Śivasaṃhitā 2.50

The verse identifies the mechanism by which false knowledge dissolves: not through suppression or denial, but through viśeṣadarśana, discriminative vision of the particular. Mithyājñāna does not yield to willpower alone; it yields to clarity. The error is not moral but cognitive, and its remedy is correspondingly epistemological rather than merely ethical.

Mithyā carries the sense of ‘falsely, incorrectly, in a mistaken manner’, while jñāna denotes knowledge in its broadest sense. Together they name the fundamental error of superimposition (adhyāsa)—taking the transient for permanent, the conditioned for absolute. Viśeṣa (particular, distinctive, specific) paired with darśana (seeing, vision, direct perception) points to a precise, active discrimination rather than vague spiritual intuition.

This epistemological framing connects the Śivasaṃhitā to the broader Vedāntic analysis of ignorance as the root cause of saṃsāra. The yogic practices described in the text—breath regulation, visualization of subtle channels, meditation on the self—are all instruments of this discriminative seeing, progressively stripping away layers of misidentification until the real stands revealed.