Pratyabhijñā-hṛdayam · Sūtra 2
स्वेच्छया स्वभित्तौ विश्वमुन्मीलयति
viśvam
By her own will she unfolds the universe on the screen of her own being.
Context
Sūtra 2 follows directly from the claim of sūtra 1 (consciousness is free, it is the cause of the universe) by specifying the mode of that causation. The question sūtra 1 raises is: how? Sūtra 2 answers: by its own will (svecchayā), on its own surface (svabhittau), it unfolds (unmīlayati) the universe. The three qualifications form a tight logical structure.
Primary reading
The universe does not arise from something outside consciousness — not from matter, not from a separate God, not from necessity. It arises from consciousness's own free impulse, displayed on consciousness's own being. Kṣemarāja is refuting both materialist and dualist cosmologies simultaneously. The universe is real — it is not illusion (māyā in the illusionist sense) — but its reality is the reality of consciousness's own display.
Commentarial layer
Kṣemarāja comments on svabhittau at length: consciousness is like a mirror (ādarśa) that contains images without being divided by them. The images are real appearances within an undivided reality. He is also implicitly refuting Sāṃkhya (which posits an unconscious material cause, prakṛti) and Vedānta of the Advaita type (which tends toward the illusoriness of the world). In Trika, the world is real precisely because it is citi's real display.
Common misreadings
Reading 'wall/surface' (bhitti) as implying that the universe is a mere projection or illusion — like a movie on a screen. The point is the opposite: the universe has the full reality of its ground, which is consciousness. Also: reading svecchayā as implying randomness or arbitrariness. The will is not arbitrary — it is the expression of fullness, not lack.
Sūtra 2 turns on three images — svecchayā (by her own will), svabhittau (on her own wall/screen/canvas), unmīlayati (she unfolds, opens). The translators agree on the structure but diverge sharply on the surface-metaphor for bhitti, and that single word choice carries the sūtra's ontology: is consciousness changed by what appears on it, or not?
What the differences reveal
Screen, canvas, or part-of-herself: the choice is a live philosophical fork. A screen is untouched by the film; a canvas is transformed by the painting; a part implies division of the whole. Whether manifestation modifies consciousness is exactly the question that separates transformation-doctrines (pariṇāmavāda) from Kṣemarāja's doctrine of appearance (ābhāsavāda), in which the universe is a real appearing that leaves its ground undivided and unstained. Singh's screen is the most doctrinally protective; Wallis's canvas the most alive to citi's artistry; Shantananda's rendering the most intimate and the most dangerous. Reading all three together does what no single one can: it holds reality, creativity, and inseparability at once.