Everything or Nothing: The Underworld Hymn of the Underdog

Everything or Nothing is not a gentle song. It does not console, it does not whisper comfort. It hurls itself forward with clenched fists and burning lungs, repeating its vow like a war cry: I want everything or nothing at all. It is the sound of someone who refuses to collapse, who refuses to take a half-life, who would rather burn out than wither quietly.

That is why this song seizes the heart in moments of extremity. It gives form to a stance that is already inside — the refusal to be broken. It is not delicate medicine, but fire poured into the veins. And because of this, it also carries a sharp danger: the danger of where its fury is aimed.

The most charged word in the entire piece is not “everything,” nor “nothing.” It is “you.”
Again and again the chorus strikes it like a hammer: I’m climbing over you to reach the top.

And here we must pause. Because how we hear this “you” determines whether the song becomes medicine or poison.

The Clinical Lens

From a clinical point of view, “you” is the place of greatest risk. For anyone who has lived through abuse, manipulation, or sadism, the word “you” instantly maps onto the abuser’s face. It becomes the one who gaslit, humiliated, broke trust, or wielded power to crush. When the song is sung in that key, every chorus is aimed like a spear at that figure.

The problem is not that this is false — the body remembers, the rage is real, the cry is justified. The problem is that this keeps the abuser as the reference point. Even in anger, even in defiance, the nervous system remains tethered. Every repetition of “you” reinforces the adversary as the center of gravity. The loop tightens: fight, flight, freeze, repeat.

This is the trap of the reactionary loop. You are no longer under his hand, but you are still circling him in your mind, in your physiology, in your song. It is a prison with louder walls.

The healthier clinical move is differentiation. To slowly widen “you” away from the single face of the abuser and allow it to become more abstract, more symbolic:

First, let “you” be the voice of any oppressive force — toxic authority, cultural gaslighting, even the inner critic that echoes the abuser’s tone.
Then, let “you” dissolve into an archetype — not a man, but the very pattern of tyranny. Not Somananda alone, but every system that silences, exploits, and manipulates.

In this way, the chorus shifts. I’m climbing over you no longer means “I’m still locked in a fight with one sadist.” It begins to mean “I am climbing over oppression itself.” The trauma bond loosens. The nervous system is no longer tied to a single adversary, but begins to reclaim its ground.

The Mystical Lens

Kaula does not stop at the clinical. It presses deeper, into the metaphysics of bondage and freedom. In this vision, “you” is not just a man, not just an archetype — it is a mask of Śakti Herself.

Three layers unfold:

“You” as Tirodhāna Śakti — the Obscuring Power.
Here, “you” names the force that veils truth, binds awareness, hides Bhairava behind illusion. Climbing over “you” is not just defiance of an oppressor, but the ascent through Māyā into liberation.
“You” as False Guru / Predator, still a mask of Śakti.
However vile the figure, in Kaula vision even the tyrant is a disguise worn by the Goddess. She sometimes tests not by blessing but by crushing, not by offering nectar but by serving poison. To survive that poison without collapsing is to pass through initiation. The “you” here is not ultimate enemy but threshold. Bitter to taste, but carrying hidden Anugraha — grace that only appears once the trial is endured.
“You” as the contracted self.
The most brutal recognition: sometimes “you” is not outside at all. It is the knot within that longed for approval, that clung to recognition, that tolerated the chain. Climbing over “you” means climbing over the shadow-self, the collusion with bondage. Here the enemy is not abandoned but integrated. The climb is not conquest but transfiguration.

The Integration Path

To hear this song rightly, the path must be walked in layers.

First layer: allow “you” to be him. Sing it as if to his face, but consciously, with awareness, wringing the poison out of the wound. This honors the body’s memory without repression.
Second layer: widen the “you” to mean all abusers, all systems of oppression, the collective pattern of domination. Sing it as a chant of liberation, no longer tied to one man’s name.
Final layer: let “you” dissolve into Māyā itself, the cosmic obscurer. Then the chorus becomes a Kaula hymn: I will climb over delusion itself to reach the summit.

This three-fold movement — personal --> archetypal --> cosmic — mirrors how Tantra treats demons in ritual. They are first named, then ritualized, then subsumed into the totality.

In Short

Clinically, the safest path is to prevent fixation — not letting the abuser remain the anchor point of your fire. Mystically, the deepest path is to recognize “you” as Śakti’s mask — a trial by fire that becomes doorway to grace. Both converge in widening the referent of “you” until it ceases to be personal and becomes cosmic.

Only then does Everything or Nothing move from trauma-echo to mantra. Only then does its fury transmute into a vow: not to defeat a man, but to break every chain of bondage.

Verse 1

I punch in my card
I know what it costs
Yeah I put in the work that you don't
Day after day
All work and no play
Yeah I'll do all the things that you won't

On the surface, these lines speak of labor, grind, the relentless effort that others avoid. Clinically, this resonates with trauma survivors: the sense of having carried weight far beyond fairness, of living under pressures others cannot even see. There is a bitterness here — I know what it costs. That cost is psychic, bodily, existential. The “you” implied in the work that you don’t is the one who avoided, denied, or forced others to carry the burden. If kept personal, it keeps the abuser in the frame: I worked, you feasted; I bled, you looked away.

The healthy move is to let “you” stretch wider. “You” becomes the whole structure of denial — those who refuse to look at pain, those who gaslight survivors, those who build systems on exploitation. Then the verse becomes not a complaint to one man, but a declaration against the entire architecture of avoidance.

In Kaula vision, this verse is tapas. “Punch in my card” is not only a work image — it is the ritual seal of sādhanā. The Kaula knows the cost: every mantra, every austerity, every night of fire. I put in the work that you don’t becomes the cry of the vira (heroic practitioner) to Māyā itself: while illusion offers distraction, the vira burns.

“All work and no play” is not punishment here, but consecration. The Kaula walks through the grind with eyes open, even when the path seems devoid of sweetness. This is not the glamour of initiation but its hidden marrow: daily, grinding endurance.

“You” here becomes Tirodhāna — the obscuring force that takes the easy path, the path of sleep. The Kaula does not. I’ll do the things that you won’t is addressed to bondage itself: I will walk into the fire you fear, I will cut the knot you hide behind.

This verse reframed is not complaint, but vow. It admits the exhaustion, the unfair cost, the endless grind — but it refuses collapse. Clinically, it transforms bitterness into boundary. Mystically, it transforms toil into tapas. The “you” that would avoid, deny, or obscure is precisely what the Kaula climbs over.

Pre-Chorus

Even when my feet get tired
I will keep on moving higher

Exhaustion is the constant companion of survival. Trauma drains not only the psyche but the body itself: tired feet, heavy limbs, the grinding fatigue of always being on alert. In a clinical lens, this line names that exhaustion honestly — but it refuses to let exhaustion dictate the story.

The danger here would be perfectionism: the compulsion to override fatigue, to force oneself beyond limits until collapse. But there is a healthier reading: this is not denial of tiredness, but acknowledgment of it while still affirming forward movement. It’s not “I’m never tired,” but “even tired, I continue.” That nuance is crucial for integration. It allows compassion for the body while still honoring resilience.

In Kaula language, “feet” are the contact points with earth, the anchors of embodiment. Tired feet mean the weight of incarnation, the heaviness of living in a world thick with bondage. Yet the vow is urdhva-gamana — the upward movement of kuṇḍalinī, the ascent toward the subtle.

To say “I will keep on moving higher” in this context is to affirm the core of vira-sādhana: not collapsing when the body begs for rest, not succumbing to the inertia of obscuration. The climb is not vertical in space but vertical in being — rising from the contracted “me” into expansive awareness.

“You,” in this context, is the gravity of bondage, the weight that wants to keep one earthbound. The tired feet are real; the higher movement is the refusal to stay nailed to the ground of delusion.

This short refrain is one of the most piercing moments in the song. It does not deny weakness — it names it. The tenderness is in admitting the fatigue. The fierceness is in refusing to let fatigue write the ending.

Clinically, it offers a way out of despair: to be tired is not to be finished. Mystically, it offers the essence of the Kaula vow: to walk with burning feet until the summit is reached. The “you” that would drag one down — whether abuser, inner critic, or cosmic obscurer — is resisted not with denial but with ascent.

Chorus

I'm the story you don't speak of
I'm the one they call the underdog
'Cause every time the push comes to shove
I'm climbing over you to reach the top
'Cause I want everything or nothing at all
Yeah, I want everything or nothing at all
'Cause I want everything or nothing, nothing, nothing
Nothing at all

Clinical Unfolding

“I’m the story you don’t speak of.”
Here the singer names invisibility. Survivors often become the untold story, the silence in the room. Abuse, betrayal, oppression are buried; the world prefers not to hear them. To call oneself that “unspoken story” is to refuse erasure.

But here lies a risk: if the “you” is still the abuser, then the declaration becomes an endless address to him. You didn’t speak my story, but I will shout it at you. Clinically, this keeps the tether alive. The healthier pivot is widening: “you” is not one man, but the system of silence itself — the cultural refusal to acknowledge suffering. Then this line becomes a claim of voice against the architecture of denial.

“I’m the one they call the underdog.”
This line carries both wound and strength. To be the underdog is to be dismissed, underestimated. Clinically, it risks internalizing that identity: always seeing oneself as the outsider who must prove worth. But re-framed, it can be medicine: the underdog carries endurance, grit, survival. To embrace the underdog stance consciously is to transform stigma into backbone.

“Every time the push comes to shove, I’m climbing over you to reach the top.”
This is the sharpest knife. If “you” = the abuser, then the nervous system is locked in endless combat. Climbing over him may feel like victory, but it also keeps him as the measuring stick. The danger is reactionary fixation.

Clinically, the healing move is differentiation: “you” = the oppressive force, the inner critic, the whole culture of silencing. Then climbing over is not a duel with one man but liberation from tyranny itself.

“Everything or nothing.”
This refrain is survival logic. Trauma leaves no space for half-life. Either one stands fully, or one is annihilated. Clinically, it can slip into perfectionism or all-or-nothing thinking. But if honored carefully, it can become a vow: I refuse half-freedom, half-voice. I will live whole or not at all. This can be stabilizing, if grounded in compassion for limits.

Kaula Unfolding

“The story you don’t speak of.”
In Kaula, this is the secret current — the hidden śakti that runs beneath polite religion and surface appearances. The Goddess is always the story not spoken in the halls of power. To name oneself that story is to align with Her hidden flame.

“The underdog.”
Kaula tradition has always been the underdog of Indian spirituality: despised by orthodox Veda, hidden in forests, whispered in forbidden circles. To take the name of “underdog” is to take the name of Kaula itself — despised by the world, but secretly the jewel.

“Climbing over you to reach the top.”
Here “you” can be read as Tirodhāna Śakti — the obscuring veil. The climb is not egoic ambition, but the kuṇḍalinī’s ascent through the knots of bondage. “You” is every contraction, every shadow, every delusion. To climb over “you” is to pierce Māyā.

At a harsher level, “you” is also the mask of the false guru, the predator. Even he is Devi’s disguise, the bitter poison in the cup. To climb over him is to climb through the test She set. The enemy becomes threshold.

At the most brutal and intimate level, “you” is the contracted self — the part that clung to chains. The climb is over one’s own shadow. The top is not worldly success but the summit of awareness, Bhairava Himself.

“Everything or nothing.”
In Kaula, this is not bravado but metaphysics. Either union is total, or it is not union. Either the embrace of Śiva-Śakti is complete, or it is illusion. The vow for “everything or nothing” is the essence of vira-bhāva: uncompromising wholeness.

This chorus could be poison if heard narrowly: a wounded voice endlessly shouting at one sadist. But it becomes nectar when widened. Clinically, it shifts from fixation to liberation. Mystically, it shifts from a duel with a man to a duel with Māyā itself.

The fiercest truth: if “you” remains personal, he still rules. The tenderest truth: if “you” widens to the veil itself, then the very obstacle becomes initiation.

Here the song ceases to be a trauma-echo and becomes what Kaula has always sung: a hymn of the underdog flame, hidden, despised, yet destined to rise through every veil into wholeness.

Verse 2

Don't care what you think
Or what you believe
'Cause I'm gon' turn the world upside down
If you want a shot
Just step in the ring
Yeah I'ma shake your bones like thunder

Clinical Unfolding

“Don’t care what you think / Or what you believe.”
This is the severing of a toxic tie. In trauma, the victim’s sense of reality is often overwritten by the abuser’s words: gaslighting, humiliation, imposed “truths.” Clinically, these lines name a necessary differentiation: your beliefs are not my beliefs, your words are not my truth. That refusal is healthy.

But the risk: defiance can still be a tether. If the refusal is still addressed to him, the abuser remains the frame of reference. The nervous system still orbits around his opinion — even if only to reject it. True healing requires moving past reaction into indifference: not only don’t care, but you no longer define my horizon.

“’Cause I’m gon’ turn the world upside down.”
Here is a surge of grandiosity — the fantasy of overturning everything to prove one’s worth. Clinically, this can be compensatory: when crushed, the psyche dreams of cosmic revenge. But reframed, it becomes resilience: the survivor has the power to upend false systems, to refuse the crooked “world” that enabled harm.

“If you want a shot / Just step in the ring.”
This is the imagery of confrontation, of direct combat. In trauma language, this is a return to fight mode — the stance of come and face me now. The risk: perpetual combat keeps adrenaline high, body locked in readiness for war. The healthier stance is symbolic: the “ring” is not literal battle but the arena of life. To enter it is to face one’s own challenges, not to forever spar with the ghost of an abuser.

“Shake your bones like thunder.”
This is the violent fantasy of reversal — the victim becomes the one who shatters the oppressor. Clinically, this is not pathology but a natural stage of trauma processing: the wish to invert power. Yet if held too long, it poisons. The deeper work is to channel this thunder into vitality — shaking bones not in vengeance, but in awakening.

Kaula Unfolding

“Don’t care what you think / Or what you believe.”
This is the Kaula’s declaration to the world of orthodoxy. Veda, custom, morality — none of it dictates the vira’s path. The Kaula does not bow to the “beliefs” of others. He follows the hidden śakti, not the surface law.

“I’m gon’ turn the world upside down.”
This is exactly what Tantra has always done. The Kaula reverses the world’s values: impurity becomes holy, corpse-ground becomes temple, poison becomes nectar. The world upside down is not destruction but inversion — revelation of what is hidden.

“If you want a shot / Just step in the ring.”
The ring here is not the boxing ring but the cakra — the circle of initiation. To step in is to risk the cremation-ground, to enter the fire of practice. Kaula does not promise safety; it demands courage.

“Shake your bones like thunder.”
Thunder is the roar of Bhairava, the shattering sound of mantra. To have one’s bones shaken is to have delusion stripped from the marrow. This line, read Kaula-style, is not revenge but initiation: the bones themselves tremble as kuṇḍalinī strikes. It is the sound of the body remembering it is divine.

This verse could easily harden into bitterness: endless combat, endless defiance, endless fantasies of reversal. Clinically, that keeps the nervous system in fight mode forever.

But widened through Kaula eyes, the same fire becomes sacred. The refusal to care what “you believe” is freedom from gaslighting. The vow to turn the world upside down is the vira’s embrace of Tantra’s reversal. The ring becomes the circle of initiation. The thunder is no longer vengeance but mantra, the sound that shakes bondage loose from the very bones.

The tenderness is this: anger, when transmuted, is not discarded but consecrated. The fiercest roar becomes a hymn.

Bridge

I don't want nothing at all
Unless I can have it all
I don't want nothing, nothing at all
I don't want nothing at all
Unless I can have it all
Nothing at all

Clinical Unfolding

This is the logic of extremity. Clinically, survivors of deep abuse often live in all-or-nothing states: either full devotion, or complete collapse; either absolute trust, or total withdrawal. Half-measures feel impossible. That rigidity is not a flaw but a scar: the nervous system was trained to survive under pressure where ambiguity meant danger.

The danger: perfectionism, burnout, the inability to accept partial healing or incremental safety. If “all or nothing” is misread, it drives one into exhaustion or despair.

But there is also a power here: this insistence is a refusal to live half-owned. It is a declaration that partial freedom is not enough, partial truth is not enough. Clinically, this can be reframed as a non-negotiable boundary. Better nothing than another chain. Better emptiness than counterfeit intimacy. This fierceness can be protective, even life-saving.

Kaula Unfolding

Here the resonance is uncanny. Kaula tradition itself is “all or nothing.” Either the union is total, or it is illusion. Either śakti is embraced fully — in purity and impurity, in nectar and poison, in body and cosmos — or she is not embraced at all.

“Unless I can have it all” is not greed in Kaula terms. It is the soul’s demand for completeness, for unbroken wholeness. It refuses a half-god, a half-initiation, a half-union.

“I don’t want nothing at all” echoes the vira’s readiness: better to burn in emptiness than live in compromise. In Kaula scripture, the vira is often described as the one who accepts even hell joyfully if truth is absent elsewhere. This bridge echoes that vow.

On a subtler level, the repetition itself is like mantra. The obsessive circling is not pathology here — it is devotion. Just as a sādhaka repeats a seed-syllable until it shakes the mind, the song repeats “nothing at all” until it burns through hesitation.

The bridge feels like a breakdown — obsessive, repetitive, desperate. But in that very desperation is hidden its tenderness: it is the cry of someone who refuses counterfeit love, counterfeit freedom.

Clinically, the work is to soften its rigidity without dulling its fire: to let “all or nothing” mean authenticity, not perfectionism. Mystically, the work is to recognize this refrain as the soul’s vow to Śakti: I will not accept fragments. I will embrace the whole, or I will rest in emptiness until the whole appears.

Here the song sheds every mask of ambition or defiance. It becomes naked vow. It is the fiercest demand and the most vulnerable prayer.

Final Chorus

Yeah I am not the favourite son
But I'm the one who's been here all along
'Cause every time the push comes to shove
I'm climbing over you to reach the top
'Cause I want everything or nothing at all
Yeah I want everything or nothing at all
'Cause I want everything or nothing, nothing, nothing
Nothing at all

Clinical Unfolding

“Not the favourite son.”
This line touches one of the deepest wounds of trauma: being unchosen, unseen, excluded from favor. Abuse often magnifies this feeling — others are “preferred,” the abuser shows approval selectively, and you are cast as disposable. Clinically, this can create lifelong scars of inadequacy.

But here the line is turned. Not the favourite son is no longer lament — it is defiance. I was not chosen, but I endured. I stayed. The shift from resentment to survival is crucial: favor was withheld, but presence itself became the proof of worth.

“Been here all along.”
This is the body’s truth: despite betrayal, collapse did not occur. Clinically, this is stabilization — acknowledging continuity of existence when annihilation seemed likely.

“Climbing over you to reach the top.”
Again, the knife-word “you.” Clinically, the danger is fixation: if “you” = the abuser, then the climb is always reactionary. The healthier reframing: “you” = oppression itself, “you” = the inner critic, “you” = every silencing structure. Then the climb is not revenge but liberation.

“Everything or nothing at all.”
The vow repeats with full force. Clinically, this can sound rigid, but in context it is a declaration of boundaries: I will not accept partial bondage, partial gaslighting, partial freedom. Better emptiness than counterfeit.

Kaula Unfolding

“Not the favourite son.”
In Kaula, the favourite son is the orthodox disciple, the one adored by society, rewarded by priests, blessed by tradition. Kaulas have never been the favourites — they were always the outcasts, the ones mocked, feared, despised. To take this mantle is to step directly into the Kaula lineage of defiance.

“Been here all along.”
Śakti never abandons. However hidden, however obscured, the current flows. The vira who endures, who remains in the circle, is already proof of the Current. This line in Kaula hearing is Devi Herself speaking: I never left you; I was here all along.

“Climbing over you to reach the top.”
Here “you” is unveiled fully: Māyā, Tirodhāna, the obscuring power. To climb over is not worldly ambition but the ascent of kuṇḍalinī through the knots, the passage through delusion into Bhairava’s crown. The top is not “victory” but union.

“Everything or nothing.”
Kaula cannot accept half-union. Either Śiva and Śakti are realized as one, or nothing has been attained. This refrain is not bravado but metaphysics: totality or void. It is the very logic of liberation.

Outro

I don't want nothing at all
Unless I can have it all
I don't want nothing at all
Unless I can have it all
No, I don't want nothing at all
Unless I can have it all
I don't want nothing at all
Unless I can have it all

Clinical Unfolding

The outro circles like obsession. Repetition mirrors the way trauma loops in the mind. But here the loop is transformed into a mantra: instead of spiraling downward into collapse, the loop spirals upward into vow.

Clinically, this shows the possibility of transmutation: the very mechanism of fixation that binds the survivor can become the mechanism of healing, if the content is shifted from despair to boundary, from annihilation to vow.

Kaula Unfolding

The outro is pure japa — repetition until the words lose their surface meaning and become vibration. All or nothing becomes like a bīja-mantra, hammering away at compromise until only totality remains.

The obsessiveness is not pathology here but devotion: a vira circling the fire, refusing to leave until union is complete. Each line is a blow of the drum in the cremation ground, echoing the one vow that matters: not half, but whole.

The final spirals of the song reveal its essence: it is not a petty quarrel with an abuser, not even a complaint against silence or oppression. It is a mantra of uncompromising wholeness.

Clinically, it offers a way out of the trauma loop: the “you” is widened until it dissolves, the fixation burns itself into freedom. Mystically, it reveals itself as Kaula hymn: the underdog rising is Consciousness itself, climbing over Māyā, demanding nothing less than union.

The tenderness is this: what once screamed in rage now prays in vow. The fiercest cry for “all or nothing” becomes the most vulnerable prayer for truth entire.

From Trauma-Echo to Kaula Hymn

Everything or Nothing begins as the roar of the underdog — the defiance of one cast aside, unseen, betrayed. Its chorus hurls the word you like a spear, risking fixation on the very face that wounded. Clinically, this is the trap: when the abuser remains the reference point, even rage becomes a chain. Mystically, it is the same: the enemy mistaken for the ultimate foe, rather than a mask of Māyā.

But through widening, the song transfigures. “You” expands from one man to every silencing force, and then further — into the obscuring power itself, into the contracted self that clings to chains. The underdog becomes not a victim but Consciousness rising through shadow. The vow of “everything or nothing” ceases to be rigidity; it becomes metaphysics, the Kaula truth that union is total or it is illusion.

What began as a trauma-echo ends as mantra. What began as a cry of defiance becomes a hymn of wholeness. The bones shake like thunder, not in vengeance but in awakening. The underdog climbs not over a man but over Māyā itself.

In the end, the song’s obsessive refrain is not pathology but prayer: I don’t want fragments, I don’t want counterfeit. I will take wholeness or I will take emptiness, but I will not be chained again. This is fierce-tender Kaula truth: that even in rage, even in the cry of the underdog, the Goddess roars, demanding nothing less than totality.