Śivasaṃhitā 4.79

The assertion that the gṛhastha — the householder living in the world — can obtain liberation through Vajrolī without observing the rules of yoga (yogoktaniyama) is a declaration of the practice’s independence from the disciplinary scaffolding of classical yoga. Patañjali’s niyamas — purity, contentment, austerity, study, devotion — are here optional, not prerequisites.

Svecchayā vartamānaḥ — ‘one who lives according to his own will’ — does not describe libertinism but the condition of the practitioner who has not adopted the vows of a monk or an ascetic yogi. Svecchā (free will, own will, from sva- own + icchā desire, will) designates the autonomy of one who lives in the ordinary world: they have a family, work, desires, pleasures. The text affirms that this condition does not disqualify the practitioner.

This principle connects with the philosophy of Kashmir Śaivism, especially with Kṣemarāja’s Pratyabhijñāhṛdayam, where liberation (mukti) is defined as the recognition of one’s own already-free nature, not the acquisition of a new state. Vajrolīmudrā is the catalyst of that recognition: working with the most fundamental energy of the human being — creative energy — it dissolves the illusion of separation without the need to renounce embodied life.