Shiva Sutras

The Aphorisms of Shiva ( Siva Sutras) are a late reiteration of the Vedic view of consciousness. According to legend, Vasugupta  `saw' the aphorisms (sutras) in his dream. Siva Sutras led to the flowering of the Kashmir school of consciousness (Kashmir Shaivism). It is due to a very clear exposition of the issues the Kashmir Shaivism has come to be quite influential in contemporary scholarship.

The universal and the individual in the Shiva Sutras.According to Shiva Sutras, the individual knowledge comes from associations. Owing to this our phenomenal knowledge can only be in terms of the associations of the outer world. But the associations in themselves need something to bind them together. The binding energy is called matrika. It is matrika that makes it possible for us to understand words or symbols strung together as language. Lacking matrika, computers cannot understand language or pictures. Universal consciousness, as a unity, is called Shiva or Bhairava. Shiva makes it possible for the material associations of the physical world to have meaning. But the domain of the union of Shiva and the phenomenal world is puzzling and astonishing (1.12). This is a restatement of a metaphor that goes back to the Rigveda where the mind is seen as two birds are sitting on a tree where one of them eats the sweet fruit and the other looks on without eating (RV 1.164.20); one of the birds represents the universal consciousness, the other the individual one. There is only one bird;the other is just the image of the first energized by the fruit! There is a paradox here which is left unresolved. But certainly root consciousness (Shiva, prakasa, cit) is what makes it possible to comprehend. In later texts the capacity of consciousness to reflect on itself is called vimarsa.

Another metaphor that has been used elsewhere is that of the sun of consciousness illuminating the associations in the mind. What facilitates this illumination is the \power of the will." Innate knowledge is taken to emerge from the mind, which is equated with mantra, taken here not as a formula but the inherent capacity to reflect. Mantra leads to the knowledge of the reality that lies beyond material associations. Consider sound made meaningful in terms of strings that, as words, have speci c associations. But what about the `meaning' of elementary sounds? This happens as one opens the `crack' between the universal and the individual. The individual then gets transformed into a state where knowledge is his food. The detachment from one's own associations is the key to the knowledge of the self|the universal being. One is supposed to take oneself as an outsider. By separating the senses from the source of consciousness, one is able to reach to the heart of the self.

First section --  Universal consciousness

1.1 Consciousness is the self.

1.2 (Ordinary) knowledge consists of associations.

1.3 Sets of axioms generate structures.

1.4 The ground of knowledge is matrika.

1.5 The upsurge (of consciousness) is Bhairava.

1.6 By union with the energy centers one withdraws from the universe.

1.7 Even during waking, sleep, and deep sleep one can experience the fourth state (transcending consciousness).

1.8 (Sensory) knowledge is obtained in the waking state.

1.9 Dreaming is free ranging of thoughts.

1.10 Deep sleep is m ay a, the irrational.

1.11 The experiencer of the three states is the lord of the senses.

1.12 The domain of the union is an astonishment.

1.13 The power of the will is the playful uma.

1.14 The observed has a structure.

1.15 By Fixing the mind on its core one can comprehend perceivable and emptiness.

1.16 Or by contemplating the pure principle one is free of the power that binds (to associations).

1.17 Right discernment is the knowledge of the self.

1.18 The bliss of the sight is the joy of samadhi.

1.19 The body emerges when the energies unite.

1.20 Elements unite, elements separate, and the universe is gathered.

1.21 Pure knowledge leads to a mastery of the wheel (of energies).

1.22 The great lake (of space-time) is experienced through the power of mantra.

Second section -- The emergence of innate knowledge

2.1 The mind is mantra.


2.2 Effort leads to attainment.


2.3 The secret of mantra is the being of the body of knowledge.


2.4 The emergence of the mind in the womb is the forgetting of common knowledge.


2.5 When the knowledge of one's self arises one moves in the sky of consciousness,the Shiva's state.


2.6 The guru is the means.


2.7 The awakening of the wheel of m atrik a (the elemental energies).

2.8 The body is the oblation.


2.9 The food is knowledge.


2.10With the extinction of knowledge emerges the vision of emptiness.

Third section -- The transformations of the individual

3.1 The mind is the self.

3.2 (Material) knowledge is bondage (association).

3.3 M ay a is the lack of discernment of the principles of transformation.

3.4 The transformation is stopped in the body.

3.5 The quieting of the vital channels, the mastery of the elements, the withdrawal from the elements, and the separation of the elements.

3.6 Perfection is through the veil of delusion.

3.7 Overcoming delusion and by boundless extension innate knowledge is achieved.

3.8 Waking is the second ray (of consciousness).

3.9 The self is the actor.

3.10 The inner self is the stage.

3.11 The senses are the spectators.

3.12 The pure state is achieved by the power of the intellect.

3.13 Freedom (creativity) is achieved.

3.14 As here so elsewhere.

3.15 Emission (of consciousness) is the way of nature and so what is not external is seen as external.

3.16 Attention to the seed.

3.17 Seated one sinks effortlessly into the lake (of consciousness).

3.18 The measure of consciousness fashions the world.

3.19 As (limited) knowledge is transcended, birth is transcended.

3.20 M aheshvari and other mothers (sources) of beings reside in the sound elements.

3.21 The fourth (state of consciousness) should be used to oil the (other) three (states of consciousness).

3.22 Absorbed (in his nature), one must penetrate (the phonemes) with one's mind.

3.23 The lower plane arises in the center (of the phoneme).

3.24 A balanced breathing leads to a balanced vision.

3.25 What was destroyed rises again by the joining of perceptions with the objects of experience.

3.26 He becomes like Shiva.

3.27 The activity of the body is the vow.

3.28 The recitation of the mantras is the discourse.

3.29 Self-knowledge is the boon.

3.30 He who is established is the means and knowledge.

3.31 The universe is teh aggregate of his powers.

3.32 Persistence and absorption.

3.33 Even when this (maintenance and dissolution) there is no break (in awareness) due to the perceiving subjectivity.

3.34 The feeling of pleasure and pain is external.

3.35 The one who is free of that is alone (with consciousness).

3.36 A mass of delusion the mind is subject to activity.

3.37 When separateness is gone, action can lead to creation.

3.38 The power to create is based on one's own experience.

3.39 That which precedes the three (states of consciousness) vitalizes them.

3.40 The same stability of mind (should permeate) the body, senses and external world.

3.41 Craving leads to the extroversion of the inner process.

3.42 When established in pure awareness, (the craving) is destroyed and the (empirical) individual ceases to exist.

3.43 Although cloaked in the elements one is not free, but, like the lord, one is supreme.

3.44 The link with the vital breath is natural.

3.45 Concentrating on the center within the nose, what use are the left and the right channels or susumna?

3.46 May (the individual) merge (in the lord) once again.

Courtesy : The Siva S utra : by Subhash Kak, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, Baton Rouge, USA, 2001