Kashmir Shaivism, Muktananda Style

[Note: This is my January 19^th Amazon.com book review, of “Consciousness is Everything: The Yoga of Kashmir Shaivism” by Swami Shankarananda.]

From my perspective as a long-time student and teacher of Kashmir Shaivism (KS), this is a very accessible, but less than steller, text. The author, Swami Shankarananda, has impressive academic credentials (Pullitzer scholar at Columbia, professor of English literature at Indiana), has read all the books on Kashmir Shaivism, and spent years studying and practicing Kashmir Shaivism under the direct tutelage of renowned guru Swami Muktananda (1908-1982), but still has produced a book that reveals him as Shaivism-challenged.

I have given this book four stars because it is perhaps the most accessible KS book for beginners, but if you are more than a beginner, then look elsewhere for further enlightenment on the subject. And even for studious beginners, I recommend the more challenging “The Philosophy of Sadhana” (see my five-star review) over this text.

Shankarananda’s first problem is that his understanding and vision of KS have been shaped by his long-time discipleship under the late, controversial Muktananda (accused of rampant pedophilia). As I have made clear in my two-star review of Muktananda’s “Play of Consciousness,” I have little respect for Muktananda’s understanding and exegesis of KS, and what Shankarananda learned from Muktananda has colored this exposition of KS. Shankarananda’s second problem is that despite his intellect and knowledge of KS, he lacks deep, or esoteric, spiritual gnosis. From the content of this text, I hardly sense that he is an accomplished mystic.

All serious expositions of KS, including Shankarananda’s, focus mainly on three things – the thirty-six tattvas (or constituent principles of Reality/reality), the three malas (or fundamental contractions obscuring the Self), and the three upayas (or essential sadhanas, or means, to Self-realization).

I find Shankarananda’s description and elaboration of the thirty-six tattvas both graphic and stirring. And the illustrations he provides serve to elucidate the process of involution, whereby Siva expresses and veils Himself in Maya, or creation. I could point out some differences I have with him regarding this cosmogenic process, but that would not best serve the interest of this necessarily delimited review.

Regarding the three malas and their corresponding upayas (karma mala/anavaopaya, mayiya mala/shaktopaya, and anava mala/shambhavopaya), I have major differences with Shankarananda, who basically regurgitates much of what he has read in various Kashmir Shaivism texts by professors who don’t deeply grok the En-Light-enment process.

For example, Shankarananda, almost verbatim, repeats Jaideva Singh’s statement, in “Siva Sutras,” that shambhavopaya upaya is akin to J. Krishnamurti’s choiceless awareness. He also likens this upaya to Zen and Dzogchen, to “staying with the thought-free state,” and to focusing on pure Consciousness, or pure awareness, free of mental movements.” Simply put, he has no real understanding of what shambhavopaya (or “Divine Means”) upaya is truly about— uniting the “vine” of contracted Siva (the jiva) with the “vine” of Anugraha Shakti in the Hridayam (or spiritual Heart-center), which “produces,” or unveils, Siva-Shakti (aka, Sambhava, or Divine Being).

Shankaranada is as clueless about shaktopaya upaya as he is shambhavopaya upaya. For instance, he, mistakenly, associates this upaya with positive thinking techniques. In accordance with Jaideva Singh, he also associates this upaya with Ramana Maharshi’s Self-enquiry, which he has no real understanding of.

There are many statements in this book that I take umbrage with. Shankarananda writes, “Shaivism says that language is bondage, there is no other.” Shaivism hardly says this, for it is patently untrue and contradicts the principle of the three malas. Elsewwhere Shankarananda writes, “If the Self is Shiva, the mind and its language is Shakti.” This is a ridiculous and misleading statement, distorting the true Nature of Shakti. Shankarananda writes, “We could even say that anava mala is our individuality, mayiya mala is our mind and karma mala is our body.” Karma is associated with karmabija, or one’s samskaras (psychical seed tendencies stored in the Heart-center which comprise one’s soul-matrix and which “sprout’ as habit-energies and crystallize as thought-forms in the brain). Hence, karma mala is associated with the mind, which produces karma, not the body, which is insentient and inconscient. Shankarananda even associates karma mala with the navel center or chakra, which makes no sense, since karmas (as concatenating and fructifying samskaras which morph into vasanas, or habit-energies) arise from, and upon Liberation are extinguished in, the Hridayam, or spiritual Heart-center.

This text is bereft of an esoteric dimensions, perhaps because Shankarananda is more a mind-based than Spirit-based yogi and lacks an experiential basis to delve more deeply into the Awakening process. It’s really just a nicely packaged, surface-level introductory KS text. And because Shankaranada derives much of the book’s content from the writings of the prominent KS scholars, such as the aforementioned Jaideva Singh, those familiar with these writings will find little new or insightful here relative to KS Dharma. And what is new is all too often not very good or just plain wrong.

In summary, if you’re not an intellectually inclined student of yoga, this is probably the preferable introductory KS text for you to get. But if you’re a bright spiritual bulb, you’ll doubtless derive a deeper, more nuanced understanding of KS from Deba Brata SenSharma’s “The Philosophy of Sadhana.” And if you’re planning to delve deeply into KS, simply get both books, particularly if you’re intrigued with the concept of the thirty-six tattvas.