flow of the breaths), and adyanta-koti-nibhalana (attention to the beginning and end points of the breath). The word "etc." opens a door to many more, including the aesthetic contemplations of the Vijnanabhairava. "If many means are described, someone may enter through any one of them."
The Sutra
vikalpa-ksaya-sakti-sankoca-vikasa-vaha-cchedadyanta-koti-nibhalanadaya ihopayah
"Herein the means are, dissolution of vikalpa, sankoca and vikasa of Sakti, cutting of the vahas, the practice (of the contemplation) of the koti (point, extremity) of the beginning and the end etc."
The Methods at a Glance
| Method | Upaya | What it is | Key source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Vikalpa-ksaya | sambhava | resting in the heart without thought-constructs | IPK IV.1.11; Spanda I.9; Jnanagarbha |
| Sakti-sankoca | sakta | withdrawing outgoing awareness into the Self | Katha Up. IV.1; the tortoise |
| Sakti-vikasa | sakta | holding inward awareness while the senses are wide open (bhairavi mudra) | Kaksyastotra; Kallata |
| Sankoca-vikasa in kundalini | sakta / anava | expansion and rest in urdhva-kundalini; entry at adhah-kundalini | Vijnanabhairava 68 |
| Vaha-ccheda | anava | stopping prana and apana by inward vowel-less sounds | Jnanagarbha |
| Adyanta-koti-nibhalana | anava | fixing the mind at the start and end of the breath, heart to dvadasanta | Vijnanabhairava 49, 51 |
| "Etc." | varied | unmesa between two thoughts; aesthetic delight | Spanda III.9; Vijnanabhairava 72–74 |
1. Vikalpa-ksaya: The Main Method
The five acts are one means; "another means is also being mentioned". It is "an easy means by which one can dispense with (lit. shatter) all the fetters of rigorous disciplines like pranayama, mudra, bandha etc."
The aspirant keeps his citta concentrated on the heart (samvit; Singh: "hrdaya here does not mean the physical heart, but the deepest consciousness"), restrains the vikalpas that obstruct staying in one's nature "by not thinking of anything whatsoever", lays hold of the avikalpa state, becomes habituated to "regarding his cit as the real knower, untarnished by body etc.", and "within a short time only" attains absorption into turya and turyatita.
Supporting texts:
- Isvarapratyabhijna IV.1.11: "By giving up vikalpa, and by one-pointedness, one gradually reaches the stage of Isvara-ship."
- Spandakarika I.9: "When mental agitation would dissolve, then would ensue the highest stage."
- Jnanagarbha: "When, O mother, men renounce all mental activities and are poised in a pure state, being free from the bondage of the pursuit of sense-activities, then by thy grace is that supreme state realized at once which rains down the nectar of undiminished and unparalleled happiness."
"This means has been described first, because it is the highest and because it has been taught in the Pratyabhijna doctrine. The sankoca of sakti etc., though not taught in the Pratyabhijna doctrine, have been, nevertheless, mentioned by us on account of their belonging to the sacred tradition and their incidental connexion with it."
Recall Singh's introduction: vikalpa-ksaya "cannot be done by force, for that creates resistance". It is "alert passivity". The instruction "by not thinking of anything whatsoever" is easy to misread as an effort to blank the mind, which would only produce the sunya state Kshemaraja ranks low. The emphasis falls on the second half: holding cit as the real knower. Thoughts dissolve not because they are pushed away but because attention rests where thoughts do not reach.
2. Sakti-sankoca: Turning Back
Sankoca of sakti means "turning in towards the Self, by the process of withdrawal, of that consciousness which is spreading externally through the gates of the senses". The Katha Upanisad (IV.1): "The self-existent one pierced the openings of the senses outward; hence one looks outward, not within one's Self. Some wise man, wishing to taste immortality, with reverted eyes beheld the immanent Self." (Kshemaraja calls the Katha part of the Atharva upanisads, an older classification.)
Or it is "the sudden turning back from all sides of the externally spread Sakti like the contraction of the limbs of the tortoise and its withdrawal into the interior on the occasion of fear". "It being reverted, there is resting in the ever-present Self."
3. Sakti-vikasa: Bhairavi Mudra
Vikasa of sakti "results from the simultaneous opening of all the sense-organs": "The object of one's aspiration is to be seen within, while the external sight may be kept steady without closing and opening of the eyelids." This is bhairavi mudra: inner absorption with outer expansion.
The Kaksyastotra: "Throwing by will all the powers like seeing etc. simultaneously and on all sides into their respective objects and remaining unmoved within like a gold pillar, you (O Siva) alone appear as the foundation of the universe." And Kallata: the development of the central power "is accomplished by transformation even in the presence of forms", that is, by seeing the outgoing consciousness as the same as the inward.
4. Sankoca and Vikasa in Kundalini
Kshemaraja adds a second, more technical sense. Vikasa is the practice of expansion and rest in urdhva-kundalini (the risen kundalini), brought about by the restraint of prana between the eyebrows, through the subtle prana developed by "regulation of the vibrations in the cavities of the nose". In adhah-kundalini, located at the "sixth organ" (medhrakanda), there is "entrance in its root, tip and middle". He quotes Vijnanabhairava 68: "One should throw the delightful citta in the middle of vahni and visa, whether by itself or permeated by vayu; one would then be joined to the bliss of sexual union (smarananda)."
Singh's notes: vahni is the entry into adhah-kundalini (sankoca); visa, from the root vis, "to pervade", is the rise into urdhva-kundalini (vikasa) (Notes 156–159). Note 158 corrects Leidecker: vaktra here means "organ", not "mouth"; the five organs are ears, eyes, nose, mouth and anus, and medhrakanda is the sixth. Note 160 on smarananda: "This is 'inverted' kama. Sexual union is external; this union is internal." Singh adds that this passage is "highly mystic" and that it is "impossible to work away the translation of such passages without understanding their import from a teacher who is initiated in the tradition".
Singh's reading of smarananda as "inverted" desire is the standard sublimationist interpretation of modern teachers, and it may well be what Kshemaraja intends here. But the Vijnanabhairava belongs to a Kaula milieu in which sexual practice was, in some lineages, literal, and verses 69–74 of the same text speak of the joy of union with a partner and of remembering it. Kshemaraja chose to cite only this inward verse, and Singh sharpened the inwardness further. This is a clear case of the sanitisation that the reader of modern Kashmir Saivism should watch for: the text is not lying, but it has been selected. Readers who want the ritual context should consult studies such as Alexis Sanderson's work on the Kaula and Krama traditions and David Gordon White's Kiss of the Yogini, read critically.
5. Vaha-ccheda: Cutting the Breaths
The two vahas are prana and apana, flowing in the left and right channels. Cheda, cutting, means their pause "by the sounding of anacka sounds like ka, ha etc. inwardly", that is, consonants without vowels, "before which, however, they should be stopped in the heart". The Jnanagarbha: "In the heart-lotus of one whose mind has been controlled, whose two nadis extending on both sides have been stilled by the restraint brought about by sounding vowel-less 'K', and whose blinding darkness has been dispelled, arises that sprout of your knowledge, O world mother, which is adequate to produce paramesaship even in the pasu."
A consonant without a vowel cannot actually be sounded; it is an articulation that stops at the point of release. The practice is a precise device for catching the breath at its threshold. When the breath tries to move and the sound does not complete, the flow pauses, and in that pause the centre opens.
6. Adyanta-koti-nibhalana: The Two Ends of the Breath
"The first point is the heart. The last point is the measure of the twelve" (dvadasanta, twelve finger-breadths). Nibhalana is "fixing the mind at the time of the rising of prana and its coming to an end between these two." Singh's Note 165: prana starts at the heart (the centre of the diaphragm) and ends at the dvadasanta twelve fingers from the point between the eyebrows; apana runs the reverse way. "This is like the pranapana smrti (anapanasati) of Buddhist yoga." There is another dvadasanta above the crown, the Siva dvadasanta.
- Vijnanabhairava 49: "He whose senses are merged in the ether of the heart, who has entered mentally into the centre of the heart-lotus, who excludes everything else from consciousness, attains to supreme happiness, O Beautiful one."
- Vijnanabhairava 51: "If one turns one's mind to dvadasanta howsoever and wheresoever, the fluctuation of his mind will diminish every moment, and in a few days, he will acquire an extraordinary status."
Singh's comparison with anapanasati is apt in technique and misleading in aim. The Buddhist practice watches the breath to see impermanence and not-self; the Saiva practice watches its turning points to enter the Self. The same attention to the breath leads, by design, to opposite descriptions of the result. The comparison is interesting precisely because of this.
7. "Et Cetera": Unmesa and Aesthetic Delight
Unmesa: Spandakarika III.9: "That is to be known as unmesa; one may see it for oneself." In Singh's notes this is the gap or upsurge between two thoughts: as one thought ends and before the next arises, the source shines.
Aesthetic delight (Note 168: asvada-dharana, sabda-dharana, manastusti-dharana):
- VBh 72: "When one experiences the expansion of the joy of savour arising from the pleasure of eating and drinking, one should meditate on the perfect condition of this joy, and then one would become full of great bliss."
- VBh 73: "When a yogin mentally becomes one with the incomparable joy of song and other objects, then of such a concentrated yogin there is identity with that, because he becomes one with it."
- VBh 74: "Wherever the manas finds its satisfaction, let it be concentrated on that. In every such case, the true nature of the highest bliss will shine forth."
"From the development of the madhya results the attainment of the bliss of the spirit." This is samavesa, samapatti, the samadhi of the highest yogin.
Verse 74 is the most radical sentence in the book and the most freeing for a beginner. It says the doorway to the highest bliss is wherever you already find satisfaction. Not suppressing pleasure but following it inward to its source: the joy in the taste of food is not in the food; it is consciousness tasting itself. This is the aesthetic theory of Abhinavagupta (rasa as savouring the self) turned into a meditation.
The "easy means" claim deserves scrutiny. Kshemaraja says vikalpa-ksaya shatters "all the fetters of rigorous disciplines", and that absorption comes "within a short time only". In practice, the dissolving of thought-constructs while holding the knower is notoriously difficult, and the tradition itself (Sutra 11) says the method does not become manifest without a good guru. "Easy" means simple in structure, needing no apparatus, not easy to do. Teachers who sell this text as a shortcut misread it.
Key Terms
- Vikalpa-ksaya: dissolution of thought-constructs.
- Hrdaya: heart, the deepest consciousness.
- Sakti-sankoca / sakti-vikasa: withdrawal / expansion of power.
- Bhairavi mudra: eyes open, attention inward.
- Urdhva-kundalini / adhah-kundalini: risen / descending kundalini.
- Vahni / visa: the entry point / the pervading rise.
- Smarananda: the bliss of union.
- Vaha-ccheda: cutting the flows of breath.
- Anacka: vowel-less consonant.
- Dvadasanta: the point twelve finger-breadths away.
- Nibhalana: practice, attentive fixing.
- Unmesa: the opening between thoughts.
- Samapatti: coalescence, samadhi.
A Graded Practice from Sutra 18
- Week one: adyanta-koti. Sit; feel the breath begin at the heart and end a hand's width beyond the face. Rest attention at each turning point. Notice the pause.
- Week two: sakti-sankoca. Several times a day, while engaged with an object, withdraw attention back to the knower, like a tortoise drawing in. Then let it go out again.
- Week three: bhairavi mudra. Sit with eyes open, gaze steady, not blinking more than needed. Let the whole field of sense be open while attention rests in the knower.
- Week four: aesthetic dharana. At a meal or with music, let the pleasure expand, then notice where the pleasure is. Rest there.
- Ongoing: vikalpa-ksaya. Sit with attention in the "heart" of awareness, not suppressing and not following thought. Return gently whenever you notice you have followed.
Krama-mudra: Samadhi That Does Not End (pp. 103–106)
The previous sutra gave samadhi. This one makes it permanent. The great yogin who has attained samavesa remains full of it even in vyutthana, emergence into activity, by krama-mudra: a swing of awareness from outer to inner and inner to outer, in which the outer is absorbed into consciousness and consciousness is poured back into the outer, until the two are one.
The Sutra
samadhi-samskaravati vyutthane bhuyo bhuyas cid-aikyamarsan nityodita-samadhi-labhah
"In vyutthana which is full of the after-effects of samadhi, there is the attainment of permanent samadhi by dwelling on one's identity with cit (the universal, supreme consciousness) over and over again."
Commentary Walkthrough
The yogin in activity. Even in what is considered vyutthana, the great yogin beholds "the entire mass of entities to be dissolving in the cit-sky like a bit of cloud in autumn", "reeling joyfully owing to the persisting after-effect of the savour of samadhi, like one intoxicated", "resorting to introversion again and again", and meditating on his identity with cit by nimilana-samadhi, the samadhi of closing the eyes, inward absorption. Singh's footnote: "This state appears when dehatma-bhava, the delusion of identity with the body, disappears."
The Kramasutras. "The sadhaka, even while gazing outward, remains in samavesa by krama-mudra which is characterized by inwardness. Owing to the force of avesa, there takes place in this, first an entrance of consciousness from the external into the internal, and then from the internal into the external. Thus this mudra-krama is both of the nature of the external and internal."
Two movements. First, through "devouring" the totality of outer objects into the highest citi plane, there is penetration into the inner by the very process of assimilation. Then, through the realisation of citi by the power of samavesa, there is entrance into the outer, the totality of objects as "this", by vamana, emission. This second entrance is also samavesa, "the manifestation of the solidification of the essence of cit". His samavesa is nityodita, "eternally active", "external and internal at the same time".
Why "Mudra", Why "Krama"
Mudra, three etymologies:
- mudam rati: it gives mud, joy, being of the nature of highest bliss;
- mum dravayati: it dissolves bondage;
- mudrayati: it seals the universe into the inner turiya.
Krama, two senses:
- it causes emanation and the rest to appear in succession;
- it itself consists in their successive appearance.
Singh's Note 172: "In this, the mind swings alternately between the internal and the external. The internal appears as the universal consciousness, and the external no longer appears as merely the world, but as the form of Siva." Mudra here does not mean a hand gesture.
Insight
Krama-mudra is the system's answer to the problem every meditator meets: the peace of the cushion fades in the traffic. Its answer is not "meditate more" but "meditate in the traffic", by a rhythm. Absorb the outer into the inner (everything seen is drawn into the seer); then let the inner flow back out (the seer sees itself as everything seen). Done repeatedly, the alternation stops being an alternation: inner and outer are both seen as consciousness. This is a practice for daily life, not a retreat technique.
The image of the autumn cloud is exact. In autumn, after the monsoon, small white clouds dissolve into the blue as you watch. Objects do not vanish violently; they thin into the sky of awareness while still faintly visible. The "intoxicated" reeling is the joy of this, and in Kashmiri poetry (Lal Ded, for instance) the same image of divine intoxication appears.
Kshemaraja writes "a great yogin who has attained samavesa". Krama-mudra is the practice of the already advanced, not a beginner's method, though a simplified version (alternating inward attention and outward seeing during the day) is safe and useful for anyone.
Key Terms
- Vyutthana: emergence from samadhi.
- Nimilana-samadhi / unmilana-samadhi: absorption with eyes closed (inward) / with eyes open (outward).
- Krama-mudra: the sealing cycle of inner and outer.
- Vamana: emission, pouring out.
- Nityodita: ever-arisen, eternally active.
Reflection and Practice
- Walking practice: as you walk, draw what you see into the seer for a few steps. Then let the seer pour out into what is seen for a few steps. Alternate. After some minutes, notice whether there is still a difference.
Lordship over the Wheel of Powers (pp. 106–115)
The fruit of krama-mudra: entering the perfect I-consciousness, which is consciousness and bliss and the power of the great mantra, the yogin attains lordship over the wheel of the deities of consciousness that emanate and reabsorb the universe. Kshemaraja closes with the meaning of aham, "I", as the whole alphabet folded into one syllable, and with the words "iti sivam": all this is Siva.
The Sutra
tada prakasananda-sara-mahamantra-viryatmaka-purnahantavesat sada sarva-sarga-samhara-kari-nija-samvid-devata-cakresvarata-praptir bhavati iti sivam
"Then (i.e. on the attainment of krama-mudra), as a result of entering into the perfect I-consciousness or Self which is in essence cit and ananda and of the nature of the power of great mantra, there accrues the attainment of lordship over one's group of the deities of consciousness that brings about all emanation and re-absorption of the universe. All this is the nature of Siva."
Commentary Walkthrough
The wheel. On attaining lasting samadhi, there accrues lordship over the samvit-devata-cakra, the group of deities of consciousness, which always brings about emanation and reabsorption "beginning with Kalagni and ending with the last kala known as Santa kala". This happens by entering the natural camatkara of Self-consciousness, "the very soul of all the mantras" (sarvamantra-jivita-bhuta), the highest vimarsa. Singh's Note 173: macrocosmically, the deities are the four -cari wheels of Sutra 12; microcosmically, they are limited knowership, inner and outer senses, and limited objective knowledge.
The ascending essences. "Iti sivam" means "all this is (really) the form of Siva". Then a chain of essences:
| Level | Its essence is |
|---|---|
| whatever is cognised (prameya) | cognition (pramana) |
| cognition | the inwardly turned experients (pramata) |
| the experients | Sadasiva-Isvaraship, where identification with body has dissolved and the body is the whole universe |
| Sadasiva-Isvaraship | the blissful great Lord, full of camatkara of the entire universe through oneness of being with prakasa |
The Lord is "full of the flow of bliss" because he is free from desire, fully perfect, absolutely free, and has attained full jagadananda by making his own the whole world of vacaka and vacya (word and object), by reflecting on the whole assemblage of non-mayiya words from "a" to "ksa".
The meaning of AHAM. The universe extends from a (the letter of the highest akula, Siva) to ha (the expansion of Sakti), with ksa marking only the end of the expansion. Combined as a + ha and taken inward "in the manner of pratyahara", it rests in the highest reality "in the form of bindu", the dot of non-differentiation: a-ha-m, "aham", I. "Thus this natural vimarsa or inward experience is of the nature of the congregation of words."
Singh's Note 181 corrects Leidecker: pratyahara here is the grammatical term (Panini's device of naming a whole range of letters by the first letter and a final marker, as "ac" names all vowels), not yogic withdrawal of the senses. Note 180: "kulam saktir iti proktam, akulam siva ucyate" (Svacchanda): kula is Sakti, akula is Siva.
Utpaladeva on "I" (Ajadapramatrsiddhi 22–23). "Resting of all objective experience within oneself is what is meant by I-feeling. This resting is called sovereignty of will, primary doership, and lordship, because of the cancellation of all relational consciousness, and of dependence on anything outside oneself." This I-feeling "is the stage of great power, for all mantras arise from and come to rest in it".
Spanda II.1–2: "All mantras approaching this power ..." closing with "All these mantras are endowed with the characteristic mark of Siva." Siva Sutras (I.22): "By unification with the great lake (mahahrada), one acquires the experience of mantra power."
One citi-sakti in all. Whatever appears (body, pleasure, blue), whatever is known, remembered or thought, "it is the play of citi-sakti which flashes forth as the background of all experience". "Without its flashing, there is no flashing of anything whatever." By Maya the jivas call it knowledge, ideation, resolution and so on; "in reality, however, this citi-sakti is one and the same". IPK, Jnanadhikara VII.1: the consciousness coloured with the succession of objects "is nothing other than the great Lord ... of the nature of successionless infinite consciousness". IPK V.18: "Owing to the maya sakti of the Lord, she herself, having to do with different knowables, is called knowledge, ideation, resolution and by other names."
The cakravarti. Entering into citi and using the means described ("successive unfolding and infolding of the senses"), "because of everything being of the nature of everything else", the highest yogin acquires lordship over the whole group of natural consciousness-deities, and parabhairava-ship. Spanda III.19: "When one is rooted in the one place, then controlling the emanation and absorption of it, one acquires the status of a real enjoyer, and then becomes the lord of the cakra." "The one place" (ekatra, Spanda III.12) is the general vibration of cit, of the nature of unmesa. Tasya, "of it", refers to the puryastaka, since Spanda III.17 begins with "bound by the puryastaka"; Kshemaraja rejects Kallata's reading. Singh's footnote records Swami Lakshman Joo's better interpretation: tasya refers to the sakti-cakra, which is responsible for emanation and absorption.
Kshemaraja's own verse: "He who has become independent ruler of the citicakra and the great lord, being served by the group of sense-deities, is only a rare being that excels all."
"Iti sivam." The word "iti" means conclusion. "Siva" means that "whatever is the body of the above text is Siva, because it is a means to the attainment of Siva. It is Siva also because it has come from Siva, because it is not different from the true nature of Siva, and because it is indeed Siva."
The closing verses. "Man bound in all the phases of waking, dream and dreamless sleep by the body, prana, pleasure etc. does not recognise his own citi. But he who, owing to this instruction, beholds in the ocean of the nectar of awareness the universe as a mass of its foam on all sides, is said to be Siva Himself in sooth." And the colophon: "This instruction in the truth has been given for those to whom has accrued the descent of Sakti wrought by Siva, but who for want of the discipline of serious study are unfit for keen arguments, and are hence incapable of understanding the Isvara-pratyabhijna."
The Leidecker Corrections
- Eka-sad-bhava means "oneness of being with prakasa", not "the only reality".
- Leidecker rendered the non-mayiya words as "the whole throng of maya-sounds", the opposite of the text.
- Prakasa in Utpala's verse means objective experience (jar, pleasure), not "divine light".
- Sarvapeksa-nirodhatah means "because of the cancellation of all dependence", not "because perception of the universe is impeded".
- Sivadharminah means "having the nature of Siva", not "those who walk in the law of Siva".
Insight
The AHAM teaching is the climax of the book and its most compressed image. "I" is not one word among others; it is the whole alphabet, and so the whole of speech and its objects, folded back into its source. Every word you say begins somewhere in "a" and unfolds toward "ha"; every object named is part of that unfolding. To say "I" truly, with the whole world resting in it, is to say every word at once. Utpala's definition makes it practical: "I" is the resting of all objective experience within oneself. Whenever an experience rests in you rather than pulling you out, you are tasting the real "aham".
"Lordship over the wheel of powers" sounds like occult mastery, and the tradition did sometimes speak that way. But in Kshemaraja's commentary the "deities" are the knower, the mind, the senses and the objects. Lordship over them means no longer being driven by one's own faculties: the senses serve; they do not rule. This is the inverse of Sutra 12's bondage, "being deluded by one's own powers".
"Iti sivam" turns the book back on itself. The text is not a description of Siva from outside; it is Siva speaking, and a means to Siva. A reader who has followed the twenty sutras is asked to see the reading itself as one more act of the five-fold power: words emanated, held, absorbed and, if understood, dissolved in grace.
The colophon admits what this guide has noted throughout: the Pratyabhijnahrdayam is a digest for the devout, given to those who already have saktipata but who cannot follow Utpaladeva's arguments. It is therefore an excellent manual of recognition and a poor book of proof. Its claims about rival schools, about causality and about the unreality of independent matter are asserted here and argued elsewhere. Read it as Kshemaraja intended: as a heart (hrdaya), not a head.
Key Terms
- Samvit-devata-cakra: the wheel of the deities of consciousness.
- Kalagni / Santa kala: the lowest world-ruler / the highest phase.
- Sarvamantra-jivita: the life of all mantras.
- Aham: I; a + ha + m.
- Akula / kula: Siva / Sakti, the transcendent / the whole of manifestation.
- Pratyahara (grammatical): naming a range of letters by its first and last.
- Bindu: the dot, nasal sound; non-differentiation.
- Mahahrada: the great lake of consciousness.
- Cakresvara / cakravarti: lord of the wheel.
- Parabhairava: the supreme Bhairava.
Reflection and Practice
- Say "aham" silently and slowly: "a" (open, Siva), "ha" (the breath going out, Sakti), "m" (the closing into a point). Feel the whole range of experience gather into the "m".
- Watch for the moment when an experience rests in you rather than taking you out. Name it: this is I-feeling.
- Read one paragraph of this book, then ask: where are those words now?
The Translator's Second Book (pp. 117–187)
Singh's 185 notes form nearly half the volume and amount to a second book, a compact handbook of Kashmir Saiva technical vocabulary. They are where Singh is most useful and also where he adds most from outside Kshemaraja's text. This section highlights the notes a serious reader should study, grouped by theme.
1. Names of the System (Notes 1–2)
- Note 1, Recognition. Abhinavagupta's analysis in the Isvarapratyabhijna-vimarsini: prati (contrary, "though known, now appearing as forgotten"), abhi (facing, close at hand), jna (knowledge). Recognition is "the unification of what appeared before with what is appearing now, as in the judgement 'This is the same Caitra'." Applied to the Lord: knowledge of the Lord's perfect power, acquired from Puranas, Agamas and inference, is joined with immediate self-experience, giving "Certainly, I am that very Lord." The system is also called Trika (Nara, Sakti, Siva) and Spandasastra (the system of vibration).
- Note 2, Siva. From si, "to lie" (in whom all things lie), and svi, "to cut asunder" (who cuts away sin): "both the fundamental ground of all reality and the supreme Benevolence". The system is called Kashmirian Saiva philosophy to distinguish it from the dualist Saiva Siddhanta of the South.
The Caitra example is the key to the whole school's name. You have heard of a man called Caitra; one day you meet him and realise, "this is that Caitra". Nothing new is added to your perception: what changes is that a known description and a present experience click together. Liberation, in this system, has exactly that structure. You already have both pieces, the teaching about the Lord and the immediate experience of being aware; recognition is their clicking together.
2. The Five Acts and the Key Terms of the Benediction (Notes 3–10)
Covered above in the Opening Verses section. The most important is Note 4: srsti is "letting go", the world is "a theophany", and anugraha is the raison d'etre of the other four.
3. Experients and Their Worlds (Notes 33–39)
Note 39 points to Singh's chart of the third sutra (p. 130), the clearest single table in the book. It adds one detail the commentary leaves implicit: "From Vijnanakala up to Sakala, there is no presiding deity, because the operation of Mahamaya begins from the stage of Vijnanakala and also because ignorance begins from the Mahamaya stage." In summary form:
| Experient | Presiding deity | Experience |
|---|---|---|
| Siva | none, transcendent | prakasa alone; the universe flashing in identity |
| Mantra-mahesvara | Sadasiva | "I am this", I dominant, "this" hazy |
| Mantresvara | Isvara | I and "this" equally distinct |
| Mantra | Anantabhattaraka | unity in diversity |
| Vijnanakala | none | pure awareness without agency; anava mala only |
| Pralayakala | none | the void; anava and mayiya malas |
| Sakala | none | diversity everywhere; all three malas |
Note 40 adds that Anasrita-Siva "is only an avastha, a state, not a tattva", lying between Sakti and Sadasiva. "The full experience of Self is that in which I and the This or the Universe are one. The loss of this Experience-whole is samsara; the regaining of it is mukti."
4. Thought, Mind and Malas (Notes 48, 57, 60)
- Note 48, vikalpa: the differentiating activity of the mind, which makes "this" by excluding "that". Not the same as Patanjali's vikalpa (verbal fancy, Yoga Sutra I.9).
- Note 48, the jar example: from Yogaraja on Paramarthasara 11: vikalpa divides experience into "jar" and "non-jar", and so ascertains the jar by excluding everything else (anyapoha).
- Note 60, mala: "Dross is the best English equivalent. Mala is what covers and conceals and limits the pure gold of divine consciousness." The anava mala is "a cosmic limiting condition over which the individual has no control", and arises in two ways: knowledge loses its freedom, and freedom loses its knowledge. The second half is subtle: a will without awareness is as much a contraction as an awareness without power.
5. Speech and Its Levels (Notes 75, 103–108)
- Note 75: the four levels of speech: para (supreme, undifferentiated), pasyanti ("seeing", word and object one but about to separate), madhyama (the middle, inner speech of thought), vaikhari (articulated speech). The Grammarians, says Kshemaraja, stop at pasyanti.
- Note 108: the eight matrka deities over the eight classes of letters: Brahmi (ka class), Mahesvari (ca), Kaumari (retroflex ta), Vaisnavi (dental ta), Varahi (pa), Indrani (ya), Camunda (sa) and Mahalaksmi (the vowels, a).
- Note 109: in the pasu stage the sakti-cakras emanate and maintain difference and withdraw oneness; in the pati stage, the reverse.
6. Grace and the States (Notes 82, 84, 125, 127)
- Note 82, saktipata: grace is para or apara. Para-saktipata "connotes the transmutation of the empirical ego into the Fullest Divine Consciousness" and "can be imparted only by the Divine". In apara-saktipata, the ego realises its identity with the Divine but "is yet unable to realize that the entire universe is only a manifestation of himself"; it "can be imparted by a spiritual director or gods". (The Tantraloka elaborates further gradations of intensity.)
- Notes 84 and 125, turiya: the fourth state, not a fourth alongside waking, dream and sleep but the witness running through them.
- Note 127, turyatita: "beyond the fourth". In turyatita "the above three states as separate states disappear", so turya "can no longer be called turya". It is "like an ocean without any ruffle whatsoever", and "the entire universe appears as his Self". "In turya, manas becomes attenuated; in turyatita it is dissolved in sakti." Turya, fully developed, becomes turyatita.
7. Nadis, Cakras and Kundalini (Notes 141–161)
- Note 141, madhya in three registers (Sambhu: universal I-consciousness; Sakti: knowledge and action; anu: the madhya-nadi). Nadi is "that through which something drops or flows". Singh describes the susumna running from muladhara to sahasrara, with the Vajrini inside it and the Citrini inside that; "the interior of the Citrini is called Brahma-nadi", and its opening, the Brahmadvara, is where kundalini mounts. Ida and pingala run outside and join the susumna at the ajna cakra, the Triveni.
- Note 142, the cakras: Singh lists the six-centre system (muladhara, svadhisthana, manipura, anahata, visuddha, ajna) with the sahasrara above, each beside its nearest physical organ.
- Notes 156–161, kundalini: the three-and-a-half folds in muladhara; lambika, the pranic crossroad near the palate with four channels; urdhva and adhah kundalini; sankoca and vikasa.
The six-cakra system with citrini and vajrini is best known from the later Satcakranirupana (sixteenth century, made famous in English by Arthur Avalon's The Serpent Power) and from Sakta and Natha yoga. Kshemaraja himself does not lay out this scheme in the Pratyabhijnahrdayam, and earlier Kashmiri texts use different and varied systems of centres (often five, or with different names). Singh's note, like much modern teaching, layers a later Sakta model onto an eleventh-century Saiva text. It is not wrong as practice guidance, but it is not Kshemaraja's own map.
8. Breath and Its Points (Notes 162–168)
- Note 162, anacka: vowel-less letters.
- Note 164–165, dvadasanta: the "end of twelve"; sakti-dvadasanta (outer, at the end of the breath) and Siva-dvadasanta (above the crown).
- Note 167, unmesa: the opening at the junction of two thoughts.
- Note 168: the three aesthetic dharanas (savour, music, whatever pleases the mind).
9. Samadhi and Its Fruit (Notes 169–185)
- Note 169, samavesa (Tantraloka I.173): "mergence of the helpless, limited self into and becoming identical with Supreme Siva", "subordinating one's limited nature, and acquiring the nature of the Supreme".
- Note 172, krama-mudra: the alternation of inner and outer.
- Note 174: the five kalas and the worlds in each:
| Kala | Tattvas covered | Bhuvanas (worlds) |
|---|---|---|
| Nivrtti | earth | 16 |
| Pratistha | water to prakrti (23 tattvas) | 56 |
| Vidya | purusa to maya (7 tattvas) | 28 |
| Santa | suddhavidya to sadasiva (3 tattvas) | 18 |
| Santyatita | Sakti and Siva | none (beyond) |
| Total | 118 |
- Note 175, three vimarsas: para (Siva's, complete non-difference), apara (the individual's, difference), parapara (Sakti's, bhedabheda, difference posited and forever transcended).
- Note 178, jagadananda: "the bliss of the Self appearing as the universe. The universe in this system is not a fall from the bliss of the Divine; it is rather the bliss of the Divine made visible." Singh quotes Tantraloka V.50–51: "That in which there is no division ... in which it is consciousness alone which expresses itself whether as knower or means of knowledge or as known ... in which there is no need for imagination or meditation. Sambhu told me that that was jagadananda."
- Note 179: mayiya words (conventional, differentiating) and amayiya words (the pure powers of the letters).
- Note 180: kula and akula.
- Note 181: the grammatical pratyahara.
- Note 182, bindu: the anusvara dot, the point of non-differentiation in which the expansion rests.
Note 178 deserves to be read as a summary of the whole system's attitude. The universe is "the bliss of the Divine made visible". Every other doctrine (svatantrya, abhasa, the five acts, recognition, krama-mudra) is a way of saying this, and every practice is a way of seeing it.
Key Terms
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Abhasa | limited manifestation; every object and subject as an appearing of consciousness |
| Aham | the perfect I; a + ha + m; all experience resting in the Self |
| Akhyati | non-recognition; nescience, shown to be itself a mode of knowing |
| Anasrita-Siva | Siva "unrelated", the first moment of differentiation, "more void than the void" |
| Anava mala | the root impurity: the sense of being incomplete |
| Anu | the atomic, limited self |
| Anugraha | grace; the fifth act and the purpose of the other four |
| Avesa / samavesa | absorption, merging into the Supreme |
| Bhairavi mudra | eyes open and senses wide, attention inward |
| Bindu | point; the dot of non-differentiation |
| Camatkara | the flash of wonder and delight in self-awareness |
| Cit / citi | consciousness / consciousness as free, active power |
| Citta | the individual mind, citi contracted |
| Dvadasanta | the point twelve finger-breadths from the face or above the crown |
| Hathapaka | forcible digestion of experience into consciousness |
| Jagadananda | the bliss of the world as one's own Self |
| Jivanmukti | liberation while alive, firm identity with cit in activity |
| Kancuka | the five sheaths of Maya: kala, vidya, raga, kala, niyati |
| Krama-mudra | the sealing alternation of inner and outer absorption |
| Kundalini | the coiled power, adhah (descending) and urdhva (risen) |
| Madhya | the centre: susumna, para-samvid or the pure I |
| Mala | impurity: anava, mayiya, karma |
| Maya | the measuring power that makes "this" separate from "I" |
| Pancakrtya | the five acts: srsti, sthiti, samhara, vilaya, anugraha |
| Para, pasyanti, madhyama, vaikhari | the four levels of speech |
| Pasu / pati | bound soul / lord |
| Prakasa / vimarsa | the light of consciousness / its self-awareness |
| Pramata, pramana, prameya | knower, knowing, known |
| Pratyabhijna | recognition: "I am that very Lord" |
| Puryastaka | the subtle body of eight (buddhi, ahamkara, manas, five tanmatras) |
| Saktipata | descent of grace, tivra, madhyama, manda |
| Samhara | withdrawal; resting in the highest experient |
| Samsara | wandering disjoined from the centre; poison |
| Samskara | latent impression, the seed of future experience |
| Sankoca / vikasa | contraction or withdrawal / expansion |
| Spanda | the creative throb or vibration of consciousness |
| Suddha vikalpa | pure thought, "all this glory is mine" |
| Sunya | the void; the subtlest false self |
| Svatantrya | absolute freedom of will, the essence of consciousness |
| Tattva | principle; the thirty-six levels of manifestation |
| Turya / turyatita | the fourth / beyond the fourth |
| Unmesa / nimesa | opening / closing; manifestation / withdrawal; the gap between thoughts |
| Upaya | means: anava, sakta, sambhava, anupaya |
| Vaha-ccheda | cutting the flows of prana and apana |
| Vikalpa / avikalpa | thought-construct / thought-free awareness |
| Vikalpa-ksaya | dissolution of thought-constructs; the main method |
| Vyutthana | emergence from meditation into activity |
The Book in One Movement
The twenty sutras describe a single movement and its reversal. Consciousness, free and full, contracts into a world of separate knowers and objects (Sutras 1–7). Each contracted knower takes a part for the whole (Sutra 8) and is bound by its own powers turned against it (Sutras 9–12). Yet even bound, it never stops performing the five divine acts (Sutras 10–11), and its fire never stops burning (Sutra 14). When it recognises its own authorship, the movement reverses: mind becomes consciousness (13), the universe becomes one's own (15), identity with consciousness becomes stable (16), the centre unfolds (17–18), samadhi pervades activity (19), and the "I" is found to be the whole alphabet of the world resting in itself (20).
The Five Big Ideas
- Consciousness is freedom. Not a passive witness but an active, self-aware power (vimarsa, svatantrya) that manifests the world as its own content (Sutras 1–2).
- The world is real as consciousness. Neither an illusion nor an independent substance: abhasa, the self-display of awareness (Sutras 2–4).
- Bondage is contraction, not fall. The individual is the universe in seed form; ignorance is itself a mode of knowing; and the malas are the divine powers narrowed (Sutras 4–9).
- Liberation is recognition. Not producing a new state but recognising the authorship of the five acts in every moment of experience (Sutras 10–13).
- Liberation is in the world. The goal is not withdrawal but krama-mudra and jagadananda: the world experienced as the bliss of the Divine made visible (Sutras 15–20).
The Three Honest Cautions
- It asserts more than it argues. By its own colophon, it is a digest for those "unfit for keen arguments". Its arguments (against Maya and Prakrti as causes, the akhyati paradox) are elegant but rest on an idealist premise it does not defend here.
- Its map of other schools is polemic. Sutra 8 ranks every rival as a partial truth below the Trika. Several characterisations (Madhyamaka, Pancaratra, "Buddhists" in general) are inaccurate; Singh himself flags one.
- The modern reading is selective. Singh's translation, guided by Lakshman Joo, internalises the Kaula and Krama ritual world (the goddesses of the letters, smarananda, the six-cakra overlay). This makes the text clean and usable; it also hides its original setting. Readers should hold both.
A Graded Practice Path
| Stage | Practice | From |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Notice | The three moments of every perception: object, knowing, knower; slide attention back to the knower | Sutra 1 (third reading); VBh 106 |
| 2. Own | Watch the five acts in perception; ask whether each object appears as separate or as shining in awareness | Sutra 10 |
| 3. Digest | Let strong experiences complete; dissolve their residue in awareness so no seed remains | Sutra 11 |
| 4. Turn | Sense-gate practice and the tortoise: withdraw and release the senses; rest at the two ends of the breath | Sutras 15, 18 |
| 5. Delight | Follow pleasure in taste, music and beauty inward to its source | Sutra 18; VBh 72–74 |
| 6. Rest | Vikalpa-ksaya: alert passivity in the heart of awareness | Sutra 18 |
| 7. Carry | Krama-mudra: alternate inner absorption and outer seeing in daily activity until they are one | Sutra 19 |
| 8. Be | Say "aham" with the whole world resting in it | Sutra 20 |
Final Insight
The title says it best. Pratyabhijnahrdayam, the heart of recognition, is not offering a new experience. It is offering a recognition of what has never been absent: that the awareness reading these words is the same freedom that is displaying them. Everything else in the book, the tattvas, the malas, the methods, is scaffolding for that single click: "This is that." "Certainly, I am that very Lord."