Sounds of Liberation: The Spanda Karikas Paperback – January 2, 2021

This book has only 53 shloka - like many other classics it is small but huge in its power.This book captures beautiful ideas I have not read elsewhere outside Kashmir Shaivism - specifically elaboration of Kalaa, kaala, niyati, vidya as emergent from Maya that hinders the true view. The meanings given are highly technical and differ from the common understanding I had.

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One of the best spiritual books I’ve read, this is the real “Advaita” - non-dualism without clutter. I’ve highlighted many verses to go back and study.

Chaudhri's Spanda Karikars is enlightening and inspiring. Concise, clear and beautifully presented, his scholarly interpretation will benefit new readers and also engage advanced students

I appreciate the attempt made to translate the Spanakarikas but some pretty serious mistakes were made that displays the author may not be ready to take on such a task. For example, he has falsely defined the causal body as meaning the Self, or Atman. There are three bodies on the manifest side of existence, these are the gross, subtle and causal. These three bodies correspond to the three states of mind - waking, dreaming and deep sleep. The causal body is the body we experience during deep sleep. It is called the causal body because this is where the various karmas reside in seed state - for example, when you enter into deep sleep the mind is not obliterated, all your thoughts and emotions simply enter a dormant state waiting to again become manifest when you awaken. These three bodies are called sthulasharira (gross body), sukshmasharira (subtle body) and karanasharira (causal body). The Karanasharira is not the Atman. The waker, dreamer and sleeper are reflections of the Self, or Atman. There is a fourth state called 'Turiya', which is the formless silent self on the subjective side of all experience - all those other three bodies and states are on the objective side of experience. Thus, there are three bodies corresponding to the three states of mind, and there is the Fourth pure consciousness that pervades all those three states as the formless silent Self, the seer (drashta).I applaud the attempt of this author to take on such a herculean task here, but spreading incorrect concepts dilutes and distorts the true teachings.

Warning, what the author calls non-being right from the beginning is not non-being. It has no form and yet it is only being and all forms that we perceive, including both the subject and object of dual perception, get their being/Is-ness from it. Do not be confused by the use if non-bring. Change it to formless being. Cheers.

Great book, came earlier than expected. Even came with a surprise broken razor blade. Love added bonus, totally recommend for those wanting to shave.

As in the other volumes, this translation is super accessible and the commentary is genuinely useful, more from a practitioner's standpoint than a scholastic standpoint. I've read the Siva Sutras and the 112 Meditations from the same translator, but there is something absolutely epic about Spanda Karikas and its characterization of consciousness as the infinitely creative ground from which all manifestation arises.I've always subconsciously thought of Supreme or Universal Consciousness as an abstract or static blank slate behind it all, a kind of slacker Beingness, but the Spanda distinction turns that whole notion inside out and upside down like Einstein did with curved space time to Newton's physics. Turns out reality is way more exciting than the pictures.A key implication is that Supreme Consciousness meets us exactly where we experience our limited consciousness (or ego) because our limited consciousness is itself a product of infinite creativity or Spanda.There's literally nowhere else to seek Supreme Consciousness. We are a product of Supreme Consciousness already, made out of the very stuff that engendered us, from the physical to the psychic. It's all the vibration (or sound as the ancients put it) of Spanda. The cosmic trick is in recognizing it.There's a lot to grok on here in this otherwise short volume. I'd put this up there in a list of top five most important books I've ever read. But it wouldn't displace 112 Meditations. If there was only one book I could take to the proverbial desert island, it would be 112 Meditations because it's pretty much all practice. But if I could take two books, I'd add Spanda, even over the seminal Shiva Sutras. The Spanda Karikas is a great companion to 112 Meditations. That said, I would definitely smuggle Shiva Sutras onto the desert island if no one were checking book quotas. The three volumes together have a sense of completeness to them. I highly recommend all of them.