Kṣemarāja answers the objection that a mind shaped by conceptual constructions cannot possibly be Śiva: Citta, the individual mind, is nothing other than Awareness in a doubly contracted condition.

Awareness conceals its own form and assumes different degrees of limitation. When its light predominates, higher forms of perception appear: pure luminosity without pronounced agency among the vijñānākalas, light with self-reference at the level of pure knowledge, and—as contraction diminishes further—the levels of Īśvara, Sadāśiva, and Anāśrita-Śiva. The ascendancy of Awareness gained in samādhi can likewise open progressively higher levels of perceivers along the pure path.

Where contraction predominates, by contrast, levels of perceivers arise from emptiness downwards. Awareness then descends from the level of the conscious perceiver (cetana), turns towards an object, and is restricted once more by that object—by blue or by a feeling of happiness, for example. The limitation of the perceiver and the limitation imposed by the perceived together constitute citta.

The three qualities sattva, rajas, and tamas are likewise not an unconscious substance existing alongside Awareness. Kṣemarāja understands them as severely contracted manifestations of its powers of knowledge, action, and Māyā in the state of the bound being.

Thus the light of one’s own nature is not lost even amid conceptual differentiation (vikalpa). One who is oriented towards the highest reality can follow that light even within thought.

For Kṣemarāja, the perceiver limited by Māyā consists of citta. Body and vital energy are shaped by this mind. Even an apparently empty condition bears mental impressions; otherwise a person could not resume unfinished tasks after returning from it.

This also explains the differing statements of two Śivasūtras. From the highest perspective, the text says, “Consciousness is the Self” (caitanyam ātmā). When describing the perceiver limited by Māyā, it says instead, “The mind is the Self” (cittam ātmā). The second statement describes a bound level of perceivers, not another ultimate reality.