Kṣemarāja explains the world’s diversity through the mutually corresponding forms of the perceived and the perceivers. Each level of apprehension has the world appropriate to it.

Corresponding levels of subject and object

• At the level of Sadāśiva, the “this”, the objective side, is still covered by a prominently manifest I-ness. The class of mantra-maheśvaras belongs here.
• At the level of Īśvara, the objective side stands forth distinctly while remaining united with I-ness. The mantreśvaras belong here.
• At the level of pure knowledge (vidyā), the many differentiated Mantra-perceivers appear together with a world correspondingly marked by distinctions.
• The vijñānākalas above Māyā are pure knowing without effective agency. Their corresponding object-world rests largely in non-difference.
• The pralaya-kevalins, who rest in emptiness within Māyā, are matched by a world that is nearly dissolved.
• The limited sakalas, extending down to the earth level, experience subject and object as clearly separate.

Śiva, who transcends these levels, experiences things as pure light. For Paramaśiva, who is both beyond the world and the world itself, the entire sequence from Śiva down to earth shines forth undivided.

For Kṣemarāja, the distinction between perceiver and perceived thus remains a real mode of appearing, but not an ultimate duality. In the highest reality there is neither an independent object nor an independent subject. It is Paramaśiva himself who appears in a thousandfold diversity.

Just as the highest Lord embraces the whole world as his body, every individual conscious being carries the entire world in contracted form within itself.

Kṣemarāja first describes the cosmic unfolding. Paramaśiva causes the world, united with himself, to shine initially in a state emptier than ordinarily conceived emptiness and not separate from light. The “essence” of Awareness then condenses into levels, worlds, things, and their respective perceivers.

The limited perceiver contains this same cosmos as a tiny seed already contains the entire banyan tree in contracted form. Kṣemarāja supports this with tantric scriptural passages: bodies, deities, and elements do not constitute a foreign domain outside Awareness.

Only Māyā’s concealing power keeps this identity from being manifest. The conscious being therefore appears contracted without ever becoming anything other than the world-encompassing Śiva. Even contraction must appear within consciousness and is therefore pervaded by Awareness. Beyond this appearing, no second thing remains.

For Kṣemarāja, thoroughly recognising this identity of Śiva and the embodied being is liberation. Failing to recognise it is bondage.