Śivasaṃhitā 5.6

This verse opens a philosophically daring category: orthodox religious practices themselves as obstacles to yoga. Ritual bathing (snāna), formal worship procedures (pūjāvidhi), fire sacrifice (homa), and even an orientation wholly fixated on liberation (mokṣamayī sthitiḥ) are named as potential impediments. The Śivasaṃhitā here challenges the assumption that religious observance automatically advances the inner journey.

The compound mokṣamayī sthitiḥ is philosophically precise: the anxious, ego-driven pursuit of liberation can itself become an obstacle, since it reinforces the very sense of separate selfhood that liberation is meant to dissolve. This paradox is well known in Advaita Vedānta discourse, where excessive mumukṣutva (longing for liberation) can calcify into another form of attachment. The inclusion of homa suggests that external ritual, however sacred, cannot substitute for internal transformation.

The section heading dharmarūpayogavighnakathanam — “description of yoga-obstacles that take the form of dharma” — is itself a remarkable editorial statement. The text does not reject dharma but diagnoses its shadow side: the tendency of religious routine to become a comfortable substitute for genuine practice. This internal critique of brahmanical orthodoxy is a hallmark of Śaiva Tantric literature, which consistently privileged direct experiential knowledge over normative compliance.