Insight Editions · No. 354
Tantrasara
The Essence of the Tantras
Abhinavagupta · translated by H.N. Chakravarty
Abhinavagupta's prose digest of the Tantraloka in H.N. Chakravarty's translation: the free light of consciousness, the four upayas, time in the breath, the 36 tattvas, the nine degrees of grace, initiation, worship and the Kula rite. All twenty-two chapters, with a glossary, a practice path and critical notes.
A study guide to the Tantrasara by Abhinavagupta, in the translation by H.N. Chakravarty, edited by Boris Marjanovic (Rudra Press, 2012). Shared free for personal reading; not for sale and not endorsed by the author or publishers. Please read and buy the original.
CORE CLAIM
The Self is Siva, a free light of consciousness that hides itself by its own play and reveals itself again. Every doctrine, meditation, mantra and ritual in the Saiva scriptures is a way of letting that self-revelation happen.
SCOPE
The front matter, all twenty-two chapters in order, from knowledge and the four ways to time, the tattvas, grace, ritual, initiation, scripture and Kaula worship, with a glossary, a practice path and a master synthesis: about 27,000 words.
KEY FIGURES
Abhinavagupta; translator H.N. Chakravarty and editor Boris Marjanovic; Swami Chetanananda, Swami Lakshman Joo and Swami Muktananda in the book's own history.
BEST FOR
Readers who want the whole Trika system in one book: the upayas, the six paths, saktipata, the inner meaning of initiation and worship, with critical notes on assertion, sectarian polemic and modern softening.
How to Use This Guide
Tantrasara means "the essence of the Tantras". It is Abhinavagupta's own prose digest of his vast verse work, the Tantraloka ("Light on the Tantras"), and it follows the larger book's plan closely in twenty-two chapters (ahnikas). Its argument fits in one sentence: the Self is Siva, a free light of consciousness that hides itself by its own play and reveals itself again, and every doctrine, meditation, mantra and ritual in the Saiva scriptures is a way of letting that self-revelation happen. The first five chapters give the philosophy and the four ways (upayas) to the goal. The remaining seventeen give the machinery of Tantric practice: time, the cosmic ladder of the tattvas, grace, bathing and worship, initiation in all its forms, consecration, funeral rites, the authority of scripture, and the secret Kula rite.
For each chapter this guide gives:
- The core argument: what Abhinavagupta sets out to establish, in his order.
- Teaching notes: the ideas unpacked one at a time, with each technical term explained when it first appears.
- Insights: what is subtle, distinctive or easy to miss, and how the chapter links to the rest of the system.
- Critical lens notes: where the text asserts rather than argues, where it is doing sectarian work against rival schools, where the translation shapes what you read, or where modern readers tend to soften the text.
- Key terms and practice: a short glossary for the chapter and questions or exercises.
Two cautions. First, the Sanskrit in this edition is printed in Devanagari and much of it does not survive in the digital copy; this guide works from Chakravarty's English, checked against the Introduction and notes. Second, the Tantrasara is short only by comparison with the Tantraloka. Abhinavagupta wrote it, he says, in "simple language" for those who cannot enter the long text, but simple here means compressed. A single paragraph often stands for a whole chapter of the larger work, and many of the ritual chapters assume a living teacher who would fill in the gestures, diagrams and mantras.
The Shape of the Whole Book in One Page
The twenty-two chapters fall into six movements.
- Knowledge and the ways (Chapters 1 to 5). Ignorance is the cause of bondage; knowledge drawn from Siva's scripture removes it. The Self is free light. It returns to itself either with no means (anupaya, Chapter 2), or by will (the Sambhava way, Chapter 3), knowledge (the Sakta way, Chapter 4), or action (the Anava way, Chapter 5).
- The six paths (Chapters 6 to 10). External practice begins with time, found in the breath (Chapter 6); then the path of space: the worlds (Chapter 7), the thirty-six tattvas and how consciousness builds them (Chapter 8), the seven kinds of knower and the fifteenfold analysis of each tattva (Chapter 9), and the five kalas that bind the six paths into one (Chapter 10).
- Grace (Chapter 11). Why some people turn to the highest teaching and others do not: the nine degrees of the descent of power (saktipata), and what makes a true teacher.
- Ritual (Chapters 12 to 20). Bathing (Chapter 12); the worship of the Trika goddesses, inner and outer (Chapter 13); initiation and its varieties, including the putraka initiation (Chapter 14); initiation of the dying (Chapter 15); of the absent and the dead (Chapter 16); the reclamation of those from other orders (Chapter 17); consecration (abhiseka) as teacher or adept (Chapter 18); the last rites (Chapter 19); and the lifelong duties after initiation, with the yearly and funeral observances (Chapter 20).
- The authority of the scripture (Chapter 21). Why the Saiva scripture is a valid means of knowledge, grounded in consciousness itself.
- The secret rite (Chapter 22). The Kaula worship with the ritual partner, in which pleasure is used as a door to consciousness, and a closing verse that returns to the one light.
Why This Book Matters
The Tantraloka runs to thirty-seven chapters and about 5,800 verses, and its standard edition with Jayaratha's commentary fills twelve volumes. Very few readers in any century have worked through it. The Tantrasara is the author's own map of that territory, made by the man who drew the original. Where a summary by a later disciple might soften or select, this one shows what Abhinavagupta himself thought was essential. It is also the place where the famous four upayas are laid out with the greatest economy, and where one can see, in a book a few hundred pages long, how the philosophy of recognition and the ritual world of the Tantras were held together in a single practice.
The Tantrasara answers a question that later readers often get wrong. Kashmir Saivism is frequently presented in the West as a pure philosophy of consciousness, with the rituals as optional decoration. Abhinavagupta gives the cosmic map of ritual and the rituals themselves seventeen of his twenty-two chapters. In his own summary, the metaphysics and the ritual are one teaching.
How the Book Is Laid Out
| Part | Pages | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Preface (Swami Chetanananda) | vii to viii | How the translation came about, through Muktananda, Lakshman Joo and Benares |
| Foreword (Boris Marjanovic) | ix to xii | The genre of the digest; why the text is hard; how the English was revised |
| Introduction (H.N. Chakravarty) | 1 to 50 | A summary of each of the twenty-two chapters |
| Text and translation | 51 to about 230 | The Sanskrit, the English and occasional "Exposition" passages |
| Notes | about 231 to 280 | Explanatory notes by Chakravarty, and by Marjanovic for Chapters 12 to 22 |
| Bibliography and About the Translator | end | Sources; a note on Chakravarty |
Three Men, One Translation
The front matter tells a short, frank story: a scholar steeped in the tradition produced an accurate but unreadable English version, and a second scholar spent two years turning it into English that a reader can follow. Knowing this helps you read the book. The translation is literal at heart and smoothed on the surface, and where it seems odd the cause is often a Sanskrit construction showing through.
Swami Chetanananda's Preface
- Swami Chetanananda, the American teacher who heads the Movement Center in Portland and whose press published the book, traces his interest to May 1980, when Swami Muktananda found him reading science fiction at the Siddha Yoga ashram in South Fallsburg and told him to read Kashmir Saivism instead.
- After Muktananda's death he visited Swami Lakshman Joo in Srinagar, whom he calls the last living lineage holder of esoteric Saivism. When travel to Kashmir became difficult in the early 1990s, he went to Benares and asked Pandit H.N. Chakravarty to translate the Tantrasara.
- Chakravarty's manuscript arrived a few years later and was, in Chetanananda's word, unreadable. It sat for years until Boris Marjanovic took it on.
Boris Marjanovic's Foreword
Marjanovic makes four useful points.
- The genre. Indian schools had a habit of producing brief versions of their doctrine for people who could not spend years on grammar and logic. Abhinavagupta and his disciple Kshemaraja both wrote such digests, and the second opening verse of the Tantrasara gives exactly this reason.
- Why it is still hard. Brevity that helped an eleventh-century reader hurts us. A contemporary would have seen the rituals performed; we have only the words. His example is the "application of the net" (jalaprayoga) in Chapter Sixteen, by which a teacher draws a departed soul into a figure made of kusa grass so that it can be initiated. Abhinavagupta says he received this orally from his teacher Sambhunatha, and the written sources do not let us reconstruct it.
- Read the two books together. The Tantraloka explains what the Tantrasara compresses, and occasionally the reverse. This matches the teaching style Abhinavagupta took from Sambhunatha: never hide knowledge completely, never reveal all of it in one place.
- How the English was made. Marjanovic began working with Chakravarty in summer 2004. The problem, he found, was not poor English but Chakravarty's insistence on literal translation, which kept Sanskrit sentence order. The two went through the text sentence by sentence for two years. Marjanovic also wrote the explanatory notes for Chapters Twelve to Twenty-Two and several for Chapter Nine. He strongly advises reading Chakravarty's Introduction first.
Marjanovic also lists texts that Abhinavagupta cites but which are now lost, including the Bhairavakulormi, Nitya, Paramesvaranuttara and Tantrasadbhava Tantras and the Yogasamcara. Some, like the Tantrasadbhava, have since been edited.
The Library of Congress record in the book gives Chakravarty's dates as 1918 to 2011, so he died the year before publication. The Introduction and notes are therefore his, but the final shape of the English, and the whole second half of the notes, are Marjanovic's. When the notes to Chapters 12 to 22 sound more like a modern academic, that is why.
The Translator
Hemendra Nath Chakravarty was a Benares pandit closely associated with Mahamahopadhyaya Gopinath Kaviraj, the great twentieth-century scholar of Tantra. He had already published a Hindi translation of the Tantrasara. His Introduction, which takes up the first fifty pages, is a chapter-by-chapter summary of the whole book and is the best way into the harder ritual chapters.
The lineage behind this edition runs through two different Saiva worlds. Chetanananda's preface comes from the Siddha Yoga movement of Muktananda and the Kashmiri teaching of Lakshman Joo. Chakravarty's scholarship comes from the Benares pandit tradition of Gopinath Kaviraj. Neither is an unbroken medieval lineage. The book is a modern reconstruction by people who took the practice seriously, which is part of its value and part of what a critical reader should keep in view.
Key Terms
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Tantraloka (TA) | Abhinavagupta's thirty-seven-chapter verse encyclopaedia of Trika ritual and doctrine |
| Tantrasara (TS) | His prose digest of the Tantraloka, in twenty-two chapters |
| Ahnika | "Daily portion"; the name for a chapter, from the idea of a day's lesson |
| Jayaratha | Thirteenth-century Kashmiri commentator on the Tantraloka |
| Sambhunatha | Abhinavagupta's principal teacher in the Kula and Trika lineage |
| Jalaprayoga | "Application of the net"; the rite for initiating a departed soul |
Knowledge, Ignorance and the Free Light
Chapter One sets the terms for the whole book. Liberation comes from knowledge, because only knowledge contradicts the ignorance that binds. That ignorance is of two kinds, and the more basic of the two can be removed only by initiation, which in turn needs a prior, correct understanding drawn from scripture. Then Abhinavagupta states his metaphysics in a single paragraph: there is one free light, it is consciousness, it is Siva, and it is your Self. It contracts itself into an individual and expands back, either with no means or by one of three means.
The Benediction
The book opens with a verse that hides Abhinavagupta's name and his parents inside a description of the highest reality.
- "May my heart pulsate in the form of emission (visarga)": the heart (hrdaya) is the core of consciousness, which the Exposition calls universal bliss (jagadananda), light that "knows neither rising nor setting".
- Yamala, "the pair" or "union", is the perfect equilibrium of Siva and Sakti, a union in which neither is separately itself. All the tattvas emerge from this union while it remains tranquil, "like a waveless ocean".
- Kula here refers to the seventeenth digit (kala) of the moon, the immortal phase beyond the sixteen that wax and wane.
- Visarga, emission, is explained in sexual imagery as the white and red drops of Siva and Sakti, which flow outward and form the bodies of all beings. In the alphabet it is the half-letter "ha" (the visarga sign, two dots).
- The mother, Vimalakala, "who has taken within herself a new creation (Abhinava)", is both Sakti and, as the Exposition notes, the name of Abhinavagupta's mother. The father is five-faced Siva, and also Simhagupta, Abhinavagupta's father.
- Siva's five faces are his five powers: consciousness, bliss, will, knowledge, action. Through them he performs his five acts: creation, maintenance, dissolution, veiling and grace.
This first verse is a model of how the whole tradition writes. One sentence is at once a prayer, a metaphysical statement, a piece of sexual-ritual symbolism and an autobiography. Abhinavagupta was literally born of the union he describes, and he invites the reader to see every birth, including his own, as a small instance of Siva and Sakti's creative embrace.
The Purpose of the Book
Two short verses state the purpose. The Tantraloka is too long for most people to enter, so this "essence of the Tantras" has been composed in simple language. The second verse asks the reader to "collect" the text, a flower picked from Abhinavagupta's heart after the "sun-like" Sambhunatha opened it, as an offering in the worship of Mahesa. Study, in other words, is presented as worship.
Two Kinds of Ignorance
The prose argument starts here, and it is tighter than it looks.
| Kind | Where it lives | What it is | How it is removed |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intellectual ignorance (bauddha ajnana) | In the intellect (buddhi) | Indeterminacy about the nature of reality, and wrong determination that takes the non-self (body, breath, mind) for the Self | By knowledge from scripture, held as firm conviction |
| Innate ignorance (paurusa ajnana) | In the self (purusa) | Thought-construction (vikalpa) as such, a contracted shining of consciousness; the root of samsara | By initiation (diksa) and, finally, by practised knowledge |
The order matters. Initiation removes innate ignorance, but initiation is impossible while intellectual ignorance remains, because initiation assumes a settled conviction about what is to be accepted and what rejected (heyopadeya). So the first task is right knowledge in the intellect, which comes from scripture. And there is a further twist: when that intellectual knowledge is practised, it also uproots innate ignorance, because practice of thought ends in thought-free awareness.
This is one of Abhinavagupta's most important moves. Thought is not simply the enemy. A correct thought, repeated until it becomes conviction, wears down the very habit of thinking that binds us, and leaves the light that thought was always made of. The whole Sakta way of Chapter Four is an expansion of this sentence.
Which Scripture?
Knowledge must come from sastra, and sastra is authoritative only when it is spoken by the Supreme Lord (Paramesvara). Abhinavagupta then ranks the scriptures:
- Other scriptures (the Vedic and non-Saiva traditions) give knowledge that frees only "up to a certain extent", not from all bondage.
- Siva's scriptures come in a fivefold stream (from Siva's five faces) and divide into groups of ten, eighteen and sixty-four: the ten Saiva, eighteen Raudra and sixty-four Bhairava Tantras.
- The best of these are the Trika texts.
- Their quintessence is the Malinivijaya Tantra (the Malinivijayottara), whose meaning is hard to gather. The Tantrasara exists to set it out.
He closes the section with a verse: ignorance is the cause of bondage and is called impurity (mala); when perfect knowledge rises it is uprooted; when self-consciousness free of all impurity dawns, liberation follows.
The ranking of scriptures is asserted, not argued. Abhinavagupta accepts that other traditions free a person partially, which is generous by the standards of the time, but the claim that the Trika Tantras sit at the top is a sectarian position that every rival school made in its own favour. Modern presentations often drop this hierarchy; the text does not.
The One Light
The Introduction (upodghata) that closes the chapter is perhaps the densest paragraph in the book. Its steps:
- The highest thing to attain is one's innate nature (svabhava).
- Innate nature is light (prakasa), because what is not light cannot be proved to be anything's nature.
- That light is one: nothing other than light can enter it, so it has no internal division, and time and space cannot divide it because they too are made of light.
- That one light is consciousness (samvit), whose nature is to make objects appear. "In this regard there is no difference of opinion."
- It is not dependent. Being illuminated by another would be dependence, and there is no other light. So it is autonomous (svatantra), unlimited by time, space or form; all-pervading, eternal, taking every form and having none.
- Its powers: its freedom is bliss (ananda); its relish of delight (camatkara) is will (iccha); its shining is consciousness (cit); its reflective awareness (amarsa) is knowledge (jnana); its joining with all forms is action (kriya).
- Though endowed with these powers, it rests in its own bliss as Siva. By its freedom it shows itself contracted, and is then called "the atom" (anu). By the same freedom it shows itself again as unlimited.
- It does this either without means, or with means, and the means are three: will, knowledge or action, giving the three absorptions (samavesa) called Sambhava, Sakta and Anava.
The chapter ends with the verse that announces the plan of the book: the Self, whose body is light, is Siva, who is free; by the delightful sport of his autonomy he veils his own nature and reveals it again in its fullness, "either with sequence or without it, or by three distinct means."
Note the key word "sport" (narma). Bondage is not a fall, a sin or a cosmic accident. It is a game the Self plays with itself, and liberation is the same Self ending the game, or rather seeing that it was a game. This is why the tradition can be so confident: nothing outside consciousness has ever bound it.
| The four ways | Power used | Chapter |
|---|---|---|
| Anupaya, "no means" | none; recognition is immediate | 2 |
| Sambhava, the way of Sambhu (Siva) | will (iccha) | 3 |
| Sakta, the way of Sakti | knowledge (jnana) | 4 |
| Anava, the way of the individual (anu) | action (kriya) | 5 |
Key Terms
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Prakasa | The light of consciousness; that by which anything appears |
| Vimarsa / amarsa | Reflective awareness; consciousness knowing itself |
| Svatantrya | Autonomy, absolute freedom; Siva's defining power |
| Mala | Impurity; another name for ignorance |
| Bauddha ajnana | Ignorance in the intellect: indecision and wrong conviction |
| Paurusa ajnana | Innate ignorance in the self: contracted, thought-bound awareness |
| Vikalpa | Thought-construct; a determinate mental form |
| Samavesa | Absorption; the merging of the individual into Siva |
| Upaya | Means, way |
| Anu | "Atom"; the contracted individual soul |
Reflection and Practice
- Write down one conviction you hold about yourself that is a wrong determination in Abhinavagupta's sense: taking the body, the breath or a mood for the Self. What would its correct opposite be?
- Read the eight steps of "The One Light" slowly and stop at the one you cannot accept. The rest of the book is an attempt to argue you past that point.
- Notice that the chapter treats study as worship. Before reading Chapter Two, try reading a page as an offering rather than as information, and see whether the reading changes.
Anupaya: The Way Without Means
The shortest chapter in the book makes the most radical claim. For someone struck by an intense descent of grace (saktipata), hearing the teacher's word once is enough. Such a person discerns for himself that the Lord is already his own Self, and is absorbed permanently, without any means, because no means could add anything to what is always present.
The Argument Against Means
Abhinavagupta asks what a means could possibly accomplish with regard to a Lord who is self-luminous and is one's own Self. He tests five possible answers and rejects each.
| What a means might achieve | Why it cannot |
|---|---|
| The attainment of one's nature | Innate nature is eternal; it is never lost |
| The knowledge of the Lord | He is self-illuminating; he does not need to be lit up |
| The removal of veils | In the supreme reality no veil can exist |
| Entry of one into the other | Enterer and entered are not different |
| The means itself | Nothing separate from reality exists to serve as a means |
So the whole universe is one consciousness, beyond time and space, unaffected by accidental attributes, not restricted by form, not conveyed by words, not described by the instruments of knowledge, yet the cause of time, space and all the instruments of knowledge. "It is 'I' myself." In that core of mine the universe shines as a reflection. One who discerns this with firm conviction is absorbed into the Lord without means, and needs no restraints of mantra, ritual, meditation or observance.
The chapter's verse gives the image that everyone remembers: the multitude of means does not reveal Siva. Could the thousand-rayed sun be lit up by a jar? One of broad vision, discerning thus, enters self-manifest Siva at once.
The surprising detail is that even here reasoning (tarka) is called "the limb of yoga". Anupaya is not anti-intellectual. The person still "discerns" (vivecayati). What makes it anupaya is that the discernment happens once and is complete, with no gradual practice. Chakravarty's Introduction adds that anupaya is not counted among the upayas because of its subtlety: the person needs no internal or external help, and the teacher's word, heard once, sets him on the "transcendent path" (anuttarapatha).
Where Anupaya Fits
Jayaratha, quoted in the Introduction, explains a fine point. In the three upayas there is still a trace of duality, because each works through one of Siva's powers: will, knowledge or action. In anupaya only bliss (ananda) is at work, and bliss has nothing outside itself to want. So anupaya corresponds to the power of bliss, as Sambhava corresponds to will.
Anupaya is easy to romanticise as "instant enlightenment". The text sets two conditions that modern presentations often drop. The grace must be intense (drdha saktipata), which Chapter Eleven treats as rare, and the teaching must come from a qualified teacher in the tradition. The chapter does not say that anyone who hears "you are already Siva" is thereby liberated. It says that a rare kind of person, already prepared by grace, is.
Key Terms
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Anupaya | "No means"; immediate, permanent recognition |
| Saktipata | Descent of power; grace |
| Tarka | Reasoning, discernment |
| Nityodita | "Ever risen"; permanently awakened absorption |
| Anuttarapatha | The transcendent path |
Reflection and Practice
- Take the five "what could a means achieve" questions and answer them for yourself, with reference to your own awareness right now. Which one feels least convincing?
- The image of the jar and the sun cuts against much spiritual practice. Notice where in your own practice you are trying to light the sun.
The Sambhava Way: The Universe as Reflection
Someone who cannot remain constantly in that unbroken circle of light can still enter thought-free (nirvikalpa) absorption into Bhairava by contemplating the power of autonomy. The method is a single insight with a long elaboration: everything you experience is a reflection in the mirror of consciousness, with no original outside it. Then Abhinavagupta shows how the universe is generated within that mirror, as the Sanskrit alphabet, the fifty letters understood as phases of the Lord's self-awareness.
The Logic of Reflection
He first defines a reflection: that which cannot shine separately but shines when mixed with something else. Examples from every sense:
- a face in a mirror;
- a taste reflected in saliva;
- a smell in the nose;
- sexual touch reflected in the organ of pleasure;
- the sensation of a spear's thrust reflected in the inner organ of touch;
- an echo in empty space.
Reflections are real enough to have effects (the limbs tremble, semen is emitted), but they are not primary: a reflected taste does not cure disease, a reflected smell has no flower behind it, an echo is not someone speaking.
The universe, he says, shines as a reflection in the light of the Lord in exactly this way. The obvious objection follows: then what is the original (bimba)? There is none. Does that mean the reflection has no cause? If you insist on a cause, it is the Lord's own power, autonomy (svatantrya). The Lord is the bearer of the reflection of the universe, and this is why he is the universe. The universe is the place where consciousness becomes manifest; consciousness is the universe "in reverse".
An ordinary mirror reflects an object outside it. Abhinavagupta's mirror reflects nothing outside itself, and still shows a world. That is the force of the image: appearance without an external source. The tradition's whole answer to the Buddhist idealist and the Vedantin lies here. Unlike the Buddhist, it gives the mirror a knower. Unlike Sankara's Vedanta, it calls the reflection real as an expression of the mirror's own power, not an illusion.
The Mirror That Knows
Consciousness, unlike a glass mirror, is aware of what it reflects. If consciousness lacked self-awareness it would be insentient (jada). This self-awareness (amarsa) is not conventional, not a matter of learned language. It is inseparable from consciousness and is "impregnated with the supreme sound (paranada)", the pre-verbal "word" that holds in itself all the Lord's powers. The chapter's closing verse puts it plainly: forms shine in a mirror, but the mirror is not aware of them; supreme consciousness, by the continuous flow of its own delight, reflects the universe and knows it.
The Alphabet of Consciousness
This is the technical heart of the chapter and of much Trika ritual. The fifty Sanskrit letters are read as the stages by which the Lord's self-awareness unfolds into a world.
| Letters | Origin in consciousness |
|---|---|
| a, i, u | The three primary powers: the Supreme (anuttara), will (iccha), unfolding (unmesa) |
| a (long), i (long), u (long) | Each of these at rest in itself: bliss (ananda), lordship (isana), wave (urmi), the first stir of action |
| (The first three are "sun", made of light; the long three are "moon", made of rest and delight. No object has yet entered.) | |
| r, r (long), l, l (long) | When an object enters will and lordship, light is "arrested": r when light dominates, l when it rests. They are neuter, part vowel and part consonant, because the object is not yet distinct |
| e, ai, o, au | Anuttara and ananda expand into will and unfolding to give e, o; joined again with anuttara, they give ai, au. This is the play of the power of action |
| am (the bindu) | Everything created so far rests as a point of pure light before re-entering the Supreme |
| ah (the visarga) | The emission of the Supreme: the creative outflow |
These sixteen vowels are the seeds (bija). From them, the consonants, called wombs (yoni), are born:
| Consonants | Source |
|---|---|
| ka group | the Supreme (anuttara) |
| ca group | will without an object |
| ta and ta (retroflex and dental) groups | will with an object |
| pa group | unfolding (unmesa) |
| ya, ra, la | will in its threefold form |
| va | unfolding |
| sa, sa, sa (the three sibilants) | will in its threefold form |
| ha | the emission (visarga) |
| ksa | the union of the two consonants ka and sa |
Each group has five letters because it is joined with the five powers. So the Supreme becomes the Lord of Kula (Kulesvara), and his single Kaula power of emission flows outward until the letters become the external tattvas.
Three Kinds of Emission
Visarga itself is threefold:
- Anava: the rest of the mind (citta);
- Sakta: the awakening of the mind;
- Sambhava: the dissolution of the mind.
Counting the Powers
Seen as one undivided awareness, there is one Lord. Divided into vowels and consonants, there is the possessor of power and power (seed and womb). Seen as eight groups with the Lord of the Wheel (the letter ksa), there are nine. Each letter separately gives fifty. With subtle divisions, eighty-one. In reality the reflective awarenesses are only six (the three short and three long vowels), which expanding and contracting become twelve, and these twelve are the goddesses called Kalikas, the Kalis.
These pure awarenesses become, at the level of pure knowledge (suddhavidya), the mantras and mantra-lords; at the level of maya they become ordinary letters, which descend through the three levels of speech, pasyanti, madhyama, vaikhari, into everyday language. Ordinary letters are like bodies without life. When they are re-enlivened by pure reflective awareness they become potent (savirya) and give enjoyment and liberation. That is what makes a mantra.
One who sees himself as the single resting place of all reflective awarenesses, in which all tattvas, beings and worlds are reflected, attains liberation while living through Sambhava absorption, and, as with anupaya, needs no mantras or other painful procedures.
The phonemic scheme can look like numerology. Its point is practical. If every sound you hear and every word you think is a contracted form of the Lord's self-awareness, then language, the very stuff of vikalpa, becomes a way back. The letters that bind as ordinary speech liberate as mantra. The difference is not in the sound but in whether the awareness behind it is alive.
Chakravarty translates "aham", the I, and the vowels and consonants with care, but the digital copy drops many transliterations, and the scheme above is reconstructed with the help of his notes and the parallel in Tantraloka Chapter Three. The precise assignment of letters to powers varies slightly between Abhinavagupta's works and in the Paratrisika Vivarana. The structure is stable; some details are not.
Key Terms
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Pratibimba / bimba | Reflection / original image |
| Paranada | Supreme sound; the pre-verbal ground of self-awareness |
| Anuttara | "Nothing higher"; the Supreme, the letter a |
| Bija / yoni | Seed (vowel) / womb (consonant) |
| Visarga | Emission; the creative outflow; the letter ah |
| Bindu | Point; the letter am |
| Matrka | The "little mother", the alphabet as power |
| Kalika | The twelve goddesses of consciousness |
| Pasyanti, madhyama, vaikhari | Seeing, intermediate and spoken levels of speech |
| Jivanmukti | Liberation while living |
Reflection and Practice
- Look into a mirror and notice that the room in it has no back, no space behind the glass. Then ask what the room you see without a mirror is reflected in.
- Say the letter "a" aloud and let it fade. Notice the silence it emerges from and returns to. The chapter treats that silence as the Supreme, and every sound as its emission.
The Sakta Way: Purifying Thought
When someone cannot enter directly, they can purify thought step by step. This is the Sakta way, and its single instrument is right reasoning (sattarka), which is the same thing as meditation (bhavana). Beings are bound because, through thought, they believe themselves bound. A new and contrary thought, "I am the transcendent and the immanent", cuts the old one, and once its work is done it falls away too. Rituals and yoga have value only as supports for this pure thought. The chapter then sets out the powers of the Lord, the twelve Kalis, and the yogin's freedom from ideas of pure and impure.
Thought Against Thought
- Beings think themselves bound because of vikalpa. That self-conception (abhimana) is the obstacle.
- A contrary vikalpa cuts the vikalpa that causes samsara. Its content: the supreme reality transcends all the limited tattvas up to and including Siva; it is undivided consciousness; it holds the universe in place, it is the universe's vitality, the universe "breathes" by it; and it is "I". So I am both beyond the universe and the universe itself.
- This conviction does not arise in those "blinded by maya", because they lack its causes: right reasoning, right scripture and a right teacher. The Vaisnavas and others are held by attachment (raga) to their limited scriptures and are even jealous of the higher ones.
Is supreme reality, then, also a vikalpa? Certainly not. The vikalpa only removes the impression of duality. Reality is everywhere, omniform and self-shining; thoughts can neither support nor refute it.
Where Right Reasoning Comes From
In a person keenly touched by grace, right reasoning arises spontaneously; such a person is said to be "initiated by the Goddesses". For others it comes from study. Abhinavagupta defines the roles exactly:
| Element | Role |
|---|---|
| Teacher | Selects the right scripture for the disciple |
| Scripture (agama) | Produces a pure vikalpa (suddhavikalpa) |
| Right reasoning (sattarka) | A series of homogeneous thoughts free of doubt; this series is meditation (bhavana) |
| Bhavana | Makes the indistinct appear as if present and distinct |
The Demotion of Yoga
This is one of the boldest passages in the book. No direct means except reasoning, "the light of pure knowledge", can be a limb of yoga. He goes through Patanjali's eight limbs:
- Restraints (yama) like non-violence, and observances (niyama) like austerity, all rest on objects; what could they do for consciousness?
- Breath control (pranayama) in its forms also rests on objects.
- Withdrawal (pratyahara) improves only the senses.
- Concentration, meditation and absorption (dharana, dhyana, samadhi), practised in order, can identify the meditator with the object of meditation. But the supreme reality is not an object, so it cannot be meditated on in this way.
What, then, is practice for one established in consciousness? It is steadying breath, intellect and body in it, as one practises carrying a load, studying, or dancing. But nothing can be added to or taken from consciousness. The impression of duality is not a thing; it is only ignorance of one's own nature, and a pure thought removes it. Reality, by its own freedom, takes on ignorance, then becomes intent on blossoming, blossoms, and is fully blossomed.
This is a quiet revolution against classical yoga. For Patanjali, the eight limbs lead to the separation of spirit from matter. For Abhinavagupta, the problem is not that spirit is mixed with matter but that consciousness misconceives itself, and only a change of conception can fix that. Breathing exercises can steady the instrument; they cannot change the understanding. The yoga of the Sakta way is a yoga of insight.
Ritual Reread as Thought
The limbs of yoga are not discarded but reinterpreted. Pure thought is purified by sacrifice, fire offering, mantra repetition, vows and yoga, each understood as a form of conviction.
| Practice | Abhinavagupta's meaning | The conviction it builds |
|---|---|---|
| Yaga (worship, offering) | Offering all entities to the Lord | "All things are established in the Lord; nothing is separate from him." External flowers and sandal paste help because offering is pleasing to the heart |
| Homa (fire offering) | Dissolving all entities in the fire of the Lord's consciousness | "All things are made of light" |
| Japa (mantra repetition) | Enlivening reflective awareness of the highest reality as one's Self, not dependent on any object | Self-recognition as continuous inner speech |
| Vrata (vow) | Seeing the body, a jar and so on as identical with the Lord | The Lord's own self-conception. Quoting the Nandisikha: "The highest vow is the harmony of all" |
| Yoga | A particular vikalpa whose nature is union with one's own nature | Steadiness in the ever-shining light |
The Names of Sakti and the Three Goddesses
The Lord's essence is fullness of consciousness, and this fullness is his Sakti, called in the scriptures by many names: body (kula), capacity, wave (urmi), heart (hrdaya), essence, vibration (spanda), glory, the three-formed goddess (trisika), Kali, Karsini, Candi, speech, enjoyment, vision, and Nitya. "The entire universe is his Sakti." Still, it can be summed up as three.
| Goddess | What she does |
|---|---|
| Para (supreme) | The universe from Siva to earth is born and seen in indeterminate consciousness |
| Parapara (supreme-and-non-supreme) | Projects the universe like an elephant in a mirror: different and not different |
| Apara (non-supreme) | Manifests the universe as differentiated |
| Parasakti / Matrsadbhava, Kalasankarsini (the fourth) | Withdraws all three back into the Lord by unification (anusandhana) |
The Twelve Kalis
Each of the four, by its freedom, shines as creation, maintenance and dissolution, so there are twelve. Abhinavagupta lists the twelve as phases of a single cycle of cognition, each described by a form of the verb kal:
- Consciousness shapes things within.
- It projects them outside as distinct forms.
- It finds external things pleasant and desirable, and draws them in, wanting to dissolve them.
- It raises doubt about obstacles to that dissolution, and dissolves them too.
- It assimilates the part of the thing that shone as doubt.
- It creates the agent of withdrawal and knows it as its own Self.
- It leaves some entities as traces (vasana) and some as consciousness alone.
- It creates the wheel of instruments, the senses and mind.
- It shapes the lords of the instruments.
- It creates the limited subject at the level of maya.
- It creates the knower intent on abandoning limitation and taking up bliss.
- It manifests the fully blossomed Self.
These twelve divine goddesses turn like a wheel, simultaneously or in sequence, for all subjects or one. Outside, they appear as months, the signs of the zodiac, and as pots and cloths. They nourish the autonomy of the Lord of the Wheel (Cakresvara) and are collectively called Sri Kali. The word kalana means moving, projecting, knowing, counting, making things enjoyable, sounding and withdrawing. Abhinavagupta quotes Bhutiraja: she is Kali "on account of projecting, knowing and counting". For details he refers to his Paratrisika Vivarana and his hymns, adding the line that sums up his method: esoteric secrets should not be disclosed in one place, nor kept totally hidden.
The twelve Kalis are a phenomenology of a single act of perception, from the first inner stir to the final rest in the Self. Read slowly, the list describes what happens every time you see a cup, want it, doubt, take it in and forget it. The Krama school's goddess worship is, on this reading, close attention to how experience happens.
Beyond Pure and Impure
The yogin should not torment himself with thoughts like "this food is allowed, this is forbidden; this is pure, this impure." Purity is not a property of objects the way blueness is; it is a product of imagination, and the same thing is called pure on one occasion and impure on another. The rules from the Vedas down to the Saiva Siddhanta Tantras "serve no purpose in this context". The directive spoken by Siva himself overrides other directives.
He also warns against a false liberalism: seeing "everything from Visnu to Siva as Paramasiva", and so treating what should be rejected as acceptable, is wrong, and the anuttara yogin must reject it.
The closing verses state the whole chapter. Bound souls are convinced: "I am dull, I am bound by past deeds, I am impure, I am led by others." When a firm conviction contrary to this is perfected, the same bound soul at once becomes the Lord. The yogin should not endanger himself with "the unsound precepts of dullards".
Two things in this chapter deserve a careful reading. First, the dismissal of the Vaisnavas as jealous and attached is sectarian polemic of a common medieval kind, not an argument. Second, the freedom from purity rules is real and radical, but it is framed within the initiated Trika practitioner's discipline. It is not a licence for anything. Abhinavagupta, in the same breath, insists that some things must be rejected. Modern readers who quote only the first half of the passage turn a disciplined transgression into a general permission.
Key Terms
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Sattarka | Right reasoning; a doubt-free stream of correct thought |
| Bhavana | Meditation as creative contemplation; making the unclear vivid |
| Suddhavikalpa | Pure thought-construct, which removes impure ones |
| Abhimana | Self-conception, conviction about who one is |
| Para, Parapara, Apara | The three goddesses of Trika |
| Kalasankarsini | The fourth goddess, who devours time; the withdrawing power |
| Kalana | The activity of Kali: projecting, knowing, counting, withdrawing |
| Anuttara yogin | Practitioner of the path of the Absolute |
Reflection and Practice
- Write the four convictions of the bound soul ("I am dull, I am bound, I am impure, I am led by others") and, under each, its contrary. Repeat the contraries, slowly, at the start and end of a day for a week. This is bhavana in its simplest form.
- Take one ritual act you already do (lighting a lamp, a prayer, a meal) and do it with the conviction Abhinavagupta assigns to homa: everything here is made of light.
- Watch one ordinary act of perception and try to notice any of the twelve phases.
The Anava Way: Mind, Breath, Body and Things
When thought cannot purify itself unaided, it can rely on means of a limited kind: the intellect, the breath, the body and external things. This is the Anava way, the way of the individual. Its forms are meditation (dhyana), the "upward movement" (uccara) of the breath, the subtle sound called varna, the bodily postures and gestures called karana, and the use of external supports such as an altar or linga. The goal is the same as before: to arrive at the one consciousness in which all of these rest.
The Four Supports
| Support | Form in the Anava way |
|---|---|
| Intellect (buddhi) | Meditation (dhyana) |
| Breath, gross | Uccara: the rising of the five vital airs, prana, apana, samana, udana, vyana |
| Breath, subtle | Varna: the inner syllabic sound |
| Body | Karana: specific arrangements of the body (explained under mudra) |
| External objects | Pots and so on, used in worship of the altar (sthandila) and the linga |
Meditation: The Three Lights
- Meditate first on the supreme reality in the heart of your own consciousness.
- Then meditate on the union of fire, sun and moon, which stand for the knower, knowing and the known.
- Keep meditating until the "fire of Bhairava" blazes up, fanned by the wind of meditation.
- See this fire surrounded by the twelve flames, the twelve Kalis of Chapter Four, forming a wheel. Its energies go out through an opening such as the eyes and come to rest on objects.
- Then see the object filled first by the moon (creation), then lit by the sun (maintenance), then dissolved by the fire of withdrawal, and finally merged into transcendence.
- With the wheel now full, apply it to the residual traces of things, and dissolve them likewise.
The result is the firm conviction that creation, maintenance and dissolution are nothing but one's own consciousness, which is freedom. Then one realises the state of Bhairava without delay. Abhinavagupta adds that specific worldly goals also come through this practice.
Uccara: The Rising of the Breath
This passage is compressed and needs slow reading.
- First let the breath rest in the heart, the void.
- With prana, let it rise and rest in external objects.
- Filled by the moon of apana, one experiences one's all-inclusive nature and becomes indifferent to everything other than the Self.
- With the rise of samana, one experiences the unity of all objects at rest.
- With the fire of udana, the distinction of subject and object dissolves; this fire devours object, knower and knowledge.
- With vyana, the highest knower, free of limits, becomes manifest.
These stages of rest (visranti), from the void to vyana, are six stages of bliss:
| Stage | Bliss |
|---|---|
| Void (sunya) | Nijananda, one's own bliss |
| Prana | Nirananda, bliss of the void of objects |
| Apana | Parananda, supreme bliss |
| Samana | Brahmananda, bliss of Brahman |
| Udana | Mahananda, great bliss |
| Vyana | Cidananda, bliss of consciousness |
| All together | Jagadananda, universal bliss, which neither rises nor sets |
By resting in any of these stages, one attains the reality of rest (visrantitattva), which is different from body and breath. This is the secret of the seed mantras "sa" (creation) and "ha" (dissolution); by continuous unification of these two syllables one purifies vikalpa.
"Sa" and "ha" are the sounds of the breath going in and out, and together they make "hamsa" ("swan") or, reversed, "so'ham" ("I am That"). The Anava way here becomes almost Sakta: the breath is used to recognise rather than to control. Compare the instruction in the Vijnana Bhairava to attend to the point where the breath turns.
Signs of Progress
For one practised in these methods, five signs appear, matched to the states of consciousness.
| Sign | What happens |
|---|---|
| Bliss (ananda) | A first glimpse of the fullness of the Absolute |
| Upsurge (udbhava) | For a moment, the firm conviction that one is free of the body |
| Trembling (kampa) | The identification with the body loosens, overpowered by inner strength |
| Sleep (nidra) | The tendency to externality disappears; the self dissolves in the non-self and the non-self in the Self |
| Great pervasion (mahavyapti) | Rooted in the "place of truth" (satyapada) |
| Whirling (ghurni) | Follows the great pervasion |
These run from the waking state to the state beyond the fourth (turyatita) and occur as the yogin enters the triangle, the bulb (kanda), the heart, the palate, and the upper coiled power (urdhvakundalini). The place where the rising breath rests, where objects dissolve into a transcendent vibration, where they bud and where they fully blossom, is the threefold linga; the highest linga is called the Heart of the Yogini (Yoginihrdaya). When this vibration contracts and expands as the union of the two (yamala), it rests as the subtle emission (visargakala). "Here I should stop revealing secrets."
Varna: The Subtle Sound
In the rising breath there is a sound (dhvani) that sounds continuously, "as if imitating the unmanifest". This is varna, and its chief forms are again "sa" and "ha". When the consonants from ka to ma, with or without vowels, are merged into the core of the breath or simply remembered, one experiences a balanced vibration of consciousness, because the mantra-word is free of convention and therefore full. After this, the yogin should bring together heart, throat, lips and the two "ends of twelve" (dvadasanta) and unite them all in the core of consciousness. Some teachers say that white and yellow syllables emerge from the reflective consciousness vibrating in the heart.
The summary verse: by vibrating consciousness without any object to be named, and by restraining the movement of both moon (apana) and sun (prana), a person enters consciousness in a balanced way and becomes perfect in all the forms of mantra: cid, bija and pinda mantras.
Dvadasanta, "the end of twelve", is the point twelve finger-breadths from the nose (outside) or above the crown (inside). Kanda is a bulb-shaped centre at the base of the trunk. These are Tantric body-maps, not anatomical claims, and the meanings differ between texts. Abhinavagupta is openly holding back here ("I should stop revealing secrets"), and this guide does not attempt to reconstruct the breath practices as instructions. They belong with a teacher.
The Point of the Whole
The chapter ends with a verse that sums up the first five chapters. For some people vikalpa reaches fullness without any means; for others it is purified through means, which are many: the intellect, the breath, the body and external objects. They are called "limited", "but at the attainment of the result, how can there be any distinction?"
This last line answers an anxiety the hierarchy might create. Anupaya, Sambhava, Sakta and Anava are not better and worse paths so much as different entrances suited to different degrees of grace. The person who needs a breath practice is not lesser in the end, because the end is the same Self.
Key Terms
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Anavopaya | The individual's way, through mind, breath, body and objects |
| Dhyana | Meditation; here, contemplative visualisation |
| Uccara | "Rising"; the practice of the vital breaths |
| Prana, apana, samana, udana, vyana | The five vital airs |
| Visranti | Repose, rest |
| Varna | The subtle syllabic sound in the breath |
| Karana | Bodily posture or gesture used in practice |
| Dvadasanta | "End of twelve"; a point twelve finger-breadths beyond the body or within it |
| Kanda | The "bulb", a centre at the base of the trunk |
| Turyatita | Beyond the fourth state |
Reflection and Practice
- Sit quietly and observe the breath without changing it. Notice the tiny pause after the in-breath and after the out-breath. Without forcing anything, rest attention in those pauses for ten minutes. This is the safe, preparatory core of the Anava way.
- Look at one object, a cup or a flower, and slowly walk through the three lights: the object filled (moon), held (sun), and dissolved (fire), and then simply rest.
- Advanced breath practices (retention, kundalini work, the "ends of twelve") are described in the text but should be learned only from a qualified teacher.
External Practice and the Path of Time
Chapter Six begins the long account of the Anava way's external practice, called "forming the place" (sthanaprakalpana). The "place" is threefold: the breath, the body and external objects. The chapter deals with the first. Its claim is extraordinary and precise: all of time, from a single moment to the life of the cosmos, is contained in one breath. A practitioner who sees the whole path of time arising in the breath, and sees himself as its owner, experiences that he is already liberated.
The Six Paths
Here Abhinavagupta introduces a scheme that organises everything from Chapter Six to Chapter Ten: the sixfold path (sadadhvan), the six ways in which reality is laid out for ritual and meditation. They fall into two groups of three.
| Path of time (kaladhvan) | Path of space (desadhvan) |
|---|---|
| Varna (phoneme), the supreme or subtlest | Kala (the five "phases"), subtlest |
| Mantra, the subtle | Tattva (principle), subtler |
| Pada (word), the gross | Bhuvana (world), grossest |
The path of time shines in the early part of the power of action, the path of space in its later part, where forms are diverse.
Time Is Breath
- Time (kala) is the sequential and non-sequential unfolding of "mutative activity" (kalana). Its cause is the Lord's power called Kali, and time exists within the Lord.
- Consciousness, isolating itself from the knowable, becomes a void (sunya), then, intent on taking objects, becomes as if fallen into the power of action and takes the form of breath (prana), which fills the body with its five forms and so shines as a living being.
- Breath moves from the heart because of three powers: the Lord's power, one's own power and effort.
The measure is the body itself. The breath of every being from Brahma to an insect, measured by its own fingers, runs thirty-six finger-breadths (angulas) out and thirty-six in, seventy-two in all.
The Calendar Inside a Breath
| Unit inside the breath | Corresponds to |
|---|---|
| 1 1/5 angulas | one casaka ("minute") |
| One complete in-and-out breath | a day and a night |
| 2 1/4 angulas | one tuti; four tutis make a prahara (three hours) |
| The out-breath to the end of twelve | the dark fortnight: the moon (apana) gives its digits to the sun (prana) one by one |
| The turning point at the dvadasanta | new moon; a cough or forced exhalation at this point is a lunar eclipse |
| The in-breath | the bright fortnight, ending in full moon; a break here is a solar eclipse |
| Six angulas of movement | the sun's passage through the zodiac from Capricorn to Gemini (northern course) |
The twelve signs carry the twelve conditions of a life: insemination, the will to become, the desire to be born, imminence of birth, beginning to arise, appearance; then birth, duration, transformation, growth, decay and death. Their presiding deities are twelve Rudras with their saktis.
Scaling up: by assigning more lunar days to each angula, a single breath holds twelve years, then sixty years. The number of breaths in a day and night is 21,600, which equals the number of "lunar days" in that sixty-year scaling.
The figure 21,600 breaths a day (fifteen a minute) is a real approximation of resting human respiration, and it reappears across Indian yoga literature as the daily count of the unspoken mantra hamsa. Abhinavagupta's system turns this into a rite: every day the breath recites the whole cosmic calendar, and a practitioner who knows this is performing the year's rituals without moving.
Cosmic Time
The same pattern continues outward, each level's lifetime being a day of the next:
| Level | Measure |
|---|---|
| Humans | one human year = one day of the gods |
| The four ages (yugas) | 12,000 divine years: Krta 4,000, Treta 3,000, Dvapara 2,000, Kali 1,000, with junctions of 400, 300, 200, 100 |
| Manvantara | 71 cycles of the four ages |
| Day of Brahma | 14 manvantaras; at its end the fire of time (kalagni) burns the three worlds; beings flee to Jana world |
| Life of Brahma | 100 years of such days = a day of Visnu |
| Life of Visnu | a day of Rudra |
| Rudra, the Satarudras, Srikantha, Gahanesa | each a day of the next; in Gahanesa's night all dissolves into maya |
| Maya, Isvara, Sadasiva | days of tens and hundreds of parardhas; Sadasiva's night is the great dissolution (mahapralaya) |
| Bindu, ardhacandra, nirodhika, nada, sakti, vyapini, anasrita | Sadasiva dissolves into these finer phases in turn |
| Samana | the equilibrium beyond all; called Brahman. All the cycles rise from it "like the opening and closing of the eyelids" |
He even lists the eighteen Indian powers of ten, from eka (one) to parardha (10 to the 17th).
Numerous creations and dissolutions happen in one breath. The breath rests in consciousness, and the vibration (spanda) is simply consciousness appearing as time. That is why dreams and imagination, with their own times, involve no contradiction.
Time in the Other Breaths
- In apana, which runs from the heart down to the base, the same six "causal agents" (Brahma, Visnu, Rudra, Isa, Sadasiva, Anasrita), who sit in the heart, throat, palate, forehead, crown opening and end of twelve in the upper body, operate in the lower body. They preside over boyhood, youth, old age, death, rebirth and liberation.
- Samana moves through ten channels (nadis) from the heart and balances the body's fluids. On an equinox day it alternates left, right and centre in a regular pattern of 900 breaths per zodiac passage.
- In udana time rises to the end of twelve as vibration; in vyana, which pervades everything and has no sequence, time is a subtle surge.
The Rising of Sounds and Mantras
The phonemes too arise in the breath in their groups. When a mantra is held with effort, day and night, with the thought of unification, the teacher becomes one with the mantra's deity.
A key philosophical point closes the section: difference of time is a difference in knowledge, not in the object. A thought lasts as long as one rising of the breath, the "subtle moment" (ksana); until another vibration arises, there is one thought. Abhinavagupta even cites Panini's grammar (Astadhyayi 1.2.32) on how a single accented vowel divides into pitches, to show that what seems one can be internally sequenced.
The chapter's verse: visualising one's own breath as one with consciousness, which transcends time yet is always turning the wheel of creation, maintenance and dissolution, one becomes Bhairava.
The cosmic numbers are traditional Puranic chronology, not discoveries of this text, and Abhinavagupta does not ask us to take them as astronomy. His concern is homology: the structure of a breath and the structure of the cosmos are the same, so working with one is working with the other. A reader can value the contemplative point without accepting the calendar as fact.
Key Terms
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Sthanaprakalpana | "Forming the place"; external practice on breath, body or objects |
| Sadadhvan | The six paths: varna, mantra, pada, kala, tattva, bhuvana |
| Kaladhvan / desadhvan | Path of time / path of space |
| Angula | Finger-breadth; the unit of breath measurement |
| Tuti | A unit of 2 1/4 angulas; a "lunar day" in the breath |
| Visuvat | Equinox; the balance of the two breaths |
| Mahapralaya | The great dissolution at the end of Sadasiva's day |
| Ksana | The subtle moment, the span of one thought |
Reflection and Practice
- Count your breaths for one minute at rest. Multiply by 1,440. How close are you to 21,600?
- At the end of an exhalation, notice the brief "new moon" before the in-breath. Rest there lightly, without holding. Abhinavagupta treats this junction as the most potent moment in time.
The Path of Space: The Worlds
The path of space, born of Sakti, rests in consciousness. Through the "outlet" of consciousness it extends into the void, intellect, breath and channels, then into the body, and finally into the altar, the image of the deity and so on. The knower of the tattvas dissolves it all back in reverse order: paths into the body, body into breath, breath into intellect, intellect into void, void into consciousness. Then he experiences consciousness as Paramasiva, and beyond that, as immanent too.
Prakriya: Knowing the Map
For those who cannot rest in full consciousness, the next best thing is to know the scheme (prakriya) of the cosmos well; the text quotes "there is no knowledge superior to prakriya." The scheme:
| Level | Size relative to the one below |
|---|---|
| Earth (the Egg of Brahma) | 100 crore yojanas; spherical. From bottom: the fire of time (Kalagni), hells, nether worlds, earth, heavens, up to Brahma's world. Outside lie the worlds of the hundred Rudras |
| Water to ego (ahamkara) | each ten times the previous: water, fire, air, ether, the five subtle elements, the five organs of action, the five senses, mind, ego |
| Intellect (buddhi) | 100 times ego |
| Prakrti | 1,000 times intellect: the Egg of Prakrti |
| Purusa | 10,000 times prakrti |
| Niyati | 100,000 times purusa; then raga, impure vidya, kala (time), kala (limited agency), each 100,000 times the last |
| Maya | 10 million times: the Egg of Maya |
| Pure knowledge, Isvara | 10 million times each |
| Sadasiva, Sakti | a billion times each: the Egg of Sakti |
Each higher principle is a sheath of the lower and pervades it. All, up to Sakti, are pervaded by Siva, who is immeasurable and pervades all six paths. Brahma's eggs and prakrti's eggs are innumerable.
The lords of the worlds in each intervening region also have shrines on this earth. Those who die in these places are given a place in that world, and the lords lead them upward through initiation.
The Worlds by Name
The chapter's verses list the worlds (bhuvanas) that make up the ritual cosmos. A summary:
- Earth (nivrtti kala): sixteen worlds, from Kalagni and Kusmanda through Hataka, Brahma, Muni, Lokesa, Rudras, then below Ananta: Kapalin, Agni, Yama, Nirrti, Bala, Sighra, Nidhisvara, Sambhu the lord of vidyas, and Virabhadra at the head.
- Water: eight lords including Lakulisa and Prabhasa.
- Fire: the "secret eight" (Guhyastaka), including Bhairava, Kedara, Mahakala, Srisaila, Hariscandra.
- Air: the "very secret eight", including Bhima, Indra, Attahasa, Kuruksetra, Gaya.
- Ether: the "pure eight", including Gokarna, Avimukta (Varanasi), Rudrakoti.
- Ego: eight more, including Kalanjara.
- Intellect: the eight heavenly beings; prakrti: the eight yogas beginning with Akrta.
- These "seven groups of eight" sit in pratistha kala. Purusa holds the eleven Rudras beginning with Vama; impure vidya, kala, niyati two worlds each, kala three, maya eight: twenty-eight from purusa to maya. Pure vidya has five, Isvara eight, Sadakhya five; santa kala eighteen.
The closing verse gives the practice: conceive all these paths in the body, in the breath, in the intellect, or in the great void of consciousness, and one attains the fullness of Bhairava.
Many of these "worlds" carry the names of real pilgrimage sites: Kedara, Mahakala (Ujjain), Srisaila, Kuruksetra, Gaya, Gokarna, Avimukta. The Tantric cosmos is India's sacred geography folded upward. To pass through the tattvas in initiation is, symbolically, to visit every shrine in the land, and the shrines on earth are doors into those levels.
The OCR in this chapter garbles several names, and lists of the eighty-odd bhuvanas vary between the Malinivijaya, the Svacchanda Tantra and the Tantraloka. Treat the names above as indicative. The structure (kalas holding tattvas holding worlds) is what matters for the ritual chapters.
Key Terms
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Desadhvan | The path of space: kalas, tattvas, bhuvanas |
| Bhuvana | A world, a level of the cosmos with its lord |
| Anda | "Egg"; one of the four spheres: earth, prakrti, maya, sakti |
| Prakriya | The systematic scheme of the cosmos |
| Vyapini | "Pervading"; Sakti as she runs through all paths |
Reflection and Practice
- Try the dissolution sequence slowly as a contemplation: room into body, body into breath, breath into thought, thought into the silence before thought, silence into awareness. Stay a minute at each step.
The Tattvas: How Consciousness Builds a World
Everything said about the worlds is the greatness of the Lord's freedom. What runs through all worlds as a "great universal" is the Lord; a tattva is a form that runs through only some worlds, with distinctive features (earth, for instance, is bearing, hard and gross). Chapter Eight explains how the thirty-six tattvas arise, and it does so through a careful theory of causation.
Two Kinds of Causation
| Kind | What it is |
|---|---|
| Absolute (paramarthika) | The Lord, as sole agent, manifests everything from Siva to earth as non-different from himself, while resting in himself |
| Created or imagined (kalpita) | The ordinary cause-and-effect order, made by the Lord's will and enforced by niyati, with its regular "before and after" |
The everyday order is real enough, but it depends on the absolute one. A sprout can come from a seed or from a yogin's will; in a dream one makes whole worlds. The potter makes the pot, but the potter's consciousness is the Lord's, and even the potter's sense of "I made it" is created by the Lord, like the pot. Different scriptures give different accounts of causes, and all are relevant, just as a scorpion can be born from cow dung, from a worm, by a yogin's will, by mantra, or by medicine.
This is a subtle answer to a modern objection. Abhinavagupta does not deny ordinary causation; he says it is a regularity that consciousness imposes on itself. Science, on this view, studies niyati, the Lord's self-restriction, and is perfectly valid within it. What it cannot do is explain the restriction.
The Pure Path
The Lord's five powers each give a tattva when they predominate:
| Power dominant | Tattva | Lord |
|---|---|---|
| Consciousness (cit) | Siva | Siva |
| Bliss (ananda) | Sakti | Sakti |
| Will (iccha), with knowledge and action balanced | Sadasiva | Sadasiva |
| Knowledge (jnana) | Isvara | Isvara |
| Action (kriya) | Pure knowledge (suddhavidya) | Ananta |
These five make the pure path, and Siva creates them directly. Their inhabitants are of five types: Sambhava, Sakta, mantramahesvaras, mantresvaras and mantras.
The Impure Path and the Three Malas
The impure path is created by Ananta, also called Aghoresa, at the Lord's will, for limited souls who long for experience. This longing is subtle: a vibrating sense of "I am not complete", a desire with no object yet, which the text calls mala. It differs from raga, attachment, which is desire for some object. The three impurities, anava, karma and mayiya, are not separate things; they arise from the Lord's will to hide himself.
- In vijnanakala souls the mala is about to be destroyed.
- In pralayakala souls it is opening up, and karma, helped by anava mala, produces the variety of worlds.
- Sentience is lordship; insentience is its defilement. Both, in maya's creation, are the Lord's will.
- Maya is the material cause, pervading all created things. The power that manifests it, mayasakti, belongs to the Lord and is distinct from the maya tattva.
Proof That the Tattvas Are Twofold
Abhinavagupta's teachers argued that whatever shines in an idea also shines outside as distinct, like a pot, and that the same holds for maya and kala and even for a "sky flower". This uses the logical form called "positive concomitance only" (kevalanvayin). Those who directly experience the twofold nature of maya, kala, prakrti and buddhi are called siddhas.
The Five Veils (Kancukas)
Out of maya come the veils that turn universal consciousness into a limited person. They work differently in each individual, and they can be pure, when they serve the Lord's purpose under grace, or impure.
| Veil | Function | Its word |
|---|---|---|
| Maya | The root contraction | (the six together are called six veils) |
| Kala | Limited agency (kimcitkartrtva); "the swelling of the seed of the world" | "something" |
| Vidya (impure) | Limited knowledge; discerns what is reflected in the intellect | "knowing" |
| Raga | Attachment to particular objects | "attached" |
| Kala (time) | Limitation by the present | "now" |
| Niyati | Restriction to a particular object and cause | "I am doing" |
When consciousness works this way in a subtle body, it is a bound soul (pasu).
Two fine points:
- Kala does not change the purusa, which is changeless; it changes maya. They interpenetrate so closely that the difference is hard to see. When grace removes karma, discernment between maya and purusa arises and the soul becomes a vijnanakala, above maya. Likewise discernment of purusa from kala, and from prakrti, lifts one above each. But only discernment between anava mala and purusa gives likeness to Siva, and only full realisation of purusa's fullness gives Sivahood.
- On raga: one cannot define it as the absence of detachment. A detached person may be attached to good deeds; a satisfied eater may seem detached but still carries latent impressions of attachment, without which detachment itself could not arise.
Prakrti, the Gunas and the Senses
- Kala separates knowledge and action from itself and produces prakrti, the balanced state of the three gunas: pleasure (sattva, light), pain (rajas, flickering light, activity) and delusion (tamas, darkness).
- Against Samkhya, Abhinavagupta adds a separate guna tattva, the agitated state between prakrti and its products; and the agitation needs a presiding deity, since prakrti alone could not attach itself to individual souls.
- From the gunas comes intellect (buddhi), where the light of purusa and the reflections of objects meet.
- From the intellect comes ego (ahamkara), the wrong conception of non-self as Self, like mistaking mother-of-pearl for silver. Samkhya denies the Self's reflective nature; Trika gives the "I" agency: at its root ahamkara is pure reflective awareness relishing its own bliss as "I".
- From the three-sided ego come mind, the ten organs and the five subtle elements. The senses come from ego, not matter, because "I hear" still contains the "I". This is why the lame and blind do not lack knowing and acting as such.
- There are five organs of action because action has five ends: excreting, grasping, moving, sexual repose, and speech, the activity interwoven with breath.
- The subtle elements (tanmatras) are the generic, unagitated background of each kind of sensation. From agitated sound comes ether; from sound and touch, air; from form, fire; from taste, water; from smell, earth, which is simply the aggregate of all qualities.
The closing verse: the gross elements, subtle elements, senses, prakrti, veiled purusa, and from vidya to Sakti, all of these are the waves of one's own consciousness expanding in order.
The chapter is a running polemic with Samkhya (and briefly with Vaisesika). Abhinavagupta keeps the Samkhya tattvas but changes their meaning: the evolutes now come from the Lord's will, and the "I" is not a mistake to be dropped but a contracted form of Siva's own I-awareness. He also says frankly that the scriptures disagree on the order of creation, which he reconciles rather than resolves.
Key Terms
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Tattva | A principle; a level of reality with a distinctive nature |
| Paramarthika / kalpita karyakaranabhava | Absolute / imagined causation |
| Suddhadhvan / asuddhadhvan | Pure / impure path |
| Anava, karma, mayiya mala | The three impurities: smallness, action, difference |
| Kancuka | Veil, sheath; the limiting powers of maya |
| Pasu | Bound soul ("the tethered animal") |
| Guna | Quality; sattva, rajas, tamas |
| Tanmatra | Subtle element, the generic form of a sensation |
| Kevalanvayin | A purely positive form of inference |
Reflection and Practice
- Pick one moment when you felt you "did" something. Look for each of the five veils in it: the limited power, the limited knowing, the attachment, the "now", the "I am doing".
- Read the closing verse aloud and then look around the room, naming objects as "waves of my own consciousness". Note any resistance.
The Seven Knowers and the Fifteenfold Analysis
Chapter Nine examines the distinct features of the tattvas through a remarkable piece of analysis: every principle, from earth upward, can be seen from the side of seven different kinds of knower, and in each case it has an object side, a power side and a subject side. This gives the "fifteenfold" division of each tattva. The aim is practical: by learning to see an object as resting in progressively higher knowers, the practitioner climbs back to Siva.
The Seven Knowers (Pramatrs)
| Knower | Their state of knowledge and action (vidya and kala) | State of consciousness |
|---|---|---|
| Sakala | Vidya and kala active through the senses; all three malas | Waking |
| Pralayakala | Vidya and kala indistinct, without objects; anava and karma mala | Dream (in this scheme) |
| Vijnanakala | Vidya and kala about to dissolve, held by traces; only anava mala | Deep sleep |
| Mantra | Pure knowledge awakening | The fourth |
| Mantresa (mantresvara) | Pure knowledge fully awake, no traces left | The fourth |
| Mantramahesvara | Pure knowledge eager to become will, whose essence is freedom | The fourth |
| Siva | Will manifest as freedom itself | Beyond the fourth |
These are seven possessors of power with seven powers. Hence each of the principles from earth to prakrti has seven powers + seven possessors = fourteen aspects, and with its own form (svarupa), fifteen.
| Aspect | Known by the grace of |
|---|---|
| Own form, the object resting in itself | the goddess Apara |
| Power side (sakta), where the knower's powers overflow and the object rests | the goddess Parapara |
| Possessor-of-power side, the object resting in the knower | the goddess Para |
This turns the cosmology of Chapters 7 and 8 into epistemology. "Earth" is not just a lump at the bottom of the universe. It is something that can be known by a sense-bound person, by a yogin in thought-free trance, by a mantra-being, by Siva, and each knowing is a different "earth". To climb the tattvas is to change the knower, not to travel.
An Objection and Its Answer
If being knowable is part of an object's nature, the knowability would itself be knowable, and so on to infinite regress; and the universe would be both knowable and its opposite. Abhinavagupta replies that knowability does not belong to the object's own nature. An object's real nature is what rests first in the knower's power and then in the knower; that nature is self-luminous and shines with reference to none. One object, known by countless knowers, stays one, because all cognitions are manifestations (abhasa). And it is real because it works in transactions: seeing a beautiful woman others are watching, one feels jealousy; seeing something many people are absorbed in, one feels fullness, as when watching a young woman dance.
The Diminishing Count
Above earth to prakrti, the number of aspects drops:
| Own form at the level of | Knowers above | Aspects |
|---|---|---|
| Sakala (purusa to kala) | six | 13 |
| Pralayakala | five | 11 |
| Vijnanakala | four | 9 |
| Mantra | three | 7 |
| Mantresa | two | 5 |
| Mantramahesvara | one (the Lord) | 3 |
| Siva | none | no division, perfect |
This analysis, he says, comes from the Paramesvaranuttara, and it explains why worlds made of the same element (nether worlds, heavens, Rudra worlds) differ: they are known from different distances.
Earth Through the Seven Knowers
As an example, the earth tattva:
- Siva is the light non-different from earth; "the earth itself is Brahman."
- Mantramahesvara is the lord who sends forth the mantresvaras, givers of siddhis.
- The mantra is the knower whose I-sense takes the form of a mantra.
- The vijnanakala of earth has gone beyond Samkhya and the systems of bound souls, practised parthiva yoga (earth yoga) by Saiva knowledge, but has not reached the permanent state.
- The pralayakala of earth, released at the end of an aeon or at death by earth yoga as described in the "texts of the pasus", remains dissolved in earth, though strange dreams may arise.
- The sakala of earth is the person who identifies with earth.
The Sixteen Tutis of One Perception
A second analysis looks at a single act of perceiving blue, measured in the breath. It takes sixteen tutis:
- The first is undivided unity.
- The second is the knower about to emerge.
- Twelve intermediate tutis, of which the first six are thought-free (nirvikalpa): the thought-free state itself and five moments that veil the coming thought (dissolution of the previous thought, its actual dissolution, the intention to open, and the opening, which lasts two moments).
- The penultimate is the manifest knower.
- The last is identical with the object.
As thoughts become fewer, the tutis become fewer, as in an experience of happiness that ends in thought-free rest. Even ordinary people, resting thought in I-consciousness, glimpse the thought-free state. When the "this-ness" diminishes by twos until only two tutis remain, the practitioner fully enters Siva: in the first, complete in itself; in the second, practised with omniscience and omnipotence, granting those powers. Kallata called this tutipata. "That is now enough of revealing secrets."
The sixteen tutis are perhaps the most precise description in Indian literature of the micro-structure of a perception, the tiny thought-free gap before every thought. The practice they imply is not exotic. It is to notice the gap: the instant of pure seeing before "blue" is named.
The Five States
States of consciousness are neither in the object alone nor in consciousness alone, but in their mutual dependence.
| State | Defined by | Yogic name | Meditative name | Knower |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Waking | Experience with external support | Pindastha | Sarvatobhadra | Sakala |
| Dream | Experience whose support is the instrument, as desire | Padastha | Vyapti | Pralayakala |
| Deep sleep | Knowledge as seed only | Rupastha | Mahavyapti | Vijnanakala |
| The fourth (turya) | Inward fullness; "I see" resting in the knower without means, as freedom | Rupatita | Pracaya | Mantra, mantresvara, mantramahesvara |
| Beyond the fourth (turyatita) | No difference from Siva in any entity | Mahapracaya | Siva |
The chapter's verse: the beauty seen in earth and the other categories, when it does not rest in consciousness, is less beautiful than the supreme subject's. Take up the principles in order, see them as I-consciousness full of freedom and self-awareness, and attain your own Self.
Several pages of this chapter are badly damaged in the digital copy, including the table of how the fifteenfold division maps to the five states. The table above follows the clear parts of the text and Chakravarty's Introduction. Readers who want the full mapping should consult Tantraloka Chapter Ten, which this chapter summarises.
Key Terms
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Pramatr | Knower, experiencing subject |
| Sakala, pralayakala, vijnanakala | Knowers with three, two and one mala |
| Mantra, mantresvara, mantramahesvara | Knowers in the pure path, with rising degrees of pure knowledge |
| Svarupa | Own form; the object in itself |
| Tuti | A breath-moment; here, a phase of perception |
| Pindastha, padastha, rupastha, rupatita | Yogic names of the four states |
| Turya / turyatita | The fourth state / beyond the fourth |
Reflection and Practice
- Look at a coloured object and try to catch the instant before you name it. Do this twenty times in a day. The aim is not to stop thought but to notice the thought-free moment that is already there.
The Five Kalas and the Six Paths Together
After worlds and tattvas, the third member of the path of space: the kalas, the five subtlest "phases" that group the tattvas. Then Abhinavagupta shows how all six paths are one path seen from the object side and the subject side.
The Five Kalas
The word kala comes from kalana, "shaping uniformly". A tattva runs through a group of worlds; a kala runs through a group of tattvas.
| Kala | Meaning | Tattvas | Sphere (anda) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nivrtti | "Cessation": creation stops here | Earth | Earth |
| Pratistha | "Establishment": nourishes, replenishes | Water to prakrti (23) | Prakrti |
| Vidya | "Knowledge": the knowable begins to thin and consciousness rises | Purusa to maya (7) | Maya |
| Santa | "Peace": the veils rest in tranquillity | Pure vidya to Sakti | Sakti |
| Santatita | "Beyond peace": conceived only for teaching, meditation and worship | Siva | none |
Because tactile resistance persists up to the Sakti tattva, the "spheres" extend that far. Beyond what can be known, reality is beyond kala.
The Thirty-Six Grouped
A verse groups the tattvas by function:
| Group | Tattvas | Count |
|---|---|---|
| The knowable, gross and subtle | five elements, five subtle elements | 10 |
| Instrumentality, pure and joined to agency | five senses, five organs of action | 10 |
| Instrumentality subordinate, agency prominent | mind, ego, intellect, prakrti, purusa | 5 |
| Result of the purity of agency | the five veils and maya (counted to make five) | 5 |
| Distinctions dissolving toward fullness | pure vidya, Isvara, Sadasiva, Sakti, and the threshold | 5 |
| Siva, free of all limits | 1 |
When Siva is taught or meditated on, the support the mind takes is a thirty-seventh principle; meditate on that, and there is a thirty-eighth. This does not regress infinitely, because meditation on free Siva ends in the thirty-seventh, and the thirty-sixth is to be conceived beyond all.
Three, Five, Nine
The same reality can be grouped in three (atman to vijnanakala, vijnanakala to Isvara, the rest pervaded by Siva), in five (the kalas), or in nine. The number is a convenience for practice.
One Path, Six Ways
- On the object side, the path is threefold: worlds (gross), tattvas (subtler), kalas (subtlest).
- When it rests in the subject, it is also threefold. As instrument of knowledge, it is pada; when the instrument's waves are coming to rest, mantra; when agitation is wholly calmed in the fullness of the subject, varna. When varna rests in its fullness, it reaches its own nature.
Abhinavagupta's three verses, composed in the arya metre for his students, give the counts for each kala:
| Kala | Varnas | Mantras | Padas | Tattvas | Bhuvanas |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nivrtti | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 16 |
| Pratistha | 23 | 56 (in some counts) | 23 | 56 | |
| Vidya | 7 | 2 | 2 | 7 | 28 |
| Santa | 3 | 3 | 3 | 18 | |
| Santatita | 16 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
The verses use number-words (fire = 3, eye = 2, rasa = 6, arrow = 5), a common Sanskrit technique, and the scanned text is damaged in places. The counts in the table are reconstructed from the readable parts and standard Trika sources. In Tantraloka 11 and the Malinivijaya, the fifty letters, eighty-one padas, eleven mantras, thirty-six tattvas and 118 or 224 bhuvanas are distributed across the five kalas; details differ by text.
The six paths are the ritual map for initiation. In Chapters 14 to 19, a teacher "purifies" the disciple by going through one of these paths, any one, because each contains the whole. That is the practical reason for this chapter's dry tables.
Key Terms
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Nivrtti, pratistha, vidya, santa, santatita | The five kalas |
| Anda | Sphere; earth, prakrti, maya, sakti |
| Pada | "Word"; the path at the level of the instrument |
| Kalatita | Beyond the kalas |
The Descent of Grace (Saktipata)
What has been said so far may lead some directly to liberation by the "short cut". For others it leads to initiation and ritual, so these must now be explained. But first: who is entitled to initiation? The answer is: one on whom grace has descended. Abhinavagupta refutes every theory that makes grace depend on something else, especially karma, and then gives his own: grace is the Lord's free act, dependent on nothing, and it comes in nine degrees.
The Refutation of Dualist Theories
Each of the following, he argues, fails:
| Theory of what causes grace | Objection |
|---|---|
| Knowledge removes ignorance, then grace descends | Then what causes the knowledge? |
| Karma | Grace would be just another result of action, an object of enjoyment |
| Being an enjoyer | Too wide: every enjoyer would receive grace |
| The Lord's will, as a separate cause | Mutual dependence, and it implies partiality in the Lord |
| Balance of opposed karmas (karmasamya) | Actions are sequential and cannot cancel; and if they did, the body would drop at once |
| Ripening of mala (malaparipaka) | What is that, and what causes it? |
| Detachment, merit, service to the good, saints' company, worship of gods | All fall to the same question |
These are the views of the dualists (Saiva Siddhanta).
The Non-Dual Answer
The Lord, in play, veils his nature and becomes a bound soul; the same Lord, removing the limit, reveals himself instantly or gradually to the limited knower. The Lord is autonomous, so grace depends on nothing. It is not proper to ask why grace falls on this person: "the Lord shines in that particular way."
But grace does have degrees of dependence, according to what the person wants:
| What the person desires | How grace works |
|---|---|
| Liberation | Independent |
| Worldly enjoyment | Depends on deeds |
| Other-worldly enjoyments | Through Rudra, Visnu and Brahma in maya; gives status as a mantra-being and the discriminations (maya/purusa, etc.) |
| Both enjoyment and liberation | Dependent for the first, independent for the second |
The Nine Degrees of Grace
| Degree | Result |
|---|---|
| Intense-intense | The body falls at once and one becomes Paramesvara |
| Intense-moderate | Firm conviction without scripture or teacher; intuitive knowledge (pratibha) opens by itself. This is the pratibha teacher, who gives enjoyment and liberation to others and need not follow social custom. In his presence other teachers have no authority |
| Intense-mild | A desire to find the right teacher, and loss of interest in wrong ones. Initiation by knowledge gives liberation while living |
| Moderate-intense | Initiated, but without deep conviction; becomes Siva after death |
| Moderate-moderate | Wants Sivahood but is dominated by desire for enjoyment; enjoys yogic powers in this body and becomes Siva at death |
| Moderate-mild | Becomes Siva after enjoyments in another body |
| Mild (three grades) | Desire for pleasure dominates; seeks the Lord by mantra and yoga, which, because they end in liberation, are themselves grace |
Initiation for the intense-mild disciple can be by glance, discourse, teaching of scripture, watching external rites, or the offering of semen and menstrual blood. A well-practised meditator can receive initiation that severs the bond of breath, but only at death (see Chapter 15).
The grace given to Vaisnavas and others is "like the grace of a king" and does not end in liberation. A Vaisnava who also follows the fivefold Saiva stream matures gradually toward Trika; some skip stages; some arrive at once. Teachers of lower orders may not even see the mandala, while a Trika teacher can enliven the lower doctrines.
The True Teacher
- The true teacher knows the whole truth of the scriptures, and is Bhairava himself.
- His competence comes from identity with Siva; charm and beauty are inessential. An incompetent teacher may have every quality except that union.
- Names for the teacher: daisika, guru, acarya, diksaka, and cumbaka ("the one who kisses": reads widely, tastes every text). The best is the one in whom knowledge has fully flowered.
- A seeker after knowledge may approach many teachers. But abandoning a teacher perfect in knowledge requires expiation. If such a teacher is silent or seems to teach wrongly, the cause is the disciple's lack of merit or surrender; keep serving.
Veiling (Tirobhava)
If grace depended on deeds or on niyati, it would be veiling, not grace. Veiling does depend on deeds and can produce intense suffering and delusion. An enlightened person can behave like a fool and then blame that behaviour; a fool can imitate the enlightened. Veiling can cause even someone once on the Saiva path to abandon it. Yet even then, by the wonder of the Lord's will, grace can come again, even after death, through a teacher or relative. So every person performs the Lord's five acts and "should not think of himself as separate from him."
The theory of grace is where non-dualism pays off in practice. A dualist must explain why God chooses some and not others, and every explanation either limits God or makes him arbitrary. Abhinavagupta's answer is that there is no one outside the Lord to be chosen. Grace is the Lord ceasing to hide from himself in a particular place. This removes partiality, though it leaves the question "why here and not there?" deliberately unanswered.
Three things here call for a critical reading. First, the pratibha teacher who need not observe social custom is a powerful idea that has been used, in modern guru movements, to place teachers beyond accountability. Second, the instruction that a disciple must not abandon a teacher "perfect in knowledge", even one who teaches wrongly, sits badly with what we now know about abuse in spiritual communities; the text assumes the teacher is truly perfect and gives the disciple no way to test it. Third, the ranking of Vaisnavas is sectarian. A modern reader can value the theory of grace without accepting these consequences.
Key Terms
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Saktipata | Descent of power; grace |
| Tivra, madhya, manda | Intense, moderate, mild |
| Pratibha | Intuition; the self-arising knowledge of the highest grace |
| Karmasamya | Balance of karmas (rejected theory of grace) |
| Malaparipaka | Ripening of impurity (rejected theory) |
| Tirobhava | Veiling, concealment; the Lord's fourth act |
| Acarya, daisika, cumbaka | Names of the teacher |
| Prayascitta | Expiation |
Reflection and Practice
- Consider the moments when you turned toward a teaching or teacher. Did they feel earned or given? Abhinavagupta would say the turning itself was grace.
- Write down what you would need to see in a teacher to trust them. Compare it with the text's single criterion, identity with Siva, and ask how that could be recognised from outside.
The Bath: Purity as Absorption
Ritual begins with bathing, and Abhinavagupta at once redefines it. Bathing is purity, and purity is absorption into the pure essence of the Lord. Impurity is not dirt but a false conviction: that the Self, which is free, blissful consciousness, is associated with something other than consciousness. Absorption into Bhairava removes it. The water bath is a bath only in a secondary sense.
How Absorption Happens
- In some people it occurs instantly; others need means, used one, two or three at a time, or all together.
- It can happen to anyone, anywhere, at any time. The diversity of means corresponds to how firm each practitioner's conviction (asvasa) is.
- The eightfold absorption: meditate on the Lord's nature and, by placing mantras (nyasa), identify with the eight forms of Siva: earth, water, air, fire, ether, moon, sun and the self. By doing this in one's own body, the limited soul becomes absorbed.
- For those whose conviction is weaker, bathing and fresh clothes give satisfaction and so serve as means. The Anandatantra lists their results: support, nourishment, invigoration, burning of impurity, pervasion, creation, maintenance and non-duality.
The Heroes' Bath
For the viras ("heroes", initiates of the Kula path) the eight forms take a transgressive shape:
| Ordinary element | Vira's equivalent |
|---|---|
| Earth | dust from the union (ranarenu) |
| Water | the water of the vira |
| Air | the great air |
| Fire | the ashes of the vira |
| Ether | the sky above the cremation ground |
| Moon and sun | joined with the previous two |
| Self | the self free of thought-constructs |
The external principal bath for them is performed by looking at the "delightful substance" (wine) in the heroes' vessel, making it Siva, worshipping the mantras in it, and worshipping with it the wheel of deities in body and breath. The inner bath is concentration (dharana) on the centre of earth and the other elements until one is identical with that wheel.
The closing verse: immersion in the Lord's own nature is the bath; only when that is done correctly does the external bath become a ritual bath at all.
Every ritual chapter that follows has this two-level structure. There is an outer act, and an inner meaning that makes the outer act work. Abhinavagupta never says to stop washing, worshipping or making offerings. He says that without the inner absorption the outer act is merely hygiene or theatre.
The vira substances (sexual fluids, cremation ash, wine) belong to the Kaula current that Chapter Twenty-Two treats at length. Abhinavagupta presents them as a higher-grade version of the bath for qualified initiates, not as something for everyone. Modern books on "Tantra" often present such elements as the essence of the tradition; here they are a specialised option within a disciplined ritual system, and the inner absorption is what matters.
Key Terms
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Snana | Bath |
| Asvasa | Firm conviction, confidence |
| Nyasa | Ritual placing of mantras on the body |
| Astamurti | The eight forms of Siva |
| Vira | "Hero"; an initiate of the Kula path |
| Dharana | Fixed concentration |
Worship, Inner and Outer
This is the longest ritual chapter and a model of how Trika worship works. The place of worship is wherever the heart is satisfied and ready for absorption; there is no other qualification. The rite then unfolds in sequence: placing mantras on the body, consecrating the vessel, entering the shrine, determining the directions, burning the body-identification, installing the trident-throne, worshipping the three goddesses, and offering into fire. Throughout, inner contemplation gives the outer act its meaning. The chapter ends with the preparation of a disciple for initiation, and the rules of conduct (samaya) the new initiate must keep.
The Place
- Sacred seats (pitha), mountaintops and the rest, which the scriptures praise, are good because they are solitary and calming, helping identification with the object of meditation.
- The Saktis, absorbed in the Lord and following his niyati, incarnate at sacred places, both in the lands of the "Aryans" of good conduct and in the lands of "barbarians" (mleccha).
Nyasa with the Two Alphabets
Standing at the temple door, place the syllables on the fingers and limbs with two mantras representing Siva and Sakti: hrim nam pham hrim and hrim a ksa hrim, the mantras of the Malini and Matrka orders.
| Point | Rule |
|---|---|
| If using only one | first Malini, then Matrka |
| For liberation | from feet to head |
| For enjoyment | in reverse |
Malini is the alphabet in an unusual order that mixes vowels (seeds) and consonants (wombs), so she fulfils all desires. Her name means "garlanded": adorned with Rudra-powers like flowers and fruit; she is the bee of sound that melts the ice of worldly existence. Because "ya" and "ra" are interchangeable in Panini's grammar, she is both the power of offering and of accepting. By her power even a mantra that has lost its proper procedure becomes effective, and impure Garuda and Vaisnava mantras bestow liberation once purified.
The Grammar of Worship
The vessel for offerings (arghapatra) is then consecrated. Here Abhinavagupta introduces an idea he loved: every ritual act is a sentence with a verb and grammatical cases (karakas): the worshipper (agent), the flower (object), the hand (instrument), the deity (recipient), the vessel (source), the altar (location). In the vessel all the cases become one with the Lord. Whoever sees ritual with this insight is united with the Lord even without knowledge or yoga.
The karaka teaching shows how seriously the tradition took grammar as metaphysics. A sentence like "I offer a flower to Siva" splits one action into many roles. Worship done with understanding collapses all the roles back into one actor, who is the Lord. This is the Pratyabhijna doctrine of the single agent turned into a ritual technique.
Entering the Shrine
- Sprinkle the flowers with water from the vessel.
- Worship the attendant deities outside (om bahyaparivaraya namah) and the deities of the door (om dvaradevatacakraya namah). If the external place is not sacred, do this inside.
- Take a flower, charge it three times with "phat", throw it north-east, conceive all obstacles removed.
- Enter facing the mandala and see the whole temple blazing with the Lord's light.
What a Direction Is
A seeker of liberation sits facing north, so that his bonds are burned by the fire from Aghora. Abhinavagupta then gives a phenomenology of space:
| Direction | Defined as |
|---|---|
| Centre | The manifestation of consciousness itself, from which all directions appear |
| Above | The region appropriated by light |
| Below | What is not so |
| East | What is in front of the light |
| West | Its opposite, since the east "receives" the light |
| South (daksina) | The direction to which the currents of light ascend, "agreeable" |
| North | The region to be illuminated |
The Lord sits at the centre with his five faces: Isana above, Tatpurusa, Aghora, Sadyojata and Vamadeva in the four quarters. Direction is not a separate tattva; like trying to step over your own shadow, the centre always comes with you. "Whatever is in front of a person is east." One should determine direction by bringing the self, the sun and the Lord into one concept.
Burning the Body and Building the Throne
- Facing north, abandon the I-sense and burn the identification with the gross and subtle bodies. Look at your body as if it were someone else's: the Self is bodiless.
- Resting in the tranquil abode, notice the natural inclination toward creativity: its first vibration is the arising of form (murti). Install the deities on that form, especially the Saktis, seats of the Lord's ninefold power.
- Nyasa is sixfold, on six centres, matching the five states plus the sixth, anuttara, the "innate state". In them abide the causal deities Brahma, Visnu, Rudra, Isvara, Sadasiva and Sakti.
- Objection: for one who has become Bhairava, isn't nyasa meaningless? Reply: the tranquil body of Bhairava is so vast that creation and dissolution are manifest within it; tranquillity does not exclude creativity.
The Trident-Lotus Throne
Then one installs, in the body, the breath and the intellect, the throne on which the deity sits. This inner architecture is central to Trika practice.
| Part | Location | Contains |
|---|---|---|
| Root of the staff | The basic power (adharasakti) | the foundation |
| Bulb (kanda) | Above it | pure, solid, holding all |
| Staff (danda), named Ananta | Up to the palate | all tattvas up to kala |
| Knot | Above the staff | maya |
| Lotus of pure vidya | the four-legged seat | |
| Sadasiva, lying on it as the Great Corpse (mahapreta) | everything rests here; he is consciousness with no knowable body, cognising nada | |
| Three prongs from his navel through the openings of the head | Sakti, vyapini, samana, above nadanta to the end of twelve | |
| Three lotuses on the prongs | unmana, beyond mind |
On this throne one conceives the chosen deity. Then come the inner definitions of the four acts:
| Act | Inner meaning |
|---|---|
| Worship (puja) | Offering one's entire being to the essence of all things |
| Meditation (dhyana) | What brings absorption into it |
| Japa | The inner reflection of it as the primal sound (nada), continuously oscillating |
| Homa | The awakened great fire that brings the whole universe to identity with one's Self (visvatmikarana) |
Afterward one meditates on the attendant deities as sparks rising from that fire. The chapter's verses describe consciousness "wandering in the void" (khecara): passing like a staff from the base to the end of twelve, identified with the void beyond the void, abiding in the void and "swallowing the nectar of the void".
The mahapreta, Sadasiva as a corpse, is a startling image with a precise meaning. On the throne of the goddess, the highest male deity is inert: he is pure consciousness with no object. The goddesses on the prongs above him are power. This is the Trika's ritual statement of what Kali iconography shows when the goddess stands on the supine Siva.
Inner Versus Outer Ritual
- Only the inner offering really fulfils the purpose, and truly only in one who has absorption.
- Even such a person should perform outer ritual to remove limitations.
- For one without absorption, outer ritual is the main form, and through it he reaches absorption. Even he needs inner ritual to remove the bound state. If outer ritual is not yet firm in him, the strength of his desire still makes it purifying.
Preparing a Disciple
When someone wants initiation, the preparatory rite runs as follows. This is a long passage; its main steps:
- Select the ground: call to mind Malini or Matrka, throw flowers, scatter white mustard, rice and fried rice charged with "phat" from the north-east.
- Worship Ganesa on a seat ending in pure vidya.
- Worship the great jar (kalasa), decorated and filled with wine, with a betel nut inside, charged by the root mantra 108 times; and a second jar for removing obstacles with "phat". Worship the guardians of the quarters with their weapons.
- A previously initiated disciple carries the jar, pouring an unbroken line of water round the temple while the teacher calls each guardian ("O Indra, stay alert by Siva's order until the rite ends").
- Worship the jars and the altar.
- Kindle the fire, unite it with the fire of consciousness in the heart, see it as Aghora, place Malini and Matrka in it, offer ghee and sesame.
- Consecrate the two ladles, placed facing each other as Siva above, Sakti below. Standing with feet parallel, imagine the full moon rising at the end of twelve, its nectar falling onto the ladle, and recite the mantra ending in "vausat" until the ghee is consumed: the final oblation, which satisfies all mantras.
- Offer caru (rice cooked with ghee) to the altar, jars and fire; keep a portion for the disciple.
- The tooth-stick: the disciple throws it. If it falls south-east, south, south-west or straight down, it is inauspicious, corrected by an oblation with "aghora".
- The blindfold: the disciple stands before the mandala blindfolded, kneels, throws flowers into it; the blindfold is removed and he sees the mantra directly before him, by grace. Those possessed by demons see it with dread.
- The teacher worships blazing deities on his right palm and places it on the disciple's head, heart and navel, burning the bonds.
- Offerings of wine, meat and water outside to the bhutas and directional deities.
- Teacher and disciple eat the caru together, and the teacher stays awake in the enlightened state, united with the disciple.
- In the morning, the teacher does not interpret the disciple's dreams at once, lest he become afraid; he worships with "phat" to reassure him.
- The teacher enters the disciple's body through the breath, touches the six centres (heart, throat, palate, forehead, crown opening, end of twelve), and performs eight purifications at each: forty-eight in all. The disciple gains a portion of Rudra and becomes a samayin, a "keeper of the conventions".
The Samaya Rules
The teacher then gives the conventions (samaya). They are worth listing in full, because they show how a Trika community was meant to live.
- Show devotion to the teacher, to the scriptures and to the deity.
- Be disinclined toward contrary schools.
- Treat the teacher's son as your own; regard fellow students and previous initiates with respect, and do not think of them as born of sexual union (that is, see them as spiritually born).
- Do not look down on barren women.
- Do not utter the name of the deity, the teacher or the mantra except in ritual.
- Do not use the teacher's bed; do not indulge in worldly sport before him; do not regard anyone as superior to your teacher.
- In rites for the dead, worship only the teacher.
- In occasional rites, do not say "sakini" and similar words.
- Worship on festival days.
- Do not associate closely with Vaisnavas and others of lower views; even if one of them has become your teacher (to learn their doctrines), never place him above your own teacher.
- Do not see initiates by their former castes, but as Siva.
- When the teacher's family visits, make offerings according to your means.
- Do not associate with Kapalikas or compare doctrines with theirs.
- Worship according to your capacity; abandon all doubts.
- In the cakra (the circle of initiates), ignore distinctions of elder and younger by birth.
- Do not regard temples and sacred places more highly than the body.
- Keep the ultimate truth of the mantra continuously in mind.
The disciple then offers the teacher "money, his wife, and even his own person" as the fee, satisfies previous initiates and the poor and helpless, and worships the murticakra. He is now entitled to mantra practice, daily ritual, hearing and studying scripture.
Three of these rules deserve comment. The rule against seeing initiates by caste is genuinely radical for eleventh-century India, though it applies inside the ritual circle. The fee of "one's wife" reflects a world where wives were counted among a man's possessions, and modern readers should not soften it into a metaphor without evidence. And the many rules about never placing anyone above the teacher, never using his things, never leaving him, construct an authority structure that has been abused in modern settings. The text should be read as a historical document of a ritual community, not as a model to copy unexamined.
Key Terms
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Pitha | Sacred seat, pilgrimage centre |
| Malini / Matrka | The alphabet in mixed order / in normal order, as goddesses |
| Arghapatra | Vessel for offerings |
| Karaka | Grammatical case-role (agent, object, instrument, etc.) |
| Mahapreta | "Great corpse"; Sadasiva as the seat of the goddess |
| Trisulabja | The trident-lotus throne |
| Unmana | Beyond mind; the highest lotuses |
| Samayin | Holder of the conventions; first-level initiate |
| Samaya | The conventions of conduct for initiates |
| Caru | Rice cooked with ghee, shared in initiation |
Reflection and Practice
- Try Abhinavagupta's definition of the east. Wherever you are, say "east" for what is in front of you, and notice that the centre moves with you. What is it like to treat yourself as the centre of the directions?
- Before any act of worship you already perform, take one minute to look at your own body as if it were another's. Then perform the act.
The Putraka Initiation
After the samayin stage comes the full initiation that makes one a putraka, a "son" of the teacher and of Siva. Abhinavagupta says the full procedure must be learned from the Tantraloka, but he gives its outline. All six paths are placed in the disciple's body and purified; teacher and disciple are made one; the disciple's past and future karma (except that which sustains the present body) is burned. For one who wants enjoyment, he is then attached to a chosen higher world.
The Mandala Rite
On the third day after the samayin rite:
- Worship the deities of the mandala, the trident and lotuses; the outer family and door deities outside.
- To the east, from north-east to south-east, worship Ganesa, the teacher, the teacher's teacher, the great-grand-teacher, the perfected teachers of old, the yoginis, the Goddess of Speech (Vagisvari) and the guardian of the field.
- With their permission, place the entire sixfold path on the throne, from the root of the trident to the tips of the white lotuses.
The Three Tridents
The mandala has three tridents, each with three prongs, and the three goddesses are placed so that Para dominates everywhere:
| Trident | Middle prong | Left prong | Right prong |
|---|---|---|---|
| Middle | Para with Bhairava | Apara | Parapara |
| Right | Parapara | ||
| Left | Apara |
All other deities, down to the weapons and guardians, are worshipped on the middle prong of the middle trident as identical with Para. Because of her supremacy, worshipping her is worshipping everything. The five supports, small jar, great jar, mandala, fire and one's own self, are then unified in non-duality.
Money and Animal Sacrifice
Two practical rules follow. The worshipper must fill the ground with offerings without being stingy with money; a person without money should not perform the great mandala rite (mahamandalayaga). And he "should offer living animals", by which the animals also receive grace: this is compassion to the animal, and one should not doubt the efficacy of animal sacrifice. The animal's marrow is offered into the fire and to the deities.
This passage is easy to skip and should not be. Animal sacrifice was part of the Trika ritual Abhinavagupta taught, justified by the claim that the victim is liberated. Modern presentations of Kashmir Saivism, especially in the West and in Lakshman Joo's lineage, almost never mention it. A critical reader should register it as a fact about the historical tradition, and notice that the justification (the animal benefits) is asserted, not argued.
Purifying the Disciple
- Bring the disciple before you. If he is absent or dying, imagine him present or use a figure of kusa grass or cow dung.
- Sprinkle and worship him, and place all six paths in his body.
- Decide what to purify, according to his aim:
| Disciple wants | What is purified |
|---|---|
| Enjoyment | Demerit only; merit is kept (it will bear the fruits he wants) |
| Liberation | Both merit and demerit |
| Seedless (nirbija) initiation | Also the bonds of the conventions; given to the dying or the extremely dull. Such a person is perfected by devotion to teacher, god or fire |
- Results differ by the disciple's latent impressions (vasanas), because mantras give fruits according to latent desires. The teacher ascertains these, cognises the principal mantra inwardly, meditates on identity with non-dual Siva, and purifies all paths in the disciple's body.
- The teacher makes his body, from the small toe to the end of twelve, and his consciousness one with the disciple's, and rests in the great lake of bliss, full of all paths and the Lord's will, knowledge and action. By this union, the disciple becomes the Lord.
- For one who wants enjoyment, unite him with the desired tattva and conceive that he has offered his pure body and re-emerged from the Lord to enjoy what remains.
The Fire Oblations
With the Para mantra, the teacher says "I purify such-and-such a tattva of this person, svaha", three oblations per tattva, ending with "vausat". All principles up to Siva are purified, followed by a final oblation of unification. For a seeker of enjoyment, one more to establish him in his world and one to create the pure tattva. The disciple then worships the teacher with a fee.
This is the putraka initiation: all past and future karma except the present is purified.
The closing verses: the enlightened teacher, seeing himself as made of all paths, inside and out, makes the disciple's intellect, breath and body one with him; when the disciple, having attained great bliss and consciousness at once, rests there, the bound soul becomes Siva.
Initiation here is not a lecture or a vow. It is an act in which the teacher's realised consciousness absorbs the disciple's. The cosmology of Chapters Six to Ten is the map for this act. The teacher "walks" the disciple's consciousness through the paths and burns the knots, much as a skilled guide might lead someone blindfolded through a building he knows well.
Key Terms
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Putraka | "Son"; the fully initiated disciple |
| Nirbija diksa | "Seedless" initiation; removes even ritual obligations |
| Sabija diksa | "With seed"; leaves ritual obligations in place |
| Vasana | Latent impression, latent desire |
| Purnahuti | The final, full oblation |
| Vausat, svaha, phat | Ritual exclamations ending mantras |
Initiation of the Dying
When a teacher learns, himself or through relatives, that grace has descended on someone about to die, he should give the "immediate ascension" initiation (samutkramana diksa). The teacher leads the dying person's consciousness up and out through the crown, so that at death he becomes identical with Siva.
The Rite
- Place all six paths in the disciple and purify each.
- Place the goddess Kalaratri ("Night of Time") in the centres of the delicate joints (marmas).
- By her, gradually pierce the bonds at those points.
- Lead the disciple's consciousness into the brahmarandhra, the opening at the crown.
- Offer the final oblation for unification. When the self leaves the body, it becomes Siva. For one who wants enjoyment, a second final oblation links him with his place of enjoyment, and "nothing remains to be done in this world".
- The teacher may also whisper the brahmavidya into the disciple's ear. Being reflective awareness, it causes an immediate self-recognition in the awakened bound soul. Samayins and others may recite it too.
The Hand of Siva
For a dull person on whom grace has fallen and who receives the seedless initiation "with conviction (sapratyaya)", the teacher discloses the "hand of Siva" (sivahasta):
- On his right palm the teacher meditates on a fiery triangle, terrible with flames, throwing sparks in the form of the syllable "ra", fanned by wind.
- He throws a seed onto it, with "ra" above and below, awakening "phat" mantras that burn its power to sprout. The seed becomes seedless. So too the disciple's karma.
- "Even immovable objects can receive initiation."
- The disciple is visualised lifted by the world of air, light. Then he is weighed and found lighter on a scale.
The verse: if the mantra cuts the marmas, if lightness appears, and if the seed's power to sprout disappears, the Lord leads the one on the right path to his goal at once.
The "weighing" test and the seed that will not sprout are ritual proofs (pratyaya) for those who need to see something happen. Abhinavagupta includes them for the "dull" disciple specifically. They show that the tradition knew some people need visible evidence, and that it was willing to supply it. Whether the scale actually moved is not something the text lets us judge.
Key Terms
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Samutkramana | "Rising up and out"; the death-initiation |
| Marma | Vital or delicate point of the body |
| Kalaratri | "Night of Time"; a fierce goddess |
| Brahmarandhra | The opening at the crown |
| Sivahasta | "Hand of Siva"; initiation through the teacher's palm |
| Pratyaya | Visible sign, proof |
Initiation of the Absent and the Dead
Initiation can be given to someone not present, whether dead or alive but absent. It is for those who served the teacher but died uninitiated, were exiled, were killed by black magic or by accident, or who wanted initiation at the moment of death, or whom the teacher learns have received grace. "This is the command of the Lord."
Why the Ritual Apparatus
For the dead, consecration is not needed. But a mantra's presence is helped by materials (flowers), a place (mandala), a seat (trident and lotus), a form to meditate on, and the mantra itself. These are aids for meditating yogins and knowers, ranked in order. For one who has fully become the Lord, they are unnecessary.
The Great Net (Mahajala)
This is the passage Marjanovic singled out in the Foreword. After worship, the teacher places a figure of kusa grass and looks at it in the way learned from his teacher:
- Energy rises from the muladhara as a shaft (danda) from which countless channels spread.
- The yogin controls the shaft, takes it to the void of the nose, and throws it outside to pervade the whole world.
- He throws it until, from the abode of fire, smoky flames emerge and cover the entire path like a net.
- This "great net" brings the paths under control. Even if all are brought near, only the intended soul is drawn in.
"This application, named the net, I learned from Sri Sambhunatha."
Why does this not happen visibly? Not for lack of practice. A teacher acting out of love or hatred could lose his inner absorption; such a teacher is still bound by niyati and must practise. But the teacher absorbed in the Lord is free: the Lord himself uses the teacher's body to give grace. "Grace has an unthinkably glorious capacity."
Completing the Rite
- The drawn soul enters the kusa figure (or a jasmine fruit). It does not move by mind or breath, which it lacks, but by the force of deep contemplation.
- The consecration rites follow, ending in the final oblation, by which the figure is dissolved into the Lord's light. The soul attains liberation whether it was in hell, the world of spirits or among animals.
- If it has already been reborn as a human, at that moment he gains knowledge, yoga, initiation or discernment, because the teacher's body has authority here.
- For the living but absent, the same rite is done without the figure and without the net. The teacher's thorough contemplation is enough.
Initiation gives both enjoyment and liberation because latent impressions are strong and cannot all be removed. A consecration according to a higher doctrine is stronger; those from lower doctrines need re-consecration.
The verse: what a wonder that the teacher, steadily absorbed in the Lord, shares his freedom; by merely viewing the absent person, he initiates him.
This is the clearest case of the book's ritual realism. Abhinavagupta believes that a realised teacher can reach a soul across death and change its course. The philosophical justification is that space, time and embodiment are within consciousness, so the teacher, identified with the Lord, is not limited by them. Whatever one makes of the claim, it follows consistently from the metaphysics of Chapter One.
Practices for the dead are found across Indian religions (the sraddha), Tibetan Buddhism (the phowa and Bardo rites) and elsewhere. The Trika version is distinctive in placing the whole power in the teacher's absorption, not in the ritual itself. The "net" cannot be reconstructed from the text, as Marjanovic admits, and this guide makes no attempt to do so.
Key Terms
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Mahajala | The "great net"; the rite for drawing a departed soul |
| Kusa | Sacred grass used to make a substitute figure |
| Muladhara | The root centre |
| Paroksa diksa | Initiation of the absent |
Reclaiming the Linga: Converts from Other Orders
This short chapter gives the procedure for initiating people from other religious orders, from Vaisnavas to the "southern doctrines", or those following other codes, or even Trika followers who have been attending a teacher of a lower order, once grace inclines them to the true teacher. The rite is called lingoddhara, "removal of the sign": it lifts off the marks of the former affiliation.
The Procedure
- The candidate fasts the day before.
- Next day, after general worship, he is brought before the Lord and all his past deeds are recounted.
- He receives his new mantra; the mantra received from other teachers is thrown into water.
- He is bathed, sprinkled, purified with caru and a tooth-stick, and enters blindfolded.
- The teacher worships with general mantras and purifies the candidate's vow and mantra in the fire, now seen as Siva.
- Placing the candidate's name between the mantra syllables, the teacher says, "I purify his expiation, svaha", one hundred oblations, then a final one with vausat.
- He invokes Vratesvara, the "lord of vows", offers ghee, and tells him by Siva's order: "Be impartial to him and cause him no obstacles."
- He takes leave of the fire. Other purifications follow as before.
The verse: a person in a lower order, keenly touched by the Lord's power, who turns to the true teacher should be purified and initiated "even though he was formerly engaged with a false teacher."
The chapter shows that the Trika was a missionary tradition in a modest sense. It assumed people would come from other schools and gave them a formal path in. The striking gesture is throwing the old mantra into water: not burning or cursing it, but letting it go.
"False teacher" and "lower order" are sectarian labels. The Vaisnava and Saiva Siddhanta traditions had equivalent rites for receiving converts from the Trika. Abhinavagupta's generosity elsewhere, that all scriptures come from one Lord (Chapter 21), sits alongside a clear ranking here.
Key Terms
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Lingoddhara | "Removing the sign"; the reclamation rite for converts |
| Vratesvara | Lord of vows, invoked to release former obligations |
| Prayascitta | Expiation |
Anointment: Becoming a Sadhaka or a Guru
Anointment (abhiseka) is given to the initiate in whom knowledge has matured, either to follow the path of a sadhaka (one who practises mantra for powers and enjoyment) or to become a guru to others. The single qualification is knowledge. A person with knowledge but lacking every other quality has the authority to guide others; a person without knowledge lacks it even if he has been anointed.
The Two Teachers
| Teacher | Duty | Sin |
|---|---|---|
| Not perfect in knowledge | May abstain from initiating | No sin in abstaining |
| Possessing knowledge | Duty-bound to initiate, being the bestower of the status of "lord of vidya" | Sins if he refuses |
After Anointment
- For six months, the new teacher performs the regular rites of the mantra daily: repetition, fire oblation and special worship, to fulfil the identity of mantra and deity.
- After that, one with the deity, he may initiate others.
- He must not initiate the unworthy nor turn away the worthy.
- Even an initiate should be tested before receiving knowledge. One who receives it deceitfully should be treated with indifference once discovered.
- Worship in this rite is done according to the candidate's financial capacity.
The closing verse: a person well practised in knowledge, bearing authority within himself and able to transmit it, has the nature of a sadhaka on the way to being a guide; such a person should be anointed.
This short chapter quietly makes a radical claim. Authority comes from realisation, not from ritual. Anointment confirms a capacity; it does not create one. Abhinavagupta even imposes a moral duty on the realised to teach. The same Tantraloka passage is the basis of the tradition that a self-realised person without formal lineage (an "akalpita" guru) can be a true teacher.
The test of "knowledge" is left to the community and the anointing teacher. The text gives no external check on a teacher who claims realisation. Abhinavagupta's world assumed small, dense lineages where people knew each other; in a modern setting, the same principle has been used to justify teachers with no accountability at all.
Key Terms
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Abhiseka | Anointment, consecration as sadhaka or guru |
| Sadhaka | Initiate who practises mantra for powers and enjoyment |
| Acarya / Guru | Teacher authorised to initiate |
| Vidyesvara | Lord of vidya; the status the teacher confers |
The Last Sacrament and the Sraddha Initiation
Initiation can be given even to a corpse. People, including teachers, who followed lower doctrines, and followers of higher doctrines who fell from the path without atonement, can receive the "final purificatory rite" (antyasamskara diksa) if grace has touched them. It follows the procedure for the dead (Chapter Sixteen), but performed on the body itself. For all the dead there is a further sraddha initiation, repeated on schedule.
The Rite on the Corpse
- Perform on the corpse everything prescribed for reclaiming the dead.
- The teacher performs the rite "for the confirmation of faith (pratyaya) of the ignorant", according to his power of action, knowledge and yoga.
- Place mantras on the body from feet to head.
- With the net (Chapter Sixteen), draw the departed soul near; arrest it, penetrate it, stir it and enliven it by transmitting vital energy to the heart, throat and forehead.
- The corpse begins to shake.
- Perform the unification with the Lord; cremation is the final oblation.
The Sraddha Initiation
- Performed for those purified by the final rite and for those not purified, on the third or fourth day, monthly or yearly.
- The performer takes the food offering in one hand and contemplates it as the Lord's virile energy in the form of the enjoyable object, then offers it to the Lord, the supreme enjoyer. When enjoyment ceases, one becomes the master.
- For those who want enjoyment, a profusion of rites gives a profusion of fruits. For a seeker of liberation, these are performed for oneness with the deity, daily, throughout life.
The Death of a Knower
The knower of reality needs none of this, from the final oblation to the sraddha. His death is a festival day (parvadinam) for his disciples, because it fulfils the consciousness of the lineage. It is like the day they received the seed of the lineage from him while he lived. In all such rites, the murtiyaga (worship of the assembly of initiates) is primary, as the Siddhamata teaches.
The verse: Siva is by nature inclined to grace; the one he graces inevitably becomes one with him. The means are only imagined by his will. Knowing this, the wise still use limited means, and so remain free from doubt.
The shaking corpse is presented as evidence for "the ignorant", that is, for onlookers who need proof. Like the weighing in Chapter Fifteen, it is a demonstration, and Abhinavagupta's own phrasing shows he regarded it as a concession. A careful reader can hold two things at once: that the passage describes a real historical practice, and that its author himself rated such signs low.
The closing verse is the theological key to Chapters Twelve to Twenty. If grace alone liberates and the means are imagined, why do any ritual? Because the wise person uses means to remove doubt, in himself and in others. Ritual is a pedagogy of conviction, not a mechanism that forces the Lord.
Key Terms
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Antyasamskara / antyesti | Last rite, final sacrament |
| Sraddha | Rite for the dead, offering of food |
| Parvadinam | Festival day |
| Murtiyaga | Worship of the embodied assembly of initiates |
The Rest of One's Life: Daily and Occasional Duties
After initiation, the teacher instructs the disciple on "the remaining conduct" (sesavartana), the duties for the rest of life. The chapter is a compact handbook of a householder initiate's religious year: daily worship on an altar or linga, festival days, the cakrayaga, the sacred-thread offering, the ritual of expounding scripture, atonement, and the worship of the guru.
Two Kinds of Initiation
Initiation given to those worthy of knowledge is for steady purification. Given to those unworthy of knowledge, it is still for liberation: this is the sabija ("with seed") type, which leaves ritual duties in place.
The Threefold Duty
| Duty | Definition | Treated here |
|---|---|---|
| Nitya (indispensable) | Occurs regularly | Yes |
| Naimittika (occasional) | Triggered by an occasion; the means to oneness with the Lord | Yes |
| Kamya (desire-driven) | Only for sadhakas seeking enjoyment | No |
Auxiliary daily practices: prayers at the junctures of the day (sandhya), festival days, and the pavitraka offering. Some regard these as regular because they are fixed in time.
The List of Occasions
The occasional observances are triggered by:
- the day the disciple obtained knowledge
- the day he received the scripture
- the arrival of the teacher or his relatives at his house
- the teacher's birthday, initiation day and day of departure from this world
- secular festivals
- the beginning, middle and end of a scriptural exposition
- the day he perceived the chosen deity
- the day of union with the spiritual partner (melaka)
- a command received in a dream
- release from the conventions (samaya)
Worship on the Altar: The Mirror
The initiate receives the principal mantra, "the pulsating consciousness of the mouth", never written down. He practises oneness with God at the junctures of the day and worships daily on an altar or a linga.
On a beautiful altar, he contemplates his own form as if reflected in a mirror, conceiving that his Self has become the host of deities, and that the image is the deity's reflection. He worships it with flowers, sandal paste, wine, water, incense, lamp, songs, music and hymns. Just as looking steadily at one's face in a mirror reveals it at once, so here the real nature is ascertained without delay. No particular order is needed, only identity with the mantra.
Two hymns are given to contemplate. The second, often quoted, runs in summary: making the earth the base, sprinkling it with delight, gathering the flowers of one's own moods, placing them on the vessel of the heart full of bliss, I worship You with the Goddess, day and night, in the temple of my body.
Then mudras, mantra repetition and offering; the withdrawal (visarjana) is the deity's identity with consciousness. The food offering is eaten by oneself or thrown into water (water creatures, it is said, were once initiated by eating caru). If a cat, mouse or dog eats it, doubt arises and "it becomes the cause of hell".
The knower of truth, wishing to grace the world, should neither act against the social order nor withdraw from it.
The mirror is the image that runs through the whole Trika, from the reflection doctrine of Chapter Three to here. Daily worship is a practice of recognition: you stand before an image and see yourself as the deity, until the seeing becomes automatic.
The Linga
The linga should not be installed with mantras, particularly a manifest (vyakta) linga. One worships firmly established lingas through invocation and withdrawal. The following can all serve as linga:
- The body of the teacher
- One's own body
- The body of the sakti (the female partner)
- A text containing sacred mantras
- The heroes' vessel (virapatra)
- A rosary
- A weapon
- A banalinga from the Narmada river
- A linga of pearl, gold, flowers, or sandal paste
- A mirror
The best lasting impression is the conception of one's identity with the supreme Lord.
The Six Kinds of Festival Day
| Type | Days |
|---|---|
| General | 1st and 5th of every month |
| General-general | 4th, 8th, 9th, 14th, 15th of both fortnights |
| General-special | The above, when joined with particular constellations |
| Special | Twelve fixed lunar dates, one per month, from the dark 9th of Margasirsa to the bright 9th of Kartika |
| Special-special | Special days falling with their associated star-planet conjunction (eleven, excluding Asvina) |
| Anuparva | A special occasion falling on another festival |
The chief rite of festival days is the anuyaga, also called murtiyaga or cakrayaga.
The Cakrayaga
The circle-worship is the most socially daring rite in the book. Those to be worshipped are:
- the teacher, his relations and their sons
- a knower of truth
- a daughter
- an outcast woman
- a prostitute
- a menstruating woman (aruna)
- a woman who knows the truth
The teacher sits in the centre; the others in a circle or row, alternating vira and sakti. Each is worshipped with sandal paste, incense and flowers. The vessel is contemplated as Sadasiva, filled with wine and meditated on as the nectar of Sakti; it is the unity of the triad nara, sakti, Siva (object, instrument, subject). Propitiation proceeds in order and in reverse, "nourishing the fullness of the circle". If there is no vessel, the joined palms (vellitasukti) serve.
No outsider may enter. If one enters by mistake, one must not become doubtful; if one does, the rite is repeated. Food is placed abundantly, unknown to common people, and everyone is called "deity" (devata) instead of their personal name. This is the virasamkarayaga. The participants are then given food, betel and clothes.
Even someone who has never seen the mandala, by worshipping with murtiyaga on festival days, gains within a year the result of the putraka initiation, without sandhya or other rites. This path is for the elderly, those inclined to worldly enjoyment, and women, and is given only when grace has descended.
Two very different readings of the cakrayaga exist. One, common in modern devotional writing, treats the outcast woman, prostitute and menstruating woman as symbols for inner states. The other, held by most historians of the Tantras (Sanderson among them), reads them literally: the Kaula circle deliberately inverted purity rules to break the practitioner's conditioned sense of pure and impure. The text itself, with its secrecy rules and naming everyone "deity", reads more naturally as literal. Note too that this "easy path" is offered to women and the elderly as a lesser option: inclusion and condescension in one sentence.
The Pavitraka
The offering of the sacred thread fulfils the Lord's command, as taught in the Ratnamala, Trisiromata and Siddhamata. The Tantraloka says: "Without the pavitraka, everything is fruitless."
- When: from the bright fortnight of Asadha to the full moon of Magha; the Nitya Tantra adds the dark fifteenth of Kartika; the Bhairava Kulormi says the bright fifteenth of Magha; the Tantrasadbhava says the last fifteenth before the winter solstice.
- Materials: gold, pearl, silk, cotton thread or kusa grass, with knots representing the thirty-six tattvas.
- Four garlands: to the knee (knots for pada, kala, bhuvana, varna and mantra), to the navel, to the throat, and on the head, offered to the deity and the teacher, one for the group.
- How often: for seven or three days at the end of the four-month rainy period; monthly if wealthy; once in an emergency.
- A person with knowledge and wealth who omits it sins: "polluted with greed, he disgraces knowledge". If unable, repeat the mantra as atonement.
On the day of receiving knowledge and at the end of worldly festivals, the upsurge of consciousness is especially great and the deities are near; an extra anuyaga is appropriate.
Expounding Scripture
This is a rare description of how a medieval Indian teacher was meant to teach a text.
- Invite and worship a teacher learned in all scriptures.
- He teaches according to each student's development, even to someone in a lower doctrine, out of compassion, but excludes the delicate secrets.
- The student sits on a lower seat, eager, with speech, mind and limbs regulated. Only then is teaching fruitful.
- Draw a square with sandal paste, three lotuses above it. On the middle, Vagisi (goddess of speech); left and right, Ganapati and the guru; on the base lotus, the deity of the subject being taught.
- The exposition must be consistent, never contradicting earlier statements.
- Present the opponent's view first, fairly, then refute it, then establish the meaning.
- Use the five recognised interpretive devices:
| Device | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Tantra | One word or rule serving several places at once |
| Avrtti | Repetition (reading a word twice) |
| Prasanga | Extended application to a related case |
| Samuccaya | Combination, taking items together |
| Vikalpa | Admitting an alternative |
- Expound the whole section, but no more. Worship at the end of each subject; finish with withdrawal and throw the materials into deep water.
"Present the opponent's view first, fairly" is the method of the whole Pratyabhijna literature, and it is good advice for any teacher. Abhinavagupta also caps the length: the whole section, and no more.
Atonement and the Guru Puja
- A knower of truth needs no atonement, but should show right conduct to those who believe ritual alone liberates.
- One who is not a knower and depends on ritual, if he breaks the conventions without atonement, suffers a hundred years and becomes a pisaca (corpse-eating ghost).
- For killing a woman there is no atonement.
- For other sins, according to gravity, repeat the Malini once or three hundred thousand times, until the feeling of guilt is gone. Then special worship and the cakrayaga, which "is performed everywhere as the last ritual".
- Guru puja: on the day after the cakrayaga, the guru is worshipped as the main object, not as an auxiliary. Draw a svastika, offer a golden seat, worship all the paths in it, seat the teacher, offer water, food and money, surrender, consume the remains of his food, prostrate, then do the cakrapuja.
The closing verse: one who performs the daily and occasional rites without misery attains liberation by ritual alone, without knowledge of truth or yoga.
The closing verse contradicts the hierarchy set up in Chapters One and Two, where knowledge is the only cause of liberation and ritual is a lower means. Abhinavagupta resolves this elsewhere: ritual done faithfully ripens into knowledge. But the verse, read on its own, gives ritualists a stronger promise than the opening chapters allow. The tension is real and should be noticed.
The atonement rule is psychologically shrewd. Repeat the mantra until the feeling of guilt is gone. The measure is not a fixed number but the inner state. Abhinavagupta treats guilt as a doubt (sanka) that blocks the practitioner, not as a debt to be paid.
Key Terms
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Sesavartana | Conduct for the rest of life |
| Nitya / Naimittika / Kamya | Regular / occasional / desire-driven rites |
| Sandhya | Prayers at the junctures of the day |
| Melaka | Union, meeting with the spiritual partner |
| Banalinga | Natural stone linga from the Narmada |
| Cakrayaga / Murtiyaga / Anuyaga | Worship of the circle of initiates |
| Pavitraka | Offering of the sacred thread |
| Visarjana | Withdrawal, dismissal of the deity |
| Pisaca | Corpse-eating ghost |
Reflection and Practice
- Make your own list of "occasional" days: the day you first read a text that changed you, the day you met a teacher. Abhinavagupta treats these as sacred. What would it mean to mark them?
- Try the mirror practice quietly: before a mirror, look at your face and hold the thought that the one looking and the one seen are the same awareness.
The Authority of Scripture
After all the rituals, Abhinavagupta asks the question that underlies them: why trust the agama at all? His answer is an original theory of authority. The universe is consciousness; consciousness is reflective awareness (vimarsa), which is inner speech (sabdana). Scripture is reflective awareness taking the form of all things and their relations of act and result. So scripture is not different from the Lord. It gives one fruit in reality, but by niyati people attach themselves to its divisions.
The Ladder of Doctrines
| Followers of | Characterised by |
|---|---|
| Vedas | Cognition of duality born of maya |
| Samkhya, Vaisnava | Erroneous notions of liberation |
| Saiva Siddhanta | Reflective awareness of transcendent Siva |
| Matanga and similar agamas | Reflective awareness of immanent Siva |
| Trika ("the rarest of the rare") | Reflective awareness of the great Lord free of all limitations, pure consciousness |
| Some who leave or transcend all these | Accomplish the single purpose through one agama |
Why All Agamas Are Valid
- Even dualists accept that all agamas, created by one Lord, are authoritative. Where one finds harmony one acts; where not, one withdraws. Mutual contradiction on different subjects does not matter: like rules for different asramas (life stages), or like the Vedic rule against killing a brahmana alongside other rules. The excellence of an action is judged by the excellence of its fruit, as the Upanisads rank above the ritual portions of the Veda.
- Even if the texts had different authors, they can be taken as omniscient authors.
- Even if scripture were eternal, logic itself (anvaya and vyatireka, perception) rests on tradition (prasiddhi).
Prasiddhi: Tradition as the Ground of Knowledge
This is the chapter's deepest move.
- "I see real silver" depends on someone else's knowledge, a goldsmith's.
- A child acts on objects not by reasoning about cause and effect but because prasiddhi impels him. Logic is absent at that age, and of little use.
- Even adult inference relies on prasiddhi to get started.
- Some prasiddhis give seen results (the hungry eat); some give unseen results: liberation after death, dissolution in prakrti, similarity with Siva, oneness with Siva.
- Whatever state a person will reach, he selects the matching prasiddhi and is drawn to accept it. "What is the purpose of verbal argument for a person who is quite empty?"
- So: take refuge in whichever agama grants the most excellent result. "What could be the purpose of further arguments?"
The verses: as the wise see the light of consciousness as supreme, they are aware of self-consciousness; so take refuge in the text that is the essence of the reflective light of anuttara. A person lives by the conventions he trusts, but becomes free of doubt only when he becomes the Lord, steady in the highest prasiddhi.
Prasiddhi anticipates a modern insight: all knowledge rests on trust in a shared tradition, from a child learning words to a scientist trusting instruments. Abhinavagupta uses it to argue that refusing scripture is not neutral reason; it is just choosing another prasiddhi. The question is only which tradition leads to the highest result.
The argument is clever but circular at the decisive step. The highest result (oneness with Siva) is defined by the Trika, so "choose the agama with the best result" will always pick the Trika for someone who already accepts its account of results. And the ladder places Vaisnavas and Samkhya under "erroneous notions" with no argument given here. This is assertion inside an inclusive frame: every school is valid, but each is placed on a rung that the Trika defines.
Key Terms
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Agama | Scripture, revealed tradition |
| Sabdana | Inner verbalisation, articulation |
| Prasiddhi | Accepted tradition, common understanding |
| Anvaya / Vyatireka | Positive and negative concomitance (logic) |
| Asrama | Stage of life |
Kaula Worship
The final chapter gives the whole worship "according to the Kaula method", for those with proper confidence in whom the desire for the Kula has developed. It opens with a verse from the Yogasamcara: bliss is Brahman abiding in the body; it is established threefold in the last labial, "ma" (the three ma-karas); one who abstains from them, not being a brahmacarin, is bereft of bliss, and those who forsake them while worshipping in the cakra "are cooked in a dreadful hell".
The Six Kaula Rituals
| No. | Ritual is performed | Note |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Externally | |
| 2 | In the sakti (female partner) | |
| 3 | In one's own body | |
| 4 | In the union of the two (yamala) | |
| 5 | In the vital air (prana) | |
| 6 | In consciousness (samvid) |
Each later one is more excellent, but the choice is one's own. Seekers of enjoyment use the second, fourth and fifth; for seekers of liberation, the sixth is principal. Even they should perform the rituals from the second onward, as far as possible, on occasional observances.
The External Kaula Ritual
- Materials: the altar, the vessel of wine ("of the heroes"), a red cloth, and the Siva linga.
- No bath is needed: purity comes from resting in the perfect blissful state.
- Meditate on the oneness of breath, consciousness and body, and that consciousness is the great Lord; repeat the mantra twenty-seven times; place it on head, face, heart, secret part and the murtis, in order and in reverse. This gives identity with the Lord's apara, parapara and para forms.
- Why twenty-seven: the tattvas from maya to earth number twenty-seven (kala and the rest included); the five Brahmas and Sadyojata and the others have twenty-seven aspects, as Lakulesa taught.
- The Lord has five saktis, each with five aspects: twenty-five. Undifferentiated, they are one point, to be meditated on as the flame of consciousness and tied into the sikha (topknot) with the mantra once, bound to the Lord so nothing extraneous can approach.
- On the altar, draw the trident seat ending in Para, Parapara and Apara. All tattvas from earth to maya are in the syllable "sa"; the "au" is the seat of the three saktis; on it, worship the sakti of reflective consciousness. Thus with SAUH once, the base and what is placed on it are set up.
- Conceive the universe within consciousness: the universe is enclosed by consciousness and consciousness comes into being through the universe. Each arises from the other and rests in it. This mutual enclosure is called coitus, hence the phrase "enclosing all the syllables".
- Offer sandal paste, incense, wine and flowers until one becomes completely absorbed; then rest in the Self and throw everything into water.
The Sakti Ritual
The pair longs for each other's nature: sakti wants the nature of the vira, vira that of sakti. Since each has the nature of both, union (srsti) awakens Siva and Sakti in both. The secret parts are the specific centre, conceived as sakti; worshipped by the "pervasion of the topknot"; the visarga sakti is conceived on the three-pointed seat; then in the brahmarandhra and minor centres.
The Yamala (Union) Ritual
This section is in verse (thirty-one verses). Its argument, in order:
- The sakti is the one by whom perfect steadiness of non-duality is attained, regardless of age, caste, or worldly relations.
- Saktis are three: created, caused, and born of both. They are worshipped mutually because bliss is near.
- Worship the principal cakra (the couple) first, then the minor cakras (the senses): outwardly with flowers and sandal paste, inwardly with food and wine.
- The mass of bliss surges; the minor cakras (senses) dissolve into the principal one.
- Each sense enjoys its sphere and relishes its own nature; the deities of the senses turn toward the central cakra of consciousness.
- The fullness of these "rays" invigorates both partners, who incline intensely toward each other.
- In union, the vibration agitates the minor cakras; they are conceived as identical with the centre.
- When, by balance, the pair loses all distinction, beyond words, that consciousness is "the compact unity of the emission of both".
9 to 10. That is anuttara, both transcendent and immanent, universal bliss: neither rest (santa) nor rising (udita) but the highest Kaula, the cause of both.
- Both rest and rise, since each has both natures. But only the sakti bears the rising of creation in her womb, not the possessor of sakti.
11a. The Kula, embodied in the teacher, is transmitted into the sakti and through her to the people. 11b to 13a. Those who contemplate the restful visarga as the cause of both are established in the perfect state. What rises from the union should be collected externally from the principal mouth; worship with it satisfies the deities and gives powers and liberation. 13b to 14. Practising the restful visarga gives Sivahood; at that moment the absolute rises, "devoid of bliss" (niranandamaya), beyond all modality. 15 to 16a. Tasting external objects fills one's own bliss; the inner organs also delight; the inner search of this experience feeds the minor and then main cakras. 16b to 17. The threefold visarga is full in every respect: whence everything is created, where it remains, where it dissolves. Reflecting on it continuously gives mantravirya, the potency of mantra, the inner core of consciousness, from which mantras give their results. 18 to 20a. An inner anatomy: in the triangle, an ever-blooming lotus; in its centre a stalk with a sixteen-petalled lotus; by the friction of the two lotuses, the kalas of the moon and sun, with blood and semen from the three-petalled lotus, produce the sprout of fire. 20b to 21a. Using the samghatta mudra (moon, sun and fire), one who internalises creation in the heart quickly attains the fourth state, the "nameless" (anakhya). 21b to 23a. In the khecari mudra of both, perfect equilibrium; whatever is experienced in drink, sport and fun merges into vimarsa through the stages avyakta, dhvani, rava, sphota, sruti, nada, nadanta, remains as unstruck sound (anahata), and becomes mantravirya. 23b to 24a. The eight cakras: the outgoing breath at its end, the ingoing breath at its end, the ear hearing, the eye seeing, contact of the sexual organs, their union, the end of twelve, and the yamala. 24b to 26. From the middle of the breast to the lips, in the throat, the unmanifest sound abides; listening to it between the two cakras at the cessation of agitation is nadabhairava, with eight forms (ardhacandra, nada, sakti, jyoti, dhvani, samarasa and others): "the absolute extension of the mantra".
- Calling up this extension in every act, one remains unattached while living and becomes Bhairava.
- Where void and non-void dissolve: the middle path, a shaft where fire and air have dissolved in the trident's equilibrium; meditate on it "as fluid come to rest in fluid".
29 to 30. Contemplate firmly, "I am not", witnessing the deities in the body, merging pleasure and worry into consciousness, watching the experiencer in the ears, eyes, mouth and nose: thus khecari is attained.
- Vyomacari mudra: placing the body in a distant sky, following the sahasa mudra, contracting both hands, looking down.
The Breath Ritual and the Ending
- The pranayaga: associate the vital air in its immanent extension with consciousness, with offerings of tarpana, food, sandal paste and incense, until steady. The samvid ritual was given earlier, for the one who is steady in it.
- After one of these rituals, if the disciple is free from doubt and pure in heart, he is shown the ritual without sesame and ghee in the fire, and is initiated by a mere glance, the teacher holding the vyapti (pervasion) in his heart.
- From initiation of the absent to the occasional rites, all the earlier procedures are performed with this as the principal ritual.
- The seven forms of kulayaga are performed in the body of the teacher; done once with this ritual, everything becomes perfect.
"Thus may the end be auspicious. This is a work of the revered Abhinavaguptapada acarya."
The yamala verses show the Kaula vision at its most concentrated. Every moment of intensity, the end of a breath, a sound heard, an object seen, sexual union, is a cakra, a doorway where the limited self can drop and consciousness recognise itself. Verse 27 is the practical summary: bring this awareness into every act, and live unattached.
Three cautions. First, the chapter is explicitly sexual and explicitly about wine; the opening verse says abstaining (for non-celibates) forfeits bliss and leads to hell. Modern presentations that make the Kaula rite purely "symbolic" go against the text. Second, the sakti is described largely as an instrument: she is "worshipped", she bears creation, the Kula passes through her, but the practitioner addressed is male and the fluids "collected from the principal mouth" are used by him. Third, Abhinavagupta ranks the sixth ritual, in consciousness, highest for seekers of liberation. The sexual rite is one option among six, not the summit. Both the prudish and the sensational readings miss this.
Key Terms
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Kaula / Kula | The esoteric current of the Trika centred on the "family" of powers |
| Ma-karas | The forbidden elements (madya wine, mamsa meat, maithuna union) |
| Yamala | "Pair"; ritual union |
| Visarga | Emission; the creative power |
| Mantravirya | Potency of mantra; the inner core of consciousness |
| Khecari mudra | "Moving in the void"; the seal of consciousness |
| Nadabhairava | The absolute as resonance |
| Samghatta | Friction, union |
| Vyapti | Pervasion |
Core Terms
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Abhinavagupta | Kashmiri teacher (c. 950 to 1020), author of the Tantraloka and this summary |
| Anava upaya | The individual means: meditation, mantra, breath, ritual |
| Anupaya | The "no-means"; recognition without effort |
| Anuttara | The unsurpassed; the highest reality |
| Bhairava | Siva as the absolute, the one who "bears" the universe |
| Cakrayaga | Ritual worship of the circle of initiates |
| Diksa | Initiation |
| Kala (five) | Nivrtti, pratistha, vidya, santa, santatita |
| Kancuka | "Cloak"; the five coverings that limit consciousness |
| Mala (three) | Anava, mayiya, karma: the impurities |
| Malini / Matrka | The alphabet in mixed / natural order |
| Mantra | Sacred formula; in Trika, consciousness as sound |
| Para / Parapara / Apara | The three goddesses of the Trika |
| Prakasa / Vimarsa | Light and its reflective awareness |
| Prasiddhi | Received tradition as ground of knowledge |
| Pratibimba | Reflection, the mirror model of creation |
| Putraka / Samayin / Sadhaka / Acarya | The grades of initiate |
| Sakta upaya | The means of power: purified thought (sattarka) |
| Saktipata | Descent of grace |
| Sambhava upaya | The means of Siva: sudden insight through will |
| Sat-adhvan | The six paths: varna, mantra, pada, kala, tattva, bhuvana |
| Tattva | Principle of reality; thirty-six in the Trika |
| Tuti | A minimal unit of time in the breath |
| Uccara | Rising of the breath and mantra |
| Visarga | Emission; creative power |
Working With the Book
The Tantrasara is not a self-help manual, and its rituals were designed for initiates inside a living lineage. What a modern reader can do responsibly is follow the contemplative core that Abhinavagupta places first and ranks highest.
- Start with Chapter One. Read it slowly until the claim "ignorance is a lack of complete knowledge, not absence of knowledge" feels clear. Everything depends on it.
- Chapter Two (anupaya): for a few minutes each day, rest in awareness without technique. Notice that it was already present.
- Chapter Three (sambhava): practise the mirror image. Watch thoughts and sensations as reflections in awareness.
- Chapter Four (sakta): practise sattarka: return one thought, repeatedly, to "this too is consciousness". Notice how the twelve Kalis map onto your own cycle of perceiving, holding and releasing.
- Chapter Five (anava): use the pause at the end of each breath as a doorway (the first two of the eight cakras in Chapter Twenty-Two).
- Chapters Six to Ten: read the cosmology as a map of your own experience. You do not have to believe in 224 worlds to see that awareness is layered.
- Chapters Twelve to Twenty: read these as history, and take from them the inner meanings: bath as absorption, worship as offering one's being, the body as temple, the mirror on the altar, guilt as doubt.
- Chapter Twenty-Two, verse 27: carry the awareness of each intense moment into ordinary life.
What the Tantrasara Teaches
One light. The whole book rests on a single claim: reality is one self-luminous consciousness, free and aware of itself. Bondage is not a substance to remove but incomplete knowledge of this. Liberation is complete knowledge: recognition.
Four ways in. Because people differ in the intensity of grace, Abhinavagupta offers four means in descending order of directness: no-means, the means of Siva (will), the means of power (purified thought), and the individual means (meditation, breath, mantra, ritual). Each lower means dissolves into the higher; all end in the same recognition.
A universe in consciousness. The long middle of the book, on time, space, tattvas, kalas and paths, is a phenomenology of how one consciousness appears as many. Time lives in the breath; space in the worlds; the thirty-six tattvas trace the descent from Siva to earth; the six paths are six ways of mapping the same descent, all of which the teacher can trace and purify.
Grace and the teacher. Saktipata (Chapter Eleven) is the hinge between philosophy and ritual. Grace comes in nine degrees; the strongest needs no teacher, the weaker needs the teacher's knowledge and the ritual of initiation. The teacher is defined by knowledge, not by birth or office (Chapter Eighteen).
Ritual as realised philosophy. Chapters Twelve to Twenty translate every metaphysical doctrine into a ritual act: bathing is absorption, directions arise from the centre of consciousness, the throne is built inside the body, the deity is your reflection in a mirror. Ritual is not rejected but re-explained. The outer act works because of the inner meaning, and the inner meaning is stabilised by the outer act.
A tradition of its time. The same book that refuses to see initiates by caste, that makes knowledge the only qualification for teaching and that treats guilt as a doubt to be dissolved, also prescribes animal sacrifice, lists "one's wife" among the fee, ranks rival schools without argument, and describes women in the Kaula rite largely as instruments. A serious reader holds both sides.
The highest Kaula. The book ends where it began: consciousness that is neither at rest nor rising, but the source of both. Every intense moment, whether a breath ending or a sound heard, is a doorway into it.
Ten Takeaways
- Ignorance is incomplete knowledge, not its absence; so liberation is completion, not acquisition.
- There are four means, and the "lowest" (ritual) is legitimate, but each is valued by how quickly it dissolves into recognition.
- Reflection is the master image: the world appears in consciousness as an image in a mirror, without being separate.
- Purified thought (sattarka) is the most important practical means; scripture and teacher help, but only thinking turned toward the Self finally liberates.
- Time is in the breath, space is in consciousness; the cosmology is a map of experience.
- Grace has degrees, and the teacher's role is calibrated to them.
- Every ritual has an inner meaning that makes it effective: the bath is absorption; homa is making the universe one's Self.
- Authority comes from knowledge, and the knower has a duty to teach.
- Tradition (prasiddhi) underlies all knowledge, so the question is not whether to trust a tradition but which one.
- Bring awareness into every intense moment, and live unattached: that is the practical end of the whole Tantrasara.