Kṣemarāja asks what recognisable sign shows that even the limited saṃsārin is Śiva. His answer is that even in ordinary experience, the limited perceiver performs the same five acts as the highest Lord.

For Kṣemarāja, this ceaseless fivefold activity distinguishes his non-dual teaching from the teachings about Brahman that he mentions. Divine consciousness is not merely a silent background. It makes things appear, sustains them, withdraws them, conceals, and reveals.

The five acts within one perception

Kṣemarāja takes a concrete appearance such as the colour blue:

• Creation (sṛṣṭi): Blue appears at this particular place and time.
• Withdrawal (saṃhāra): Other possible places, times, and appearances do not come forth at that moment.
• Maintenance (sthiti): The blue appearance endures for a while.
• Concealment (vilaya or nigraha): What appears presents itself as different from the perceiver. The underlying unity remains concealed.
• Grace or revelation (anugraha): The same appearance is recognised in its unity with the light of Awareness.

Śiva’s cosmic acts are therefore not processes that occur only outside the human being. They form the structure of every single experience.

According to Kṣemarāja, one who repeatedly contemplates this fivefold activity with firm insight allows his own divine sovereignty to arise. One liberated while alive recognises the whole world as the unfolding of his own unlimited nature. One who sees only mutually separate objects remains bound.

Kṣemarāja adds an esoteric interpretation of the five acts drawn from the Mahārtha or Krama perspective. It describes more precisely what happens in the course of a single experience.

• Manifestation (ābhāsana): Whatever shines forth through the expanding powers of perception is created at that moment.
• Taking delight or becoming intimately coloured (rakti): When Awareness rests with the appearance for a time without interruption and becomes, as it were, coloured by it, Awareness sustains it.
• Reflective apprehension (vimarśana): In the moment of conscious apprehension, which Kṣemarāja also connects with astonished self-presence (camatkāra), the appearance that previously seemed autonomous is withdrawn.
• Depositing a seed (bījāvasthāpana): If what has been withdrawn leaves doubt or other impressions (saṃskāra) within, it becomes the seed of an experience that will arise again later and thus also of renewed saṃsāra.
• Dissolution (vilāpana): An impression already stored or a present experience can dissolve through “sudden ripening” (haṭha-pāka) and “complete devouring” (alaṃ-grāsa) in the fire of Awareness. What was separate is absorbed into fullness. This is grace in the present account.

According to Kṣemarāja, these five processes are always active. Yet their liberating significance does not become apparent merely through a conceptual list. For that, he regards instruction from and devotion to a true teacher (sadguru) as necessary.