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This distinctive emphasis on defining and even equating Reality with this power of freedom or swātantrya-
shakti in Kashmir Shaivism is also the key to sadhana or spiritual practice. Realization is more than simply
knowledge: it is the fulfillment of one’s innate freedom. Self-realization is to become fully swatantrā,
fully free, and true freedom is the most essential characteristic of the realized being.
The practical significance of this for us in our spiritual practice is a simple yet challenging message; just as
the Divine is free and unhampered in the expression of creative freedom, so we too are free from depen-
dence on outer circumstances in the expression of our innate freedom of consciousness.
This kind of claim can and engender some skepticism right from the outset. Are we speaking only meta-
phorically? Are we meant to take the tantric philosophers quite literally? How can we have anything like
the divine freedom by which the universe was created when we are in this limited state?
It would be all too easy — and fruitless — to revert to well-worn arguments about freedom, destiny and so
on at this point, and lose sight of the very large picture that Tantra paints. As individuals, Kashmir Shaivism
would say, we are subject to what it calls the ‘malas’ or impurities/limitations inherent in being individual.
These include the sense of limitation, imperfection and subjection to karma or the consequences of our
actions. It would be silly to speak of freedom or swātantrya in the context of being an individual. In fact,
it was the original expression of swātantrya that Consciousness chose to assume the condition of not being
The being who is swatantrā can only be described as having awakened to his or her own very real freedom,
which is very different from what we think it is. The bound individual is lost in dreaming of the possibility
of freedom — a dream which contains a grain of truth. Shaivism recognizes that grain of truth, and reveals
its full expression.
Kashmir Shaivism
Among the many forms and schools of tantra, Kashmir Shaivism best embodies the culmination of the
philosophical trends and themes that we’ve been following through this book — particularly the move-
ment from commitment to community— and it is coming to be recognized as the créme-de-la-créme of
yogic philosophy.
Kashmir Shaivism gives one of the most highly refined and comprehensive statements of the overall world-
view of Tantra, and thus I take it as a profound expression of tantric thinking. In the end, Kashmir Shaivism
is all about the Swatantryā of the divine creative Shakti, and the swātantrya-shakti of the individual. The
joining of the descent of grace from the Divine with the effort and devotion of the individual (the expres-
sion of his or her own swātantrya-shakti) bring about the realization of true freedom.
The central text of Kashmir Shaivism, the Shiva Sutras or ‘Aphorisms of Shiva’ were revealed to the sage
Vasugupta in the middle of the 9th century in Kashmir. This work represented the first of a series of works
composed in Kashmir by monistic Kashmiri Shaivites stretching from the 9th to the 13th century. ‘Shaivism’
had an ancient presence in Kashmir, and these sages from Vasugupta forward were inspired by the earlier
Shaiva Tantras and the earlier dualistic philosophy of the Shaivasiddhānta. But Kashmir Shaivism was
something new — brilliantly new.
The greatest among them was Abhinavagupta, who lived from the middle of the 11th century into the first
quarter of the 12th. He systematized the whole of the philosophy, and made great original contributions to
its monistic philosophy, to the Pratyabhijñā philosophy that we will explore more closely, to the exegesis of
the many Tantras that were prevalent in the Kashmir of his day, and to Indian poetics and aesthetics. His
greatest disciple was Ksemarāja, who wrote a number of important works, including commentaries on the
Shiva Sutras and on the Spandakarikā or ‘Stanzas on Vibration.’
The actual founder of the monistic Shaiva philosophy — known as the ‘Pratyabhijñā, which drew its
name from his principle work, the Īśvarapratyabhijñakārikā — was Utpaladeva (along with his teacher,
30 The point here is that, although the name ‘Kashmir Shaivism’ has stuck, the philosophical school is neither strictly
composed of sages from Kashmir, nor is it strictly ‘Shaivism’ in the sense of the more deistic cult that preceded it in the region
of Kashmir. Kashmir Shaivism is a philosophical system quite different and distinct from the religious and deistic cult of Shiva.
Kashmir Shaivism has developed a very strong following in Western academia and is being intensely studied, after having been
introduced to the West through the work of Swami Muktananda and Swami Laksmanjoo in the 1970’s and 80’s. Kashmir
Shaivism is currently being intensively explored in Universities through the work of scholars such as Mark Dyczkowski and Paul
Muller-Ortega, .
In all, there were three types of literature in the Shaiva or ‘Trika’ system. The first is the Āgama Śāstra
or ‘revealed’ literature, of which the Shiva Sutras are the prime example. The second is the Spanda Śāstra,
which lay down the important doctrines of the system. The main work of this kind was the Spanda Kārikās
or ‘Stanzas on Vibration,’ which set forth the doctrine of Spanda as a key idea to understanding Shaivism.
The third is the Pratyabhijñā Śāstra, which interprets the main doctrines of the system according to logical
reasoning, often offering arguments, counter-arguments and discussions. The Pratyabhijñāhrdayam oc-
cupies a central place among this literature, and manages to avoid all polemics while giving very succinct
statements of the main tenets of the Pratyabhijñā system of Kashmir Shaivism.
Consciousness as One
Kashmir philosophy is a form of monism which teaches that there is only one reality. That reality is one
universal divine Consciousness. It is also an idealism in the sense that it teaches that things exist as objects
in the external world because they appear within the field of awareness of that divine Consciousness. They
are because they are perceived to be by this one divine Consciousness; they are the appearing-forth of Con-
sciousness Itself. (esse est percipii — to be is to be perceived) This, as we’ve seen, is a view shared by other
schools of yogic philosophy, notably Advaita Vedānta.
Yet this monistic idealism is not what is truly distinctive of Kashmir Shaivism, for it shares this conception
with Advaita (nondualistic) Vedanta. Its uniqueness lies in its clearly expressed and deeply explored teaching
the essence of yoga is contained within the simple experience of ‘I.’
Absolute Reality is pure ‘I’ consciousness , which we can and do directly experience simply by being aware
that ‘I am.’ Kashmir Shaivism uniquely describes the nature of this ‘I’ awareness in a way that goes beyond
anything described in previous philosophies.
‘I Am That I Am’
Kashmir Shaivism does, like the previous philosophies, distinguish between the pure ‘I’ of Spirit and the
ego, where the ego is based on identification with the body and limited personal attributes that in fact
change over time. And in Shaivism, just as in the other philosophies, the ego, with its pride and selfishness
is indeed the root of all ills.
But Kashmir Shaivism goes beyond the previous philosophies in terms of how deeply it goes into the nature
of the pure ‘I,’ finding qualities inherent in its nature that go far beyond the qualities of Purusha described in
Classical philosophy, or even the Ātma/Brahma of Vedanta. Mark Dyczkowski in his book The Aphorisms
of Śiva gives a nice description of the spiritual significance of this understanding:
The authentic ego, this pure sense of ‘I am’, does not cling to self and personal ambitions. It
has no fear of being less than anyone or of anything else. It makes room for others and does
This description is in many ways very close to the famous and powerful description of Love given by Paul
in the Bible, and indeed the Shaivites would happily allow that the essential nature of this pure divine Con-
sciousness, the ‘I am That I am’ awareness of God, is unconditional Love. Realization in Kashmir Shaivism
is the realization of this experience of the ‘I,’ the realization of the true inner nature of Love.
The term ‘Light’ appears quite often in the Tantras, and for good reason. The tantric understanding of
consciousness reaches a new level, based largely on the metaphor of light. This metaphor eventually became
a whole mysticism of Light in the writings of the sage Bhāskara. He described the Divine as Light, which
expands and unfolds as all things, allowing us to understand both the ‘illumination’ that takes place within
our own mind on the one hand, and the appearance of the outer world on the other as two instances of
the same Truth. To realize this vision of Being and the ‘I’ as Light is to acquire ‘Pure Knowledge’; to miss
it is to be caught in the appearances of consciousness, to be stuck in the awareness of thought constructs,
concepts and ideas that only mask the true nature of Reality, rather than reveal it. The practice of yoga is
meant to help us to see beyond this mask through the experience of consciousness as light.
With this understanding of consciousness, Shaivism is also able to transform our conception of the Self as
well. In their vision, the Self is not just the Purusha, the detached witness of Prakrti, nor is it the changeless,
actionless Brahman of Vedanta.
The highest Reality according to Shaivism is Citi (pronounced ‘chit’-ee’). This term is most often translated
as ‘consciousness’ – but this divine consciousness is far more than the changeless and impassive ‘witness-
consciousness’ of the previous philosophies.
Citi is a feminine form of the root cit, which implies ‘to perceive, to observe, to appear, to understand’ and
‘to know.’ Citi is consciousness empowered to know and to perceive, and it is also that which makes things
appear or manifest.
On the one hand, consciousness makes all things appear — just as Vedānta described Brahman as the
‘sun’ that illumines the world of Māyā. But in Shaivism, Citi is more. Everything that appears is not only
illumined by consciousness, but is also made of nothing but consciousness. All things are but contracted
forms of consciousness, appearing in the field of consciousness. Just as crystals form in a liquid, the Tantrikas
emphasized that objects can only ‘appear’ when held in the field of awareness or consciousness. There can
be no objects or ‘appearances’ of objects apart from a consciousness in whom and to whom they appear.
31 Mark Dyczkowski, The Aphorisms of Śiva, SUNY Press 1992, p. 3
Thus consciousness is in every sense the support or ground for all manifestation. The Tantrikas in general
described this Absolute Consciousness using feminine attributes because of the support and nurturing that
citi provides. Citi is the Goddess, the Mother of creation in whom the universe appears and has its being, and
the whole movement of Tantra is a celebration of the feminine aspects or qualities of Absolute Reality.