The Razor and the Question: Śuddha-Vikalpa, Mahāvākyas, and the Safety of “Who am I?”

silent, devouring center beyond all stories and identities

This addendum  to the previous post (https://www.vira-chandra.com/2025/12/the-mirror-beyond-stories-on-nature-of.html) is not a quarrel with tradition.

It is a clarification around two very sharp instruments: Abhinavagupta’s śuddha-vikalpa and the Upaniṣadic mahāvākyas.

Both were forged for a different age, inside a guarded mandala of guru, initiation, and long preparation. In that setting, the thought “I am Śiva” or “I am Brahman” functions as medicine: it loosens the knot of bondage and then is thrown away. In our time, the same formula is often taken as costume and crown.

What follows simply traces that difference in use. First, it sketches how Abhinava himself places śuddha-vikalpa within the path of Śakti, as a precise and temporary means. Then it turns to Ramana Maharshi’s replies about mahāvākyas, and why the bare question “Who am I?” is a safer discipline when identity is as fragile and inflated as it has become now.

The intention is not to defend or attack any name, but to keep faith with the mirror: to see how these sentences behave when they fall into unprepared hands, and to point toward the form of practice least available for ego to wear.

Abhinavagupta and the Precision of Śuddha-Vikalpa

In Abhinavagupta’s world, “I am Śiva” is not a slogan.
It is a controlled incision.

Classical Trika speaks of several upāyas—means by which consciousness recognizes itself as Śiva. Abhinavagupta arranges them as āṇavopāya, śāktopāya, śāmbhavopāya (with anupāya standing beyond method).

• Āṇavopāya works with what is explicitly dual: body, breath, senses, mantra, ritual.

• Śāktopāya works with thought itself, refining it from distorted concepts (aśuddha-vikalpa) into pure insight (śuddha-vikalpa).

• Śāmbhavopāya is non-conceptual: a sudden, unsupported recognition in which thought has already fallen silent.

Śuddha-vikalpa belongs to this middle way of Śakti. It is not random “positive thinking,” but a very specific cognition. Abhinava describes pure vikalpa as the opposite of the habitual self-conception “I am this body, dull, bound by karma,” a thought-construct that reflects the real situation instead of falsifying it. In Tantrasāra 4 (Śāktopāyaprakāśanam) he states that the deep-rooted impression “I am in bondage” is the root of saṃsāra, and that this impression is uprooted by a conviction of the opposite nature, the pure thought-construct (śuddha-vikalpa) [1]

Later Trika manuals make the implicit explicit and gloss śuddha-vikalpa as the fixed idea “I am Śiva” and the sustained contemplation of oneself as essentially Śiva, the supreme I-consciousness. [2]

In Kṣemarāja’s digest of the Pratyabhijñā school, Pratyabhijñāhṛdayam, śuddha-vikalpa is described as the mental formulation in which one recognizes that “all this glory of manifestation is my own Self,” identifying with Śiva; it is called “pure” precisely because it is a formulation of identity with the Divine and functions as a means for passing into nirvikalpa awareness. [3]

Its function is sharply defined. Abhinava locates bondage in a deep, latent impression—“I am in bondage”—born of aśuddha-vikalpas that make the Self appear as a limited creature. Śuddha-vikalpa is the contrary conviction that uproots this impression: a deliberate thought of unity that dissolves the feeling of smallness and separateness. It does not “reveal” Paramāśiva, who is ever self-luminous; it removes the veil of duality that made that light seem broken.

Because of this, śuddha-vikalpa is explicitly a means, not the summit. Kṣemarāja presents it as a support that leads into nirvikalpa-samvit and then falls away. Jaideva Singh’s summary of Abhinava’s system follows the same line: Śākta-upāya is the ever-recurring contemplation “I am Śiva,” while Śāmbhavopāya begins where even this pure thought has been consumed.

Within that older mandala, “I am Śiva” is a razor laid in trained hands: spoken in a field of guru, initiation, tapas, and discrimination, meant to dislodge the old conviction “I am bound” and then to erase itself in silence. It is a bridge, not a throne.

When the Razor Becomes a Crown — Śuddha-Vikalpa in the Present Age

The instrument did not change.
The room in which it is used did.

Śuddha-vikalpa was shaped for a world where access was narrow. The sentence “I am Śiva” appeared only after long work: purification of conduct, discipline of senses, years of mantra and ritual, the slow erosion of vanity under a teacher who could see through the disciple’s story. Within that frame, a single pure thought could function as shock-treatment. It struck a mind already softened by tapas.

The contemporary situation is almost the inversion of that world.

Teachings once veiled are now searchable. Abhinavagupta’s maps, once carried in memory and guarded commentaries, can be downloaded in an afternoon. The phrase “Śākta-upāya = think ‘I am Śiva’” circulates unmoored from its prerequisites. The upāya that was meant to refine a nearly-translucent mind is offered to any mind that finds it interesting. The razor is handed out as costume jewelry.

In this loosened field, “I am Śiva” easily ceases to be śuddha-vikalpa and becomes persona.

The pattern is familiar. A teacher is declared, or declares himself, to be Śiva, Bhagavān, Incarnation, Guru beyond karma. The rhetoric is nondual: “God has become everything,” “All is Śiva,” “You too are That.” The practical arrangement, however, is sharply asymmetrical. One body absorbs devotion; other bodies orbit. Emotional dependence is cultivated, money is drawn in, boundaries blur. When pain surfaces, it is spiritualized. When exploitation appears, it is re-labeled as “grace” or “mirror.” The sentence “I am Śiva” no longer functions as a wedge to break the conviction “I am bound”; it functions as a shield against any appeal to conscience.

At the psychological level this is simple. The same sentence can perform two opposite tasks:

• as śuddha-vikalpa in Abhinava’s sense, it loosens the old identity: “I am small, powerless, a victim of forces outside me”;

• as grandiose self-description, it hardens a new identity: “I am beyond question, above ordinary law.”

The words are identical; the use is not.

In such a climate, critique itself is easily framed as sin. If a follower questions behaviour, the reply is ready: “It is your ego resisting the Divine,” “You cannot understand the play of Śiva,” “To doubt the Guru is to doubt God.” The ancient teaching that “this entire universe is your own power” is quietly rewritten as “this entire situation must adjust around my authority.” The nondual statement that was meant to dissolve hierarchy is used to fortify it.

The older texts already know the danger of garva—spiritual pride. They warn repeatedly that the sense “I am the Lord” can appear as a last refinement of ego. The difference today is not the danger itself, but the scale of exposure. Where once a misused upāya might distort a small circle under a single roof, now the same confusion can repeat across continents in many languages at once.

None of this cancels Abhinavagupta’s insight. It only shows what happens when a sentence designed for a precise altitude is thrown into air that is not yet thin. A formula that was meant to serve as antidote to “I am in bondage” becomes, in unprepared hands, an intoxicant: a faster, subtler way to be someone.

When that is seen, the question is no longer whether “I am Śiva” is true—its truth was never in doubt. The question is whether a mind structured by modern fragility and inflation can use that thought as bridge, or only as crown.

Two Masks of the Same Fever

The mind reaches for extremes when it cannot bear its own ambiguity.
In religion and mysticism, two tools have always been close at hand: the cry “I am nothing” and the cry “I am God.”

Both can be medicines. Both are easily overdosed.

The first is the sinner-formula.
“I am fallen, I am unworthy, I am lower than a worm.” In its cleanest form, this is a blow to arrogance. It reminds a swollen personality that it is made of dust, that actions have weight, that others bleed too. Used once, at the right moment, it can crack open genuine remorse and let humility breathe for the first time. The sense of entitlement loosens; a human being appears.

But the mind does not love “once.” It loves repetition.
Repeated often enough, the confession becomes a costume. “I am a sinner” turns into a fixed role: a self that is perpetually wrong, perpetually unworthy, and quietly special in its misery. The psyche banks a strange profit: importance through failure. One becomes the central villain of one’s own universe. This is no longer humility; it is narcissism inverted. The mirror still cannot stop talking about itself; it has simply switched from praise to indictment.

The second is the god-formula.
“I am Śiva. I am Brahman. I am the Infinite.” At its cleanest, this is the śuddha-vikalpa Abhinavagupta was pointing to: a deliberate thought used to counter the cramped conviction “I am small, I am bound, I am at the mercy of forces outside me.” Contemplated in the right climate, it can dissolve inferiority and reveal that the light behind all forms is not foreign, not elsewhere.

But again, the mind loves costume more than incision.
The same words can harden into a second mask. “I am God” becomes a character: the enlightened one, the one beyond rules, the one whose anger is līlā, whose desire is transmission, whose demands are tapas for others. Critique can no longer land; conscience is easily re-labelled as “lack of faith.” Here, the ego does not disappear into God; it expands to divine scale.

Between these two misuses, the second is more dangerous.
A self that calls itself sinner is still reachable. It hurts, but it knows it hurts. It can be met in shared human ground. A self that calls itself God in a literal, performative way is almost untouchable. Any mirror held up to it is turned into an attack on the Absolute. The same formula that was meant to melt separation becomes a wall against accountability.

Both masks share the same flaw: they turn instrument into identity.
“I am a sinner” and “I am Śiva” were never meant to be final self-descriptions. They are scalpel-strokes, to be made at specific points and then dropped. When they are repeated past their usefulness, they become stories the mirror tells about its own dirt or its own shine. The focus remains fixed where it has always been: on the “I” that loves to define itself.

Seen from there, the question is no longer which story is more “orthodox.”
The only real question is: which tools, in this age, are hardest for the ego to steal?

Ramana and the Limits of Mahāvākyas

Ramana Maharshi never dismissed the mahāvākyas.
He questioned how the mind tries to use them.

When asked, “Shall I meditate on aham brahmāsmi — ‘I am Brahman’?” his reply was clean:

“‘I am Brahman’ is only a thought. Who says it? Brahman itself does not say so. What need is there for it to say it? Nor can the real ‘I’ say so, for the real ‘I’ always abides as Brahman. To be saying it is only a thought. Whose thought is it?” ('Conscious Immortality')

Here the issue is not the sentence itself but its ownership.
As long as there is someone in the head repeating “I am Brahman,” the ego remains intact and has simply armed itself with a sacred phrase. For Ramana, the mahāvākya is true as description of the state, not as a mode of thinking. In Talks it is said plainly:

“The śruti-vākya ‘aham brahmāsmi’ relates to the state and not to the mode of mind. One cannot become Brahman by continuing to repeat ‘I am Brahman.’” ('Talks with Ramana Maharshi')

He uses a blunt analogy for this whole approach:

“Acute diseases will not be cured merely by repeating the name of the medicine but only by drinking the medicine. Similarly, the bonds of birth and death will not cease merely by doing many repetitions of mahāvākyas such as ‘I am Śiva’. Instead of wandering about repeating ‘I am the supreme’, abide as the supreme yourself. The misery of birth and death will not cease by vocally repeating countless times ‘I am That’, but only by abiding as That.” ('Be as you are')

The mahāvākya is medicine only when swallowed as being, not when recited as story.

At the same time, Ramana fully acknowledges their stature as formulations of truth. In Talk 106 he says:

“‘I am’ is the name of God. Of all the definitions of God, none is so well put as the Biblical statement ‘I AM THAT I AM’. There are other statements, such as Brahmaivāham [Brahman am I], aham brahmāsmi [I am Brahman] and so’ham [I am He]. But none is so direct as the name JEHOVAH = ‘I AM’.” ('Talks with Ramana Maharshi')

So the sentences are not the problem.
The problem begins when the mind tries to hold them as thoughts instead of sinking into the bare ‘I am’ they point to.

For that reason, whenever someone asked about meditating on “I am Brahman,” “Śivoham,” or “tat tvam asi,” Ramana’s movement was always the same:

• He does not argue with the content of the formula.

• He turns attention back to the one who is trying to say it.

“Do you continue to meditate ‘Śivoham’ or ‘aham brahmāsmi’?” he asks in one dialogue.
“The significance must be traced and understood. It is not enough to repeat the bare words or think of them. Reality is simply the loss of the ego. Destroy the ego by seeking its identity.” ('Talks with Ramana Maharshi')

In that light, the mahāvākyas become pointers, not practices. They name a fact that is already the case. The real work is to see what obscures that fact. For Ramana, this work has a single method: to turn the question away from “What am I?” (to be answered with doctrines) and toward “Who is this ‘I’ at all?”

Mahāvākya then falls into its proper place:
not as a mantra to be defended or performed,
but as a sentence that becomes redundant once the source of “I” has been found.

Why “Who am I?” Is Safer Medicine Now

When identity is brittle and inflated, the cleanest remedy is the one that offers it nothing to wear.

The Upaniṣadic sentences and śuddha-vikalpa still point true. “I am Brahman,” “I am Śiva,” “this universe is my own splendour” are not lies. They describe the situation in which everything already appears. The difficulty lies in who repeats them and why. A mind that is hungry for significance will swallow even the highest formula as food for its story.

Self-enquiry cuts at the root of that movement.
“Who am I?” does not hand the mind a new sentence to guard. It does not say “you are low,” or “you are high,” or “you are God,” or “you are servant.” It simply refuses to let any of these positions solidify. Each time a thought appears—“I am unworthy,” “I am the Self,” “I am the disciple,” “I am the guru”—the enquiry turns gently toward its source: To whom has this arisen? What is this ‘I’ made of?

Used steadily, this question has a particular cruelty that is also kindness. It leaves no room to build a persona from doctrine. It gives no script to perform, no title to defend. There is nothing there that can be announced: not sainthood, not realization, not special guilt, not special chosenness. The same logic that dissolves a low identity dissolves a high one. The sinner-image and the god-image fall into the same fire.

For that reason, self-enquiry is difficult material for cults.
One can build a system around “I am Śiva” quite easily; the structure is already implicit: a knower of Śiva, a speaker of Śiva, a circle organized around that knowing. It is far harder to build a lasting hierarchy around a practice whose only instruction is: “Question every claim to be this or that until only bare being remains.” The moment “Who am I?” is used to elevate a person above others, it contradicts itself. The method undermines the throne it might be used to construct.

In an age where access is easy, filters are weak, and personality is rewarded, this matters. If a practice is to be offered in open air, it must be one that does not readily harden into costume. Between a formula that lends itself to identity and a question that strips identity away, the second is the kinder choice for most.

“Who am I?” does not deny the mahāvākyas. It simply refuses to let them be worn. It leaves truth where it belongs: in being, not in proclamation.

Respect Without Illusion

Nothing here cancels Abhinavagupta, or Ramana, or the scriptures that gave them language. The older vision is internally consistent. Used as intended, śuddha-vikalpa—“I am Śiva, this is my own power”—is a medicine that uproots the conviction “I am bound” and then dissolves into thought-free recognition. The mahāvākyas speak the same truth in a different cadence.

The fracture appears not in the syllables but in the age. Formulas forged for a narrow, supervised path now circulate in a world of restless ego and weak containment. Instruments that once served as precise incisions slip easily into the hand of grandiosity. “I am a sinner” and “I am God” become props in the same small theatre.

In that landscape, fidelity to the old teachings is not measured by how loudly they are repeated, but by how well their original intention is preserved. The intention was always this: that the felt knot “I am this limited one” should come undone, and that nothing false should be left to speak in its place.

For that work, any tool may be used that does not strengthen the knot.
Sometimes a pure thought does the cutting. Sometimes a single question is enough.

When even that question falls quiet, no sentence is needed.
No one remains to say “I am Śiva,” or “I am a worm,” or “I am the servant,” or “I am the Self.” The mirror does not declare its own clarity. It has no use for titles. It simply no longer tells stories about what it reflects.

[1] Abhinavagupta, Tantrasāra 4 (Śāktopāyaprakāśanam). See H.N. Chakravarty (trans.), Tantrasara of Abhinavagupta (Ishwar Ashram Trust), introduction and notes to ch. 4: “The erroneous conception latent in the soul, ‘I am in bondage’, is the root cause of worldly existence… That deep-rooted impression… is uprooted by the conviction contrary to it, i.e. the pure thought-construct (śuddha-vikalpa).” 

[2] Jaideva Singh, Śiva Sūtras: The Yoga of Supreme Identity (Motilal Banarsidass), glossary entries “Vikalpa (śuddha)” and “Śākta-upāya,” where śuddha-vikalpa is defined as “the fixed idea that ‘I am Śiva’,” and Śākta-upāya as the repeated contemplation of oneself as essentially Śiva. 

[3] Kṣemarāja, Pratyabhijñāhṛdayam, sūtra 12 and commentary, in Jaideva Singh (trans.), Pratyabhijñāhṛdayam: The Secret of Self-Recognition (Motilal Banarsidass, 4th rev. ed.), esp. the note explaining śuddha-vikalpa as the mental formulation “sarvo mamāyaṃ vibhavaḥ”—all this manifestation is my own glory—serving as a means to nirvikalpa realization.