The Dissolution of Ordinary Knowledge — Shiva Sutra 2.10

This concluding sutra of Chapter Two describes the final consequence of the process traced throughout Shaktopaya: once ordinary, dualistic knowledge (vidya in its lower sense, referring here to worldly and sensory cognition) has been fully consumed as 'food' by the fire of true Self-knowledge, as taught in the previous sutra, what remains of that former knowledge is only its faint trace, as insubstantial and unreal as the residue of a dream recalled upon waking. Kshemaraja draws a direct parallel to Chapter One's ninth sutra, 'svapno vikalpāḥ' (dream is mental construction), and its broader treatment of the three states, situating this teaching as the Shaktopaya counterpart to that Shambhava-oriented framework: after full realization, the entirety of one's former, unrealized life — its cares, distinctions, attachments, and dualistic perceptions — is remembered, if at all, with the same detached, faintly unreal quality one has toward a dream after waking. This is not a claim that memory or functional knowledge disappears altogether; the realized yogi can still recall facts, names, and past experiences perfectly well, but these are no longer felt as binding realities that define or threaten his sense of self. Kshemaraja emphasizes that this sutra completes the picture of Shaktopaya's fruit: the mind, having become mantra through sustained effort, guru's grace, and awakening to Matrika, ultimately finds ordinary dualistic knowing utterly relativized, reduced to the status of a dream-memory within the vast, unbroken wakefulness of Self-recognition — a fitting close to a chapter devoted to the gradual, mantra-based unfolding of consciousness into its own Supreme nature.