Insight Editions · No. 411
To Enter, to Be Entered, to Merge
The Role of Religious Experience in the Traditions of Tantric Shaivism
Christopher D. Wallis
Christopher Wallis's 2014 Berkeley dissertation on samavesa and shaktipat: how religious experience, from possession to divine fusion, became the core of Tantric Shaiva initiation, and how it survives in modern shaktipat.
A study guide to To Enter, to Be Entered, to Merge by Christopher D. Wallis (PhD dissertation, University of California, Berkeley, 2014). Shared free for personal reading; not for sale and not endorsed by the author or publishers. Please read and buy the original.
CORE CLAIM
Samāveśa (immersion, possession, fusion with the deity's power) and śaktipāta (the Descent of Power) sat at the center of Tantric Śaiva initiation and distinguish Tantra from Brahmanical religion.
SCOPE
A history of initiatory Śaivism (Atimārga, Mantramārga, Kulamārga) followed by a chronological study of āveśa, śaktipāta and dīkṣā from the Mahābhārata to the Kulārṇava, with an epilogue on modern shaktipat.
KEY FIGURES
Alexis Sanderson, Abhinavagupta, Kṣemarāja, Utpaladeva, Somānanda, Rāmakaṇṭha, Bhojadeva, Jayaratha; critics and interlocutors David Gordon White and Robert Sharf; modern teachers Viṣṇu Tīrth and Muktānanda.
BEST FOR
Readers who want the scholarly evidence behind Tantric ideas of initiation, kuṇḍalinī awakening and the guru's transmission.
The Book on One Page
To Enter, to Be Entered, to Merge is Christopher Wallis's 2014 doctoral dissertation at the University of California, Berkeley. It asks one question across 418 pages: what role did religious experience play in the initiatory religion of Tantric Śaivism between roughly 500 and 1200 CE? Its answer is that a family of experiences called samāveśa (immersion, possession, fusion) and śaktipāta (the Descent of Power) sat at the center of initiation, and that this made the Tantric self porous in a way the Brahmanical self was not.
The Argument Map
The work has two halves of unequal character. Part One (about 130 pages) is a synthetic history of initiatory Śaivism, built largely on the research of Alexis Sanderson and his students. Part Two (about 230 pages) is original philology: Wallis collects, translates and explains every important passage he can find on āveśa, samāveśa, śaktipāta and dīkṣā, moving chronologically from pre-Tantric sources to the twelfth-century Kulārṇava, then argues from that evidence. An epilogue traces how these ideas turned into the modern Hindu notion of "shaktipat".
Chapter by Chapter
| Ch. | Dissertation section | Big idea |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Introduction, method | Samāveśa is the key that separates Tantric Śaivism from Vedic religion |
| 2 | 1.1 to 1.4 | "Hinduism" is late; Śaivism was a distinct religion with its own initiation |
| 3 | 1.5 Atimārga | Three phases of ascetic Śaivism, each more transgressive |
| 4 | 1.6 to 1.9 Mantramārga, Kulamārga | Nine sampradāyas on a spectrum; one canon; Buddhism borrowed from it |
| 5 | 2.1 to 2.2 | "Possession" in Indian sources before Tantra: illness, infusion, devotion |
| 6 | 2.3.1 to 2.3.3 | From Bhairava entering the mouth (BY) to rudra-śakti-samāveśa (SYM, MVT) |
| 7 | 2.3.4, 2.5.1 | Siddhānta: śaktipāta as grace that awakens; karmasāmya and ripened mala |
| 8 | 2.3.5 | Kaula texts: trembling, collapse, transmission; no signs, no initiation |
| 9 | 2.4 | The ritual of dīkṣā: the guru is "possessed" by Śiva in a routinized rite |
| 10 | 2.5.2 to 2.5.4e | Abhinava's nine grades of śaktipāta; Utpala's universal "possession" |
| 11 | 2.5.4f to j | Five States, turya, vedha-dīkṣā, the Kulārṇava |
| 12 | 2.6 | Eight conclusions; the porous self; what Tantra really is |
| 13 | 2.7 Epilogue | From Kaula vedha to Muktānanda's Shaktipat |
This is a doctoral dissertation, not a trade book. Part One openly relies on Sanderson's unpublished lectures and papers and on secondary syntheses; Part Two is close philology on often unedited manuscripts, and Wallis flags many readings as tentative. The edition below keeps the arguments and evidence but drops most Sanskrit text, footnotes and manuscript discussion, so claims here sound firmer than they are in the original.
The Question, the Thesis and the Method
Wallis opens with an epigraph from novelist David Mitchell and a bold claim: the experience of being entered by divine power is the feature that most clearly distinguishes Tantric Śaivism from mainstream Brahmanical religion. He then explains how he will test that claim: by philology, by searching every available e-text, and by standing on Sanderson's historical map.
What the Study Is For
The dissertation has a primary purpose and a set of arguments. The primary purpose is practical: to bring together, translate and explain "all the important passages" for understanding śaktipāta and samāveśa, the two main Tantric terms for religious experience, especially as they relate to dīkṣā, the initiation that premodern practitioners took to be the core of their religion. Wallis says this compilation alone justifies the study, since no one had gathered it before.
On top of the compilation he builds arguments. The first and largest is that (sam)āveśa is "one of the primary signifiers that distinguishes Tantric Śaivism (and, one could argue, Tantra generally) from mainstream Indian religion". He concedes this may be too broad to prove in one work, but argues the evidence shows samāveśa is central to every form of Śaiva Tantric initiation, and that initiation is central to the religion.
In Tantric Śaivism, initiation was not complete unless something happened to the initiate. That something was described as power descending (śaktipāta) or as immersion and fusion with the deity's energy or the guru's consciousness (samāveśa). The term reworks āveśa, ordinary "possession", into a controlled, liberating experience.
The Title's Three Verbs
The title condenses the semantic range of the root ā-√viś. "To enter" is the practitioner's agency: one absorbs the mind in the deity, as the Gītā says. "To be entered" is the deity's agency: power descends or a god takes up residence in the body. "To merge" is the end point, fusion (sāmarasya) in which the distinction between the one who enters and the one entered falls away. Wallis's whole study tracks how texts slide between these three.
Entry; possession; infusion; pervasion; penetration (vedha); fusion (sāmarasya); immersion; emergence; communion; absorption; spiritual experience in general; and, at the top, liberation itself, the "ever-arising" samāveśa (nityodita) of the realised person.
Method: Philology, Search and Sanderson
Wallis calls his approach philology in the broad sense defended by Sheldon Pollock: the discipline of making sense of texts, including their history and their claims. Practically, this meant searching digitized e-texts of the Śaiva corpus for every occurrence of the key terms and reading each one in context. He stresses that many of the scriptures he cites are unedited, that his translations of them are first attempts, and that he relied on readings and corrections from his teachers.
The intellectual debt is to Alexis Sanderson of Oxford, with whom Wallis studied. Sanderson's work redrew the history of Śaivism using manuscripts and inscriptions. Wallis cites one of Sanderson's counts of early medieval land grants to show how dominant Śaivism once was.
| Recipient tradition | Inscriptions recording grants |
|---|---|
| Brahmanical (Vedic) | 660 |
| Śaiva | 596 |
| Vaiṣṇava | 164 |
| Jaina | 111 |
| Buddhist | 63 |
| Saura (Sun worship) | 38 |
On this count, Śaiva grants nearly equal Vedic ones and outnumber Vaiṣṇava grants more than 3.5 to 1 and Buddhist ones more than 9 to 1. This is the evidence behind Sanderson's phrase "the Śaiva Age" for roughly the 5th to 13th centuries.
Experience as an Object of Study
Wallis knows he is entering contested ground. Robert Sharf has argued that "religious experience" is a modern Western construction, used rhetorically, and that premodern Asian texts rarely appeal to it. Wallis's material, he argues, is a counter-example: Śaiva scriptures and manuals repeatedly demand observable signs that an experience has occurred, and make access to initiation depend on them. He does not claim to know what practitioners felt. His claim is about what texts required and how they described it.
The thesis rests on a textual reading of a ritual culture. Texts that demand signs of possession do not show how often such signs actually appeared, or whether gurus enforced the rule. Wallis himself later admits that the standard Saiddhāntika rite was highly routinized. The claim that experience was "central" holds clearly for the Kaula prescriptions and less clearly for everyday practice.
What Śaivism Was: Dates, Laity and Two Streams
Part One begins by clearing away modern labels. Wallis argues that "Hinduism" as a unified religion is a late idea, that Śaivism was in its own time a distinct religion with its own scriptures and initiation, and that its initiatory forms divide into an outer ascetic stream and an inner Tantric one.
Hinduism Is Late, Śaivism Is Early
Following David Lorenzen and others, Wallis dates a self-conscious sense of a single "Hindu" religion to around the 15th century. Before that, the emic categories were Vaidika (followers of the Veda), Śaiva, Vaiṣṇava, Saura and so on, each with its own revelation. Śaivism counts as a distinct religion, he argues, because it had four features: its own scriptural canon, its own initiation that made one a member, its own soteriology (path to liberation) and its own institutions and lineages.
- c. 140 BCE. Patañjali's Mahābhāṣya mentions Śiva-bhāgavatas and Mauryan images of Śiva being sold.
- c. 65 CE. The Panjtār inscription, an early epigraphic sign of Śiva worship.
- 1st to 2nd c. Kuṣāṇa coins showing a deity named Wēš, an iconographic puzzle linked to Śiva.
- c. 90 to 130 CE. A Caṇḍaśiva temple, among the earliest datable Śaiva shrines.
- c. 150 CE. Lakulīśa, founder figure of the Pāśupatas, dated by a Mathurā pilaster inscription of 380 CE.
- c. 500 CE. The Niśvāsa, the earliest surviving Tantric Śaiva scripture.
- 590 to 650. Senakapāṭ inscription: Śaiva Siddhānta already an established institution.
Wallis rejects one famous earlier claim. The so-called "proto-Śiva" seal from Mohenjo-daro, read as a yogic Śiva by John Marshall, does not, he says, support any link between Śiva and the Indus civilization.
Laity and Initiates
Most Śaivas were not initiates. Wallis separates the lay devotee (Śivabhakta, upāsaka), who followed the Śivadharma texts with faith and devotion, from the initiated Śaiva who had taken dīkṣā. The original Skanda-purāṇa and other sources describe lavish lay piety, such as copying a scripture and parading it through a city on an elephant with flowers and banners, while initiation was reserved for those who sought liberation through Śiva's own teaching.
Lay devotees worshipped Śiva without initiation. Initiates divided into four types: the samayin (basic initiate), the putraka ("son", who has received liberating initiation), the sādhaka (who seeks supernatural powers), and the ācārya (the consecrated teacher who can initiate others).
Two Streams: Atimārga and Mantramārga
The oldest Tantric scripture, the Niśvāsa, already divides initiatory Śaivism into the Atimārga ("Outer Path", for ascetics only) and the Mantramārga ("Path of Mantras", open to householders). Wallis builds his whole map on this distinction, adding a third stream, the Kulamārga (Kaulism), following Sanderson's later work.
What the streams share Both are initiatory; both promise liberation through Śiva; both inherit a growing cosmology of levels (tattvas) and a divine hierarchy; and both treat certain ascetic vows of imitation of the deity as powerful.
Where they differ The Atimārga is for renunciate men and seeks only liberation (and, later, power). The Mantramārga is open to householders, both genders and all castes, adds homa to initiation, builds a complex "choreography" of mantra, mudrā and visualization, and offers powers (siddhi) as well as liberation.
The Kulamārga Problem
The Kaula stream complicates the map. Sanderson long treated Kaula as a mode within the left-hand Mantramārga, but later concluded that it is a distinct stream that so deeply influenced the non-Saiddhāntika Mantramārga that the two are hard to separate. Wallis follows this, and adds the caution that the boundary between Kula (an older cremation-ground cult of goddesses) and Kaula (its domesticated, erotic-mystical reform) is not yet clear in the evidence.
Part One's map is a synthesis of other scholars' research, much of it then unpublished. It is clear and useful, but Wallis seldom tests it against rivals, and the dating of key texts (for example the Niśvāsa at c. 450 to 550) rests on arguments he summarizes rather than reproduces.
The Atimārga: Three Phases of Ascetic Śaivism
The Outer Path came first. Wallis describes its three branches, the Pāśupatas, the Lākulas or Kālamukhas, and the Somasiddhānta or Kāpālikas, and translates key parts of the Pāśupata-sūtra. Each branch is more transgressive than the last, a trend the Tantric Mantramārga later reverses.
Phase I: Pañcārtha Pāśupatism
The Pāśupatas are the earliest organized Śaiva ascetics, with the Pāśupata-sūtra (c. 2nd century) and its commentary by Kauṇḍinya (c. 400). Only brāhmin men could join. The practice had stages: first living by a temple, smearing the body with ash, worshipping with song, dance and laughter; then going out among people and courting dishonour by acting mad, snoring in public or making lewd gestures, so that others' contempt would transfer their bad karma to the ascetic and his good karma to them; then retreat and constant meditation; and finally death and union with Śiva.
The doctrine's name comes from its five topics: effect (kārya, the manifest world), cause (kāraṇa, the Lord), union (yoga), observance (vidhi) and the end of suffering (duḥkhānta). The goal was not merging into Śiva but becoming a mahāgaṇapati, a liberated being who shares the Lord's eight qualities. One of those qualities, the sūtra says, is that he "enters all" (sarvāṃś cāviśati): he can enter any bound soul's body. This early line, Wallis notes, is one of the first appearances of āveśa in Śaiva scripture.
Phase II: Lākulas and Kālamukhas
The second phase, the Lākulas (or Kālamukhas, Mahāpāśupatas), took up the great vow (mahāvrata). The ascetic carried a skull-bowl and a skull-topped staff (khaṭvāṅga), wore bone ornaments and lived in the cremation ground. Wallis shows that this imitates the Dharmaśāstra penance for a brāhmin who has killed a brāhmin, who must carry a skull and a skull-staff, live in the cremation ground and beg at no more than seven houses.
Purāṇic myth explains the vow: Bhairava, Śiva's fierce form, cut off one of the creator Brahmā's heads and wandered with the skull as penance. A version in the Kathā-sarit-sāgara has Śiva tell the Goddess he took the Great Vow out of remorse after beheading the arrogant Brahmā. The mahāvratin imitates this divine brāhmin-slayer, not a human criminal.
Wallis points out that onlookers could tell the difference: the mahāvratin wore ash and a skull-crown, not a donkey's hide, and wandered as he liked. People who saw him would "do a double-take" and recognize a Śaiva ascetic in a mimetic vow. The vow's purposes were to cultivate dispassion, annihilate the ego and signal rejection of Brahmanical norms. The Lākulas also developed a cosmology of many worlds (bhuvanas) that the Mantramārga later inherited.
Phase III: Somasiddhānta and the Kāpālikas
The third phase, the Somasiddhānta, is the Kāpālika cult known from literature and polemic. It worshipped Bhairava with a consort, included the offering of meat, alcohol and sex, and probably animal and possibly human sacrifice. It also had a clear role for āveśa: devotees sought possession by the deity. Wallis notes that a 7th-century king, Mahāśivagupta Bālārjuna, was associated with this milieu, and that the Somasiddhānta can hardly have begun much before 500.
Atimārga I (Pāśupata): secure a liberating death and become a mahāgaṇapati and siddha. Atimārga II (Lākula): take on the features of the cremation ground and show power over death. Atimārga III (Kāpālika): sacrifice and sexual union offered to the deity, transcending the whole cycle of life and death and gaining ultimate power.
The Turn Toward Domestication
The Atimārga moves toward ever greater transgression in the practice of its initiates, but this is softened by its ācāryas, who handle "public relations" and present the religion in an inoffensive way. Wallis's key structural claim follows: the Mantramārga can be understood in part as the domestication of the Atimārga. It accommodates Brahmanical values and pushes the power-seeking ascetic to the margins.
| Phase | Name | Core practice | Relation to āveśa |
|---|---|---|---|
| I | Pāśupata / Pañcārtha | Ash, dishonour, meditation, liberating death | Liberated being can enter any body |
| II | Lākula / Kālamukha | Mahāvrata with skull and staff; cosmology | Imitation of Bhairava |
| III | Somasiddhānta / Kāpālika | Bhairava with consort; meat, wine, sex | Devotees sought possession |
Most of what we know of phases II and III comes from hostile outsiders and from later Tantric redactions, so the picture of "increasing transgression" is partly a picture of increasing polemic. Wallis acknowledges the āveśa material for phase III is thin and postpones it to Part Two.
The Mantramārga, the Kulamārga and the Nine Lineages
The Mantramārga is the Tantric Śaivism of scriptures called tantras or āgamas. Wallis sets out its defining features, its dating, its division into a right-hand and left-hand current, and nine lineage groupings, then argues that the canon was unified, that it spread across all of India, and that Tantric Buddhism modelled itself on it.
What Makes It "Tantric"
The Mantramārga is so named because in it mantras reach "their final apotheosis". Deities are worshipped as mantra-deities: the mantra is the deity's most subtle form, the maṇḍala its subtle form and the image its gross form, and the latter two only count as the deity once the mantra is installed. "To be a tāntrika means, first and foremost, the daily propitiation of a mantra-deity." Wallis distinguishes this from the Mīmāṃsaka view that Vedic gods are nothing but their mantras: for the tāntrikas, the mantra is the primary contactable form of a being who transcends form.
- It was open to both genders, all castes and all life-stages, and did not require householders to become ascetics.
- Its ritual and yoga used a complex "choreography of spiritual transformation": mantra, mudrā and visualization.
- Its initiation centered on homa (fire offering), a step toward Vedic religion.
Wallis also reviews Western lists of Tantra's characteristics (27 traits drawn from scholars such as Padoux and Brooks). He shows that 11 of the 27 (41%) apply only or mostly to the left-hand current, a sign that Western scholarship has defined Tantra by its most transgressive forms.
Right Current and Left Current
The tradition itself divides the Mantramārga into sāmānya ("common") and viśeṣa ("special") revelation, usually called right-handed and left-handed. Wallis's table, condensed:
| Sāmānya (right, Siddhānta) | Viśeṣa (left, Bhairava and Goddess) |
|---|---|
| More exoteric, Veda-congruent | More esoteric, transgressive |
| Observes caste | Rejects caste distinctions |
| Public institutions, temples | Private worship, secrecy |
| Liberation through ritual | Liberation through gnostic and yogic means |
| Gradualism | Tends toward subitism (sudden realization) |
| Gentle deities, little Goddess worship | Fierce deities, Goddess-centered |
| Women not allowed to practice | Women may practice and even teach |
| Guru as ritual functionary | Guru as source of charismatic power |
| Patronage through royal initiation and temples | Patronage through protective and aggressive magic |
But the binary is too simple. Wallis replaces it with a spectrum, on which the lineages sit by degree of nondualism, Goddess worship, inclusion of women, transgression, mortuary symbolism and charismatic gurus.
The Nine Sampradāyas
Wallis sketches nine lineage groupings active from 500 to 1200, inside a structure of three paths.
| Path | Groupings |
|---|---|
| I. Atimārga | Pāśupata; Kālamukha / Lākula; Somasiddhānta / Kāpālika |
| II. Mantramārga | 1 Śaiva Siddhānta; 2 Vāma; 3 Yāmala; 4 Mantrapīṭha (Svacchanda); 5 Amṛteśvara; 6 Trika; 7 Kālīkula / Krama; 8 Kaubjika; 9 Śrīvidyā |
| III. Kulamārga | Kuleśvarī (Eastern); Kubjikā (Western); Kālīkula (Northern); Tripurasundarī (Southern) |
Some highlights. The Śaiva Siddhānta was the broad ritual base: dualist, Veda-congruent, focused on public and private worship and the legitimation of kings; its institution at Āmardaka monastery existed by 600 at the latest. The Amṛteśvara cult, popular in Kashmīr, was a domesticated Bhairava cult used to bring Tantric ritual into the king's domain. The Yāmala texts, such as the Brahmayāmala, keep cremation-ground material that may be as old as the Somasiddhānta. The Trika was the first grouping to give a privileged place to female practitioners and is the lineage behind most of the sources in Part Two.
Pratyabhijñā and Krama
Two non-scriptural lineages get extended treatment. The Pratyabhijñā ("Recognition") school of Somānanda (c. 900) and Utpaladeva (c. 925 to 975) gave nondual Śaivism its philosophy. The Krama ("Sequence") lineage, a Kālī cult, traces itself to the goddess Maṅgalā and to Jñānanetra (c. 850). Its lineage chart, unusually, includes several women gurus, and both Abhinavagupta and Kṣemarāja appear in it.
One Canon, a Shared Culture
Abhinavagupta held that all scripture is the self-expression of the Supreme Being, ranked by the degree of truth it conveys. For him the purpose of scripture is to produce a firm conviction (vimarśa) in the right person; his example is the conviction "This snake poison cannot kill me, I am Garuḍa", which works only if held firmly. On this view even Buddhist and Jain teachings count as valid for those who believe them firmly. Wallis sees this as the theology of a unified canon in which every text has its level.
He then summarizes Sanderson's "The Śaiva Age" (2009): Śaivism was by a clear margin the dominant religion of early medieval India, and Tantric Buddhism adopted its forms directly from Śaivism to compete for royal patronage, borrowing initiation before a maṇḍala, identification with the deity, mantras, mudrās and homa.
- Before 1200. Lavish royal patronage supports a baroque ritual culture.
- After the Muslim conquest. Patronage collapses; ritual shrinks; texts like the Mṛti-tattvānusmaraṇa teach gnosis "with a dash of yoga".
- 20th c. Swāmī Lakṣmaṇ Jū (d. 1991), "the last Śaiva guru of Kashmīr", teaches in this mode, which explains the modern focus on ritual-free texts like the Vijñāna-bhairava.
Kaulism and a Working Definition
The Kulamārga recoded the left-hand tradition in terms of experience, erotic-mystical practice and the clan (kula) of goddesses. Wallis praises a Kaula argument that revulsion at eating from a skull is just cultural conditioning, a "perspicacity in cultural analysis" also seen in Kaula claims that caste is a cultural construct.
He closes Part One with a definition of his object, Nondual Śaiva Tantra (NŚT): a refinement of Śaiva Tantric thought and practice in a nondual mode, peaking in the 10th and 11th centuries, characterized by (1) direct experience of a divine reality with transcendent (Śiva) and immanent (Śakti) aspects; (2) initiation into a guru-disciple relation and a nominally caste-free kula; (3) gnosis joined to ritual and yoga with mantra, visualization, breath, subtle-body work and the aesthetic cultivation of the senses, aimed at power, pleasure and liberation.
- A clearer map of initiatory Śaivism (three paths, nine lineages).
- Firmer key dates.
- Tantric Śaivism was pan-Indian, not "Kashmir Shaivism" or "Tamil Śaiva Siddhānta"; those regional labels are modern.
- The Siddhānta and the left-hand cults were co-functional for patrons, and all Tantric traditions, including Buddhist, are mutually intertextual.
"Nondual Śaiva Tantra" is, as Wallis says, his own construction, defined so that it fits the texts he wants to study. That is honest, but it means later conclusions about "Tantra" lean on a category built around Kaula Trika and Krama sources, the very wing where samāveśa is most prominent.
What Is "Possession"? Theory and Antecedents
Part Two opens with a problem of translation. Āveśa is usually rendered "possession", but the Śaiva sources rarely mean a named spirit taking over a body. Wallis tests anthropological definitions against his texts, then surveys pre-Tantric uses of the term in medicine, the Mahābhārata, the Gītā and the classical sūtras.
Why Anthropology Does Not Fit
Monier-Williams gives āveśa a wide range: joining oneself, entering, taking possession, absorption in one idea, demonic frenzy, epileptic giddiness. Ethnographies of South Asian possession mostly study oracular or exorcistic cases, in which a ritual specialist is taken over by a particular deity to bless, advise or cure. The Śaiva āveśa that concerns Wallis is different: it is described as the penetration of one's being by the generalized "power of God", and in this, he says, it has "more in common with American Pentecostal or Baptist experiences of the 'holy Spirit'" than with most South Asian possession.
He reviews three definitions and finds each a poor fit:
| Scholar | Definition of possession | Why it does not fit Śaiva āveśa |
|---|---|---|
| Harper (1963) | Role-playing in which one takes the identity of a personified supernatural being | No performance of a specific deity's personality |
| Garrett (1987) | "Spectacular body language" for feelings too dangerous to speak | No subaltern protest; the goal is power and liberation |
| Klass (2003) | Patterned dissociative identity: culturally patterned "alters" | The power entered is universal, and no speech acts are attributed to it |
The "entry of the power of God" (rudra-śakti-samāveśa, śiva-śakti-pāta) is intense and consuming: it can take a person over and direct his actions, with the personal will in abeyance. Symptoms such as shaking, reeling and fainting match ethnographic accounts. So the word fits the experience but not the sociology.
Medicine: Possession as Illness
The oldest Āyurvedic text, the Caraka-saṃhitā (c. 100 BCE), divides madness (unmāda) into endogenous and exogenous kinds, the second caused by eight classes of nonhuman beings called bhūtas or grahas ("seizers"). The Suśruta-saṃhitā uses the term "nonhuman affliction". Wallis does not try to map these onto modern psychiatry, as Mitchell Weiss did; for his purposes they show that the idea of a permeable self has an ancient pedigree in India.
The Epic: Infusion Rather Than Takeover
The Mahābhārata has a different kind of āveśa, rarely noticed. Wallis highlights three stories:
Bharadvāja (Mbh. 13.31) raises Prince Pratardana to adolescence by magic, then penetrates him through yoga and infuses the energy of the world into him. He does not leave his own body or control the prince. Vidura (15.33) enters Yudhiṣṭhira just before dying, giving him all his powers and faculties; the text leaves open whether he merges with him. Vipula (13.40), told to guard his teacher's wife Ruci from Indra, who can take any form, protects her by yogically entering her body and sharing it with her, overriding her control while she remains present.
Maurice Bloomfield had distinguished a "folkloric" type of entering another body (animating a corpse or an empty body) from a "philosophical" type (sharing one body). Wallis adds a philological observation: for entering an empty body the texts often use pra-√viś, but for sharing a self they generally use ā-√viś. That second kind, infusion and co-presence, is the closest antecedent to the Tantric material.
The Gītā: Absorbing the Mind
The opening of Gītā 12 uses ā-√viś in a religious sense: "Those who absorb their minds in me, ever disciplined, serving me with supreme faith, are considered by me the most disciplined." The causative form makes the devotee the agent: one "causes the mind to enter" God. Abhinavagupta later comments on exactly this verse in his discussion of samāveśa, so the Gītā gives Tantric exegetes their devotional sense of the term.
The Sūtras: Pāśupata, Brahma, Yoga
The Pāśupata-sūtra (2nd c.) says the liberated mahāgaṇapati "enters all" bound souls. The Brahma-sūtra (c. 3rd c., 4.4.15) says the liberated one can enter several bodies "just as one lamp lights several others": āveśa as penetration of bodies one has created. The Yoga-sūtra (c. 4th c., 3.38) explains how a yogin can enter another's body by loosening the cause of bondage and knowing the pathways of the mind. Each assumes that a strong consciousness can move into, and act through, another body.
Śaktipāta Before Tantra
Unlike āveśa and dīkṣā, śaktipāta is a term unique to Śaivism. Wallis finds a precursor in the recently discovered Atimārga Saṃskāra-vidhi, edited by Diwakar Acharya: initiation begins when someone, "impelled by Śiva himself", approaches a guru. God as the agent who moves a person toward initiation is, he argues, the seed of the later doctrine, which the earliest Tantric scripture, the Niśvāsa, then names.
- Pathological: exogenous madness caused by seizers (medicine).
- Yogic-heroic: a yogin infuses or shares another's body (Epic, Yoga-sūtra).
- Devotional: the devotee absorbs the mind in God (Gītā).
- Soteriological: the liberated being can enter all (Pāśupata-sūtra). Tantric Śaivism draws on all four.
Wallis sets aside Frederick Smith's large study of possession (2006), saying he finds its use of primary sources problematic, and calls his own survey of pre-Tantric material "cursory". The antecedents chapter therefore shows that these ideas existed, not that they formed a continuous line into Tantra.
From Bhairava in the Mouth to the Power of Rudra
The scriptural survey begins with the oldest and most literal material. In the Brahmayāmala, Bhairava is summoned in the cremation ground and physically enters the practitioner. In the Trika scriptures, the Siddhayogeśvarīmata and the Mālinīvijayottara, this becomes rudra-śakti-samāveśa, an experience of God's power that is required for mantras to work.
The Brahmayāmala: Literal Entry
The Brahmayāmala (BY), a Yāmala scripture with Kāpālika material, describes a siddhi-seeking sādhaka performing bizarre cremation-ground rites to summon Bhairava. The god then enters his mouth and takes up residence in his heart, with the deity's retinue spread through his body, granting him all his powers and making him into "a duplicate of Himself". The verbs here are √viś and pra-√viś, simple entering.
In the BY the deity enters as an agent and the sādhaka becomes his vessel, much as in the Epic stories of Vidura and Bharadvāja. There is no merging of selves. This archaic picture, Wallis argues later, survives in the formal invocation of the initiation ritual: "O Lord, enter my body".
The Siddhayogeśvarīmata: No Power, No Success
The Siddhayogeśvarīmata (SYM), the Trika root text, shifts the vocabulary. Bhairava tells the Goddess there is a secret principle, mantra-vīrya, the vitality of mantras, without which mantras are inert "even if used according to the correct rules". Then:
If those who desire the fruits taught in the scriptures obtain a guru without śakti, they will not succeed even with much effort. Therefore, if someone initiated with Śiva's rite desires success, he should know how to become possessed by the Power of Rudra, and having done so, he should perform the grasping of the mantra.
Siddhayogeśvarīmata 1.16 to 17, Wallis's translationThree consequences follow. Mantras work only for one who has been "possessed" by Rudra's power. One should therefore look for signs of samāveśa in a guru. And a guru permeated by that power can grace anyone through initiation, "even a low-caste sinner", because he manifests the power of mantra. The SYM also implies that experiencing one's real Self (ātma-parigraha) is a kind of samāveśa, since it too brings mantra-vīrya.
As listed in the SYM and repeated in MVT 2.14 to 16: (1) unwavering devotion to Rudra; (2) success in mantras; (3) mastery over all levels of reality; (4) completion of what one undertakes; (5) poetic gift and spontaneous understanding of all scriptures.
The Mālinīvijayottara: A Theory of Experience
The Mālinīvijayottara-tantra (MVT), the scripture Abhinavagupta treated as the Trika's highest authority, makes samāveśa a general rubric. Its chapter two lists 50 kinds of samāveśa and then crosses them with three types, giving 150, while saying these "do not at all exhaust" the possibilities.
| Type | How it arises | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| Āṇava (individual) | Through yogic practice: breath, mantra, visualization | Immersion via the body and mind |
| Śākta (of power) | Through contemplation and refined thought | Communion with the Power in all things |
| Śāmbhava (of Śiva) | An awakening that bypasses the mind | Immersion into Śiva-nature, beyond being and non-being |
Wallis reads the 150-fold list as a sign that the text wanted to accommodate a wide range of experiences, acknowledging that maps cannot capture them all. He also notes that two older systems seem to be stitched together here, a central habit of the MVT.
Two Initiations, Two Words
The MVT's chapter on initiation is the crux. At the samaya-dīkṣā (entry-level), the guru gauges the candidate's śaktipāta as mild, medium or intense; the sign is that the initiand moves through the rite without a sense of personal will, his hand moving as if by the śakti. At the higher Kaula nirvāṇa-dīkṣā, the text uses āveśa in the same context and lists a new set of signs:
Ānanda (Bliss), Udbhava (Ascent, a jumping or leaping up), Kampa (Trembling), Nidrā (Yogic Sleep), Ghūrṇi (Whirling). These arise "by the Power which has entered" in mild, medium or intense degree.
Wallis infers that śaktipāta and āveśa are near-synonyms in the MVT, perhaps with āveśa marking a stronger experience, since the Five States "would presumably be harder to fake". That inference about faking is his own; the text does not discuss sincerity, and the scale from mild to intense could equally be a ritual classification rather than a report of felt intensity.
If the candidate shows none of the Five States, the MVT says the guru should intensify the transmission; if he still does not fall to the ground, he is to be "cast aside like a stone". This, Wallis says, is "an unambiguous statement" that samāveśa was required for full membership of a Kaula community.
The Siddhānta: Śaktipāta as Grace That Awakens
The right-hand Śaiva Siddhānta tells a quieter story. Its texts almost never use āveśa, but śaktipāta is central: a benign act of Śiva's grace that awakens the soul, makes it turn from worldly life and seek a guru. The theological question becomes why grace descends on one person at one time.
The Earliest Source: Initiation Through Descent
In the Niśvāsa, the oldest Tantric scripture, śaktipāta is said to grant initiation and gnosis, or initiation grants gnosis by means of śaktipāta. Wallis notes a reading in which śaktipāta is "the means by which spiritual knowledge is transmitted during the dīkṣā rite", giving it an even more central place, and an emphasis that the source of the gift is Sadāśiva.
The Svāyambhuva: A Sequence of Events
The Svāyambhuva-sūtra-saṅgraha (SSS), commented on by Sadyojyotiḥ (c. 675 to 725), lays out the soul's journey as a sequence:
Wallis agrees with Somadeva Vasudeva that the SSS is likely the source of much of the Saiddhāntika material in the MVT.
Signs Without Drama
In the mature Siddhānta, the evidence of śaktipāta is an increase in awareness: of one's real nature, of the fruitlessness of worldly life. Texts call it the "awakening of the soul" (puṃ-prabodhinī) and speak of signs of awareness (bodha-cihna). There is no trembling or collapse.
The 10th-century Kashmiri Saiddhāntika Bhaṭṭa Rāmakaṇṭha remarks that when scripture speaks of initiating a "child", a teenager must be meant, because in a small child one could not tell whether śaktipāta had occurred. Where the guru cannot reliably infer it, through age or mental illness, the person is not entitled to initiation. Wallis calls this revealing: śaktipāta is a real psychological shift, a "conversion experience", visible enough for an ācārya to judge.
His sharpest line follows: it is śaktipāta, the unpredictable grace of God, that produces a noticeable shift in one's orientation to life, not the institutionally controlled and routinized dīkṣā-vidhi, and this is why the rite itself "must be frequently extolled and described as indispensable".
Why Now? Karmasāmya and the Ripening of Mala
The Siddhānta, uniquely, asks why grace comes at one time and not another. The Kiraṇa-tantra and its commentator Rāmakaṇṭha answer with karmasāmya, the "equal balance" of opposed karmas: when good and bad karma exactly cancel, the soul is momentarily free of karmic momentum and grace can descend. Later exegetes such as Nārāyaṇakaṇṭha add the ripening of mala (malaparipāka), innate Impurity reaching maturity.
Siddhānta: grace has conditions Śiva graces souls when their karma balances or their Impurity ripens. Grace is in principle Śiva's will, but there is a mechanism that explains its timing. Dualist ontology makes this necessary: God, souls and bonds are three real things, and bonds must be acted on.
Abhinava: grace is free Śaktipāta is "independent" of karma. Abhinavagupta lists over a dozen reasons other schools give (karma balance, good works, ripened Impurity, meeting a saint, devotion, practice, renunciation, equanimity) and rejects them all as leading to infinite regress. Only the Lord's free will explains it.
Bhoja's Manual and the Four Kinds of Descent
In the Siddhānta-sāra-paddhati of King Bhojadeva (r. c. 1018 to 1060), initiation "with substrate" is performed "by the Lord in the person of the ācārya, by means of a Descent of Power of four kinds: gentle, very gentle, intense and very intense". Here śaktipāta happens during the rite, not only before it, perhaps preserving the older Niśvāsa view. Hélène Brunner had read Somaśambhu the same way; Wallis argues that the majority view across the Siddhānta is that śaktipāta is the prerequisite for initiation.
- Śaktipāta as benign awakening, not bodily seizure.
- The rule that a candidate must show discernible signs before initiation.
- A theory of timing (karmasāmya, ripened mala) absent in the left-hand sources.
- The doctrine that grace, once given, is never lost: even an apostate will in time return.
Wallis's argument that the Siddhānta "seemingly divorces samāveśa from śaktipāta" rests partly on the absence of āveśa vocabulary in a limited set of texts. Silence in surviving manuals may reflect genre (ritual instruction) more than doctrine, a point he does not fully weigh.
The Kaula Scriptures: Trembling, Collapse, Transmission
In the Kaula and Kaula-influenced scriptures, religious experience becomes dramatic and verifiable. Disciples shake, weep, fall down and see visions; gurus "transmit" power; and a candidate who shows nothing is refused. Wallis reads six texts, from the 8th-century Timirodghāṭana to the Vijñāna-bhairava.
The Timirodghāṭana: The Āveśa-Guru
Wallis dates the Timirodghāṭana (TU) to the early 8th century and proposes that it is one of the earliest texts of the Pūrvāmnāya, the Eastern Kaula transmission. It redacts material from the SYM, and its thesis is that a guru who has rudra-śakti-samāveśa also has mantra-vīrya, and can therefore transmit (saṅkrānti) the power into the disciple. It coins the term āveśa-guru for such a teacher, and defines "transmission of knowledge" (jñāna-saṅkrānti) as rudra-śakti-samāveśa.
In a typically Kaula statement, the TU says all mantras and tantras are void and useless without rudra-śakti, which it consistently describes in experiential terms: bodily symptoms such as shaking, ecstasies, then visions of yoginīs and other worlds.
The Ūrmikaulārṇava: Pierced by Reality
The Ūrmikaulārṇava (ŪKA) introduces vedha-dīkṣā ("initiation by penetration") and vedha-saṅkramaṇa, intense transmissions from the guru that cause samāveśa. By a glance, a touch, the power of command or a mudrā, "the great bonds are loosened and he attains āveśa". Its signs are the MVT's Five States, "the five states of one who has been pierced by reality":
The pierced one falls on the ground like a massive rock struck by lightning. This state of oneness is the powerful Śākta wisdom arising in one who shows the five states.
Ūrmikaulārṇava 2.233, Wallis's translationThe Ciñciṇīmatasārasamuccaya and Tantrasadbhāva
The Ciñciṇīmatasārasamuccaya (CMSS), a Kubjikā text, repeats the Five States. The Tantrasadbhāva (TSB) goes further: collapsing under the intensity of the energy transmitted by the mantra during initiation is absolutely required. Abhinavagupta's own guru Śambhunātha taught him a TSB procedure for candidates who had failed every other attempt, producing stobha, automatism, as "direct evidence" of efficacy.
The Kubjikāmata: Possessed by a Level of Reality
The Kubjikāmata-tantra (KMT) repeats that vedha-dīkṣā causes āveśa, then adds a hierarchy of six levels of āveśa mapped onto the tattvas, the levels of reality. One can in principle be "possessed" by any tattva.
| Level of āveśa (KMT) | Result |
|---|---|
| Below manas (mind) | Symptoms like madness: shaking, weeping, babbling |
| From manas up to prakṛti | Omniscience |
| From puruṣa up to unmanā | Śivahood |
Wallis's comment is short: "Clearly, possession in the usual sense is not intended." Being possessed by an abstract principle has left the ethnographic model far behind.
The Vijñāna-bhairava: Ritual Recoded as Experience
The Vijñāna-bhairava-tantra (VBT) uses the vocabulary sparingly but tellingly. Worship of Reality is only possible when one is immersed in Rudra's power, an esoteric form of the rule that "only having become Śiva can one worship Śiva". Immersion into one's own essence, "the awareness of the bliss of one's innate freedom", is the true purificatory bath. And: "possessed by that Goddess, one attains supreme Bhairava."
Conclusions to the Scriptures
Wallis sums up: the terms śaktipāta, samāveśa and saṅkrānti "all converge in privileging the phenomenology of religious experience, whether that is conceived as mild, dramatic, or bizarre". Some form of religious transformation is required by all branches of scriptural Śaivism: the Saiddhāntikas require śaktipāta for dīkṣā to take place; the Kaulas require āveśa during initiation, and suggest further āveśas on three or more levels.
Several of these Kaula sources survive in corrupt, unedited manuscripts, and Wallis marks some readings with daggers as doubtful. The strong claim that samāveśa was "absolutely required" depends heavily on a handful of verses (MVT 11, TSB, ŪKA 2) transmitted through Abhinavagupta's later synthesis.
Dīkṣā: The Guru Possessed by Śiva
Wallis turns from scriptures to the ritual manuals. In the paradigmatic Saiddhāntika initiation, the ācārya invites Śiva to enter his body, joins his subtle channel to the disciple's, plucks out the disciple's consciousness and unites it with Śiva. The structure is that of possession, even though the performer expects to feel nothing.
Why Initiation Matters
Dīkṣā was the defining act of initiatory Śaivism: it made one a member, removed the bonds that cause rebirth, and in the Siddhānta was held to guarantee liberation at death. Wallis studies it through Bhoja's Siddhānta-sāra-paddhati (SSP), an 11th-century manual whose oldest manuscript dates from 1077 and which draws syncretically on the Svacchanda-tantra.
The Shape of the Rite
- 1. Preparation. Maṇḍala, fire pit and the ācārya's own purification and identification with Śiva ("only having become Śiva can one worship Śiva").
- 2. Invocation. The ācārya prays: "O Lord, enter my body and bestow grace."
- 3. Channel-joining. By mudrā, visualization and breath he fuses his central channel with the disciple's (nāḍī-sandhāna) and "enters" his body.
- 4. Cutting the bonds. He ritually severs the bonds of mala, karma and māyā across the levels of reality (pāśa-ccheda).
- 5. Plucking the soul. He draws out the initiand's consciousness, visualized as a bindu, into himself and fuses it with his own.
- 6. Uniting to Śiva. He raises the fused consciousness to the dvādaśānta above the head and unites it with Śiva (śiva-yojanikā), then returns it.
Possession, Routinized
Wallis argues that this rite has its roots in possession rites. The prayer "enter my body" echoes the literal possession of the Brahmayāmala. Somaśambhu says Śiva performs initiation "having mounted the body of the ācārya" (ācārya-mūrtim āsthāya), and this exact phrase is already quoted by Kauṇḍinya around 400 CE, which shows its age. The two key actions, cutting bonds and uniting to Śiva, are ritualized forms of entering another's body (para-śarīrāveśa), and the fusing of guru and disciple consciousness is a kind of samāveśa.
Form The ācārya enacts possession by Śiva, entry into the disciple and fusion of consciousness. The rite is correct if performed in the right sequence.
Feeling He "did not expect to experience any preternatural sensations". There was "no pressure within the mainstream of the tradition against routinization", so in most cases the actions were highly routinized.
In the Siddhānta, the guru is ritually possessed and the disciple is passive. In the Kaula rites, the disciple must show signs of possession, and the guru's role is to transmit. The Kaula reform moves the experience from the performer to the recipient and makes it testable.
The claim that the dīkṣā "has its roots in possession rites" is an argument from structure and vocabulary, not from historical evidence of an earlier possession ritual. It is suggestive, but a ritual of identification with the deity could also derive from Vedic models of the sacrificer becoming divine, a line Wallis does not explore.
The Exegetes: Nine Grades of Grace and Universal Possession
The Kashmiri nondualists of the 10th and 11th centuries took these scattered scriptural ideas and built a theology from them. Abhinavagupta ranked śaktipāta in nine grades that decide which initiation one may receive; Kṣemarāja made samāveśa the power behind mantras; and Somānanda and Utpaladeva argued that every being is always already "possessed" by Śiva.
Abhinavagupta's Totalizing Theology
Abhinavagupta (fl. c. 970 to 1020) wrote about 10,000 verses and nearly 2,000 pages of prose covering the whole range of Śaiva thought and ritual. He was a Trika master who was also, like several of his circle, secretly initiated into the Krama. Wallis discusses three works: the Mālinī-śloka-vārttika, the Tantrasāra (TS) and the Tantrāloka (TĀ). He also notes that the label "Kashmir Shaivism" for this circle was coined only in 1914, by Jagdish Chatterji.
Abhinava's characteristic move, which Wallis calls "totalization", is to fit every Indian school into his own system. On śaktipāta he lists the reasons other schools give for grace (karma balance, good works, ripened Impurity, meeting a saint, devotion, birth, service, yoga practice, breaking habit patterns, removal of false knowledge, renunciation, equanimity) and argues that each leads to infinite regress or circularity. Grace is caused by Śiva's free will alone.
The Nine Grades of Śaktipāta
In Tantrasāra 11 and Tantrāloka 13, Abhinava grades śaktipāta as intense, medium or mild, each subdivided again into intense, medium and mild, giving nine. The grade determines adhikāra, the level of initiation and practice one is qualified for.
| Grade band | Effect | Qualifies for |
|---|---|---|
| Intense-intense | Body may fall away at once, or one becomes insensate as a block of wood, then liberated | Immediate liberation |
| Medium-intense | The heart's contraction ends and one's nature "shines forth"; spontaneous realization | Self-realized guru; subitist initiation |
| Mild-intense | Seeks a guru and is liberated quickly through initiation | Liberating dīkṣā, swift fruit |
| Medium grades | Desire for liberation mixed with desire for enjoyment | Samaya- or nirvāṇa-dīkṣā |
| Mild grades | Desire chiefly for powers and pleasures | Path of the sādhaka (siddhi) |
For Abhinava, the strength of a person's awakening is not just evidence that grace occurred. It sorts initiates: the lower grades lead to the power-seeking path, the middle to liberation through ritual, the highest to liberation with little or no ritual. Experience becomes the basis of religious rank.
Abhinava links the medium-intense grade to the MVT's "rudra-śakti-samāviṣṭa" and lists its signs from MVT 2.14 to 16, the five signs met in Chapter 6. He also holds that grace, once received, is never fully lost. An initiate who turns against the path suffers "only in this body" (not in hell, as Rāmakaṇṭha thought possible) and will receive another śaktipāta, in this life or after death through the compassion of a guru or relative.
Floating Signifiers
At this point Wallis stops to admit a difficulty. From the MVT's general perspective, samāveśa is any spiritual experience, so śaktipāta is one kind of samāveśa: the kind that makes one seek a guru. But in the context of initiation, samāveśa is reserved for Kaula initiates, so it looks like an intense kind of śaktipāta. The key terms, he says, are "floating signifiers". His working rule: śaktipāta is more exoteric and Saiddhāntika; samāveśa is more esoteric and Kaula. Abhinava uses both because he aims at a pan-Śaiva synthesis: śaktipāta dominates the exoteric TĀ 13, samāveśa the esoteric TĀ 29.
Saiddhāntika Exegesis on Āveśa
The dualist commentators rarely discuss samāveśa at all, and the term appears in their works only in passing. That fits their view that God, souls and bonds are three separate real things: fusion with Śiva is not on their map. This contrast sharpens Wallis's thesis: the experiential, fusion-based reading is a mark of the Kaula-influenced exegesis.
Kṣemarāja: Samāveśa Powers the Mantra
Kṣemarāja, Abhinava's disciple, uses gloss as hermeneutic, repeatedly rereading scriptural terms through samāveśa. Three points stand out:
- Mantric efficacy. Mantras become one with what they signify only when empowered by śivāveśa, the blissful self-awareness of Consciousness; the effective guru is "śivāveśa-śālin", endowed with immersion in Śiva.
- Two directions. Introversive samāveśa (eyes closed, absorbed in the Self) and extroversive samāveśa (eyes open, the world seen as one's own expansion), roughly the turya and turyātīta.
- Liberation. Repeated immersion culminates in nityodita-samāveśa, "ever-arising" immersion, which is jīvanmukti under another name (Pratyabhijñā-hṛdaya 19 to 20).
Wallis also finds an early use of the word kuṇḍalinī in Kṣemarāja's account of contracting and expanding energy, a term "only very rarely found" before him, and notes that the Krama founder Jñānanetra (c. 850) already said he composed his hymn to Kālī "through the influence of the state of full samāveśa", so the sense of immersion in the divine is older than Abhinava.
Somānanda and Utpaladeva: Everyone Is Possessed
The farthest reach of the term comes in the Pratyabhijñā school. Somānanda's Śiva-dṛṣṭi opens with a salutation that is "Śiva bowing to himself" after having "possessed" the author's form. His student Utpaladeva draws the conclusion: since Śiva is consciousness itself, all sentient beings are by definition "possessed" by Śiva and always have been; the separate self is a constructed fiction.
Śiva possesses us The first movement has already happened: every cognition and act is Śiva's power at work. Enlightenment is recognition (pratyabhijñā) that God has already "entered" you, indeed is you. Kṣemarāja extends this to everything: nothing can appear without being penetrated by the Light of Consciousness.
We possess Śiva Utpala proposes, perhaps to startle, that sādhana is the act of "possessing" Śiva: penetrating stage by stage into His expanded nature and acquiring His full power. The difference between an embodied being and God is of degree, not of kind. Abhinava names this complementarity āveśyāveśaka-bhāva.
The Īśvara-pratyabhijñā-kārikā ends by saying perfection is "immersing unceasingly in the Divinity which is the agency of all beings", and Utpala's own commentary adds that by this immersion "one is liberated in this very life". Abhinava adds that samāveśa needs a body: there can be no "penetration" where awareness is an undivided mass, so samāveśa can only mean living liberation.
In his longer commentary on the ĪPK, Abhinava says that even someone free of delusion can be hindered by lingering impressions of separateness. So before composing a treatise one should enter samāveśa, in which "the universe too is one with this true self", so "what can impede whom, and where?" Even while writing, the force of that immersion keeps obstacles at bay. Samāveśa here is both inspiration and protection.
Wallis calls Utpala's "universal possession" a language-game: the authors do not mean that Śiva secretly cohabits the body. That admission matters, because it shows the term's meaning has drifted so far that counting its occurrences across texts, as the study does, risks treating different concepts under one word as a single tradition.
Turya, the Five States and Initiation by Penetration
The last textual sections bring all the threads together. In Tantrāloka 10 samāveśa is mapped onto the Fourth State; in TS 5 and TĀ 5 the Five States are tied to breaths, cakras and phases of consciousness; in TĀ 29 they become the test of Kaula initiation; and vedha-dīkṣā, initiation by piercing, foreshadows modern kuṇḍalinī awakening.
Samāveśa and the Fourth
In TĀ 10 Abhinava describes movement into the transcendent Fourth State (turya) in stages. Near immersion, object-consciousness dominates; when "colored" by it, the faculties of knowing dominate; in identification with it, the knower becomes clear; beyond that, in pure awareness, one cannot speak of immersion except metaphorically. The first three stages are expressions of the Goddess's grace. Beyond the Fourth is turyātīta: "that whose nature is full and undivided, overflowing with joy... that alone is the supreme state."
Turyātīta of practice (yogic) Gradual; knowables are transmuted; the layers of selfhood are passively permeated by the I-sense; it is the "possessed" pole (āveśya).
Turyātīta of realization (gnostic) Sudden; knowables are transcended; an active entry into one's ultimate nature; it is the "possessing" pole (āveśaka). Same in nature, different in degree.
The Five States Decoded
The Five States of the MVT were "largely undefined" in scripture. In Tantrasāra 5 Abhinava defines them inside a practice of raising the breath (prāṇoccāra) and homologizes nine categorical lists at once, including five breaths, five phases of consciousness, five cakras, the Five Acts of God and five layers of self. Wallis's Table 12, condensed:
| Breath | Phase of consciousness | Mystic state | Subtle center |
|---|---|---|---|
| Prāṇa | Waking | Bliss | Triangle (trikoṇa) |
| Apāna | Dreaming | Ascent | Bulb (kanda) |
| Samāna | Deep sleep | Trembling | Heart |
| Udāna | The Fourth | Yogic Sleep | Palate |
| Vyāna | Beyond the Fourth | Whirling | Upper kuṇḍalinī |
Bliss from touching a portion of fullness. Ascent from rising for a moment into bodilessness. Trembling as identification with the body loosens under the force of one's own power. Sleep as outward-facing awareness dissolves. Whirling when, the false self having dissolved, the sense of "not-self" also dissolves and great pervasion dawns.
In TĀ 5 Abhinava adds that a yogin who enters one of these states automatically gains the matching cakra, and one who pierces a cakra triggers the state. Wallis: this "clearly foreshadows" kuṇḍalinī rising through the cakras with accompanying experiences, a key idea of second-millennium yoga.
Tantrāloka 29: The Test in Practice
TĀ 29 elaborates the MVT's Kaula initiation immediately after the kula-yāga, the Kaula sexual rite. Abhinava notes that by the MVT the candidate qualifies as a samayin "by the movement of the hand", an automatic, śakti-driven movement. Jayaratha glosses śaktipāta here as śaktyāveśa. If āveśa fails to occur, the MVT allows one more attempt with an extra-intense use of the Mālinī mantra; if the candidate still does not fall, he is "cast aside like a stone" for being too dense. Abhinava, out of compassion, adds yet another chance through a Tantrasadbhāva technique learned from his guru Śambhunātha.
Wallis reads Abhinava's message this way: in initiation the self is briefly an entranced automaton directed by the Power; in liberation one's will fuses with the Divine, so that one has no separate will yet enjoys total freedom (svātantrya). This reconciles the system's two central values, autonomy and possession.
Vedha-dīkṣā: Initiation by Piercing
Vedha means piercing, penetrating, breaking through, and in alchemy transmutation. Abhinava preserves passages from lost Kaula scriptures on vedha-dīkṣā (TĀ 29.236 to 81, translated in Wallis's Appendix Two). An untraced verse quoted by Jayaratha says: "One who performs a dīkṣā without vedha-dīkṣā, both guru and disciple go to hell." In Abhinava's account, vedha is the ascending penetration of subtle centers along the central channel by a siddha-guru.
| From the Kulagahvara | According to "esoteric gurus" |
|---|---|
| Mantra-vedha | Mantra-vedha* |
| Bhuvana-vedha | Nāda-vedha* |
| Śakti-vedha | Bindu-vedha |
| Bhujaṅga-vedha | Rūpa-vedha* (form) |
| Para-vedha | Śākta-vedha |
| Vijñāna-vedha | |
| Piṇḍa-vedha* | |
| Sthāna-vedha | |
| Nāḍī-vedha | |
| Para-vedha* |
*Explicitly said to grant liberation. Abhinava first says vedha-dīkṣā is for those seeking enjoyment and powers, yet many verses he quotes promise highest liberation; Wallis notes the contradiction openly.
One vedha, from the Vīrāvali-kula (TĀ 29.273 to 75), has the guru pierce "mouth with mouth" and "form with form" until guru and disciple minds fuse and they perceive the same sense objects, then rise together to the highest state. Jayaratha takes "mouth" to mean the central channel. Wallis points out that this matches the Mahābhārata stories of Vipula and Vidura almost exactly, which shows such entries were believed literally possible by some.
Two further details matter. The Kularatnamālā says powers gained by piercing cakras are a sign of success, but if one does not go on to the higher centers, those powers should be considered possession by a demon. And Abhinava says vedha-dīkṣās are ideally given by a guru who has "devoured" both enjoyment and liberation, and so can grant both.
The Kulārṇava: Bridge to the Modern
The Kulārṇava-tantra (12th to 14th c.), published by Sir John Woodroffe in 1916, bridges the classical and modern periods. It keeps vedha-dīkṣā and the Five States as signs of a guru's transmission, in a simplified form that later teachers would inherit.
The homologies of TS 5 are, as Wallis admits, Abhinava's attempt to show "a unitary vision at the scriptural level (which did not really exist)". Reading the Five States as kuṇḍalinī stages therefore reads a later exegete's synthesis back into the scriptures, and the "foreshadowing" of kuṇḍalinī yoga is a connection drawn by Abhinava as much as one found in the sources.
Conclusions: Experience, the Porous Self and What Tantra Is
Wallis gathers his results into eight theses, lists eight functions religious experience served, and draws two larger conclusions: that the Tantric self was shared and porous, a refinement of a pan-South Asian intuition, and that Tantra is defined by initiation, yogic technology and samāveśa, not by sex.
Eight Theses
- Samāveśa distinguishes Tantric Śaivism from mainstream Indian religion.
- Experience is central to initiation: (a) evidence of śaktipāta or samāveśa is required; (b) its degree sets one's adhikāra; (c) the texts have a real rhetoric of experience.
- Śaktipāta and samāveśa have a fluid relationship; the first is more exoteric, the second more esoteric.
- Kaula exegetes made samāveśa a general rubric for spiritual experience.
- Samāveśa is the path, the purpose of all practice.
- Samāveśa is required to empower mantras, especially in initiation.
- Samāveśa is the goal: liberation in life as nityodita-samāveśa.
- Samāveśa is the model for embodiment: consciousness "possesses" every body.
The rules were explicit. The SSP orders new gurus: "thou shalt not initiate someone who is without śaktipāta." Sadyojyotiḥ adds the converse: "dīkṣā necessarily comes about for one on whom the Power descends." The Kālīkula-pañcaśatikā says the secret in the hearts of the Yogeśvarīs is gained only through śaktipāta. And Jayaratha: the guru "should not grant the higher initiation to a student who has not experienced āveśa."
What Experience Was For
| Function of religious experience | Example sources |
|---|---|
| a. Leads one to seek a guru | MVT, SSS |
| b. Shows a guru is qualified for charismatic initiation | TU, MVT, ŪKA |
| c. Shows a transmission or penetration succeeded | TU, MVT, TĀ 29 |
| d. Shows dīkṣā achieved its metaphysical goals | TU, MVT |
| e. Verifies progress on the path | TU, ŪKA, KMT |
| f. Is a prerequisite for mantric power | Svacchanda and commentary |
| g. Grants insight or realization | PH, TS, TĀ |
| h. Becomes continuous as liberation itself | Śiva-dṛṣṭi, ĪPK |
Why build such a rhetoric of experience over centuries? Wallis suggests that, besides marking distance from Brahmanism, it created communities of spiritual elites, set apart from the mass of uninitiated devotees who worshipped for luck or a better rebirth. Aghoraśiva says śaktipāta "brings about conviction... by destroying wrong understanding and doubts concerning God", the kind of certainty a conversion gives.
The tradition implicitly holds śaktipāta more central than dīkṣā itself: it inevitably leads to liberating initiation; for some (Bhoja, the Niśvāsa) it is the very means of initiation; and for the Kaulas a strong enough śaktipāta makes ritual initiation unnecessary. No wonder the doctrine of śaktipāta survived to the present, while the dīkṣā ritual did not.
Wallis is careful about the limit: the Kaulas tried to reserve membership to "a community of mystics", but "we have no way of knowing how successful it was, for map is not territory". What the study shows is that the literature has a rhetoric of experience and treats it as defining.
The South Asian Self
The Brahmanical texts present an inviolable, unchanging, monadic self: the Sāṅkhya puruṣa, the Vedāntin ātman. Yet, Wallis notes, no brāhmin acted as if it were inviolable; the obsession with purity shows a fear that any lapse would open "a chink in the armour" through which excluded powers could enter and possess, in Sanderson's phrase.
Brahmanical self Monadic and sealed. Purity rules patrol its boundary. Possession is a threat: pollution, madness, loss of identity.
Tantric self Shared, porous and permeable: it overlaps and mingles with other beings, powers and energies. The question becomes: who or what will you share yourself with? Chosen possession is the most powerful way to internalize a deity's qualities.
Even so, the Tantric self has integrity: a field of awareness with autonomy, porosity, dynamism and the capacity to enjoy self-awareness, oscillating between contraction and expansion. Wallis argues this porous self is "simply a philosophical refinement of the dominant discourse of selfhood in South Asia", explaining behaviors from brāhmin purity rules to tāntrika nyāsa rites to exorcism. He accepts Frederick Smith's claim that possession is "perhaps the region's most widespread form of spiritual expression", if possession means the shared self.
What Tantra Really Is
What gave Tantra its specificity in the medieval period: (a) a liberating initiation using mantra, breath, gesture and visualization in elaborate sequences mapped onto maṇḍalas; (b) daily yogic practice using the same technologies, gradually replacing the socially constructed self with identity with the deity; (c) techniques that triggered altered states, construed as penetration by the deity's energy or dissolution into the deity: samāveśa.
This is aimed squarely at David Gordon White, who wrote that "sexualized ritual practice is the sole truly distinctive feature of South Asian Tantric traditions". Wallis replies that maṇḍalas, mudrās, uccāra and bīja-mantras are distinctive and appear outside Tantra only through its influence; that White's "satisfying multiple and petulant divinities by feeding them" fits only the Kaula Yoginī cult, not the mainstream; and that Religious Studies would be better served by "the careful philological work being done on Tantric texts and inscriptions".
The critique of White is forceful but asymmetric: Wallis's own definition is built from the Kaula-influenced nondual sources he chose to study, where samāveśa is strongest, so it partly assumes the result. His closing claim that the shared self is "a master key to understanding so much of South Asian culture" goes well beyond what a textual study of one religious tradition can establish.
From Vedha to "Shaktipat": Modern Survivals
The dissertation ends by tracing how the classical ideas reached the present. Subitist (instantaneous) initiation was always part of the tradition; in the 20th century the Tīrtha Siddhayoga lineage merged śaktipāta, dīkṣā, samāveśa and kuṇḍalinī into one guru-given awakening, which Muktānanda carried to the West as "Shaktipat".
Subitism Was Always There
Wallis uses "subitist" in its cognitive-science sense: an instantaneous transmission or spontaneous realization, not "sudden enlightenment" as in Buddhist studies. Overshadowed by ritual initiation, it is nonetheless old:
- c. 500. The Niśvāsa's mūla-sūtra already knows it.
- c. 900. The Jayadratha-yāmala: in the Krama way, the guru's glance leads one to union.
- Classical period. The Cintyāgama lists four kinds of initiation: by look, touch, word and thought.
- 10th to 11th c. Abhinava's highest grades of śaktipāta qualify one for nonritual charismatic initiation.
- 12th to 14th c. The Kulārṇava's vedha-dīkṣā and Five States.
The Tīrtha Siddhayoga Lineage
In the modern period, a lineage of the Daśanāmī Tīrtha order taught what it called Siddhayoga. Its teachers included Nārāyaṇ Tīrth (1870 to 1935), Gaṅgādhar Tīrth, Viṣṇu Tīrth and Shivom Tīrth. Viṣṇu Tīrth's book Devātma Shakti (1948) describes "shaktipat deeksha" and gives a long list of kriyās, spontaneous movements and experiences that follow awakening.
In the classical sources, Śiva (or the Goddess) is the agent of śaktipāta and the guru gauges or channels it. In the modern lineage the guru becomes the bestower: śaktipāta is something a sadguru gives by awakening the disciple's kuṇḍalinī. The Kaula vedha-dīkṣā of TĀ 29, an ascending penetration of centers by a siddha-guru, is the clearest precursor.
Nārāyaṇ Tīrth (1870 to 1935) and Gaṅgādhar Tīrth, early teachers of Tīrtha Siddhayoga; Viṣṇu Tīrth, author of Devātma Shakti (1948) with its list of kriyā signs; Shivom Tīrth, his successor; Swāmī Muktānanda, who popularized "Shaktipat" in the West; Swāmī Lakṣmaṇ Jū, the gnostic Kashmiri teacher whose ritual-free style shapes modern views of "Kashmir Shaivism".
The epilogue is brief and draws on modern teaching literature rather than critical history. Wallis's other books name Gurumayī of the Siddha Yoga movement, Muktānanda's successor, as an early teacher; readers may want to weigh how that background shapes the sympathetic framing of modern "shaktipat" as a genuine survival.
What the Dissertation Teaches as a Whole
Master Takeaways
- Śaivism was a distinct religion with its own canon, initiation and goal; "Hinduism" as one religion is a late idea.
- Initiatory Śaivism has three paths: Atimārga, Mantramārga, Kulamārga, and nine Tantric lineage groupings.
- The Atimārga grew more transgressive in three phases; the Mantramārga domesticated it for householders and kings.
- To be a tāntrika meant first of all the daily worship of a mantra-deity.
- The right current (Siddhānta) and left current (Bhairava and Goddess cults) lie on a spectrum, not a binary.
- Śaivism was the dominant religion of the early medieval period, and Tantric Buddhism modelled its rites on it.
- Āveśa in Śaiva sources is not oracular possession by a named spirit but infusion by the universal power of God.
- Pre-Tantric texts already know permeable selves: medical seizers, Epic yogic infusion, Gītā absorption.
- The archaic Brahmayāmala has Bhairava enter the mouth; the Trika makes rudra-śakti-samāveśa the secret of mantric power.
- The MVT counts 150 kinds of samāveśa in three modes: individual, of power, of Śiva.
- The Siddhānta treats śaktipāta as gentle grace that awakens and asks why it comes when it does (karmasāmya, ripened mala).
- No discernible śaktipāta, no initiation: even the conservative Siddhānta requires visible signs.
- Kaula texts require dramatic, verifiable experience; a candidate who shows nothing is "cast aside like a stone".
- The Five States (Bliss, Ascent, Trembling, Sleep, Whirling) are the signs of Kaula āveśa.
- The Saiddhāntika dīkṣā is a routinized possession rite: Śiva enters the guru, the guru enters the disciple.
- Abhinava's nine grades of śaktipāta turn the intensity of experience into initiatory rank.
- Kṣemarāja makes śivāveśa the power behind every effective mantra.
- For Utpala, all beings are always possessed by Śiva; practice is "possessing" Śiva in return.
- Samāveśa as nityodita immersion is living liberation itself.
- Vedha-dīkṣā by a siddha-guru prefigures the modern idea of kuṇḍalinī awakening.
- The Tantric self is shared and porous, against the Brahmanical sealed self.
- Tantra is defined by liberating initiation, yogic technology and samāveśa, not by sexual ritual.
- Śaktipāta outlived the ritual of dīkṣā and survives as modern "Shaktipat".
Frameworks at a Glance
| Framework | Source | Use |
|---|---|---|
| Three paths and nine sampradāyas | Part One, after Sanderson | Map of initiatory Śaivism |
| Sāmānya vs viśeṣa spectrum | Table 5, Fig. 3 | Placing lineages by transgression, nondualism, Goddess focus |
| Five signs of rudra-śakti | SYM, MVT 2.14 to 16 | Recognizing an empowered guru |
| Three samāveśas (āṇava, śākta, śāmbhava) | MVT 2 | Types of spiritual experience |
| Five States (pañcāvasthā) | MVT 11.35, ŪKA, TS 5 | Signs of Kaula āveśa; stages of ascent |
| Nine grades of śaktipāta | TS 11, TĀ 13 | Matching experience to adhikāra |
| Six levels of āveśa by tattva | KMT | From madness-like symptoms to Śivahood |
| Fifteen vedha-dīkṣās | TĀ 29 | Kinds of initiation by penetration |
| Functions a to h of experience | Section 2.6 | What experience did in the tradition |
| Initiation, technology, samāveśa | Section 2.6 | Definition of Tantra |
Alexis Sanderson, Oxford historian of Śaivism whose map underlies Part One. Abhinavagupta (fl. c. 970 to 1020), Trika and Krama master, author of the Tantrāloka. Kṣemarāja, his disciple, author of the Pratyabhijñā-hṛdaya. Utpaladeva (c. 925 to 975) and Somānanda (c. 900), founders of the Pratyabhijñā. Jayaratha (13th c.), commentator on the Tantrāloka. Bhaṭṭa Rāmakaṇṭha and Sadyojyotiḥ, Saiddhāntika commentators. Aghoraśiva and Somaśambhu, authors of ritual manuals; Bhojadeva, royal author of the Siddhānta-sāra-paddhati. Kauṇḍinya, Pāśupata commentator (c. 400). Jñānanetra, Krama founder (c. 850). David Gordon White and Hugh Urban, scholars whose sex-centered view of Tantra Wallis rejects. Robert Sharf, critic of "religious experience". Frederick Smith, author of a major study of possession. Loriliai Biernacki, scholar of samāveśa in Abhinava. Hélène Brunner, editor of Somaśambhu. Viṣṇu Tīrth and Muktānanda, modern "shaktipat" teachers.
The dissertation is strongest as a sourcebook: it gathers and translates passages no one had assembled, and its readings of the MVT, TĀ 13 and TĀ 29 are careful. Its larger claims are weaker. Part One is borrowed synthesis; the antecedents survey is admittedly cursory; many Kaula texts are unedited; and both the definition of Tantra and the "porous self" thesis rest on the nondual Kaula wing that Wallis set out to study. Treat it as a well-documented argument from texts, not as proof of how initiation was actually practiced.
About This Edition
This Insight Edition is an independent study guide to To Enter, to Be Entered, to Merge by Christopher D. Wallis. It summarises and comments on the book in its own words, quotes only short passages for discussion, and is not a substitute for the original. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by the author or publisher. Please read and buy the original.