In his commentary on Shiva Sutras, Lakshamjoo translates verse 2 thus: “Knowing differentiatedly and not knowing undifferentiatedly is bondage.”

He comments: “Knowledge is bondage. What knowledge is bondage? Differentiated knowledge. What not knowing is bondage? Not knowing your own undifferentiated self. So knowing individual consciousness as one’s own nature and not knowing universal consciousness as one’s own nature, are both bondage.”

Remarks

Bondage, of course, refers to suffering. Since there is suffering, the question naturally arises: “What is the cause or source of suffering?”

Advaita Vedanta and, here, Kashmir Shaivism both assert that a basic kind of ignorance is the cause of suffering, or bondage. What sort of ignorance is this?

Very carefully does Lakshamjoo spell out the kind of ignorance in question. It is two-fold (even if it’s a single act of misidentification). In the first place, one knows individual consciousness–the sense of being a separate self–as one’s own nature. In the second place, one doesn’t know universal consciousness, which is what one truly is. What one knows is not real; what one doesn’t know is the only reality. Therefore, one is living “upside down.”

Now, these “two acts” are really one and the same: every time I take myself to be limited personal consciousness I do not know myself to be limitless universal consciousness. And so long as I take myself to be this limited personal consciousness, I can’t take myself to be the limitless universal consciousness that I truly am. This, in brief, is the epistemic pickle.