Insight Editions · No. 363
Shiva Sutras
The Supreme Awakening
Swami Lakshmanjoo · edited by John Hughes
An Insight Edition of Swami Lakshmanjoo's Shiva Sutras: The Supreme Awakening: every sutra of all three Awakenings with Kshemaraja's Vimarshini, on consciousness as the self, the four states and turya, the wheel of letters, the yogin as actor and liberation in life, with tables, critical notes, glossary and a safe practice path.
A study guide to Shiva Sutras: The Supreme Awakening by Swami Lakshmanjoo, edited by John Hughes (Lakshmanjoo Academy). Shared free for personal reading; not for sale and not endorsed by the author or publishers. Please read and buy the original.
CORE CLAIM
Consciousness is the self (caitanyam atma). Bondage is limited knowing, and the 77 sutras revealed to Vasugupta lay out three ways back, through Shiva, through Shakti and through the individual, ending in one who lives "just like Shiva", for whom daily life is the vow and ordinary talk is mantra.
SCOPE
Front matter, Kshemaraja's opening, every sutra of all three Awakenings (1.1 to 3.45) with Lakshmanjoo's commentary on the Vimarshini, and Kshemaraja's conclusion (Lakshmanjoo Academy, 2015 edition), with tables, diagrams, critical notes, glossary and a safe practice path: about 23,000 words.
KEY FIGURES
Swami Lakshmanjoo (1907 to 1991) and editor John Hughes; Vasugupta and Kallata; the commentators Kshemaraja and Bhaskara; Abhinavagupta, Utpaladeva, Macchandanatha; and Patanjali as a foil.
BEST FOR
Readers who want the root scripture of Kashmir Shaivism sutra by sutra: the four states and turya, the wheel of letters, the yogin as actor, the junctions between breaths and thoughts, and the portrait of liberation in life, with honest notes on textual variants and Guru-only practices.
The Book on One Page
Shiva Sutras: The Supreme Awakening is Swami Lakshmanjoo's spoken rendering of the Shiva Sutras of Vasugupta together with the classic commentary on them, the Shiva Sutra Vimarshini of Kshemaraja. It comes from twenty lectures that began on 7 June 1975 at his ashram above Dal Lake in Srinagar, distilled by the editor John Hughes from more than sixteen hours of tape. The book is three things at once: the 77 sutras themselves, Kshemaraja's dense commentary with its chains of Tantric quotations, and Lakshmanjoo's own oral glosses, examples and footnotes. This guide follows the book in its own order, sutra by sutra.
For each chapter the guide gives:
- The argument: what each sutra claims and how Kshemaraja and Lakshmanjoo support it, in the order they give it.
- Teaching notes: every technical term opened up, with the long lists turned into tables.
- Insights: what is distinctive, subtle or easy to miss, and how the sutra connects to the rest of the text and to the Spanda Karika, which Kshemaraja quotes under almost every sutra.
- Critical lens: where the book asserts rather than argues, where it sets aside rival schools, where tradition and modern scholarship differ, and where a modern reader might soften what is actually said.
How to read it
The sutras are very short: most are two to four Sanskrit words, often with no verb. "Consciousness is the self." "Knowledge is bondage." "Effort is Bhairava." "The body is the oblation." On their own they are riddles. The meaning lives in the commentary, and Kshemaraja's commentary is itself compressed, so Lakshmanjoo's role is to open it up in plain English, with homely examples (a chair, a rope mistaken for a snake, a box in which a yogin locks his illness).
The whole text is one teaching repeated at three levels of difficulty. The First Awakening says you are already free consciousness and shows what that looks like; the Second says how to get there through the power of mantra and the Guru; the Third starts from the ordinary bound mind and works upward through breath, body and practice. Each Awakening ends in the same place: the yogin who lives in the world as Shiva.
The three Awakenings at a glance
Kshemaraja divides the 77 sutras into three unmeshas, "openings" or "awakenings", and maps each to one of the three upayas (means) of Kashmir Shaivism.
| Awakening | Sutras | Means (upaya) | Starting point | Key sutra |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| First | 22 | Shambhavopaya, the divine means | Sudden insight, no process | 1.5 "Effort is Bhairava" |
| Second | 10 | Shaktopaya, the energetic means | Purified thought and mantra | 2.6 "The Guru is the means" |
| Third | 45 | Anavopaya, the individual means | The limited mind, breath, body | 3.1 "The mind is the individual self" |
The argument in six movements
- What you are (1.1 to 1.4). The self is free consciousness; bondage is the threefold impurity; the Universal Mother of letters runs that bondage.
- How it ends in a flash (1.5 to 1.11). A sudden upsurge of awareness is Bhairava; the wheel of energies dissolves the world into consciousness; turya appears in waking, dream and sleep.
- What such a yogin is like (1.12 to 1.22). Wonder is the sign; will becomes Shiva's energy; powers appear, limited and universal; the great lake of consciousness gives the power of the supreme "I".
- The way of mantra and Guru (2.1 to 2.10). The mind becomes mantra through effort; the Guru reveals the wheel of letters; the body is offered as oblation; and a warning against settling for powers.
- The way of the bound person (3.1 to 3.24). The mind as the individual self, the dissolving of elements in the body, victory over delusion, the cosmic theatre, sinking into the lake, the threat of the lower energies.
- The life of the liberated (3.25 to 3.45). Just like Shiva; his bodily life is his vow, his talk is mantra, his gift is self-knowledge; pleasure and pain stay outside; breathing becomes natural; and the closing "opening of the eyes" again and again.
- 77 sutras in Kshemaraja's count (22, 10, 45).
- 20 lectures, from 7 June 1975, over 16 hours of tape.
- 1911: the Kashmir Series edition Lakshmanjoo read from, its first volume.
- 4 commentaries survive: Kshemaraja, Bhaskara, Varadaraja and an anonymous Vritti.
- 92 agamas in Shaiva reckoning: 64 monist, 18 mono-dualist, 10 dualist.
Chapter map of this guide
| Guide section | Covers | Main theme |
|---|---|---|
| Front Matter | Preface, author, introduction | Source, lineage, the three means |
| First Awakening I | Kshemaraja's opening, sutras 1.1 to 1.4 | The self and the three impurities |
| First Awakening II | Sutras 1.5 to 1.11 | Bhairava, the wheel, the four states |
| First Awakening III | Sutras 1.12 to 1.22 | Signs, will, powers, mantra-virya |
| Second Awakening I | Sutras 2.1 to 2.5 | Mind as mantra |
| Second Awakening II | Sutras 2.6 to 2.10 | Guru, oblation, food, the lapse |
| Third Awakening I | Sutras 3.1 to 3.8 | The bound mind and its undoing |
| Third Awakening II | Sutras 3.9 to 3.20 | The dancer, the seed, the oil |
| Third Awakening III | Sutras 3.21 to 3.32 | Just like Shiva |
| Third Awakening IV | Sutras 3.33 to 3.45 and Kshemaraja's conclusion | The liberated in life |
| Synthesis | Takeaways, frameworks, critical lens, who's who, glossary, practice path | The book as a whole |
The neat match of the three Awakenings to the three upayas is Kshemaraja's arrangement, and the book presents it as the structure of the text itself. The other surviving commentator, Bhaskara, names his three sections differently and counts 79 sutras (23, 10, 46), not 77; Dyczkowski argues that nothing in the aphorisms requires the upaya scheme, which was formalised by Abhinavagupta (Sanatana Rahasya). Kshemaraja's reading became standard largely because his line of manuscripts and printing survived better. Read the book as one powerful school reading of the sutras, not the only possible one.
Preface, Author and Introduction
Before the sutras, the book gives a preface by John Hughes, a short life of Swami Lakshmanjoo, and an introduction that frames the text: what Trika is, where the sutras sit among the scriptures, who wrote the commentaries, and how the three means map onto the three Awakenings. These pages tell you what kind of book you are holding: an oral revelation in English, edited to keep the teacher's voice.
A revelation, not a translation
Hughes is candid about the English. Lakshmanjoo's Sanskrit was better than his English, he said so often, and sometimes he searched for words; he told the class he was "not looking to translate the Sanskrit closely, but rather to give us the essential meaning". Hughes kept his style even where it reads as "stilted, uneven and repetitive". He calls the result "a revelation and not a strict translation": Lakshmanjoo was "not like a scholar describing the ocean while standing on the shore. He was the ocean."
The Sanskrit used was the Shiva Sutra Vimarshini printed in 1911 as the first volume of the Kashmir Series of Texts and Studies, published by the Research Department of Kashmir State under Maharaja Pratap Singh (Sanatana Rahasya). Lakshmanjoo found errors, omissions and later additions in that edition and corrected his own copy; the corrected Devanagari is printed as an appendix. The English body leaves out the Sanskrit of the quoted verses for readability.
- Swami Lakshmanjoo (9 May 1907 to 27 September 1991): the teacher, born in Srinagar, said to have a photographic memory and to recall whole texts from their first words (Lakshmanjoo Academy).
- John Hughes: recordist and editor; began taping in 1971, when Lakshmanjoo told him recordings were "a good idea".
- Vasugupta: the sage to whom the sutras were revealed, usually placed around 800 to 850 (Wikipedia).
- Kshemaraja: chief disciple of Abhinavagupta, author of the Vimarshini.
- Maharaja Pratap Singh: patron of the 1911 printed series.
The setting
The lectures were held once or twice a week at nine in the morning in a small glassed-in hall with mud walls, for about eight listeners. The ashram stands on a hill near the Mughal garden Nishat; to the north is the Harvan valley and Mahadeva Mountain, where tradition says the sutras were revealed. Lakshmanjoo would not begin until Hughes confirmed the recorder was working. He told Hughes he had feared the tradition would die with him and was now "hopeful that the true understanding of Kashmir Shaivism will be preserved".
What Trika is
The introduction defines Trika, "threefold", in two ways: the triad Shiva, Shakti and the bound person (nara), and the three energies para (supreme), parapara (medium) and apara (inferior). It then ties the energies to the states of consciousness:
| Energy | Level | State of consciousness |
|---|---|---|
| Apara shakti | Inferior | Waking and dreaming |
| Parapara shakti | Medium | Deep sleep |
| Para shakti | Supreme | Turya, the fourth |
Trika is said to contain four schools: Pratyabhijna (recognition), Kula, Krama and Spanda (vibration), all grounded in agamas, scriptures held to be Shiva's own revelation. The Shaiva canon is given as 92 agamas: 64 Bhairava Tantras (monist, supreme), 18 Rudra Tantras (mono-dualist, medium) and 10 Shiva Tantras (dualist, inferior). Because Shiva revealed the sutras to Vasugupta, they too count as agama, and as one of the most important for absolute monism.
The commentators
A sutra is a short statement, often with no verb, that runs "like a string" through what it reveals. The introduction lists the surviving commentaries:
| Commentary | Author | Date given in the book |
|---|---|---|
| Shiva Sutra Vimarshini | Kshemaraja | 10th century |
| Shiva Sutra Varttika | Bhatta Bhaskara | 11th century |
| Shiva Sutra Varttika | Varadaraja | 15th century |
| Shiva Sutra Vritti | Unknown | Close to Kshemaraja, so probably his time |
Kshemaraja's other works are listed too: the Pratyabhijnahrdayam, Spandanirnaya and Spandasandoha on the Spanda Karika, the Parapraveshika, and commentaries on the Svacchanda and Netra Tantras, Utpaladeva's Shivastotravali, Bhatta Narayana's Stavacintamani and the Vijnana Bhairava (of which only about 25 verses survive). His writing is hard, the introduction says, because he writes from experience; explaining it to those without that experience is "like trying to explain the third dimension to those who can only experience two dimensions".
The three means
| Means | Who it suits | How entry (samavesha) happens |
|---|---|---|
| Shambhavopaya | Highest aspirants | By the Guru's grace alone, without thought, mantra or any aid |
| Shaktopaya | Medium aspirants | By contemplating a mental object that cannot be spoken |
| Anavopaya | Lower aspirants | By concentration on places in the body, meditation, recitation, breath and mantra |
These definitions come from Abhinavagupta, drawing on the Malinivijaya Tantra (Lakshmanjoo cites Tantraloka 1.167 to 1.169). Abhinavagupta's advice is to try the highest first and step down only on failure, which is why both the Tantraloka and the Shiva Sutras start with shambhavopaya.
The order of the book is pedagogy by descent. You meet the summit first so that every lower practice later on is understood as a way back to that summit, never as an end in itself. A reader who skips to the "practical" Third Awakening without the First will mistake techniques for goals, which is exactly the error the sutras warn against.
The book calls Lakshmanjoo "the last and the greatest" master of the tradition; that is a disciple's devotional judgement, not a historical finding. The commentators' dates need care too. The book makes Bhaskara later than Kshemaraja, following Buhler and Jaideva Singh, but Dyczkowski placed Bhaskara in the last quarter of the tenth century, which would make his commentary the older one; Kshemaraja himself is usually placed around 1000 to 1050 (Sanatana Rahasya). The "92 agamas" is the tradition's own neat scheme; surviving Shaiva literature is messier, and the three classes reflect a monist ranking of scripture in which the dualist Shaiva Siddhanta texts come last.
The Self and the Three Impurities (Sutras 1.1 to 1.4)
The First Awakening opens with Kshemaraja's verses of homage, the story of the rock on Mahadeva Mountain, and then four sutras that set out the whole problem: what the self is (free consciousness), what bondage is (two kinds of knowing and not knowing), what the three impurities are, and who runs them (the Universal Mother of letters). Everything after this is the cure.
Kshemaraja's opening
Kshemaraja bows to the consciousness of Shiva, "who is the whole universe and who is one in many", from whom the Rudras (beings eternally full of God consciousness) and the Kshetrajnas (beings who reached that fullness through practice) arise. He calls that consciousness spanda, "a unique reality of supreme movement", an outpouring of the bliss of independence. Then comes a sharp line: many commentaries on the Shiva Sutras exist, but "they all differ from each other and are all incorrect", so he will give a new one under the protection of his masters and scriptures.
The story of the rock
At the foot of Mahadeva Mountain lived Vasugupta, a devotee of Shiva who "did not accept the theory and teachings of Buddhist philosophers" and had purified himself through the teachings of siddhas and yoginis (hidden saints in subtle bodies, and their female counterparts). Shiva appeared to him in a dream and told him that sutras were inscribed under a great boulder. Vasugupta found the rock; at his touch it turned over, and the sutras were on its underside. He studied them deeply, taught them to his disciples, Bhatta Kallata and others, and "simultaneously" revealed their meaning in the Spanda Karika, which Kshemaraja later explained in his Spanda Nirnaya.
- c. 800 to 850: Vasugupta, traditional dating (Wikipedia).
- 855 to 883: reign of Avantivarman, in which the chronicle Rajatarangini places Kallata (Sanatana Rahasya).
- c. 1000 to 1050: Kshemaraja writes the Vimarshini.
- 1911: Vimarshini printed as KSTS volume 1.
- 1975: Lakshmanjoo's lectures in Srinagar.
The rock story exists in several versions that the book does not mention. Bhaskara says only that the sutras came to Vasugupta "by the command of a Siddha", with no dream and no rock. A closing verse of the Spandasarvasva, attributed to Kallata, says they were "taught in a dream by Mahesha on Mahadeva mountain", again with no rock; Kshemaraja is the first to tell of the stone that turns over, and no inscription survives on the site called Shankarpal (Sanatana Rahasya; Wikipedia). Kshemaraja's dismissal of all earlier commentaries as "incorrect" is asserted, not shown: he does not say which readings he rejects or why. And the attribution of the Spanda Karika to Vasugupta is disputed; Bhaskara and the Spandapradipika give it to Kallata (Google Books).
Sutra 1.1: caitanyam atma
"The independent state of supreme consciousness is the reality of everything."
Before the sutra, Kshemaraja names the opponent: philosophers who hold that the individual being stays individual forever and the universal being stays universal, never to unite (the dualist Shaivas and others). Against them, the first sutra says that individual and universal are one.
Why caitanya means freedom
The key move is in the word. Kshemaraja reads caitanya as "complete independence" in knowing and doing. Shiva has many divine attributes: eternal, all-pervading, full, all-knowing. But these, he argues, could be found in other beings too. The one attribute unique to Shiva is svatantrya, absolute freedom. Had the sutra meant to list attributes, it would have used cetana (awareness); caitanya points to freedom alone.
He then argues against attributes altogether. If Shiva's other aspects are not filled with freedom, they are inert and cannot belong to consciousness; if they are filled with freedom, then just accept freedom and drop the extra postulates. The same dilemma dissolves time, space and form as separate realities, and then dissolves ignorance itself: ignorance outside consciousness cannot exist, and ignorance inside consciousness is consciousness. What we called ignorance was only "non-fullness of knowledge".
Three readings of one sutra
| Reading of "atma" | Meaning | What follows |
|---|---|---|
| The reality of everything | Free consciousness is the self of all beings | All beings are one universal being |
| The self (in a teaching dialogue) | Not body, breath, intellect or void, not Veda, Buddhism or Madhyamaka | Consciousness is above each: "in voidness, he is full" |
| Form | Free consciousness is the form of everything | Even "the milk of a bird" and "a barren woman's son" exist in it, since they can be thought |
The third reading leads to the book's most quoted and most startling lines. Since knower and known are one, "there is nothing right and there is nothing wrong. Everything is filled with God consciousness... Whatever you commit is divine, and whatever you do not commit is also divine."
No means, no sadhana
If consciousness is the form of everything, then any means you choose (breath control, concentration, meditation, absorption) is already the goal: "that is not actually means, that is, in reality, meant". So, at this level, "there is no process, there is no sadhana." Kshemaraja quotes the Ucchushma Bhairava: the self is like your shadow; however you step, you cannot overtake it, because it is the finder, not the found. Spanda Karika 1.2 and 1.5 close the sutra: the reality is what the universe exists in, "in movement", everywhere and beyond space.
Think of the shadow you chase. Every step toward it moves it. The First Awakening's claim is that God consciousness is not ahead of you to be caught: it is the one walking. Practice, at this level, means stopping the chase and recognising the walker.
The harsh line about practitioners
Kshemaraja also says that aspirants who "meditate day and night, and do not achieve anything" are "the same as ignorant people"; until full realisation, "everything is useless and worthless". Lakshmanjoo repeats this without softening it.
Sutra 1.2: jnanam bandhah
"Knowing differentiatedly is bondage and not knowing undifferentiatedly is bondage."
Here the commentary uses a grammatical trick. Run the first two sutras together, caitanyam atma jnanam bandhah, and the final "a" of atma can be read as joining onto the next word, giving ajnanam bandhah, "ignorance is bondage". Read them apart and you get jnanam bandhah, "knowledge is bondage". Kshemaraja keeps both:
| Reading | Meaning | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Jnanam bandhah | Differentiated knowledge binds | "I am this body"; "I am weak, I am stout" |
| Ajnanam bandhah | Not knowing the undifferentiated self binds | "I am not universal consciousness" |
This is the first impurity, anava mala: the feeling "I am incomplete" (apurnammanyata), a contraction that Shiva takes on by his own freedom, "just for play, not in trying to satisfy some deficiency". The self is a "vacuum full of consciousness", and in that vacuum appear all levels from Anashrita Shiva to the limited soul. Spanda Karika 1.9 puts the paradox plainly: "When, by your own freedom, your own free will, you become worthless, powerless..."
The two forms of anava mala
Lakshmanjoo then gives an observation that will matter to anyone who meditates. Quoting the Ishvara Pratyabhijna Karika, anava mala has two forms:
- Loss of freedom (svatantryahani): you have the experience of consciousness in samadhi, but it came by grace, not by your will, and ends when samadhi ends.
- Loss of awareness (abodha): you are free to move in and out, but in the outer world the full awareness of samadhi fades, and you must go back inside to recover it.
Bondage is defined so that even genuine meditative experience can be a form of it. A yogin who is fully conscious only with eyes closed is still bound by anava mala. The goal set from the second sutra on is awareness that does not depend on being in samadhi or out of it.
Sutra 1.3: yonivargah kalasariram
"Mayiya mala and karma mala are also bondage."
The word bandhah (bondage) must be supplied from the previous sutra. The two compounds name the other two impurities:
| Term | Impurity | Meaning | Examples in the book |
|---|---|---|---|
| Yonivarga | Mayiya mala | Differentiated knowledge; the "class" produced by the source (yoni) of the world, maya | "He is mine, he is not mine"; "this is good, this is bad" |
| Kalasarira | Karma mala | The "embodiment of action": impressions actions leave in body, mind and self | "This is done, this is half done"; "I have lost my precious wife, I am almost dead" |
Lakshmanjoo splits yonivarga into a direct class (my finger, my knee) and an indirect class (my wife, my disciple, my cook, my rice, my plate). Together they build "your own separate individual world". Mayiya mala covers the levels from earth up to kala; above it lies the pure level of shuddhavidya.
Kshemaraja draws on his own Spanda Nirnaya for the five kancukas ("cloaks") that limit Shiva's powers, and the Svacchanda Tantra for the whole descent from free consciousness through the cloaks, prakriti and the three gunas, intellect, ego, mind, senses, subtle and gross elements.
| Cloak (kancuka) | Limitation it produces |
|---|---|
| Kala | Limited action |
| Vidya | Limited knowledge |
| Raga | Attachment to things |
| Niyati | Attachment to one particular object or place ("this house is my house") |
| Kala (time) | Bondage to a particular time, space and form |
The ordering principle comes from the Pratyabhijna: karma and mayiya mala rest on anava mala. Remove the root sense of incompleteness and the other two go with it.
Ordinary ethics says good actions raise you and bad actions lower you. Lakshmanjoo says the opposite: "With good actions, you will fall, with bad actions, you will fall." All action is limited and leaves an impression; only svatantrya, which "is not actually action", carries you to the Lord. Joy always hides sadness, and sadness hides joy.
Sutra 1.4: jnanadhishthanam matrika
"The Universal Mother commands this triple knowledge."
The three impurities need a ruler, and Kshemaraja names her Matrika, the "unknown mother" (ajnata mata). She is the power that pervades all the letters from a to ksha, and also every object those letters name. Lakshmanjoo's example: the word C-H-A-I-R is the world of letters (vacaka); the chair in front of you is the world of objects (vacya). The Mother pervades both.
When the same energy is known correctly it is svatantrya shakti; when known wrongly it is maya shakti. So "svatantrya controls the three instruments of bondage", and "svatantrya is your own will! If you bind yourself or if you free yourself, both are under you."
How words bind
When this energy is contracted, the person thinks "I am not full", "I am weak", "I am a great master", "I have so many disciples", "I am a world renowned teacher", and is pushed from grief to wonder to joy to anger. Matrika, seated in brahmarandhra (the subtle opening at the crown), is surrounded by the pitheshvaris, the deities of senses, mind, intellect and ego, who become "very fearful" and bind the victim further. A Timirodghata verse adds the escape: "the one who is a player with mother is not deluded at all."
| The played | The player | |
|---|---|---|
| Hears "your business is ruined" | Victim of grief | Untouched |
| Hears "your business is doing well" | Victim of pleasure | Enjoys, unbound |
| Hears "your father is dead" | Joins word to person: bound | Sees only letters: F-A-T-H-E-R I-S D-E-A-D |
The four energies
Kshemaraja adds a short Tantric scheme: when Matrika "kisses" each of the Lord's four energies, she gives a distinct fruit.
| Energy | Fruit |
|---|---|
| Amba | You are held in place, neither rising nor falling |
| Vama | Samsara |
| Raudri | You cannot decide anything, good or bad |
| Jyeshtha | You rise to knowledge of your own nature |
Spanda Karika 3.13 and 3.15 close the sutra: a sound heard, good or bad, carries you away from your nature, and Shiva's energies are "always determined to cover and conceal" it.
The father example is the book's most practical teaching on language. Bondage is the instant of joining word to thing: the letters arrive, the mind links them to your own father, and grief follows. Lakshmanjoo is not recommending coldness; he is showing where the hook is. The yogin who notices the joining moment is "a player with mother" rather than her plaything.
Three points deserve a careful reader's attention. First, "nothing right and nothing wrong... whatever you commit is divine" is a statement about how things look from the standpoint of full realisation; taken as advice to an unrealised person it would license anything, and the text gives no guard against that reading here (later sutras, such as 3.26 on the body as vow, assume a realised yogin). Second, the ajnanam / jnanam split is an ingenious exegetical device, but it is Kshemaraja's; the sutra as it stands says "knowledge is bondage", and Bhaskara's commentary reads the whole text differently in places (Sanatana Rahasya). Third, the refusal of all attributes except freedom is argued by dilemma (either attributes are free and redundant, or not free and inert), which a Vedantin or Nyaya thinker would reject: they would say attributes can be real without being independent agents. The harsh verdict that sincere meditators without results are "the same as ignorant people" is also stronger than most modern teachers would put it.
Bhairava, the Wheel and the Four States (Sutras 1.5 to 1.11)
Having named the bondage, the sutras give the cure in one word: udyama, a sudden upsurge of awareness, which "is Bhairava". The next sutras show what follows: the wheel of energies absorbs the differentiated world, the state of turya appears inside waking, dream and sleep, and the yogin who enjoys all three as one becomes master of the heroes, the lord of his own senses. Sutras 1.8 to 1.10 pause to define the three ordinary states with unusual precision.
Sutra 1.5: udyamo bhairavah
"That effort, the flashing forth of active awareness, that instantaneously makes universal consciousness shine, is Bhairava."
Lakshmanjoo separates two kinds of effort. Passive effort is gradual work. Active effort "takes you abruptly, in one flight, to your consciousness" and makes pratibha, the supreme knowledge of being, radiate. It is called Bhairava for three reasons: it carries you to Bhairava; in it all energies are digested in one energy, svatantrya; and in it differentiated perception ends. It is found in "real devotees whose consciousness is always introverted in the awareness of God consciousness".
Grace needs a vessel
The Malinivijaya Tantra (2.23) defines shambhava samavesha as a penetrative trance that comes through "the elevating infusion of power from the master" to one "capable of keeping away all thoughts and impressions". Lakshmanjoo's gloss is direct: "When you are capable, then your master will uplift you. If you are not capable, he will not be successful in carrying you there."
The Spanda method in one verse
Kshemaraja quotes Spanda Karika 3.9, which Lakshmanjoo turns into an instruction:
Take one thought. Contemplate on that one thought with unwavering concentration. Then, when another movement rises in your mind from that first thought, that is spanda and that is unmesha. You have to observe it yourself and that will be spanda.
Spanda Karika 3.9, as rendered by LakshmanjooThe sutra ends with a stark condition: "if supreme consciousness is not held in an instant, it won't be held at all."
"Effort" here does not mean straining. It means the spring of awareness that comes before any thought, the moment of unmesha ("opening the eyes"). Shambhavopaya is not effortless in the sense of passive; it is the most active state there is, compressed into an instant.
Sutra 1.6: shakticakrasandhane vishvasamharah
"By establishing and meditating on the wheel of energies, the differentiated universe comes to an end."
Bhairava is found together with svatantrya shakti. How do you find her as one with Bhairava? "By keeping your organs in action, and then by establishing yourself inside, observing the action within. This is Bhairava mudra." The senses stay open; awareness rests in the centre.
Then Kshemaraja goes beyond method. The supreme energy holds both successive (krama) and non-successive (akrama) movement, but here "there is neither", because both need something to meditate on. In svatantrya "there is no meditation"; it is anupaya, the means that is no means, and "beyond anupaya". "There is no way to go, there is no traveling. From the point you start, that is what is to be held."
| Movement | Upaya | Character |
|---|---|---|
| Akrama (non-successive) | Shambhavopaya | One flash, no journey |
| Krama (successive) | Shaktopaya and anavopaya | Stages 1, 2, 3, 4 |
| Beyond both | Anupaya | "Just to be is enough" |
A footnote adds an elegant pattern: means are created in anavopaya, protected in shaktopaya and destroyed in shambhavopaya.
What "destruction" means
The heroic yogin destroys the dual universe "right from Kalagni Rudra" (the lowest point, in the earth element) "up to Shantatita kala" (the subtlest, in Shiva tattva). But "destruction does not mean that it is destroyed": the yogin feels everything has "become one with the fire of supreme consciousness". Kshemaraja quotes the Bhargashikha and Viravala scriptures; the latter describes the thirty-six tattvas burned to ashes, "shining like Kalagni Rudra" in one's own body. Lakshmanjoo's footnote links this to a Vijnana Bhairava practice of imagining fire rising from the left big toe and burning the body.
Kshemaraja then stops: the Malinivijaya teaches that this power appears only in one "who serves the feet of a master", so a fuller explanation "must come from the mouth of the master". The secret is in "special tantras that remain unwritten".
The closing refusal is a pattern you will meet throughout the book: at the decisive point, the text defers to oral instruction. That is honest about the tradition's method, but it also means the written commentary cannot be checked at exactly the places it claims most. The fire visualisation resembles the Tantric dissolution practices known as bhutashuddhi; as with other intensive practices in this book, it is best learned with a qualified teacher rather than from print.
Sutra 1.7: jagratsvapnasushuptabhede turyabhogasambhavah
"Such a heroic yogi experiences the expansive state of turya in the differentiated states of waking, dreaming and deep sleep."
For the yogin of 1.5, turya ("the fourth") is not a fourth room beside the other three; it is present in all of them. "He does not experience any difference between this world and the state of samadhi." The Candrajnana compares him to the moon filling the world with happiness: as he wanders, he purifies everything "right from hell (avici) to Shiva". Spanda Karika 1.3 says turya is "found as one" in all three states.
A footnote notes a variant reading: some read samvit ("awareness") in place of sambhava ("arising"), so the sutra would say turya "is held in consciousness" in the three states. This is in fact Bhaskara's reading (Sanatana Rahasya).
Another footnote defines active versus passive meditation: active means "no yawning, no leaning, and no other thought interfering"; passive meditation "will carry you towards nothingness. It is only a waste of time."
Sutras 1.8 to 1.10: the three states defined
Three tiny sutras define the ordinary states:
| Sutra | Sanskrit | State | Definition |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1.8 | jnanam jagrat | Waking | External sense knowledge, common to everyone |
| 1.9 | svapno vikalpah | Dreaming | Internal perceptions and thoughts, private to one person (even when awake) |
| 1.10 | aviveko mayasaushuptam | Deep sleep | Unawareness, failure to discriminate; one with maya |
Note what this does. "Dreaming" is defined by content (private thought), not by being asleep, so daydreaming is dreaming. "Deep sleep" is defined by unawareness, so it is the same as maya itself, "which must be discarded".
Nine sub-states
Lakshmanjoo then expands each state into three, following the Malinivijaya:
| Waking-in | Dreaming-in | Deep-sleep-in | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Waking | Sense knowledge of the outer world | Only thoughts, while awake | Blank unawareness while awake |
| Dreaming | Knowing that you are dreaming | Lost in the dream | Dreams not remembered |
| Deep sleep | The moment before sleep, feeling "I will rest" | On waking: "I slept and knew nothing" (subtle impressions) | Completely thoughtless |
The yogic reading
For a yogin the same words mean something higher, in rising order:
| Ordinary term | Yogic meaning | Name (Malinivijaya) |
|---|---|---|
| Waking | One-pointed meditation (dharana), aware that you are meditating | Abuddha |
| Dreaming | One thought held without a break | Buddha |
| Deep sleep | Subject and object vanish: samadhi | Prabuddha |
| Turya | Awareness in the fourth | Suprabuddha |
Read the nine sub-states as a map of where awareness leaks. Waking-in-dream (lucid dreaming) and waking-in-sleep (the threshold before sleep) are the small doors through which a yogin carries awareness into states that normally swallow it. This same idea returns in 1.19 (the yogin who knows the moment of entering dream and sleep) and in 3.38.
Sutra 1.11: tritayabhokta vireshah
"The one who enjoys in the oneness of awareness all of the three states, waking, dreaming, and deep sleep, becomes the master of all organic energies."
When the yogin apprehends the three states as free of dualistic thought, "filled with the nectar of bliss (ananda rasa)" and mixed with turya, he has truly "relished" them. Two terms carry the sutra:
- Vira ("hero"): a yogin who masters organic energies (indriya shaktis), not just organic organs (indriya vrittis). Everyone has sense organs; only the yogin, aware while seeing, touching, smelling, hearing, tasting and speaking, has sense energies.
- Vireshah ("lord of heroes"): one who is Manthana Bhairava, the Bhairava who churns object, cognition and subject into one consciousness.
From here he rises to turyatita, "beyond the fourth". A footnote gives the experience in plain terms: when you see a chair, you normally know the chair and forget the seer; the yogin "experiences the objective world and the subjective world simultaneously" and is above both.
The ordinary person, and even the yogin who has not reached this state, "is played by the three states... just like a beast" (pashu, the bound soul). The hero plays them. The language of player and played, introduced with the Mother in 1.4, now extends to the states of consciousness themselves.
Spanda Karika 1.17 closes the section: the knowledge of spanda is held "in the same way in waking, dreaming and deep sleep."
The comparison of ordinary people to beasts (pashu) is technical Shaiva vocabulary (pashu means "bound soul", and Shiva is Pashupati, lord of the bound), but Lakshmanjoo uses it with its everyday sting. The dismissal of passive meditation as "a waste of time" is a teacher's emphasis; other contemplative traditions, including Buddhist and Christian ones, value receptive or open-awareness practices that would count as "passive" here. Finally, the variant reading at 1.7 shows how a single word can shift a sutra from an event (turya "arises") to a standing condition (turya "is known").
Wonder, Will, Powers and the Great Lake (Sutras 1.12 to 1.22)
The last eleven sutras of the First Awakening describe the established yogin from the outside and the inside: the one sign by which you know him (wonder), the nature of his will, his relation to his own body and the world, his thought, his samadhi, and the powers that may or may not appear. The Awakening ends where it began, in the supreme "I", now heard as the power of all mantras.
Sutra 1.12: vismayo yogabhumikah
"The predominant sign of such a yogi is joy-filled amazement."
Vismaya is "amazement completely filled with joy", like the wonder of seeing something marvellous, but directed at entry into one's own self while the senses are active in the world. It is "unique, intense, always fresh and uncommonly charming"; the yogin is never satiated by it. Spanda Karika 1.11 adds that one who is "wonderstruck" in this way has no possibility of returning to repeated births.
Then a pointed exclusion: perceiving joy at the base of the spine (muladhara) or light between the eyebrows "are not the states of such a yogi. These are to be discarded." There is only one sign.
This is one of the most useful sutras for anyone who meditates. The tradition rejects the standard spiritual trophies (lights, sensations, energy at chakras) as signs of realisation. The single mark of the summit is a fresh, joyous wonder at one's own being that does not wear out.
Sutra 1.13: iccha shaktir uma kumari
"His will is the energy of Lord Shiva and it is called Uma and it is called Kumari." Lakshmanjoo gives an alternative: "his will is one with the energy of Lord Shiva, unobstructable, completely independent, always given to play."
The yogin's will is Shiva's svatantrya, and the sutra gives it three names. Lakshmanjoo unpacks Kumari four ways:
| Reading of "kumari" | Basis | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| The one at play | Grammar: kumara linked to krida, "play" | Energy always playing in creation, protection and destruction |
| Kum marayati | "Kills the ku", differentiated perception | Destroys duality and turns it back to one's own nature |
| Virgin | Never enjoyed by another | Enjoys her own nature and needs no other vehicle |
| Uma before marriage | Parvati's penance for Shiva | A will wholly one-pointed on Shiva |
Supporting quotations come from the Svacchanda Tantra (10.727), the Netra Tantra ("his will is one with my will... just as heat is one with fire and rays are one with the sun") and Spanda Karika 1.8: he "does not crave for any desire", but when he wills, it is done.
Sutra 1.14: drishyam shariram
"This entire perceived world is his own self", or, read the opposite way, "His own body is just like an object to him."
Lakshmanjoo accepts both readings and shows why they agree. We put "I" into one portion of the world, the body ("I am strong, I am weak"), and treat the rest as other. The yogin does the reverse: he puts I-consciousness into everything, and so his own body, together with his dream body, his deep-sleep body and his "body of voidness", becomes an object like any other. "It is erroneous to put I consciousness into only a portion of the world."
The peacock's egg: the yolk is one colour, yet the peacock it becomes has many. The yogin sees the many-coloured world as made of one "liquid of consciousness and bliss" (cidananda). Vijnana Bhairava 110 gives the matching images: waves are not separate from water, flames from fire, rays from the sun.
Sutra 1.15: hridaye cittasamghattad drishyasvapadarshanam
"When his thoughts are diverted to the centre of God consciousness, then he feels the existence of God consciousness in oneness in the objective world and in the world of negation."
The heart (hridaya) is not the physical organ but cit prakasha, the light of consciousness, "the background, the basis" of everything that moves, is born, dies, laughs and marries. The "world of negation" (svapa, the void) is what we meet in deep sleep and death. By collecting the flickering mind on that point, the yogin finds God consciousness in both.
Vijnana Bhairava 49 is quoted: the one who directs all the senses into the void of the heart, "between the two lotuses of this-ness and I-ness", is glorified with God consciousness. Spanda Karika 3.7 gives the practical moral: "Do not try to dwell in each and every being. Reside in your own self."
Sutra 1.16: shuddhatattvasandhanad va apashushaktih
"Or by aiming at the pure element of Shiva, he possesses Shiva's unlimited energy."
The "or" marks a second route. The pure element is supreme Shiva. You "make this universal objectivity enter in that supreme consciousness" and see the universe resting in it: "There you will never find any impure object. Everything will appear to you as divine." Then you are freed from the pashu shakti, the binding energy of the bound soul.
The Lakshmikaularnava Tantra says that powers from even a perfect initiation are "not equal to its sixteenth part". Lakshmanjoo's gloss on sandhana ("aiming") is pointed at the reader: we meditate one, two, three hours "aiming, aiming, aiming. We are only aiming. But we have to aim once and for all. Aim and attain it."
This sutra is where the commentaries divide most. Kshemaraja reads it as one aphorism ending in apashushaktih, release from the binding power. Bhaskara splits it in two: "or through union with the pure principle" and svapadashaktih, "the power of one's own station", which he reads as an affirmation of sovereignty. That split is one reason his count reaches 79 (Sanatana Rahasya). The book does not mention the alternative.
Sutra 1.17: vitarka atmajnanam
"Any inference of such a yogi is knowledge of his own real self."
Whatever he thinks or confirms is one with self-knowledge: the standing perception "I am Lord Shiva, one with the universe." A footnote widens vitarka to cover perception as well as inference. Vijnana Bhairava 102 gives the contemplation: the Lord is all-knowing, all-doing, all-pervading; "my self is one with the Lord because the aspects of Shiva are my aspects."
Sutra 1.18: lokanandah samadhisukham
"The joy of his samadhi is bliss for the whole universe."
"This yogi doesn't have to do anything. He only has to remain in samadhi." Kshemaraja reads loka two ways (what is perceived, and the perceiver), so the bliss of samadhi is the yogin's simultaneous experience of subject in object and object in subject (Vijnana Bhairava 106, 65).
A second reading, "given by masters", is about transmission: anyone who sees the yogin in samadhi and understands what he is experiencing "will, at that very moment, also enter into samadhi". Lakshmanjoo's image is vivid: it is like meeting a cobra face to face; when it bites, its poison fills you.
Sutra 1.19: shaktisandhane sharirotpattih
"By infusing his energy of will, the embodiment of that which is willed occurs at once."
Now the powers begin. The yogin need not pray; he wills "let this man achieve this" and it happens. Kshemaraja quotes the Netra Tantra and the Lakshmikaularnava (initiation, powers and mantra all fail "unless the will of such a yogi is focused") and Spanda Karika 3.1: a yogin attains his desire "just by inhaling and exhaling along with focusing his will".
Who gets powers
Here Lakshmanjoo makes the decisive qualification: these powers arise only for yogins who have attachment "for the body, attachment for disciples, attachment for the public", who "have slightly come down from God consciousness". Elevated yogins do not get them, because they "do not care for these powers or for matters of the world". A footnote is blunt: "Powers come only by maintaining external consciousness... In internal consciousness, there is no need of anything."
Dreams and death
Spanda Karika 3.2 extends the power to dreams: such a yogin "can dream any dream he wishes" (svapnasvatantrya), free of maya or prakriti. Lakshmanjoo then gives one of the book's most practical teachings:
The one who remembers these three points will also remember the point of death. He will also be conscious and aware there. The point here is awareness, awareness must be developed. The more you develop awareness, the more you are near to God consciousness.
Lakshmanjoo on sutra 1.19Sutra 1.20: bhutasandhana bhutaprithaktva vishvasamghattah
"By the greatness of this achievement of the energy of will, the yogi can focus his awareness and heal the sick and suffering, separate elements from his body and be free from the limitations of space and time."
| Power | Sanskrit | Lakshmanjoo's description |
|---|---|---|
| Healing | Bhuta sandhana | Focus on someone sick, in pain or sad, living or dead, "here or in heaven or hell", and the suffering leaves |
| Separation | Bhuta prithaktva | A yogin destined to suffer three years in bed "separates that affliction" into a box, works all day, and opens the box again at night |
| Union with the universe | Vishva samghatta | Enter a past or future world; see a distant city's past, present or future |
The box of trouble is the book's most memorable image of yogic power, and it is notably modest: the karma is not cancelled, only scheduled. "Let his body be painful, his consciousness is never painful." Spanda Karika 3.6 and 3.8 add that even a feeble person "becomes capable" through spanda, and that someone filled with intense hunger can subside it by the force of will.
Sutra 1.21: shuddhavidyodayac cakreshatvasiddhih
"Pure knowledge rises and by that knowledge he becomes the master of the universal wheel."
For the yogin who does not want limited powers and seeks universal being, shuddhavidya (pure knowledge) rises and he becomes cakreshvara, lord of the wheel of energies. Lakshmanjoo contrasts the scales:
| Limited powers | Universal powers |
|---|---|
| Telling you will pass your exam | Rain falling when he wills |
| Predicting tomorrow's business deal | An earthquake, or the dissolution of the universe |
| "The rise of happiness for the universe" |
The test is simple: "When in the background there is no individuality, that is universal power." Krishna showing his universal form is the model; Rama, who used "his weapons, his strength and his energy" and no universal power, is the model of the yogin who does not want such powers at all. Svacchanda Tantra 6.396 to 6.397 defines pure knowledge as knowing Shiva's svatantrya and the supreme I-consciousness.
Sutra 1.22: mahahridanusandhanan mantraviryanubhavah
"By the attentive continuity of meditation on the great ocean of consciousness, the power of supreme I is attained."
The third kind of yogin wants neither power and simply rests in God consciousness "without creating universal agitation". Consciousness is a great lake (mahahrada), pure and transparent, with currents of sound, touch and smell rising from it. Turning all the senses inward, the yogin obtains mantra virya, the "potency of mantra".
The supreme I in all three persons
Mantra virya is the essence of all letters from a to ksha (the shabdarashi, the mass of sounds): one "soundless sound", aham, "I". It must be realised subjectively ("I am mantra virya"), not objectively ("this is mantra virya"). And it is universal first person: "I in I, I in you and I in him."
| Wheel | Direction | Sequence |
|---|---|---|
| Matrika cakra | Creative | aham (a to ha) |
| Malini cakra | Destructive | mahaa (the reverse) |
Spanda Karika 2.1: "All mantras live in and get life from that one mantra of I consciousness."
The Awakening in summary
Lakshmanjoo closes the Awakening himself: consciousness is the self, not body, mind or organs; when it weakens, the three impurities rise; udyama, Bhairava, removes them; and then the universe is full of divinity and all powers, limited, universal or the inward rest of one's own nature. Shaktopaya appears only "to make a distinction" and point you toward shambhavopaya.
The First Awakening sorts accomplished yogins into three kinds: those with limited powers (still attached to body and public), those with universal powers (lords of the wheel), and those who simply rest in the lake of the supreme I. The book quietly ranks the last highest, and treats powers throughout as a sign of having "slightly come down".
The powers described (healing the dead in other worlds, causing rain or earthquakes, seeing the future of distant cities) are presented as plain fact, with scriptural quotation as the only support. A modern reader should note that none of this is testable from the text, and that the tradition itself devalues powers, which makes them hard to use as evidence either way. The image of Krishna as "master of the wheel" and Rama as one who used only weapons is Lakshmanjoo's own illustration, not Kshemaraja's, and it reads Rama in a way devotees of Rama would contest. The cobra transmission in 1.18 is a strong claim about darshan (seeing the saint) that should be weighed against the warnings elsewhere in the book that the Guru can only lift those who are capable.
The Mind Becomes Mantra (Sutras 2.1 to 2.5)
The Second Awakening turns to shaktopaya, the means of energy, and its whole subject is one idea announced at the end of the First: mantra virya, the potency of the supreme "I". Its ten sutras are, in Lakshmanjoo's words, "the commentary of I-consciousness". The first five define real mantra, the effort that drives it, its secret essence, the trap of powers, and the true khecari, "moving in the sky of consciousness".
Sutra 2.1: cittam mantrah
"Mind is mantra."
"Mind" does not mean the thinking mind; it is "that by which you become aware of supreme consciousness", the vimarsha (reflective I-awareness) of the self. Kshemaraja gives two readings: the mind is the thought of a sacred word, and the mind is the thought of a sacred aspirant, who is purified like a sacred word. Both are mantra.
Two mantras of I-consciousness
| Mantra | Sound | Direction | Meaning |
|---|---|---|---|
| Prasada mantra | sauh | Inside to outside only | The whole universe seen as the expansion of oneself |
| Pranava mantra | aham and ma-ha-a | Out and back | Subject to object (aham), then object back to subject (ma-ha-a) |
The word mantra is etymologised: man from manana, "causes you to reside in your own God consciousness", and tra from trana, "protects you from all the evils of the world". It is secret (guptam) because it lives in consciousness, not on the lips.
Words are not mantras
Lakshmanjoo then says something that many readers find startling. Phrases such as om namah shivaya and svacchanda bhairavaya namah are "collections of sacred words", "not mantras, but just a waste of time for the aspirant". Kshemaraja backs this with the Sarvajnanottara (gods and gandharvas are "deluded" in thinking spoken formulas are mantras, and proud of reciting God's name), the Tantrasadbhava (without the energy of consciousness, mantras are "like a mass of clouds in the rainless autumn sky") and the Shrikanthi Samhita (reciting for the sake of realising God will never attain it).
The ball against a wall. If you push awareness from subject to object slowly, it ends in the object: that is prasada. If you push it with great velocity, it strikes the object and rebounds to the subject: that is pranava. "This is not a flow, it is a push." The difference between a mantra that ends in the world and one that returns you to yourself is the force of awareness behind it.
Sutra 2.2: prayatnah sadhakah
"Pauseless effort brings about his attainment of God consciousness."
The effort meant here is not repetition but anusandhitsa, holding the beginning point of any movement: "just begin with some movement, any movement, and stop. Hold the beginning point of that movement with awareness." That union of worshipper and worshipped, reciter and mantra deity, is the means.
Two images come from the Tantrasadbhava: a vulture in the sky that sees meat and seizes it with spontaneous effort, and an archer whose arrow, once released, flies to its mark. "If the yogi is not successful in one push, he will not be successful at all." The effort must be natural (akrita), not artificial, "filled with intense desire and fervent longing" from the heart.
The yogi must first possess such a determined longing that it will lead to the resolution, "I will sit until I attain the state of God consciousness or I will leave my body." ... It must not be passive effort, it must be active effort. That active effort itself is God consciousness.
Spanda Karika 2.6, as glossed by LakshmanjooSutra 2.3: vidyasharirasatta mantrarahasyam
"The secret essence of mantra is establishment in the body of the knowledge of oneness."
The "body of knowledge" is supreme God as the collection of all sounds, where all sounds are created and stored. Real mantra is supreme I-consciousness; again, not om namah shivaya or om namo bhagavate vasudevaya.
Why mantras fail
The Tantrasadbhava gives Shiva's own warning: for those who do not keep the discipline, who "do not believe that our master is one with Lord Shiva", who are "crooked, attached to worldly pleasures", he has "extracted the splendour from their mantras"; for them mantras are "as good as letters". Faith that the master is one with Shiva, discipline and character restore the splendour.
Kundalini and the letters
Kshemaraja then quotes a long Tantrasadbhava passage on kundalini, the Divine Mother who sleeps "like a serpent" holding the moon, fire, sun, stars and fourteen worlds in her body, unaware of it. She cannot be awakened by force, only by nada, supreme I-consciousness filled with awareness.
| Stage | Name of the energy | What happens |
|---|---|---|
| Churning | Insert one spark of awareness, let it fade, insert a fresh one, again and again | |
| First lights | Intense lights seem to come from all sides | |
| Bindu with four projections | Subjective (pramatri), cognitive (pramana), objective (prameya), digestive (pramiti) awareness | |
| Straight rise | Jyeshtha | Established between subject and object |
| Rise of "supreme semen" | Rekhini | Subject and object dissolve in bliss; the yogin may come out because he "cannot tolerate the joy" |
| Three centres | Tripatha | Subject, object and cognition re-arise |
| Obstruction | Raudri | "Puts obstacles" on the way to liberation |
| Half moon | Ambika | Half inside, half outside |
The yogin who is thrown out must "return inside again and again. He must not think that he has lost anything. He need not wait for the master's direction." From this same kundalini arise the nine classes of letters, the five faces of Shiva (Ishana, Tatpurusha, Aghora, Vamadeva, Sadyojata), twelve vowels, fifty letters and the three levels of speech:
| Speech | Seat | Character |
|---|---|---|
| Pashyanti (supreme) | Heart | One point, no letters, only the force of what is to come |
| Madhyama (medium) | Throat | Forming |
| Vaikhari (gross) | Tongue | Spoken words |
Kshemaraja apologises for the number of references and adds: if you still do not understand kundalini, "you should take hold of the feet of your master."
The kundalini passage is a description from scripture, not an instruction set. It describes overwhelming bliss, being thrown out of meditation and an obstructing energy; the text itself sends the confused reader to a master. Treat the churning practice as Guru-only: anyone with a history of psychiatric illness, dissociation or trauma, or who is pregnant, should not attempt intensive energy practices from a book.
Sutra 2.4: garbhe cittavikaso'vishishta vidyasvapnah
"When a yogi's mind is satisfied with the expansive body of illusion, then he falls in the world of differentiated perceptions and his knowledge of being is just like that of ordinary living beings."
Garbha ("womb") is mahamaya, the great illusive energy, and its "body" is the world of limited powers. Lakshmanjoo's examples are pointed: "creating divine incense or the materialization of sacred ash to give to disciples, walking on water, flying in air". If the yogin is satisfied and does not move ahead, his knowledge "is like the world of dreams; it is not knowledge at all".
Kshemaraja cites Patanjali (Yoga Sutra 3.37): these are obstacles to samadhi (samadhau upasargah). Worldly people applaud such a yogin as "a real yogi" who bestows powers on devotees; the sutra says he has fallen. Spanda Karika 3.10 lists the same distractions: light between the eyebrows, divine sound in the heart, divine form and taste, "all just a disturbance".
| What the public sees | What the sutra sees |
|---|---|
| A miracle-working saint | A yogin who stopped at the womb of maya |
| Proof of attainment | An obstacle to samadhi |
| A reason to follow him | A sign he has the knowledge of ordinary people |
Sutra 2.5: vidyasamutthane svabhavike khecari shivavastha
"The pure knowledge of God consciousness effortlessly rises and this state of Shiva is realized as one with the state of khecari."
When the yogin sets powers aside and pure knowledge rises naturally (svabhavika), he "flies in the ether of supreme knowledge": khecari, literally "moving in the sky", is the state of Shiva himself.
Kshemaraja then rejects a rival khecari: a technique in which the yogin sits in padmasana, places the mind at the navel and holds three voids (shakti, vyapini, samana) until they appear. "This state... is not real khecari mudra. It should be avoided."
The real khecari is the way of totality (kulamarga): "Take one part of the universe and see the whole universe existing there." Lakshmanjoo's example is a grain of rice, which holds the power to produce millions of plants: "one part of the world is complete in itself."
The Kulacudamani adds two terms that Spanda Karika treats as one:
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Mantra virya | The creative germ of the state, at its beginning |
| Mudra virya | Establishment in that creative state |
The Second Awakening's first half sets up one contrast again and again: external form versus inner potency. Spoken mantras, visible powers and bodily mudras are all forms; the potency is I-consciousness. A mantra without awareness is letters, a power without awareness is a fall, and a mudra without awareness is a posture.
The claim that om namah shivaya and similar mantras are "a waste of time" needs context. Lakshmanjoo himself says later (at the so'ham passage under 2.7) that "in the beginning, you have to recite", so the sharp line targets recitation without awareness, not recitation as such; a reader can easily take it more broadly than he means. The Yoga Sutra citation is a free gloss: Patanjali's sutra (numbered 3.37 or 3.38 by edition) calls the preceding supernormal perceptions, such as divine hearing and sight, obstacles to samadhi though powers in ordinary life; the "lights between the eyebrows" are the commentator's gloss. The example of materialised sacred ash is Lakshmanjoo's own, not Kshemaraja's, and many readers will hear in it a comment on the miracle-gurus of his day. The kundalini passage's language of "supreme semen" is Tantric technical vocabulary (bindu, essence of life), not a literal physiological claim, and should not be read as one.
The Guru, the Wheel of Letters and the Lapse (Sutras 2.6 to 2.10)
The second half of the Second Awakening names the means of means: the Guru. Through the Guru's pleasure the disciple receives the wheel of letters, the most technical teaching in the book, which shows the whole universe unfolding in the Sanskrit alphabet. Then the body is offered as oblation, knowledge becomes food, and the Awakening closes with an honest sutra about failure: the yogin who loses awareness in samadhi slides into dream.
Sutra 2.6: gurur upayah
"The master (guru) is the means."
Mantra virya and mudra virya "can be attained only through the master, no one else". Lakshmanjoo immediately says who is not a Guru: "The one who demands that his disciples donate money to him or who requires his disciples to provide service to him, all in the guise of attaining enlightenment, is not the guru." The Guru is "that person who puts before you the reality of God consciousness".
The Malinivijaya (2.10) has Shiva say that such a master "is as good as me". Spanda Karika does not discuss the Guru directly, Kshemaraja notes, but its last verse (4.1) bows to "that supreme and wonderful world of the master" that carries the disciple across the ocean of doubt.
| View of the Guru | Source | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| A human master equal to Shiva | Malinivijaya 2.10 | Causes you to attain the creative energy and establishes you in it |
| Shiva's own energy | "Some other masters"; Malinivijaya, Trishirobhairava | "The mouth of the master" is the wheel of energies; the Guru is not a worldly being |
The book holds two ideas of the Guru together: a person, and the power of grace that works through any person or event. The first gives the tradition its lineage; the second keeps it from becoming mere personality cult. A test the book itself supplies: the real Guru asks for nothing and puts God consciousness in front of you.
Sutra 2.7: matrikacakrasambodhah
"(The disciple attains) the knowledge of the wheel of the hidden mother (matrikacakra)."
When the master is pleased, the disciple understands matrikacakra, the theory of the alphabet from a to ksha: fifty letters standing for the thirty-six tattvas from Shiva down to earth. This is the longest single commentary in the book. Its core can be set out in three tables.
The sixteen vowels: Shiva's inner life
| Letter | State of Shiva | Note |
|---|---|---|
| a | Anuttara, the unsurpassable; cit shakti | "The first movement" of I-consciousness |
| aa | Ananda, bliss | Comes when Shiva "keenly observes his nature again and again" |
| i | Iccha, subtle will | Admiring his own nature |
| ii | Ishana, gross will | Wanting to possess it, which already "carries him down" |
| u | Unmesha, knowledge | Discovering the universe within |
| uu | Unata, lessening | The apprehension that bliss may diminish |
| ri, rii, lri, lrii | The four amrita bija (nectar seeds) | Turning the will back inside: intention, confirmation, establishment, its confirmation; Panini's "eunuch" vowels, since Shiva "does not have the courage to create" |
| e, ai, o, au | Kriya, action, from non-vivid to most vivid | e is the triangle, o the six-pointed star (shatkona), au the trident seed (shulabija) |
| am (anusvara) | Bindu, a point | Nothing is created: all is one point |
| ah (visarga) | The two dots | From one view nothing is created; from another everything is |
Two claims inside this table are polemical. Against Vedanta's sat-cit-ananda, Shaivism says sat (existence) "is not an aspect of Lord Shiva. Sat is the reality of Lord Shiva. Why, therefore, call it an aspect?" And against the Vedantic idea of an unmoving Brahman, "Shiva is always in movement... even a rock is in movement." Most striking, at au: "if you want to perceive the state of Lord Shiva as it ought to be perceived... you must enjoy this universe. You won't find the real state of Lord Shiva in samadhi."
To explain visarga, Lakshmanjoo tells the story of Macchandanatha and his disciple Gorakhanatha. Gorakhanatha, travelling far away, is furious to find his master married with many children. He returns to the ashram and finds the master in samadhi, never having left. He goes back by yogic power and again sees the family. The master explains: "From one point, you will see that I have fallen in love and am attached to the world, and from another point you will see that I have not fallen in love at all, that I am Lord Shiva." That double view, written as two dots one above the other, is visarga.
Three visargas
| Visarga | Belongs to | Letter | State of mind |
|---|---|---|---|
| Para (supreme) | Shiva | aa | Cittapralaya: no mind at all |
| Parapara (medium) | Shakti | ah | Cittasambodha: mind fully aware with one thought |
| Apara (inferior) | The individual | ha | Cittavishranti: effortless one-pointedness (niruddha), as opposed to effortful ekagrata |
The consonants: the outer universe
| Letters | Arise from | Represent |
|---|---|---|
| ka to nga | a, aa (consciousness and bliss) | Five gross elements |
| ca to nya | i, ii (will) | Five subtle elements (tanmatras) |
| ta to na (retroflex) | ri, rii | Five organs of action |
| ta to na (dental) | lri, lrii | Five organs of knowledge |
| pa to ma | u, uu (knowledge) | Mind, intellect, ego, prakriti, purusha |
| ya, ra, la, va | The kancukas with maya; Panini's "inner" (antahstha), Shaivism's dharana, since they give life to the individual | |
| sha, sha, sa, ha | Shuddhavidya, Ishvara, Sadashiva, Shakti; Panini's "warm" letters (ushma) | |
| ksha | ka joined to sa | Kutabija, energy joined to energy |
The gross elements come from the subtlest energy, consciousness, because Shiva "does not fear coming down into the gross world". The whole wheel is summed up in aham: take the first letter a and the last ha and unite them in the point m. This mirrors Panini's method of pratyahara (naming a series by its first and last), and Panini's first sutra a-i-un is read as anuttara, iccha and unmesha.
So'ham: Lakshmanjoo says the familiar mantra is really three automatic seeds: sa (nectar), ha (breath, Shakti) and m (the point). "These three letters cannot be recited at all; they are automatic. They are to be perceived, not recited." Yet "in the beginning, you have to recite these letters. And then, when the reality comes in front of you, recitation ends." This sentence is the key to his harsh words on spoken mantra under 2.1.
The five hearts
The Siddhamrita Tantra names five states in which I-consciousness pervades. Lakshmanjoo explains the inner one with an ant: "when an ant crawls on your foot, you are aware of it; that is the heart."
| Heart | What it is |
|---|---|
| External | The universe |
| Internal | Awareness pervading the body |
| Sound | Nada, sound that simply occurs |
| Supreme state | Supreme consciousness |
| Supreme void | The supreme void |
Without this secret, the Siddhamrita says, "all the recitations of mantras are useless just like empty rainless clouds in the autumn sky". And a master's only qualification is that "he causes you to realize what is first and what is last and how to combine it". Spanda Karika 3.16 closes: Shiva's energy of action entangles only "when it is not realized".
Sutra 2.8: shariram havih
"The establishment of I-consciousness on the body becomes an offering in the fire of God consciousness."
Everyone has "inaugurated" (abhishikta) their I-consciousness in three bodies: gross (waking), subtle (dream) and subtlest (deep sleep). These are the three veils. The yogin offers all three, with the I-sense placed in them, as oblation (havih) into the fire of God consciousness, until God consciousness is found in every body.
| Source | Image of the offering |
|---|---|
| Vijnana Bhairava 149 | Elements, organs, perceptions and mind offered in the fire of the great void "with the sacrificial ladle of awareness" |
| Timirodghata | Attachment to lover, friend, relative and beloved subsided in that fire |
| Bhagavad Gita 4.27 | All actions of the senses and breath offered in the fire of one-pointedness |
| Spanda Karika 1.9 (with Kallata's commentary) | "When all agitations end", agitation being the I-sense in the three bodies |
Sutra 2.9: jnanam annam
"Differentiated perception is his food", or "knowledge of his own nature is his food."
The first reading answers sutra 1.2 (jnanam bandhah): the yogin eats and digests the differentiated perception that binds others, carrying it "from darkness to light, from sadness to joy". The second reading says self-knowledge satisfies him, so "he doesn't crave for physical food. Of course he eats, he does not starve himself, but he is not attached to food."
Vijnana Bhairava 148 is quoted: take any one of its 112 means and practise it consistently; the fullness it gives is complete. Then Spanda Karika 3.12, "Always maintain awareness in all your activities", draws one of Lakshmanjoo's most quoted passages:
Be fully aware of what you are thinking and you won't think anything. If you are aware of what is happening next, nothing will happen. If you are aware that you are dying, you won't die. If you are aware that you are going from wakefulness to the dreaming state, you won't go.
Lakshmanjoo on sutra 2.9He adds that broken awareness, aware now, lost for a few minutes, regained, "is not the way to maintain awareness". It must be continuous.
Sutra 2.10: vidyasamhare tadutthasvapnadarshanam
"Although he is established in God consciousness in samadhi, yet not being able to maintain awareness, after a short time he enters into the dreaming state."
This is "the great crisis in the yogic world", and "this happens to all yogis". The order of subtlety is waking, dream, deep sleep, samadhi, so awareness is hardest to keep in samadhi, and when it slips, the yogin falls to the next state down, dream. Dream is subtler but less aware: in waking you would not believe someone who said your father, dead two years, had come to visit; in a dream you would.
How samadhi is entered
| Capacity | First entry into samadhi | Later |
|---|---|---|
| Weak | Through deep sleep | Then through dream |
| Medium | Through dream | Then through waking |
| Established | Through waking | "The most firm" samadhi |
The practical sign: when thought becomes very subtle "you will feel that you are about to go to sleep". Those who cannot keep awareness fall asleep. Those who can "enter the gap, the junction of these two states of waking and dreaming. That junction is turya."
Lakshmanjoo disagrees with Kshemaraja
The Malinivijaya says Shiva taught Parvati only when "absolutely and wholeheartedly happy with her". Kshemaraja draws the lesson that if you cannot keep awareness, your master was not really happy with you when he initiated you, so you must never pressure a master for initiation. Then Lakshmanjoo adds a sentence that matters a great deal for how to read this book: "This is the teaching of Kshemaraja. I don't necessarily agree with this point of view."
The Malinivijaya adds that powers, enjoyed with joy, cut awareness; Spanda Karika 3.3 says the creative energy then "plays with him" as with ordinary people; and Spanda Karika 1.21 promises that one aware of spanda in every movement gains entry "in the very state of wakefulness".
Why the Third Awakening is needed
The yogin who has lost pure knowledge "has lost everything and from a yogic point of view, he is a pauper". The Third Awakening, anavopaya, is written for him: a way to train awareness until shaktopaya and then shambhavopaya become possible.
The Second Awakening ends not in triumph but in diagnosis. Effort, mantra, Guru and offering lead to samadhi, and samadhi without continuous awareness decays into dream. The book's answer to that decay is not more ecstasy but steadier awareness at the junctions between states.
Three things stand out. First, Lakshmanjoo's open disagreement with Kshemaraja on the Guru's pleasure shows that his rendering is not a neutral translation; he corrects his source where his experience differs, and the reader should notice how rarely he flags it. Second, the alphabet theory relies on Panini's grammar read mystically (the "eunuch" vowels, a-i-un as anuttara-iccha-unmesha); this is ingenious and old (Abhinavagupta develops it in the Tantraloka and Paratrishika), but it is an interpretive overlay on a grammatical system that Panini built for other purposes. Third, the attacks on Vedanta (sat as a needless attribute, Brahman as motionless) simplify Advaita: Shankara's Brahman is not an object with the attribute "existence" but existence itself, which is close to what Lakshmanjoo says Shiva is (Hindupedia). The comparison of the shatkona to "the Jewish star" in a footnote is a visual aid, not a historical link.
The Bound Mind and Its Undoing (Sutras 3.1 to 3.8)
The Third Awakening, anavopaya, begins at the bottom. Its first sutra defines the self as the limited mind, the opposite of 1.1. Then come the methods the Tantras teach to the ordinary practitioner: dissolving the five circles of the universe in one's own body, breath and the elements, and the inner meaning of the limbs of yoga. Two warnings frame the methods: powers are a sign of illusion, and even "God consciousness" can be a subtle bondage if it excludes the world.
Three definitions of the self
Lakshmanjoo begins by placing the three first sutras side by side. They are not contradictions, he says; each is true "in that state of being".
| Sutra | Words | Level | Self defined as |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1.1 | caitanyam atma | Shambhavopaya | Free God consciousness |
| 2.1 | cittam mantrah | Shaktopaya | A mind so purified it is mantra, aham |
| 3.1 | atma cittam | Anavopaya | The limited mind, soaked in sense impressions |
Sutra 3.1: atma cittam
"Individual being is the mind entangled in the wheel of repeated birth and death."
This mind has three organs: intellect understands what is to be done, mind thinks how to do it, and ego says "this is to be done by me". Kshemaraja derives atma from the root at, "to move continually": the atma here is "who comes and goes", always in movement through births and deaths.
The quality of mind at death decides the next birth:
| State at death | Guna | Next life |
|---|---|---|
| Pure | Sattva | A higher life |
| Active | Rajas | A life "filled with luxuries" |
| Dull | Tamas | Beasts, trees, "states of deadened consciousness" |
Sutra 3.2: jnanam bandhah
"For this limited individual, all knowledge is bondage."
The same words as 1.2, with a narrower meaning. In 1.2 Kshemaraja found two senses (knowing and not knowing). Here, for the limited person, "whatever knowledge he possesses... is differentiated knowledge. In this state, there is no possibility of possessing undifferentiated knowledge." Each act of the three inner organs is tied to pleasure (sattva), pain (rajas) or delusion (tamas).
Spanda Karika 3.17 to 3.18 names the vehicle: the puryashtaka, the "city of eight" (five subtle elements plus intellect, mind and ego), which works in dream and carries the soul from birth to birth.
Sutra 3.3: kaladinam tattvanam aviveko maya
"Being unable to possess the undifferentiated knowledge of the 31 elements, you live in those elements, from kala to prithvi (earth), which are the expansion of the energy of illusion."
An objector cites Vijnana Bhairava 137: knowledge and the knower are both enlightening and are one. How then can knowledge bind? Kshemaraja accepts the verse "with one condition": it holds only when you know that knowledge and knower are one. If you know, it is not bondage; if you don't, it is.
| World | Tattvas | Count | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pure | Shiva, Shakti, Sadashiva, Ishvara, Shuddhavidya | 5 | Enlightened |
| Maya | Maya and the kancukas, puryashtaka, senses, elements, down to earth | 31 | Impure, unless known as one with the pure five |
The mark of having descended: "You think that you are one with your own body and God is not." The mark of being elevated: "all bodies are my bodies... knowing, 'I am God'." A Tantrasadbhava verse adds a sharp psychological detail: the limited person's attachment to his own limited path is such that "even if you meet an elevated soul who desires to show you the correct path, you will not accept his guidance."
Spanda Karika 1.20 states the principle of the whole Awakening: the same organs lead the aware person to God consciousness and deprive the unaware of it.
Sutra 3.4: sharire samharah kalanam
"You must make all the circles (kalas) in your body enter one into the other from gross to subtle."
This is the first real technique: laya bhavana, meditation by absorption. Put each effect into its cause, and that cause into its cause, until only Shiva remains, and "there the observed and the observer become one".
Lakshmanjoo gives a more homely form of the same practice. Be situated in your mind and think the gross world is only its invention: now, though awake, you are "in dreaming state". Let that enter the dreamless state, thoughtless and one-pointed, and "you are very near to experiencing the state of samadhi".
Two Vijnana Bhairava verses are quoted:
| Verse | Practice |
|---|---|
| VB 56 | Absorb the gross path of worlds (bhuvanadhva, 118 worlds) into the path of tattvas (36), and that into the path of kalas (5), until "your mind becomes unminded" |
| VB 52 | Imagine Kalagni Rudra rising as fire from the left big toe and burning the whole body to ash; "the highest peace of God consciousness will shine" |
Then a key remark on method: these practices use imagination and meditation, which the Malinivijaya places in the inferior world of anavopaya. That is why the Spanda Karika, which teaches only shaktopaya and shambhavopaya, does not teach them, and why it is quoted in the Third Awakening only where anavopaya touches the higher means.
Each upaya ends where the next begins. "When, in explaining anavopaya, you reach the terminus, there you will find a touch of shaktopaya." The three means are not three separate roads but one road with two thresholds, and the practitioner's task is to notice when a technique has already turned into the next means.
Sutra 3.5: nadisamhara bhutajaya bhutakaivalya bhutaprithaktvani
"The merging of the movements of breathing, controlling the gross elements, diverting attention from all objective senses and directing it towards the centre of the movement of the breath, and removing your consciousness from the grip of the elementary field."
| Term | Meaning | Svacchanda Tantra practice quoted |
|---|---|---|
| Nadi samhara | Merging inhalation and exhalation in the central channel (sushumna) by awareness of breath | Alternate-nostril breathing; and an "uncommon" internal breath at the navel, pushing and drawing back without breathing out or in (7.294 to 296) |
| Bhuta jaya | Mastery of the five elements | Awareness on the left big toe (air), navel (fire), throat pit (earth, to increase flesh), inner tongue near the palate (water), head (ether, for all powers) (7.299 to 300) |
| Bhuta kaivalya | Withdrawing the mind from sense objects to the centre of the breath | Direct consciousness and mind to the navel: a "calmed means of retention" (7.297) |
| Bhuta prithaktva | Freeing consciousness from the elements | Subside all five elements "up to unmana" and become one with Shiva (7.327) |
Lakshmanjoo glosses the fruits simply: with control of the elements, "if you become feverish, internally you do not suffer any pain"; "if you have a painful leg, you separate your consciousness from the pain".
Why repeat 1.20?
The powers here match those of 1.20 in the First Awakening. The difference: in shambhavopaya they come automatically; in anavopaya they are won by effort through the classical exercises (dehashuddhi, bhutashuddhi, pranayama, pratyahara, dharana, dhyana, samadhi). And such powers come to yogins "covered by illusion". "If you actually know your real nature, you will not care about these powers."
The breath and element practices of 3.5, especially the internal kumbhaka (breath held at the navel) and alternate-nostril work, are traditional techniques quoted from the Svacchanda Tantra. They can cause dizziness, anxiety or worse when forced. Learn them only from a qualified teacher; avoid breath retention with heart disease, high blood pressure, epilepsy or pregnancy. The left and right nostril scheme matches common yogic teaching on the nadis (Sivananda; Himalayan Institute).
Sutra 3.6: mohavaranat siddhih
"These powers are brought into existence when a yogi's consciousness is covered by the energy of illusion (maya)."
The Lakshmikaularnava says the one directed to limited powers "is carried away from the consciousness of Lord Shiva". But for a yogin whose covering has subsided, the same exercises take on an uncommon meaning. Kshemaraja reinterprets the limbs of yoga (sutras 8.12 to 8.18 of that Tantra):
| Limb | Ordinary meaning | Meaning for the advanced yogin |
|---|---|---|
| Asana | Sitting straight in padmasana or svastikasana | Holding awareness, without a moment's break, in the centre between exhalation and inhalation |
| Pranayama | Breath control | Breath becomes subtle (sukshma), then "beyond subtle"; fear of losing awareness; an inner throbbing (spandana) and "tremendous divine sounds" |
| Pratyahara | Withdrawing senses | Keeping awareness whole while hearing sounds "good, bad, furious, frightening or threatening" |
| Dhyana | Meditation | The ineffable ecstasy beyond those sounds |
| Dharana | Concentration | Holding Shiva consciousness without any break, eternally |
| Samadhi | Absorption | Shiva's universal consciousness both within and in the active life of the universe |
The Netra Tantra adds the distinction: dharana that leads to Shiva is right; dharana that leads to powers "will mislead you".
The centre between two breaths is the anavopaya doorway. It appears here as true asana and returns at the very end (3.43 to 3.44) in the "centre" of the nose and the natural link of breath. Vijnana Bhairava builds many of its 112 practices on the same gap.
Sutra 3.7: mohajayad anantabhogat sahajavidyajayah
"After conquering the field of illusion (maya) by destroying its many impressions, one attains the victory of the pure knowledge of consciousness."
Maya does not end "until its last faint impressions (samskaras) are also destroyed". Then sahaja vidya, innate pure knowledge, wins. The conclusion: from anavopaya one enters shaktopaya, and from that shambhavopaya.
A bondage hidden in God consciousness
The Svacchanda Tantra (5.393 to 396) then makes a distinction that is one of the subtlest in the book:
| Pervasion | What it is | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Atmavyapti (pervasion of the self) | Turning from the world to "experiencing only yourself"; thinking God consciousness pure and worldly life impure | Also bondage; must be abandoned |
| Shivavyapti (pervasion of Shiva) | Experiencing every object "completely filled with all knowledge, all action and all will", beyond good and bad, pure and impure | The supreme knowledge; beyond mind (unmana) |
Lakshmanjoo translates the levels into life: "Our life is filled with individual consciousness. A yogi's life is filled with God consciousness. And a supreme yogi's life is filled with universal God consciousness."
Knowledge (vidya) has three aspects: vedana (knowing Shiva's will, knowledge and action), bodhana (infusing your consciousness with it) and varjana (casting off what is alien).
Atmavyapti is the goal of many contemplative systems: withdraw from the world into the pure witness. The Svacchanda calls it a halfway house. Shivavyapti requires bringing the world back in. This is the clearest statement in the book of what makes Kashmir Shaivism distinct from Sankhya-style isolation and from forms of Vedanta that treat the world as an illusion to be left behind.
Sutra 3.8: jagrad dvitiyakarah
"The waking state is another form of his real nature of consciousness."
For this yogin, waking, dream and sleep are "another ray of his being". The waking state is found not in "I" but in "thisness", which universal consciousness absorbs. Ordinary God consciousness "does not digest thisness; it only digests I-consciousness".
Vijnana Bhairava 117 says universal consciousness is present in every sense, and "never absent for in absence it is also not absent". Lakshmanjoo turns this into one of his best images:
When a madman is completely mad and he knows he is mad, then he is not mad... When a yogi is aware that his nature of self has become less, then, because he is aware, it has not become less. The nature of the self is awareness. When awareness is held, everything is held.
Lakshmanjoo on sutra 3.8The Sarvamangala gives the metaphysics in a line: in this universe there are only energy (shakti) and the energy holder (shaktiman); the universe is energy, and the holder is Maheshvara alone.
The rebirth scheme in 3.1 (tamasic minds become trees and beasts) is presented as fact; it is common Indian doctrine, but the text offers no argument for it. The etymology of atma from "at", to move, is traditional grammar used for teaching; modern linguistics derives atman differently, and Kshemaraja himself treats the word flexibly from sutra to sutra. The element practices in 3.5 make physiological promises (increasing flesh by meditating at the throat, curing fever pain) that no evidence is given for. Finally, the striking claim that atmavyapti is bondage is a monist ranking of other paths: a Sankhya or Yoga practitioner would reply that isolation (kaivalya) is not a lesser state but the goal, and that "bringing the world back in" is a different metaphysics, not a higher stage of the same one.
The Dancer, the Seed and the Oil (Sutras 3.9 to 3.20)
With pure knowledge won, the sutras turn to how the realised yogin lives, and they do it through an extended image from Indian theatre: the self is the dancer, the inner soul is the stage, the senses are the audience, and the yogin's art is sattvika abhinaya, true acting. Then come the practices that keep the state alive: attention to the seed, diving into the lake, the power to create, the end of birth, a warning about the mothers of beasts, and the instruction to spread turya like oil.
Sutra 3.9: nartaka atma
"The dancer in this field of universal dance is his self of universal consciousness."
The "universal dance" is "everything that you experience in your life": coming, going, birth, death, joy, depression. The actor is the one who conceals his real nature from the public while knowing it himself. Lakshmanjoo's example uses a class member: an actress named Denise may appear as Krishna, Shiva, a child, "a silly fellow" or Jesus Christ, but "in herself, she knows she is really Denise".
So Shiva appears as waking, dream and deep sleep, yet "although he has become the waking state, he has not actually become the waking state". Three sources are quoted:
| Source | Image |
|---|---|
| Naishvasa hymn by the Goddess | Shiva rests in his own nature yet puts on coverings that appear as waking, dream, sleep |
| Bhatta Narayana, Stavacintamani 59 | From a seed in his own nature he creates the three dramas and withdraws them; "who else can act in this way?" |
| Pratyabhijna Karika | "You are unique and the one who is actually awake in this dreaming state" |
Sutra 3.10: rango'ntaratma
"The player is the internal soul" (literally, "the stage is the inner self").
The antaratma is the soul in its shrunken state, living in dream, deep sleep and the void, distinct from the "external soul" of the waking body; the Svacchanda Tantra (11.85) describes it entering the puryashtaka and journeying "in each and every womb". On this stage he weeps and laughs, "and all of this is his play. In actual fact, he is neither laughing nor dreaming nor sad nor joyous."
Lakshmanjoo introduces the three grades of abhinaya (acting), taken from Indian dramatic theory:
| Grade | The audience feels | The yogin feels (sutra 3.12) |
|---|---|---|
| Sattvika | This actor is Rama | He is truly acting as every person in the world |
| Rajasa | Something of Rama is in him, but he is not Rama | He acts "on the sidelines" |
| Tamasa | He is plainly pretending | He acts "only through imagination" |
Sutra 3.11: prekshakanindriyani
"His own organs are spectators."
Only yogins see the world as theatre; "worldly people are overwhelmed by sadness, by pleasure, by pain". For the yogin, the senses watch the play from inside, "inherent difference (vibhagam) is totally destroyed" and the organs fill with joy and freedom. Kshemaraja quotes the Katha Upanishad (2.4.1): rare heroes turn their gaze inward.
Sutra 3.12: dhivashat sattvasiddhih
"By means of a supreme intellect filled with the awareness of the self, this yogi experiences that he is actually acting."
Sattva here means sattvika abhinaya, the "real essence of acting". In the outer theatre, true acting imitates four things, and Lakshmanjoo lists them:
| Mode | Conveyed by | The audience must feel |
|---|---|---|
| Angika | Bodily movement | This is the character's body |
| Vacika | Speech | These are the character's words |
| Aharya | Dress and ornament | These are not costumes |
| Sattvika | Inner feeling (tears, smiles) | If he weeps, you weep |
The actor who never forgets who he is. Kashmir Shaivism does not ask you to stop playing your roles; it asks you to play them as Shiva plays the universe, wholeheartedly and without losing the knowledge of who is acting. Detachment here is not distance from the role but awareness inside it.
Sutra 3.13: siddhah svatantrabhavah
"The state of absolute independence is already achieved."
Svatantrabhava lies in all knowledge, action and will; "this world is lying under the control of such a yogi". Shri Nathapada says: own the energy of independence, the energy of Bhairava; the Svacchanda Tantra (7.245) says all worlds, beings, words and sentences depend on such a yogin.
Sutra 3.14: yatha tatra tathanyatra
"This absolute independence is the same in the external world as it was in samadhi."
There is "no difference between the independence experienced in samadhi and the independence experienced in the external state (vyutthana)". Spanda Karika 1.7 calls for seeking this "unartificial" independence "with great reverence".
Then a surprise: having achieved freedom, the yogin "still must remain active for the whole of his life... to realise the truth of reality again and again, again and again, so that in the end, he becomes one with Shiva."
Sutra 3.15: bijavadhanam
"Maintain breakless awareness on that supreme energy which is the seed of the universe."
The seed (bija) is svatantrya shakti, the cause of the universe and of every breath (Netra Tantra 7.40). Avadhana means attention held again and again without pause.
Lakshmanjoo inverts a common expectation. Before realisation, "you want to relax, to take life easy, to rest". After realisation, "you will naturally become active and you will remain active... the cause of your being always active comes from above." Continuous awareness is not the price of realisation but its consequence: the strength to sustain it arrives with it.
Sutra 3.16: asanasthah sukham hrade nimajjati
"Seated in that real posture, he effortlessly dives in the ocean of nectar."
"The postures (asanas) explained in the yogadarshana are not really asanas at all." The real posture is Shivayoga, holding the energy of awareness in every act; physical asanas "are only imitations of the real asana". The yogin, "leaving aside the effort of asana, pranayama, dhyana and dharana", simply remains, and "diving" means letting the impressions of body, breath, puryashtaka and void sink into that ocean.
The Netra Tantra (8.41 to 45) is quoted at length, a list of what not to do:
- No concentration above at the crown or below at muladhara.
- Not the tip of the nose, nor breath work with prana and apana.
- No particular place in the body, nor the universal; not ether, not downward.
- Eyes neither closed nor wide open; neither support nor absence of support.
- Not senses, elements or sensations: "put all of these aside and enter into that universal being of awareness."
"The revealed is not the point to be sought; it is the revealer that is to be striven for."
Sutra 3.17: svamatranirmanam apadayati
"Experiencing that this objective world is the product of his subjective consciousness, he can create anything he desires."
Svamatra is "the product of one's own consciousness", which "congeals in the shape of time and space". The Ishvara Pratyabhijna Karika (1.5.15) says the world is created not by any power in objectivity but by subjective consciousness. A Tantra gives the classic image of water and snow: different forms, one substance. "For the one who realizes this, nothing remains undone... This is his last birth." Spanda Karika 2.5: the universe becomes "not defective, but a playful amusement".
Sutra 3.18: vidya'vinashe janmavinashah
"When his knowledge of the Self is permanently established, then birth (and death) are gone forever."
Janma (birth) includes marana (death). The cause of birth is "action attached with ignorance", which builds the organs and body; when the cause ends, so does the effect. The Shrikanthi, Svacchanda and Netra Tantras (8.26 to 27) all promise no return for one established in this knowledge.
Sutra 3.19: kavargadishu maheshvaryadyah pashumatarah
"In the world of letters, words and sentences, the eight energies of the Lord, who are the mothers of beasts, take control and hold him."
This is the warning for the yogin whose knowledge subsides. Kshemaraja supplies the missing verb ("they take charge of holding them"). The eight mothers (pashumatarah), Maheshvari and the rest, are the five senses with mind, intellect and ego.
Kshemaraja traces from the Malinivijaya (3.5 to 3.13) how svatantrya appears to descend:
| Step | Form of the energy |
|---|---|
| 1 | Svatantrya, one with Shiva |
| 2 | Iccha, will |
| 3 | Jnana, knowledge: distinguishing what is to be desired |
| 4 | Kriya, action: wanting the desire fulfilled |
| 5 | Like the wish-fulfilling cintamani stone, she becomes every object desired |
| 6 | The garland of letters: twofold (vowels as seed, consonants as womb), ninefold (vargas), fiftyfold (letters, the fifty Rudras, one hundred with subject and object) |
Two ways to hear a sentence
| Savikalpa (with thought) | Nirvikalpa (without thought) | |
|---|---|---|
| "Get me a bucket of water" | You go and fetch it | You observe only "the flow of consciousness"; "g, e, t" mean nothing |
| "Your father is dead" | You weep | Only letters; "it is all divine" |
| Who hears this way | "Ignorant beings, those beasts" | Yogins |
The Timirodghata places the Divine Mother in brahmarandhra surrounded by the eight mothers holding nooses, "very difficult to conquer". Kshemaraja notes that 1.4 described Matrika in general; here she is shown in particular, as the fate of a realised yogin who lets awareness ebb.
The father is dead example appears twice (1.4 and 3.19) and is meant as a contemplative exercise about the moment of meaning, not a model for grief. Taken literally as a life rule ("only letters, it is all divine"), it can be read as endorsing emotional numbness, which most of the tradition's own devotional poetry (Utpaladeva's hymns, for example) would not support. Lakshmanjoo's frequent use of "beasts" for ordinary people is technical (pashu, the bound soul), but its tone is harsh in English.
Sutra 3.20: trishu caturtham tailavad asecyam
"The fourth state (turya) must be expanded like oil so that it pervades the other three: waking, dreaming, and deep sleep."
Oil poured on cloth spreads and adheres. Turya is already present "at the moment of entry and at the moment of exit" of each state; the yogin must hold it at both junctions so that its nectar (turyarasa) spreads into the middle.
Three sutras, three relations
Kshemaraja insists this is not a repetition of 1.7 and 1.11:
| Sutra | Upaya | Relation of turya to the three states |
|---|---|---|
| 1.7 | Shambhava | Turya is already found in all three |
| 1.11 | Shambhava, "with force" (hathapaka) | The three states melt into turya |
| 3.20 | Anava | Like sword and sheath: separate, yet held together; turya must be spread |
The most usable instruction in the Third Awakening is this: watch the junctions. Falling asleep, waking up, the first moment of a dream, the end of a thought. Turya is "found" there by everyone; the yogin's work is to hold it a moment longer each time until it spreads like oil.
Sutra 3.16's dismissal of the asanas of the Yoga Darshana as "imitations" is a Shaiva ranking of Patanjali's school; for Patanjali, asana is simply a steady, comfortable seat and was never meant as the goal. The promise of no rebirth (3.18) and the power to create anything desired (3.17) are presented as fruits of realisation without any means of checking them, and the tradition's own teaching that the realised do not care for powers makes 3.17 more a description of metaphysical status than of practical ability. The theatre analogy draws on Indian dramatic theory (the Natyashastra tradition of abhinaya and rasa), which Abhinavagupta himself commented on; it is a deep and deliberate link between aesthetics and spiritual life in this school, and worth noticing as such.
Just Like Shiva (Sutras 3.21 to 3.32)
This stretch describes the realised yogin from the inside and the outside. First, the method: dive in with the mind and hold God consciousness as the breath moves out. Then a failure mode: the yogin who has turya only at the edges of his states. Then recovery, and finally a portrait of the one who has become "just like Shiva": his vow is to keep his body, his talk is mantra, his gift is knowledge, and the universe is his own collected energy.
Sutra 3.21: magnah svacittena pravishet
"The yogi who is merged in his self must enter completely with his mind filled with great awareness."
Kshemaraja opens with the Netra Tantra (8.12): when awareness is held through waking, dream and sleep, the gross breath enters the subtle, the subtle enters the supreme, and the yogin feels spanda in his own nature. The method, from the Mrityujit section of the same Tantra, is again to set aside the gross means, breath holding, concentration, contemplation, and keep "one-pointed thought merged in the self" through introverted knowledge (antarmukha samvedana).
"Being merged" has a precise meaning: the I-ness placed on the gross body, prana and puryashtaka is dissolved into the nectar of consciousness (citta camatkara). Three supporting verses:
- Svacchanda Tantra 4.437: keep the activity of the mind apart and unite it with God consciousness; then the bound soul (pashu) realises Shiva.
- Vijnana Bhairava 138: when mind, individual consciousness, the energy of breath and ego disappear, "that formation of Bhairava is found existing there."
- Jnanagarbha Stotra: O Mother, when one repels the mind's actions and turns the senses towards God consciousness, "by your grace he instantly achieves" the supreme state.
Sutra 3.22: pranasamacare samadarshanam
"When his breath begins to slowly move out toward the external state, then he also experiences the pervasion of God consciousness there."
This is the exit from samadhi done well. The yogin's breath is "filled with a supreme fragrance"; although it moves out, he feels it is not moving out but established in his Supreme Being. He emerges into waking with the fragrance intact, "a king of yogis".
Two consequences are drawn from scripture:
| Source | Claim about the realised yogin |
|---|---|
| Ananda Bhairava Shastra | All castes and stages of life are equal to him; he does not distinguish between food permitted and forbidden; he is free of the bonds of daily life |
| Utpaladeva, Pratyabhijna | Though active in all three states, he has no limitation of owning and disowning, pure and impure, good and bad |
Sutra 3.23: madhye 'varaprasavah
"He does not experience the state of God consciousness in the center of these three states."
This is the lesser birth (avara prasava): the yogin who tastes turya at the beginning and end of each state but "in the center... is just like us". Lakshmanjoo is careful: he is "not always covered with illusion", only in the middle.
The cause, from the Malinivijaya Tantra, is surprisingly social: "the impressions he has of what others think of him or expect from him and of his wanting to help others, to satisfy them with boons". This can make him lose his temper and become uneven-minded, so that he is "played by this universe in the center, played by hunger, played by thirst".
The obstacle named here is not lust or laziness but reputation and the wish to help. The yogin who has touched the real is pulled out of it by caring how he is seen and by wanting to bless others. This connects directly to sutra 3.26's teaching that the true yogin hides.
Sutra 3.24: matrasvapratyayasamdhane nashtasya punarutthanam
"When a yogi, in coming out from samadhi, also attempts to maintain awareness of God consciousness in the objective world, then, even though his real nature of self is destroyed by the inferior generation of self-consciousness, he again rises in that supreme nature of the self."
The remedy is to look for God consciousness in objects too. The Svacchanda Tantra (12.163 to 164) lists everything to search: what the eyes see, what speech feels, what the mind thinks, what intellect perceives, what ego owns, what exists and what does not. Meditating "This whole universe is one with myself", the fallen yogin rises again. A further verse (4.313 to 314) gives the attitude: when the mind moves, "it does not move at all because it moves in his own nature".
Sutra 3.25: shivatulyo jayate
"He becomes just like Shiva."
The wording is chosen with care: just like Shiva, not one with Shiva. The reason is the body: "he may cough, have headaches, experience muscle pain, stomach aches, ulcers, or fever. Shiva does not have these ailments." Only when the body falls does he become one with Shiva.
A second reason is prarabdha karma, the karma that produced this body. It "cannot be overcome unless it is enjoyed"; it cannot be cast aside. So "he must welcome whatever comes to him, whether it be good or bad. Whatever he gets to eat, he must eat." The Kalikakrama adds: learn this yoga "from the mouth of your master" and consider "his every word to be doubtless and true".
| Jivanmukta in this text | Final union | |
|---|---|---|
| Relation to Shiva | Shivatulya, "just like" | One with Shiva |
| Body | Still subject to illness | Cast off |
| Karma | Prarabdha being exhausted by experience | Ended |
| Inner state | Turyatita realised | Same, without obstruction |
Sutra 3.26: shariravrittir vratam
"His virtuous behavior is the maintenance of his body."
For ordinary people a vrata is a special observance, like fasting during an eclipse. For this yogin, the vow is simply daily life, and Lakshmanjoo lists it with a smile: "getting up from bed at four o'clock in the morning, going to the bathroom, taking bed tea, going for a walk, having lunch, gardening, taking a nap... going to the cinema".
Every ordinary act is worship of Shiva; "he is not, he is somewhere else." The Svacchanda Tantra (4.389): fire burns on the ground but its flames are seen in the sky. A Trika verse says the one stamped by ordinary postures, tea, bed, talk, joking, "is the real holder of all the mudras of yoga. All other yogis... only hold a bundle of bones."
The secret of rising
Kshemaraja then quotes the Kulapancashika on three classes of Shiva's energies:
| Class | Name | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| Lowest | Ghoratari | Push the soul into the darkness of ignorance |
| Middle | Ghora | Make it stand still |
| Supreme | Aghora | Carry the yogin to God consciousness |
The aghora energies "always embrace that yogi who lives in such a way that he remains absolutely unknown as a yogi". The one "known to everyone as an elevated yogi" is shunned by them. "He must be known to the world as an ordinary person."
Lakshmanjoo goes further: "Even the disciple must not know the depth of his master's realization... The disciple must possess and maintain blind faith. This is the manner of the Shiva Sutras."
Two teachings here pull in different directions for a modern reader. The rule that a yogin must hide his attainment is a strong safeguard against spiritual celebrity, and it fits Lakshmanjoo's own famously quiet life in Srinagar (Lakshmanjoo Academy). But the claim that a disciple must keep "blind faith" and treat the master's every word as "doubtless" is an assertion from the Kalikakrama and the commentator, not an argument; combined with a hidden attainment that the disciple cannot check, it leaves no external test of a teacher at all. The Ananda Bhairava verse that the realised yogin sees all castes as equal and is beyond rules of pure and forbidden food is radical for its period and is one of the places where Kashmir Shaivism's tantric roots show plainly (IEP on Kashmir Shaivism); it describes the inner state of the liberated and is not a licence for others.
Sutra 3.27: katha japah
"Ordinary talk of life is the recitation of mantra."
"He recites mantra when he laughs with you, when he embraces you and talks to you, when he goes with you to the theater." The supporting verses come mostly from the Vijnana Bhairava, which Lakshmanjoo also translated:
| Verse | Teaching |
|---|---|
| VB 145 | Real japa is establishing awareness in God consciousness repeatedly without break |
| VB 155 | Going out the breath utters "sa", coming in "ha": hamsa, so'ham, day and night |
| VB 156 | This recitation happens 21,600 times in a day and night; easy for the aware, hard for the unaware |
This automatic recitation is called ajapa gayatri.
21,600 breaths a day, the traditional figure used in the Vijnana Bhairava and many yoga texts: one breath every four seconds, or 15 breaths a minute. Each one, for the aware yogin, is a repetition of the mantra of the self.
Sutra 3.28: danam atmajnanam
"His only purpose for remaining in his body is to impart his knowledge to others."
Dana has several meanings, some about himself (what he sees in his own self; what gives fullness; what destroys differentiated perception; what remains when illusion ends; what protects his nature) and one about others: "whatever is given". His disciples receive knowledge of the self from him; in the Kula tradition, heroic masters reveal reality "by merely looking (darshana) or touching".
Sutra 3.29: yo 'vipastho jnahetushca
"The one who rules the wheel of energies becomes the cause of inserting knowledge in others."
The wheel of energies (shakticakra) is the senses of knowledge and action. "Whatever our sensual energies ask for or demand, we are bound to obey them. But he is not like that." Only the one who is the player, not the played, can awaken others: "The person who is... dependent on his senses, is not able to protect himself, so how could he possibly protect others?"
Kshemaraja records an alternative reading that splits the sutra letter by letter (yo for yogindra, vi for vijnana, pa for pada, and so on). Lakshmanjoo's response is blunt: "We, however, do not accept this explanation... From my point of view, Kshemaraja should not have included it. After all, if one begins including incorrect explanations then they could be introduced for every sutra."
Lakshmanjoo as critic of Kshemaraja. This is the second place (after 2.10) where the teacher openly disagrees with the commentator he is transmitting. It shows the oral tradition working as it should: respectful of the text, but not bound to every word of it.
Sutra 3.30: svashaktipracayo 'sya vishvam
"For him, this universe is the embodiment of his collective energies."
As the universe is Shiva's energy, so for the one "just like Shiva" it is his own. The Netra Tantra (9.12) gives the key definition: holding "only one class" of knowledge is bondage; when the master reveals the universal truth, "the whole universe becomes your possession. To possess the whole universe as your own self is real knowledge and that is netra and that is liberation."
The Kalikakrama adds that no object has ever been perceived without knowledge, and practice is not to keep God consciousness and discard the rest: "God consciousness must be united with objective consciousness and objective consciousness must be united with God consciousness."
Sutra 3.31: sthitilayau
"This universe is the expansion of his energy in objective impressions and in the dissolution of those impressions."
Three phases of every experience:
| Phase | Sanskrit | What is present |
|---|---|---|
| Creation | Srishti | The object shines vividly in the senses |
| Persistence | Sthiti | Only its impression remains in the mind |
| Dissolution | Laya | The impression melts into void (sleep, death, unconsciousness) |
All three, for the yogin, are his energy. Lakshmanjoo's argument is memory: "I give you some money to keep for me. I then go to bed... dreaming... dreamless sleep... wake up" and ask for the money. "If God consciousness did not persist in every moment... I would not remember." It is consciousness running through all three states that keeps the continuity of memory.
Sutra 3.32: tatpravrittav apy anirasah samvettribhavat
"Although he is determined in creating, protecting, and destroying the universe, even then he is not separated from the real state of his subjectivity."
The objection: if the yogin's nature expands as creation, maintenance and destruction, does it not change? Answer: the knower never changes; the three acts exist only by the power of the knower.
Spanda Karika 1.14 to 16 gives the distinction: of doer and done, only the done perishes; "when that force is destroyed, ignorant people cry, saying, 'we too are also destroyed'". Lakshmanjoo's example is a mother whose baby dies: the baby is "the outcome of your effort towards objectivity", but she is not destroyed.
The memory argument in 3.31 is a version of the Pratyabhijna school's central proof: memory and recognition need a single continuous subject that links past and present (IEP). As philosophy it is strong against Buddhist momentariness; as proof of a universal God consciousness it moves fast, since continuity of memory would also be explained by a continuing individual mind. The grieving mother example in 3.32 states a metaphysical point (the knower is untouched by the loss of what was "done") in a way that can sound cold; it is best read as a statement about the self that grief cannot destroy, not as advice to the grieving.
The Liberated in Life (Sutras 3.33 to 3.45 and Conclusion)
The final thirteen sutras give a portrait of the jivanmukta, the one liberated while living. He holds joy and sorrow as objects, lives in seclusion within I-consciousness, and can fall and rise again. The section teaches the trick of catching God consciousness in moments of joy, taste, music and even fear, and ends with breath, the central channel, and the last word of the text: pratimilanam, the repeated opening and closing of the eyes of the universe.
Sutra 3.33: sukhaduhkhayor bahirmananam
"He experiences his joy and his sadness just like an object, with 'this-consciousness' separate from his being."
The yogin does not think "I am joyous" or "I am sad" but "this is joy", "this is sadness", the way one says "this is a pot". He experiences "the whole universe with I-consciousness and... his individuality with this-consciousness." Pleasure and pain here stand for "everything that exists in this world".
| Ordinary person | Yogin of 3.33 | |
|---|---|---|
| Joy | "I am happy" | "This is joy" |
| Sorrow | "I am sad" | "This is sadness" |
| Universe | "This" (object) | "I" (self) |
| Individuality | "I" | "This" |
The Pratyabhijna commentary says such yogins, though they feel pleasure and pain, are not affected, since "the cause of the rise of pain and pleasure is individuality and they have destroyed individuality". Spanda Karika 1.5: reality is where there is no pain, no pleasure, no object, no subject, "and not even the negation of these".
Think of the swap in the table: the ordinary person calls the world "this" and the body-mind "I"; the yogin calls the world "I" and the body-mind "this". Liberation in this text is not the end of feeling but a change in who owns the feeling.
Sutra 3.34: tadvimuktas tu kevali
"Separated from pleasure and pain, he is established in real seclusion."
Kevali bhava, "aloneness", is the opposite of ordinary loneliness. Lakshmanjoo reads the Upanishadic story of the Lord who was alone and afraid: fear arises when "this-ness" is excluded and set apart; when this-ness is absorbed into I-consciousness, "you are only one and there is nothing to fear." The Kalikakrama says the pair "pleasure welcome, pain to be avoided" is "the great illusion of duality". The particle tu here signals "supremacy", not contrast.
Sutra 3.35: mohapratisamhatas tu karmatma
"The yogi whose God consciousness is destroyed by this state of illusion is dependent on his action."
The opposite case. He becomes karmatma, "embodied action", a plaything of past, present and future karma: "I have a good job which is very nice. I have been fired and I am very sad!" The Kalikakrama: he does not see the 36 tattvas in a universal way; only good and bad appear, causing pain.
Sutra 3.36: bhedatiraskare sargantarakarmatvam
"He drives away the field of differentiated perceptions and enters into a new world of God consciousness."
"Drives away" (tiraskara) does not mean ignoring the world but not being attached to it inwardly; he lives among differences while "the nature of his God consciousness shines forth". He rises through the three pure subjects:
| Subject | Tattva |
|---|---|
| Mantra pramata | Shuddhavidya |
| Mantreshvara pramata | Ishvara |
| Mantramaheshvara pramata | Sadashiva |
Triple awareness
The Svacchanda Tantra says: fix awareness "not only in two, but in three". Lakshmanjoo explains: two is in-breath and out-breath; the third is the junction between them, "between one step and another step, between one thought and another thought". Another Svacchanda verse (6.54 to 55) describes the powers of such a one: he terrifies Brahma, Vishnu and Indra, grants boons and curses, can "level great mountains".
Sutra 3.37: karanashaktih svato 'nubhavat
"The power of creation is the experience of every individual."
The proof is dreaming: "you can create a motorcar to drive, the road to drive on and the fields and vegetation"; in imagination, or even drunk, "you can think that you are the Lord". IPK 1.6.11 says every being has the power of knowing and acting according to the thoughts he chooses. When the yogin desires "with an intense force of awareness", the claim continues, his creations appear in the waking state and "can also be perceived by others"; the Tattvagarbha says his desire becomes like the wish-fulfilling kalpataru.
Sutra 3.38: tripadadyanupranam
"Emerging from the state of turya, insert the absolute bliss of that state into the waking, dreaming, and deep sleep states."
Lakshmanjoo gives a second, finer reading of the "three states": the three phases of every perception:
| Phase | Name | Example: reading glasses |
|---|---|---|
| About to direct consciousness | Srishti (creation) | You are going to look at the glasses |
| Consciousness on the object | Sthiti (protection) | You are looking at them |
| Curiosity ends, moves on | Laya (reabsorption) | You lose interest and turn to the book |
Turya is in all three, but under illusion it shows itself "for just one moment like a flash of lightning". Holding that moment "is just a trick... You do not have to move here and there with breath." The example: tasting a well-cooked ear of corn.
The trick in daily experience
Kshemaraja quotes a run of verses from the Vijnana Bhairava and Spanda Karika that turn ordinary intense moments into doors:
| Source | Moment of entry |
|---|---|
| VB 15 | The state free of thought, filled with Bhairava's shakti |
| VB 69 to 70 | The joy of union with one's life partner, and even its memory; without the trick, "the union of two beasts" |
| VB 71 | Seeing a loved one after long absence (Lakshmanjoo: a son returning unannounced after twenty years) |
| VB 72 | The joy of a fine meal or drink |
| VB 73 | A melodious song |
| SK 1.22 | Rage, overwhelming happiness, indecision, terror "of a fierce lion" |
| SK 1.25 | The "player of tricks" is never covered |
"This whole universe has come into existence just to carry you to God consciousness. It is not meant to push you down."
The doors are the moments of greatest intensity, pleasant or painful, because intensity briefly stops the chatter of thought. The Vijnana Bhairava's famous verses on sex, food, music and fear are here placed inside the Shiva Sutras' method, and the instruction is the same for all: be absolutely aware at the flash, inwardly, and give it life "again and again".
Sutra 20 and sutra 38
Kshemaraja insists they differ: 3.20 inserts turya into the three states (waking, dream, sleep) so they become one with it; 3.38 inserts turya into "each and every act of our daily life" by the trick of awareness.
Sutra 3.39: cittasthitivac charirakaranabahyeshu
"The awareness of God consciousness should not only be infused in that state where one's mind is established in one-pointedness, but... in the establishment of his body, in his organic actions, and in the external objective world."
What the yogin has with eyes closed must be held in body, senses and world. VB 65: infuse awareness that the universe or your own body is filled with your own bliss, and you melt into supreme bliss. When this fails, I-consciousness slides back onto body, puryashtaka, prana and void, "he feels he is absolutely incomplete. Then desire appears in him."
Sutra 3.40: abhilashad bahirgatih sambahyasya
"Due to the insatiable and insistent desire to fill that gap (in his nature), his flow and movement are toward the objective world... and so he is carried from one birth to another."
This is the Shiva Sutras' psychology of craving. Anava mala is the feeling of incompleteness; from it comes desire (abhilasha), which turns attention outward. The carriers are the energies of the shakticakra: the six kancukas, the inner organs, the ten senses and the five tanmatras. The image: like bamboo set alight by its own friction in the wind, "he destroys himself by his own impurities".
Sutra 3.41: tadarudhapramites tatkshayaj jivasamkshayah
"All desire vanishes in that fortunate person whose consciousness is established in his own real nature. For him, the state of being a limited individual has ended."
By grace, he turns back. Jiva means the awareness "I am the body... the senses... the mind, intellect and ego". The Kalikakrama: as dreams vanish on waking, so the more one holds "this universe is only subjective consciousness", the more one becomes that; "this imagination has become true." The yogin "determined to destroy the sphere of time (kalagrasaikatatparah)" fixes on the timeless point, which is found "between two breaths, between one step and another step, between one word and another word."
Sutra 3.42: bhutakancuki tada vimukto bhuyah patisamah parah
"For him, the five elements are only coverings. At that very moment, he is absolutely liberated, supreme and just like Shiva."
The answer to an objection: if individuality is gone, why does the body not drop? Because the body is now a covering (kancuka), worn, not identified with. He is bhutakancuki (covered by the elements), not bhutadharin (holding them). His attitude: "This body is the frame, let it remain like this, what do I care?"
Lakshmanjoo's example: people tell the doctor "Please check my pulse." "In fact, they have no pulse... it is the body that is unwell; they are always the same."
| Source | Promise |
|---|---|
| Kularatnamala | When a master reveals reality, he is liberated from that moment; the rest of life is "like a machine" |
| Unnamed verse | Established "for only one second" in Brahman, he is liberated and liberates the whole universe |
| Netra Tantra 8.8 | Realising it for a fraction of an eye-blink, he will not come again |
| Kulasara | Even the sound of the word passing from ear to ear liberates |
Sutra 3.43: naisargikah pranasambandhah
"This connection with breathing in and breathing out is his nature."
Why does the body remain? Because breath is the first form consciousness takes. Bhatta Kallata: "prak samvit prane parinata", "the first change of God consciousness takes place in the breath" (Tattvarthacintamani).
The descent has two steps:
| Step | Name | Mark |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Pranana, "breathless breath" | Life without breathing: a hand is alive though it does not breathe; a foetus has pranana first |
| 2 | Prana, in and out breath | Exhaling creates, inhaling destroys (Svacchanda 7.25); the letter "ha" |
The Vajasaneya Samhita names the goddess Mahaghoreshvari, who creates and destroys time flowing in ida, pingala and sushumna, and in past, present and future.
Sutra 3.44: nasikantarmadhyasamyamat kim atra savyapasavyasaushumneshu
"If his consciousness is established in the central vein in that force, which is the energy of life (pranana), then he remains always the same. For him, there is no difference in traveling in prana, apana, or sushumna."
Nasika here does not mean "nose" but the energy of breath that gives life and removes stiffness; at death the body becomes rigid. For the one centred in antari samvit and the central breath, it does not matter whether breath flows in the left, right or central channel, of the 72,000 nadis. VB 106: knowledge of subject and object is the same for all beings; "in both kinds of knowing, yogis always remain aware."
Sutras 3.43 and 3.44 concern prana, nadis and kundalini. The text's own instruction (3.38) is that the trick "does not" need moving "here and there with breath", and Lakshmanjoo's notes say the subtle kumbhaka mentioned earlier is "only done by advanced yogis". Breath retention and channel work belong under a qualified teacher; this edition presents them for understanding only.
Sutra 3.45: bhuyah syat pratimilanam
"This yogi simultaneously and repeatedly experiences the revealing state and the concealing state of the objective world."
The last sutra names the fruit. The universe enters his nature (nimilana, closing the eyes) and emerges again afresh (unmilana, opening), "not once, not twice, but repeatedly". This is why, for him, "the state of being Shiva is not fresh or new... This state of being Shiva is already his nature."
The Svacchanda Tantra (10.371 to 372) supplies the last images: fire risen from wood, once pure and blazing, "does not again enter into that wood"; the yogin free of the three malas lives in impurity without being attached.
"So, practicing in this way, repeatedly taking it out and then bringing it back to your own nature, is intended for knowing this very state of being."
Swami Lakshmanjoo on 3.45Kshemaraja's Conclusion
Kshemaraja closes with five verses about his own commentary, the Vimarshini. He has placed it "before the public because it is adorned with references from the agamas and the Spanda Shastra." Its glory, he says, is that "it has the power to generate curiosity to realize Shaivism in the minds of those who have no curiosity." The rare soul who realises "this universe is only existing as congealed foam in the ocean of nectar of universal consciousness" becomes one with Shiva. The last line credits the method to the teacher: the sutra will, "by the trick of your Master, cause you to quickly overcome differentiated universal perception."
The reading of 3.45 matters. Lakshmanjoo follows Kshemaraja's "pratimilanam" (opening and closing of the world in consciousness). Some editions read "pratiniryanam" here, and Bhaskara's numbering differs across the whole Third Awakening, so the final sutra is one of the places where the text itself is unsettled (Sanatana Rahasya on the Shiva Sutras). Sutra 3.37's claim that the yogin's creations can be "perceived by others" in waking life, and the Svacchanda verses on levelling mountains, are assertions without proposed tests; the more defensible core is 3.37's first half, that everyone already creates in dream and imagination. The VB 69 to 70 verses on sexual union are often sensationalised in modern "tantra" marketing; in this commentary they are one item in a list with food, music and fear, all teaching the same thing: awareness at the moment of intensity.
Twenty-Two Lessons from the Shiva Sutras
- Consciousness is the self. The first sutra, caitanyam atma, is the whole teaching; everything after is method and description.
- Bondage is knowledge, not sin. Limited knowing (1.2) and the three malas bind; liberation is a change in how you know.
- The alphabet rules the bound. Matrika, the mother of letters, governs thought (1.4); words carry us away until we hear them as consciousness.
- Effort itself is Bhairava (1.5). The upsurge of awareness is not a means to God; it is God appearing.
- Turya is already present in waking, dream and sleep (1.7); the task is recognition, not manufacture.
- Wonder marks the stages of yoga (1.12). Amazement, not technique, is the sign of progress.
- The mind is mantra when it holds awareness of God consciousness (2.1). Japa is a state, not a count.
- The master is the means (2.6). The text gives no path that bypasses the Guru.
- Pure knowledge must be guarded. Even the realised can slip into ignorance and dreams of their own (2.10, 3.19).
- The bound soul is the mind (3.1): the same consciousness, contracted into thought, becomes the field of the anava practitioner.
- Powers come from the veil (3.6): they arise while illusion still covers the yogin, and attachment to them blocks the higher goal.
- Life is theatre. The self is the actor, the inner soul the stage, the senses the audience (3.9 to 3.11): play every role, never forget who plays.
- Freedom is the same inside and outside samadhi (3.14). A realisation that disappears when the eyes open is not yet freedom.
- After realisation you become more active, not less (3.15). Strength to sustain awareness arrives with it.
- The real asana is awareness (3.16). Physical posture imitates it.
- Watch the junctions. Turya flashes at the entry and exit of every state, breath, step and thought (3.20, 3.36, 3.41); hold it there.
- Reputation is an obstacle. Caring what others think pulls the yogin out of the centre (3.23); the true yogin hides (3.26).
- "Just like Shiva" while embodied (3.25). Illness and prarabdha karma remain; full union comes at death.
- Ordinary life is the vow. Bed tea, walks and talk are worship and mantra for the realised (3.26, 3.27).
- Hold joy and sorrow as "this". The realised swaps "I" and "this": the world becomes I, the body-mind becomes this (3.33).
- Desire is a sense of a gap (3.40). It is anava mala in action, not a moral failing.
- Intense moments are doors. Food, music, union, reunion, rage and fear all flash God consciousness for the aware (3.38).
The Book's Key Schemes in One Table
| Framework | Elements | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Three Awakenings / upayas | Shambhava (1), Shakta (2), Anava (3); Kshemaraja's scheme | Structure |
| Three malas | Anava (incompleteness), mayiya (difference), karma (action) | 1.2 to 1.3 |
| Four states | Waking, dream, deep sleep, turya (plus turyatita) | 1.7 to 1.11, 3.20, 3.38 |
| Five acts of Shiva | Creation, preservation, destruction, concealment, grace | 1.5, 3.31 to 3.32 |
| Matrikacakra | Vowels as seed, consonants as womb; 50 letters | 1.4, 2.7, 3.19 |
| Five kalas | Nivritti, pratishtha, vidya, shanta, shantatita | 3.4 |
| Five pervasions | Atmavyapti vs Shivavyapti | 3.7 |
| Four abhinayas | Angika, vacika, aharya, sattvika | 3.10, 3.12 |
| Eight mothers | Five senses with manas, buddhi, ahamkara | 3.19 |
| Three energy classes | Ghoratari, ghora, aghora | 3.26 |
| Three phases of perception | Srishti, sthiti, laya | 3.31, 3.38 |
| Pure perceivers | Mantra, mantreshvara, mantramaheshvara | 3.36 |
| Two breaths | Pranana (breathless), prana (in and out) | 3.43 |
| Three channels | Ida, pingala, sushumna; 72,000 nadis | 3.43 to 3.44 |
Reading the Whole Book
:::warn CRITICAL LENS Revelation as authority. The text presents itself as dictated by Shiva and found on a rock; the Vasugupta legend is the tradition's account, while the historical author, date and even the exact sutra list are matters for scholarship (Wikipedia on Vasugupta). Bhaskara's commentary divides the text differently (23, 10 and 46 sutras) and gives variant readings at several points, so "the" Shiva Sutras are partly Kshemaraja's edition (Sanatana Rahasya).
The upaya frame is the commentator's. Reading the three sections as shambhava, shakta and anava is Kshemaraja's system; the sutras themselves do not say so, and Bhaskara does not frame them this way.
Assertion more than argument. Most of the book's claims are supported by quotations from Tantras (Svacchanda, Netra, Malinivijaya, Kalikakrama, Vijnana Bhairava) rather than by reasoning; the exceptions, such as the memory argument for a continuous subject, come from the Pratyabhijna school (IEP).
Rival schools ranked. Patanjali's asanas are "imitations" (3.16), Vedanta's dissolution of the world is implicitly inferior to recognising it as one's own energy, and ordinary people are "beasts" (pashu), a technical term with a harsh sound.
Guru and faith. The insistence on a master (2.6, 3.25, 3.26) and on "blind faith", combined with the rule that realisation must be hidden, removes any external check on a teacher.
Powers. Creation in waking reality, boons and curses and liberation by sound alone are stated without tests.
Lakshmanjoo's independence. Twice he openly disagrees with Kshemaraja (2.10 and 3.29); his translation changes "dancer" to "actor" (note 14) for English readers. The edition is a living oral commentary on a commentary, not a neutral translation. :::
People in the Book
| Person | Role |
|---|---|
| Swami Lakshmanjoo (1907 to 1991) | Translator and oral commentator; last master of the Kashmir Shaiva oral line (Lakshmanjoo Academy) |
| John Hughes | Editor; recorded and published the lectures |
| Vasugupta | Traditional recipient of the sutras on Mahadeva mountain; credited with the Spanda Karika |
| Kallata | Vasugupta's disciple; author of the Spanda Vritti and the Tattvarthacintamani ("the first change of God consciousness is in the breath") |
| Kshemaraja | Abhinavagupta's disciple, author of the Vimarshini commentary followed here |
| Bhaskara | Earlier commentator with a different division and readings |
| Abhinavagupta | Kshemaraja's teacher; author of the Tantraloka and commentator on drama |
| Utpaladeva | Author of the Ishvara Pratyabhijna Karika and hymns, often quoted |
| Bhatta Narayana | Author of the Stavacintamani |
| Macchandanatha | Founder of the Kula; story of his insight (2.10) |
| Shri Nathapada | Quoted on owning the energy of independence (3.13) |
| Patanjali | Author of the Yoga Sutras; foil in 3.16 |
Key Terms
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Abhinaya | Dramatic portrayal; sattvika is the highest, "real acting" |
| Ajapa gayatri | The automatic mantra of breath, hamsa / so'ham |
| Anava mala | The impurity of feeling incomplete |
| Antaratma | The inner soul in dream, sleep and void; the "stage" |
| Avara prasava | "Lesser birth": turya only at the edges of states |
| Bhutakancuki | One who wears the elements as a covering |
| Bija | Seed; svatantrya shakti |
| Camatkara | Ecstatic wonder of consciousness |
| Jivanmukta | Liberated while living |
| Kancuka | Covering that limits Shiva's powers |
| Kevali bhava | Real seclusion: I-consciousness with no separate "this" |
| Matrika | Mother of letters; power of language over the bound |
| Nimilana / unmilana | Closing and opening; absorption and emergence of the world |
| Pashu | Bound soul ("beast") |
| Pranana | Breathless breath of life |
| Prarabdha karma | Karma that produced this body; exhausted only by experience |
| Puryashtaka | Eightfold subtle body: five tanmatras, mind, intellect, ego |
| Shakticakra | Wheel of energies; the senses and their powers |
| Shivatulya | "Just like Shiva" |
| Spanda | Vibration; the creative pulse of consciousness |
| Svatantrya | Absolute freedom of consciousness |
| Turya / turyatita | Fourth state / beyond the fourth |
| Vimarsha | Self-awareness of consciousness |
| Vrata | Vow; for the realised, daily life itself |
Living the Teaching Safely
:::warn SAFETY NOTE The Shiva Sutras assume a living teacher. Breath retention, chakra and kundalini work, and the advanced kumbhaka mentioned in the notes are Guru-only. The practices below are the gentle, awareness-based ones the text itself puts first; stop and seek help if practice brings distress, dissociation or sleep problems. :::
| Stage | Practice | Sutra |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Remember the first sutra. Several times a day, notice "I am aware" before what you are aware of | 1.1 |
| 2 | Hear words as sound. For a few minutes, listen to speech or a song without following the meaning | 1.4, 3.19 |
| 3 | Watch the junctions. Falling asleep, waking, between breaths, between steps: notice the gap, hold it a moment longer | 1.7, 3.20, 3.36 |
| 4 | Use intense moments. At the first taste of food, a piece of music, sudden joy or fear, turn inward for one breath | 3.38 |
| 5 | Swap "I" and "this". When a feeling arises, name it "this is sadness" rather than "I am sad" | 3.33 |
| 6 | Make routine the vow. Do tea, walking and talk as offerings, without display | 3.26, 3.27 |
| 7 | Keep it hidden. Do not advertise practice or experiences | 3.23, 3.26 |
| 8 | Study with a teacher. Read Lakshmanjoo's full text and seek qualified guidance before any breath or energy work | 2.6 |
The Shiva Sutras end where they began: you are already consciousness, and the whole practice is to stop forgetting it, at the junctions, in the intense moments, and in ordinary tea and talk.