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Siva Sutras are considered to be a revealed book of the Yoga: supreme identity of the individual self with the Divine. Dr. Jaideva Singh has studied the book with the help of his guru Swami Laksmana Joo, the sole surviving exponent of this system in Kashmir and has provided an English Translation of the Sutras together with the commentary of Ksemaraja. Each Sutra is given in Devanagari as well as in Roman Script. Then the meaning of every word of the Sutra is given in English, followed by a translation of the whole Sutra. This is followed by the Vimarsini Commentary in Sanskrit and its English translation, copious notes on important and technical words and a running exposition of the main ideas of the Sutra. A long introduction, together with an abstract of each Sutra, throws a flood of light on the entire system of Saiva Yoga. A Glossary of technical terms and index are appended for the convenience of the reader.
This book offers 112 dharanas -- 112 meditations or techniques -- for experiencing the extraordinary and paradoxical reality of unbounded consciousness called Bhairava. In her initial question to Bhairava, the Goddess asks him to reveal his own essential nature to her. Bhairava praises her question as pertaining to the very essence of the Tantra, and he praises the transcendent aspect of the Supreme. The Goddess then beseeches Bhairava to teach her the method by which she may gain an understanding of this blissful, nondual reality. The methods offered here hint at a profound secret: only a subtle shift of attention is required in order to bring this astonishing reality into view. The shift will open a chink in the apparently impregnable smoothness of the ordinary world. Here are 112 secret gestures of attention that will reveal infinity.True to its tantric provenance, the Vijnana-bhairava discovers Supreme Reality in unexpected and bizarre places. As one scans the great variety of methods it offers, one is struck by the contrast in tone between this text and the classical expositions of Yoga. While equally serious, the Vijnana-bhairava has a playful approach anchored in the confidence that one can really never stray from the reality of Shiva. Because it is grounded in the tantric realization, the text has a freedom to explore meditational domains puritanically disdained by classical Yoga. All things, all experiences, all moments are bathed in the unassailable purity of the absolute consciousness. Only a shift of attention, a subtle refocusing, is required for that extraordinary reality to come into view.
The Vijnana-bhairava contains no sustained philosophical position. Rather, it is an instructional guide that continuously invites the practitioner to look more deeply and more subtly at her own experience. The blissful and shattering realizations that she will undergo as a result of its method serves as the only form of proof or justification. This is an initiatory manual that instructs in the intricacies of the advanced sport of Shiva.