Teaching to the disciple: the means that is no-means (anupāya)

Translated by Thothica

2 min

My child, behold: it is you alone — the universe, when truly known, is made of That, non-dual with awareness, for everything else is trifling and unreal.

By what means could this Reality be reached, since nothing other than it exists at all? Therefore they declare it to be the means-less means [{{ananyopāya / anupāya:the means-less means; the Self as sole means}}], the Self-as-means.

Withdrawing thought from everything and cultivating [the awareness] 'I' [{{ahaṃ / aham:the pure 'I' / supreme subjectivity}}], one attains a non-conceptual, directly-evident awareness of oneself.

Even while taking up endless forms of just such extent, [that self-awareness remains] of a single character; entering into that awareness of oneself, one should construct no thought-constructs at all.

Plunging into Vyomeśvarī, the consciousness that is the Self — that great lake brimming with the currents of the four streams beginning with {{khecarī:the sky-roving power/goddess of consciousness}} — one should drown [therein] all that is inert.

Performing the five acts [{{pañcakṛtya:the five acts — creation, maintenance, withdrawal, concealment, grace}}] in the sequence of emission, preservation, withdrawal, concealment, and grace, one should hold the conviction 'I am Śiva.'

Or by the sequence of casting-forth, knowing, enumerative reflection [prasaṃkhyāna], passage, and resonance [nāda], having gathered those [acts] into the Self through the mouth of the teacher, one becomes fulfilled.

Having so determined: 'I am Bhairava, the Self of all, and these manifold modes of the universe are mine alone — just as the wavering tongues of flame belong to fire, and the radiance to the sun' —

'I am the One, possessed of the modes of knower, cognition, means-of-knowledge, and known; in the form of pure awareness and the rest, I am the fourteen [powers] beginning with the {{khecarī:the sky-roving power of consciousness}}.'

Contemplating bondage and liberation in their modes of difference and non-difference, through the firm trust 'I am Bhairava,' one should attain the supreme autonomy.