The Shiv sūtras were first revealed in the late 8th century A.D. by Shiva to Vasugupta in person on mount Mahadeva in the Kashmir Himalayas. Later expounded by one of his students Abhinavagupta, this philosophy came to be known as Kashmir Shaivism and is an integral part of the Agamas literature in Hindu thought. The Spanda-kaarikas are a commentary on the Shiva- sūtras whose authorship is credited to Kallatta, a chief disciple. The first Shlöka of these kaarikas underlines the very act of Creation & Destruction of this ephemeral Universe as the mere blink of Shiva’s eyes:- We laud that Shankara, by whose mere opening and shutting of the eye-lids, there is the appearance and dissolution of the world and who is the source of the glorious powers of the collective whole of the shaktis in various forms. (1st Shloka) Spanda-kaarikaas, ‘The Divine Creative Pulsation’ by Jaidev Singh[1] Spanda literally means a ‘throb’, a pulsation of energy that spawns all creation. One blink of Shiva’s eyes, the unmesha and the nimesha, releases an intense cosmic pulse that unfolds billions of years of galactic causation. The Unknown in the Shiva- sūtras is the Naad-Brahman and this initial pulse is […]