From Vaikuṇṭha to the Spine: Rewriting Liberation in Kaula Terms

A traditional devotional painting of Vaikuṇṭha, depicting Lord Viṣṇu and Lakṣmī enthroned in a celestial pavilion surrounded by attendants, musicians, peacocks, and blooming lotus pools — an idealized vision of heavenly liberation in devotional (bhakti) tradition

How Liberation Is Commonly Understood

In most Hindu traditions — whether devotional (bhakti-based), philosophical (Vedānta), or puranic — moksha is described as freedom from the cycle of birth and death, and more importantly, freedom from suffering, limitation, and separation from the Divine.

Over time, theologians outlined different modes of that liberation, often explained through relationship to the deity:

The Four Classical Muktis

Sanskrit Term	Literal Meaning	Imagined Experience of Liberation
Sālokya	“Sharing the same world”	Living in the same divine realm as the chosen deity — Vaikuṇṭha with Viṣṇu, Kailāsa with Śiva, Goloka with Kṛṣṇa.
Sāmīpya	“Being near”	Constant closeness to the Divine — like an eternal attendant or companion.
Sārūpya	“Becoming similar in form”	Assuming the attributes or radiant body of the deity — shining like them, clothed in their qualities.
Sāyujya	“Union / merging”	Dissolving completely into the deity’s being — losing individual identity like a drop in the ocean.

Depending on the tradition, these are ranked differently:

In some bhakti schools, union (sāyujya) is considered too extreme — the devotee prefers to remain eternally separate so that love can continue.
In others — especially Vedāntic currents — merging into the Absolute is the only true liberation.

Either way, liberation is often imagined as a place one goes, or a state one achieves after death — given as a reward by the deity in response to devotion or merit.

It is elsewhere, later, above.

And even when spoken of in philosophical terms — as Brahma-sāyujya (merging into impersonal Brahman) — it still carries the flavor of departure, ascending away from the world into peace.

The Kaula Reversal: Liberation Without Leaving

Kaula does not dismiss the classical four liberations. It simply refuses to postpone them. Instead of treating moksha as somewhere else or sometime later, Kaula interprets each mukti as an inner adjustment of perception, realizable while still embodied.

To clarify this shift, we must correct a common misunderstanding: loka (as in sālokya) does not literally mean “planet” or “heavenly district.” The Sanskrit root lok means “to see, to make visible.” Thus loka is not a location — it is a mode of perception. It refers to a field of consciousness, a way reality becomes visible to a being.

With that in mind, the Kaula reinterpretation unfolds naturally:

Sālokya (“being in the same loka as the deity”) is not imagined as travelling to another world after death. It is the moment when the practitioner’s perception shifts into alignment with the Deity’s own vision. The world does not change — the way one sees it changes. What was previously “ordinary” is now recognized as sacred territory, already permeated by Śiva or Śakti. One does not enter God’s realm; one realizes one has always been inside it.

Sāmīpya (“being close to the deity”) ceases to be about spatial distance. If the divine is genuinely omnipresent, the idea of “nearness” or “farness” becomes meaningless. In Tantric realization, sāmīpya occurs the instant one ceases to imagine the deity as external. The presence of Śiva is felt as one’s own pulse, one’s own breath. Closeness is no longer measurable; the boundary between worshipper and worshipped dissolves.

Sārūpya (“having the same form as the deity”) is not postponed to celestial afterlife. It is an ontological takeover that happens internally: the deity’s qualities — steadiness, brilliance, compassion, sovereignty — begin to override the practitioner’s habitual identity. The old personality becomes porous, and the divine temperament seeps through. Sārūpya is achieved not by sprouting extra arms, but by allowing Śiva’s or Śakti’s traits to govern one’s expression.

Sāyujya (“merging into the deity”) is no longer a final absorption at the moment of death. In Tantric terms, true union happens the instant the fiction of separateness collapses. When one stops imagining “God there, me here,” there is no further merging to perform. The distinction was mental; once seen through, identity is already unified.

In this reinterpretation, Kaula does not reduce moksha. It internalizes it. It does not make it easier; it makes it immediate and inescapable. Liberation is not awarded — it is recognized. It is not a migration of the soul — it is a correction of vision.

This reframing prepares the ground for the final movement. Once sālokya, sāmīpya, sārūpya, and sāyujya are understood not as separate destinations but as different names for the same shift of consciousness, the classical ladder collapses into a single state.

That state is what the Kaulas call Samarasya.

Samarasya: When Union Stops Being an Event

Once the four liberations are no longer treated as destinations, but as different angles on the same perception, something becomes clear:

There was never a journey.

There was only clarity arriving in stages.

At first, one sees the world as separate from the Divine. Then, with sālokya, that division weakens — the world begins to feel infused with presence. With sāmīpya, the divine is no longer “out there” but palpably close. With sārūpya, its qualities override one’s own. With sāyujya, separateness collapses entirely.

But even after this collapse, there may linger a subtle trace:
“I have attained oneness.”

That residual notion — that someone merged into something — is the final veil.

When even that dissolves, there is no more “merging,” no more “distance,” no more “state change.”

There is simply one flavor.

This is Samarasya.

Not union as an event.
Not liberation as a transaction.
Not becoming divine.
Just the recognition that every perception — sacred or mundane — already carries the same essence.

No difference in taste between meditation and marketplace, silence and speech, solitude and embrace.

Not numbness. Not neutrality.
Equanimity with warmth. Oneness with character.

Kaula tradition calls this “One Rasa,” the indivisible savor of reality when the mind stops dividing experience.

One does not “hold on” to it. There is no need to maintain it.
It remains by itself, because there is nothing left to disturb it.