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| A stone relief from central India, dated to approximately the 7th–8th century. It represents the nine celestial powers of traditional Indian astrology. |
Between Two Extremes
There is a curious tension I have noticed over the years among people drawn to non-dual spiritual traditions, particularly Kashmir Śaivism, whenever the subject of Jyotiṣa, or traditional Indian astrology, arises. Some dismiss it almost immediately. If everything is Śiva, if consciousness manifests the universe through its absolute freedom (svātantrya), how could the positions of planets possess any authority over human life? Others seem to move in the opposite direction, granting astrological charts, planetary periods, and auspicious configurations an authority that gradually extends into nearly every important decision. Marriage, employment, travel, and even spiritual practice can become dependent upon the interpretation of celestial arrangements.
I have never found either attitude entirely satisfactory. The first can turn a profound metaphysical insight into a convenient way of dismissing the differentiated world. The second risks transforming a possible language of cosmic order into an instrument of dependence. There is a considerable difference between seeking to understand the conditions through which our lives unfold and allowing those conditions to pronounce the final verdict upon what we may become.
My own relationship with the subject has changed considerably over the years. At times I have been more receptive to traditional astrological considerations; at others, more skeptical. What has gradually interested me is not simply whether astrology should be accepted or rejected, but what kind of significance celestial configurations might possess, and how that significance could be understood within a tradition that places the absolute freedom of consciousness at its very center.
Some time ago, in my essay Worlds Without Corridors, I approached this question through the image of a local coordinate system. Perhaps planetary configurations could be understood not as independent powers imposing destiny upon living beings, but as a framework through which certain patterns of karmic manifestation might become intelligible. Geographical coordinates do not create the landscape they describe. Similarly, the positions of celestial bodies would not necessarily have to produce the events of our lives in order to possess some possible significance as a language of orientation.
I still find this image worth contemplating, although it remains a philosophical hypothesis rather than an explanation whose validity has been established. In particular, it leaves unanswered the question of whether astrological interpretations actually possess the predictive reliability attributed to them. Nevertheless, the distinction between describing an order and governing it has stayed with me.
Rather than developing that earlier intuition further, I want to approach the question here through Abhinavagupta himself.
This requires a preliminary distinction. Jyotiṣa encompasses several related disciplines, including astronomical calculation, calendrical determination, the selection of ritual occasions, and the interpretation of individual horoscopes. These are not interchangeable. An instruction to perform a Kaula observance on a particular lunar day does not automatically establish the validity of natal astrology. Equally, the doctrine that divine grace cannot depend upon external conditions does not necessarily render every traditional distinction between ritual occasions meaningless.
Abhinavagupta is particularly interesting because his writings contain both elaborate ritual prescriptions involving celestial configurations and an uncompromising defence of the freedom of Parameśvara. These are not isolated elements belonging to unrelated works. They occur within the same philosophical and ritual universe, sometimes remarkably close to one another.
I want to examine three aspects of that universe: the place of celestial timing in ritual, the nature of cosmic time as an expression of Śakti, and the relationship between temporal conditions and the descent of divine grace.
It is in their relationship, rather than in any isolated statement about astrology, that I think something important becomes visible.
The Place of Jyotiṣa in Ritual — Tantrāloka 28
The twenty-eighth āhnika of the Tantrāloka is devoted to naimittika rites, observances performed on particular occasions, including festivals and special forms of Kaula worship. Here Abhinavagupta discusses lunar days (tithi), periods of the day (velā), planets (graha), and lunar mansions (nakṣatra) with considerable technical attention.
His concern is practical: when should particular observances be performed, and how should the relevant prescriptions be interpreted when their different requirements do not coincide?
In verses 28.42–43, he instructs the practitioner to make an effort to obtain the appropriate occasion for anuyāga, a form of worship important to the ritual system he describes:
anuyāgakālalābhe tasmāt prayateta tatparataḥ |
bhagrahasamayaviśeṣo nāśvayuje ko 'pi tena tadvarjam ||
velābhagrahakalanā kathitaikādaśasu māseṣu | (Tantrāloka 28.42–43)
"Therefore, one devoted to this should strive to obtain the appropriate occasion for the anuyāga. In the month of Āśvayuja there is no particular conjunction of asterism, planet, and time, and so that month is excluded. The reckoning of times, asterisms, and planets has thus been given for eleven months."
The discussion belongs to the domain of ritual timing, closely related to what traditional Jyotiṣa calls muhūrta. Abhinavagupta is not examining the horoscope of an individual or attempting to predict future events. He is transmitting prescriptions in which celestial configurations constitute part of the conditions for particular forms of worship.
A revealing disagreement appears a few verses later. What should happen when the prescribed lunar day and the appropriate period of the day do not coincide?
tām anādṛtya viśeṣaṃ pradhānayet sāmayam iti kecit |
neti tv asmadguravo viśeṣarūpā hi tithir iha na velā || (Tantrāloka 28.48)
"Some maintain that one should disregard that [lunar day] and give priority to the particular time. But our teachers disagree: here it is the lunar day, not the time of day, that constitutes the distinctive factor."
The appeal to asmadguravaḥ, "our teachers," is significant. Abhinavagupta does not resolve the difficulty by declaring that such distinctions are ultimately irrelevant because all time is an expression of consciousness. He treats it as a genuine question of ritual interpretation and preserves the judgment of his lineage.
The explanation that follows brings an additional dimension into view.
In 28.49, the lunar day is interpreted through the relationship between the moon as the knowable (saṃvedya) and the sun as illumination or cognition (saṃvedana). The changing illumination of the moon is thus described in terms belonging to Abhinavagupta's broader philosophical vocabulary. Jayaratha, commenting on the passage, draws upon the astronomical tradition of Jyotiḥśāstra and cites Varāhamihira's Bṛhatsaṃhitā to explain the relation between sunlight and the changing appearance of the moon.
The combination is characteristic. Astronomical observation, traditional ritual prescription, and philosophical interpretation are brought into the same discussion without being treated as mutually exclusive.
Abhinavagupta then states his conclusion:
tasmān mukhyātra tithiḥ sā ca viśeṣyā graharkṣayogena |
velātra na pradhānaṃ yuktaṃ caitat tathā hi parameśaḥ || (Tantrāloka 28.50)
"Therefore, the lunar day is primary here, and it is further qualified by the conjunction of planet and asterism. The time of day is not primary. This is appropriate, for the Supreme Lord [has taught accordingly]."
The hierarchy is clear. The lunar day is the principal requirement; planetary and stellar conjunctions specify it further, while the period of the day occupies a subordinate position. The following verse refers to the authority of the Trika, Bhairava, and Kula scriptures in which such festival occasions are prescribed.
What interests me is the way Abhinavagupta handles the inevitable imperfection of actual circumstances. What if the desired conjunction simply cannot be obtained?
bhagrahayogābhāve tithis tu pūjyā pradhānarūpatvāt | (Tantrāloka 28.52)
"When the conjunction of asterism and planet is absent, the lunar day should nevertheless be honoured, because it is primary."
To explain this principle, he employs an example from traditional sacrificial interpretation: when the prescribed white goat is unavailable, a black goat may be substituted. The reasoning concerns the distinction between an essential requirement and an accessory qualification. A rite does not necessarily become impossible merely because one of its preferred conditions is absent.
Yet this flexibility is not a general dismissal of ritual timing. In 28.56, Abhinavagupta adds:
bhagrahayogābhāve velāṃ tu tither avaśyam īkṣeta |
"In the absence of the conjunction of asterism and planet, one should nevertheless take care to observe the appropriate time of the lunar day."
The ideal occasion remains one in which the different prescribed elements coincide. Abhinavagupta also speaks seriously, in 28.58–59, about the obligations associated with the relevant festivals and the consequences of neglecting commitments undertaken within the discipline.
The resulting picture is more precise than either a rejection of celestial timing or an insistence that every conjunction is indispensable. The prescriptions matter, but their requirements possess different degrees of importance. Understanding those distinctions is part of understanding the ritual itself.
We should also distinguish three questions that are sometimes confused. First, does Abhinavagupta recognize celestial configurations as meaningful within particular ritual prescriptions? Clearly, yes. Second, does he attribute efficacy to observances performed under prescribed conditions? The surrounding ritual framework indicates that he does. Third, does this establish, independently of that tradition's theological commitments, that celestial configurations produce the effects attributed to them, or that birth charts can reliably predict individual destinies? No. The textual evidence alone cannot establish either claim.
This distinction allows us to take Abhinavagupta's ritual world seriously without converting it into a general proof of astrology.
There remains, however, a deeper question. Why should celestial time possess spiritual significance at all? Is the relationship merely a matter of inherited prescriptions, or is there something in Abhinavagupta's understanding of time and consciousness that makes such correspondences intelligible?
For this, we must turn to the sixth āhnika of the Tantrāloka, where time itself is examined as a manifestation of Śakti.
The Stars Within Consciousness — Tantrāloka 6 and Tantrasāra 20
The sixth āhnika of the Tantrāloka contains an elaborate account of time, the movement of prāṇa, and the correspondences between vital processes and cosmic cycles. Days, months, seasons, lunar phases, and solar movements are examined through a framework in which the apparent division between the inner and outer dimensions of existence is considerably less rigid than we ordinarily imagine.
Near the beginning of the chapter, Abhinavagupta writes:
kramākramātmā kālaś ca paraḥ saṃvidi vartate |
kālī nāma parā śaktiḥ saiva devasya gīyate || (Tantrāloka 6.7)
"Supreme time, whose nature comprises succession and non-succession, abides in consciousness. That very reality is called Kālī, the supreme Śakti of the Lord."
Ordinarily, time appears to us as an uninterrupted succession. One event follows another; the moon passes through its phases, the seasons return, and our own lives move through changes that cannot be reversed. Yet Abhinavagupta situates both succession and non-succession within saṃvid, consciousness itself. The supreme nature of time is identified with Kālī, the divine Śakti.
The preceding verse, 6.6, employs the example of a picture. Its elements can be apprehended together, even though the realities represented within it may be understood through temporal sequence. The analogy points toward a distinction between the successive order in which events unfold and a more comprehensive mode of awareness in which that order is present.
This does not abolish the reality of temporal differentiation within manifestation. Abhinavagupta proceeds to examine its countless divisions with extraordinary care. The movement of prāṇa is brought into relation with the larger rhythms of the cosmos, so that the vital processes of the individual and the movements of celestial time become two dimensions of a common structure.
Toward the end of this discussion, he writes:
iti prāṇodaye yo 'yaṃ kālaḥ śaktyekavigrahaḥ |
viśvātmāntaḥsthitas tasya bāhye rūpaṃ nirūpyate || (Tantrāloka 6.129)
"Thus, this time manifested in the arising of prāṇa, whose very form is Śakti and which dwells inwardly as the soul of the universe, is now to be described in its external form."
The movement from inward to outward time is explicit. Having explored temporal divisions through the vital process, Abhinavagupta turns toward their external expression. These are not presented as two unrelated orders, one spiritual and the other merely physical. Both are understood through the activity of Śakti.
This becomes particularly interesting in his treatment of eclipses, where astronomical phenomena, ritual efficacy, and contemplative realization converge.
In 6.102, he interprets the sun, moon, and Rāhu through the three fundamental aspects of differentiated experience:
arkaḥ pramāṇaṃ somas tu meyaṃ jñānakriyātmakau |
rāhur māyāpramātā syāt tadācchādanakovidaḥ || (Tantrāloka 6.102)
"The sun is the means of knowledge, while the moon is the knowable; both are of the nature of knowledge and action. Rāhu is the knower conditioned by Māyā, skilled in concealing them."
The sun represents pramāṇa, the means or activity of knowing; the moon represents meya, the knowable; and Rāhu is associated with the limited knower, māyāpramātā. The eclipse becomes an occasion for contemplating the structure of experience itself: the apparent separation between knower, knowing, and known.
In the following verses, Abhinavagupta brings this celestial imagery into relation with the supreme knower, in whom the opposition between subject and object is overcome. The eclipse thus discloses a contemplative meaning that extends far beyond the physical phenomenon.
But Abhinavagupta does not treat the event as merely an allegory. He also attributes particular efficacy to practices undertaken during an eclipse:
grāsamokṣāntare snānadhyānahomajapādikam |
laukikālaukikaṃ bhūyaḥphalaṃ syāt pāralaukikam || (Tantrāloka 6.107)
"Between the obscuration and release [during an eclipse], bathing, meditation, oblations, mantra-recitation, and similar practices yield abundant fruits, whether worldly, extraordinary, or pertaining to the world beyond."
The physical occasion retains its ritual significance even after receiving an elaborate philosophical interpretation. Abhinavagupta is not suggesting that the eclipse becomes meaningful only when we regard it as a metaphor for consciousness.
The following verse brings the external occasion and the inward state still closer together:
grāsyagrāsakatākṣobhaprakṣaye kṣaṇam āviśan |
mokṣabhāg dhyānapūjādi kurvaṃś candrārkayor grahe || (Tantrāloka 6.108)
"One who, during an eclipse of the moon or sun, performs meditation, worship, and the like, entering even for a moment the state in which the agitation of devourer and devoured has subsided, becomes a participant in liberation."
I find this passage particularly beautiful. The eclipse is recognized as a spiritually significant occasion, yet the liberating movement is described through the dissolution of opposition between devourer and devoured. The event is not simply a mechanical trigger producing liberation irrespective of the practitioner's awareness. The celestial phenomenon and the transformation of consciousness are brought together without becoming identical.
The same vision informs Abhinavagupta's treatment of the larger solar cycles. In 6.114–120, he relates the zodiacal signs, the northern and southern courses of the sun, and the equinoxes to the movement of vital energy and to occasions associated with particular ritual purposes. In 6.128, transitions between temporal divisions are likewise treated as favourable moments for meditation and worship.
Time is therefore not merely a neutral background against which spiritual practice occurs. Its differentiated rhythms belong to the manifestation of Śakti, and particular moments can acquire significance within the disciplines that engage those rhythms.
There is an important difference here between recognizing a correspondence and demonstrating a predictive mechanism. The relationship between cosmic and vital processes belongs to Abhinavagupta's contemplative cosmology. It does not, by itself, establish that the positions of planets at birth can reliably disclose the future of an individual. Nevertheless, it helps explain why he could take celestial phenomena seriously without conceiving them as powers standing outside consciousness.
A remarkably concise expression of the same relationship appears in the twentieth āhnika of the Tantrasāra.
Immediately before introducing the prescriptions concerning festivals, Abhinavagupta writes:
sarvatra parameśvarābhedābhimāna eva paramaḥ saṃskāraḥ. (Tantrasāra 20.24)
"In every context, the identification with one's non-difference from the Supreme Lord is itself the supreme consecration."
And then, almost without a pause:
atha parvavidhiḥ. (Tantrasāra 20.25)
"Now, the regulations concerning festivals."
I cannot help finding something very characteristic of Abhinavagupta in this transition. He speaks of the highest consecration, the recognition of one's non-difference from Parameśvara, and immediately proceeds to the detailed classification of ritual occasions, including lunar days, planetary conjunctions, and asterisms.
There is no apparent need to explain why the recognition of absolute non-duality has not rendered these distinctions obsolete.
Later in the same chapter, he describes occasions marked by a special intensification of the unfolding of consciousness, saṃvidullāsādhikya, and the presence of the circle of deities, devatācakrasaṃnidhi. The significance of such moments is understood not merely through external calendrical arrangements, but through the manifestation of consciousness and its divine powers.
I think there is something quietly beautiful about this understanding of spiritual life. The changing moon, the occurrence of an eclipse, the arrival of a festival, and the return of a particular sacred occasion need not be dismissed as spiritually irrelevant simply because consciousness is supreme. The discovery of non-duality does not flatten the differentiated world into an abstract sameness.
Nor does it demand that every traditional distinction be elevated into an absolute necessity. Abhinavagupta can distinguish between primary and secondary ritual requirements precisely because those distinctions have their own particular domains and purposes.
Yet the question becomes considerably more difficult when we move from the efficacy of particular observances to the most decisive transformation of spiritual life itself.
Can the descent of divine grace depend upon the maturation of a prior condition? Must Parameśvara wait for an appropriate moment before revealing His own nature?
Here the discussion of cosmic time meets one of the most uncompromising aspects of Abhinavagupta's philosophy.
Where Celestial Order Meets Divine Freedom — Tantrāloka 13
The thirteenth āhnika of the Tantrāloka examines śaktipāta, the descent of divine grace, and the different explanations offered for its occurrence. Why does grace descend upon one individual and not another? Why at a particular moment? Why with different degrees of intensity?
These questions are especially difficult because they concern an event that appears within the differentiated order of existence but is understood to arise from the supreme freedom of Parameśvara.
Abhinavagupta examines several explanations associated particularly with the Śaivasiddhānta, including the maturation of impurity (malapāka) and the balancing of opposing karmic forces (karmasāmya). According to such accounts, certain antecedent conditions must reach an appropriate state before bondage can be overcome or grace can descend.
The attraction of these explanations is understandable. They offer an intelligible sequence: a particular condition matures, an obstacle disappears, and liberation becomes possible.
But Abhinavagupta subjects the supposed necessity of these conditions to sustained criticism.
If impurity must mature before it can be removed, what causes that maturation? If karma is responsible, how can the very structure implicated in bondage independently bring about its transcendence? If the balancing of karmic forces makes grace possible, why should divine freedom depend upon that balance?
The problem becomes especially pointed when the explanation appeals to the special efficacy of time.
athāpi kālamāhātmyam apekṣya parameśvaraḥ |
tathā karoti vaktavyaṃ kālo 'sau kīdṛśas tv iti || (Tantrāloka 13.74)
"But if the Supreme Lord acts in this way in dependence upon the special efficacy of time, then one must explain what that time actually is."
This question goes directly to the foundation of the argument. If Parameśvara must wait for a particular temporal condition before acting, what gives that condition its determining power? Time cannot simply be invoked as an unexplained authority over the very consciousness through whose freedom time itself arises.
Abhinavagupta continues by examining the difficulties surrounding beginningless karma and the succession of its effects. If karmic existence has no first beginning, the appeal to prior impressions can explain each difference only by referring it to some earlier difference. It does not establish why the decisive condition should arise at precisely the moment in question.
His criticism becomes explicit in 13.87:
ittham ucchinna evāyaṃ bandhamokṣādikaḥ kramaḥ |
ajñānād bandhanaṃ mokṣo jñānād iti parīkṣitam || (Tantrāloka 13.87)
"In this way, the very order of bondage and liberation would be undermined, and the established understanding that bondage arises from ignorance and liberation from knowledge would be impaired."
The force of this objection is not that karma possesses no significance within ordinary experience. Rather, Abhinavagupta refuses to reduce liberation to an automatic consequence of karmic rearrangement. If the balancing of particular forces were the ultimate cause of liberation, knowledge would cease to occupy the decisive role assigned to it.
The spiritual problem would become one of waiting for the appropriate modification of conditions rather than overcoming the ignorance through which one's own nature remains unrecognized.
Abhinavagupta carries this reasoning further in 13.98–101. He considers not only karma and impurity, but several conditions ordinarily regarded as favourable to spiritual development: dispassion (vairāgya), dissatisfaction with worldly enjoyment, moral and religious discipline, discernment (vivekitā), association with the wise (satsaṅga), devotion and worship, contemplation of suffering, scriptural study, and knowledge concerning the Lord.
These are hardly negligible. Abhinavagupta's own writings repeatedly demonstrate the importance he assigns to instruction, practice, contemplation, and disciplined inquiry.
Yet none can be treated as an independent condition possessing the power to compel the descent of grace.
I find this especially striking because his argument does not simply replace astrological or karmic determinism with another system of spiritual achievement. He is not suggesting that liberation is guaranteed once an individual has accumulated sufficient purification, austerity, knowledge, or religious merit. Even those qualities most closely associated with spiritual maturity cannot become authorities standing above the freedom of Parameśvara.
This does not make practice meaningless. It changes how we understand its efficacy. A practice may serve as a means through which recognition unfolds without becoming an external cause that governs the supreme consciousness. The distinction is particularly important in a tradition that describes different paths and degrees of spiritual realization with considerable precision.
Having examined the inadequacy of these causal explanations, Abhinavagupta begins to express his own position:
devaḥ svatantracid rūpaḥ prakāśātmā svabhāvataḥ |
rūpapracchādanakrīḍāyogād aṇur anekakaḥ || (Tantrāloka 13.103)
"The Lord is of the nature of free consciousness, self-luminous by His very nature; through the play of concealing His own form, He appears as the many limited subjects."
The condition of limitation is not imposed upon consciousness by something ultimately independent of it. Śiva, through His own freedom, appears as the multiplicity of limited subjects. Concealment is itself an expression of divine activity.
A little later, Abhinavagupta describes the movement of recognition:
svātantryamahimaivāyaṃ devasya yad asau punaḥ |
svaṃ rūpaṃ pariśuddhaṃ sat spṛśaty apy aṇutāmayaḥ || (Tantrāloka 13.105)
"This indeed is the greatness of the Lord's freedom: that even while appearing as a limited individual, He again touches His own perfectly pure nature."
The one who appears to be bound and the one who recognizes freedom are not two ultimately separate realities. The appearance of limitation and its overcoming both belong to the activity of consciousness.
Abhinavagupta then appeals to Somānanda's Śivadṛṣṭi, returning to the teaching of his own spiritual lineage:
pañcaprakārakṛtyoktiśivatvān nijakarmaṇe |
pravṛttasya nimittānām apareṣāṃ kva mārgaṇam || (Tantrāloka 13.108–109, citing Somānanda)
"Since Śiva is understood as performing the fivefold activity, why should we search for other causes when He undertakes His own activity?"
There is remarkable clarity in this question. If Śiva's own nature includes the fivefold divine activity—creation, maintenance, dissolution, concealment, and revelation—why should we seek an independent cause that makes this activity possible?
The explanation cannot ultimately place the Lord under an authority external to His freedom without contradicting the very understanding of Śiva upon which it rests.
What makes the discussion especially relevant to our inquiry, however, is that Abhinavagupta does not stop at this affirmation of freedom. He proceeds to distinguish the conditions associated with particular worldly results from those concerning liberation.
In 13.117–120, he examines the relation between devotion, the descent of grace, and the desire for specific fruits. Devotion directed toward the acquisition of particular results remains connected with karma and the differentiated circumstances through which those results arise. Liberation, by contrast, is not governed by those conditions in the same manner.
He writes:
kulajātivapuṣkarmavayo'nuṣṭhānasampadaḥ |
anapekṣya śive bhaktiḥ śaktipāto'phalārthinām ||
yā phalārthitayā bhaktiḥ sā karmādyam apekṣate |
tato'tra syāt phale bhedo nāpavarge tv asau tathā || (Tantrāloka 13.117–119)
"Without dependence upon family, caste, body, karma, age, or the possession of ritual accomplishments, devotion to Śiva is the descent of grace for those who seek no particular fruit. But devotion motivated by the desire for results depends upon karma and other conditions; consequently, differences arise in the fruits obtained, whereas liberation is not subject to such differentiation in the same way."
The distinction continues into the discussion of those who seek both worldly enjoyment (bhoga) and liberation (apavarga). Worldly fruition remains related to differentiated karmic conditions; liberation does not depend upon them in the same way.
Here, I think, we reach the most important philosophical point of our investigation.
The same Abhinavagupta who carefully discusses lunar days, planetary conjunctions, and ritual occasions refuses to subordinate the descent of grace to the maturation of karma or the special efficacy of time. There is no need to diminish either side of his teaching to make them compatible. They concern different relationships between conditions and their results.
Within manifestation, particular conditions may possess significance. Abhinavagupta's ritual prescriptions and his account of cosmic time leave little doubt about their place in the system he transmits. But the supreme freedom through which manifestation arises cannot itself be explained as the inevitable product of those conditions.
This bears directly upon astrology, although Abhinavagupta is not discussing natal horoscopes in these passages.
A chart may claim to describe the temporal and karmic circumstances of an individual. Whether it can actually do so remains a separate question, requiring evidence that these texts do not provide. But even if some correspondence between celestial configurations and human circumstances were established, it would not follow that the descent of divine grace must await the appropriate planetary arrangement.
From the standpoint of Abhinavagupta's teaching, such a claim would require that the freedom of Parameśvara depend upon a condition belonging to the very manifestation of that freedom.
The problem is not the existence of temporal conditions. It is the attempt to give them an authority they cannot ultimately possess.
There is also a human difficulty here that I think deserves attention. When our lives become painful or uncertain, the idea that everything follows an intelligible sequence can be deeply attractive. We want to know why a particular misfortune has occurred, when it may end, and whether there is some arrangement that explains why one person encounters terrible suffering while another seems to pass through life with comparatively little difficulty.
An astrological interpretation can appear to offer precisely that kind of order. At its best, such an interpretation might be approached as a tentative attempt to understand patterns. But it can also become a mechanism of dependence, especially when the individual begins to regard a chart as the final explanation of what can or cannot happen.
Even spiritual realization may then be imagined as something that must await permission from a favourable planetary period.
Abhinavagupta's treatment of śaktipāta gives us a powerful reason to resist this conclusion. Yet it would be equally mistaken to interpret divine freedom as though it guaranteed that every individual could simply change the circumstances of life through an act of will.
The freedom of Parameśvara is not identical with the psychological freedom of the limited individual. Our lives remain subject to countless conditions, many of which cannot be changed through choice, effort, or recognition alone. There are illnesses, losses, and events whose consequences cannot be dissolved by appealing to the metaphysics of svātantrya.
Abhinavagupta's argument does not promise that our circumstances will always improve, or that the suffering of embodied existence will cease to possess its ordinary force.
What it establishes is something different: the freedom at the heart of spiritual realization cannot be reduced to the favourable arrangement of those circumstances.
And it is precisely this distinction that has gradually changed the way I understand the relationship between Jyotiṣa and the non-dual vision of Kashmir Śaivism.
The Stars and the Freedom of Śiva — Returning to the Human Question
Having followed these passages through the Tantrāloka and Tantrasāra, I find myself returning to an intuition that has accompanied me for years, although I have not always been able to articulate it clearly.
There seems to be an immense order through which our lives unfold, and yet the freedom from which that order arises cannot be exhausted by it.
I do not mean that there are two separate realities, one governed by fixed laws and another belonging to some higher spiritual world where those laws no longer exist. Such a division would be difficult to reconcile with Abhinavagupta's non-duality. Rather, what we ordinarily call the structure of manifestation—time, causality, karma, the movement of celestial bodies, and the innumerable conditions of embodied existence—belongs to the expression of Śakti. But her freedom is not something produced by that structure, nor something that can be confined within it.
The laws themselves arise within that freedom.
This brings me back to the image of planetary configurations as a local coordinate system, which I explored in Worlds Without Corridors. I remain uncertain whether astrological interpretation genuinely possesses the kind of correspondence with human circumstances that its practitioners attribute to it. But if such correspondences exist, I find it more intelligible to imagine them as belonging to a particular order of manifestation rather than as independent powers governing destiny.
The distinction becomes particularly interesting when I think about the extraordinary vastness of the universe.
Our solar system is one planetary arrangement among an immense number of others. There are billions of galaxies, each containing vast populations of stars, many surrounded by planets. Their celestial configurations differ profoundly from our own. If conscious life exists elsewhere, as it may, it would not inhabit a world arranged around the positions of Venus, Jupiter, Saturn, and the moon as observed from Earth.
This does not disprove astrology. A system developed to interpret the circumstances of earthly existence might reasonably claim to concern precisely that local environment. But it makes me reluctant to confuse the coordinates of our particular cosmic neighbourhood with the universal principles of consciousness itself.
The distinction between the map and the reality it describes becomes especially important here. A local system may possess its own order, perhaps even relationships that we do not yet understand. But the existence of such an order does not mean that the entire movement of Śakti can be reduced to it.
Indeed, Abhinavagupta's account of time in the sixth āhnika seems to offer a much deeper way of approaching the problem. Succession and non-succession both abide within consciousness. The celestial cycles, the movements of prāṇa, and the divisions of time are not independent structures imposed upon Śakti from outside. They are expressions of her own activity.
The freedom of Śiva is therefore not another force operating somewhere beyond the universe, occasionally interrupting the laws that ordinarily govern it. It is the freedom through which the possibility of those laws arises in the first place.
I think this distinction has become increasingly important to me through the experience of living, rather than through philosophy alone.
I have known circumstances that did not ask for my consent: illness, war, losses, and changes brought about by the decisions of other people. I have encountered limits that no amount of philosophical reflection could simply dissolve. There are dangers that remain dangers regardless of what we understand about consciousness, and suffering that cannot be made painless by describing it as the play of Śakti.
For this reason, I have little patience for the claim that recognition of our divine nature means that we can simply choose a different reality whenever we wish. It confuses the absolute freedom of consciousness with the capacities of an individual whose life continues to unfold under conditions that may be severe, unjust, and impossible to negotiate with.
But I am equally unwilling to believe that the ultimate significance of a life can be exhausted by a predetermined sequence of events.
Even when circumstances remain beyond our control, the question of consciousness itself has not been settled by them. Nor can it be settled by a horoscope, however elaborate its calculations or confident its predictions.
This is where Abhinavagupta's treatment of śaktipāta speaks to me most directly. The descent of grace is not the inevitable product of a cosmic mechanism that must complete its appointed sequence before consciousness is permitted to recognize itself. The movement of concealment and revelation belongs to Parameśvara's own freedom.
That does not tell me why one person suffers or why another receives grace. It does not explain the terrible unevenness of human existence, nor does it offer the comforting assurance that everything must eventually turn out well. I do not think Abhinavagupta's argument should be made to promise any of these things.
But it does prevent the differentiated order of existence from becoming the final authority over the reality from which that order itself arises.
I can therefore appreciate why Abhinavagupta pays such close attention to ritual occasions without feeling compelled to make astrology sovereign over my life. I can respect the traditional significance of lunar days, eclipses, and celestial conjunctions while remaining skeptical of predictive claims that have not been reliably established. And I can acknowledge the countless conditions through which my own life unfolds without mistaking those conditions for the ultimate nature of consciousness.
Perhaps what has changed most in my understanding is that I no longer feel the need to choose between an ordered universe and divine freedom. The choice itself now seems mistaken.
There is an order to manifestation, although we may understand only fragments of it. There are structures and regularities, some well established, others belonging to traditional cosmologies whose claims remain open to examination. There are also events whose meaning escapes us, circumstances that resist explanation, and moments in which the familiar sequence of causes and effects seems utterly inadequate to what is being experienced.
Yet none of this places the order of manifestation outside Śakti. Nor does the existence of order make her freedom dependent upon its particular arrangements.
I can look toward the heavens with wonder, respect the rhythms through which this world unfolds, and remain open to the possibility that some of those rhythms disclose relationships we have not yet understood. But I do not need to transform that openness into obedience, or mistake the desire for certainty for knowledge.
The stars may belong to the conditions of our journey. Perhaps some of their patterns can help us understand the world through which we travel. But they are not the source of the freedom from which the world itself arises.
That freedom is not somewhere beyond the stars, waiting for us to escape their influence. It is present in their very movement, in the passage of time, in the unfolding of our lives, and in the consciousness through which all these become known.
The cosmic order is not outside Śakti, but neither is Śakti imprisoned within the cosmic order.
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