Yoga of Synthesis in Kashmir Shaivam

Author(s): S S Toshkhani
Publisher: S S Toshkhani

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and without any substance. And with every phenomenal entity being momentary, nothing has any essential nature as it lasts for only a single moment. It is in one single moment that both creation and dissolution take place.
Trika, or Kashmir Shaivism as it is more widely known, agrees with the basic premise of the Mädhyamikā School of Buddhism that everything in the world is constantly undergoing change, being subject to the process of creation, sustenance and dissolution every moment and therefore in a state of both being and non-being. But at the same time it rejects the Buddhist notion of time being a linear or homogenous entity that can be divided into past, present and future and that links one instant with other as the underlying reality. According to the Kashmir Shaiva point of view, time is not real, nor is it a connecting link between instants and, what is more, the yogi can disrupt its continuity by penetrating the gaps or the "interstitial void (madhya)", to put it in the words of Paul E. Murphy. Abhinavagupta calls it "the rupture of past and future, the two modalities of time":
"It is at this very instant ... at the present, actual moment that (mystical experience) is realized, while past and future are excluded. Then the present moment is also rejected as dependent upon the other two ..."
In shămbhavopāya terms, the Centre is viewed as "a rupture or interstitial void"-an interval between two acts of cognition. According to Kshemarāja, the Centre is consciousness itself, ix the source of both past and future. It abides in the eternal present as the innermost nature of everything. Abhinavagupta identifies the Self with the void, calling it the "expanse of ether”. IX This ether, he elaborates, is the emptiness that the consciousness experiences. In the Aphorisms of Vātūlanātha and the Vijñānabhairva the Absolute itself is viewed as a void, “free of duality and discursive thought"-a "non-dual void”. The Vijñānabhairava calls it shünyātishūnya or the Absolute Void. lxi
But the Shaiva shūnya or emptiness unlike the Buddhist concept is anything but nothingness or non-being. It is interpreted as "fullness itself", a positive reality without
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