Insight Editions · No. 450
Vijnana Bhairava
The Manual for Self Realization
Swami Lakshmanjoo
A study edition of Swami Lakshmanjoo's verse-by-verse commentary, edited by John Hughes (Lakshmanjoo Academy, 2015): all 163 verses and the 112 dharanas sorted into anava, shakta and shambhava means, the gaps between breaths, thoughts and desires, centering, sound, emptiness and the sky of consciousness, a full table of the practices, a practice path and a critical lens on lineage, dating and claims.
A study guide to Vijnana Bhairava: The Manual for Self Realization by Swami Lakshmanjoo, edited by John Hughes. Shared free for personal reading; not for sale and not endorsed by the author, editor or publishers. Please read and buy the original.
CORE CLAIM
Bhairava, the supreme consciousness, is not reached by ritual but recognized in a gap: between two breaths, two thoughts, waking and sleep, or the first instant of a desire. The text gives 112 ways to find that center, and says one is enough.
SCOPE
All 163 verses of the Vijnana Bhairava with Swami Lakshmanjoo's spoken commentary (recorded 1973 to 1984), each practice classed as anava, shakta or shambhava, plus the editor's appendix on sauh, krama mudra, the 36 tattvas, kundalini and the seven states of ananda.
KEY FIGURES
Bhairava and the Goddess (the speakers); Swami Lakshmanjoo (commentator); John Hughes (editor); Abhinavagupta and Kshemaraja (the classical tradition); Swami Mahatabakak (Lakshmanjoo's master).
BEST FOR
Meditators who want the practices explained by a living lineage holder; readers of Kashmir Shaivism who want the upaya system applied verse by verse; anyone curious about the original behind the famous 112 techniques.
The Book, the Master and the Introduction
Before the first verse, the book sets out three things a reader needs: who is speaking (Swami Lakshmanjoo, recorded between 1973 and 1984), how the transcript was made (edited by John Hughes from tapes, kept close to the spoken word), and the map of the means (the three upayas, plus the "no-means" of anupaya) that Lakshmanjoo uses to classify every one of the 112 practices. The Introduction is the editor's, but it is built almost entirely from Lakshmanjoo's own words in other lectures, so it reads as a primer on how this master taught.
What kind of book this is
The full title is Vijnana Bhairava: The Manual for Self Realization, "revealed by Swami Lakshmanjoo, edited by John Hughes". The Lakshmanjoo Academy published the second edition in 2015; the first appeared in 2007 from the Universal Shaiva Fellowship as an audio study set, with the transcript as a companion to the recordings. That origin explains the book's texture. It is not a written commentary. It is a master talking, with students (John Hughes, Denise, Jagdish, the scholar Ganjoo and others) interrupting to ask what a word means, whether a practice is safe, or why a verse says what it says.
The editor explains his conventions plainly:
- Square brackets are the editor's additions for clarity; round brackets are Swamiji's own glosses.
- Footnotes in quotation marks are Lakshmanjoo's own words from other published texts or the archives; all other notes are the editor's.
- Each verse is printed in Devanagari and roman transliteration, then Lakshmanjoo's word-by-word rendering and explanation.
- The Sanskrit text followed is the 1918 Kashmir Series of Texts and Studies edition, volume 8. That edition carries a commentary partly by Kshemaraja and partly by Shivopadhyaya, but Lakshmanjoo used it only as a reference for the verses, not as an authority for their meaning.
The book's authority rests on oral transmission, not on a Sanskrit commentary. Lakshmanjoo is explaining the verses as a living teacher who claims to know the practices from the inside, and he is willing to overrule the printed commentator when he thinks the commentator is wrong. That makes this the most practice-first reading of the Vijnana Bhairava in English, and also the most personal.
The prefaces: a quarrel over transcripts
The Preface to the First Edition places the book in a short history of the text in the West. Hughes notes that Paul Reps dedicated the "Centering" chapter of Zen Flesh, Zen Bones (1957) to Lakshmanjoo; that Lilian Silburn, who first met him in 1948 and studied with him for about ten years, published Le Vijnana Bhairava in French in 1961; and that Jaideva Singh's English translation, Vijnanabhairava or Divine Consciousness, followed in 1979.
He then makes a sharp complaint. A book called Vijnana Bhairava: The Practice of Centering Awareness (Indica Books, Varanasi, 2002) was, he says, compiled from his own preliminary, unedited and incomplete transcript, which was "misappropriated" and given to two other authors without his consent. He calls that version "fraught with mistakes".
Hughes is a party to this dispute, and the guide reports his account as his account. What a reader can take from it is practical: there are two English books presenting Lakshmanjoo's Vijnana Bhairava, and the 2007 and 2015 Academy editions are the ones the editor stands behind. When readers quote "Lakshmanjoo on the Vijnana Bhairava" from the 2002 book, they may be quoting an unchecked draft.
The recordings were made at different times between 1973 and 1984, with different equipment. Some verses were explained twice, once in the first reading and again when devotees asked for clarification. This is why the text sometimes circles back on a practice, and why Lakshmanjoo's classification of a single dharana can shift between two labels (for example anava and shakta) within the same discussion.
The author
The book's short biography gives the facts and the tradition's view of them. Swami Lakshmanjoo was born in Srinagar on 9 May 1907 and died on 27 September 1991. The Academy describes him as "the most recent and the greatest of the long line of saints and masters of the Kashmir Shaiva tradition", credits him with a photographic memory (he could recall an entire text from its first few words), and says he shunned fame.
The biography quotes his only recorded description of his own breakthrough, from his 1990 lectures on the Bhagavad Gita: grace (shaktipata) came "abruptly" and "threw all its force" in him; it was tivra tivra shaktipata, "super-supreme" grace; he was "newborn", and "because I had to become Bhairava, I had to experience all of the states of yoga". He names the final states of cidananda and jagadananda, the last two of the seven states of bliss in the turya ladder (explained in the Appendix).
"The greatest of the long line" is a disciple's judgement, as the guide to No. 363 also notes. The self-report of supreme grace is testimony, offered by a teacher whom many credible students found credible; it is not something the book argues for. Readers do not need to accept it to use the practices, but should notice that the book's method assumes it: Lakshmanjoo classifies each practice by means, and says which ones are dangerous, from the standpoint of someone who claims to have passed through all of them.
The Introduction: the three means
The editor's Introduction opens with a phrase for Kashmir Shaivism as a whole: "the mystical geography of awareness". It then frames the Vijnana Bhairava as a dialogue in which Bhairavi (the Goddess), "feigning ignorance", asks Bhairava for "the real essence of the way we have to tread", and Bhairava answers with 112 techniques. Two points from the opening verses are put up front: the techniques are "just to begin with: you begin with them and then leave them aside", and they belong to the field of Bhairavi (shakti), not to the field of Bhairava, because the supreme state is the knower and cannot be reached as an object.
The core of the Introduction is the doctrine of the three upayas (means), drawn from Abhinavagupta's Tantraloka and the Malinivijaya Tantra:
| Means | Also called | Where awareness is held | What it uses | Speed |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Shambhavopaya (highest) | Icchopaya, path of will | In thoughtlessness, at the first start of a perception or desire | Nothing; entry by the master's grace and one's own strength of awareness | Quickest |
| Shaktopaya (medium) | Jnanopaya, path of knowledge | In the "organic world" of the five senses and mind, ego and intellect | Contemplation of the gap between two thoughts, two breaths, two actions | Shorter |
| Anavopaya (lowest) | Kriyopaya, path of action | In the "elementary world" of the five great elements | Breath (uccara), sense-focus (karana), meditation with mantra (dhyana), places in the body (sthana prakalpana) | Longest |
The goal of all three is the same: samavesha, "mystical entry" or absorption, in the shambhava state, where the yogi "has nowhere to go" and only has to be in his own nature.
Strength of awareness decides the means
What decides which means suits a seeker is not belief or caste but strength of awareness: the power of the subject to stay present without being "overshadowed" by its objects or thoughts. The editor gives a simple example. We say "I am seeing a butterfly", but in fact the "I" is eclipsed by the seeing, and what remains is only "seeing a butterfly". The subject is lost in the act.
Picture awareness as a lamp and experience as what it lights. In ordinary life the lamp forgets itself in what it shows. The three upayas are three ways of turning the light back on itself:
- Anava: tie the lamp to something steady (breath, mantra, a point in the body) so it stops flickering.
- Shakta: notice the dark gap between two things it lights, where only the lamp remains.
- Shambhava: the lamp simply rests as light, before it shines on anything.
Shambhavopaya: the first start
In shambhavopaya the aspirant holds the thought-less (nirvikalpa) state and rests "just at the starting point of any sensation, perception, or thought". The editor quotes Lakshmanjoo's commentary on verse 98: "When you fix your awareness at the very first start, when desire is about to flow out, it has not flown out, it is about to flow out, that is shambhavopaya." That starting point has a technical name, prathamabhasa, "first appearance". The yogi who reaches it is "waiting at the threshold"; from there, says Lakshmanjoo, entry is automatic, because it happens by grace (shaktipata), which the tradition identifies with the grace of the master. A footnote adds that a yogi without a human master can be "initiated" by his own inner energies, the shakti cakra (Tantraloka 4.42).
Shaktopaya: the gap between
Every sensation, perception and thought begins, lasts and ends. Between the end of one and the start of the next is a momentary gap, and "within the gap itself shines the universal undifferentiated reality of God". Shaktopaya trains attention on that junction (sandhi): between raising an arm and lowering it, between two steps, between waking and dreaming, between the outgoing and incoming breath. The key phrase, from verse 61, is madhyam dhyatva: "concentrate on that center, and while concentrating on that center, be established in that center". This requires unbroken awareness "in a chain-like manner"; without it the aspirant falls back to anavopaya. The goal is to become fit to receive the guru's grace, called being "at the feet of the guru".
Anavopaya: supports from every side
Anavopaya is named after anu, the individual soul. It uses four kinds of support, singly or together:
| Support | Meaning | Example from the Introduction |
|---|---|---|
| Uccara | Concentration on breath | Attending to the points between outgoing and incoming breath |
| Karana | One-pointedness through a sense, chiefly sight | Gazing at an object without blinking until the perception dissolves |
| Dhyana | Contemplation, including with mantra | The lotus in the heart; the meaning of "so'ham" or "Shiva" |
| Sthana prakalpana | Concentration on a place | Between the eyebrows, the pit of the throat, the heart; in its higher form, seeing the universe in the span of one breath |
Two practices are singled out as the most typical anava methods, both built on breath with a mantra given by the master: ajapa gayatri (slow, silent breath) and cakrodaya (slow breath with its sound). In both, the weight falls on the start and end points of the breath cycle, and the awareness must be "continually fresh, new, and filled with excitement", never routine.
The three means are not three religions or three goals. They are three entry speeds into one state. A practice that begins as anava (breath and mantra) turns into shakta when the yogi enters the center between the breaths, and into shambhava when that center becomes his own nature. This is why so many of Lakshmanjoo's labels in the book are double ("anava to shakta", "shakta to shambhava"): he is naming the start and the end of a single movement.
Moksha is more than absorption
The Introduction then makes a distinction that the 112 practices themselves rarely state. Absorption in the shambhava state is not yet liberation. Abhinavagupta (Tantraloka 1.31) defines liberation as the condition in which "your being becomes absolutely independent (svatantratmaka)". Independence (svatantrya) is the defining quality of Shiva, so the liberated yogi must have the same freedom in the outer world as in inner trance.
Lakshmanjoo describes how this happens through krama mudra. The yogi is inside, in nimilana samadhi (eyes-closed absorption), relishing the rise of cit kundalini; then he is pulled out, his eyes open, and the world appears "filled with ecstasy" (unmilana samadhi). The going in and coming out repeats, each time with more ecstasy, until I-consciousness and "this"-consciousness are diluted in each other and inner trance and outer life become one. That oneness is jagadananda, universal bliss, which Abhinavagupta's master Shambhunatha described as the state where the six limbs of yoga "are no longer used or required". Such a person is a jivanmukta, liberated while living.
- Advaita Vedanta, as the Introduction presents it: the world is unreal and disappears on liberation.
- Samkhya: the goal is kaivalya, isolation of spirit from matter.
- Trika Shaivism: the world is as real as Shiva, being his creation. What is unreal is only the belief that diversity is the whole truth. Liberation keeps the world and sees it as Shiva's magic trick (indrajala): "We have concealed ourselves in order to find ourselves."
The summary of Advaita Vedanta as teaching that "the world disappears" is a Shaiva polemical shorthand. Many Advaita teachers would say the world is not destroyed but re-understood as Brahman, which is closer to the Trika view than the contrast suggests. The real disagreement is subtler: whether the world's appearance is a power of the Absolute (Shaiva) or a superimposition on it (Advaita).
Anupaya: no means at all
The Introduction ends with anupaya, "no-means". It is not a fourth technique. The one who lives in anupaya "has only to observe that nothing is to be done. Just to 'be' is enough." The Vijnana Bhairava will return to this idea in its final verses, and it is also the hidden point of the opening dialogue: the "terrible medicine" Lakshmanjoo speaks of is exactly the medicine "where you have to do nothing", and the 112 practices are the "sugar candy" that helps it go down.
Read every practice in this book with two questions: what does it use (breath, sense, thought, nothing), and where does it end (in the gap, in the center, in thoughtlessness). The first tells you its upaya; the second tells you that all 112 end in the same place.
The Dharana and Upaya Guide
Before the text, the book prints a one-page table that lists, for each of the 112 dharanas, its verse number and Lakshmanjoo's upaya. It is the most useful single page in the book, and this guide reproduces and expands it in the Master Synthesis at the end. Three quirks are worth noting now:
- Verse 24 is dharana 1, and the 112 practices run from verse 24 to verse 138.
- Verses 69 and 70 and verse 106 are marked "not dharanas"; verses 113 and 114 together form dharanas 87 and 88.
- Dharana 49 (verse 74) has no upaya listed.
| By the numbers | Count |
|---|---|
| Practices taught as pure shambhavopaya | 25 |
| Pure shaktopaya | 50 |
| Pure anavopaya | 7 |
| Mixed labels (anava to shakta, shakta to shambhava, and so on, including one marked "all three") | 29 |
| No label | 1 |
The Goddess Asks, the Lord Clears the Ground
The first twenty-three verses are a frame. The Goddess lists the great maps of Tantric practice (fifty letters, nine states, three energies, the subtle stages of OM) and asks which one is the real path. Bhairava replies that none of them is, that they are sweets to coax a child, and that the real state lies beyond space, time and form. Then comes the turn that makes the whole book possible: that state can only be approached through Bhairavi, through energy, and so 112 ways will be given, all in her field.
Where the text says it comes from
Lakshmanjoo opens by placing the Vijnana Bhairava as one chapter of the Rudrayamala Tantra, another chapter of which is the Paratrishika. These are, he says, neither Rudra scriptures nor Shiva scriptures but Bhairava scriptures: "monistic, pure monistic". In the first verse, rudrayamala sambhavam can be read two ways, and he gives both: "that which has come out of the Rudrayamala Tantra" and "that which has come out of the union (yamala) of Rudra and his energy".
The claim to be part of the Rudrayamala is the text's own, and tradition repeats it. Scholars treat it as a traditional attribution, not a historical one: no single early Rudrayamala survives, and the works printed under that name are later compilations. A University of California study places the Vijnana Bhairava's composition between the seventh and ninth centuries, and if pressed, "between 750 and 850", with an upper limit set by works of the Kashmiri guru Hrasvanatha (c. 900 to 950). Christopher Wallis puts it "around the middle of the ninth century, so maybe about 850 CE". Lakshmanjoo does not engage with dating at all; for him the text is revelation.
He then adds a sentence that changes how the whole book should be read: "Actually these processes are meant for masters. These are not meant for students. This is a book for masters." John Hughes offers "Training guide", and Lakshmanjoo agrees: it is a guide to how to teach people, in which way.
The 112 dharanas are presented as a teacher's repertoire, not a self-help menu. A master looks at a student's strength of awareness and gives the one or two practices that fit. Reading the book as a list of 112 things to try, one after another, is the opposite of how its commentator says it was meant to be used.
Verses 1 to 6: the Goddess's questions
Devi says she has heard "the essence of the threefold school" (Trika), drawn from the Rudrayamala, "part by part, essence of essence", yet her doubt is not removed (verses 1 to 2a). She then asks: "O Lord, what is the real essence of the way we have to tread?" and lists the options (verses 2b to 4).
| Option the Goddess names | What it means in Lakshmanjoo's reading |
|---|---|
| Shabda rashi kala, the mass of sound | The journey through the fifty letters from "a" to "ksha" and back |
| Navatma bheda, the nine-fold | The nine states from prakriti to Shiva: prakriti, purusha, the five kancukas, maya, shuddhavidya, ishvara, sadashiva, Shakti and Shiva; or, as mantra, the nine letters h, r, ksh, m, l, v, y, num |
| Trishiro bheda, as in the Trishirobhairava | Moving through the three energies para, parapara, apara and back |
| Nada bindu and the subtle stages | The ascent of OM: nada, bindu, ardhacandra, nirodhika, nadanta, shakti, vyapini, samana |
| Cakrarudham anackam | The energy that rides the wheel of the letters "without vowels", moving so fast it is motionless |
| Shakti svarupa | Energy itself as the form of the goal |
Two of his glosses here are worth keeping. On the nine states: when you ascend from prakriti you are "not glorified"; when you return from Shiva, you come back "glorified with garlands", carrying Shiva-consciousness down into every level. This is the Trika pattern of ascent and return that the Introduction called krama mudra.
On the stages of OM, he gives a compact breath-map: bindu is one-pointed perception in the movement of breath while reciting "aum"; in ardhacandra the breath stops but there is "an apprehension of breathing again"; in nirodhika breathlessness is fully established; nadanta is "the soundless state of sound".
These descriptions of breath stopping are given as a map of what the tradition says happens, not as instructions. Breath retention and the subtle stages of OM belong to Guru-only practice in this edition's rules. Nothing here should be read as advice to hold the breath.
"Without vowels": a moving stillness
The students press him on anackam. Literally it means "without vowels". Why would that mean "movement-less"? His answer is linguistic and then mystical. You cannot pronounce "ka" without its final "a"; a consonant without a vowel cannot be uttered, it does not move out into speech. So the energy "riding the wheel" (the matrika cakra, the circle of all letters from "a" to "ksha", "not the six cakras here") moves, yet does not move. It cannot be wholly still, or it would be jada, inert like a rock; and it is "all-consciousness". So: "in spanda, it is aspanda; in aspanda, it is spanda", movement in stillness and stillness in movement.
Vibrationless vibration. This idea, which Lakshmanjoo developed fully in his Spanda Karika lectures, appears here in miniature. Consciousness is never static (that would make it dead matter) and never pushed about by its contents (that would make it just another object). Its "motion" is the self-aware throb of being conscious.
Verse 5: the riddle of the supreme
Devi's sharpest question is about the three energies. If parapara and apara both have "the cycle of functioning" (sakala, with parts, with sensation), and if para has it too, how is para supreme? Lakshmanjoo explains sakala: whatever can be observed, perceived, heard, seen or touched. Para has no sensation, because "God consciousness is not felt, it is your own Self". His example is to John: "You don't feel John every now and then because it is your own nature... You can feel Jagdish, you can feel Jeremy, you can feel all others, but you cannot feel yourself always."
He then quotes a line that he returns to often: "shantim no labhate mudho yatah shamitum icchati", the deluded one does not find peace because he wants it. "As long as the urge is there, it is useless... It must become your nature, it must not become your [desired] object."
The supreme is the knower, never the known. That single idea explains why the text will now say all methods are "bogus", and also why it still gives 112 of them. A method can only work on objects; the goal is the subject. So every method must end by dropping itself.
Verse 6: a misunderstanding on purpose
Verse 6 states that supremacy cannot exist where there are differences of letters or forms; the partless (nishkala) cannot be with parts (sakala). Lakshmanjoo calls this "a misunderstanding of Parvati" that she voices so it can be cleared. In fact, he says, "sakala can be nishkala and nishkala can be sakala", because of the Trika theory of the journey and return through aham (I) and its reverse.
Verses 7 to 13: "all this is bogus"
Bhairava praises the question ("sadhu sadhu", well asked): this is "the essence of all Tantras", worth concealing, "even then, I will expose this secret to You" (verses 7b to 8a). Then he says something startling. Whatever forms of Bhairava are taught in the Tantras, with parts or without, "that is all bogus", Lakshmanjoo's own word, "only deception or delusion"; like Indra's net (sorcery), like maya, like a dream, like the gandharva city, a mirage of a town in the sky (verses 8b to 9).
Why are they in the Tantras, then? Verse 10: they are taught "for the meditation of those whose intellect is astray" and who are "established in the commencement of actions" (kriyadambara, a show of rituals). Lakshmanjoo gives a local example: a man in the valley "has now commenced havan of Candi... He has collected so much money, thousands, and he will spend there, finished. It is kriyadambara."
Verses 11 and 12 then deny each option in turn. Bhairava is not the nine-fold, not the mass of letters, not the three-headed god, not the three energies, not nada and bindu, not the stages of OM, not the wheel, not energy's form.
Verse 13 gives the reason with two images that Lakshmanjoo loves:
- Bala vibhishika, "bugbears for children": "If you do such and such action, this ghost will eat you." The devotees laugh.
- Matri modaka, "the mother's sweet": a child will not take bitter medicine, so the mother first puts a sweet in his mouth.
The methods are pravrittyartham, "just to begin with". "You begin, and leave them aside, and then go on the right path."
"We don't say this is bogus"
John objects, sensibly: if the Lord calls all these theories bogus, why study them? Lakshmanjoo's reply turns the objection round. "We don't say this is bogus. Why should we say it is bogus?" They are bogus only "in that state", that is, from the standpoint of the goal, because Bhairava "is not achieved by the support of means". Then the key passage:
> "The exact medicine is that medicine where you have to do nothing. It is terrible, you can't do that. You have to digest it with these upayas... and that support is these one hundred and twelve ways. There is no way to achieve that, actually. One hundred and twelve ways are just in place of sugar candy."
- Verse 13 says: the maps are sweets for children.
- Lakshmanjoo adds: the 112 practices are also sweets, and the bitter medicine is doing nothing.
- So the book is self-cancelling by design: its subject is a hundred and twelve ways to arrive where no way leads. This is the anupaya of the Introduction, placed at the very start.
Verse 9 calls the Tantric maps "without essence", and Lakshmanjoo renders this as "bogus" and "humbug". This is a teacher's emphasis, and it is stronger than the Sanskrit asarataya ("because they lack essence"), which judges their value as the goal, not their truth as stages. The tradition he belongs to still teaches the nine-fold path and the stages of OM in the Tantraloka. Readers should not take "bogus" as a ruling that these systems are false; it is a ruling that they are not Bhairava.
Verses 14 to 21: what the real state is
Now Bhairava describes the goal (verses 14 to 16a). It is free of the limits of space, time and form (dik, kala, kalana); it has no particular place (desha uddesha); it cannot be described (vyapadeshtum ashakya); it is inwardly filled with one's own bliss (antah svanubhavananda); it is beyond the reach of thought (vikalpa unmukta gocara); it is full (bharitakara). That state of Bhairavi, the full state of Bhairava, is "absolutely pure, and absolutely filled with universal existence" (vimalam vishvapuranam).
Lakshmanjoo's aside on Shiva's home is characteristic: "Do you know where Lord Shiva resides? In Shivaloka... and the residence of Lord Shiva in this universe is [Mount] Kailasha. He lives on the top of Kailasha. This is all humbug!"
A scholar who needs no book
To explain vikalpa unmukta gocara, "known without thought", he uses himself as an example. He knows the Tantraloka. At this moment he has no book and does not hold any verse in mind, "but whenever somebody asks me [about] some shloka, bas, [the explanation] comes out. Where was that shloka residing in my brain? Where? In the nirvikalpa state." That is pramiti bhava, the state of the pure knower, as opposed to the scholar who must open the book.
The book example is the best practical key in this section. Knowledge you have become is present without being thought. The goal of the dharanas is to know your own Self this way: not as a remembered fact, but as the place the answer comes from.
Verse 16b follows: "In such a supreme reality, who is to be worshipped and who is satisfied?" (kah pujyah kashca tripyati). Worshipper and worshipped collapse.
Verses 17 to 21: the way is the Goddess
The turn comes in verse 17. The state of Bhairava, "sung" in the Tantras, is in its supreme form the supreme Goddess. Lakshmanjoo explains: the real state of Bhairava is the perceiver and "can't be found [because] It is the [finder]". It can be approached only when it "comes down one step lower, at the state of Parvati". So:
> "One hundred and twelve ways will be explained in this book, and those one hundred and twelve ways will reside only in the field of Parvati. It can't reside in the field of Bhairava because Parvati is the way."
Is there any difference of rank between them? No (verse 18): as energy and its holder are never separate, the supreme energy is the energy of the supreme Self. Verse 19 gives the image: the burning power of fire cannot be found apart from fire; it is only "a beginning, for entering" (prarambhah praveshane). He lists fire's powers (burning, cooking, giving light) and says that using any of them is how you "enter" fire.
Verse 20 states the method in one line: "when one who has entered the state of energy contemplates it as undivided, he becomes Shiva-formed; the Shaivi is here called the doorway" (shaivi mukham ihocyate). Lakshmanjoo: you must "throw off the individual state and enter in the energy", and "unless you [throw] off your individuality, universality will not rise". The path is Shakti; the path is not Shiva.
Verse 21: as a room's directions are seen by the light of a lamp or by the sun's rays, Shiva is known through Shakti.
The lamp and the room. You do not see light; you see by it. Shakti is the light by which the space of consciousness becomes visible. Every dharana is a way of noticing the light while it shows you something: a breath, a sound, a feeling, a void.
Verses 22 and 23: the request
Devi addresses the Lord by his signs: "O God of gods, marked by the trident, adorned with skulls". She restates the goal (beyond space, time and name; the full state of Bhairava) and asks: "By what means does the supreme Goddess become the doorway to it? Tell me, O Bhairava, so that I may know it fully." Lakshmanjoo: "Now, one hundred and twelve ways will be explained."
The prologue makes four claims that govern the rest of the book:
- The goal is the knower, so it is never reached as an object.
- All maps and methods are beginnings only, "sugar candy".
- Yet the way in is real: it is energy, Shakti, which is never separate from Shiva.
- So each of the 112 practices is a way of entering energy and letting it show its source.
The Uddyota commentary of Kshemaraja, Abhinavagupta's disciple, survives for these first 23 verses only. Scholarship notes that Kshemaraja refers to a commentary on the rest elsewhere, so it may once have been complete. From verse 24 onward, the 1918 edition prints the commentary of Shivopadhyaya, described as an eighteenth-century Kashmiri scholar. Lakshmanjoo, as quoted in the book's first edition, called Shivopadhyaya "Shaivite-cum-Vedanti, not an actual Saivite, not a pure Saivite", which is why he sets that commentary aside. From here on, the reader is hearing Lakshmanjoo's own reading of the practices, without any medieval commentator to check it against.
Breath, the Central Channel and the Void of Sound
The first eighteen practices move from the coarsest support to the finest: from breath with syllables, through breath without syllables, to the central channel, the rising energy, the senses, sound and mantra, until the last ones in the group need nothing but attention to the start and end of a sound. They are also the practices where Lakshmanjoo talks most about danger, about kundalini, and about what can go wrong. Almost every practice in this section is Guru-only under this edition's rules.
Read this section as explanation, not instruction. Dharanas 1, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 13 and 14 involve breath retention, kundalini, pressing the eyes, or closing all the openings of the head. Lakshmanjoo himself warns that closing the openings without prior one-pointedness means "you will only get suffocation of breath and you will die". The book is, in his words, "for masters". None of these practices should be tried without a qualified teacher in person, and pressing on the eyeballs carries real medical risk for anyone with glaucoma, retinal problems or recent eye surgery.
Dharana 1 (verse 24): the two starting points of breath
Upaya: anava. The upward movement, from the heart to dvadashanta (the point twelve finger-widths outside the body), is prana, the outgoing breath. The downward movement, from dvadashanta to the heart, is jiva, the incoming breath. The supreme energy, "whose nature is visarga", arises at the two points of origin; resting there, the yogi attains the "full state" (bharita sthiti) of Bhairava.
Lakshmanjoo makes it a mantra practice. The out-breath is "sa", the in-breath "ha". The out-breath ends in visarga ("sah") at the outer dvadashanta; the in-breath ends in "m" at the heart. Concentrating at those two starting points, the yogi becomes one with Bhairava "because of its fullness". It is anava because it works "in the objective field": breath plus mantra.
The first practice already contains the whole book's method in small: attention goes not to the breath, but to the turning points where one breath has ended and the next has not begun. Everything after this refines where and how one rests in a "between".
Dharana 2 (verse 25): the two voids
Upaya: shakta. The breath moves in and out; "by following the two voids", the inner and outer points where the breath turns, the form of Bhairava is revealed through Bhairavi. Lakshmanjoo defines Bhairavi here as uninterrupted awareness. The difference from dharana 1 is exact: "You have not to recite 'so' or 'ham'. It is without the recitation... It is only awareness that functions here." That is why it is shakta, not anava.
A devotee asks where the voids are. "Between going out and coming in. Here [outside] and in the heart." John puts it in one line: in anavopaya there is an object; "There is no object. It is why it is called here shaktopaya."
Dharana 3 (verse 26): neither in nor out
Upaya: shambhava. "When the energy of breath neither goes out nor comes in, because the center has blossomed, through thought-free awareness in the middle, one takes on Bhairava's form." Lakshmanjoo reads madhya as sushumna, the central channel. When one-pointedness is established there, the breath stops of its own accord because the center is already lit. It is shambhava because "there is only nirvikalpa bhava" and one-pointedness; "no recitation of mantra and no objective field".
Dharanas 1 to 3 form a ladder of three steps on the same breath:
- Anava: breathe with "sa" and "ha", rest at the turning points.
- Shakta: breathe with no syllables, rest in the two voids.
- Shambhava: the center opens and the breath stops by itself, without being held.
The upaya changes not because the object changes but because the effort drops away.
Dharana 4 (verse 27): held out, held in
Upaya: anava to shakta. "Whether the breath is held after exhaling or after inhaling, at the end of that, the peaceful one called shanta shines by means of energy." Lakshmanjoo calls it "a practice with a little effort, what you call hatha yoga". His instructions are specific: exhale, pause outside "for half a minute or one fourth of a minute", inhale, hold "in the heart", "hold it just for ten seconds", with every breath. When John asks how long, he says "six hours a day. It is not harmful."
He reads shantanama with a pun: sha-vargasya antah, "the end of the sha-group", is the letter "sa", which stands for sadashiva. So what is revealed is the state of sadashiva, "completely appeased". It begins as anava ("as long as there is kumbhaka... there is mind") and becomes shakta when the calm arrives.
Sadashiva and Shiva
A devotee asks the difference. Sadashiva "is as good as Shiva, but in the body". The solo state of Shiva comes only after the body falls (dehapate tu paramashiva bhattaraka eva bhavati). John then asks the sharp question: if this is realization, why only shakta and not shambhava? The answer sets a rule for the whole book: "From anavopaya, you cannot fly to shambhavopaya." A realization that has come "by holding the breath" is shakta; it will then "automatically go in shambhavopaya in the end".
Two claims here deserve care. First, "six hours a day, it is not harmful" was said to a small circle of students living near their teacher in Kashmir. Breath retention practised for hours without supervision is not harmless for everyone, and modern yoga teachers warn against it for people with heart conditions, high blood pressure, pregnancy, anxiety or panic disorders. Second, the rule that anava "cannot fly" straight to shambhava is Lakshmanjoo's systematization; the verse itself says nothing about upayas. The classification of all 112 practices by upaya is his, built on Abhinavagupta's framework, not something the Tantra states.
Dharana 5 (verse 28): rays from the root
Upaya: anava to shakta. "Contemplate her, rising from the base like rays of light, subtler and subtler, dissolving at the dvadashanta: then Bhairava arises." Lakshmanjoo insists the "her" is para shakti, not to be identified with prana kundalini, cit kundalini or shakti kundalini. The rising can rest at any "dvadashanta": the navel, the heart, the throat, between the eyebrows, the crown. "It is not always that it must go to brahmarandhra. In fact, the state of brahmarandhra is held everywhere in all the cakras."
George asks if one should hold attention at the muladhara. The answer is a warning against imagining it: "You cannot reach muladhara just while talking. You have to meditate, meditate in continuity, and then your breath goes down in the central vein... then it touches muladhara." The anava part ends with that "sipping course" down to the base; from there it is shakta. "It is not shambhavopaya. Shambhavopaya begins from krama mudra", the automatic "opening and closing, opening and closing".
Dharana 6 (verse 29): lightning, wheel by wheel
Upaya: anava to shambhava. "Contemplating her rising like lightning, from wheel to wheel, step by step, up to the measure of three fists (twelve finger-widths), at the end comes the great rising." Lakshmanjoo calls this cakrodaya and prana kundalini: the energy shoots cakra by cakra, muladhara to navel, navel to heart, heart to throat, throat to the eyebrow center, eyebrow center to the crown, each a span of twelve fingers. When instead it shoots straight from base to crown, that is cit kundalini.
The students' questions here produce one of the book's most useful passages:
| Question | Lakshmanjoo's answer |
|---|---|
| Does prana kundalini usually stop at the eyebrow center? | "If it is functioned properly, then it will go to sahasrara." |
| What happens when it rises cakra by cakra? | "Eight great powers are possessed by that sadhaka." When it rises straight, "no powers". |
| Can the yogi stop it? | "It is not in [the yogi's] power... the sadhaka cannot stop." |
| Can it stop by itself? | "When there is some defect", and "the sadhaka will get perturbed, worried". |
| What causes the defect? | "More attachment for worldly pleasure." Then he will have "lots of power but no realization." |
| Does such a yogi fall? | "He will never fall!... He is always on the path... but he won't gain anything" in this life. "It is never [too] late." |
Lakshmanjoo separates power from realization with unusual clarity. A rising that goes step by step can bring siddhis; one that goes straight brings none and is the higher. A rising blocked by worldly desire produces a yogi with powers and no liberation, stuck at the level of mantra pramatri, not mantreshvara. The lesson is moral as much as technical: attachment, not technique, is what stalls the energy.
These descriptions of cakras "twelve finger-widths apart" and of eight powers are traditional yogic physiology, not anatomy. They describe experience as the tradition maps it. Readers who come to this book from modern "kundalini awakening" literature should notice how sober Lakshmanjoo is: no breathing tricks to force a rising, a plain statement that rising can stall and disturb, and the view that powers are a side road. Guru-only.
Dharana 7 (verse 30): the twelve stations and twelve vowels
Upaya: anava, "successive", "an inferior way of anavopaya because it is a successive way". The verse: "The twelve stages, each pierced by its twelve letters, held through the gross, subtle and supreme: leaving each in turn, at the end, Shiva." Lakshmanjoo, following the printed commentary for once ("in the commentary you will see"), lists the twelve stations:
| No. | Station | Vowel |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Janmagra (base of the organ of generation) | a |
| 2 | Mula(dhara) | aa |
| 3 | Kanda | i |
| 4 | Nabhi (navel) | ii |
| 5 | Hrid (heart) | u |
| 6 | Kantha (throat) | uu |
| 7 | Talu (palate) | e |
| 8 | Bhrumadhya (between the eyebrows) | ai |
| 9 | Lalata (forehead) | o |
| 10 | Brahmarandhra (crown aperture) | au |
| 11 | Shakti (the force that breaks through the aperture) | am |
| 12 | Vyapini (the all-pervading, universal ether) | ah |
The vowels exclude the four "neuter" vowels r, rr, l, ll. Each station is held with three grades of awareness: dhyana (with breath, gross), spandamanata (the breath reduced to a pulse at one point, medium) and jyoti rupata (flame-form, supreme). One leaves each in turn ("muktva muktva") until "at the end, only Shiva is revealed". He calls this laya cintana, contemplation by dissolving one into the next.
The student exchange adds two facts. As concentration grows, the breath "becomes shorter and shorter" until "it moves only on one point"; that is spandamanata, close to citta pralaya (the mind's dissolution), which comes fully only in jyoti rupata. And: "This is not kundalini... Without the rise of kundalini, realization takes place."
- Popular kundalini writing often treats the rising as necessary for awakening.
- Lakshmanjoo: kundalini is one path among many. Dharana 7 reaches Shiva without it. Many practices later in the book reach Shiva through a sound, a feeling or a glance, with no rising at all.
Dharana 8 (verse 31): the dam between the brows
Upaya: anava, "without succession". "Filling quickly with it up to the top of the head, breaking through by the bridge of the brows, making the mind thought-free, all-pervasiveness arises in the highest." The key word is setu, a bridge, bank or "bund" (the scholar Ganjoo's word, a dam). Attention held between the eyebrows "without moving even for half a second" acts as a dam that stops the breath without holding it. "It is not kumbhaka, it is one-pointedness... If your breath is held automatically by one-pointedness, it is this practice." Asked whether concentration is enough, he corrects even that: "Only concentration won't do." John offers "strength of awareness"; he says "strength of one-pointedness".
Dharana 9 (verse 32): the five voids, like peacock feathers
Upaya: shakta, "absolutely pure". "Meditating on the five voids in the circles, many-colored like peacock feathers, one enters the supreme void of the heart." Lakshmanjoo reads the circles (mandalas) as the five senses: as many-colored as a peacock's tail. While seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting and touching, the yogi holds all their objects at once as void.
His instruction is the clearest he gives anywhere on bare perception: "It is only seeing as energy, just seeing only, hearing only, bas, not to analyze that. When I see Denise, bas, I see Denise, I don't see the formation of Denise. I see only, it is only seeing. There it ends." Perception is to stop at sensation, "so that you will [avoid being] entangled in the world of the senses." John compares it to seeing a field of grass without singling out a blade, and he agrees: "simultaneously".
A first practice for a lay reader. Of all the practices so far, this is the one that needs no breath work, no posture, no mantra. Sit anywhere and let the five senses work at once, while noticing that each perception simply ends in itself: seeing ends in seeing, hearing in hearing. Do not add "that is a car". The book claims this opens the "heart" of awareness; even a modest result is a felt rest from commentary.
Dharana 10 (verse 33): wherever you rest attention
Upaya: shakta. "In the same way, wherever contemplation is placed, on a void, on a wall, on a worthy recipient, it dissolves by itself and grants the boon." Lakshmanjoo glosses "the worthy recipient" (para patra) in an unexpected way: "on some heart of a disciple". When a master rests his one-pointed attention on a disciple, "that disciple will be also illuminated at once."
He then distinguishes two terms, quoting a verse: dhyana is grosser, attention with mantra and recitation; cintana is subtler, pure one-pointedness on the meaning. And he states a general rule: "When you have to concentrate on something... it becomes shakta. It will be automatically shaktopaya. It can't be shambhavopaya."
Reading "worthy vessel" as a disciple's heart fits Lakshmanjoo's view that the book is a training guide for teachers. Other translators take para patra simply as any excellent object. The disciple reading places the practice inside a guru relationship, which is an interpretive choice, not a necessity of the Sanskrit.
Dharana 11 (verse 34): fire in the skull
Upaya: shakta, "complete". "Placing the mind inside the skull, sitting with eyes closed, gradually, by steadiness of mind, one perceives the supreme target." Lakshmanjoo adds an image the verse does not state: in the space of the skull, "there is fire shining all around... flaming, flames of fire." John asks whether that is imagination. "It's not imagination... There is the fire of cit (consciousness)" produced in cit kundalini.
Dharana 12 (verse 35): the lotus fiber
Upaya: shambhava, "complete". "The central channel, standing in the middle, fine as a lotus fiber: contemplated by the Goddess as inner space, through her the God shines." The key move: the channel is to be contemplated "not with your mind" but by the central channel itself. "Your individual consciousness won't reach there. Madhya nadi will reach there. Madhya nadi is realized by madhya nadi, not by any other agency." John asks if madhya nadi is "a state of consciousness". "State of consciousness. That state of consciousness is realized by that consciousness of that state." This is para pramatri bhava, the supreme subject.
Dharana 12 shows what makes a practice shambhava: there is no second thing doing the looking. When the only "tool" is the state itself, there is nothing to classify as mind or breath. This is the same logic as the prologue's claim that the goal is the knower.
Dharana 13 (verse 36): closing the seven gates
Upaya: anava, "pure". "By blocking the gates with the hands as a weapon, piercing the brow, the point (bindu) is seen; as it gradually dissolves, in its midst, the supreme state." The thumbs close the ears, the forefingers the eyes, the middle fingers the nostrils, the last fingers the lips. A light appears (taraka prakasha, bindu light), fades by degrees, and "you will enter in samadhi". The essential condition comes first: "before closing these openings, you have to maintain awareness first of one-pointedness." Without it, "suffocation of breath and you will die."
Dharana 14 (verse 37): the flame from pressing the eyes
Upaya: anava. "Meditating on the point, a subtle flame like a tilaka, born from the agitation inside the eye, at the crown and in the heart, at the end of dissolution, absorption." The yogi presses the eyeballs; a point of light appears; he holds it at the upper dvadashanta (above the crown, "top of the shikha") and in the heart; it dissolves into laya, which Lakshmanjoo equates with samavesha.
Do not press on your eyes. Pressure on the eyeballs can raise intraocular pressure and slow the heart through a nerve reflex. Dharanas 13 and 14 are given here for understanding only, as Guru-only.
Dharana 15 (verse 38): the unstruck sound
Upaya: shakta, "pure". "One who is immersed in sound-Brahman, the unstruck sound heard in the ear, unbroken, like a rushing river, reaches the supreme Brahman." Anahata is the sound "which is heard only in your ears", not from an outer source. If one cannot hear it, any unbroken sound will do: the roar of a waterfall or a fast stream. Fingers on the ears, or cupped hands, make it audible. "Just contemplate on that sound." Shakta because "no mantra, no recitation, no breathing exercise", and he adds: anahata or a waterfall, "not both".
Dharana 16 (verse 39): the end of the long OM
Upaya: anava to shambhava in the guide; in the talk he also says "a touch of anavopaya in the beginning... in the body of this process, it is all pure shaktopaya." "By reciting the pranava and the rest, and contemplating the void at the end of the prolonged tone, through the supreme void power, one becomes void, O Bhairavi." There are three pranavas: Vedic "om", Shiva's "hum", and Maya's "hrim". Any of them is sung in pluta, drawn out ("Ooooooooom"), and attention rests where the sound merges into silence.
Here the book itself is inconsistent: the summary table calls dharana 16 anava to shambhava, while the spoken commentary calls its body "pure shaktopaya". The two can be squared (anava start, shakta body, shambhava end), but this guide flags it because readers who use the table as a fixed classification should know Lakshmanjoo's labels were spoken, and sometimes shifted.
Dharana 17 (verse 40): before and after any letter
Upaya: shambhava. "Contemplate the beginning and the end of any letter (any sound unit), with the void; that person becomes void, of void form." Before a mantra is uttered, "you are going to recite"; after it is over, "the recitation is over". At those two places, attend to the nothingness. "In the beginning of uttering any mantra, what is there? Nothing? There is some force only, there is some energy." Resting there, the yogi's form "becomes the embodiment of voidness, and that is Lord Shiva", the vishvottirna, the state beyond the universe.
The edges of a sound. Dharana 16 rests at the end of a long sound; dharana 17 rests at both edges of any sound, even the shortest. The second is higher (shambhava) because it needs no prolonging: the gap is found at the first start, the prathamabhasa of the Introduction, where the impulse to speak exists as pure energy before it becomes a word.
Dharana 18 (verse 41): the fading string
Upaya: shambhava. "In the sounds of stringed and other instruments, long and drawn out in sequence, with a mind on nothing else, at the end of each one becomes the body of supreme space." Lakshmanjoo demonstrates with an imagined sitar: pluck the string and do not stop it with your hand; let it "prolong as long as it can", like "Hmmmmmmm". Attention follows the sound to its very end, and there rests.
In eighteen practices, the book has walked from breath with syllables to listening to a sitar note fade. The tools get lighter as the upaya rises: breath and mantra, then breath alone, then the center, then the senses, then any sound and its vanishing. The constant is a single gesture: rest where something ends or begins.
Mantra Dissolved, Body Emptied, World Burned
This group turns from breath and sound to space and imagination. The practices ask the yogi to dissolve a mantra into silence, to feel empty space on every side, to find the body hollow or even missing, to keep the "center" in every daily act, to imagine the body and then the whole universe burnt to ashes, and finally to see the world as one's own vast consciousness or as pure void. Lakshmanjoo's commentary contains two passages that are among the most quoted in his teaching: the practice for conscious dreaming, and the claim that a yogi who dreams of practising has a "certificate" of liberation.
Dharana 19 (verse 42): letting a mantra thin into silence
Upaya: anava rising to shambhava. "By the gross sequence of letters of any pinda mantra, and by the void-utterance ending in ardhendu, bindu and nadanta, one becomes Shiva." Lakshmanjoo gives an alternative reading of the second line (bindvardhacandra nadantah) and defines a pinda mantra: a "lump" mantra of consonants with a vowel only at the end, like "klim" or "sauh". "Namah shivaya" is not one, because vowels fall between its consonants. "Aum" is not strictly a pinda mantra, "but here, Shaivism has recognized this as a pinda mantra".
He then lays out the three levels of a mantra:
| Level | Stages of "aum" |
|---|---|
| Gross (sthula) | a, u, m: the spoken syllable |
| Subtle (sukshma) | bindu (the dot) and ardhacandra (the crescent) |
| Subtlest (para) | nirodhini, nada, nadanta, shakti, vyapini, samana and finally unmana, "where the mind is over" |
The key gloss is on shunya uccara, "uttering the void": "You have not to utter this voidness... You can utter words, but you can't utter voidness. You have to feel voidness... So, uccara is here a feeling, not an uttering."
Dharana 20 (verse 43): space on every side
Upaya: anava to shambhava. "Contemplate space in all directions in your own body at once; with a thought-free mind, everything becomes space for him." Sit, close the eyes, and feel: "From my right side, from the left side, from the front, from the back, there is nothing." It starts as anava because "you have to feel that you have got a body... you have got sides of your body". Held without thought, the void "dissolves all that grossness everywhere... His body is over... only voidness remains".
Then Lakshmanjoo gives one of his clearest statements of what "void" means in this book: "Nothingness is Lord Shiva, because Lord Shiva is not this thing, not this thing. What is Lord Shiva? No-thing. No-thing is something, something which is not thinkable, [not] expressible... That is 'nothing'."
- Shunya in Madhyamaka Buddhism: emptiness is the absence of inherent existence in all things, including consciousness.
- Shunya in this book: the void is consciousness free of objects, and it is identified with Shiva, a "something which is not thinkable".
- The same word is doing different work. Trika authors elsewhere criticize the Buddhist void as a lower stage; here the word is borrowed and filled with Shiva.
Dharana 21 (verse 44): the body goes missing
Upaya: shambhava "with the slightest touches of anava" (the guide: anava to shambhava). "One who contemplates at once the void above and the void below, by the energy that no longer depends on the body, becomes void-minded." Imagine the void above and below, then "try to find out your body... there is no body, the body is missing. When the body is missing, then this dharana... will be completed." He is direct: "Just try, just try for half an hour and you will see your body is missing... If it is not missing, then this process is not complete."
Dharana 22 (verse 45): three voids, three knowers
Upaya: shakta. "Contemplate firmly the void above, the void below, the void in the heart: by being thought-free at once, the thought-free state arises." Lakshmanjoo maps the three onto the triad that runs through Trika: the upper side is subjective consciousness (pramata), the lower is the objective field (prameya), the heart is the cognitive state (pramana). Emptying all three at once removes knower, known and knowing, and nirvikalpa rises.
Dharana 23 (verse 46): one moment of emptiness
Upaya: shakta to shambhava. "Contemplate voidness in the place of the body for just a moment: free of thought, one becomes thought-free, of thought-free form." The commentary is a small lecture on what mind is. The mind's real function is "to think of things which are not concerned with anything": "This is paper", "These are spectacles", though "you have nothing to do with those". Denise: "It collects useless information." Swamiji: "Yes, useless impressions." Then: "Actually, the mind is nothing. If the mind is one-pointed, it is God."
The idle labeller. Lakshmanjoo's picture of the ordinary mind is a machine that names whatever passes, needed or not. Dharana 23 does not fight the labeller; it takes one moment in which the body is felt as empty, and in that moment the labelling has nothing to hold. The practice is short on purpose.
Dharanas 24 and 25 (verses 47 and 48): the hollow body
Upaya: shakta (24); shakta to shambhava (25). Verse 47: "Contemplate that everything material in the body is pervaded by space, O doe-eyed one; then that contemplation becomes firm." Flesh, bone and marrow are imagined as hollow. Verse 48: "Contemplate the skin as a wall around the inside of the body, with nothing within: meditating so, one reaches the one who cannot be meditated on." Lakshmanjoo glosses adhyeya, "not to be meditated upon", as "the one who is the knower and never the known".
He says these two are really "only one technique", though the book's guide gives them separate numbers.
Lakshmanjoo calls verses 47 and 48 one dharana while the book counts them as two (24 and 25). This is not the only such case. The figure 112 is traditional; how the verses are divided into 112 practices varies between translators, and Lakshmanjoo himself was not rigid about it. Readers comparing this book with Jaideva Singh or Wallis should match by verse number, not by dharana number.
Dharana 26 (verse 49): the space between two lotuses
Upaya: shakta. "With awareness dissolved in the space of the heart, in the middle of the two lotus cups, with mind on nothing else, O blessed one, one gains supreme good fortune." Akshah here means "thought", not just "eyes". The heart is pictured between two lotuses, one facing up and one facing down. John asks if the lotuses are just a simile. "No, they are existing... One who perceives that in samadhi, he perceives these two lotuses."
"They are existing" is a claim from inside meditative experience. It may describe a common visionary form that this practice produces, or a structure the tradition trains practitioners to see. The book does not separate the two, and a reader can use the practice without deciding.
Dharana 27 (verse 50): one center, unflickering
Upaya: shakta, "pure". "When the mind dissolves in a dvadashanta, on all sides of one's body, for one of firm intellect, the target of reality appears firmly." Any center will do: the eyebrow point, the throat pit, the heart, the navel. Attention must be "just like a flame, the candle flame, without the disturbance of air", and he quotes Bhagavad Gita 6.19, "as a lamp in a windless place does not flicker". Dridha buddhi is the practiser's "firm strength of awareness"; dridhibhuta describes what is revealed: it does not fade.
Dharana 28 (verse 51): the center in every act
Upaya: anava to shambhava. "In whatever way, wherever, throw the mind into the dvadashanta; for one whose mental activity wanes moment by moment, in a few days a transformation comes." This is the first practice explicitly for daily life: "when you are walking or talking, or doing some household work, or doing any other nonsense act". It must be continuous, pratikshanam, "not once, not twice, not thrice". Then "one is born anew. One is born anew in days, not in months." He offers an alternative reading, kshanair for dinair: "not in days, [but] in moments."
George asks whether dvadashanta is a place or a state. "Dvadashanta is the center, any center. Wherever you go, if you are talking, put your mind in the center. If you are laughing, put there also your mind in the center... While making jokes, put your mind in the center without a break." And how do you find it first? "You just breathe in and breathe out and be acquainted with the center."
Taking the glasses out of the case. Lakshmanjoo's own example of this practice is a small act: "I have put the [spectacles] in my case and I am taking it [out]. Just do all these [mundane] actions in that awareness." Of all the practices in the book, this is the one most often taught to householders. The difficulty is not the technique but the continuity.
"In days, not in months" is a promise made for a practitioner whose "mental activity wanes moment by moment" (kshinavritti), that is, someone already very concentrated. For most readers, the honest expectation is slower. The promise describes the speed of the method once the condition is met, not the speed of meeting the condition.
Dharana 29 (verse 52): the fire from the toe
Upaya: shakta to shambhava. "Contemplate that one's own body is burnt by the fire of time rising from the foot of time; at the end, the peaceful appearance arises." Kalagni Rudra, the fire at the end of time, is placed "at the big toe of your left foot". Imagine the fire of God consciousness rising from there and burning the whole body to ash; in the end "the peaceful state of Lord Shiva is revealed."
Dharana 30 (verse 53): the whole world in ashes
Upaya: shakta. "In the same way, meditating by imagination that the whole world is burnt, for the person of undivided mind, the supreme personhood arises." This is a dharana "based on imagination" (vikalpatah), and Lakshmanjoo says imagination done this way comes true: "This imagination won't remain imagination, it will be true." It must flow "like a chain", without pause; the thought "it is still existing" must not return. Jagdish asks if "chain" means "succession". "Not succession. 'Chain' means 'continuity'. When there is succession... there will be a gap, [and] it will be filled with foreign matter", that is, with other thoughts. The result is pumbhava, the state of "a real man", and "a real man is God".
Lakshmanjoo's distinction between a chain and a succession is a precise piece of meditation teaching. Succession is one thought, then another, with gaps where distraction enters. A chain is a single unbroken flow of the same awareness. Many later practices depend on this: an imagined image is a support only while it flows without breaks.
Dharana 31 (verse 54): dissolving the elements
Upaya: anava and shakta. "Meditating that the elements, subtle and ever subtler, in one's own body or in the world, dissolve into their source, at the end the supreme is revealed." Body and universe are made of the same thirty-six tattvas, so either can be used. Earth dissolves into water, water into fire, fire into air, air into space; then the subtle elements, the organs, mind, intellect, ego, prakriti and purusha, the kancukas, maya, shuddhavidya, ishvara, sadashiva, shakti, and Shiva, "the subtlest".
Asked about the upaya, he states a general rule: "As long as botheration is concerned, it is shaktopaya and anavopaya. It can't be shambhavopaya. Wherever there is botheration... Without botheration is shambhavopaya. And total negation of botheration is anupaya." He also rejects a printed reading that took the "tattvas" as the five states of waking, dreaming and so on: "No, that is incorrect."
- Kalagni Rudra: the form of Shiva as the fire at the end of the world, placed in Trika cosmology at the lowest level of the universe, "the toe".
- The thirty-six tattvas: the levels of reality in Kashmir Shaivism, from earth (36th) up to Shiva (1st); see the Frameworks section.
Dharana 32 (verse 55): mastery of dream
Upaya: anava to shambhava. The verse in the 1918 edition reads that by meditating on the energy "full yet weak" in the dvadashanta, entering the heart, "asleep" (suptah), one gains freedom. Lakshmanjoo gives what he calls "the real reading of Lord Shiva": svapna svatantryam, "freedom in dreaming".
He opens with a strong claim: the dream state is "the cause of our being involved in repeated births and deaths". And: "If you, in your dreaming state, only dream that you are doing abhyasa, there is liberation, there is no rebirth... This is the certificate of your being liberated."
The practice, as he gives it:
- Sit in a posture without leaning.
- Breathe slowly (durbala) with sound (pina), so the ear hears it: this is cakrodaya.
- Focus the breath at one center: heart, throat pit or eyebrow point.
- Continue until drowsiness comes ("it must come, and it will come").
- Then lie flat and keep practising into sleep.
Starting while lying down will not work: "Then you will go only into the dreaming state." But if begun seated, "you will do the same practice unconsciously in the dreaming state also... You will see that you are practicing, [that] you are breathing deeply." The full result is to know that one is dreaming and to choose the dream: "If he wants to see Lord Shiva in the dream, Lord Shiva will appear before him."
Puri tattva: the hinge between states
The "heart" entered here is puri tattva, "a place where we go first": the point between waking and dreaming, dreaming and deep sleep. Touch it with awareness and "you can change your position of your being": wakeful into dream while staying aware, dream into dreamless sleep while staying aware, and so on.
- Modern lucid-dream research studies the ability to know one is dreaming and sometimes to steer the dream, using techniques like reality checks and wake-back-to-bed.
- Dharana 32 aims at the same capacity with a different method (breath with sound, a center, continuity into sleep) and a different goal: not dream control for its own sake, but entry into turya, the fourth state, which is "found in" the dream.
Three things deserve a careful reading. First, the reading "svapna svatantryam" is Lakshmanjoo's emendation, presented as Shiva's "real reading"; the printed text has "suptah", and other translators follow it. Second, the "certificate" of liberation is a teacher's encouragement, not a doctrine found in the verse. Third, slow audible breathing until "giddiness" is cakrodaya, an anava breath practice that this edition treats as Guru-only; giddiness can also be a sign of over-breathing, which should not be pushed.
Dharana 33 (verse 56): gross, subtle, supreme paths
Upaya: shakta to shambhava. "Contemplate the whole universe, step by step, in the form of the paths of worlds and the rest, through gross, subtle and supreme, until at the end the mind dissolves." The six paths (adhvan) of Trika are grouped by grade:
| Grade | Path | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| Gross | Bhuvanadhva | The path of worlds |
| Subtle | Tattvadhva | The path of the elements of reality |
| Subtlest | Kaladhva | The path of the fundamental powers |
Each is dissolved into the next by imagination; at the end, manolaya, the mind becomes "un-minded".
Dharana 34 (verse 57): "I am pervading all of this"
Upaya: shakta, "supreme". "Meditating on the Shiva principle in all its limits on every side of this whole universe, by the process of the paths, there is the great rising." The instruction is homely and vast: "Just sit or stand outside in your garden and imagine that around you this whole universe is existing." Picture "all these one hundred and eighteen worlds" around, above and below, and feel: "This whole universe is my own God consciousness... I am pervading in each and every part."
This is adhva prakriya, "knowledge of the process of the paths", as taught in Tantraloka chapter 8. He cites the saying "na prakriya param jnanam", there is no knowledge higher than knowledge of this process, and identifies its state with sadashiva's "aham sarvam", "I am all".
Dharana 35 (verse 58): the world as a void
Upaya: shakta to shambhava, "more shambhava". "O great Goddess, contemplate this universe as void; let the mind dissolve there; then one becomes fit for that dissolution." Look at a key and think "this is not a key, this is nothing, this is only a vacuum"; let the mind melt there. The yogi then becomes "worthy" of the supreme void of God consciousness. "The next is pure shambhavopaya."
Seventeen practices, one direction: from filling the mind to emptying it. Some work by adding an image (fire, the 118 worlds, two lotuses); others by removing (the void on every side, the hollow body, the world as nothing). Both arrive at the same place, because what matters, as dharana 30 says, is not the image but the unbroken chain of awareness that carries it.
The Gaze, the Center Between, and the Doors of Joy
Here the practices open outward. The yogi looks at a pot and sees only its empty shape, gazes at a bare open plain, rests between two objects, holds one object without tiring of it, and feels the body and the world as consciousness and as bliss. Then come the most debated verses of the whole Tantra: joy as a doorway, including the joy of union, of meeting a loved one after years, of eating, of music, and finally of whatever pleases the mind. Lakshmanjoo makes one of his rare open disagreements here: verses 69 and 70 are, he insists, not practices at all.
Dharana 36 (verse 59): the pot without walls
Upaya: shambhava. "Throw the gaze on a pot or other vessel, leaving aside its walls; going at once into its dissolution, by that dissolution one becomes one with it." Keep a pot, a jug or a tumbler before you, eyes wide open, and see it as "only shape without this substance", no clay, no copper, no glass. You can do the same with a person sitting in front of you: a shape, but "only a vacuum". When you enter "the vacuum of that pot, he enters in the vacuum of God consciousness, just there and then."
Why shambhava and not shakta? "Because you have to see nothing, you have to look and see nothing, just only go on seeing."
A devotee suggests the pot might be "a creation of my thought". The reply is a little Socratic exchange: "Whose thought?" "My thought." "Who are you?" Then: "This is the creation of the thought of God consciousness. Don't put 'I', because as soon as you put 'I', the body will make you limited."
The pot practice shows the difference between Trika and subjective idealism. The world is not "my" idea. It is the idea of universal I-consciousness, and the practice works only if the "I" that sees is not the "I" bounded by the body.
Dharana 37 (verse 60): the empty plain
Upaya: shambhava, "pure". "Throw the gaze on a place without trees, mountains, walls; when the mental state dissolves there, one becomes free of mental activity." Go to a barren field or a desert with "no houses, no roads, no shade, no waterfalls, nothing", stand or sit, eyes wide open, and "see [that] there is nothing". The emptiness of the view empties the mind, and "thought-lessness appears, at once".
The sky practice. Many teachers since have adapted this verse to looking at a clear sky or the open sea. Lakshmanjoo's reading keeps the verse's literal sense: the point is an unfeatured field, with nothing for the eye to grab. A city-dweller can find the same quality in a blank wall at close range, though the verse prefers open space.
Dharana 38 (verse 61): between two objects
Upaya: shakta. "In knowing two things, meditate and rest in the middle; leaving both at once, in the middle reality shines." This is the verse the Introduction quoted as the heart of shaktopaya (madhyam dhyatva). His example: a spectacles case and a piece of paper. Look at one; when perceiving it is over and perceiving the other "has not yet come", that is the middle. Rest there.
He adds a practical note the verse does not state: the center will slip, and that is expected. "While you concentrate on that center, this center will disappear, and you have to take the support of these two objects again... see this and see this, and see what is in-between." When the center is steady, drop both objects. The same works with the two breaths. "There you will enter in the shaktopaya state. That is not shambhavopaya." He notes the Tantraloka also treats this practice as shakta.
Two posts and a gate. The two objects are posts; the center is the gate between them. You use the posts to find the gate, and go back to them whenever you lose it. Only when you can stand in the gateway without looking at either post have you "left both at once".
Dharana 39 (verse 62): one object, kept alive
Upaya: shakta, and he gives two readings, both shakta.
Reading 1, "bhave atyakte" (the object not abandoned): look at one pot and only that pot. "Don't think of this paper, or cardamom, or any flower." The key instruction: keep the awareness alive. "When you are fed up with seeing [an object] again and again, [then] your consciousness... [becomes] dead and your consciousness wants to see another object because you want to see something new. But don't do that." If any other thought slips in, "finished, the dharana is over". When it holds, object-consciousness melts into subject-consciousness and the two together enter universal consciousness.
Reading 2, "bhave tyakte" (the object abandoned): look at one object fully, then leave it with the intention of seeing another, but do not arrive at the other. "Leave the kingdom of this object... [but] don't enter in the kingdom of another object", and roam in the center. There "blooms forth" the supreme state.
John asks why a practice with an object is not anava. The answer gives the rule clearly: anava uses mantra, breath, place, "united". "When [there is] only [the perception of an] objective support, and that God consciousness is meditated on, that is shaktopaya."
"Keep it alive" is one of the most practical sentences in the book. Boredom with an object is the moment the mind is about to jump. Lakshmanjoo's instruction is to treat the moment of boredom as the edge of the practice, not as its failure: stay with the object, and keep the seeing fresh.
Dharana 40 (verse 63): body and world as consciousness
Upaya: shakta, "highest state of shaktopaya". "Contemplate that the whole body or the world is made of consciousness, at once, with a thought-free mind: the supreme rising." "Toe to head" and the universe are to be felt as one, simultaneously, filled with God consciousness. The thought that crowns it is sarvo mamayam vibhavah, "all this is my glory", a phrase from Utpaladeva's Ishvarapratyabhijna.
Dharana 41 (verse 64): where the two breaths meet
Upaya: anava. "From the collision of the two breaths, inside or outside, at the end, the yogi becomes fit for the rising of the knowledge of sameness." Samghatta, the meeting point: "The beginning of ingress is the ending point of egress." It can occur inside (eyebrow point or heart) or outside (the outer dvadashanta). When at the end both breaths stop, the yogi becomes able to know "the rise of the oneness of the Self". Guru-only.
Dharana 42 (verse 65): body and world as bliss
Upaya: shakta. "Remember that the whole world or one's own body is filled with one's own bliss, at once; by one's own nectar one becomes made of supreme bliss." Not filled step by step, but already full. He links this to dharana 40: there, the universe filled with light (prakasha); here, filled with bliss, which is vimarsha, the self-aware side of light. The universe is "the coagulation of one's own consciousness".
- Dharana 40: the world as prakasha, consciousness as light.
- Dharana 42: the world as vimarsha / ananda, consciousness tasting itself.
- In Trika the two are inseparable: light that does not know itself would be like a crystal, bright but dead. Practising both is practising both faces of Shiva.
Dharana 43 (verse 66): the tickle
Upaya: shakta. "By a trick (kuhana), O doe-eyed one, a great joy rises at once, by which reality shines." Lakshmanjoo takes the trick literally: tickling in both armpits. "When somebody tickles you... and you laugh, you laugh wildly without any limit, and there you have to see where this laughing comes [from]." The tickle is unpleasant, so why laugh? "You ought to have wept. [But] you don't weep, you laugh. So there is something unknown to you that makes you laugh." Find the source of the laughter, and "the supreme bliss shines forth". Can you tickle yourself? "Then [you] won't laugh. Tickling must be done by somebody else."
Kuhana literally means "trickery" or "a sly device", and other translators read the verse more abstractly, as any sudden, surprising method. Lakshmanjoo's tickling reading is memorable and teachable, and it fits the pattern of finding the source of a spontaneous feeling, but it is one interpretation. Some readers find it charming; some find it odd. Both responses are reasonable.
Dharana 44 (verse 67): the ant's touch
Upaya: anava to shambhava, "superior anavopaya", for "elevated sadhakas". "By blocking all the streams (of the senses), with the energy of breath rising slowly, at the time of an ant's crawling touch, supreme happiness spreads." The checking of the senses is done not by force but by elevated prana shakti: ordinary breath, "real breath", but without any movement of thought. "When there is one-pointedness in prana shakti, that prana shakti is not simple prana shakti, it is elevated prana shakti."
The students are confused, and the exchange is long. The center here is madhya dhama in the outside field, and "Madhya dhama is everywhere, if you are aware." Does the breath enter sushumna? "It has entered already. It has entered universal sushumna." External and internal center "are one". The order matters: "Just center yourself and then breathe", not the other way round. Then cit kundalini rises, "very minutely", like an ant's movement, "not in a flash".
A surprising ranking
A devotee objects: "You always told us that instantaneous revelation of cit was the highest." Lakshmanjoo says it was, "but it is lower than this". The slow rise is the firm movement of nimilana; the rise "in a flash" is the weak one. "Yes, you scratch your head [laughs]!"
This ranking of the slow ant-like rise above the instant flash reverses what Lakshmanjoo said elsewhere, and the student says so. The text does not resolve it. One reading: a flash can come and go, while the slow rise is stable; another: the teacher was emphasizing that this practice, though anava, is not inferior. This guide records the tension rather than smoothing it.
Dharana 45 (verse 68): between fire and poison
Upaya: shakta. "Throw the joyful mind between fire and poison, alone or filled with breath, and one is joined with the bliss of love." Lakshmanjoo gives two readings of fire (vahni) and poison (visha):
| Reading | "Fire" (vahni) | "Poison" (visha) | For whom |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cognitive | The energy of will (iccha) | The energy of knowledge (jnana) | Anyone; "when you are not married" |
| Sexual | The rise of sexual excitement | Its appeased state | "When you are married" |
The cognitive version is his clearest teaching on the moment before recognition. Hold up a handkerchief. "What is this?" is will. "This is a handkerchief" is knowledge. "Soon after will, it must stop; and, before knowledge, it must stop." Or bring two fingers together: the intent to join is will, the joining is knowledge, and the mind rests between. That is alocana, close to prathamabhasa, but because it uses two supports, it is shakta. Going straight into the unsupported moment "is shambhavopaya".
Smarananda, literally the bliss of love-making, is to be understood as the union of Shiva and Shakti, "Rudrayamala". The breath is not to be released; "it is automatic kumbhaka". The bliss is cidananda in nimilana, not yet jagadananda.
The sexual reading of this practice is given in the book only for married partners, inside a guru-led path, and with an "automatic" retention of breath that cannot be forced. This edition treats it as Guru-only. The will and knowledge reading, which needs no partner and no breath technique, is the one that any reader can try: notice the instant between "what is this?" and "this is a handkerchief".
Verses 69 and 70: not practices, says Lakshmanjoo
Verse 69 speaks of the joy at the end of the agitation of union with a shakti (a female partner): "that joy, which is of Brahman, is called one's own". Verse 70: "By licking, churning and striking" (kissing, embracing and so on), from the intense memory of a woman's pleasure, "even without a shakti, O Goddess, there is a flood of bliss."
Lakshmanjoo's position is firm: "These two are not dharanas from my point of view." They are a simile: "It is just a simile, what kind of joy you perceive in samadhi." Verse 69 is "the direct way of the sex act", verse 70 "the indirect way", by intense memory. Neither tells you what to do. A devotee objects that "other acaryas including Abhinavagupta have taken it as a dharana". He answers: "If you ask me, I won't agree, I have got a disagreement with that... The Vijnana Bhairava, this book itself, will tell you in the seventy-first shloka that this was not a process."
This is the clearest place where Lakshmanjoo departs from his own tradition's greatest authority, as reported by a student in the room. Abhinavagupta's Kaula ritual (Tantraloka chapter 29) does include sexual practice for qualified initiates, and many scholars read verses 69 and 70 as genuine Kaula methods. Lakshmanjoo, a lifelong celibate monk teaching householders, reads them as illustrations and moves the method to verse 71. Readers should know the disagreement exists. The book's numbering (verses 69 and 70 marked "not dharanas") encodes his position, not a neutral one.
Dharana 46 (verse 71): the source of a great joy
Upaya: shakta to shambhava ("This can be shaktopaya or shambhavopaya even"). "When a great joy is obtained, or when a dear one is seen after a long time, meditate on the joy that has arisen; absorbed in it, the mind becomes that." Now, he says, "this is a process". The method is the same for joy in union and joy in reunion: "find out wherefrom this joy has appeared... Situate your mind there with full awareness", "at the very moment of rising", and melt into the udgama sthana, the place of its source.
The station platform. Lakshmanjoo's second example is ordinary enough for anyone: "your own dear, dearest one... who has been out of sight for so many years, and you have seen him", and "at the very first moment, you are filled with that joy." The practice is not to enjoy less, but to turn toward where the joy is coming from in the very moment it rises.
Dharana 47 (verse 72): eating and drinking
Upaya: shakta. "From the expansion of the joy of taste brought by eating and drinking, contemplate the state of fullness; then great bliss comes." Put before you your favorite sweet dish or drink: "It will be kshira pana [milk] or it will be virapana" (the "hero's drink", the ritual wine of Kaula practice), "anything you like". When you are merged in the taste, "don't think [of] yourself as an individual being... imagine that you are all-full", in the state of mahananda.
Dharana 48 (verse 73): music, heard as one
Upaya: shakta. "For the yogi who is one with the unequalled joy of songs and other objects, by absorption, the mind becomes that." Music is "our diet through the ears". The instruction is specific: attend to the collective sound, the nada that runs through all seven notes, not to each note in turn. A devotee points out that most raga music is one note after another. "But still then you hear." Hearing the "sound which is not a sound in any sound" is for "elevated ones"; the practice with support remains shakta.
He quotes Abhinavagupta in the Tantraloka: those who cannot become one with what they hear, "not knowing how to drown the body and the rest", are ahridaya, "without heart", inert. Then a striking addition: "For those who are fully elevated souls, they can rise in ordinary talk also (e.g., in hearing bad names)."
- Sahridaya, "one with heart": in Abhinavagupta's aesthetics, the sensitive spectator who can dissolve into the mood (rasa) of poetry or drama. Dharana 48 uses the same capacity for liberation.
- Abhinavagupta (c. 975 to 1025): the great Kashmiri master whose Tantraloka is Lakshmanjoo's main authority for the upaya system.
Dharana 49 (verse 74): wherever the mind is content
No upaya listed in the guide. "Wherever the mind finds satisfaction, hold the mind right there; there and there, the nature of supreme bliss arises." Lakshmanjoo's gloss is bold: "If your mind is situated peacefully in working in the garden, put your mind there; don't go in the prayer room for prayer. Going in the prayer room at that moment is a sin for you, and working in the garden is the right way for you." And: "Don't think that this is an impure act. That is a pure act for you [whereas] the 'pure' act is an impure act for you."
Dharana 49 is easy to misuse. "Wherever the mind is content" could be read as permission to follow every pleasure. Lakshmanjoo's examples are innocent (gardening), and the instruction is to hold the mind there with awareness, not to chase the pleasure. The verse belongs to a group that uses joy as a doorway, and in every case the door is the source of the joy, not the object that triggered it.
This section moves the practice out of the meditation room. A pot on the table, an empty plain, two objects, a tickle, a meal, a song, a reunion, a garden: anything that empties the mind or delights it can be used, as long as awareness turns from the object to where the seeing or the joy is rising from. The method is the same; only the doorway changes.
Sleep's Threshold, the Five Mudras, Sky and Darkness
This group is full of thresholds and postures. It begins with the gap between waking and sleep, then gives the five mudras of the five kinds of perfected yogis, and then a series of body practices that look almost playful: sitting on one buttock, finding the hollow of the armpits, riding a horse, swaying. It ends with the great outer contemplations: light filling the sky, the cloudless sky, the sky inside the skull, the three states of waking, dream and sleep, and the darkness of a moonless rainy night. Lakshmanjoo also tells one of the book's few stories about his own master.
Dharana 50 (verse 75): between waking and sleep
Upaya: shambhava, "because there is no support". "When sleep has not yet come and the outer world has faded, that state which the mind can reach: there the supreme Goddess shines." The gap is the moment when wakefulness is over and sleep has not yet come. Held with awareness, it opens.
The students press him hard, and the answers describe the state precisely:
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| Is there drowsiness here? | "No drowsiness... it is just awareness." |
| Does he go into dream? | "He doesn't go into the dreaming state." |
| Does he sleep? | "He never sleeps." He is "not aware of the body", "he doesn't see dreams, but he is aware of his Being." |
| Is the body asleep? | To others "the body is there"; John: "This is nimilana samadhi. The body doesn't sleep." |
| Doesn't the body need rest? | "But this is the real rest. The turya [state] is the real rest." |
He adds a startling aside: one who keeps this awareness, if put under chloroform for surgery, "can't be affected... because they are always aware. How can they forget their Being?"
The chloroform claim is testimony, not evidence, and it should not be tested. General anaesthesia acts on the brain whatever one's spiritual state. What the remark does show is how Lakshmanjoo understood turya: as an awareness that does not depend on the brain's ordinary states. That is a metaphysical claim the book asserts and does not argue.
- Dharana 32 (verse 55): a breath practice with sound that carries awareness into dream and gives control over dreams.
- Dharana 50 (verse 75): no technique at all; awareness rests at the hinge and does not enter dream. That is why one is anava to shambhava and the other pure shambhava.
Dharana 51 (verse 76): light filling space
Upaya: shakta. "When space is variegated by the brilliance of the sun, a lamp and the like, fix the gaze right there: the form of one's own Self shines." In the garden, the sunlit sky; in a room at night, an electric bulb or a lamp. "Only see the light of the bulb without that glass [encasement]." John checks: "That doesn't mean you should look at the sun?" "No, you have to look at the light. It is just imagination." Look, "have acquaintance with it", then close the eyes and see the whole room or the whole sky filled with light. "Get lost in it."
Asked about the highest shakta practice, he names the five voids (dharana 9) "or 'this whole universe is my own Self'" (dharana 34).
Never gaze at the sun. Lakshmanjoo is explicit that the practice is with the light in space, not the solar disk, and that after brief acquaintance the eyes are closed. Staring at the sun can cause permanent retinal damage within seconds.
Dharana 52 (verse 77): the five mudras of the five perfected ones
Upaya: shambhava. "By Karankini, Krodhana, Bhairavi, Lelihana and Khecari, at the time of seeing, the attainment of the supreme shines." Lakshmanjoo turns this verse into a short lecture on five schools of ancient siddhas, each ending in its own mudra:
| Siddha type | Path | Mudra | What it is |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jnana siddhas | Knowledge of scripture, "with a guru" | Karankini | Lying flat like a corpse, without movement |
| Mantra siddhas | Recitation of mantra | Krodhana | The posture of wrath: furious face, eyes and mouth wide open, motionless |
| Melapa siddhas | Union with yoginis in dream or samadhi | Bhairavi | Eyes wide open without blinking, mouth open, breath neither in nor out; "inner aim, outer gaze" |
| Shakta siddhas | Enjoyment | Lelihana | The licking gesture, as when tasting something sweet |
| Shambhava siddhas | Thoughtlessness from start to end | Khecari | "Actually no mudra": being "above" every act of daily life |
Several of his comments are worth recording.
On the jnana siddhas and the guru: "With a guru everywhere, without a guru nowhere." A student cites the Tantraloka's self-taught (samsiddhika) masters, "initiated by the goddesses of their own awareness". He replies: then the goddess of one's own awareness is the guru.
On krodhana: mantra recitation has made "your body... more attached to you, to your soul. So you have to shatter it out by krodha, by wrath."
On melapa: a yogini may come in the hinge between sleep and waking "and embrace me, or kiss me, or give me some filthy thing to eat... because whatever they give is divine... If they give you filth to eat, you must eat it. While eating, you will find the nectar in it." He links bhairavi mudra to cakita mudra, "the pose of astonishment".
On lelihana, a memory of his youth: "just to taste the grape of Kabul", which "used to come in those sealed plates in ancient times, when we were young."
Khecari: talking in a vacuum
His description of khecari is the most quoted passage of this verse:
> "When I talk to you [and say], 'How do you do? Are you well?' actually I don't mean what I tell you. At that very moment, I am elevated... I am talking in a vacuum, I am putting words in a vacuum... You are not where you are looked at."
He gives Krishna as the model: all of Krishna's acts were done "in the shambhava state". A devotee asks if this means being separate from one's acts. "Not separate, above. You are that and above, above it also." This is the fullness of the mantra sauh and of khecari samya, the "sameness" of the sky-goer.
Khecari is the book's clearest picture of the liberated life described in the Introduction. It is not withdrawal: the yogi talks, eats, embraces, works. It is a way of being fully in an act and not bounded by it. "Kha" is sky; "cari" is the one who moves. The sky-goer moves through life as space moves through a room.
Two passages here need a careful frame. Lakshmanjoo's list of what the khecari yogi does "in a vacuum" includes "every degraded thing", which, read alone, could be taken as license for antinomian behaviour. In context he is describing the inner stance of a fully established yogi, with Krishna as the model, not prescribing conduct. And the melapa passage about eating "filth" given by yoginis belongs to the Kaula tradition of transgressive offerings, as a test of non-duality; it describes visionary experience "in a dream or in samadhi", not a practice to imitate.
The mudras here involve breath suspension (bhairavi), wide unblinking eyes and extreme facial postures. They are described as the "ending" postures of fully developed siddhas, not entry practices. Guru-only.
Dharana 53 (verse 78): one buttock on a soft seat
Upaya: the guide says "all three"; in the talk he says first "anavopaya-cum-shaktopaya" and then "anavopaya-cum-shambhavopaya". "Sitting on a soft seat on one buttock, hands and feet without support, by that, the mind becomes supreme and full." "Just a Dunlop cushion", sit on one buttock, and let hands and feet rest on nothing. Anava because of the posture; with no mantra and "nothing to be done", it rises to shambhava.
Why would this work? The book does not explain. One plausible reading: balancing on one buttock with limbs unsupported needs constant, light, full-body attention; the mind cannot wander and still keep balance. The posture creates the one-pointedness that other practices build with breath or mantra.
Dharana 54 (verse 79): the hollow of the armpits
Upaya: anava to shakta. "Seated well on a seat, making the arms half-bent, putting the mind in the space of the armpits, absorbed there, one comes to peace." The arms must be half-bent, not fully curved. Find the hollows of both armpits and rest the mind in that vacuum. The anava element is the arm position, not the seat: "In shambhavopaya also we sit like that."
Dharana 55 (verse 80): one glance at beauty
Upaya: shambhava. "Letting the gaze fall fixed on a gross form, quickly making the mind supportless, one goes to Shiva." The object, he says, should be "something beautiful, attractive": a finely adorned woman, a beautiful flower vase, or "an attractive girl of seven years old". Not a painting ("only imagination") and not distant scenery: it must be close, so the gaze can be fixed without blinking. Then no thought must arise. "This is a five-minute course, five minutes from individuality to universality."
How can a practice with an object be shambhava? "Only beauty is the object, not the object... But beauty is a subtle thing, so it won't catch shaktopaya." The beauty "is only appearing", which is prathamabhasa: "You have not to touch it, you have not to talk to it, you have not to do anything with it. It is just, look at it and you will enter." The mind must be "caught": "Excitement for shambhavopaya must be maintained first."
Swami Mahatabakak at the wedding
Lakshmanjoo tells a story about his own master, Swami Mahatabakak. At a marriage function, tea was served; "a small beautiful girl with the best ornaments" was sitting in front of his master, "and he went inside. He was only looking at her and he went inside. And tea was served, and he was nowhere. Who could take tea?" Afterwards, his master told him "he had held this dharana there".
A modern reader may be uneasy that the examples of "beauty" are a woman and a young girl. The commentary is explicit that nothing is to be done with the person ("you have not to touch it, you have not to talk to it"), that the "object" is beauty as pure appearance, and that a vase works as well. The verse itself only says "a gross form" (sthularupa bhava). This guide keeps the example as given but notes that the practice is about the first flash of the beautiful, which any beautiful thing can provide, and that people should never be treated as meditation objects without regard for them.
Dharana 56 (verse 81): the tongue in the open mouth
Upaya: anava, "simple anavopaya (inferior one)", carrying to the shambhava state. "With the tongue in the middle, the mouth opened wide, placing awareness in the middle, mentally uttering ha, one dissolves into peace." The tongue rests in the center of the mouth; the mouth is opened inside, lips closed; awareness rests at the center of the tongue; and with the breath one silently recites "so'ham", as in dharana 1, "but it is in the mouth, it is not by the nostrils".
Dharana 57 (verse 82): the body on nothing
Upaya: shakta to shambhava "and its state". "Seated or lying down, contemplating one's body as supportless, when the mind wanes, in an instant one becomes free of residues." On a seat or on the bed, "you have to throw your body as if it is thrown on nothing." When thought-lessness arises, "instantly he enters in the thoughtless state of God consciousness."
Dharana 58 (verse 83): riding a horse
Upaya: shakta, "pure". "For one seated on a moving seat, or by slowly swaying the body, when the mental state is calm, O Goddess, one reaches the divine flood." The calasana: "Horseback is the best", or a tonga (a horse cart), or a scooter, or "an inferior motorcar (not a well-tuned motorcar)", but not a smooth ride. If none is available, sway slowly from side to side.
The method is the gap again: "If your body is moving up and down, you have to ignore the up and down [and] put your mind in-between the up and down." The result is divyaugha, the "divine flood", which he glosses as cidakasha, the sky of consciousness.
The bus ride. Of all the practices, this is one of the easiest to try: on a bumpy bus or train, let the body move and rest attention in the turn between one movement and the next. Lakshmanjoo's insistence on an "inferior motorcar" is funny, and also exact: a smooth ride gives the attention nothing to turn on.
Dharana 59 (verse 84): the cloudless sky
Upaya: shambhava, "absolutely... pure shambhavopaya". "Looking at a clear sky, making the gaze unbroken, with the body motionless, at that very instant, O Goddess, one attains the form of Bhairava." The sky must be pure, "without any clouds, only blueish". The gaze must be without pause. Atma here means "the body", which must be still "like a rock". Why shambhava? "There is no two. It is only akasha."
Dharana 60 (verse 85): the sky in the skull
Upaya: shakta. "Contemplate all of space dissolved in the head as Bhairava; then one enters the luminous principle of Bhairava's form." Imagine the skull as wide as the sky, "without sides", and the sky within it as full of Bhairava. One then enters tejas tattva, the light that is Bhairava's form. Why not shambhava? "Because there are two. There is the outside akasha and the akasha in the space of your skull."
Dharanas 59 and 60 show how Lakshmanjoo counts. Same sky, same goal, different upaya. In 59 there is one thing (the sky) and the seer is still; nothing to unite, so shambhava. In 60 there are two skies to be made one; the uniting is the work of shakti, so shakta. The test is always: is there still a pair?
Dharana 61 (verse 86): waking, dream and sleep as Bhairava
Upaya: anava to shambhava (he also calls it shakta in the talk). "Knowing that the slightly known, giving duality (waking), the outer light (dream), and darkness again (deep sleep) are Bhairava's form, beginning with vishva, one holds infinite light." His mapping:
| State | Verse's phrase | Name of the experiencer |
|---|---|---|
| Waking (jagrat) | "Slightly known, giving duality" | Vishva |
| Dream (svapna) | "Outer light": the outer world appearing in one's own light | Taijasa |
| Deep sleep (sushupti) | "Darkness again" | Prajna |
He explains why dream is the "outer light": "You dream only those dreams which you have already seen in wakefulness"; the outer world appears inside one's own light. The practice is to know each state as not separate from God consciousness, through "aham iti paramarsha", the awareness "I". The awareness of deep sleep is found the same way as in dharana 50: "When he enters in the center of the two." The fruit is unmilana, eyes-open absorption, after first passing through nimilana.
The trap of brahmaloka
A student, Gurtoo, asks in Kashmiri about another reading: brahmalokas for bahyalokas. Brahmaloka, Lakshmanjoo says, is "the internal world of God consciousness" that one passes through on the way into samadhi. "If you stay there, you are stuck... That is not liberation." It is "the limited state of God consciousness". The Bhairava state is beyond brahmaloka.
The vishva, taijasa, prajna names come from the Mandukya Upanishad and Advaita Vedanta. Lakshmanjoo uses the Vedantic vocabulary freely, while the Introduction criticized Vedanta for world-denial. This is typical of the Kashmiri tradition, which often adopts Vedantic terms and gives them a Shaiva meaning: here, the three states are not illusions to be left behind, but forms of Bhairava to be recognized.
Dharana 62 (verse 87): the dark rainy night
Upaya: shakta. "In the same way, on a dark night, at the coming of the dark fortnight, contemplating for long the form of darkness, one attains the form of Bhairava." Durnisha, a "bad night": heavy rain, no moon, so not even moonlight glows through the clouds. Put off the lights, open the windows, look out with eyes wide open, and think the whole atmosphere is "Bhairava dancing outside".
Is rain required? Yes, "because the continuity of that sound of rain... will carry you there swiftly". That support is why it is shakta. Pure darkness and silence, high in the mountains at Sonamarg? "Then you will be situated in shambhavopaya... Shambhavopaya is soundless."
Dharana 63 (verse 88): darkness carried outward
Upaya: shakta. "In the same way, first closing the eyes, contemplating the darkness in front, spreading out the form of Bhairava, one becomes one with it." Close the eyes gently, without pressing, or "you will see some white spots". Meditate long on the darkness as Bhairava's vacuum. Then open the eyes abruptly: if you still see only darkness, the practice has succeeded; if you see the room and its objects, "this is an incomplete dharana" and you must repeat. The light in the room "must be very dim".
Fourteen practices, from the hinge of sleep to a room in dim light, all test one capacity: whether awareness can stay itself across a change. Waking into sleep, stillness into motion, inside into outside, eyes closed into eyes open. The final test in dharana 63 is literal: open your eyes, and see whether the inner state survives.
Shock, Astonishment and the First Start of Desire
These thirteen practices use sudden events and the inner organs. A sense struck against something, a mouth opened in astonishment, a sound that cannot be said, a needle-prick, the thought "I have no mind", the thought "maya is not mine", and then the heart of the shambhava teaching: catching desire, knowledge and anger at the instant they arise. If the book has a center of gravity for daily life, it is here.
Dharana 64 (verse 89): the jolt of the senses
Upaya: shakta. "When any sense organ is struck or blocked, one who has entered the non-dual void: there the Self shines." A sense may be struck by accident ("when your eye, or your nose, or your ear... is struck against some object") or deliberately. "Here you have to note that you have to meditate on the very starting sensation of that strike."
Stubbing a toe. The practice is in a sense always available: every bump, flash or sudden noise has a first instant before the mind has labelled it "pain" or "annoying". The verse invites one to notice that instant rather than the story that follows. No one need cause themselves harm to try this; ordinary life supplies the jolts.
Dharana 65 (verse 90): "a", with no ending
Upaya: anava to shakta ("shaktopaya with anava's touch in the beginning"). "Repeating 'a' without bindu and without visarga, suddenly, O Goddess, the great Lord arises as a flood of knowledge." Recite "a" without its final "m" or "h". It is "not long 'aa'". In practice, it is to open the mouth abruptly: "Don't recite anything because it is only 'a'." This produces cakita mudra, the pose of astonishment.
He then distinguishes two kinds of astonishment:
| Kind | How it arises | Upaya |
|---|---|---|
| Produced cakita mudra | You open your mouth on purpose with "a" | Shakta |
| Automatic cakita mudra | You are astonished by something new or terrifying | Shambhava, "the same as bhairavi mudra" |
A devotee asks if a beautiful sight produces it. "Not beautiful. When it is hideous... when you see some terrifying figure." Must it be real fear? "No, real fear. For instance, when he sees a lion in front of him, he will go into cakita mudra. When he goes into cakita mudra, the lion will not touch him at all [because] he is Bhairava!"
"The lion will not touch him" belongs to the genre of the saint's invulnerability, common in yogic literature. It is a statement of faith in what a realized yogi becomes, not a claim anyone should test. The useful core is psychological and familiar: sudden fear or wonder stops thought, and in that stopped instant there is a bare awareness the tradition calls Bhairava.
Dharana 66 (verse 91): the breath that ends a syllable
Upaya: shambhava. "Fix the mind at the end of the visarga of a letter that has visarga; with a supportless mind, one touches the eternal Brahman." Say once a syllable with a final visarga, like "kah" or "pah", and attend not to "ka" but to the final "h" alone. It cannot be pronounced on its own: "Just [try and] recite visarga." Denise tries "Ah", and the room laughs. "'Ah' not, not 'a'."
So the mind has no place to sit: as long as there is "ka" or "a" there is a seat; the pure "h" offers none, and the mind becomes niradhara, supportless. He adds that pure visarga escapes the lips at the moment of sexual climax, "but nobody can catch it, nobody can catch it. All are duffers there." It is "supposed to be kama tattva".
Dharana 67 (verse 92): the body as sky without directions
Upaya: shakta. "Meditate on one's self as space, unbounded by the directions; the supportless energy of consciousness then shows its own form." Atmanam here "means your body": imagine the body as pure void, with no sides at all, no east or west. When consciousness has no support, "citi shakti", the energy of consciousness, reveals her nature.
Dharana 68 (verse 93): the needle
Upaya: anava to shambhava ("shambhava with slight touches of anava"). "First pierce some part of the body with a sharp needle; joining awareness right there, a pure path into Bhairava." The prick is anava; resting in the pain is shambhava, "because there is only pain, there is no body consciousness".
Do not pierce yourself to try this. Self-injury is never a safe practice to adopt from a book, and anyone who finds this verse attractive in a way that relates to self-harm should seek support. The commentary's real point (attend to the first edge of a sensation) is available with ordinary sensations: a cold splash of water, the first moment of a sharp taste, the jolt of dharana 64. This edition treats the needle practice as Guru-only.
Dharana 69 (verse 94): "I have no mind"
Upaya: shakta. "Contemplate: 'Within me there is no mind or other inner faculty'; by the absence of thought-constructs, one becomes free of them." The three inner organs are mind (manas), intellect (buddhi), ego (ahamkara). Imagine they do not exist "in me", hold that thought steadily, and their working ceases. "Then you achieve the thought-less state of shambhava."
Dharana 70 (verse 95): "Maya is not mine"
Upaya: shakta. "Maya is the deluder; kala is the limiting; considering such to be the nature of the tattvas, a person stands apart." Think: maya's job is to delude, the five coverings (kala, vidya, raga, kala, niyati) have their own jobs, "I have nothing to do with that... let them function in their own way, what have I to do?" So one is "liberated from maya... from all these limited aspects".
The five kancukas, the "jackets" that maya puts on unlimited consciousness, appear across Lakshmanjoo's teaching:
- Kala: limited doing, against Shiva's all-doing.
- Vidya: limited knowing, against all-knowing.
- Raga: attachment, a sense of lack, against fullness.
- Kala (time): limited duration, against eternity.
- Niyati: limitation by place and cause, against all-pervasion.
Dharana 70 is a practice of disowning the jackets: seeing them as functions, not as "me".
Dharana 71 (verse 96): seize desire as it rises
Upaya: shambhava. "Seeing a desire that has suddenly arisen, bring it to rest; it dissolves right where it came from." Lakshmanjoo's instruction is exact: "Let it come, let it flow out. As soon as this desire flows out, put an end to it at once." Is it to be resisted? "Not resisted, abolished, because it is that point of beginning... it has not [yet] flown, it begins to flow and then stop it, at that very moment." This is icchopaya, the means of will, another name for shambhavopaya.
"Not resisted, abolished." Resistance is a second movement of mind fighting the first, and it keeps both alive. Lakshmanjoo's method is to meet desire at its source, in the same instant, with awareness alone. Then there is nothing to fight; the desire returns into the point it came from.
Dharana 72 (verse 97): "Who am I then?"
Upaya: shakta. "When my desire has not arisen, nor knowledge, who am I then? In truth, I am that; absorbed in it, one becomes it." When desire and cognition cease, the limited "I" ("asmi") also has nothing to stand on. A devotee notes the verse names only two (desire and knowledge). "Tada asmi kah? Then where is asmi... Individual 'I' also expires in nothingness."
- Ramana Maharshi's "Who am I?" asks the question to trace the I-thought back to its source.
- Verse 97 asks "who am I then?", in the gap where desire and knowledge have not arisen. It is the same move, but placed in Trika's map of will, knowledge and the limited self.
Dharana 73 (verse 98): at the first start
Upaya: shakta to shambhava. "When desire or knowledge has arisen, fix the mind there; with awareness of it as the Self, with mind on nothing else, there is the seeing of the meaning of reality." This is the verse the Introduction quoted to define shambhavopaya. "Concentrate your mind on your will when it is about to flow out; not when it has flown out... When it has flown out, then nothing will come." Where is the shambhava touch? "[At the] first start."
Is it two practices? "No, it is only one... You can do only on one, one energy at a time, either on desire, the start of desire, or the start of knowledge... This is not to be done successively."
Dharana 74 (verse 99): knowledge without a cause
Upaya: shakta, "can't be shambhavopaya". "Knowledge is without cause, without support, of the nature of illusion; in truth it belongs to no one. Contemplating so, one is Shiva, O dear one." Objective cognitions arise all day, yet "it has no cause to rise. How it rises? It is a wonder." So the rise of cognition of the objective field is bhrama, "an illusion". In reality, Ganjoo checks, it does not arise "for both", realized or not.
Verse 99 sounds close to Yogacara Buddhism (cognition without external basis) and to Advaita (appearance as illusion). Lakshmanjoo's gloss leans hard on "illusion". But the Trika framework he defends elsewhere treats the world as real as Shiva's expression. The practical resolution is that what is "illusory" is cognition as a separate event owned by a separate knower; what remains is one consciousness. The verse's wording invites more than one philosophy, and readers should notice the stretch.
Dharana 75 (verse 100): the same in insect and god
Upaya: shakta. "Consciousness is the same in all bodies; there is no difference anywhere. Contemplating everything as made of it, a person conquers becoming." "From an insect to Brahma", "that tiny ant, or germ, or worm, or in the body of Brahma, or in the body of the sun", caitanya is the same. Holding this, one "conquers the duality of the objective world".
Dharana 76 (verse 101): at the rise of anger
Upaya: shambhava. "In the field of desire, anger, greed, delusion, pride and envy, making the intellect still, that reality remains." The six "enemies" (kama, krodha, lobha, moha, mada, matsarya): when any of them begins, keep the intellect "motionless, without agitation". Not in the excitement: "[With the] rise of excitement, not in the excitement; when the excitement is [about] to rise, at the point of rising." Once it has risen, "then [the yogi] is lost... he is finished!"
His image of the result: "saints are broad-minded just like the sky, saints are broad-minded just like the ocean. Big tides do not agitate them."
Anger at work. A sharp email arrives. There is an instant of heat before the reply forms. Dharana 76 places awareness exactly there, without suppressing and without acting. Lakshmanjoo is honest that after that instant the practice is over: if you are "in the excitement", you have missed it. The training is to notice earlier.
Section seven is where Lakshmanjoo's shambhava teaching becomes psychology. The same instruction recurs four times (dharanas 71, 73, 76 and, by implication, 64 and 65): find the first instant of a sensation, a wonder, a desire, a cognition, an anger. In that instant there is energy without content. To rest there is icchopaya, and the book's highest means turns out to be a habit of catching the start.
The Magic Show, the Middle of Feeling, the Deep Well
The practices in this stretch re-see the world: as a magic show, a painting, a moving picture; as the meeting of pain and pleasure; as everywhere I am. They teach compassion as a method ("feel the needle in another's body as in your own"), give a pure shambhava practice of the mind with no seat, and close with three of the book's best-known images: walking until you drop, the curiosity of not understanding, and gazing into a deep well. Verse 106 is set aside as not a dharana.
Dharana 77 (verse 102): magic, painting, movie
Upaya: shakta. "Meditating on the universe as made of magic, or as placed like a painting, or as all in motion, bliss rises for one who sees so." Three images, any one of which may be used:
| Image | Lakshmanjoo's gloss |
|---|---|
| Indrajala, a magic show | "The Lord Himself is the great magician." He makes us seem separate; we take one as enemy, one as friend, one as daughter, "and you are lost in that magician's trick." |
| Citrakarma, a painting | "This whole universe is only a painting of one's own Self... a very well-drawn painting." |
| Bhramat, moving | Nothing is destroyed; it moves: child to youth, youth to age, age to death, death to the next birth. "It is only a movie, a great movie, a movie picture." |
A devotee asks whether we are "in fact, differentiated because it's His self-expression". "We are expanded, we are not differentiated. This is only the expansion of one's [undifferentiated] Self."
He then draws a distinction that recurs in his teaching: the perceiver is "thought", not mind. "Thought is the desire-less state of that mind... Thought is nirvikalpa, the mind is savikalpa."
"Expanded, not differentiated" is the whole Trika theory of the world in four words. Difference is real as expression; it is false only when taken as separation. The magic show is not a lie; it is a show, and the error is to forget there is a magician.
Lakshmanjoo uses "thought" in an unusual way here, for the thought-free awareness behind the mind. Elsewhere in the book "thought" (vikalpa) is what must be dropped. The two uses are easy to confuse. In this guide, "thought-lessness" always means freedom from vikalpa, and this special sense of "thought" as the pure perceiver is flagged where it appears.
Dharana 78 (verse 103): between pain and pleasure
Upaya: shakta. "Do not place the mind in pain, nor in pleasure; O Bhairavi, know the middle: what reality remains?" Put awareness where "the pain is risen and pleasure has ended, when pleasure has risen and pain has ended".
Then, unusually, an exhortation in capitals in the transcript: "First do practice between pain and pleasure. Then, if you are not successful, do it again, do it again, do it again, one hundred times, one thousand times, in two lives, in four lives, in ten lives, in innumerable lives. DO IT! But do it now, begin it from now."
- The Buddha's middle way steers between indulgence and self-mortification as ways of life.
- Verse 103 finds the middle between pain and pleasure as moments of experience, a point of rest at their junction. The words are similar; the target is different.
Dharana 79 (verse 104): "I am everywhere"
Upaya: shakta. "Leaving attachment to one's own body, contemplating 'I am everywhere', with a firm mind and a gaze that sees nothing else, one becomes happy." Take away "I am this body" by imagination, and with firm one-pointed knowledge feel: "I am everywhere, and in each and every body, I am existing."
Dharana 80 (verse 105): the bottle is everywhere
Upaya: shakta. "The knowledge in a pot and so on, or desire and so on within me, has not arisen only there but everywhere; contemplating so, one becomes all-pervading." The example is a bottle on the table. The bottle seems to be "there" and my perception and desire for it "in me". But I see the same bottle in my dream, in my bedroom: so "it is everywhere". Placing it in two locations is "a trick of that Magician"; the sadhaka's work is re-placement, "from individuality to universality".
At prathamabhasa, the first start, "there is no difference between [spectacles] and a bottle". He makes it personal: "So specs is a bottle, a bottle is specs. I am Dina Nath Ganjoo, Dina Nath Ganjoo is myself." "Eka pramata vishva pramata": all individuals are one universal Being.
Verse 106: not a dharana
"The awareness of object and subject is common to all embodied beings; the yogis' distinction is attentiveness in the relation." Everyone perceives the same way; the yogi differs in the contact between perceiver and perceived, which is "divine" because they "remain fully aware in each and every act". When an ordinary person sees his wife he is excited; when he sees his enemy, "the flood of wrath begins". Yogis "have got divinity in each and every contact". "So this is not a dharana."
Verse 106 states the principle behind all 112 practices: the difference between a yogi and anyone else is not in the world they see or in how perception works, but in sambandhe savadhanata, "alertness in the relation". Every dharana is a way of training that alertness at a particular kind of contact.
Dharana 81 (verse 107): another's body as your own
Upaya: shakta. "As in yourself, so in another's body, contemplate awareness; giving up concern for your own body, in days you become all-pervading." "As you would feel the prick of a needle in your body paining you, feel the prick of a needle in some other's body... Don't laugh at that prick [upon another], don't weep at your own prick." The fruit: "you will lose, day by day, the I-consciousness of your body, and this universal consciousness... will get its rise day by day."
Dharana 81 is the one place where the Vijnana Bhairava's method is plainly ethical. Empathy is not an add-on to the practice; it is the practice. Feeling another's pain as one's own is a direct way of dissolving the body-bound "I".
Dharana 82 (verse 108): the mind with no seat
Upaya: shambhava. "Making the mind supportless, do not entertain thought-constructs; then, in the self becoming the supreme Self, O doe-eyed one, there is Bhairava." Sit and "see what your mind wants to do. And when it moves to function, don't give any place for its existence." "Put it dispersed, then there won't be a seat for this mind to rest, where it would create confusion and all that bother."
Dharana 83 (verse 109): "I am he"
Upaya: shakta to shambhava. "The all-knowing, all-doing, all-pervading supreme Lord: I am he, with Shiva's nature; by firmness in this, one becomes Shiva." Contemplate Shiva's three qualities for a while, then transfer that awareness to oneself: "your individual consciousness is one with that Lord Shiva". Firmness is the key.
Dharana 84 (verse 110): waves of one ocean
Upaya: shakta "ending in the shambhava state". "As waves of water, flames of fire, rays of the sun, so these waves of the universe are only mine, Bhairava's, differentiated." The practice is to hold that thought: "all the universal currents rise from me, mamaiva bhairavasya, who am one with Bhairava."
Dharana 85 (verse 111): walking until you drop
Upaya: shambhava, "a first class upaya". "Wandering and wandering with the body, and suddenly falling to the ground, by the end of the energy of agitation, the supreme state arises." His example: the pilgrimage to Amarnath on foot. Not half an hour: "walking for about six hours without a stop", until "your body aches, you want to lie down somewhere, and you don't reach home". Then lie down at once, motionless, and when the agitation ends, "only when you are aware", enter Shiva's state. "Actually, it happens to yogis when they are absolutely tired... You have nothing to do."
The long hike. This is one of the few practices Lakshmanjoo says happens naturally to practitioners. Anyone who has collapsed at the end of a long day's walk knows the sudden stillness when the body stops. The practice is to be awake in that stillness, rather than falling into sleep or thought.
Exhaustion is a doorway only for the healthy. Do not push to collapse in heat, at altitude or alone; the Amarnath trail itself is at high altitude. The commentary's example presumes a fit pilgrim in a group.
Dharana 86 (verse 112): the curiosity of not knowing
Upaya: shakta. "On the supports, or by inability, or by not knowing, or by dissolution of mind, at the end of the agitation of the arising absorption into energy, the form of Bhairava." Lakshmanjoo makes two examples. Ashakti, inability: a blind person wants to see a form, cannot, and "has got curiosity". Ajnana, not knowing: you want to understand a point in a book and cannot; "you just roam in that ether of ignorance", "only curiosity remains". Meditate on that curiosity: the mind stops, and the energy (the power to know, unspent) turns inward into "the internal vacuum of God consciousness".
The impossible paragraph. Every reader of Kashmir Shaivism has met a passage they cannot understand. Dharana 86 suggests not forcing it and not giving up, but resting in the pure wanting-to-know that remains when understanding fails. It is an unexpectedly kind practice for students of difficult books.
Dharanas 87 and 88 (verses 113 and 114): open eyes, closed ears
Upaya: shambhava, "a very supreme way". "Listen, O Goddess, I tell you this sampradaya (secret tradition) fully: liberation arises at once when the eyes are only fixed." And: "Contracting the ears, and likewise the lower opening, meditating on the sound without vowel or consonant, one enters the eternal Brahman."
The two practices:
- Eyes wide open, unmoving, seeing nothing: "don't move the eyelids [and] go on looking but don't perceive anything."
- Close the ears with the fingers and contract the anal sphincter "with the breath" at the same time; then listen to the continuous inner sound that is "neither a vowel nor a consonant" (anackam ahalam). Gurtoo: "Like a stream flowing." "It is easy. It is a practical thing."
The second practice combines closing the ears, a root lock and breath. These are classical hatha and tantric techniques that this edition treats as Guru-only, and their effects on blood pressure and the nervous system vary. The first, gazing without seeing, is gentle, but should be done with ordinary blinking allowed if the eyes become dry or painful.
Dharana 89 (verse 115): over a deep well
Upaya: shakta. "Standing over a deep pit, a well and the like, looking down, for one whose mind is free of thought, at once the dissolution of mind is clear." Stand at the top of a deep well, look down to the bottom, and let no other thought enter: "You'll become un-minded and thus get entry in God consciousness."
Stand behind a secure railing or at a safe distance. Looking down into depth can bring dizziness; that dizziness is part of why the practice stops thought, and part of why it must be done safely.
This section turns the eye on the whole of experience. The world is a show; feeling has a middle; "I" can be everywhere; another's pain can be mine; even not understanding has a center to rest in. And verse 106 names the single skill that all of it trains: alertness in the relation between the one who knows and what is known.
Wherever the Mind Goes: The Last Twenty-Three
The final group of practices is mostly wisdom practice: ways of seeing rather than things to do. Lakshmanjoo calls several of them "a technique of wisdom, not a technique of sadhana [in activity]". They include letting the mind roam free, catching the sneeze, fear and hunger, stepping into a memory, the intensity of devotion, freedom from purity rules, sameness with friend and enemy, the meaning of the word "Bhairava", "I am neither bound nor free", and a last practice that dissolves mind, perception, breath and ego together. After it: "End of 112 dharanas."
Dharana 90 (verse 116): wherever the mind goes
Upaya: shambhava. "Wherever the mind goes, outside or inside, there is the state of Shiva; being all-pervading, where will it go?" "Keep your mind loose, keep your mind absolutely loose; don't control it, don't put any effort to control it." Outer objects are things perceived; inner objects are "sukha, duhkha, moha, vishada", pleasure, pain, confusion, sadness, sexual excitement. "These are also objects." Seeing that wherever the mind lands is "only the expansion of God... where that state of Shiva bhava will go? It is there!"
- Dharana 82 (verse 108): give the mind no seat; disperse it as it moves.
- Dharana 90 (verse 116): let the mind go anywhere; Shiva is there already.
- Dharana 103 (verse 129): follow the mind and push it on from each object.
Three answers to the wandering mind, two of them shambhava. Control is the one method the book never recommends at this level.
Dharana 91 (verse 117): the Lord in each sense
Upaya: shakta. "Wherever, through the path of the senses, the Lord's consciousness is manifested, since that has only that nature, by dissolving into consciousness, there is fullness." When you perceive a pencil, "bas, just know that this perception exists on the basis of consciousness". Behind sound, touch, form, taste and smell, "the basis is caitanyam". "At the time of perceiving these objects, don't perceive [these objects]; go on, dive deep in that consciousness."
Dharana 92 (verse 118): sneeze, fear, grief, flight
Upaya: shambhava. "At the beginning and end of a sneeze, in fear, in grief, in a dead end, or fleeing from battle, in curiosity, at the beginning and end of hunger: the being of Brahman is near." His examples are vivid:
| Moment | Lakshmanjoo's illustration |
|---|---|
| Sneeze | At its start and at its end |
| Fear (bhaya) | Skylab: when the falling space station's time was fixed at "4:00PM", "there, everywhere there was bhaya... what will happen [in the] next five minutes" |
| Grief (shoka) | The intensity of sorrow |
| Gahvara | Lost on a mountain descent with no safe way down: "See the position of your mind at that moment. What to do? You can't move now." |
| Flight | A gang with weapons and "machine guns"; "you are running (just like flying)" |
| Curiosity | "What is this? I want to find out what this is." |
| Hunger | At the start and end of a great appetite |
"In all these states, brahma satta samipaga, God consciousness is near in your hand. It is there. You find it out."
The emergency door. Dharanas 64, 65, 92 and 104 form a group: sudden shock, astonishment, fear, the scream for help. In each, ordinary thinking is knocked out for an instant. The Vijnana Bhairava's claim is that this instant is not empty but full: it is the same thought-free awareness that formal practice seeks. Lakshmanjoo's point is not to seek danger but to recognize what is already there when it comes.
Dharana 93 (verse 119): stepping into a memory
Upaya: shakta, "because you have to take the help of the body". "When things are remembered, let the mind go to the place seen; making one's body supportless, the Lord flows forth." Recall a past event "fifty years before" and relive it, place and time. "Tyajet" does not mean leave the mind; it means put it there. Then the body here is "only your phantom formation... equal to nothing", and "the fountain of God consciousness will appear".
Dharana 94 (verse 120): withdrawing the gaze
Upaya: shakta. "Placing the gaze on some object, slowly withdraw it; that knowledge, with the mind, O Goddess, becomes an abode of the void." Put the sight on an object and withdraw the perception "slowly, slowly, slowly, in your own self". When knowledge of the object goes with the mind, one enters "that voidness of God consciousness".
Dharana 95 (verse 121): the intensity of devotion
Upaya: shambhava. "The understanding that arises in one detached by the excess of devotion: that is the energy of Shankara; contemplate it always, then one is Shiva." "When there is the intensity of love for God, you won't recognize Viresh, you won't recognize John, you won't recognize your body." Detachment then "appears from all sides", and the intellect is "transformed in the energy of God consciousness".
Dharana 95 is the only practice of the 112 built entirely on bhakti, and Lakshmanjoo ranks it shambhava. In his reading, detachment is not the cause of devotion but its effect: love so strong that nothing else registers. This matches his own life, which combined a strict yoga of awareness with a devotional hymn tradition (his teaching on Utpaladeva's hymns is a separate book in the same series).
Dharana 96 (verse 122): the previous object
Upaya: shakta. "When another object is being known, slowly there is emptiness in objects; meditating on that with the mind, even when known, one becomes peaceful." While perceiving this stand, attend to what you perceived before it. Then, he explains, "when I perceive Stephanie, [and] then I perceive Ellen, at the time of perceiving Ellen, I must perceive Stephanie". Each present object is displaced by the last, and "everything becomes dissolved in nothingness".
Dharana 97 (verse 123): beyond pure and impure
Upaya: shakta. "The purity taught by those of little knowledge is impurity in the vision of Shambhu; there is neither pure nor impure; so, free of thought, one becomes happy." The "kincit jnah", "the masters of other schools of thought [other] than Shaivism", have decided that this act is pure and that impure. In Shaivism, "it is neither pure nor impure". Leave aside all doubts about purity.
Verse 123 is one of the clearest polemical verses in the text. It turns Vedic and Smarta purity rules upside down: what they call purity is, for Shiva's vision, impurity. Lakshmanjoo's gloss ("the masters of other schools") keeps the attack. Two cautions follow. First, this is a sectarian claim about rivals, asserted, not argued. Second, scholars note that the tantric rejection of purity rules operated within strict initiatory discipline; it was a test of non-dual insight for advanced practitioners, not a general license. Lakshmanjoo's own lifestyle was famously austere.
Dharana 98 (verse 124): even in ordinary people
Upaya: shakta. "Bhairava's being is everywhere, perceptible even in ordinary people; there is nothing beyond it: so, the non-dual path." When ordinary people talk ("Where are you going?" "I will do that."), they do it "on the basis of God consciousness". He cites a Vedic verse that "the cowherds saw him, the water-carrying women saw him", and glosses: "God is realized by everybody. God is realized by ignorant people."
Dharana 99 (verse 125): the same to friend and enemy
Upaya: shakta. "The same toward enemy and friend, the same in honor and dishonor, knowing Brahman to be full, one becomes happy." "If anybody shoots you, kills you, you laugh, [and] if anybody embraces you, you laugh." He quotes Utpaladeva's hymns: "If they conquer, they laugh, [and] if they are conquered, they laugh." The basis: "You are always in fullness."
"If anybody shoots you, you laugh" is hyperbole about an inner stance, the sameness of the established yogi. It is not advice to ignore danger, abuse or injustice. Read with the Gita's ideal of equanimity in honor and dishonor, which it closely echoes, it names a freedom from being moved, not a refusal to act.
Dharana 100 (verse 126): no attraction, no aversion
Upaya: shakta. "Contemplate no hatred anywhere, no attachment anywhere; freed from attachment and aversion, Brahman spreads in the middle." The practice is to remain "without detachment and attachment"; then "in the center this supreme Brahman will shine".
Dharana 101 (verse 127): the unknowable
Upaya: shambhava. "What cannot be known, what cannot be grasped, what is void, what goes into non-being: contemplate all that as Bhairava; at the end, awakening arises." He takes the chance to restate the rule: "The definition of shambhava is just when you put your mind... on nothingness, absolute nothingness. When there is some object to be meditated upon, that will be shaktopaya or anavopaya."
Dharana 102 (verse 128): outer sky to no-sky
Upaya: shakta to shambhava. "Placing the mind in the outer sky, eternal, supportless, void, pervading, free of limit, one enters the no-sky." Meditate on the blue of the sky, knowing that "this blueish-ness also does not exist there": it is "nitya", eternal, "It won't be affected by Skylabs." Diving deep, "a time will come [when] you will get entry in that akasha which is beyond this bahyakasha". Shakta while the blue is a support; shambhava when even the blue fades.
Dharana 103 (verse 129): follow and release
Upaya: shakta to shambhava. "Wherever the mind goes, release it from that very thing at that very instant; by not letting it settle, one becomes wave-less." "If it goes to these [spectacles]... at that very moment, don't let [your mind] perceive those specs, tell [your mind] to do something else." "You have to leave your mind free, but follow your mind." When it has no rest anywhere it becomes support-less, and "the tide-less state of God consciousness" appears.
Dharana 104 (verse 130): the meaning of "Bhairava"
Upaya: shakta. "He who makes all cry out with fear, who is all-going, pervading the whole: by continuously uttering the word 'Bhairava' so, one becomes Shiva." Lakshmanjoo explains the word through its syllables: "bha" fear, "ra" screaming, "va" presence. "When you scream [to God] in fear, God is there." Students push back. Why is God more present in fear? "When you scream, you want It." Ernie: "So really, this is just about fear." "When you are afraid, He is your refuge. ... When you become yourself Bhairava, what fear is there?"
The bha-ra-va gloss is a traditional nirukta, an etymology by syllables, used for teaching. It is not historical linguistics. The verse itself (bhiya sarvam ravayati, "who makes all cry out by fear") already plays on the sounds. Readers should take this as meditative etymology, a way to load a word with meaning for repetition, which is exactly its use in the practice.
Dharana 105 (verse 131): "I" and "mine"
Upaya: shakta ending in shambhava. "In the course of perceptions like 'I', 'mine', 'this', making the mind supportless, impelled by that meditation, one becomes peaceful." "'I am Lakshmanjoo', 'Mine is Denise', 'Viresh is my son', 'Stephanie is my disciple'": keep the mind free of these "discriminating perceptions". "This is my money", "This is not my money": remove "personal I-ness". The fruit is shama, "the appeased state".
Dharana 106 (verse 132): five words for God
Upaya: shakta. "Eternal, all-pervading, supportless, pervasive, lord of all: meditating on these words at every moment, according to their meaning, one has done what is to be done." The sadhaka becomes kritartha, "purposeful": "With what purpose he was sent here in this field of repeated births and deaths, it becomes purposeful."
Dharana 107 (verse 133): the magic net
Upaya: shambhava. "All this is unreal, like a magic show; what is real in a magic show? By firmness in this, one goes to peace." The "one hundred and eighteen worlds" of the tradition are "atattvam... It is just a joke"; it is Indra's net, maya. But "in its place, there is only God consciousness always shining". He restates the upaya test again: nothingness, shambhava; support for a time, shakta; support "up to the end", anava.
- Dharana 77 (verse 102): the world as magic, painting, movie: shakta, because one contemplates the images.
- Dharana 107 (verse 133): "what is real in a magic show?": shambhava, because the question empties the image itself. Same metaphor, different work.
Dharana 108 (verse 134): no knowing, no doing in the Self
Upaya: shambhava. "For the changeless Self, where is knowing, where is doing? Outer things depend on knowledge; so this world is void." "I know it", "I don't know it": both are changes, "and wherever there is change, it is ignorance". Ernie objects: "This is not a technique then. This is just information." "No, it is a technique. ... You can't understand anything. Just try to see that not-understanding state [and] you will get entry in God consciousness. When you understand and just find out how I have understood, you will get entry."
Dharana 109 (verse 135): neither bound nor free
Upaya: shakta. "No bondage for me, no liberation: these are terrors for the individual; this is a reflection in the intellect, like the sun in waters." Is even liberation a bogey? "Yes, liberation. 'I am liberated. I am liberated!' What is that? It is also bondage." In the limited intellect the world is reflected as in different pools: broken in flowing water, still in still water. In samvit, unlimited consciousness, the same reflection does not frighten; there one is jivanmukta.
"I am liberated!" as bondage is a hard teaching for anyone who has spent years seeking. The verse does not deny liberation; it denies that liberation is an event that happens to a person. While "I" is waiting to be freed, the "I" that waits is the bondage.
Dharana 110 (verse 136): above the senses
Upaya: shakta ending in shambhava. "Everything, the meeting with pleasure and pain, comes through the senses; so, leaving the senses, one rests in one's own Self." "Be above the organs". He labels it plainly: "This is also a technique of wisdom, not a technique of sadhana [in activity]."
Dharana 111 (verse 137): knower and knowledge are one
Upaya: shakta. "Knowledge illuminates in the world, and the Self also illuminates; because the two are not separate, the knower is found in knowledge." Is it shambhava, Ernie asks, since the last was wisdom too? "No. [The last technique was the] wisdom of nothingness. [Here] it is the wisdom of something."
Dharana 112 (verse 138): the four dissolved
Upaya: shambhava. "Mind, perception, energy and self: when these four, O dear one, are dissolved, then is Bhairava's form." His gloss:
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Manasa | The mind, organ of differentiated thought |
| Cetana | Differentiated perception, "a kind of intellect" |
| Shakti | "The energy of breath, breathing in and out" |
| Atma | "The limited ego" |
"These four have ruined the nature of a man... It is looted by these four." When they dissolve: the mind becomes mind-less, perception undifferentiated, breath breath-less, the ego "unlimited Being". "End of 112 dharanas."
At the climax of the gloss Lakshmanjoo says "don't breathe!" He then explains it as what happens naturally in anava practice: "the time will come when you breathe in and out... [and then] the breath will stop." This is description, not an instruction to hold the breath. Any deliberate breath suspension is Guru-only in this edition.
The 112 end not with a method but with an inventory of what disappears: thought, divided perception, breath, the small "I". Looking back, every earlier practice was a way to dissolve one or more of these four. The last dharana is less a technique than a description of arrival.
Real Worship, the Breath Mantra and the Embrace
After the 112 practices, the text turns back to the Goddess. She has heard that the highest reality has no form and no support. So, she asks, who recites mantra, who meditates, who worships, who is satisfied? Bhairava redefines every outer ritual as an inner act: japa, dhyana, puja, homa, yaga, tirtha, bath. He gives the "essence" of the 112 in the breath mantra hamsa, adds a warning about whom to teach, and the Goddess, satisfied, embraces Shiva.
The fruit of one practice (verses 139 to 142a)
Bhairava sums up: "One hundred and twelve" instructions of the "nistaranga", the tide-less state. "In these one hundred and twelve ways... any person attached to one of these processes, only one out of one hundred and twelve, he becomes himself Bhairava."
The verses then promise powers:
- Vaca karoti karmani: "he does things by speech, not by doing. He says [something] and that is done."
- Shapanugraha karaka: "he can curse and he can bestow boons also."
- Ajaramaratam eti: no old age, no death; and the eight siddhis, beginning with "becoming minute".
- Yoginam priyah: beloved of yoginis, "the chief director of all the melapas", the spiritual gatherings of yoginis and siddhas "in samadhi".
- Jivann api vimukto: "although he is doing all his daily routine of life, he becomes absolutely jivan mukta."
The power verses. Promises of curses, boons, freedom from old age and the eight siddhis are standard in tantric phalashruti, the "hearing of fruits" that closes a text. Lakshmanjoo glosses them without comment. Two things to keep apart: the text's central promise (liberation in life, doing one's ordinary work) is consistent with everything taught before; the power promises are traditional claims with no evidence offered, and the Kashmiri tradition itself often warns that siddhis are distractions. A careful reader can accept the first and hold the second lightly.
The Goddess's question (verses 142b to 144a)
"If this is the essence of supreme energy, then who is recited and what is recitation? Who meditates, O great Lord, who is worshipped, who is satisfied? To whom is the oblation offered, whose is the sacrifice, what is it, how is it done?" If reality is formless, "what have You put in these one hundred and twelve ways?"
Bhairava's answer: every ritual turned inward (verses 144b to 153)
"This outward procedure is for the gross ones." For sadhakas "who have not that subtle strength of awareness". For those who have it, every rite is redefined:
| Rite | Outer form | Inner meaning (verse) |
|---|---|---|
| Japa (recitation) | Repeating a mantra | Contemplation of the supreme "in continuity", where nada, "the real I-consciousness", flows by itself; the mantra is the universal "I" (145) |
| Dhyana (meditation) | Picturing the deity's body, eyes, face, hands | The intellect still, formless and supportless: "That is the real meditation" (146) |
| Puja (worship) | Flowers, ghee, things from "the market and the garden" | The intellect firm in the thought-free void; "you expire with honor" (147) |
| Tripti (satisfaction) | The deity pleased | Fullness in whatever arises for one established in a single practice (148) |
| Homa (fire offering) | Oblations into fire | Elements, senses and objects offered with the mind into the fire of the great void, "awareness is the spoon" (149) |
| Yaga (sacrifice) | Ritual sacrifice | Satisfaction "marked by bliss" (150a) |
| Kshetra / tirtha (holy place) | Pilgrimage to a shrine | Absorption in Rudra's energies; "ksha" destroys sins, "tra" protects (150b, 151a) |
| Snana (bath) | Washing | Entering the Self that is "freedom, bliss, consciousness": "When you go to the bathroom and put the geyser on and take a bath, that is not a bath" (152) |
He makes the point about continuity sharply. "Bhuyo bhuyah is not 'again and again'... When you put [contemplation] again and again, then there is a pause. There should not be a pause." It must be "chain-like... just like the flame you see in movement of a candle". "If you meditate with pauses, everything is finished."
And the logic of verse 153: the flowers, incense and lamp are the Lord, "and the adorer is the Lord... How can you offer the Lord anything, if anything, whatever you offer, is the Lord Himself?"
On pilgrimage, Lakshmanjoo is blunt: "When you enter in a tirtha (e.g., in Khirbhavani, in Jvala), you enter only in duality and nothing is achieved there." These are two of Kashmir's most loved shrines. The verse supports an inward reading, but not necessarily the dismissal; and the same tradition (including Abhinavagupta) kept outer worship for most people. This is the sharpest form of the inner-ritual teaching, voiced for advanced students. It would be a misreading to take it as contempt for ordinary devotion, which the text itself calls fitting "for the gross", that is, for most of us at most times.
The essence: hamsa, the breath mantra (verses 154 to 156)
"Now, the essence of all these one hundred and twelve ways, He is putting here": "Prana goes out, jiva enters, by will, in a curved form; she is the great Goddess, long; the supreme holy field." Lakshmanjoo names three powers in breathing:
| Power | When it acts |
|---|---|
| Prana shakti | Breath that runs on its own, as in sleep, unconsciously |
| Atma shakti | Breath directed by you: "when you control the breath" |
| Prabhu shakti | Breath entering the central channel by the grace of the Lord: "absolutely impossible [to function]" |
The practice uses atma shakti: breathe in and out by will, and make each breath "dirghatma", long in time. The key teaching: "More time, less space; less time, more space." A violent breath covers more distance; a slow breath covers less. "Less space. Thank you. You have understood it."
Then the famous verses: "With sa it goes out, with ha it enters again; 'hamsa, hamsa': this mantra the jiva repeats always." The count: "twenty-one thousand and six hundred times" a day. "Japo devyah samuddishtah": this japa of the Goddess is given to all. "Pranasyante sudurlabhah": but at the end of prana, "very hard to attain".
The tutis
Lakshmanjoo's technical gloss of "pranasyante":
- One normal breath spans thirty-six finger-widths.
- That span is divided into sixteen tutis, each "two finger spaces and one quarter".
- Lengthen the breath in time so its span shrinks to fifteen tutis: "then it will be real japa".
- Then fourteen, then thirteen. "After one or two weeks, you will be born anew."
"Otherwise, everybody is breathing in and out, day and night, like asses, dogs, bears, beasts."
The arithmetic of breath. 21,600 breaths a day is 15 a minute (21,600 / 1,440), close to a normal resting rate in adults. Sixteen tutis of 2.25 finger-widths make 36. The tradition's numbers are internally consistent and roughly match physiology; the claim that shortening the breath's "space" by one tuti changes everything is the teaching's own and is not tested.
This is a breath practice with a precise technical method passed down orally, and the book itself says to do it "the way I have taught". This edition treats the tuti method as Guru-only. Gentle lengthening of the breath is harmless for most people; deliberate, progressive restriction is not something to learn from a page.
Who may be taught (verses 157 to 161a)
"This supreme nectar... should never be revealed" to:
- a parashishya, "a follower of other schools";
- the khala, the mischievous;
- the krura, hardhearted;
- one not devoted to the guru's feet.
But it should be given "without any hesitation" to the nirvikalpamati (those without doubt), the vira (heroes) and the unnatatman (those of expanded mind), and to those devoted to the lineage of masters. Give up village, kingdom, city, country, son, wife, family, "but You must protect this supreme nectar". "Even life may be given, but the supreme nectar must not be given" to the unfit.
His gloss of "nirvikalpamati" is the book's most striking statement on the guru:
> "Whatever comes from the lips of your masters, don't put your reason there."
A devotee objects: "But it's a big mistake to make that surrender before you know who is this person." "Yes, that is quite true. But once you have surrendered, there is no way out, finished!" And on the vira: "You should not go in details of the acts of your masters. Whatever he is acting, in which way he acts, consider it divine, then you will rise. Otherwise, you will fall and fall."
On unconditional surrender. This is the passage readers most need to frame. Lakshmanjoo's own reply concedes the key point: test before you surrender. Much later spiritual abuse has been justified by the second half ("consider it divine", "don't put your reason there"). Three things are worth holding together: (1) the tradition does demand deep trust in an authentic teacher; (2) the commentary itself admits that choosing the teacher must be done with care; (3) no authentic teaching requires anyone to accept harm. A reader today can honor the first two and keep the third non-negotiable.
"Not to a follower of other schools" is a sectarian restriction, standard in tantras, and stands awkwardly beside a public translation like this one. Lakshmanjoo chose to teach the text openly to Western students; the restriction is therefore read, in practice, as concerning attitude (one who comes to argue or exploit) rather than formal affiliation.
The embrace (verses 161b to 163)
The Goddess: "O god of gods, Mahadeva, I am fully satisfied, Shankara. Today I have grasped the essence of the Rudrayamala Tantra, and the heart of all the divisions of energy." "And I have not only understood... I have achieved That." "Saying this, the Goddess, filled with bliss, embraced Shiva's neck."
Lakshmanjoo's last words: "So, there ends the language of transcendental love. This is the language of transcendental love. Jai Guru Dev!"
The text ends where it began, with a dialogue between lovers. Every technique has been offered by Bhairava to his own Shakti, and the reply is not a question but an embrace. For the Trika reading, that is the whole teaching: Shiva and Shakti were never two, and the 112 practices are 112 ways the Goddess remembers it.
The Maps Behind the Practices
The book's editor adds an appendix of short passages from Lakshmanjoo's other teachings, chosen to explain terms the commentary uses without stopping: the mantra sauh, krama mudra, the four levels of knowing, the 36 tattvas, the three kundalinis, the seven perceivers, the two kinds of samadhi, the seven states of ananda, nirvikalpa and the kancukas. This section presents them as working maps and adds the guide's own framework charts for the three upayas and the four states.
Sauh, the heart mantra
Sauh is "the supreme mantra", "the heart-mantra", because it "digests these thirty-six elements in its body". It is "not a creative mantra, it is a destructive mantra", or better, a contracting one, "just as a giant tree is contracted in a seed".
| Part | Elements it holds | Cycle |
|---|---|---|
| Sa | The 31 elements from earth to maya: their reality is sat, existence | Nara, the individual |
| Au | Shuddhavidya, Ishvara, Sadashiva: the essence of knowledge and action | Shakti |
| Ah (visarga) | Twofold creative energy, of Shiva above and Shakti below, the two dots of ":" | Shiva |
"So, the Trika system of Kashmir Shaivism is the combination of nara, Shakti, and Shiva." Sauh is "above all other mantras including... 'aham', 'om', and 'so'ham'". (From Self Realization in Kashmir Shaivism.)
"Above om" is a clear ranking against rival traditions: om is the Vedic and Vedantic seed-syllable par excellence. The claim is internal to Trika and is asserted, not argued; a Vedantin would rank the syllables the other way. The appendix also places so'ham below sauh, though the closing verses of the Vijnana Bhairava (verse 155) give hamsa as "the essence of all these one hundred and twelve ways". The two can be reconciled (hamsa as practice, sauh as the state), but the book does not do so.
Krama mudra
The yogi enters samadhi inside; by its intensity he emerges into the outer world; then goes back in, and out again. "This movement... takes place by the force of the absorption... not by the effort of the yogi." The point is "to come to the understanding that outside and inside are not different aspects but one."
He describes it with unusual warmth: "But why does he want to come out? He wants to come out for the fun of it, but he cannot come out. The intensity of God Consciousness does not let him come out." When krama mudra is established, it becomes jagadananda, "universal bliss", and "everything is divine, no [more] krama mudra". "When you eat, you are in that bliss. When you talk, you are in that bliss." This takes "one day, one life, or one hundred lifetimes".
The four levels of knowing
| Level | Name | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Prameya bhava | The objective state: the object known |
| 2 | Pramana bhava | The cognitive state: subject connected to object through knowing |
| 3 | Pramatr bhava | The subjective state, "where objective perception is attached" |
| 4 | Pramiti bhava | The supreme subjective state, "objectless-subjective", "the life of all the three" |
His example of pramiti: "When you are [giving a lecture while] reading your book, your consciousness is with an object. When you are giving a lecture without a book, without any support, your consciousness is without an object, it flows out... this is the state of pramiti bhava."
The 36 tattvas
The appendix gives the standard Kashmiri list, with Lakshmanjoo's short glosses. The guide groups it in one chart.
| Group | Tattvas | Gloss |
|---|---|---|
| Five pure tattvas | Shiva, Shakti, Sadashiva, Ishvara, Shuddhavidya | I-ness; I-ness as energy; I-ness in this-ness; this-ness in I-ness; I-ness in I-ness and this-ness in this-ness |
| *(Mahamaya)* | Not counted | "The gap of illusion", the abode of the vijnanakalas |
| Six coverings | Maya, kala, vidya, raga, kala (time), niyati | Illusion of individuality; limited doing, knowing, attachment, time, place |
| Subject and nature | Purusha, prakriti | "Ego connected with subjectivity"; nature |
| *(Guna tattva)* | Not counted | The agitated state of the gunas, between prakriti and buddhi |
| Three inner organs | Buddhi, ahamkara, manas | Intellect; "ego connected with objectivity"; mind |
| Five organs of knowing | Ear, skin, eye, tongue, nose | Hearing, touching, seeing, tasting, smelling |
| Five organs of action | Speech, hand, foot, excretion, procreation | |
| Five subtle elements | Sound, touch, form, taste, smell | |
| Five great elements | Ether, air, fire, water, earth |
The two uncounted tattvas (mahamaya and guna tattva) are Lakshmanjoo's notes on Abhinavagupta's "subtle understanding": both are recognized but "not nominated" in the list of 36.
Reading the dharanas through the tattvas. Many practices aim at a specific level. Dharana 69 dissolves the three inner organs. Dharana 70 disowns maya and the five kancukas. Dharanas 17 to 19 work with the subtle elements and sound. Dharana 112 dissolves mind, perception, breath and ego. The tattva chart is a map of where each practice cuts the knot.
The kancukas as "dharana"
A small but important note in the appendix: the five kancukas (with maya) are called "dharana" in the Shaiva tantras, "because they give life to the individual being". Panini's grammar lists the letters ya, ra, la, va (which correspond to them) as "antahstha", "residing inside". So the same word, dharana, names both the coverings that hold the limited self in being and the 112 practices that loosen it.
The three kundalinis
| Kind | Functioned by | Lakshmanjoo's description |
|---|---|---|
| Para kundalini | Lord Shiva | "Not known or experienced by yogins... only experienced at the time of death." It creates, holds and consumes the universe. Its two poles are the two dots of the visarga: the revealing point and the concealing point. |
| Cit kundalini | Consciousness | Experienced by "concentrating on the center between any two breaths, thoughts, or actions". "Ecstasy beyond ecstasy." Sexual happiness is "one millionth part" of it. Full rise only "by the grace of your master and by the grace of your own strength of awareness". |
| Prana kundalini | Breath | Arises for those with attachment to spirituality and to worldly pleasures. "There is nothing you can do to determine how the rise of kundalini will take place." |
The cit/prana split rests on a moral claim: the kind of kundalini that rises depends on one's attachments. This is a teaching from the tradition's own experience and is offered without argument. The book's description of "the center between any two" as the site of cit kundalini is the clearest link between the appendix and the dharanas: it is the madhya that so many practices seek.
Kundalini teaching is Guru-only in this edition. The appendix itself says the full rise takes place "only by the grace of your master". Reports of unsupervised kundalini practice include severe anxiety, sleep disruption and other distress; anyone experiencing such symptoms should seek a qualified teacher and medical advice.
The seven perceivers
| No. | Perceiver (pramatr) | Tattva level | State |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Sakala | The objective world | Perception "in the objective world and not in the subjective world" |
| 2 | Pralayakala | The void of negation | Unawareness, as in coma or dreamless sleep |
| 3 | Vijnanakala | The yogi's path | Sometimes aware without action, sometimes active without awareness |
| 4 | Mantra | Shuddhavidya | Always aware, with svatantrya; the world felt as false beside "I" |
| 5 | Mantreshvara | Ishvara | More stable: "idam-aham", the universe found in the Self |
| 6 | Mantra maheshvara | Sadashiva | "Aham-idam", "I am this universe"; no question of falling |
| 7 | Shiva | Shiva | State and observer are one: "aham", "This-ness is gone" |
The first two are "states of worldly people, not spiritual aspirants".
A puzzle in the ordering. In this chart (from Kashmir Shaivism: The Secret Supreme), "idam-aham" belongs to Ishvara and "aham-idam" to Sadashiva. But in the 36-tattva chart of the same appendix, Sadashiva is "I-ness in this-ness" and Ishvara "this-ness in I-ness". These describe the same pair of states with the emphasis placed differently, and Kashmiri authors do vary on the wording. Readers comparing translations should expect this confusion and check which term is meant to be dominant in each.
Nimilana and unmilana samadhi
Nimilana, "eyes closing", is internal samadhi. Unmilana, "eyes opening", is samadhi with the outer world present. Through the six inner states of turya, nimilana deepens; with krama mudra it turns into unmilana; when unmilana is "fixed and permanent", it is jagadananda. Several dharanas (50 and 61, for example) were described as leading first to nimilana and then to unmilana.
The seven states of ananda
Lakshmanjoo's account (from The Secret Supreme, 16), taught to Abhinavagupta by Shambhunatha:
| No. | State | What happens |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Nijananda, bliss of one's own Self | Concentration with love; breath becomes fine; a giddy, intoxicated mood |
| 2 | Nirananda, beyond limited bliss | The giddiness becomes firm; one "falls asleep at once" into the junction; hideous sounds and furious forms: the house collapsing, fire, the thought of dying. "These thoughts are wrong thoughts and he must ignore them." |
| 3 | Parananda, bliss of breathing | Pulling and pushing in the throat, a sense of choking; insert "more love and affection" |
| 4 | Brahmananda, all-pervading bliss | The breath stops at lambika sthana near the soft palate and rotates at one point; apprehension of death, "not a physical death, it is a mental death"; "shed tears of devotion" |
| 5 | Mahananda, great bliss | When the whirling becomes fast, stop the breath; the central channel opens and the breath is "sipped" down to muladhara |
| 6 | Cidananda, bliss of consciousness | Bhramavega, "unknowing force", pierces muladhara; cit kundalini rises to brahmarandhra "like the blooming of a flower" |
| 7 | Jagadananda, universal bliss | Eyes open and close, in and out: krama mudra, established as permanent |
After mahananda, "no effort is required... From this point on, everything is automatic." The caution is subtle: "he should not think that 'everything is now automatic'. The more he thinks that everything will be automatic, the more surely he will remain at the state of mahananda. This is why masters never tell what will take place after mahananda."
Swamiji's short poem on the journey closes this account:
> "There is a point twixt sleep and waking / Where thou shalt be alert without shaking."
Three versions, three numberings. The appendix gives the seven anandas in three ways that do not quite match. (1) In The Secret Supreme, nijananda is the first state and jagadananda the seventh. (2) In the Tantraloka 5 passage, "nijananda is no state", nirananda is "the first", and jagadananda is the sixth. (3) The mapping to the seven perceivers shifts again: sakala is nijananda, vijnanakala nirananda, and so on up to "Paramashiva... jagadananda", which skips pralayakala and adds Paramashiva. These are differences of counting, not of substance, but they will confuse anyone matching them line by line. The guide's chart follows The Secret Supreme.
Guru-only, in the strongest terms. The seven anandas describe breath stopping, choking sensations, apprehension of death, and frightening visions, and an instruction at stage five to "stop your breath at once". The text presents these as what happens under a master's guidance, "according to the instructions of your master". Nothing in this edition is an instruction to induce any of them. If such experiences occur spontaneously, stop and seek a qualified teacher; if there is any physical distress, seek medical help.
Nirvikalpa and vikalpa
"Nirvikalpa is the cause of all vikalpas... It is not something foreign [to vikalpas]. It is their life." Naming ("This is a specs cover"), memory ("this was in my house and this is mine") all belong to vikalpa; but "that vikalpa state cannot exist without anubhavam, the nirvikalpa state". (From the Paratrishika Vivarana.)
The three upayas at a glance
The guide's own chart, drawn from Lakshmanjoo's repeated rule ("When there is nothingness, it is shambhava... When there is some support for the time being, this is shaktopaya. When there is support, all-around support, up to the end, this is anavopaya").
| Anavopaya | Shaktopaya | Shambhavopaya | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Means | Body, breath, place, mantra recited | Thought, contemplation, a held idea | Awareness alone, no support |
| Support | "Up to the end" | "For the time being" | None: "nothingness" |
| Also called | Kriyopaya (action) | Jnanopaya (knowledge) | Icchopaya (will) |
| Count in this book | 7 pure | 50 pure | 25 pure |
| Typical image | Breath between two points | Light filling the sky | First start of desire |
Twenty-nine practices mix upayas, usually by starting in one and ending in another.
The four states and turya
| State | Experiencer (Vedantic name) | In the dharanas |
|---|---|---|
| Jagrat, waking | Vishva | "Slightly known, giving duality" (61) |
| Svapna, dream | Taijasa | "Outer light" (61); controlled dream (32) |
| Sushupti, deep sleep | Prajna | "Darkness again" (61) |
| Turya, the fourth | Witness of all three | "The real rest" (50); the seven anandas are seven states of turya |
The appendix is short, but it shows that the 112 dharanas are not a loose list. They sit on a detailed map: thirty-six levels of reality, seven kinds of knower, three kinds of kundalini, seven stages of the fourth state. Each practice enters that map at a particular point. The maps also show the book's honesty about danger: the higher stages are described with choking, terror and the feeling of dying, and are kept firmly in the master's hands.
All 112 Practices in One Table
This is the full map of the book's practices, built on the Dharana and Upaya Guide printed at the front of the book, with the guide's one-line name for each practice and notes where Lakshmanjoo's spoken label differs. Practices that use breath control, mudras, locks, kundalini or self-injury are marked Guru-only. Use the table to find a practice, then read its full entry in the sections above.
How to read the table
- Verse is the verse of the Vijnana Bhairava; Dharana is Lakshmanjoo's practice number.
- Upaya follows the printed guide. A label like "anava to shambhava" means the practice starts in one means and ends in another.
- Notes record where the spoken commentary gives a different or wavering label, and flag Guru-only practices.
- Verses 69, 70 and 106 are not dharanas. Verses 113 and 114 are dharanas 87 and 88, labelled together.
| Verse | Dharana | Upaya (book guide) | Practice | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 24 | 1 | anava | The two starting points of breath | Guru-only |
| 25 | 2 | shakta | The two voids | Guru-only |
| 26 | 3 | shambhava | Neither in nor out | Guru-only |
| 27 | 4 | anava to shakta | Held out, held in | Guru-only |
| 28 | 5 | anava to shakta | Rays from the root | Guru-only |
| 29 | 6 | anava to shambhava | Lightning, wheel by wheel | Guru-only |
| 30 | 7 | anava | The twelve stations and twelve vowels | Guru-only |
| 31 | 8 | anava | The dam between the brows | Guru-only |
| 32 | 9 | shakta | The five voids, like peacock feathers | |
| 33 | 10 | shakta | Wherever you rest attention | |
| 34 | 11 | shakta | Fire in the skull | |
| 35 | 12 | shambhava | The lotus fiber | |
| 36 | 13 | anava | Closing the seven gates | Guru-only |
| 37 | 14 | anava | The flame from pressing the eyes | Guru-only |
| 38 | 15 | shakta | The unstruck sound | |
| 39 | 16 | anava to shambhava | The end of the long OM | talk adds shambhava touch |
| 40 | 17 | shambhava | Before and after any letter | |
| 41 | 18 | shambhava | The fading string | |
| 42 | 19 | anava to shambhava | Letting a mantra thin into silence | |
| 43 | 20 | anava to shambhava | Space on every side | |
| 44 | 21 | anava to shambhava | The body goes missing | talk: shambhava with anava touch |
| 45 | 22 | shakta | Three voids, three knowers | |
| 46 | 23 | shakta to shambhava | One moment of emptiness | |
| 47 | 24 | shakta | The hollow body | spoken together with 25 |
| 48 | 25 | shakta to shambhava | spoken together with 24 | |
| 49 | 26 | shakta | The space between two lotuses | |
| 50 | 27 | shakta | One center, unflickering | |
| 51 | 28 | anava to shambhava | The center in every act | |
| 52 | 29 | shakta to shambhava | The fire from the toe | |
| 53 | 30 | shakta | The whole world in ashes | |
| 54 | 31 | anava to shakta | Dissolving the elements | |
| 55 | 32 | anava to shambhava | Mastery of dream | Guru-only |
| 56 | 33 | shakta to shambhava | Gross, subtle, supreme paths | |
| 57 | 34 | shakta | "I am pervading all of this" | |
| 58 | 35 | shakta to shambhava | The world as a void | |
| 59 | 36 | shambhava | The pot without walls | |
| 60 | 37 | shambhava | The empty plain | |
| 61 | 38 | shakta | Between two objects | |
| 62 | 39 | shakta | One object, kept alive | |
| 63 | 40 | shakta | Body and world as consciousness | |
| 64 | 41 | anava | Where the two breaths meet | Guru-only |
| 65 | 42 | shakta | Body and world as bliss | |
| 66 | 43 | shakta | The tickle | |
| 67 | 44 | anava to shambhava | The ant's touch | Guru-only |
| 68 | 45 | shakta | Between fire and poison | Guru-only |
| 69 & 70 | none | not a dharana | Joy of union; tasting the joy of a kiss (read as non-practices) | Set aside in the commentary |
| 71 | 46 | shakta to shambhava | The source of a great joy | |
| 72 | 47 | shakta | Eating and drinking | |
| 73 | 48 | shakta | Music, heard as one | |
| 74 | 49 | not listed | Wherever the mind is content | |
| 75 | 50 | shambhava | Between waking and sleep | |
| 76 | 51 | shakta | Light filling space | |
| 77 | 52 | shambhava | The five mudras of the five perfected ones | Guru-only |
| 78 | 53 | all three | One buttock on a soft seat | talk wavers: anava-shakta, then anava-shambhava |
| 79 | 54 | anava to shakta | The hollow of the armpits | |
| 80 | 55 | shambhava | One glance at beauty | |
| 81 | 56 | anava | The tongue in the open mouth | talk: carries to shambhava |
| 82 | 57 | shakta to shambhava | The body on nothing | |
| 83 | 58 | shakta | Riding a horse | |
| 84 | 59 | shambhava | The cloudless sky | |
| 85 | 60 | shakta | The sky in the skull | |
| 86 | 61 | anava to shambhava | Waking, dream and sleep as Bhairava | talk also says shakta |
| 87 | 62 | shakta | The dark rainy night | |
| 88 | 63 | shakta | Darkness carried outward | |
| 89 | 64 | shakta | The jolt of the senses | |
| 90 | 65 | anava to shakta | "a", with no ending | Guru-only |
| 91 | 66 | shambhava | The breath that ends a syllable | |
| 92 | 67 | shakta | The body as sky without directions | |
| 93 | 68 | anava to shambhava | The needle | Guru-only |
| 94 | 69 | shakta | "I have no mind" | |
| 95 | 70 | shakta | "Maya is not mine" | |
| 96 | 71 | shambhava | Seize desire as it rises | |
| 97 | 72 | shakta | "Who am I then?" | |
| 98 | 73 | shakta to shambhava | At the first start | |
| 99 | 74 | shakta | Knowledge without a cause | |
| 100 | 75 | shakta | The same in insect and god | |
| 101 | 76 | shambhava | At the rise of anger | |
| 102 | 77 | shakta | Magic, painting, movie | |
| 103 | 78 | shakta | Between pain and pleasure | |
| 104 | 79 | shakta | "I am everywhere" | |
| 105 | 80 | shakta | The bottle is everywhere | |
| 106 | none | not a dharana | Alertness in the relation of subject and object | Set aside in the commentary |
| 107 | 81 | shakta | Another's body as your own | |
| 108 | 82 | shambhava | The mind with no seat | |
| 109 | 83 | shakta to shambhava | "I am he" | |
| 110 | 84 | shakta to shambhava | Waves of one ocean | |
| 111 | 85 | shambhava | Walking until you drop | |
| 112 | 86 | shakta | The curiosity of not knowing | |
| 113 and 114 | 87 and 88 | shambhava | Open eyes, closed ears | Guru-only |
| 115 | 89 | shakta | Over a deep well | |
| 116 | 90 | shambhava | Wherever the mind goes | |
| 117 | 91 | shakta | The Lord in each sense | |
| 118 | 92 | shambhava | Sneeze, fear, grief, flight | |
| 119 | 93 | shakta | Stepping into a memory | |
| 120 | 94 | shakta | Withdrawing the gaze | |
| 121 | 95 | shambhava | The intensity of devotion | |
| 122 | 96 | shakta | The previous object | |
| 123 | 97 | shakta | Beyond pure and impure | |
| 124 | 98 | shakta | Even in ordinary people | |
| 125 | 99 | shakta | The same to friend and enemy | |
| 126 | 100 | shakta | No attraction, no aversion | |
| 127 | 101 | shambhava | The unknowable | |
| 128 | 102 | shakta to shambhava | Outer sky to no-sky | |
| 129 | 103 | shakta to shambhava | Follow and release | |
| 130 | 104 | shakta | The meaning of "Bhairava" | |
| 131 | 105 | shambhava | "I" and "mine" | talk: shakta ending in shambhava |
| 132 | 106 | shakta | Five words for God | |
| 133 | 107 | shambhava | The magic net | |
| 134 | 108 | shambhava | No knowing, no doing in the Self | |
| 135 | 109 | shakta | Neither bound nor free | |
| 136 | 110 | shakta to shambhava | Above the senses | |
| 137 | 111 | shakta | Knower and knowledge are one | |
| 138 | 112 | shambhava | The four dissolved | Guru-only |
The numbers. Pure shakta 50, pure shambhava 25, pure anava 7, mixed 29 (13 shakta to shambhava, 10 anava to shambhava, 5 anava to shakta, 1 all three), not listed 1: 112. Of the 29 mixed practices, 23 end in shambhava. The book's method is plain in the numbers: begin wherever you can, and let the practice carry you toward support-less awareness.
The guide and the talk do not always agree. The printed guide was compiled by the editors from the recordings, and in about eight places (marked in the Notes column) Lakshmanjoo's spoken label differs or wavers. The clearest cases are dharana 53, which he calls first anava-cum-shakta and then anava-cum-shambhava, and dharana 105, which the guide calls shambhava and the talk "shakta ending in shambhava". These are signs of an oral teaching, given across eleven years, not errors to be resolved.
Where the Text Asserts, Attacks, or Parts from Scholarship
This section brings together the critical lens notes from the whole guide and adds the larger questions a careful reader should hold while using the book. None of them cancels the book's value. Lakshmanjoo's Vijnana Bhairava is the record of a living master explaining a classic to students, and that is its strength. But a master's word, a tradition's self-understanding and the findings of historical scholarship are three different things, and this edition keeps them apart.
1. The text's date and setting
The Vijnana Bhairava presents itself as the essence of the Rudrayamala Tantra (verse 162), spoken by Bhairava to the Goddess. Lakshmanjoo reads it within the Kashmiri Trika tradition of Abhinavagupta and Kshemaraja. Historical scholarship generally places the text much earlier than those commentators, in roughly the eighth or ninth century: a study published on eScholarship argues for a date between about 750 and 850, and Christopher Wallis (Hareesh) gives about 850 CE. No single early Rudrayamala survives, and the works printed under that name are later compilations. So the frame is a traditional attribution, not a historical claim.
2. The commentaries
Kshemaraja's commentary survives only for verses 1 to 23, though it may once have been complete; the complete classical commentary is the eighteenth-century work of Shivopadhyaya, which Tantra Vidya dates to the 1700s and which Lakshmanjoo describes as mixing Shaiva and Vedanta thought (text of the earlier edition). For most of the 112 practices, then, Lakshmanjoo's explanations are his own oral tradition, not the gloss of Abhinavagupta's circle. This matters: when he says "this is shambhavopaya", he is giving the classification of a twentieth-century master, applying Abhinavagupta's scheme to a text that does not itself use the three upayas.
The three upayas are not in the root text. The Vijnana Bhairava never says "anava", "shakta" or "shambhava". The labels come from Abhinavagupta's later system and from Lakshmanjoo's teaching. They are illuminating, but they are a lens laid over the text. Popular versions, from the "Centering" chapter of Paul Reps's 1957 book (which Reps dedicated to Lakshmanjoo) to Osho's talks, as Sanatana Rahasya notes, present the same verses without any such scheme.
3. Assertion rather than argument
The book teaches; it does not argue. Several central claims are stated as the experience of realized beings:
| Claim | Where | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Turya is "the real rest"; the yogi is not affected by chloroform | Dharana 50 | Testimony; not to be tested |
| The lion "will not touch him" in cakita mudra | Dharana 65 | Faith claim about invulnerability |
| One practice alone makes one Bhairava; powers of curse and boon; no old age | Verses 140 to 142 | Traditional phalashruti |
| Sexual happiness is "one millionth" of cit kundalini | Appendix | Experiential comparison |
| The kind of kundalini depends on one's attachments | Appendix | Teaching from the lineage |
| Lakshmanjoo passed through all the states of yoga | Front matter | Self-report, as reported by students |
A reader can practise much of the book without accepting these claims, and should be wary of anyone who presents them as proven.
4. Attacks on rival schools
The book is courteous but sectarian. The main targets:
- Advaita Vedanta, portrayed as world-denying (Introduction). Many Advaitins would not accept the picture; the real disagreement is about whether appearance is a power of the Absolute or a superimposition on it.
- Vedic and Smarta purity rules: what "those of little knowledge" call purity is impurity (verse 123).
- Pilgrimage: at Khirbhavani or Jvala "you enter only in duality" (verse 151 commentary).
- Om and so'ham ranked below sauh (Appendix).
- Abhinavagupta himself on verses 69 and 70: Lakshmanjoo declines to count them as dharanas, in disagreement with the classical reading, and the guide reports this as a difference of interpretation.
- Followers of other schools are not to be taught (verse 157).
These polemics are normal in Sanskrit religious literature. They tell us where the tradition drew its lines; they are not findings about the rival schools.
5. Vedantic terms, Shaiva meanings
Lakshmanjoo freely uses vishva, taijasa, prajna (dharana 61), "Brahman" (verses 91, 114, 125, 126), and calls the world "illusion" (verses 99, 133). Elsewhere he insists that Trika, unlike Vedanta, holds the world real as Shiva's expression. The tension is resolved in his own phrase from dharana 77: "We are expanded, we are not differentiated." What is "illusion" is the appearance of separation, not the world itself. Readers coming from Advaita should not assume the words carry the same meaning.
6. Sexual and transgressive material
The text includes practices that use the joy of sexual union (verses 68 to 70), the melapa meetings with yoginis (dharana 52, verse 141), and the overturning of purity rules. Lakshmanjoo's commentary handles these conservatively: verses 69 and 70 are "not practices"; the melapa material is visionary, "in a dream or in samadhi"; the yogi's "every degraded thing" refers to inner stance, not conduct. Historians of tantra point out that the Kaula background of such verses was more literal. This guide reports both: what the text says, and how this commentary chose to read it.
7. The guru and surrender
The most important caution in the book is its own. On verse 158, Lakshmanjoo says: "Whatever comes from the lips of your masters, don't put your reason there." A student answers that surrendering before knowing the teacher is "a big mistake". He agrees: "Yes, that is quite true." Then: "once you have surrendered, there is no way out".
The test comes first, and harm is never part of the path. Read in full, the passage supports careful discernment before commitment, and deep trust after. It cannot be used to justify any teacher's harm to a student. The twentieth century has many examples of "consider the guru's acts divine" being used to excuse abuse, and the tradition's own standard, in this very book, is that a disciple must first know "who is this person".
8. Safety
The Vijnana Bhairava is often marketed as a set of simple meditation techniques. Many are simple. But the book also contains breath retention, locks, the closing of the senses, mudras with suspended breath, a needle prick, gazing into wells, walking to exhaustion, and in the appendix a description of choking, terror and the apprehension of death as stages of the path. Lakshmanjoo himself keeps these within a teaching relationship ("the way I have taught to You"). This edition's Guru-only markings follow that lead.
Use the book as what it is: an oral master's practical reading of an early tantra, faithful to a living lineage, partly at odds with history, openly sectarian at points, and honest about danger. The practices of awareness at the "first start" need no metaphysics to try. The cosmology, the powers and the ranking of schools are the tradition's own, and can be held with respect and some distance.
People, Places and Terms
The people who appear in the book, from the divine speakers to the students in the room, and a glossary of the Sanskrit terms used in this guide. Spellings follow this edition's style, without diacritics.
People in the text and the room
- Bhairava: Shiva in his "terrifying" and transcendent form; the teacher in the dialogue. Lakshmanjoo reads the name as bha (fear), ra (crying out), va (presence).
- Bhairavi, Devi, Parvati: the Goddess, Shiva's own energy, who asks the questions and ends by embracing him.
- Swami Lakshmanjoo (1907 to 1991): the Kashmiri master whose recorded talks (1973 to 1984) form the book.
- John Hughes: American disciple, editor of the book for the Lakshmanjoo Academy; a speaker in many dialogues.
- Swami Mahatabakak: Lakshmanjoo's own master, who entered samadhi at a wedding while looking at an adorned child (dharana 55).
- Abhinavagupta (c. 975 to 1025): the great Kashmiri philosopher whose system of upayas Lakshmanjoo applies; Lakshmanjoo departs from him on verses 69 and 70.
- Kshemaraja: Abhinavagupta's disciple; his commentary on the text survives for verses 1 to 23 only.
- Shivopadhyaya: eighteenth-century author of the full classical commentary, mixing Shaiva and Vedanta views.
- Shambhunatha: Abhinavagupta's teacher, credited with the teaching of the seven states of ananda.
- Utpaladeva: Kashmiri philosopher and poet; his hymns are quoted at verse 125 ("If they conquer, they laugh").
- Krishna: given as the model of khecari mudra, acting "in the shambhava state" (dharana 52).
- Students in the room: Denise, Ernie, Bruce, George, Stephanie, Ellen, Jagdish, Viresh (Lakshmanjoo uses him in examples), Nilakanth Gurtoo (who asks in Kashmiri about variant readings) and Dina Nath Ganjoo (who checks points of philosophy; "I am Dina Nath Ganjoo, Dina Nath Ganjoo is myself").
Places
- Srinagar: Lakshmanjoo's birthplace and home; the talks were given in Kashmir.
- Amarnath: high Himalayan cave shrine; the pilgrimage on foot illustrates dharana 85.
- Sonamarg: mountain valley used to illustrate silent darkness (dharana 62).
- Khirbhavani and Jvala: Kashmiri shrines mentioned in the commentary on pilgrimage (verse 151).
Glossary
| Term | Meaning in this book |
|---|---|
| Anavopaya | The individual means: body, breath, place, recited mantra; "support up to the end"; also kriyopaya |
| Anupaya | "No means": the state where nothing is to be done |
| Bhairavi mudra | Eyes wide open, unblinking, breath fixed; "inner aim, outer gaze" |
| Bhavana | Contemplation "in continuity", without pause, "chain-like" |
| Cakita mudra | The pose of astonishment; produced (shakta) or automatic (shambhava) |
| Cidakasha | The sky of consciousness |
| Dharana | A practice of holding awareness; also the name for the kancukas, which "hold" the individual in being |
| Dvadashanta | The point twelve finger-widths beyond the body where the outgoing breath ends; also other "end" points |
| Hamsa / so'ham | The breath mantra: "sa" going out, "ha" coming in; 21,600 times a day |
| Icchopaya | Means of will; another name for shambhavopaya |
| Jagadananda | Universal bliss; the seventh state of turya; krama mudra made permanent |
| Jivanmukta | Liberated while living |
| Kancukas | The five "coverings" (kala, vidya, raga, kala, niyati) produced by maya |
| Khecari | "Moving in the sky"; the shambhava "mudra" that is "no mudra", being above every act |
| Krama mudra | The automatic movement in and out of samadhi until inner and outer are one |
| Kundalini | Shiva's revealing and concealing energy: para, cit and prana kundalini |
| Madhya | The center: between two breaths, two thoughts, two objects, waking and sleep |
| Melapa | Gatherings of yoginis and siddhas experienced in samadhi or dream |
| Nimilana / unmilana | Absorption with eyes closed (inner) and with eyes open (outer) |
| Nirvikalpa / vikalpa | Free of thought-constructs / a thought-construct; nirvikalpa is "the life of all vikalpas" |
| Nistaranga | "Wave-less": the tide-less state that all 112 practices teach |
| Prathamabhasa | The first flash of appearance, before naming |
| Pramiti bhava | The supreme, objectless subjective state |
| Samavesha | Absorption, immersion |
| Sauh | The heart mantra of Trika, holding the 36 tattvas |
| Shaktipata | Descent of grace |
| Shaktopaya | Means of energy: contemplation with "support for the time being"; also jnanopaya |
| Shambhavopaya | Means of Shiva: awareness alone, "nothingness", no support |
| Sushumna, madhya nadi | The central channel |
| Tattva | One of the 36 levels of reality |
| Tuti | One-sixteenth of a breath's span, "two finger spaces and one quarter" |
| Turya | The fourth state, beyond waking, dream and sleep |
| Visarga | The final breathy "h" (written ":"); its two dots are Shiva and Shakti |
Where to Begin, What to Leave to a Teacher
A short, safe way into the book for a reader without a teacher, built from practices Lakshmanjoo himself describes as simple, natural or available in daily life. It is followed by the master takeaways of the whole edition. Nothing here replaces a qualified teacher, and every practice marked Guru-only in the table is left out on purpose.
Read this first. This edition marks as Guru-only every practice that uses breath retention or control, locks, closing of the sense openings, mudras, kundalini, or self-injury, and the whole sequence of the seven anandas. If any practice brings panic, dizziness, pain, sleep problems or distressing visions, stop, rest, and seek a qualified teacher; if there is any physical distress, seek medical help. People with a history of psychosis, severe anxiety or trauma should practise only with professional guidance.
A gentle sequence
The order moves from noticing a gap to staying in it to living from it.
- The gap between things (dharana 38). Look at one object, then another. Rest, for a moment, in the space between knowing the first and the second. Two minutes, eyes open.
- The fading sound (dharana 18). Strike a bell or pluck a string. Follow the sound to the very end, and rest where it disappears.
- Joy at its source (dharanas 46 to 48). When a real joy arrives (meeting a friend, good food, music), let attention fall from the object of joy into the joy itself.
- The edge of sleep (dharana 50). At night, as the world fades and before sleep comes, stay lightly aware. Do not fight sleep; just notice the hinge.
- Between movements (dharana 58). On a bus or train, rest attention in the turn between one motion and the next.
- The sky (dharana 59). On a clear day, look into blue sky, body still, gaze unbroken. Never at the sun.
- The first start (dharanas 71, 73, 76). Through the day, try to catch a desire, a thought or an irritation at its first instant. Not resisting: just being there first.
- Another as oneself (dharana 81). When you see another's pain, let it register as you would your own.
- Wherever the mind goes (dharana 90). Let the mind wander without control, and recognize the same awareness wherever it lands.
A day with the Vijnana Bhairava. Waking: notice the moment before the day's first thought (50, reversed). Commute: rest between movements (58). Work: catch the first heat of irritation (76). Lunch: let attention fall into taste (47). Evening walk: the long walk's stillness when you sit (85, gently). Night: the hinge of sleep (50). No special posture, no breath technique, no hidden instruction, and every one of these is in the book.
What to leave to a teacher
| Group | Dharanas | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Breath practices and the rising energy | 1 to 8, 32, 41 | Breath holding and kundalini imagery; the commentary assumes oral instruction |
| Closing the gates, pressing the eyes | 13, 14, 87 and 88 | Pressure on eyes and ears, root lock with breath |
| Practices of sexual joy | 44, 45 | Belong to an initiatory frame the commentary treats with care |
| The mudras | 52, 65 | Breath suspension and extreme facial postures |
| The needle | 68 | Self-injury |
| Hamsa with tutis | Verses 154 to 156 | Progressive breath restriction, "the way I have taught" |
| The seven anandas | Appendix | Choking, terror, apprehension of death, breath stopping |
Master takeaways
1. One practice is enough. "Only one out of one hundred and twelve." The book is a menu, not a syllabus. 2. Every practice seeks the same place: the center, the gap, the first start, where thought has not yet formed. 3. The upaya tells you what the practice uses: body and breath (anava), a held contemplation (shakta), or nothing at all (shambhava). Most mixed practices end in shambhava. 4. Catch the start. Desire, knowledge, anger and wonder all have a first instant of pure energy. "Not resisted, abolished." 5. Ordinary life is the practice ground. Sneezes, fear, hunger, a bumpy ride, the edge of sleep, music, a long walk. 6. Alertness in the relation (verse 106) is the single skill all 112 train. 7. Ritual turns inward. Real japa is unbroken contemplation; real puja is the mind firm in the void; "awareness is the spoon". 8. Love is a means. Devotion intense enough to forget everything else is shambhava (dharana 95), and empathy is a method (dharana 81). 9. Liberation is not an event that happens to a person: "I am liberated!" is also bondage (verse 135). 10. Read with two eyes. Honor the oral master's insight; keep the history, the sectarian polemic and the power claims in view; and leave the dangerous practices to a teacher.
The text ends with an embrace, and Lakshmanjoo calls the whole book "the language of transcendental love". That may be the best key to it: the 112 practices are not tasks to be completed, but 112 ways of noticing what was never absent.