Pratyabhijñā-hṛdayam · Sūtra 7
स चैको द्विरूपस्त्रिमयश्चतुरात्मा सप्तपञ्चकस्वभावः
sa caiko dvirūpastrimayaścaturātmā svabhāvaḥ
And he, though one, is of two forms, threefold in constitution, fourfold in self, and of the nature of the seven pentads (saptapañcaka).
Context
Sūtras 4 through 7 describe the individual conscious being at increasing levels of structural detail. Sūtra 7 is the most complex cosmological statement of the group — a compressed map of the entire tattva system as it exists within each perceiver, delivered as a sequence of enumerations: one, two, three, four, seven-times-five.
Primary reading
The sūtra lists the being's self-description at multiple levels simultaneously: one (as Śiva, the undivided), two (as Śiva-Śakti, light and reflective awareness), three (variously unpacked — as the three states of waking, dreaming, and deep sleep, as the three bodies, or in Kṣemarāja's gloss as the being affected by the three malas), four (the fourfold structure of the individual self), and seven pentads (the thirty-five tattvas). The essential point is that each level is a valid description of the same reality — the numbers are not stages the being passes through but simultaneous truths about what it is.
Commentarial layer
Kṣemarāja's commentary unpacks each number in turn, and his glosses are specific: the one is caitanya, consciousness undivided; the two forms are consciousness as unrestricted light and as contraction; the threefold constitution is the covering by the three malas (āṇava, māyīya, kārma); the fourfold self is the individual's layered identification with the void, the vital breath (prāṇa), the subtle body (puryaṣṭaka), and the gross body; and the seven pentads are the thirty-five tattvas from Śiva to earth — with the seven also read as the seven classes of perceiver. This section should be expanded from the primary commentary before publication, since the traditions of unpacking the smaller numbers vary and the sūtra's compression invites more than one authorized scheme.
Common misreadings
Reading the numbers as sequential — first one, then two, then three — rather than simultaneous: each is a different level of description of the same being at the same time. Treating the sūtra as abstract cosmology rather than self-description: the practitioner IS the one-two-three-four-thirty-five, and the sūtra is read wrongly the moment it is read about something else.
The sūtra is a string of bare numbers, each a compressed pointer to a specific teaching. The translator must decide whether to leave the numbers as bare as the Sanskrit leaves them or to begin glossing; and the final compound saptapañcaka forks three ways — seven pentads, or seven and five, or all of these at once — a decision about how much of Kṣemarāja's commentary to pull up into the sūtra itself.
What the differences reveal
Two forks organize the divergences. First, the subject: Singh and Shantananda keep the personal 'he,' continuous with the māyāpramātā of sūtra 6, so the counting describes the individual; Wallis's 'It' makes Awareness itself the counted one. Trika holds these to be the same referent — the individual is Awareness contracted — but the pedagogical aim differs: one reading says 'you are structured like this,' the other says 'the Absolute is structured like this.' Second, the arithmetic of saptapañcaka: a single figure (thirty-five tattvas) or a deliberate polysemy (seven perceivers, five powers or coverings, thirty-five tattvas). Kṣemarāja's own commentary licenses the polysemy Wallis renders, which suggests the compound was built to be unpacked, not merely computed. The comparison shows the sūtra functioning as a mnemonic: the numbers are hooks, and each translator decides how much of the tradition to hang on them in the sūtra itself.
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