The Second Flow of the Stanzas of Pulsation by Kallata, disciple of Vasugupta (9th cent.), titled ‘The Arising of Innate Wisdom’.
This is the ‘Second Flow’, i.e. Chapter Two, of the sublime Stanzas on Pulsation, composed about 1,150 years ago in the Kashmir Valley, translated directly from the original Sanskrit by Christopher Wallis. The first chapter is here. You might notice that many of the verses of the Stanzas on Pulsation are not fully comprehensible without learned explanation. Such explanation can be found in teaching videos on my Patreon page. And now, the Second Flow, which reveals the secret of how mantras work. This teaching has remained influential all the way to the present day.
टदाक्रम्य बलं मन्त्राः सर्वज्ञबलशालिनः ।
प्रवर्तन्तेऽधिकाराय करणानीव देहिनाम् ॥२६॥
Mantras, attaining that innate power, become suffused with Divine force, enabling them to perform their respective functions, like the senses of embodied beings. || verse 26
☞ Kallaṭa’s explanation of his own verse: Mantras, having inhabited & attained that innate power—which is unveiled Awareness—are endowed with praise/ celebration through that [divine] power that is omniscience and omnipotence, and thus perform their functions of bestowing grace and so on. The senses of an embodied being function likewise [i.e. through accessing the innate power of awareness], not because of some other special configuration [of the bodymind] etc.
[Then] they completely dissolve into that same [power], becoming quiescent and stainless, along with the mind of the one who worships them. Therefore, these mantras have the nature of Śiva. || 27
☞ Kallaṭa’s explanation of his own verse: Their functions complete, they dissolve into that same spacious void of essence-nature, becoming quiescent and free of māyic impurity [i.e. subject-object duality], along with the mind of the practitioner. Because their nature is to unite [us] with Śiva (the Divine), they are said to be Śiva.
The embodied soul consists of all things since all states arise [within and from its Awareness], and because it perceives its identity with the awareness it has of all [those] things. || Therefore, that state which is not Śiva does not exist in word, thing, or thought. It is only the Experiencer that is everywhere and always existing as the feeling/substance of that which is experienced. || 28-29
☞ Kallaṭa’s explanation of his own verses: This Self is indeed everything, by virtue of the fact that it is the source of all entites & states [that it experiences]. Because there is awareness only/precisely of that which is being experienced, one grasps all external things being experienced as the ‘body’ (cf. Śiva Sūtra 1.14), not only this one body of his that has head, hands, etc. Therefore, since one’s essence-nature consists of everything in this sense, in both discursive and nondiscursive thought there is no state which does not manifest & express the Śiva-nature. Hence it is only the Experiencer that is everywhere established as the feeling/substance of that which is experienced; there is no other experienceable [other than the Self].
One who has this kind of realization, seeing the whole world as a divine play, permanently connected [to reality], is liberated while embodied, without a doubt. || 30
☞ Kallaṭa’s explanation of his own verse: One whose heart-mind has such a nature, i.e. “the whole world is nothing but [the manifestation of] what I am,” seeing everything as a divine play, is, by virtue of being ever-connected [to reality], as liberated as God himself even while living in this very body. His or her body, mind, etc. no longer creates [the experience of] bondage.
Only this constitutes the [true and full] arising of the object of meditation in the mind of the meditator: the practitioner’s realization (samāpatti) of identity with it through [the power of his] will. || 31
☞ Kallaṭa’s explanation of his own verse: When the practitioner performs mantra-installation in such a way that s/he grasps the real nature [of the mantra(s)] (ātmagraha) by virtue of his or her [fully developed] awareness of them, that constitutes the [true] arising of the object of meditation—in this case the mantra—in the mind of the practitioner. Attainment of the essential nature of the mantra is identity with the mantra-deity, accomplished through one’s pure intent (icchā) to perform [proper] uccāra of the mantra.
Only this is the attainment of the Nectar of Immortality; only this is grasping the nature of identity; and this is the [true] liberating initiation (nirvāṇa-dīkṣā) that bestows the state of Śiva. || 32
☞ Kallaṭa’s explanation of his own verse: Only this is the attainment of the Nectar of Immortality: the awareness of one’s unobscured true nature possessed by the practitioner who is free of all forms of thought fundamental misaligned with the nature of reality (mithyā-jñāna). It is not as some say, the savoring of a physical substance, a sweet fluid [released in certain mystical experiences]. One is said to have truly grasped the Self when one is centered in one’s true nature merely through the inner utterance (uccāraṇa) of the mantra. As has been taught, “At the time of initiation, the guru grasps the soul by means of awareness.” Grasping that which is formless cannot be done as one grasps a stone with the hand. Therefore, only this is the [true] liberating initiation that bestows the state of Śiva, i.e. reveals one’s true nature as the Divine Absolute.
~ Here ends the Second Flow of the Stanzas on Pulsation. ~
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NOTE: the incredible image used as the banner of this post was created by Dan Bore. A water and oil mixture creates natural ‘mandalas’ with distinct sound vibrations. The pictured ‘mandalas’ were created with vibrations at and below the low end of the threshold of human hearing. For more fascinating into on this subject, see “Cymatics: The Science of Dance ~ A Study of the Effect Sound has on Matter” by Bo Constantinsen, where this image was found.