Greetings,
I am getting married this weekend and have been looking for readings for quite a while.
I have settled on something out of a childrens book,
I had found a few beautiful things in the Vedas, but I was curious if anyone could share anything related to marriage / householders within KS literature. Just in general.
Sorry the post is long; I am trying to lay out my argument carefully and fully.
Direct realism, also know as "naive realism" (naive not in a pejorative sense, but in "everyday perception" sense) is a description of how we intuitively understand our perception. The assumption is that when you look at some object, you're actually seeing the object itself. For example, when I sit and look at a tree, it's as if there was some self inside me that looked at a tree through my eyes as if they were windows. My mind somehow "grabs onto" the tree and fuses with it.
(This is based on an ancient idea of extramission: that the way we see the world is by our vision coming out through the eyes and interacting with the world.)
Oftentimes, when a person achieves non-dual awakening, either the sense of self drops, or it fuses with the tree, and people conclude there is non-duality of subject and object. There is non-separation of the "me" and the "world", or there was never a "me" to begin with, just the world. Thoughts without a thinker and a tree without a watcher. Also, the "tree" itself starts feeling like a thought or a vibrant mind-presence leading to a conclusion that everything is actually some form of consciousness.
But there was a mistake from the beginning that affected the whole process.
You never were looking at the "actual" or "objective" tree. Let's assume for the sake of the argument there is some reality in the universe that is what we call "tree". It could be a physical object, or it could be code in the Matrix, or it could be God's thought. You never directly see that. You see an arising in your mind that is the product of your brain activity. You retina has no "treeness" in it. There is no green, no shapes, no outlines or contours. There are just salt ions going in and out through a fat membrane, generating current. And the same is true for thalamus, to which retinal neurons project. Same is true for primary visual cortex, V1. And V2, V3, V4. There are just fat bags pushing salts in and out of themselves. But we know that if we record activity in V4, the person whose V4 it is will be seeing color. There is no color in V4 itself, and modern science has no idea how the experience of color arises in response to V4 neurons firing (because modern science doesn't know what consciousness is; it can just record the person's report).
But the simple point is that the color, shape, contours, space around, background/foreground, etc., of the tree were fabricated by the brain. We're living in a controlled hallucination created by the brain. I'm not saying the objects of perception are themselves in the brain, but somehow brain activity is necessary for them to appear. Every single aspect of your perception and cognition is constructed by brain activity. If there is a stroke, God forbid, in one of those steps, the patient will stop being able to see colors, or specific aspects of shapes, or left side of everything (it won't be darkness, he just won't be aware of the left side). Also, stimulating of the V4 with an electrode will by itself produce colors. No outside world necessary.
If you follow this thread back, you can conclude that the real world probably does not have colors. Colors are our private experiences fabricated by neural activity that then consciousness somehow "reads out" and turns into "color experience". But the same is probably true about shapes. And before/after, here/there, etc. All aspects of our perception are fabricated maps. They do map onto some logic of the universe, but the universe itself doesn't "look" anything like them; in fact, it probably doesn't look like anything.
A simple example is looking at CCTV footage of a man. Or seeing the man in a mirror reflected by a mirror reflected by a mirror, reflected by a mirror. Colloquially we say we're looking at the man, but really we're just looking at the TV screen or a mirror that replicated the original image. Well, you're directly "looking" not at a tree but your brain activity. And it didn't replicate the original reality; it actually constructed something completely new to represent it.
So, when you experienced non-dual awakening, you never experienced oneness with the "tree" outside your mind. The tree you were seeing all along was a controlled hallucination inside your mind. And then you stopped reifying/projecting it outside of yourself and felt like it's a part of your mind or part of you, or the program called "self" stopped running and there was just the conscious experience of the tree.
That's right. That's a valid experience. The tree-you-experienced *was* always a part of your mind. Just like all your mind states are. You are now like a sentient GPS that realized that "it" is not just the blue arrow in the center but the entire screen and objects rendered on it. But if the GPS thinks it's also the physical street, it's wrong. The GPS never saw the physical street. There *is* a physical street "out there", but the GPS was never one with it. So, there is some aspect of reality out there, but it's not the tree you experienced either before or after non-dual awakening.
So... Coming back to Kashmiri Shaivism. From what I understand, KS states oneness of conscious experience with the object of experience.
If that means that my "self" and my internal "tree" are one, that makes sense. But if that means that my "self" and the "real tree" are one, that seems to contradict modern science since we never see the "real tree". Unfortunately, to me it seems like the latter. Other non-dual systems seem to say something similar. Yogacara, Advaita Vedanta, forms of Sufism, etc. That's because ancient people all assumed direct realism. And many, both Indian and Greeks, actually explicitly posited the idea of extramission: sight coming out of the eyes to fuse with an object so that the mind can experience it directly. (Actually the idea of "evil eye" is tied to extramission. If I look at your harvest or your goat, and I am jealous, I could harm them. How? Because my mind is fused with them, so if bad thoughts arise in it, they can harm the object.)
So, in Kashmiri Shaivism, a tree first arises as phenomenon one with Shiva. Then Shiva splits Himself internally into "jiva" and "tree", and "jiva" now experiences "itself" as something separate from its supposed object of perception, while it has always been one with the tree.
But that assumes that the mind object of the tree and the "real tree" are the same, and as I explained above, they're not.
So, I don't know how to resolve this contradiction between modern understanding of perception and nonduality.
I am sharing this because it actually bothers me, and I am curious if there is a resolution, or if the above has an error, etc.
Thanks! 🙏🏻
Sometimes, as people first explore KS, often in conjunction with reading other interesting modern theories of consciousness and generic non-duality teachings, I've found a not-too-common-but-not-altogether-uncommon tendency for some people to mix up these teachings and mistake the KS teachings for solipsism.
The mistake they make is a simple one to make: when one sees the phrase "śivo'haṃ," that "I am Śiva," they understand the "Śiva" correctly as the universal consciousness replete with its inherent cosmic energies to will, to know, to act, to conceal, and to reveal; but do not understand the "I." They think that their personal constructed empirical self, their day to day experience, is what they must recognize as identical to that Śiva, and that they, from their individual specific locus of experience, as Dinesh or Sandy sitting on their bed, have created that bedroom and the entire world around them. Just like we fall asleep and a whole dream world arises in our individual minds, so too is our waking world a product of that same individual mind. This is solipsism and is a major mistake.
To be sure, there are some traditions that will try to deny the intersubjective shared reality that we experience during our waking life. That will insist it's an illusion, and perhaps an illusion that we create as individuals. (Because to recognize a shared basis for it would also be to contradict its status as illusion). The KS view is more profound than that. It shows us, through practice, how just as our dream-self and its reciprocal dream world arises in our personal consciousness, our waking-self and its reciprocal waking world arise in Śiva consciousness. KS does not reinforce the isolated individual consciousness of our waking experience, but returns that consciousness to its transcendent universal state.
Taken to its culmination, this is an experience so powerful that even a few seconds of it, this intense unfathomable fullness of being the totality, mark the end of any and all further seeking. Swami Lakshmanjoo was forever changed after he had this experience in ways that we should perhaps discuss sometime soon, as they remain mostly in the oral teachings rather than in the published books.
For now, the point is that we are not here to reinforce the individuality of our waking consciousness by pretending the waking world is its dream, but to recover that universal consciousness which first transcends all the states of waking, dreaming, and deep sleep, and then reinhabits them: not as illusions that arise, but as active manifestations of the inherent cosmic energies of that universal consciousness. These manifestations are incredible and varied, and appear differently for different types of bodies, from insects to humans to gods, but they are not personal illusions. They are genuinely intersubjective, which is what makes them so full and capable of eliciting wonder.
The Īśvarapratyabhijñākārikā of Ācārya Utpaladeva (3:2:16–17) in just two verses makes this clear: that while our dreams mistakenly seem to be something other than our individual consciousness, the waking world is defined by its stability and intersubjective knowability, being shared by different beings. Here are those verses, as translated by Paramaguru Balajinnātha Paṇḍita:
>मनोमात्रपथेऽप्यक्षविषयत्वेन विभ्रमात् ।
स्पष्टावभासा भावानां सृष्टिः स्वप्नपदं मतम् ॥ १६ ॥
mano-mātr-apathe 'py akṣa viṣayatvena vibhramāt ।
spaṣṭāvabhāsā bhāvānāṃ sṛṣṭiḥ svapna-padaṃ matam ॥
In the dream state, the clear manifestation of objective existence, which is brought about only through the mind but, through misapprehension, seems to be brought about by the senses, is taken as actual existence.
>सर्वाक्षगोचरत्वेन या तु बाह्यतया स्थिरा ।
सृष्टिः साधारणी सर्वप्रमातॄणां स जागरः ॥ १७॥
sarvākṣa-gocaratvena yā tu bāhyatayā sthirā ।
sṛṣṭiḥ sādhāraṇī sarva-pramātṛṇām sa jāgaraḥ ॥
The creation that proves to be externally stable, on the basis of being commonly known to all knowing subjects through all their senses, is the waking state.
For more on this error as it's come up in the Trika triadic context on this sub, see here.
It just blows my mind there are so many things I will never experience.
I find life sacred so of course want to keep this sacred train going.
The philosophical confrontation between Kashmir Shaivism and Madhyamaka Buddhism is one of the many sophisticated intellectual battles. It was not merely a disagreement about religion. It was a direct confrontation over the nature of consciousness, existence, language, causality, selfhood, epistemology, and liberation itself. Thinkers like Nāgārjuna, Candrakīrti, Śāntarakṣita, Dharmakīrti, Utpaladeva, Abhinavagupta, Kṣemarāja, and others were operating at an extraordinarily high level of abstraction and phenomenological precision.
Kashmir Shaivism — especially the Pratyabhijñā (“Recognition”) school — arose partly in response to Buddhist dominance in Indian intellectual culture. By Abhinavagupta’s time (10th–11th century CE), Buddhism had immense philosophical prestige. Shaiva thinkers therefore had to engage Buddhist logic seriously. They could not dismiss Buddhism casually. Abhinavagupta knew Buddhist arguments intimately and often adopted Buddhist analytical methods while reversing their conclusions.
The core issue can be stated simply:
Madhyamaka says: “No phenomenon possesses inherent existence (svabhāva).”
Kashmir Shaivism replies: “Correct — but the very capacity for appearance and recognition presupposes a luminous self-revealing consciousness.”
From this point unfolds an enormous philosophical war.
Nāgārjuna’s Madhyamaka begins with radical critique. In the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā, he dismantles all claims to independent essence. Things do not arise from themselves, from others, from both, or from neither. Cause and effect collapse under analysis. Motion collapses. Identity collapses. Time collapses. Subject-object duality collapses.
The goal was not nihilism. Nāgārjuna repeatedly denied being a nihilist. Rather, he argued that all phenomena are dependently originated (pratītyasamutpāda), empty (śūnya) of independent essence, and conceptually designated.
Candrakīrti later sharpens this further: Even emptiness itself is empty.
This becomes devastatingly anti-metaphysical. Madhyamaka refuses to establish any ultimate ontological ground whatsoever. Any attempt to posit an ultimate principle becomes reification.
Kashmir Shaivism sees a problem here.
Utpaladeva argues: If everything is denied inherent reality, what explains manifestation itself? What accounts for the undeniable fact of awareness?
For Shaivas, consciousness cannot merely be another empty dependent designation because all denial presupposes awareness. Even the cognition “there is no self” appears within luminous experience.
This becomes one of their major critiques: Madhyamaka secretly relies upon consciousness while refusing to ontologically acknowledge it.
Abhinavagupta often accuses Buddhists of “stealing the king’s treasury while denying the king exists.”
The Shaiva position is subtle. They do not claim consciousness as an object-like substance. Consciousness is self-luminous (prakāśa) and reflexively aware of itself (vimarśa). This reflexive awareness becomes crucial.
The famous Shaiva argument: A cognition must be aware of itself in order to be known.
Buddhist logicians like Dignāga and Dharmakīrti also accepted forms of reflexive awareness (svasaṃvedana), but Madhyamaka became suspicious of this because it appeared to reintroduce intrinsic nature.
Candrakīrti attacks reflexive awareness using the famous sword analogy: A sword cannot cut itself. Likewise cognition cannot cognize itself.
Shaivas respond: The analogy fails because consciousness is unlike objects. Consciousness is precisely that which reveals itself and others simultaneously, like a lamp illuminating both itself and a room.
This becomes one of the deepest disputes in Indian philosophy: Can awareness reveal itself without splitting into subject-object duality?
For Kashmir Shaivism: Yes. Consciousness is inherently self-revealing.
For Madhyamaka: To posit such inherent self-presence risks metaphysical essentialism.
Another major dispute concerns negation itself.
Madhyamaka employs prasanga — reductio ad absurdum. Rather than establishing positive metaphysical doctrines, it dismantles all positions.
Shaivas criticize this relentlessly.
Utpaladeva argues: Pure negation is impossible without an implicit affirming consciousness.
If you say: “All things are empty.”
The Shaiva asks: “To whom does this realization appear?”
The Madhyamika replies: “That question falsely presupposes an enduring subject.”
The Shaiva then argues: But even the denial of subjectivity appears within undeniable experiential luminosity.
This debate becomes phenomenologically subtle. Madhyamaka fears eternalism. Shaivism fears nihilistic collapse into unintelligibility.
One of the most sophisticated Shaiva critiques concerns memory and recognition.
Pratyabhijñā philosophy is centered on recognition: “I am the same consciousness that experienced previous moments.”
Utpaladeva argues that recognition presupposes continuity of subjectivity. If no enduring awareness exists, memory becomes impossible.
Buddhists counter with momentariness (kṣaṇikatva): Only causal continuity exists, not enduring identity.
The flame analogy appears: A flame appears continuous though composed of changing events.
Shaivas attack this: Causal succession alone cannot explain the lived immediacy of identity recognition.
When you remember childhood, there is not merely causal linkage but direct recognition: “That was me.”
This “I-ness” becomes central in Shaivism.
For Madhyamaka, however, such selfhood remains conventionally valid but ultimately empty.
Then comes the dispute over language and conceptuality.
Madhyamaka often deconstructs conceptual categories as inherently unstable. Language creates reification.
Kashmir Shaivism partially agrees but introduces a more positive theory of language through Śabda (vibration/speech-consciousness).
Influenced by Bhartṛhari, Shaivas see language not merely as conceptual distortion but as creative manifestation itself.
Parāvāk — supreme speech — is consciousness vibrating into multiplicity.
Reality is linguistic in a cosmic sense.
This is radically different from Madhyamaka suspicion toward conceptual proliferation (prapañca).
For Shaivas: Manifestation itself is divine expression.
For Madhyamikas: Conceptual elaboration perpetuates bondage.
Now the most profound difference: The status of ultimate reality.
Madhyamaka refuses all metaphysical assertions. Ultimate truth is emptiness beyond conceptual fabrication.
Kashmir Shaivism asserts: Ultimate reality is dynamic, self-aware consciousness possessing freedom (svātantrya).
This freedom is enormously important.
Śiva manifests worlds freely. Multiplicity is not accidental ignorance but creative play (līlā).
Madhyamaka often appears more apophatic: Ultimate truth cannot be positively characterized.
Shaivism becomes more cataphatic: Ultimate reality is blissful, luminous, creative consciousness.
Yet the strange thing is that advanced practitioners often report similar experiential states.
Both traditions describe: Dissolution of egoic fixation. Non-duality. Freedom from conceptual grasping. Spontaneous awareness. Compassion or expansive being. Collapse of subject-object dualism.
This has led many modern scholars — like Alexis Sanderson, Mark Dyczkowski, Christopher Wallis, and David Loy — to argue that experiential realization may converge while metaphysical interpretation diverges.
Some even argue Kashmir Shaivism emerged partly by “reabsorbing” Buddhist insights into a more affirmative metaphysical framework.
Abhinavagupta especially seems almost obsessed with avoiding what he saw as Buddhist incompleteness. He admired Buddhist phenomenology but believed Buddhism stopped at negation without affirming the full richness of conscious manifestation.
Another sophisticated issue involves aesthetics and bliss.
Madhyamaka often emphasizes freedom from attachment.
Shaivism emphasizes camatkāra — ecstatic wonder.
Reality is not merely empty. It is aesthetically radiant.
The universe is consciousness savoring itself.
This leads to radically different spiritual moods.
Madhyamaka can feel austere, surgical, anti-essentialist, relentlessly deconstructive.
Kashmir Shaivism feels ecstatic, integrative, artistic, erotic, cosmically affirmative.
Yet both aim to destroy fixation.
The paradox is beautiful: Madhyamaka destroys all views. Kashmir Shaivism turns the destroyed ruins into divine theater.
Modern comparative philosophers often note: Madhyamaka is philosophically safer because it avoids reification. Kashmir Shaivism is existentially richer because it explains manifestation positively.
But Shaivas would say Madhyamaka secretly depends on luminosity. And Madhyamikas would say Shaivas secretly reify luminosity.
The debate never truly ends.
Even today philosophers struggle with it: Can consciousness be fundamental without becoming metaphysical essentialism? Can emptiness avoid collapsing into epistemic unintelligibility? Can experience be non-dual without a ground? Can awareness know itself?
These are not merely historical arguments. They remain among the deepest unsolved questions in philosophy of mind and phenomenology.
I am interested in incorporating the Kālikāstotram of Jñānanetranath into my daily worship. For those more familiar with the Krama system or otherwise, what is the position on adhikāra/eligibility for a stotra such as this?
For reference, I have no external guru and belong to no paramparā.
Jai Maa
stotram in question: https://mahanaya.org/en/scriptures/kalikastotram/
I have read descriptions of breath meditations specific to KS in Vijnana Bhairava Tantra along with this excellent post from u/kuds1001. I have seen videos with Mark ji and Swami Laxmanjhoo discussing some of these meditations too. I am looking for more material to read on the breathwork from KS perspective to help me understand and practice better. Any pointers for a beginner are deeply appreciated!
When starting out on the path of Kashmir Śaivism, it is very easy to default into generic non-duality thinking, thinking that ironically creates a duality between the "high" forms of practice that are internal, pure contemplation, and transcendental vs. the "low" forms that are more external, ritual, and embodied/immanent: thinking that often prompts people to seek to embrace the former and discard the latter. It is easy also to read verses from, say, the Vijñāna Bhairava outside the context of the broader tradition and seek justification to readily discard external rituals. But, people often forget, the Vijñāna Bhairava literally begins with the Goddess describing how she's studied all the tantras and engaged in many of the esoteric mantras and practices and only then does Bhairava teach her about transcendence of ritual.
What's the point? The point is not primarily whether you perform rituals or not, but for you to eradicate the false distinction in your mind between the higher and lower, external and internal, transcendent and immanent practices, the entire duality between the "non-dual" practices and the "dualistic" practices, and the sense of superiority that can come with attachment to the transcendent practices and ignoring of the immanent. KS is not a practice or philosophy of just transcending, but of returning back from transcendence to embody all the variety of immanent forms, and some of those most beautiful forms are embodied within ritual practice.
I remember very well asking my guru this very question from time to time in various forms: when I'm in the transcendent state, why do you tell me to continue the ritual practices? Why not just dwell in that state? It took me a long time to finally understand what he was teaching and I hope anyone who reads this will learn more quickly than I did!
To that end, I'd like to share a little gem from Ācārya Abhinavagupta's Tantrasāra (Ch. 13). It addresses exactly this objection from those who are attached to the transcendental states, and provides the KS response for why we continue to do external rituals like nyāsa, pūjā, and so on. He explains that the transcendent state of Bhairava-consciousness is indeed waveless, but there is an impulse to creation within its wavelessness, such that he manifests all the endless variety of immanent forms. And so one should learn to unite the immanent forms with the waveless consciousness, and then continue on doing both external and internal pūjā practices.
>tenaitadanavakāśam yadāhuḥ: ataraṅgarūḍhau labdhāyāṁ punaḥ kiṁ tattva-sṛṣṭi-nyāsādineti
Thus, there is no space (anavakāśam) to make the argument: “Once one has become established in the “waveless” (ataraṅga) state [of identity with Bhairava], what use can there be in further performing the ritual placement (nyāsa) of the tattvas in the order of emanation (sṛṣṭi) and so on?”
>tāvaddhi tadataraṅgaṁ bhairava-vapuryat svātmanyavabhāsita-sṛṣṭi-saṁhāra-vaicitrya-koṭi
[We respond as follows:] That waveless (ataraṅga) [state] is indeed (tāvat) the very body (vapus) of Bhairava which has radiated (avabhāsita) within itself (svātmani) tens of millions (koṭi) of emanations (sṛṣṭi) and reabsorptions (saṁhāra) of wonderful variety (vaicitrya).
>evam anyonya-malaka-yogena parameśvarībhūtaṁ prāṇa-deha-buddhyādi bhāvayitvā bahirantaḥ-puṣpa-dhūpa-tarpaṇādyair yathāsambhavaṁ pūjayet
Thus, by the yoga of reciprocally integrating the two (anyonya-melaka-yogena) [i.e., the waveless state of Bhairava and the wonderful variety he radiates], a practitioner, having contemplated their prāṇa, body, intellect, and so on as becoming the Supreme Goddess (parameśvarī-bhūtaṁ), should perform puja [both] externally (bahis) and internally (antar), using flowers (puṣpa), incense (dhūpa), libations (tarpaṇa), and so on, as much as is feasible (yathāsambhavaṁ).
Synchronicity is usually defined broadly as "meaningful coincidence," but it is more comprehensively understood as 1.) The experience of coincidence that is so radically improbable and personal that it cannot be attributed to random chance or causal mechanisms and 2.) An acausal principle that defines the "realm of potentiality" which exists outside of time and space, and which manifests as events at various points in time which are connected to one another through meaning.
This has had me thinking about the KS understanding of grace and — since synchronicity often provokes questions of fate and free will — the notion of svātantrya.
In contemporary Western ceremonial magic, it is often understood that undertaking a magical ritual to manifest an intent is a way to experience a specific and desirable synchronicity, one that makes the intent a reality. I think the following example gives us an interesting way to respond to Western understandings of free will, fate, and grace:
A practitioner undertakes a ritual to receive money in the exact amount of $285.67. The next day, the practitioner receives a check in the mail for this exact amount. The specificity of the amount makes random chance radically improbable, yet the check arrived from far away and was mailed before the practitioner undertook the ritual.
Many different interpretations of an event like this might be raised by Western practitioners, one of them being what's called "retrocausality", where events in the past are caused by events in the present. Others might resort to various forms of quantum theory etc. Meanwhile, there may also be a temptation to say that all of this was predetermined as part of an inescapable causal chain. All of these ideas are prone to stick with a more or less conventional Western understanding of causality and free will; i.e., we live in an at least partially deterministic reality and one's outlook depends on the extent to which free will exists within that reality.
In the process of learning the philosophical ideas in the schools of KS, I've come to realize that a truly nondual perspective on a phenomenon like this would say something quite different, and it's the only view that really makes sense for me. Correct me if I am wrong, but would a KS point of view say that:
Let me know where I'm off-base here, and insight is very much appreciated. Thank you!
I don't want to create controversy but I am confused...
I have been studying Kashmiri Shaivism for a while now and I don't understand why reincarnation is even a thing.
If we are all Shiva and there is non-duality - no me and no you but just Shiva then why do we need reincarnation?
If there is non-duality then actions are actions neither good nor bad. So why the need to atone?
If we are all Shiva but some do not recognize this upon death do they really need to return?
The wave rejoins the ocean without understanding it is a wave.
I may not be expressing this in the best way but I am genuinely curious about this. I just don't see how reincarnation fits in.
Do you have a recommendation for a good translation of the Upanishads that you as a KS practitioner liked?
An incredible video of one of our dear teachers of KS. Well worth the watch! I remember well: Markji was so overjoyed when he returned from this trip. He told us in the kula how Swami Lakshmanjoo would have been so overjoyed to hear the mantras of the Krama still being recited in an unbroken line all the way in Kerala.
We are seeing more and more how Kashmir is one node in a much larger network of the Śaiva āmnāya teachings and transmissions, and recovering the pan-Indic (and pan-Asian) civilizational nature of our tradition. It’s a beautiful thing to see.