विज्ञानभैरव Vijñāna Bhairava Tantra · all 112 verses on one page
This is the whole text in one document — every verse in Devanagari and IAST, both English registers, the practice notes, the word-by-word gloss and, where it has been read, Śivopādhyāya’s commentary. It carries no script and no pictures, so it prints, searches and copies cleanly. The reader is here →
Where this text comes from
Preface
The book opens with the Goddess losing patience. She has been given answers to the most important questions there are — that the ultimate is the ninefold, or the mass of sounds, or the three-headed form, or the triad of powers, the point and the resonance — and she says that none of these answers has settled anything: her doubt remains. Bhairava tells her she is right. All those forms, he says, are insubstantial as a conjuror's show, described for people whose minds wander and who are fond of elaborate ritual, the way a mother offers a sweet to get a child to do something. So she asks the only question left after an answer like that: by what means, then? The hundred and twelve are his reply.
It is a Kashmirian text and belongs to the Śaiva stream that later flowered as the Trika. Before that, dating is inference — somewhere between the seventh and the ninth century is the usual estimate, arrived at from the company the text keeps rather than from anything in it. No author is named. It presents itself instead as an extract: in the last verses the Goddess says she has now grasped the essence of the Rudrayāmala Tantra, a large work that has not survived, and whose name on printed books today belongs to other things. Whether this was ever a part of such a tantra, or claimed the descent to give itself standing, can no longer be determined.
The hundred and twelve run from verse twenty-four to verse one hundred thirty-five, one after another, in no order that anyone has managed to reduce to a system — a breath, then a sound, then a posture, then a grief. The count is the text's own: a hundred teachings of the waveless have been spoken in brief, it says afterwards, and twelve besides. The line that follows is of utmost importance. Engaged in even one of these, a person becomes Bhairava. You don't need all of them, and you don't need a sequence. One. You need only one. Out of the hundred and twelve you can find one that works for you.
Its later life is thinner than its reputation suggests. The great Kashmiri commentators of the tenth and eleventh centuries knew it and quoted it, but the commentary Kṣemarāja began on it breaks off after twenty-three verses, and the running commentary that carries a reader through all hundred and twelve was written by Śivopādhyāya some seven hundred years later. It reached print in 1918, in the Kashmir Series of Texts and Studies, and reached readers outside India only in the second half of the twentieth century. It is an old book that has been read continuously by very few people.
Because his is the only commentary that runs the whole way, we have given it a prominent place, and have translated it here from scans of the original handwritten Sanskrit. Śivopādhyāya called it the Uddyota, the illumination, and he works the way a commentator of his tradition works: gloss the words, name what the verse leaves unnamed, and say plainly when a line can be taken two ways. Where he says something that bears on a portal, it stands in the margin beside it, in our translation of his Sanskrit — and each note says which plate it came off, so that a reader who doubts it can go and look. His voice is not the text's own. Some seven hundred years lie between the verse and the gloss, he is sometimes reading the tantra through a later lens, and where his reading and ours part company the margin says so.
There is no shortage of good modern teachings on the Vijñāna Bhairava Tantra. It has been translated and expounded more than once, and some of those teachings are broad and deep, offered as the fruit of a life transformed by profound engagement with the text and the practice it inspires.
This edition emerges differently, not from the study of the text but from practicing for decades Kriya Yoga, many of the techniques of which are alluded to in the Vijñāna Bhairava Tantra. This edition began as a private study tool, engaging with the text less as a teaching to be received than as a mirror to hold up to what had already developed — to gain perspective on the trodden path, to open what is not yet fully open, and to have something to share with a friend. That is still what it is for, and it will go on changing as the understanding it answers to ripens.
One last thing, since it sits oddly with a website. The closing verses forbid exactly this offering. Do not reveal it, Bhairava says — not to the disciple of another, not to the cruel, not to anyone without devotion at a teacher's feet; give away your village, your kingdom, your family, give your very breath, before you give this away. That injunction was made for a world in which a teaching went from a mouth to an ear, and in which the wrong hearer was a danger chiefly to himself. That cat has been let out of the bag by other teachers.
How to use the hundred and twelve
For practitioners
The count is permission, not a curriculum. After the last of them the text counts itself — a hundred teachings of the waveless, and twelve besides — and then adds a line well worth keeping: engaged in even one of these, a person becomes Bhairava. Not all of them, and not in order. So expect most of these doors to stay shut. A hundred and eleven closed doors is not a failure of practice or of reading. Take one at a time, and give it more than a single sitting before deciding it is not yours. Very likely you will encounter one or more of the teachings that resonate with you.
States are not stages, and it helps to keep them apart. Almost every argument this book seems to start with itself comes apart once you ask whether a verse is describing something that visits or something that stays. Any of these portals can give the state — Bhairava present, entire, now, and to someone with no training at all. What none of them gives in an afternoon is the developmental stage: the settling in which that presence is the ordinary ground rather than the weather, and in which the locus of identity transcends and includes the former daily life. The text speaks freely of both and marks neither, which is why one verse can promise everything at once and the next assume a lifetime. The tradition has its own form of the distinction, in the three states and the fourth beyond them. The language of states and stages is modern and brought in from outside; we use it because it makes the rest of the book easier to read.
The whole book is one instruction, and so is each verse. It is worth holding the possibility that these are not a hundred and twelve techniques but a hundred and twelve presentations of one thing — that the text entire is the vehicle of a transmission, and that each verse is that same vehicle entire. On such a reading the difficulty is never the mechanics. If what the verse carries is received, the rest of it is plain; if it is not, no amount of getting the procedure right will supply it. This is why a portal can open on a first reading and stay shut through a hundred careful sittings, and why the shut ones are not a scoring of your practice.
These were written for people who already had a teacher. The silences are not gaps in the text; they are the places where the mouth of a teacher was supposed to be. One verse names a sequence of twelve and does not say which twelve; another presupposes five seals and explains none of them. What is worth knowing is that a commentator sometimes stands in for a personal teacher — Śivopādhyāya names the twelve, and names the five, and where he does the margin passes it on with the scanned plate it came off, so you can take it as his and check it. Where no one supplies anything, leave the silence alone and be careful of trying to fill it with your analytical mind musings. Just sit with the silence and perhaps something will emerge for you, maybe a shift of consciousness, or perhaps not for that verse.
Your own practice is a legitimate way to read this. Kṣemarāja's commentary on the book breaks off after twenty-three verses, and Śivopādhyāya's, the one that carries a reader through all hundred and twelve, was written some seven hundred years later. Where a verse names something you already know from the inside, you are experiencing a commentary it never had. That cuts both ways: the recognition is yours, and is not by itself evidence about the verse. That's fine. Perhaps your own recognition is better for you than understanding the verse.
Read the ends of the verses. At the end of that. At the end of its dissolving. At the end of the out-breath. Releasing, releasing, at the last. Over and over the fruit is found not in the technique but at the point where the technique gives out. Any practice with a shape is superb at many things and structurally vulnerable to one: there is always a next round, and the instrument that carries you also carries you past the moment it was built to produce. Linger a little longer in the space where nothing comes next.
Notice who is doing it. Consider the verbs that name the result — is disclosed, shines forth, shows, rises, glides forth. Almost nowhere does the practitioner achieve anything; the subject of the sentence is the śakti, or the state, and the practitioner is the place where it happens. What you do is the technique, exactly and with effort. What follows the technique is not a further thing you do, and treating it as one is a reliable way to lose it.
The verb is almost never “imagine”. Twenty of these verses turn on bhāvayet and its relatives, and another sixteen on cintayet, dhyāyet, smaret or a verb of looking: contemplate, cultivate, meditate on, call to mind, gaze. Not one of them means make-believe. Bhāvanā is the causative of the verb to be, and it asks you to bring something into being by dwelling on it — which is not the same act as producing a picture, and in this book the thing dwelt on is usually reported as found rather than fabricated. Śivopādhyāya glosses the ray at the fifth portal as the breath you already have; the point of fire at the fourteenth is what appears when the eyes have been pressed and let go; the blackness at the sixty-fifth is seen, he says, not imagined. So the practice notes here say see where they might have said picture, and the difference is practical rather than fussy: attention spent manufacturing an image is attention unavailable to notice what is actually there. Where a portal genuinely does ask you to construct something — the body burned, the world burned, the universe emptied, a deity with four arms — the note says so outright, and the text marks it with a different word, vikalpa, the constructing thought. That is worth sitting with, because vikalpa is the same faculty the book elsewhere tells you to stop. The few constructive portals take the instrument the rest are dismantling and spend it.
A good many of these need no seat, no hour and no preparation. The verge of a sneeze. Terror, grief, the ground dropping away underfoot. The onset of hunger and its end. The threshold where the outer world has gone and sleep has not yet come. Attention laid in the joining of seer and seen rather than on either one. None of this is performed; these states arrive, whether or not you are practising. The preparation is availability — be aware of the named possibilities, and when one of them takes you, fall into the gap instead of moving past it. Learn to notice and let go.
The book contradicts itself, and means to. Wherever the mind goes, one verse says, that is already the state of Śiva, so let it go. Thirteen doors later the same four words open a verse that tells you to drop whatever it lands on, instantly. Desire is led back to its source in one place and ridden in another. Nothing here ranks them. This is an anthology of doorways assembled by people who cared whether a door opened, not whether the doors could be arranged into a system. Find out which reading is yours in the moment rather than determining it in advance.
Some of these want an experienced teacher, and the book does not supply one. The plainest risk is not injury but disorientation. Sustained practice of powerful techniques can loosen a person from ordinary life and produce dissociation from it — which is in a sense what they are for, and which is exactly why most people carrying duties and responsibilities are better served by not having sudden or semi-permanent shifts in their state of consciousness. Teachers in living lineages often decline students who are dealing with mental health difficulties, for the same reason: the practices are strong. Where we think a particular portal carries real risk we have said so in the note beneath it, but that is a poor substitute for someone who can watch you over time. Where to look for such a person is a fair question and we will answer it once: the Kriya Yoga lineage teaches practices that closely resemble a number of these, and kriya.org is a way to reach one branch of that tree. If you are working on your own, be gentle with yourself, and be especially careful of long stretches spent holding the breath or breathing in a pattern that is not natural to you. If you are unsure, the doors that ask nothing of the body are not lesser doors.
What we have done to it
About this edition
The numbers on the doors are ours; the verse numbers are the book's. The Vijñāna Bhairava is one continuous poem of a hundred and sixty-odd verses, and the hundred and twelve do not begin at its beginning. The Goddess asks her question and Bhairava answers, and the first portal is verse 24. So a door's number is always its verse number less twenty-three — portal 1 is verse 24, portal 112 is verse 135 — and both are printed at the head of every entry so that a reader holding another edition can find the same line in it. The useful consequence is that distances agree: when a note says a practice returns six portals back, it is also six verses back, and either count will get you there.
One Sanskrit line, several honest English ones. Sanskrit of this kind is compressed past anything English can carry in a single pass. A compound may be read as the light of awareness or as awareness, which is light, with nothing in the grammar to decide between them; a word may hold two senses at once and be meant to; a case ending may make the practitioner the one who acts or the place where something happens. So translators of this text arrive at genuinely different verses, and they are not all being careless — the multiplicity is in the original, and a translation is a choice made and then, usually, not shown. Here two are shown. The received line is held to what the words will license and keeps the text's own difficulty. The plain line beside it says the same thing in ordinary English: warmer, and never a different reading. Where the line truly does admit two readings, the note gives both and declines to choose.
Where we disagree we say so, and where we borrow we say that too. Two things happen in these notes that a reader is owed warning of. The first is disagreement — with the verse now and then, more often with the commentary. Where our reading and Śivopādhyāya's part company the margin says which is which and leaves the disagreement standing rather than quietly settling it. The second is borrowing. Some of what is said here comes from outside this tradition altogether, to shed light on this tradition: a distinction from a modern writer on development, a line from a Zen teacher, a sentence from the Bible. Those are ours and not the text's, and where one appears it is named as an import instead of being allowed to pass as the tradition's own.
The sorting into paths is editorial. Some notes place a portal among the ways — the way of the individual, the way of power, the way of Śiva. The threefold scheme is genuinely Kashmiri, but it belongs to later systematic writing, and the hundred and twelve carry no such labels in the text. Ours are assigned by us. Where Śivopādhyāya assigns one the margin reports it, and he and we do not always agree. Take the label as a reading aid and never as a reason to think a door is not for you.
Above, prāṇa; below, the life-breath — and the supreme, whose self is that letting-go, rises in utteranceat the place where each is born — fill there, and the state stands filled
Translation · colloquial
The breath rises and goes out, it sinks and comes in, and the great one, who is that letting-go itself, is saying herself in the turn.Each of the two is born somewhere. Stay full at those two places, and what you are stands full.
Practice
Sit with the breath and feel it as one energy uttering herself: rising and out as prāṇa, sinking and in as the life-breath. Visarga is the emission — the letting-go with which each breath releases into the other. Each breath is born at a place: where the out-breath starts, where the in-breath starts. Rest attention full in those two places. Filled there, the verse says, your state stands filled.
Śivopādhyāya locates those two places, where the verse does not: the heart, and the dvādaśānta, the point about twelve fingers out beyond the nostrils where the out-breath spends itself. Take that as an offer rather than a correction — the verse gives no anatomy, and he is reading it eight centuries downstream. He also hears the two breaths as two letters, ha going out and sa coming in, so that the breath is already saying haṃsa, 'I am He', without anyone deciding to say it. If that is audible to you, the practice is to notice it rather than to recite it.
Śivopādhyāya’s commentary
Śivopādhyāya explains this half-line six times over, and then sorts his own six explanations by path: the first and second are śāmbhava, the fourth and fifth śākta, the third and sixth āṇava. So the first of the 112 is not one technique but the same instant taken at three depths — which is why he can spend five plates on a verse that seems to say one simple thing. He also does what the verse refuses to do and names the two places: the heart, and the dvādaśānta twelve fingers out. And he hears the two breaths as ha and sa, the breath already sounding haṃsa, 'I am He' — so that what is to be recognised is not produced by the practice but only noticed in it.
Commentary
The breath turns twice — at the top of the in-breath, at the bottom of the out-breath — and this verse asks you to put your attention in the turn. You are not doing anything to the breath. You are attending to something it is already doing on its own, and about a third of the portals that follow work the same way.
The two places named are junctures, not organs. The text gives no anatomy at all, here or anywhere.
It comes first because it is the most available. Everyone has the breath, and the turn is happening now whether or not you notice it. Watch the verb the verse chooses: you do not enter this state or achieve it, you fill it, the way attention fills a vessel by going into the place. That much is the mechanism, and it is why so many of the verses after this one can afford to be a single line.
Word by word
ūrdhve — above, upward (loc. sg.); prāṇaḥ — the outgoing breath (m. nom. sg.); hi — for, indeed (emphatic particle); adhaḥ — below, downward (indecl.); jīvaḥ — the life-breath, here the descending in-breath (m. nom. sg.); visarga+ātmā — whose self is visarga, the emission [the two-pointed release, ḥ] (bahuvrīhi, nom. sg., qualifying parā); parā — the supreme one, the supreme śakti (f. nom. sg.); uccaret — rises, is uttered (opt. 3 sg., ud-√car); utpatti+dvitaya+sthāne — in the pair of places of arising (n. loc. sg.); bharaṇāt — from filling, from steady holding (n. abl. sg.); bharitā — filled, brimming (ppp f. nom. sg.); sthitiḥ — abiding, the state (f. nom. sg.)
The breath, within or without — when it does not turn back from the pair of voidsthus, Bhairavī — through Bhairavī — Bhairava's body is disclosed
Translation · colloquial
The breath goes out, the breath goes in, and at each end is an emptiness it does not hurry back from.Stay where it does not turn, and through her the body of Bhairava is uncovered.
Practice
Follow the breath to its two ends: outside, after the out-breath; inside, after the in-breath. At each end there is an empty place where the breath has stopped and not yet turned back. Do not hurry it around the corner. Stay in the void where it rests. When the breath forgets to return, what stands disclosed there, the verse says, is the body of Bhairava.
Śivopādhyāya is emphatic that the pause worth having is the one that arrives by itself — twice he calls it 'accomplished without effort' — and that it lasts an instant, not a held breath. He also points out that this pause is already happening, in you and in every animal, all day and all night, and that what makes it liberating is not performing it but recognising it as your own nature. So there is nothing here to achieve. There is only something to catch yourself already doing.
And it does not stop when the breath starts again. What stands disclosed at the end of one breath can be noticed persisting through the whole of the cycle — through the in-breath, through the out-breath, through the next turning. Noticed, and not held: the moment you reach for it you are doing something again, and the pause was worth having precisely because nothing was being done. The turnings come all day, in you and in every animal. They are where it is first caught sight of, not where it lives.
Śivopādhyāya’s commentary
Śivopādhyāya calls the pause at each end of the breath अयत्नसिद्धम्, 'accomplished without effort', and says it lasts an instant — a tuṭi, a lava. He is ruling out breath-retention in as many words. He then makes the larger claim: these eight turnings of the breath are already accomplished in every creature, beasts and birds included, all day and all night, without anyone's effort; they become liberating only when known as one's own nature. The second portal, on his reading, adds nothing to what you are already doing. It asks you to notice it.
Commentary
The same two junctures as the first portal, with the instruction turned around. There you noticed the turn; here you decline it, and let the pause at each end go on being a pause.
Read carelessly this becomes breath-retention. It is not. Nothing is held, nothing is forced, and the moment you are keeping the breath out you have left the practice. What is asked is that you stop hurrying the breath around the corner and see how long the corner is.
The second line is the theology of the whole book, stated at the second door: it is through Bhairavī that Bhairava is disclosed. Not the still point instead of her, but her stillness as the disclosure. The Goddess asked the question; she is also the means of its answer.
Word by word
marutaḥ — of the breath, the wind (m. gen. sg.); antaḥ — within (indecl.); bahiḥ — without, outside (indecl.); vā api — or also, whether... or (particles); viyat+yugma+anivartanāt — from [its] not turning back from the pair of skies, the two voids (n. abl. sg. of cause; viyat — sky, empty space; yugma — pair; anivartana — non-returning; ni-√vṛt construes with an ablative, here compounded); bhairavyā — through Bhairavī, the śakti (f. instr. sg.); bhairavasya — of Bhairava (m. gen. sg.); ittham — thus, in this way (indecl.); bhairavi — O Bhairavī (f. voc. sg., the Goddess addressed); vyajyate — is manifested, disclosed (pres. pass. 3 sg., vi-√añj); vapuḥ — body, essential form (n. nom. sg.)
Vijñāna Bhairava, verse 26 · dhāraṇā 3 · Breath · śāktopāya · a means of mind · subtle
न व्रजेन् न विशेच् छक्तिर् मरुद्रूपा विकासिते
निर्विकल्पतया मध्ये तया भैरवरूपता
na vrajen na viśec chaktir marudrūpā vikāsite nirvikalpatayā madhye tayā bhairavarūpatā
Translation · literal Sanskrit
When the śakti whose form is breath goes neither out nor in — opened outin the madhya, by the thought-free state — through her, the bearing of Bhairava's form
Translation · colloquial
When the power that moves as breath neither leaves nor enters, but opens out where it stands,there in the middle, with nothing being made of it, she gives you Bhairava's own form.
Practice
This is not forced. What you contribute is the thought-free state: let the mind fall quiet of naming and choosing. As it deepens there are moments when the breath stands still on its own — not held, not pushed out, resting in the middle. Madhya is that centre between the two movements. Do not grab the stillness. Resting there with her, the verse says, you wear Bhairava's form.
Śivopādhyāya adds the posture the verse leaves out. He says the stillness is entered through the Bhairavī mudrā, and quotes its definition: the aim within, the gaze without, the eyes neither closing nor opening. Sitting with the eyes open and soft, not blinking deliberately, looking at nothing in particular while the attention rests inward — that is his way into this verse, and it is worth trying against the eyes-closed version to see which one lets the breath go quiet first.
Śivopādhyāya’s commentary
The verse says only that the breath stops; Śivopādhyāya says how one comes to be sitting when it does. He quotes the definition of the Bhairavī mudrā — 'the aim within, the gaze without, free of the closing and opening of the eyes' — and makes it the door to this portal: eyes open, unblinking, attention turned inward. He also reads madhya technically, as the abode of the central channel, where the verse says only 'the middle'. And he closes by classing this verse and the one before it as the āṇava stage — where we have read this one as śākta. The disagreement is worth seeing: the paths are a way of sorting practices, not a property the practices carry.
Commentary
Most breath practice quiets the breath in order to quiet the mind. This verse runs the arrow the other way. It asks for the quiet mind first — thought-free, not naming, not choosing — and reports that the breath then stops of its own accord, going neither out nor in.
Many people find the mind the harder of the two to quiet, and do better running it the usual way round — settle the breath, and let the mind follow.
Anyone who has sat for more than a few months has met a spontaneous cessation of breathing, where the breath simply forgets to happen. What the verse contributes is to say that the gap is not an oddity to be noted but a place to abide. Madhya, the middle, is the central term of this school and it will keep returning; here it has its plainest sense, the centre between two movements.
The difficulty is not technical. It is that noticing the stillness with any satisfaction ends it.
Word by word
na vrajet — does not go out (opt. 3 sg., √vraj, negated); na viśet — does not enter (opt. 3 sg., √viś, negated); śaktiḥ — the energy (f. nom. sg.); marut+rūpā — having the form of breath (f. nom. sg., bahuvrīhi); vikāsite — when [it] has unfolded, opened out (loc. sg. absolute, ppp of vi-√kas); nirvikalpatayā — through the state free of thought-constructs (f. instr. sg., abstract noun from nirvikalpa); madhye — in the middle, the madhya (loc. sg.); tayā — through her (f. instr. sg., the śakti); bhairava+rūpatā — the condition of having Bhairava's form (f. nom. sg., abstract noun)
When she is held in, or emptied out, or filled fullat the end of that she is named the stilled one; through the śakti, the still one shines forth
Translation · colloquial
Whether the breath is held, or let all the way out, or drawn all the way in,at the end of it she is called the quiet one, and through her the quiet one shines out.
Practice
Breathe deliberately once: hold the breath, or empty it right out, or fill it full. Then attend to the end — the moment the effort ceases and the breath's energy dies down. That dying-down is the practice; there she is called the stilled one. Rest in the stilling itself, not in the next breath, and let what shines there show itself.
Śivopādhyāya’s commentary
Śivopādhyāya passes over this verse in five lines and adds no technique to it, which is itself informative in a commentary that spent five plates on the first portal. His one contribution is a verb: the stilled kumbhaka arises at the end of the effort — it is not the retention you performed. He calls the stilling the subsiding of difference, and the one who shines there beyond name and form.
Commentary
Hold the breath, or empty it right out, or fill full. It is the one early breath verse that asks for something deliberate, and the deliberate part is not the practice. The practice is a precondition to the cessation of the practice: an effort that has been made can then be seen to subside, and the subsiding is what you are here for.
The later haṭha manuals build an entire discipline on kumbhaka (breath retention) and its cousins. This text spends one line on the technique and three words on the result, which tells you where it thinks the value is. She is named the stilled one at the end of the effort, not during it.
Two things the verse does not say: how long, and how hard.
Forced retention of the breath is one of the instructions in this book that can do real harm quickly, depending on your health. Go gently, and let your interest be in the dying-down, the abatement, rather than in intense practice of the technique. As a general rule, mild discomfort — the equivalent of a stretch that challenges you a little but does not hurt — should be the limit of how hard you push without a competent teacher's supervision.
Word by word
kumbhitā — held in, retained [as in kumbhaka] (ppp f. nom. sg., qualifying the breath-śakti); recitā — emptied out, expelled (ppp f. nom. sg.); vā api — or also; pūritā — filled in, inhaled full (ppp f. nom. sg.); vā — or; yadā — when (indecl.); bhavet — she may be (opt. 3 sg., √bhū); tat+ante — at the end of that (loc. sg.); śānta+nāmā — having the name 'stilled', 'pacified' (bahuvrīhi, nom. sg.); asau — she, that one (pron. nom. sg.); śaktyā — through the śakti (f. instr. sg.); śāntaḥ — the still one [Bhairava] (m. nom. sg.); prakāśate — shines forth, becomes manifest (pres. mid. 3 sg., pra-√kāś)
From the root up she gleams like a ray, her nature subtler than the subtlecontemplate her growing still at the end of the twice-six — the dawning of Bhairava
Translation · colloquial
From the root of the body she gleams upward like a ray of light, finer than anything you would call fine.Watch her come to rest twelve fingers past the head: that stilling is Bhairava dawning.
Practice
Sit. See her rising from the root of the body as a single ray, growing finer as she climbs — finer than anything the senses could hold. Follow her to the point twelve finger-widths above the head, the twice-six, and watch her come to rest there. Where she stills, the verse says, Bhairava dawns. Stay with the stilling, not with what you are seeing.
Śivopādhyāya says plainly who she is: the breath-power, the same energy the four portals before this one worked with. So the ray is not a new object to imagine but the breath followed along the body's axis, from the seat of birth upward. And he is exact about the ending: what discloses Bhairava is the melting away of the meditated form — including, he insists, the subtlest form, the one your own concentration has just made most vivid. The clearer she becomes, the more there is to let go of.
Śivopādhyāya’s commentary
Śivopādhyāya identifies the ray as मरुच्छक्ति, the breath-power — the same energy the preceding portals worked with, now traced along the axis of the body from the seat of birth upward. So this is not a new imaginative object but the old one, followed further. And he is precise about the end: what discloses Bhairava is अगलनात्, the melting away of the meditated form — expressly including the subtlest form, the one raised up by the very intensity of the meditation. The image is not perfected. It is dissolved.
Commentary
The easy mistake here is to imagine and visualise what you are being invited to perceive.
This verse introduces the axis that a dozen later verses take for granted: root of the body below, dvādaśānta twelve finger-breadths above the head. What is easy to miss is that 'subtler than the subtle' is a description and not praise. The ray refines as it rises, so if a bright vivid line is still there at the top, you have stopped following the verse and started decorating it.
The image of the ray is scaffolding, and following it as it refines is what sublimes ordinary awareness into stillness. Where the ray ends — where she grows still — is the point of the practice, and the verse's last two words say what dawns there without asking you to see that too.
And nothing is said about the centres the ray passes: no colours, no petals, no count. That apparatus belongs to later texts.
Word by word
ā-mūlāt — from the root [of the body] upward (abl. sg. with ā); kiraṇa+ābhāsām — gleaming like a ray of light (f. acc. sg., bahuvrīhi); sūkṣmāt — than the subtle (abl. of comparison); sūkṣmatara+ātmikām — whose nature is subtler still (f. acc. sg., agreeing with kiraṇābhāsām; KSTS prints the feminine, where the e-text had °ātmikam); cintayet — one should contemplate, dwell on in thought (opt. 3 sg., caus. of √cint); tām — her (f. acc. sg., the śakti); dviṣaṭka+ante — at the end of the twice-six [twelve finger-breadths, the dvādaśānta] (loc. sg.); śāmyantīm — subsiding, growing still (pres. part. f. acc. sg., √śam; KSTS, and the vivṛti glosses dvādaśānte śāmyantīm — the e-text's śyāmyantīm would be 'growing dark'); bhairava+udayaḥ — the arising, the dawning of Bhairava (m. nom. sg.)
[Contemplate her] rising as lightning — centre after centre, step by stepupward, as far as three fists — and there at the end, the great dawning
Translation · colloquial
Watch her go up like lightning, centre after centre, one step at a time,as far as three fists above you, and there at the end, the great dawn.
Practice
The same ascent, now sudden. See her as lightning, flashing upward from centre to centre — each cakra a rung, taken in order, one leap at a time. Let the flash climb to three fists above the head and no further. At that end-point, let it fade. What the verse promises there it calls the great dawning; your work is to leave room for it.
Śivopādhyāya fixes the two ends of the climb: it runs from the kanda, the bulb below the navel, to the brahmarandhra at the crown — and then the last stretch, to the three fists above, which he says is the same dvādaśānta the verse before ended at. So the two portals end in the same place. He calls that point 'the one that fills the universe', which is a way of saying it is not really a distance at all.
Śivopādhyāya’s commentary
He treats this verse as an expansion of the one before rather than a second technique — एतदेव प्रपञ्चयति, 'he expands on just this'. He fixes the span of the ascent from the kanda to the brahmarandhra, and identifies the verse's 'three fists' with the dvādaśānta of portal 5, so both climbs end at the same point. That point he calls विश्वपूरकम्, the one that fills the universe.
Commentary
The previous portal climbed; this one flashes. Same ascent, different tempo, and the pairing is deliberate — this text repeatedly gives a technique twice, slow and sudden, and leaves you to find out which suits your temperament. Neither is the better version.
Here the centres are named for the first and nearly the only time: praticakram, centre after centre. The text conspicuously does not say how many there are or what they contain, and anyone who arrives expecting the familiar six with their petals and syllables is bringing later equipment to an earlier room.
Three fists above the head is roughly the twelve finger-breadths of the verse before, measured by another hand. The text is not fussy about the distance, only that you stop there.
Word by word
udgacchantīm — rising up (pres. part. f. acc. sg., ud-√gam; object of cintayet carried over from the previous verse); taḍid+rūpām — having the form of lightning (f. acc. sg., bahuvrīhi; KSTS taḍid- for the e-text's taḍit-); prati-cakram — at each cakra, centre after centre (adverbial accusative); kramāt kramam — step by step, stage after stage (abl. + acc., distributive idiom); ūrdhve — above, in the upper region (loc. sg.; KSTS, glossed ūrdhve muṣṭitrayaṃ dvādaśāntadhāma — the e-text had the adverb ūrdhvam); muṣṭi+trayam — a triad of fists, three fist-breadths (n. acc. sg., accusative of extent); yāvat — until, as far as (indecl.); tāvat — to that point, then (indecl., correlative); ante — at the end (loc. sg.); mahā+udayaḥ — the great arising, the great dawn (m. nom. sg.)
The twelvefold sequence, rightly parted by the twelve soundsthrough gross, subtle, and supreme standing — releasing, releasing, at the last: Śiva
Translation · colloquial
Twelve stages in order, each one cut clean from the next by its own sound,taken coarse, then fine, then finest, and let go, let go, until at the last there is Shiva.
Practice
The verse gives a sequence of twelve, each step marked by its own syllable, and tells you to release each as it completes — muktvā muktvā, letting go and letting go — through its gross, subtle, and supreme mode. Sound each stage, refine it, release it, and carry nothing forward. When the last is released, what remains is Śiva.
Śivopādhyāya names the twelve, and they are the stations of the ascent this book has been climbing since portal 5: the tip of the birth-place, the root, the bulb, the navel, the heart, the throat, the palate, the point between the brows, the brow, the aperture at the crown — and then two that are no longer in the body, śakti and the all-pervading. The twelve syllables he takes as the twelve vowels, from the first sound to the visarga. And he says what the three modes are for: first the station is made distinct, then it is felt to throb, then it turns to light. That is gross, subtle, supreme — three depths of one station, not three practices. Then it is let go and you begin the next.
Whether to take his list is your decision. The verse withholds it, and a thousand years of readers have proposed others.
Śivopādhyāya’s commentary
The verse names twelve stations and never says which twelve, and readers have proposed lists for a thousand years. Śivopādhyāya simply gives one: the tip of the birth-place, root, bulb, navel, heart, throat, palate, brow-point, brow, the aperture at the crown, and then śakti and the all-pervading, which are past the body. The twelve syllables he takes as the twelve vowels, from the first to the visarga, setting the four 'neuter' vowels aside. And he unpacks the three modes as three depths of a single station — first made distinct, then throbbing, then turned to light. His answer is not the verse's answer, and it is not the only one on offer; but it is the answer this edition's own commentator gives, and it is a coherent one.
Commentary
Twelve stations, each one parted by its own syllable — and the verse never says which twelve. Candidates have been proposed for a thousand years and none of them is decisive. The honest position is that this was teacher's knowledge, and it is not in the text.
What survives is the shape, and the shape is clear enough to work with: plumb each stage in its gross form, then its subtle form, then its causal form, and then let it go. Muktvā muktvā — releasing, releasing. The ladder is kicked away at every rung, not only the last, which is why the verse can end with Śiva instead of a thirteenth station.
So you can practise it without knowing the syllables. Release, release, release, in each Cakra.
Word by word
krama+dvādaśakam — the twelvefold sequence (n. acc. sg.); samyak — rightly, completely (indecl.); dvādaśa+akṣara+bheditam — differentiated by the twelve akṣaras, the twelve syllables (n. acc. sg., ppp of √bhid in compound); sthūla+sūkṣma+para+sthityā — through [its] gross, subtle, and supreme mode of standing (f. instr. sg.); muktvā muktvā — releasing, then releasing again (gerund of √muc, repeated distributively); antataḥ — at the end, finally (indecl.); śivaḥ — Śiva (m. nom. sg.)
Fill swiftly with her to the crown of the head; break through by the bridge of the knitted browsmake the mind free of thought-constructs: above everything, the rising of the all-pervading
Translation · colloquial
Fill quickly with her to the crown of the head, and break through there by the bridge your knitted brows make;let the mind stop making anything, and above everything the one that is everywhere rises.
Practice
Draw the breath-energy up quickly, filling the body to the crown of the head. At the barrier there, use the brows: knit them, and let that contraction be the bridge over which the energy breaks through. Then drop every effort of thought and make the mind construction-free. What rises after that rises above everything and is everywhere at once. Your work ends at the brow; the rising is not yours.
Śivopādhyāya names this the khecarī mudrā — not the tongue technique of the later haṭha manuals, but this piercing of the brows — and his image for setu is a dam breaking a flow of water, which settles what kind of bridge is meant. He also attaches a condition the verse does not: the breaking-through is done 'by the method of the guru's instruction'. He is the only commentator on these first eight portals to require a teacher, and he requires one here. Take that as it is meant. Everything above is what the words say; whether to do it from a page is a different question, and his answer is no.
Śivopādhyāya’s commentary
Śivopādhyāya calls this the khecarī mudrā — the older Trika sense of the term, the piercing of the brows, not the tongue technique of the later haṭha manuals. His simile for setu settles the metaphor: it breaks the barrier 'as a dam breaks a flow of water'. And he attaches a condition the verse does not have — the breaking-through is done गुरूपदेशयुक्त्या, by the method of the guru's instruction. Of the first eight portals this is the only one he will not let stand on its own words.
Commentary
Śivopādhyāya's metaphor repays attention, and it is worth being exact about how much of it is his. He writes that the piercing of the brows breaks through the crown as a dam breaks a flow of water. The dam is his. Reading it as a structure that holds water back in order to send it where you want is ours, and neither he nor the verse says that. What both do say is that something gives way.
The knit of the brows is the small deliberate contraction that gives the rising energy something to break against. Everything up to the brow is technique. Then the verse changes register — make the mind free of construction, and what rises rises above everything and is everywhere. That last clause is not a further instruction. It is a statement about something that is no longer yours to do, and the practice fails exactly to the degree that you try to do it.
One caution, and it is Śivopādhyāya's rather than ours: of the first eight portals this is the only one he will not let stand on its own words. He attaches a condition the verse does not have — the breaking-through is done gurūpadeśayuktyā, by the method of the guru's instruction. Tayā, with her, is the breath, so this is breath-work whatever else it is called, and forced manipulation of the breath is the likeliest way to come to harm here. There is no dosage in the verse. Assume less is meant than you think.
Word by word
tayā — with her, the breath-śakti (f. instr. sg.); āpūrya — having filled (gerund, ā-√pṝ); āśu — swiftly (indecl.); mūrdha+antam — to the end of the head, the crown (m. acc. sg.); bhaṅktvā — having broken [through] (gerund, √bhañj); bhrū+kṣepa+setunā — by the bridge of the throwing-together of the brows (m. instr. sg.; kṣepa — casting, contraction; setu — bridge, dam); nirvikalpam — free of thought-constructs (n. acc. sg., predicative); manaḥ — the mind (n. acc. sg.); kṛtvā — having made (gerund, √kṛ); sarva+ūrdhve — in what is above all (loc. sg.); sarvaga+udgamaḥ — the rising up of the all-pervading (m. nom. sg.)
The five voids — through the bright-patterned circles of a peacock's feathersfor the one meditating so, entry would open — into the unsurpassed void, into the heart
Translation · colloquial
Five emptinesses, held the way the bright rings in a peacock's feathers are held, one colour nested inside another.Meditate like that and a door opens: into the emptiness with nothing above it, into the heart.
Practice
Take the eye of a peacock feather: rings of colour nested one inside another. Meditate on the five voids that way — five hollows, one within the next, each subtler than the last, held in the mind as those bright circles. You are using colour to think emptiness. When the five have been passed through, entry comes of itself: into the void with nothing beyond it, which the verse calls the heart.
Śivopādhyāya offers two ways to take the five, and you can try either. Spatially: above, below, the middle, and the two sides — the five directions a body sits in. Or by the senses: the five fields of sound, touch, form, taste and smell, which he calls void because in their bare state, before they are made into anything, there is nothing there to hold. He also reads the heart as where you meditate rather than where you arrive, which is worth taking literally — sit with the attention resting in the chest and let the five open from there.
Śivopādhyāya’s commentary
Śivopādhyāya does what the verse declines to do and lists the five voids — twice, differently. Spatially: above, below, the middle, and the two sides. Or by the senses: the five fields of sound, touch, form, taste and smell, void because as bare sensa they are unmanifest. He also etymologises the verse's 'circles' as the senses themselves, 'what take up the essential sap'. And he reads the heart as the place one meditates from rather than the place one enters — the line permits both, and this edition's translation keeps the doubling.
Commentary
Colour used to conjure emptiness. It is a strange enough instruction to be worth slowing down over.
The five voids are not listed, here or anywhere in the text, and the proposals made since are guesses dressed as knowledge. What is given is their arrangement: nested one inside the next like the rings in the eye of a peacock feather, each subtler than the one containing it. So the practice has a form even without the contents. You pass inward through hollows, and you do not stop at the first that feels final.
Two words at the end carry the weight. Praveśa, entry — you are let in, you do not arrive. And hṛdaya, heart, which in this school is never the organ and never sentiment, but the centre in which the whole thing is held together.
You can also feel your way through each of the five senses to the void beneath it — the eternal stillness that underlies and pervades whatever the sense is reporting.
Word by word
śikhi+pakṣaiḥ — by the feathers of the peacock (m. instr. pl.; śikhin — the crested one, the peacock); citra+rūpaiḥ — of variegated, many-coloured form (instr. pl.); maṇḍalaiḥ — by the circles, the eye-rings (n. instr. pl.); śūnya+pañcakam — the pentad of voids (n. acc. sg.); dhyāyataḥ — of/for the one meditating (pres. part. m. gen. sg., √dhyai); anuttare — in the unsurpassed, that with nothing higher (n. loc. sg.); śūnye — in the void (n. loc. sg.); praveśaḥ — entry (m. nom. sg.); hṛdaye — in the heart (n. loc. sg.); bhavet — would come about (opt. 3 sg., √bhū)
By just such a sequence, thinking — anywhere at allon a void; on a wall; on some worthy vessel — dissolves of itself, and grants the boon
Translation · colloquial
By exactly these same graded steps, thinking can be set down anywhere at all,on empty air, on a wall, on some worthy vessel, and it melts of its own accord, and gives you what you came for.
Practice
The method generalises. Choose any resting place for the mind — empty air, a blank wall, another person — and give thinking a single object, by graded steps, as the earlier verses did. Then let the thinking thin out on its own. You do not end it; it ends. The promise lies in that self-dissolving: attention that has died into its object is what grants the gift.
Śivopādhyāya makes the move sharper than 'any object will do'. He says to contemplate the whole twelvefold ascent — the stations from the root to the crown and past it — in the outer void, or in a wall, exactly as in the body of your own self. So what is being generalised is not the attention but the body: you find your own axis in the empty air in front of you. And where the verse says 'a worthy vessel' he takes it to mean a person — a disciple of spotless mind — not a bowl. Doing this practice with another human being in front of you is a different undertaking from doing it with a wall, and he offers both.
Śivopādhyāya’s commentary
This is the verse where the text stops and says the object was never the point. Śivopādhyāya makes it more specific than that: contemplate the twelvefold ascent from root to crown in the outer void or in a wall exactly as in your own body — the axis is what gets transferred, not merely the attention. And 'a worthy vessel' he reads as a person: a disciple of spotless mind. Sanskrit pātra means both a bowl and a fit recipient, and he takes the second.
Commentary
Nine portals in, the text stops and tells you what it has been doing. The object was never the point — take any object, empty air, a blank wall, a good bowl, and run the same graded attention into it.
Wall-gazing has its own long life elsewhere, notably in Chan, and there is no need to suppose any connection between traditions. A wall is available to everyone and does the same nothing for all of us.
What is precisely stated is the ending: svayaṃ līnā, the thinking dissolves of its own accord. You do not stop it. The single most common way to lose this practice is to try — to notice the thinning and take charge of it.
Word by word
īdṛśena — by such, of this kind (m. instr. sg.); krameṇa — by the sequence, the graded method (m. instr. sg.); eva — precisely, indeed (particle); yatra kutra api — wherever at all (indeclinable phrase); cintanā — thinking, directed contemplation (f. nom. sg.); śūnye — on a void, on empty [space] (loc. sg.); kuḍye — on a wall (n. loc. sg.); pare — on a surpassing, excellent (loc. sg.); pātre — vessel, worthy object (n. loc. sg.); svayam — of itself, of its own accord (indecl.); līnā — dissolved, merged (ppp f. nom. sg., agreeing with cintanā); vara+pradā — boon-granting (f. nom. sg., bahuvrīhi)
Set the mind inside the skull and stay, the eyes closedlittle by little, as the mind grows steady, sight the highest mark
Translation · colloquial
Set the mind down inside the skull and stay there, the eyes closed.Little by little, as the mind settles into stillness, sight the highest mark.
Practice
Set the mind down inside the skull, as if lowering it into the dark bowl of the head, and remain there. Do not look for anything at first; the instruction is to stay. Steadiness is the instrument: as the mind settles into stillness, a seeing becomes possible, and by degrees you discern the highest mark. Let it be found rather than hunted.
Śivopādhyāya reads 'eyes closed' twice over. Outwardly: kūṇita, narrowed to a slit rather than shut — the ordinary posture of this literature, worth trying against a full closing. Inwardly, and this is his real gloss: saṃkucita-bheda-dṛṣṭi, the seeing of difference contracted. The eyelid is the small version of what is actually being asked. He also gives the mark a description the verse refuses — a self-luminous light in the aperture at the crown — and cites Patañjali for it. Take that as his, not the verse's. Sitting down expecting a light is precisely the way to manufacture one.
Śivopādhyāya’s commentary
Śivopādhyāya reads 'eyes closed' as saṃkucita-bheda-dṛṣṭi, the seeing of difference contracted — the eyelid being the outward half of it; he also glosses it kūṇita, narrowed to a slit rather than shut. And he takes the skull by an old etymology in which ka is the supreme Śakti and pāla the protector Śiva, so that 'inside the skull' means inside the conjunction of the two. Where the verse names the mark only as 'highest', he describes it: a self-luminous light in the aperture at the crown, on which concentration, meditation and absorption are accomplished in turn — citing Patañjali, 'on the light in the crown, the vision of the perfected ones'. The verse's silence about what is seen may well be deliberate.
Commentary
Attention put in a place rather than on an object, which is what dhāraṇā means at its most literal: a holding in a location.
The place is odd and the oddness is useful. The inside of your own skull is somewhere you have never looked, and setting the mind down in that dark bowl has a disorienting quality that keeps the practice from going comfortable.
The verse is unusually frank about the first stretch: nothing is promised except staying. Firmness comes by degrees, and only out of firmness does any seeing arise.
The mark to be sighted is never described, only called highest. That is deliberate. A described mark is a thing to manufacture, and someone who sits down knowing what they are supposed to see will see it.
Word by word
kapāla+antaḥ — inside the skull (adverbial; kapāla — skull, cranium); manaḥ — the mind (n. acc. sg.); nyasya — having set down, placed (gerund, ni-√as); tiṣṭhan — standing, remaining (pres. part. m. nom. sg., √sthā); mīlita+locanaḥ — whose eyes are closed (m. nom. sg., bahuvrīhi); krameṇa — gradually, in due order (instr. sg., adverbial); manasaḥ — of the mind (n. gen. sg.); dārḍhyāt — from the firmness, the steadiness (n. abl. sg.); lakṣayet — one should sight, discern (opt. 3 sg., caus. of √lakṣ); lakṣyam — the mark, what is to be sighted (n. acc. sg.; KSTS, glossed uttamaṃ lakṣyaṃ lakṣayet — the e-text's laṣyam is not a word); uttamam — highest, utmost (n. acc. sg.)
The central channel stands in the midmost, her form the sheen of a lotus-stem fibremeditated on as the goddess who is inner sky — through her the god shines forth
Translation · colloquial
The channel that runs up the middle stands in the midmost, and she has the sheen of the thread inside a lotus stem.Meditate on her as the goddess who is inner sky, and through her the god shines out.
Practice
Find the middle channel, the nāḍī that runs up the exact centre of the body. See her as fine and pale as the thread inside a lotus stalk — and hollow: meditate on her inside as open sky. Hold both at once, utter fineness and utter spaciousness, until the channel is nothing but inner sky. Through her, the verse says, the god comes to light. You do not have to fetch him.
Śivopādhyāya puts the middle at the heart, and starting there is easier than trying to find a line through the whole body at once. He also says the thing that makes the two qualities stop fighting each other: inside the channel there is nothing but a void whose nature is the sky of consciousness, and it is out of that void that the breath-power comes. So the hollowness is not a space the goddess occupies. It is her. Follow the breath in until you are attending to where it comes from rather than to it.
Śivopādhyāya’s commentary
Śivopādhyāya names the channel suṣumnā and puts 'the midmost' at the middle of the heart. His central remark is about the hollowness: within the channel there is nothing but a void whose self is the sky of consciousness, and it is out of that void that the breath-power issues. The emptiness is not something the goddess contains — it is what she is. Note also what he does not do. Reading this verse from fully inside the tradition, he reaches for marut-śakti, the breath-power carried forward from the verses before, and never once for a coiled serpent.
Commentary
The channel is as fine as the pale thread inside a lotus stalk, and it is open sky within. Thread and sky, held at once — and the difficulty is that the two pull against each other. Most people can hold one and lose the other; the practice is both together, until fineness and spaciousness stop being a contradiction.
What is not here is worth as much as what is. No serpent, no coiled power at the base, no waking of anything. The whole kuṇḍalinī apparatus that later readers bring to a verse like this is absent, and the channel is simply where she stands.
And once more the grammar does the doctrine: it is through her that the god shines forth. He is not fetched. She is not a conduit to something better than herself.
Word by word
madhya+nāḍī — the central channel (f. nom. sg.; nāḍī — subtle channel); madhya+saṃsthā — standing in the middle (f. nom. sg., bahuvrīhi); bisa+sūtra+ābha+rūpayā — with a form like the sheen of the fibre-thread in a lotus stem (f. instr. sg.; bisa — lotus stem; sūtra — thread; ābhā — gleam, likeness); dhyātā — meditated upon (ppp f. nom. sg., √dhyai, agreeing with nāḍī); antar+vyomayā — who is inner sky, inner space (f. instr. sg., bahuvrīhi); devyā — by the goddess (f. instr. sg.); tayā — by her (f. instr. sg.); devaḥ — the god (m. nom. sg.); prakāśate — shines forth (pres. mid. 3 sg., pra-√kāś)
With the weapon of hands stopping the eyes; by piercing at the brow; by barring the doorsa bindu is seen and by degrees dissolves; in the middle of that, the supreme abiding
Translation · colloquial
The hands over the eyes for a weapon, a piercing at the brow, every door barred:a point of light is seen, and by degrees it goes, and in the middle of its going is the highest place to stand.
Practice
Use the hands to close the head's openings — eyes, ears, nostrils, lips — so that sight is stopped at its own gate. Press attention into the point between the brows until it gives way. In the darkness a bindu appears: a compact point of light. Watch it without touching it. It fades by degrees; follow it in. In the middle of its vanishing is the abiding the verse calls supreme.
Śivopādhyāya gives the hand position the verse assumes and does not describe: thumbs first, then forefingers, then the rest in order, the two hands between them stopping every opening in the face. He also says what makes the point fade — one-pointedness drawing on it, by degrees. So the watching is not passive; the narrowing of attention is the mechanism, and there is nothing else to do. And he reads the brow not as a place to pierce but as a knot. His word for what becomes of it is vidāraṇa, a rending — harsher than the knot image leads you to expect, and his rather than ours. Nothing in the practice asks you to supply that force. You supply the one-pointedness; the knot gives way or it does not. In his reading the bindu dissolves into the sky of consciousness, and the 'middle' you end in is the midst of that, not the middle of the vanishing point.
Śivopādhyāya’s commentary
The verse assumes a hand position it never describes. Śivopādhyāya describes it: thumb, forefinger and the rest in sequence, the two hands stopping every opening of the face — the word for the eyes standing in for the whole set. He reads the brow not as a point to pierce but as a knot to be torn open, and he names the mechanism of the fading: one-pointedness drawing on the bindu, by degrees. He then construes the verse's three phrases three different ways over, and settles on none, so this translation keeps the order and the ambiguity the Sanskrit has.
Commentary
The hands do physical work here, and what appears is described as seen rather than imagined.
Sealing the outward channels is an old and widespread practice. The classical name is pratyahara, withdrawal, and the later hatha manuals build a whole family of mudras on the same principle: close the doors and the pressure goes inward. This one can be read alongside the breath practices already given, and the sealing done while you work with the breath.
Two cautions, since the verse gives none. Practising alone, let the hands rest on the eyes rather than press them. Sustained pressure on the eyeball raises the pressure inside it and can slow the heart, and anyone with glaucoma, a retinal condition, high myopia or recent eye surgery should close the lids and leave it there. And when the sealing is combined with breathwork, it is your capacity and comfort with the breath that sets the limit, not the seal.
What is distinctive here is the ending. The bindu is not to be held, brightened or interpreted; the instruction is to stay with it while it fades, and the abiding is located in the departure.
Notice what the verse omits: how long, how hard, and what to do if nothing comes. That silence runs through all 112 and is not damage in transmission. It is the part a teacher was there for.
Word by word
kara+ruddha+dṛś+astreṇa — with the weapon that is the eyes [and openings] stopped by the hands (instr. sg. compound; kara — hand; ruddha — blocked, ppp of √rudh; dṛś — eye, sight; astra — weapon); bhrū+bhedāt — from the piercing of the brow[-centre] (m. abl. sg.; bheda — splitting, piercing); dvāra+rodhanāt — from the blocking of the doors, the sense-openings (n. abl. sg.); dṛṣṭe — when seen (ppp loc. sg., locative absolute); bindau — the bindu, the point [of light] (m. loc. sg., locative absolute); kramāt — gradually (abl. as adverb); līne — when dissolved (ppp loc. sg., locative absolute); tat+madhye — in the middle of that (loc. sg.); paramā — supreme (f. nom. sg.); sthitiḥ — abiding, station (f. nom. sg.)
Its shape a tilaka-mark of subtle fire, born of stirring within the seat of lightfor the one meditating on that bindu — at the crown's end; in the heart; at the end of its dissolving — dissolution
Translation · colloquial
A point shaped like the mark on a forehead, made of fine fire, born of a stirring deep in the seat of light.Meditate on it at the crown, and in the heart, and at the very end of its melting: and you melt.
Practice
A point small and exact as a tilaka-mark, made of subtle fire, arisen of itself from a stirring deep within the seat of light. Hold it at the crown's end, then in the heart. Do not brighten it; let it burn down. Attend to the very end of its going out: as the point dissolves, the one meditating dissolves with it.
Śivopādhyāya reads the seat of light as the light in the eye itself, and the point as what arises there under pressure — the same hands, still on the same eyes, as the portal before. So this need not be imagined at all; it can be the thing that appears when the eyes have been pressed and released. His other reading is a lamp guttering at the moment it goes out, and the point that arises from that flicker. Either way the object is given rather than invented, which changes only one thing about the practice, and changes it completely: you cannot make more of it without going back and pressing again. Don't. The instruction is to attend to it going. He puts the crown's end at the dvādaśānta — twelve finger-widths above the head, the station portal 5 ended at, not the breath's outer point of portal 1 — and says what the dissolution dissolves into — the principle of light, in a culmination where conceiving has melted off.
Śivopādhyāya’s commentary
Śivopādhyāya reads the seat of light as the brightness residing in the eye, and the point as a pressure phosphene — arisen 'by intense pressing and the like', of the form of a ray of the eye. On his reading this portal is the continuation of the one before it, hands still on the eyes, and nothing here is imagined. His alternative is a lamp at the moment it gutters out. He puts the crown's end at the dvādaśānta, twelve fingers out, and names what the dissolving dissolves into: the principle of light, in a culmination where conceiving has melted away.
Commentary
Something is made — here a point of subtle fire, exact as a mark on the forehead — for the sole purpose of being watched as it diminishes. This is the third of the endings-practices, after the breath's dying-down and before the silence at the end of OM, and the family resemblance is the teaching.
The instruction not given is the one the hand reaches for: do not brighten it. A bindu you are feeding is a bindu that will not finish.
Since Śivopādhyāya reads the point as what arises under pressure on the eyes, our caution at the portal before applies here unchanged. But read him carefully: he is accounting for where the point comes from, not issuing a fresh instruction. On his reading the hands are already where the portal before left them, and what this verse asks is what to do with what has appeared — not how to make more of it.
The verse says laya twice in three words, at the end of its dissolving, dissolution, and that repetition is the mechanism: attention that has genuinely gone into an object goes wherever the object goes. This is the same principle the text will use later for music and for pleasure, stated most nakedly here, where the object is nothing but a spark you evoked.
Word by word
dhāma+antaḥ+kṣobha+sambhūta+sūkṣma+agni+tilaka+ākṛtim — having the shape of a tilaka-mark of subtle fire arisen from stirring within the dhāman, the seat of light (m. acc. sg., bahuvrīhi; dhāman — abode, seat of light; kṣobha — stirring, agitation; sambhūta — arisen, ppp of sam-√bhū; tilaka — the forehead mark; ākṛti — shape); bindum — the bindu, the point (m. acc. sg.); śikhā+ante — at the end of the śikhā, the crown-tuft [or the flame-tip] (loc. sg.); hṛdaye — in the heart (n. loc. sg.); laya+ante — at the end of [its] dissolving (loc. sg.); dhyāyataḥ — for the one meditating (pres. part. m. gen. sg., √dhyai); layaḥ — dissolution (m. nom. sg.)
In the unstruck [sound] — unbroken, rushing like a river — in the ear, a fit vesselone bathed in the brahman that is sound reaches the supreme brahman
Translation · colloquial
There is a sound nothing strikes, unbroken, running like a river, and the ear is a vessel fit to hold it.Steep yourself in that sound until you are nothing but steeped, and you arrive at what is highest.
Practice
Sit where it is quiet and listen inward, not for any sound that something makes. The anāhata is the unstruck sound: nothing strikes to produce it, and it does not break off. When the ear has grown fit for it, it runs on like a river heard from inside. Do not examine it. Enter it and stay, as you would stay in water. The immersion itself is the practice.
Śivopādhyāya is worth hearing on the question everyone asks, which is whether there is really a sound. He records that some read the verse to mean the ears are precisely not the vessel and the thing is apprehended only within — and then he says where the practitioners come down: in point of fact it is heard, as an object of the ear. He also says it sounds day and night without a break, which changes what you are doing: nothing is going to start. You are coming within earshot of something already running. And he says it is not merely uncaused but self-arisen, risen up of its own sap, and that it has a name — Nāda the Lord. Where our reading has you bathe in it, his has you do the three stages in it, concentration, meditation, absorption. Either way the instruction is to stay.
Śivopādhyāya’s commentary
Śivopādhyāya records that the tradition argued about whether this sound is actually heard. The compound can be read 'in which the ears are the vessel' or, divided otherwise, 'in which the ears are not the vessel' — apprehended only within. He gives both, then reports where the weight fell: the practitioners say it is in fact heard, as an object of the ear. He also says it sounds day and night without interruption, so nothing begins when you sit; and that it is risen of its own sap, not merely uncaused. He names it Nāda the Lord.
Commentary
We are talking about the OM sound — the unstruck sound. Nothing strikes to make it, so it never stops.
Listening inward for it is a very old and very widely promulgated practice, and there is a whole later discipline, nāda-yoga, built on this verse's territory.
One plain thing this text will not tell you: sit in a quiet room and most people hear something, and much of what they hear is the body — blood, and in a great many people a permanent ringing that a physician would name in a minute. The verse is indifferent to that adjudication and so should you be. The unstruck sound is everywhere and mostly unnoticed, and you can find it beneath and within whatever you hear of the body.
Its instruction is not to identify the sound but to bathe in it, to marinate in it; niṣṇāta means bathed, and the practice is immersion, not analysis. The moment you begin examining what you are hearing, you are on the bank rather than in the water.
Word by word
anāhate — in the unstruck [sound] (loc. sg., agreeing with an implied nāda/śabda; an-āhata, not struck); pātra+karṇe — in the ear [that is a] fit vessel (m. loc. sg.; pātra, worthy recipient); a+bhagna+śabde — whose sound is unbroken (loc. sg., bahuvrīhi agreeing with the same); sarit+drute — rushing like a river (loc. sg.; sarit, river + druta, ppp of dru, run/flow); śabda+brahmaṇi — in the brahman that is sound (n. loc. sg.); niṣṇātaḥ — immersed, adept (m. nom. sg., ppp of ni+snā, lit. bathed in); param — supreme (n. acc. sg.); brahma — brahman (n. acc. sg.); adhigacchati — he reaches (3rd sg. pres. act., adhi+gam)
Vijñāna Bhairava, verse 39 · dhāraṇā 16 · Sound · āṇavopāya · with a support · subtle → causal
प्रणवादिसमुच्चारात् प्लुतान्ते शून्यभावनात्
शून्यया परया शक्त्या शून्यताम् एति भैरवि
praṇavādisamuccārāt plutānte śūnyabhāvanāt śūnyayā parayā śaktyā śūnyatām eti bhairavi
Translation · literal Sanskrit
From the full voicing of the praṇava or its like — from contemplating the empty as the drawn-out vowel endsby the empty, supreme śakti one goes to emptiness, Bhairavī
Translation · colloquial
Sound the syllable all the way out, and as the long vowel dies away, hold the empty.Then an empty and supreme power carries you into emptiness, Bhairavi.
Practice
Sound OM once, slowly, and let the last vowel stretch long past its ordinary length. When it gives out, do not start again. Attend to the empty place the sound leaves behind, and rest there. You are not asked to hold anything; the verse says an empty, supreme śakti — power — carries you into emptiness. Your part is the full utterance and the willingness to stay in what follows.
Śivopādhyāya is explicit that OM is one option among several — the Vedic praṇava is OM, the Śaiva HŪṂ, the māyā-praṇava HRĪṂ, and the tantras teach more. Use whichever you have. He gives a good image for the length: like the ringing of an empty vessel, a resonance left to run out rather than a note pushed with the breath. And he says the tail is not undifferentiated. As the sound thins, it passes through subtle phases in order — bindu, the half-moon, and finer ones after — and the whole reason for the protraction is to give them time to form. The last of them, he says, cannot be uttered at all. That is where the practice is going, and it is why you do not start again.
Śivopādhyāya’s commentary
Śivopādhyāya reads 'or its like' widely: the Vedic praṇava is OM, the Śaiva HŪṂ, the māyā-praṇava HRĪṂ, and the tantras teach many more. His remark on the length is an instruction in itself — the protracted vowel should ring like an empty vessel, three morae, left to run out. And the silence is not undifferentiated: as the sound thins it passes through subtle resonances in order, bindu, half-moon and finer, which is what the length is for. The last of them, he says, is impossible to utter — a void whose form is undivided consciousness, and which nevertheless becomes the whole.
Commentary
You can test this one in the next minute: sound OM once, let the final vowel run long, and when it gives out do not start again. Of the first twenty it is the most immediately doable.
The text is technically exact about the length — pluta is a real grammatical category, the three-mora vowel, held past any ordinary syllable — because the point is to make the ending unmistakable. Everything is in the silence that the sound leaves shaped behind it.
What keeps this from being a nihilism is the phrase most easily skated over: it is by an empty and supreme śakti that one goes to emptiness. The emptiness is a power. It is not an absence you fall into but something active that takes you, and your whole contribution is the full utterance and the willingness not to fill the gap.
Word by word
praṇava+ādi+samuccārāt — from the full utterance of the praṇava (OM) and the like (m. abl. sg.; sam+uccāra, complete voicing); pluta+ante — at the end of the prolated [vowel] (loc. sg.; pluta, the three-mora prolonged vowel); śūnya+bhāvanāt — from contemplation of the empty (abl. sg.; the text's bhāvānāt read as bhāvanāt, see notes); śūnyayā — empty (f. inst. sg.); parayā — supreme (f. inst. sg.); śaktyā — by the śakti (f. inst. sg.); śūnyatām — emptiness (f. acc. sg.); eti — he goes to (3rd sg. pres. act., i); bhairavi — O Bhairavī (f. voc. sg.)
Feel out the beginning and the end of any letter whateverby the empty [śakti] emptied, that person becomes one whose form is emptiness
Translation · colloquial
Take any letter at all, and feel out the edge before it and the edge after it.Emptied by the empty one, that person comes to have the shape of emptiness.
Practice
Take any letter of speech — any sound at all. Say it once, aloud or in the mind, and attend to its two edges: the moment before it arises, the moment after it stops. The letter itself is not the object; the emptiness on either side of it is. Attended to cleanly, the one attending takes on the shape of what is attended to.
Śivopādhyāya makes the near edge much more findable. He glosses it as the wish to utter — the impulse, caught in the instant before anything is sounded. So the two edges are not the same kind of thing. The far one is a sound stopping, which is easy to notice; the near one is the intention to speak, which is not, and which is where most of this practice actually lies. And he says to contemplate the edges as pervaded by the void, rather than merely to attend to them: they are not the object either, they are where it shows through. What falls away, on his account, is not the person but the conceit of being a knower identified with a body.
Śivopādhyāya’s commentary
The shortest comment in this stretch, and it turns on one word. Śivopādhyāya glosses the letter's beginning as ucciccārayiṣā — the wish to utter, the impulse caught before anything is sounded. So the near edge is not silence but intention. He adds that the two edges are to be contemplated as pervaded by the void rather than attended to for themselves, and that what falls away at the end is the conceit of being a knower identified with the body.
Commentary
Yasya kasyāpi — of any letter whatever. Two words, and they are what make this verse remarkable. There is no seed syllable to be received, no initiation, no lineage requirement; the sound may be one you invented on the way to the kitchen, because the sound is not the object. Its edges are.
Where earlier portals gave you the ending of a breath or of a note, this one gives both edges of the smallest sonic thing there is, and asks you to feel out the silence the letter comes from as well as the one it goes into.
And here the text states its own working principle outright, having only implied it so far: attend to emptiness and you become empty; the one attending takes the form of what is attended. Everything in this book that promises to turn a person into something rests on that sentence.
Word by word
yasya kasya api — of any whatever (m. gen. sg., indefinite phrase); varṇasya — of a letter, a speech-sound (m. gen. sg.); pūrva+antau — the beginning and the end (m. acc. du., dvandva: what precedes and where it ceases); anubhāvayet — let him attend to, bring into felt experience (3rd sg. opt. caus., anu+bhū); śūnyayā — by the empty [śakti] (f. inst. sg., noun unexpressed); śūnya+bhūtaḥ — become empty (m. nom. sg.); asau — that one (m. nom. sg., pron.); śūnya+ākāraḥ — whose form is emptiness (m. nom. sg., bahuvrīhi); pumān — the person (m. nom. sg., puṃs); bhavet — becomes (3rd sg. opt.)
In the drawn-out sounds of stringed and other instruments, resting fixed in their sequencewith mind on nothing else, at the very end of each — one's body becomes the supreme sky
Translation · colloquial
In the long sounds of a plucked string, or any instrument like it, staying with them as they follow one another,with the mind on nothing else, at the very end of each note your body becomes the highest sky.
Practice
Listen to music whose notes are long — a bowed or plucked string is the verse's example. Give the whole mind to each note as it follows the last, refusing every other object. Then attend at the very end of a note, the point where sound gives way. What receives the note when it dies is a wideness; the verse calls it the supreme sky, and says you become its body.
Śivopādhyāya says why the notes have to be long: length is the cause suited to producing a mind on nothing else. Only a note that goes on lets an unbroken stream of attention form, and only an unbroken stream leaves anything behind when it stops. He is also precise about the moment: absorption comes at the end, when the sound has ceased and no other object has yet arisen. That is the whole condition. If the mind has already moved to the next note, or to the fact that a note has ended, the gap has been filled and there is nothing to enter. His instruments are all long-decay plucked strings — the hundred-stringed, the seven-stringed vīṇā, the gourd vīṇā — and he treats the notes as belonging to a mode, a mūrchanā, so that each follows the last without your choosing it.
Śivopādhyāya’s commentary
Śivopādhyāya gives the working part of this verse in one sentence: length is the cause appropriate to producing a mind on nothing else. Only a long note builds an unbroken stream of attention, and only that leaves a gap when it stops. He is exact about the moment too — absorption comes when the sound has ceased and no other object has yet arisen. His instruments are all long-decay strings: the hundred-stringed, the seven-stringed vīṇā, the gourd vīṇā. And he takes the verse's 'sequence' as a musical term, the mūrchanā, so that each note follows the last without your having to choose it.
Commentary
This is the book's other music verse, and it wants something quite different from the one further on. There, the mind melts into the song and stays; here it waits at the far end of each note for the moment the sound gives out. Pratyante, at the very end of each — so this happens dozens of times in one piece of music, not once at the close.
The verse names strings for a good reason. A plucked or bowed note has an audible dying edge, and most of what comes out of a speaker today is compressed until it has none. A struck bowl, a plucked string, a bowed drone will all do it.
What the verse claims is oddly precise, and you can check it: the silence a long note falls into is not the same silence as before it began. It has a size.
Word by word
tantrī+ādi+vādya+śabdeṣu — in the sounds of stringed and other instruments (m. loc. pl.; tantrī, string; vādya, instrument, what is played); dīrgheṣu — long, drawn out (loc. pl.); krama+saṃsthiteḥ — from settled abiding in their succession (f. abl. sg.; krama, sequence + saṃsthiti, remaining fixed); ananya+cetāḥ — with mind on nothing else (m. nom. sg., bahuvrīhi); prati+ante — at the very end [of each sound] (loc. sg.); para+vyoma+vapuḥ — having the supreme sky as body (m. nom. sg., bahuvrīhi; vyoman, sky, space; vapus, body, form); bhavet — he becomes (3rd sg. opt.)
Vijñāna Bhairava, verse 42 · dhāraṇā 19 · Sound · āṇavopāya · with a support · gross → causal
पिण्डमन्त्रस्य सर्वस्य स्थूलवर्णक्रमेण तु
अर्धेन्दुबिन्दुनादान्तः शून्योच्चाराद् भवेच् छिवः
piṇḍamantrasya sarvasya sthūlavarṇakrameṇa tu ardhendubindunādāntaḥ śūnyoccārād bhavec chivaḥ
Translation · literal Sanskrit
Any piṇḍa mantra whole, [voiced] through the sequence of its gross lettersending in half-moon, bindu, nāda — by the voicing into emptiness one becomes Śiva
Translation · colloquial
Take a whole seed-sound and voice it through its plain letters, in order,and let it thin to the half-moon, the point, the fading hum: voice it out into emptiness and you are Shiva.
Practice
Take a compact seed mantra and voice its audible letters in order, without hurry. Then follow the sound inward through its tail: the vowel closes into a half-heard nasal hum, gathers to a point, thins to bare vibration, and gives out. Ride the utterance all the way into that emptiness, and do not pull back at the threshold.
If you have not been given a seed mantra, you are not shut out of this one. Śivopādhyāya says the piṇḍa mantra is OM — or so'ham, which is the same thing, since so'ham with its two consonants dropped leaves OM — and that it counts as a piṇḍa mantra because it is already distributed through the body from the navel upward. It is the mantra the breath says without anyone reciting it.
He also walks the tail out much further than three steps, and puts each step somewhere: a at the navel, u at the heart, m at the mouth; then the bindu between the brows, the half-moon at the forehead, and above that a series growing finer — nirodhinī, nāda, nādānta, śakti, vyāpinī, samanā — up through the crown, ending at unmanā, the mind-beyond, which he says is what the verse means by 'emptiness'. Note the order: bindu first, then half-moon. The verse as printed has them the other way round and he says plainly that it should be read his way. The three gross letters take a full beat each; everything above the bindu takes half a beat; above the last there is no utterance left. Twelve beats for the whole ascent is his measure.
Śivopādhyāya’s commentary
The verse looks as though it needs something you were given. Śivopādhyāya says otherwise: the piṇḍa mantra is OM, or so'ham — which is OM with its two consonants dropped — and it counts as compacted because it is already laid out through the body from navel to crown. It is the mantra the breath says unrecited.
He also extends the tail far past the three the verse names, and gives each step a seat in the body: a at the navel, u at the heart, m at the mouth, the bindu between the brows, the half-moon at the forehead, then nirodhinī, nāda, nādānta, śakti, vyāpinī, samanā, and last unmanā at the end of the crown-lock — which he says is what 'emptiness' means here. He notes the order should run bindu, half-moon, nāda rather than as the verse prints it, and he times the ascent: a full beat for each of the three gross letters, half a beat for each stage above the bindu, twelve beats in all.
Commentary
This is the first portal that assumes something you may not have. A piṇḍa mantra is a compacted seed syllable given in a lineage, and the text takes for granted that you were handed one. The verse before it deliberately needed nothing of the kind; the pairing is either a courtesy or an accident, but it means no one is shut out.
What is described in the tail — half-moon, bindu, nāda — is not mysticism but the phonetics of a nasalised syllable heard closely. Anyone can find the ladder by humming a long m and refusing to stop: the vowel closes to a hum, the hum narrows to a point, the point thins to a vibration with no location, and then there is nothing.
The whole practice is in not pulling out at that last stair, which is where the body wants its next breath.
Word by word
piṇḍa+mantrasya — of a piṇḍa mantra, a compacted seed-syllable (m. gen. sg.; piṇḍa, lump, mass); sarvasya — of any, whole (m. gen. sg.); sthūla+varṇa+krameṇa — through the sequence of its gross letters (m. inst. sg.); tu — and, but (particle); ardha+indu+bindu+nāda+antaḥ — ending in the half-moon, the bindu, and the nāda (m. nom. sg., bahuvrīhi on the implied utterance/utterer); śūnya+uccārāt — from the voicing [that issues] into emptiness (m. abl. sg.; uccāra, upward utterance); bhavet — he becomes (3rd sg. opt.; sandhi bhavec chivaḥ = bhavet śivaḥ); śivaḥ — Śiva (m. nom. sg.)
In your own body contemplate space in every direction, all at oncethe mind without constructs — and everything unfolds for you as space
Translation · colloquial
In your own body hold open space in every direction, all at once.With the mind making nothing of it, everything unfolds for you as space.
Practice
Sit still and contemplate open space within your own body — in every direction at once. Not the head, then the chest, then the back: all of it together, above, below, before, behind, on both sides. Held this way, the mind has no foothold for building one image after another. When its constructing stops, the verse says, everything — not the body only — unfolds as space.
Śivopādhyāya has one word for this verse and it is the right one: akrama, without succession. The four portals before this were all sequence — letters in order, stations in order, morae counted out. This one is defined by having none, and the whole difficulty is that the mind will try to take the directions one at a time. He also lists only four of them, in front, right, left and behind, which is a ring rather than a sphere and is considerably easier to hold all at once. Start there if the full six keeps collapsing into a sequence.
Śivopādhyāya’s commentary
Two lines of comment, and one word in them. Śivopādhyāya glosses 'all at once' as akrama, without succession — set against the krama, the strict sequence, on which the four portals before this one were built. He also names only four directions, in front, right, left and behind: a ring rather than a sphere, which is easier to hold whole. And he reads 'the mind without constructs' as one-pointedness brought in at the start rather than as what results.
Commentary
Three verses now run on one piece of engineering, and it is worth naming, because it explains all of them. The mind constructs serially — one thing, then the next thing. Yugapad, simultaneously, is the word that appears in each of the three, and the demand for everything at once is a demand the constructing faculty cannot meet. It does not stop because you told it to. It stops because it has been given a job with no serial form.
In this first of the three the whole body is the site: space above, below, before, behind and to both sides, held together and not toured.
The reward clause is larger than the practice, as it often is here — not the body only but everything unfolds as space — and the honest reading is that the verse is describing what has happened to some people, not issuing a guarantee.
Word by word
nija+dehe — in one's own body (loc. sg.); sarva+dikkam — belonging to all directions (n. acc. sg., adj. with viyat); yugapad — simultaneously (indecl.); bhāvayet — let him contemplate (3rd sg. opt. caus., bhū); viyat — space, sky (n. acc. sg.); nirvikalpa+manāḥ — whose mind is without constructs (m. nom. sg., bahuvrīhi; vikalpa, thought-construct); tasya — for him (m. gen. sg.); viyat — space (n. nom. sg.); sarvam — all, everything (n. nom. sg.); pravartate — comes about, unfolds (3rd sg. pres. mid., pra+vṛt)
Vijñāna Bhairava, verse 44 · dhāraṇā 21 · Space · śāktopāya · a means of mind · subtle
पृष्ठशून्यं मूलशून्यं युगपद् भावयेच् च यः
शरीरनिरपेक्षिण्या शक्त्या शून्यमना भवेत्
pṛṣṭhaśūnyaṃ mūlaśūnyaṃ yugapad bhāvayec ca yaḥ śarīranirapekṣiṇyā śaktyā śūnyamanā bhavet
Translation · literal Sanskrit
Whoever contemplates at once the emptiness above and the emptiness belowby the śakti that takes no support from the body, that one's mind becomes empty
Translation · colloquial
Hold the empty space above you and the empty space below you, both at once.A power that needs no body to lean on will empty your mind.
Practice
Hold two emptinesses at once: one above, one below. Śivopādhyāya reads the pair as a vertical axis rather than as parts of the body — the emptiness overhead and the emptiness beneath. Both together, not alternating between them: the simultaneity is the practice. Held in two places at once, the mind cannot settle into either. The śakti at work here takes no support from the body, and he makes that the point of it — when what you are is no longer resting on the body, her independence of the body is simply what is left. Let her do the work, and the mind itself goes empty.
Śivopādhyāya’s commentary
Śivopādhyāya reads the pair vertically — ऊर्ध्वाधः, ‘above and below’ — rather than as the back and the base of the body (plate 0048). One verse earlier, at 43, he uses pṛṣṭha for the horizontal ‘behind’, so the vertical sense here is chosen rather than careless.
Commentary
Two places, and the choice of places is not arbitrary. The back and the base are the two regions of yourself you cannot see, cannot easily attend to, and spend your life with your attention turned away from. Putting emptiness in exactly those two, at the same moment, asks for something the ordinary body-sense is not built to do. That is the point, and the difficulty is honest difficulty rather than a failure of concentration.
The phrase to sit with is the one describing the power at work: śakti that takes no support from the body. The practice is located in the body throughout, and the thing doing the work is explicitly not. The text feels no need to resolve that, and neither should you while you are doing it.
Word by word
pṛṣṭa+śūnyam — the emptiness at the back (n. acc. sg.; pṛṣṭa for pṛṣṭha, back); mūla+śūnyam — the emptiness at the root, the base (n. acc. sg.; the received line renders this pair 'above' and 'below'. Śivopādhyāya takes pṛṣṭha and mūla as the two ends of a vertical axis rather than as two places on the body, and the translation follows him. The words on their own say back and root); yugapad — simultaneously (indecl.); bhāvayet — should contemplate (3rd sg. opt. caus.); ca — and (particle); yaḥ — whoever (m. nom. sg., rel. pron.); śarīra+nirapekṣiṇyā — not dependent on the body (f. inst. sg., agreeing with śaktyā; nir+apekṣin, without regard to); śaktyā — by the śakti (f. inst. sg.); śūnya+manāḥ — empty-minded (m. nom. sg., bahuvrīhi); bhavet — he becomes (3rd sg. opt.)
Contemplate, steadily, emptiness above; emptiness below; emptiness in the heartall at once, free of constructs — and from that the construct-free stands revealed
Translation · colloquial
Steadily, and all at once, hold three empty places: above you, below you, and in the heart.Nothing is being made of them then — and what was never made stands plain.
Practice
As in the last dhāraṇā, but with a third place, and Śivopādhyāya names what the three are: above is the knower, below is the known, and the heart between them is the act of knowing itself. Empty all three at once — there is then no one to know, nothing to be known, and no knowing going on in between. Of the three he weights the middle: the heart's emptiness, he says, is the greater here. Steadily is how, not what — it qualifies the act, not the emptiness. And what comes of it does not arrive: he reads the verse's dawning as a becoming-manifest, so the construct-free state is not produced by the practice but uncovered by it, having been there the whole time. Do not look for it; keep the three.
Śivopādhyāya’s commentary
He names what the three empty places are: above is the knower, below the known, and the heart between them the act of knowing — पृष्ठे ऊर्ध्वे प्रमातृरूपं … मूलमपि अधोदेशात्मकं प्रमेयं … हृदयमध्येऽपि प्रमाणात्मके (plate 0048). Of the three he weights the middle. He also reads the verse’s dawning as उदय अभिव्यक्तिः — a becoming-manifest, not a coming-into-being.
Commentary
The same instruction with a third site, and the third is the heart — which in this text is never sentiment and never the organ, but the centre where the whole is held. So the escalation is not merely arithmetic. Two peripheral emptinesses become two and a centre, and the figure closes.
The only new word is sthiram, steadily. This is not a flash; it is to be held.
Whether two places or three is right for a given person is not a ranking, and reading it as one is the standing temptation of a numbered book. Take whichever number saturates your attention completely, since saturation is the whole mechanism — and note that the verse does not say the construct-free state is produced. It says it dawns, from that, of itself.
Word by word
pṛṣṭa+śūnyam — the emptiness at the back (n. acc. sg.); mūla+śūnyam — the emptiness at the base (n. acc. sg.; as at the portal before, the received line renders the pair 'above' and 'below' on Śivopādhyāya's reading of the axis. The words on their own say back and base); hṛt+śūnyam — the emptiness in the heart (n. acc. sg.; sandhi hṛcchūnyam); bhāvayet — let him contemplate (3rd sg. opt. caus.); sthiram — steadily (n. acc. sg., adverbial); yugapat — simultaneously (indecl.; sandhi yugapan before n-); nirvikalpatvāt — because of the absence of thought-constructs (n. abl. sg., abstract in -tva); nirvikalpa+udayaḥ — the arising of the construct-free [state] (m. nom. sg.); tataḥ — from that, thence (indecl.)
In one place in the body contemplate, a bare moment, emptiness alonewithout constructing a thought; construct-free, one shares in the construct-free nature
Translation · colloquial
In one spot in the body, for a bare moment, hold that there is nothing there at all.Do not make a thought of it. Free of that making, you come to share the nature of what is free of it.
Practice
Choose one place in the body. For a bare moment, no longer, contemplate that in that spot there is nothing at all: emptiness only, where flesh was. Do it without turning it into a thought about emptiness — a flash, not an argument. The moment done cleanly, free of constructs, leaves you sharing the nature of what is free of them.
Śivopādhyāya reads the place as the seat of the limited knower rather than as any patch of tissue, so the spot to pick is wherever you feel yourself to be located — and he says how to empty it: by the directional contemplation of the portal three back, above and below and around, now brought down to one station and one instant. His remark on the second word is the one to carry in. 'Free of construction', where it describes the practitioner, he glosses as one in whom no fear has arisen at the apprehension that there is no support. Something in a person flinches when the ground under attention is taken away. Not flinching is the qualification, and it is the reason a moment is enough and also the reason a moment can be hard.
Śivopādhyāya’s commentary
Śivopādhyāya reads 'the body's place' as the station of the limited knower — the seat of whatever in you is doing the perceiving — rather than any particular patch of flesh, and he says the emptying is done by the directional contemplation of the twentieth portal brought to a single spot. His gloss on the middle 'construct-free', the one describing the practitioner, is the sentence to keep: one in whom no fear has arisen through the apprehension that there is no support.
Commentary
After three verses demanding everything at once, here is one demanding almost nothing: a single small place, for a single moment, empty. The economy is the instruction. A bare moment — kṣaṇamātram — is short enough that no thought about emptiness has time to form, and the verse says twice over that the contemplation must be free of construction, which means it has to be finished before the mind can get a description going.
This one sits on the border of the third kind of means. It keeps a support, a patch of the body, so we have filed it with the second; but everything that makes it work is the instantaneity, and a practitioner who has met the sudden verses later in the book will recognise the family.
For the same reason it is unusually easy to do badly. A moment spent thinking about a spot being empty is not this verse at all.
Word by word
tanū+deśe — in one region of the body (m. loc. sg.; tanū, body + deśa, place); śūnyatā — emptiness (f. nom. sg. where acc. śūnyatām is expected as object — see notes); eva — alone, only (particle); kṣaṇa+mātram — for a mere moment (n. acc. sg., adverbial); vibhāvayet — let him contemplate vividly (3rd sg. opt. caus., vi+bhū); nirvikalpam — without constructing (n. acc. sg., adverbial); nirvikalpaḥ — construct-free (m. nom. sg.); nirvikalpa+svarūpa+bhāk — partaking of the construct-free own-nature (m. nom. sg.; bhāj, sharing in)
All the stuff the body holds, pervaded by space, gazelle-eyed one —contemplate it so, and that contemplation grows steady
Translation · colloquial
Everything the body is made of, shot through with space, doe-eyed one:hold it that way, and the holding itself grows steady in you.
Practice
Consider everything the body contains — flesh, fluid, bone, breath — and contemplate it all pervaded by space, the way water soaks through sand. Nothing is removed; everything is opened. The verse asks for vividness, not theory: feel the porousness rather than assert it. And it makes a plain promise: contemplated so, the contemplation itself grows steady.
Śivopādhyāya opens his comment by naming who this one is for: the person in whose heart the emptiness of the portal before would not settle at once. That one was a moment on a single spot; this is the slow route through the whole inventory, bone and flesh and the rest, taken piece by piece and distinctly. So if the sudden version keeps failing, this is not a lesser practice, it is the prescribed next move. What gets laid down, on his reading, is a disposition rather than a skill — the leaning toward emptiness becomes habitual, and that is what the verse means by steady.
Śivopādhyāya’s commentary
Śivopādhyāya opens by saying who this is for: one in whose heart the emptiness of the verse before did not settle in an instant. The portal before is the sudden version, a moment on a single spot; this is the graded one, going through the body's contents item by item — and the two are meant to be taken in that order. He also says what becomes steady is a disposition rather than an ability: the leaning toward emptiness, laid down as a habit.
Commentary
Nothing is closed, held or moved here. You contemplate, and that is the whole of it.
It works on the most solid thing you have and asks you to see it as porous, and the verse is careful to ask for that vividly rather than to ask you to agree: not the proposition that the body is mostly space, which is cheap, but the felt version, which is not.
Notice who is being spoken to. 'Gazelle-eyed one' is the Goddess, addressed by name, and half the charm of this text is that it is a conversation between lovers about how to disappear.
What it promises is modest and believable: what steadies is the contemplation itself. Do it and it gets easier. You can check that for yourself.
Word by word
sarvam — all (n. acc. sg.); deha+gatam — contained in the body (n. acc. sg.); dravyam — substance, stuff (n. acc. sg.); viyat+vyāptam — pervaded by space (n. acc. sg.; vyāpta, ppp of vi+āp); mṛga+īkṣaṇe — O gazelle-eyed one (f. voc. sg., bahuvrīhi; the Goddess addressed); vibhāvayet — let him contemplate vividly (3rd sg. opt. caus., vi+bhū); tataḥ — then (indecl.); tasya — his (m. gen. sg.); bhāvanā — the contemplation (f. nom. sg.); sā — that (f. nom. sg.); sthirā — steady (f. nom. sg.); bhavet — becomes (3rd sg. opt.)
Within the body consider the layer of skin a [mere] wallmeditating — nothing at all inside it — one comes to share in what cannot be meditated on
Translation · colloquial
Inside the body, take the layer of skin for a wall and nothing more.Meditate that there is nothing at all behind it, and you come to share in what no meditation can reach.
Practice
Consider the skin that bounds your body as a wall — a thin partition, nothing more. A wall around what? Meditate that inside it there is nothing at all. Stay with the nothing, not with the wall. What you arrive at is not one more object for meditation; the verse says you come to share in what no meditation can take as its object.
Śivopādhyāya is exact about the wall, and both his adjectives are instructions. It is an outer wall, seen the way you would see the side of a building from the street, not a lining felt from inside. And it is inert — dead masonry, not living tissue. He chooses the skin, he says, because it is the body's densest part: the strongest case anyone could make for solidity, which is why demoting that one settles the rest. What subsides, on his account, is the claim of the subtle body — the city of eight that carries a person from life to life — to be the one who knows. And he notes that this happens while you are still meditating, which is the whole oddity of the verse: the practice delivers you to something no practice can take hold of.
Śivopādhyāya’s commentary
Śivopādhyāya makes both halves of the wall an instruction: an outer wall, seen as from the street rather than felt as a lining, and an inert one, dead masonry rather than living tissue. He picks the skin because it is the body's densest part — the strongest case for solidity there is, which is why demoting it settles everything softer. What subsides, he says, is the puryaṣṭaka's claim to be the knower: the subtle body of eight, the part of a person that was thought to carry over from one life to the next.
Commentary
The verse before this asked you to see the body as porous. This one goes further and asks you to see it as a container with nothing in it — the skin demoted to a partition, and the partition enclosing no contents.
What makes it more than a striking image is the word it ends on. Adhyeya: not-to-be-meditated-on. A meditation that succeeds by delivering you to what no meditation can take as an object, so that the practice cancels its own category on completion. That move is not incidental to this book. It is the shape of its argument, and it will be made again at the very last verse.
The practical instruction hidden in the note is easy to lose: stay with the nothing, not with the wall. The wall is only there to make the nothing something you can attend to.
Word by word
deha+antare — within the body (loc. sg.; antara, interior); tvak+vibhāgam — the portion that is skin (m. acc. sg.; tvac, skin + vibhāga, division, layer); bhitti+bhūtam — being a [mere] wall (m. acc. sg.; bhitti, wall, partition); vicintayet — let him consider (3rd sg. opt., vi+cint); na kiṃcit — nothing at all (n. sg.); antare — inside (loc. sg.); tasya — of it (gen. sg.); dhyāyan — meditating (m. nom. sg., pres. act. part. of dhyai; sandhi dhyāyann); a+dhyeya+bhāk — sharing in what cannot be meditated on (m. nom. sg.; a-dhyeya, gerundive of dhyai negated, + bhāj); bhavet — he becomes (3rd sg. opt.)
Eyes dissolved in the heart's space, gone into the middle of the closed lotus-cupfortunate one — with mind on nothing else, one reaches the highest fortune
Translation · colloquial
Eyes gone down into the space of the heart, sitting in the middle of a lotus closed like cupped hands,with the mind on nothing else, lucky one, you come into the greatest luck there is.
Practice
Let the eyes close and sink, and the other senses with them, into the space inside the heart. Enter the middle of the heart-lotus, its two halves closed over you like cupped hands. Keep the mind on nothing else — that is the whole instruction. The fortune the verse promises is found inside the closed cup, not by prying it open.
Śivopādhyāya finds the heart's space in the breath: the station in the interval between the out-breath and the in-breath, which is where the very first portal began. So you can arrive at this one by breathing rather than by locating anything. He also says what the two lotuses are, and it is worth having. The upper is the means of knowing, the lower is the known, and the middle where you sit is the knower — pure consciousness, your own form. On that reading 'mind on nothing else' is not an effort of exclusion; once you are standing at the knower there is nothing else to be on. He says the cup is shut because the round of existence closes and opens like an eye, and this is the closing half. It does not stay shut: he ends by saying the mind that settles into the light of consciousness sees the whole world suffused with it.
Śivopādhyāya’s commentary
Śivopādhyāya locates the heart's space in the breath — the station in the interval between the out-breath and the in-breath, which is where the first portal of all began. And he says what the two lotuses are: the upper is the means of knowing, the lower is the known, and the middle you sink into is the knower, pure consciousness, your own form. The cup is shut, he says, because existence contracts and expands like an eye closing and opening, and this is the closing. It does not stay closed — he ends with the mind that has settled into the light of consciousness seeing the whole world suffused with it.
Commentary
Almost everything later iconography does with the heart-lotus opens it. This verse closes it. Sampuṭa is two bowls fitted rim to rim — the shape of hands cupped over something small — and you are asked to be inside it with the halves shut.
The feeling of the practice is enclosure rather than expansion, and that is worth knowing in advance, because a practitioner expecting a blossoming will spend the sitting trying to make the wrong thing happen.
The Sanskrit contains a small joke that is also the argument. The Goddess is addressed as subhagā, fortunate one, and what the practice yields is saubhāgya, fortune. She is being told that she will get what she already is. And the senses are not shut out by force here — nilīna, dissolved, melted in with the eyes.
Word by word
hṛdi+ākāśe — in the space in the heart (loc. sg.; sandhi hṛdyākāśe); nilīna+akṣaḥ — his eyes [and senses] dissolved [into it] (m. nom. sg., bahuvrīhi; nilīna, ppp of ni+lī, melted into; akṣa, eye, sense-organ); padma+sampuṭa+madhya+gaḥ — gone into the middle of the closed lotus-cup (m. nom. sg.; sampuṭa, two bowls fitted rim to rim; -ga, going/gone to); ananya+cetāḥ — with mind on nothing else (m. nom. sg., bahuvrīhi); subhage — O fortunate one (f. voc. sg.; the Goddess); param — highest (n. acc. sg.); saubhāgyam — fortune, blessedness (n. acc. sg.); āpnuyāt — he would attain (3rd sg. opt., āp)
On every side of one's own body, by the mind's dissolving in the dvādaśāntafor one of firm understanding the aim — reality — comes forth and holds firm
Translation · colloquial
All around your own body, twelve fingers out, let the mind dissolve.For one whose understanding has gone firm, what is actually there comes forward and holds.
Practice
The dvādaśānta is the 'end of twelve' — a point twelve finger-widths out from the body. Here it surrounds you: a shell of still space a short span from the skin, on every side at once. Let the mind dissolve outward into that surrounding distance and stay dissolved. For one who holds this firmly, the verse says, the aim — reality itself — comes forth and holds firm in return.
Śivopādhyāya puts it closer than a shell. There is a twelve-finger point, he says, even in the spaces between the pores — everywhere the body ends, and the body ends everywhere — because consciousness enters everywhere. So this need not be done as a distance held off the skin at all; it can be done at the skin, at any part of it, and found to be the same measure. He also glosses the dissolving as viśrānti, coming to rest. Nothing is being dispersed. The mind arrives somewhere and stops, and what then unfolds does not come toward you but spreads outward.
Śivopādhyāya’s commentary
Śivopādhyāya puts the twelve-finger point closer than a shell around the body. There is one, he says, even in the spaces between the pores — wherever the body ends, which is everywhere — and the reason is that consciousness enters everywhere. He glosses the mind's dissolving as viśrānti, coming to rest: nothing is dispersed, the mind arrives somewhere and stops. And he reads the firmness as belonging to the mind rather than to what is found, so the reciprocity in the last line may be a gift of the Sanskrit's ambiguity rather than of the verse.
Commentary
The dvādaśānta has moved. At the fifth portal it was a point twelve finger-breadths above the head; here it is a distance on every side of the body, a shell of still space just off the skin. Anyone hoping to pin it to one anatomical spot will be disappointed, and the disappointment is the lesson: it is a measure, not an organ, and this text uses it wherever a measured remove from the body is wanted.
The direction is unusual too. Most of these hundred and twelve move attention inward; this one puts it outside you and asks it to dissolve there.
The verse's last line is a reciprocity, and the same word does both halves of it: to the firm, reality comes forth and stands firm. Steadiness in the practitioner and steadiness in what is found are described as one event.
Word by word
sarvataḥ — on every side (indecl.); sva+śarīrasya — of one's own body (n. gen. sg.); dvādaśa+ante — in the dvādaśānta, the 'end of twelve' [finger-widths] (m. loc. sg.); manas+layāt — from the dissolving of the mind (m. abl. sg.; laya, dissolution); dṛḍha+buddheḥ — for one of firm understanding (m. gen. sg., bahuvrīhi); dṛḍhī+bhūtam — become firm (n. nom. sg.; cvi-formation with bhū); tattva+lakṣyam — the aim, the mark, that is reality (n. nom. sg.; tattva, thatness + lakṣya, what is aimed at); pravartate — comes forth (3rd sg. pres. mid., pra+vṛt)
In any way, in any place — cast the mind into the dvādaśāntamoment by moment; with the churning worn thin, within days comes a state unlike any other
Translation · colloquial
Any way at all, anywhere at all, throw the mind out to the point twelve fingers beyond you.Moment after moment, as the churning wears thin, within days something comes that is like nothing else.
Practice
No posture, no set place, no method: however you are, wherever you are, throw the mind out to the dvādaśānta — twelve finger-widths beyond the body — and when it wanders back, throw it again, moment by moment. Each throw cuts a churning short. As the churning wears thin, the verse promises, within days something arrives that is unlike anything you know. Keep throwing; do not measure.
Śivopādhyāya reads both halves of 'in any way, in any place' more narrowly than they sound. 'In any way' he glosses as whatever mode of consciousness's own spreading-out has arisen of its own accord — so you are not picking a method, you are using the movement already under way. 'In any place' he bounds to whichever of the stations the book has already named, which after the previous verse is effectively anywhere on the skin. And 'cast the mind' he glosses simply as make it one-pointed; the throwing is a figure, not a strain. On the promise he is dry: 'within days' means in not much time. Which is the best answer to the temptation to count.
Śivopādhyāya’s commentary
Śivopādhyāya takes the clock off the promise: 'within days', he says, means only in a little time. On the two open words he is narrower than they sound — 'in any way' is whatever mode of consciousness's spreading-out has arisen of its own accord, so you use the movement already under way rather than choosing one; and 'in any place' means at whichever of the stations already named. 'Cast the mind' he glosses simply as make it one-pointed. And he reports a variant that turns the line into a proportion: in whatever manner and wherever you cast the mind, in that manner and there the difference comes.
Commentary
No posture, no place, no preparation, in any manner, wherever you are. It is the most portable instruction in the book, and it is also the only one of the hundred and twelve that names a timescale. Within days.
Everything else in this text is silent about how long anything takes, so the exception stands out — and it is a trap. A promise with a clock on it makes you measure, and the measuring is exactly the churning the practice is meant to wear down.
The mechanism is attrition, not suppression. Each throw of the mind out to the dvādaśānta cuts one fluctuation short before it can finish, and the claim is simply that a habit interrupted often enough goes thin. Nothing is being fought. That is what lets this one fit inside an ordinary working day without any of the day being set aside.
Word by word
yathā tathā — in whatever manner (indecl. correlatives); yatra tatra — in whatever place (indecl. correlatives); dvādaśa+ante — in the dvādaśānta (m. loc. sg.); manaḥ — the mind (n. acc. sg.); kṣipet — let him cast, throw (3rd sg. opt., kṣip); prati+kṣaṇam — moment by moment (n. acc. sg., adverbial); kṣīṇa+vṛtteḥ — for one whose mental churning has worn thin (m. gen. sg., bahuvrīhi; kṣīṇa, ppp of kṣi, wasted away + vṛtti, fluctuation); vailakṣaṇyam — an otherness, a state without common mark (n. nom. sg., abstract of vilakṣaṇa, unlike); dinaiḥ — within days (n. inst. pl.); bhavet — arises (3rd sg. opt.)
By the fire of time, risen up from the foot of time, your own city —imagine it burned; then, at the end, one appears as stillness
Translation · colloquial
Picture this city you call your body burned by the fire of time, risen up out of time's own foot;and at the end of the burning, what stands there looks like stillness.
Practice
Sit, and bring to mind kālāgni, the fire of time — the fire that ends a world-age. Let it rise from the foot and climb through your own body, the city you live in, until you have seen the whole of it burned. This is deliberate imagining; stay with it to the end. When nothing of the body-image remains, what appears is stillness — rest there as that.
Śivopādhyāya is precise about where the fire starts: the big toe of the right foot, which is where Kālāgnirudra is placed in the old rite of purifying the body, and the fire is that Rudra rather than an impersonal blaze. He also changes the picture in one word. 'Your own city', he says, is your own body as guggulu — the resin burned as incense before a god. Not a city razed: a lump of incense on the coals, which gives its fragrance only while it is being consumed. Anyone who finds this portal frightening should have his image rather than ours. He gives a formula to say while it burns — om, the fire syllables, 'I burn the body', homage — which belongs to his ritual setting more than to the verse, but it tells you the practice was once spoken aloud and not only imagined.
Śivopādhyāya’s commentary
Śivopādhyāya starts the fire at the big toe of the right foot, where the old rite of purifying the body places Kālāgnirudra — and for him the fire is that Rudra, not an impersonal blaze. His reading of 'your own city' is the thing to carry away: the body is guggulu, the resin burned as incense before a god. Not a city razed but an offering, which gives its fragrance only in being consumed. He also gives the formula spoken while it burns, and files the whole portal as a means of the individual where we file it as a means of energy.
Commentary
Violent imagery in a text that has so far been gentle, and it needs its terms. Kālāgni is the fire at the end of an age, not a personal punishment, and puram — city — is the standing figure for the body as a place one inhabits rather than a thing one is. Burning a city you are living in is a different act from destroying yourself, and the verse depends on the difference.
Said plainly: this is a rehearsal for dying, undertaken while there is time to profit from it, and the tradition considers that a kindness.
This text was written more than a thousand years ago, before anything like our psychological understanding existed, and it shows here. Be very careful with this one: it can cause or aggravate suicidal ideation or distress, and it can go badly for anyone carrying grief or unhealed trauma. There is no screening here of any kind. It is also not a daily practice — the verse asks for one complete burning, attended to the end, not a habit of imagining oneself destroyed. Proceed with great caution.
Word by word
kāla+agninā — by the fire of time (m. inst. sg.); kāla+padāt — from the foot [or station] of time (m. abl. sg.); utthitena — risen, arisen (ppp, inst. sg., agreeing with kālāgninā); svakam — one's own (n. acc. sg.); puram — city [figure for the body] (n. acc. sg.); pluṣṭam — burnt, scorched (ppp of √pluṣ, n. acc. sg.); vicintayet — one should think out, consider fully (3rd sg. opt. of vi-√cint; the received line reads this as deliberate imagining, and that reading is ours. It comes from what is contemplated — a body already burnt — and from the portal that follows, which names vikalpa as the instrument in the verse itself. The verb alone will not give it); ante — at the end (m. loc. sg.); śānta+ābhāsaḥ — one whose appearance is stillness (bahuvrīhi, m. nom. sg.); tadā — then (adv.); bhavet — one becomes (3rd sg. opt. of √bhū)
Just so: meditate the whole world burned by constructing thought;in one whose mind holds nothing else, a person's highest state arises
Translation · colloquial
Now just the same for the whole world: meditate it burned, and let the thought do the burning.In one whose mind holds nothing else, the highest state a person can come to comes up.
Practice
Carry the same fire outward. Picture the entire world burned, in just the way you burned the body — and notice the verse's honesty: the burning is done by vikalpa, the mind's own constructing thought. That is the tool, not a flaw. Let no second image share the mind. Held to one thing only, the highest state of a person arises of itself.
Śivopādhyāya says plainly that this is not a new practice: it is the portal before, made firm, and the only difference is how far the fire goes. So do not set it up again from the beginning — continue. He also takes 'all' to mean what stands in the body and what stands outside it together, which is why he can call the two one practice. And on the last line: 'the highest state of a person' he glosses as the Bhairava-nature of the unmeasured knower — the exact opposite of the limited grasper he named in the twenty-third portal. That is the axis the whole stretch is turning on.
Śivopādhyāya’s commentary
Śivopādhyāya says this is not a new portal but the one before made firm — the same contemplation, and the only difference is that the fire now takes the whole world. 'All', for him, means what stands in the body and what stands outside it, taken together. And 'the highest state of a person' he glosses as the Bhairava-hood of the unmeasured knower, the exact negation of the limited grasper he found in the twenty-third portal. On vikalpataḥ, the word our note makes most of, he says nothing whatever.
Commentary
Vikalpataḥ — by constructing thought. One word here contradicts most of the book, and it is the most interesting thing in the verse. Nearly every other portal wants vikalpa gone. This one hands it the job.
The world is to be burned deliberately, in imagination, with the same faculty that spends the rest of its life building the world up, and the burning is not less effective for being made up. Later Kashmir Śaiva writers make this explicit and give it a name, the purified construct: a thought used to undo the habit of thinking.
It is worth noticing because it rescues the imaginative practices in this book from the charge of being mere fantasy. They are fantasy. That is what they are for. What they are aimed at is the habit of taking the ordinary construction of a world as something other than fantasy.
Word by word
evam — thus, in this way (adv.); eva — just, precisely (particle); jagat — world (n. acc. sg.); sarvam — whole, all (n. acc. sg.); dagdham — burnt (ppp of √dah, n. acc. sg.); dhyātvā — having meditated (gerund of √dhyai); vikalpataḥ — by means of constructing thought (adverbial ablative of vikalpa); ananya+cetasaḥ — whose mind is on nothing else (bahuvrīhi, m. gen. sg.); puṃsaḥ — of the person (m. gen. sg.); pum+bhāvaḥ — the state of [being] a person (m. nom. sg.); paramaḥ — highest, supreme (m. nom. sg.); bhavet — arises, comes to be (3rd sg. opt. of √bhū)
In your own body, or in the world as well, subtle and subtler still —the tattvas, whichever they are — meditate them home to rest; at the end she is revealed, the supreme herself
Translation · colloquial
In your own body, or in the world just as well, take the things it is made of, the fine and the finer still,and meditate them all the way home to rest; at the end she shows herself, the highest one.
Practice
Take the tattvas — the constituent principles the tradition counts in body and world — and follow them from gross toward subtle, each subtler than the last. Watch each one settle into the one it rests on. Work in your own body, or in the world, as you please. When the series has run out, at the end, she who is supreme is revealed; you do not produce her.
Śivopādhyāya supplies the inventory the verse leaves open, and it is the Sāṃkhya one: prakṛti, the great one, the I-maker and the rest above; earth and the rest below, with flesh and the body's substances as their modifications. He also says what the settling is modelled on — dissolution into their own respective causes, as happens in the state of death. That binds this portal to the two burnings before it. You burned the body, you burned the world, and now you watch what is left return to where it came from, in the order it would take if you were dying. It is the quietest of the three and the most thorough. His gloss on the ending agrees with the verse's own grammar: at the very end the supreme Goddess becomes manifest. Nothing has been achieved.
Śivopādhyāya’s commentary
Śivopādhyāya supplies the inventory: prakṛti, the great one and the I-maker above, earth and the rest below, with flesh and the body's substances as their modifications. And he says what the settling is modelled on — dissolution into their own respective causes, as in the state of death. That makes this the third movement of a single arc: the body burned, the world burned, and now the constituents returning to their sources in the order dying would take them. He reports a variant on which the principles are contemplated as already dissolved, as good as destroyed.
Commentary
Yāni — whichever they are. The text names the tattvas and then pointedly declines to count them, exactly as it declined to name the five voids and the twelve stations. The Śaiva thirty-six are the obvious frame and this verse fits them well, but it does not require them, and a practitioner who holds some other inventory of what the world is made of may use that one.
The instruction is not analysis. It is watching: each principle settling into the one it rests on, gross giving way to subtle, subtle to subtler, until the series runs out of places to rest.
What the verse does at the end is what this book almost always does — the verb goes passive. She is revealed. Not attained, not realised, not reached. The same word was used at the second portal for Bhairava's body, and it is the grammar of the whole text.
Word by word
sva+dehe — in one's own body (m. loc. sg.); jagataḥ — of the world (n. gen. sg.); vā — or; api — even, as well; sūkṣma+sūkṣmatarāṇi — subtle and subtler (n. nom./acc. pl., with comparative -tara); ca — and; tattvāni — the tattvas, constituent principles (n. nom./acc. pl.); yāni — which, whichever (n. pl. relative pronoun); nilayam — resting place, [place of] dissolution (m. acc. sg.); dhyātvā — having meditated (gerund of √dhyai); ante — at the end (m. loc. sg.); vyajyate — is made manifest, is revealed (3rd sg. pres. passive of vi-√añj); parā — the supreme [she] (f. nom. sg.)
Meditate on the śakti, full and faint, in the range of the twelve;enter the heart and meditate there — freed, one attains self-rule
Translation · colloquial
Meditate on the power, full and then gone faint, out in the space twelve fingers beyond you;then come into the heart and meditate there, and set free, you come into your own rule.
Practice
Attend to the śakti at the range of the twelve, the dvādaśānta. Meditate it first as full and thick, and then let it grow lean — faint, almost failing. Then enter the heart and keep meditating there. What is attained is svātantrya — standing on your own.
Śivopādhyāya is unhesitating about what this śakti is: it is the breath. And he reads the two adjectives as a sequence rather than a pair — full at first, and then by degrees becoming subtle — done by the method of prāṇāyāma. So this is a breath practice with an ordinary technique behind it: lengthen and refine the breath out at the twelve-finger point until it is barely there, then bring the meditation into the heart. On the last word he is as strong as the verse: not that one attains autonomy but that one comes to be of the form of the autonomous Lord, which in this school is what Śiva is and not something Śiva has.
Śivopādhyāya’s commentary
Śivopādhyāya says without hesitation that the śakti here is the breath, and he reads the two adjectives as stages rather than as a pair held together: full and thick at first, then by degrees grown lean — done, he says, by the method of prāṇāyāma. That is a plainer instruction than ours and it is the plainer reading of the Sanskrit. And on the ending he is emphatic: one comes to be of the form of the autonomous Supreme Lord.
Commentary
Attend to the same power both thick and failing. That pair of adjectives is the odd instruction here, and it is not one or the other — full at its height and faint at its guttering, which for anyone taking the breath as the śakti in question means the strong middle of a breath and the almost-nothing at its end. Two conditions of one thing, and the practice lives in holding them as one thing.
Then the verse moves you from the periphery to the centre, out at the range of the twelve and then into the heart, which is the direction most of this book's spatial practices run.
What is promised at the end is not the usual word. Svātantrya — self-rule, autonomy — is this school's name for Śiva's own defining attribute, the thing that makes him what he is. It is offered here to the practitioner, and that is a larger claim than liberation.
Word by word
pīnām — thick, full (f. acc. sg.; KSTS pīnāṃ, glossed prāṇaśaktim ādau pīnāṃ-pīvarām, ttaḥ krameṇa kṛśāṃ — the e-text's pināṃ is not a word); ca — and; durbalām — weak, faint (f. acc. sg.); śaktim — the śakti, the power [of breath] (f. acc. sg.); dhyātvā — having meditated (gerund of √dhyai); dvādaśa+gocare — in the range of the twelve, the dvādaśānta (m. loc. sg.); praviśya — having entered (gerund of pra-√viś); hṛdaye — in the heart (n. loc. sg.); dhyāyan — meditating (pres. act. participle, m. nom. sg.); muktaḥ — freed (ppp of √muc, m. nom. sg.); svātantryam — self-rule, autonomy (n. acc. sg.); āpnuyāt — one would attain (3rd sg. opt. of √āp)
Vijñāna Bhairava, verse 56 · dhāraṇā 33 · Awareness · śāktopāya · a means of mind · gross → causal
भुवनाध्वादिरूपेण चिन्तयेत् क्रमशो ऽखिलम्
स्थूलसूक्ष्मपरस्थित्या यावद् अन्ते मनोलयः
bhuvanādhvādirūpeṇa cintayet kramaśo 'khilam sthūlasūkṣmaparasthityā yāvad ante manolayaḥ
Translation · literal Sanskrit
Step by step, contemplate the whole of it as the course of worlds and the rest,through the gross, the subtle, the supreme state — until at the end the mind dissolves
Translation · colloquial
Step by step, hold the whole of it as a run of worlds and everything that goes with them,coarse, then fine, then finest, until at the end the mind dissolves.
Practice
Think the whole of things through in order: the course of worlds first — bhuvana-adhvan, the graded path running through every level of manifestation — then whatever follows it. Move step by step, gross to subtle to supreme, skipping nothing. This is sequential, deliberate thinking, and you ride it as far as it goes. Its end is not a conclusion; it is the mind dissolving.
Śivopādhyāya gives the map the verse assumes. There are six courses, three of them what is meant and three of them what means it: worlds, principles and portions on one side; words, mantras and syllables on the other. Each earlier one pervades the later as clay pervades a pot; each later one sits inside the earlier as a tree sits in its seed — so working through any one of them works through all six, and that is why the old manuals could take any single course as the whole rite.
And he says what the practice actually is, which needs none of the map: dissolve the grosser into the gross, the gross into the subtle, the subtle into the supreme, which is awareness and nothing else. He adds that this makes the portal one of the emptiness contemplations, arrived at by dissolving rather than by voiding.
The sentence to carry in is his one caution. In truth, he says, this power flashes with no sequence at all, and then out of sheer freedom displays sequence as well — the way a city appears in a mirror. You go in order because the order is being shown to you, not because things are built in stages. Which is also why the verse ends where it does: the mind dissolves rather than arrives.
Śivopādhyāya’s commentary
Śivopādhyāya supplies the whole apparatus. Six courses: worlds, principles and portions on the side of what is meant; words, mantras and syllables on the side of what means it. Each earlier pervades the later as clay pervades a pot, each later sits in the earlier as a tree in its seed — which is why purifying one course purifies all six. He also states the practice in a line, and it needs none of the map: dissolve the grosser into the gross, that into the subtle, that into the supreme, which is awareness and nothing else. And he gives the caution that makes the whole thing safe to attempt — in truth this power flashes with no sequence at all, and displays sequence out of its own freedom, the way a city appears in a mirror.
Commentary
The adhvans are the courses: the graded paths running through every level of manifestation. They are a whole genre of Śaiva contemplation, worked out at enormous length in the ritual manuals, and this verse compresses the entire apparatus into a line and a half on the assumption that you already have the map. Most readers now do not, and no honest note can supply it in a paragraph. Of everything here, this is the practice hardest to lift out of its own century.
What is portable is the shape: think the whole of things through in order, level by level, gross to subtle to supreme, refusing to skip. Then notice where it ends. Not in understanding, not in a completed system — the mind dissolves. The most scholastic instruction in the book is built to consume the learning it requires.
Word by word
bhuvana+adhva+ādi+rūpeṇa — in the form of the course of worlds and the rest (n. inst. sg.); cintayet — one should contemplate (3rd sg. opt. of √cint); kramaśaḥ — step by step, in sequence (adv.); akhilam — the whole, the entire [universe] (n. acc. sg.); sthūla+sūkṣma+para+sthityā — by way of the gross, subtle, and supreme states (f. inst. sg.); yāvat — until (conj.); ante — at the end (m. loc. sg.); manas+layaḥ — dissolution of the mind (m. nom. sg.)
Vijñāna Bhairava, verse 57 · dhāraṇā 34 · Awareness · śāktopāya · a means of mind · causal
अस्य सर्वस्य विश्वस्य पर्यन्तेषु समन्ततः
अध्वप्रक्रियया तत्त्वं शैवं ध्यात्वा महोदयः
asya sarvasya viśvasya paryanteṣu samantataḥ adhvaprakriyayā tattvaṃ śaivaṃ dhyātvā mahodayaḥ
Translation · literal Sanskrit
At the outermost limits of this whole universe, on every side,by the way of the courses, meditate on the reality that is Śiva's — a great dawning
Translation · colloquial
At the far edges of this whole universe, on every side,meditate by that same laying-out on the reality that is Shiva's, and a great dawn comes.
Practice
Go to the edges. Hold this whole universe in attention and reach its outermost limits, on every side at once, using the same graded course as before. At those limits, meditate on what remains there: the reality that is Śiva's. The verse gives no technique past that point — only that a great dawning follows. Stand at the rim and look.
Śivopādhyāya reads the limits as the ends of the courses rather than the rim of space: you follow the graded series of the portal before out to where it stops, and what you find at the end of it is that there is nothing of the world apart from Śiva. Then, he says, let the form of the world go and meditate Śiva alone. He also gives the technique the verse seems to withhold, and it needs none of the apparatus. What is signified is light; what signifies it is the awareness of that light; the two rub together like fire-sticks. Meditate the astonishment of feeling both powers at once — the opening and the closing in the same instant. The great arising he glosses simply as the light showing itself, which is a showing-forth of what was already there and not an event that starts.
Śivopādhyāya’s commentary
Śivopādhyāya reads 'the limits' as the ends of the courses, not the rim of space: you follow the graded series out to where it stops and find nothing of the world left over from Śiva — then let the world's form go and meditate Śiva alone. And he gives a technique where the verse seems to give none. What is meant is light, what means it is the awareness of that light, and the two rub together like fire-sticks: meditate the astonishment of experiencing both powers, the opening and the closing, in one and the same moment. The great arising, he says, is simply the light showing itself.
Commentary
The companion to the last, running the other way: not inward through the levels but out to the rim of everything, held on every side at once. It is the same figure the twenty-seventh portal drew twelve finger-breadths off the skin, now at the scale of the universe — a boundary attended from inside.
Whether a modern cosmology can be made to hold still at its edges the way this one could is a real question, and the verse does not help with it. What it wants is the reaching, and the reaching is possible in any picture of the world large enough to have a far side.
Once you are at the limits there is no further technique, only the instruction to meditate on what is there and the report that a great dawning follows. The verse takes you to the rim and stops.
Word by word
asya — of this (gen. sg. demonstrative); sarvasya — whole, entire (n. gen. sg.); viśvasya — of the universe (n. gen. sg.); paryanteṣu — at the outermost limits (m. loc. pl.); samantataḥ — on every side, all around (adv.); adhva+prakriyayā — by the procedure of the courses (f. inst. sg.); tattvam — the reality (n. acc. sg.); śaivam — belonging to Śiva (n. acc. sg.); dhyātvā — having meditated (gerund of √dhyai; input reads dhyatvā, evidently for dhyātvā); mahā+udayaḥ — great arising, great dawning (m. nom. sg.)
Vijñāna Bhairava, verse 58 · dhāraṇā 35 · Space · śāktopāya · a means of mind · causal
विश्वम् एतन् महादेवि शून्यभूतं विचिन्तयेत्
तत्रैव च मनो लीनं ततस् तल्लयभाजनम्
viśvam etan mahādevi śūnyabhūtaṃ vicintayet tatraiva ca mano līnaṃ tatas tallayabhājanam
Translation · literal Sanskrit
Imagine this universe, great Goddess, become empty;and the mind dissolved right there: then one is a vessel for absorption into that
Translation · colloquial
Imagine this whole universe, great Goddess, gone empty;and the mind melted right there. Then you are a vessel for melting into that.
Practice
Imagine this universe as having become empty — not each thing removed one by one, but the whole of it, as one act. This one is deliberate construction, and meant to be: the verb is vicintayet, the same one that burns the body six portals back. Then let the mind dissolve right there, inside that emptiness, not watching from anywhere else. Nothing further is done. One who stays so becomes a vessel — a thing shaped to receive absorption into that.
Śivopādhyāya adds one word and it raises the bar. 'Become empty' he glosses as having arrived at the void beyond the void — not the universe cleared of its contents, which would still leave the emptiness there to stand in, but an emptiness with nothing under it either. And the dissolving he glosses as becoming of that very nature, which is why the verse does not need to say what happens next. He also marks this portal as the opening of a run: from here, he says, the teaching goes by way of resting on outer emptiness. So it is the first of a group, not a single sudden verse standing alone.
Śivopādhyāya’s commentary
Śivopādhyāya glosses 'become empty' as having arrived at the void beyond the void — not the universe cleared of its contents, which would leave the emptiness itself to stand in, but an emptiness with no further ground. And he marks this verse as the head of a run: from here, he says, the teaching goes by way of resting on outer emptiness. The dissolving he glosses simply as becoming of that very nature.
Commentary
Set beside the two portals before it, this one is defined by what it refuses. Those went step by step, level by level, skipping nothing. This one asks for the whole universe empty in a single act — no inventory, no sequence, no working through. Whether that is possible for a given person on a given day is exactly the difference between the graded practices and the sudden ones, and the text puts them next to each other without ranking them.
The word to sit with is bhājana, vessel. You are not told that you will attain absorption; you are told you become a thing shaped to receive it.
That distinction runs quietly through the whole book and it is the difference between practice and result. Almost everything here that a person can actually do is preparation of a vessel. The filling is not on the list of instructions.
Word by word
viśvam — the universe (n. acc. sg.); etat — this (n. acc. sg.); mahā+devi — great Goddess (f. voc. sg.); śūnya+bhūtam — become empty (n. acc. sg.); vicintayet — one should think out, consider fully (3rd sg. opt. of vi-√cint; as at portal 29, the received line's 'imagine' is our reading of what is being contemplated rather than the force of the verb); tatra — there (adv.); eva — precisely, right (particle); ca — and; manaḥ — the mind (n. nom./acc. sg.); līnam — dissolved (ppp of √lī, n. sg.); tataḥ — then, thereupon (adv.); tat+laya+bhājanam — a vessel for absorption into that (n. nom. sg.)
Cast the gaze into a jar or any vessel, the walls dropped;that instant one goes into absorption in it; from that absorption one becomes of its nature
Translation · colloquial
Cast the gaze into a jar, or any vessel, and drop its walls.That instant you go into it, and by going into it you become of its own kind.
Practice
Take a jar, a bowl, any vessel with an inside. Cast your gaze into it and drop the walls: do not look at the clay, look into the contained space. The verse says absorption into that space comes the same instant the walls are let go. From that absorption, you become of one nature with what you look into.
Śivopādhyāya gives the criterion instead of a list: anything hollow within will serve. And the 'walls' he reads simply as the sides of the thing — you are letting go of the pot's flanks, not of a piece of architecture. What follows the letting-go he calls, as he has before, a coming to rest rather than a dissolving away; the word means settling, not annihilation. And where the verse says one becomes of that nature, he says one becomes absorbed into the supreme brahman.
Śivopādhyāya’s commentary
Śivopādhyāya replaces the list with a criterion — anything hollow within will do — and reads 'the walls' as simply the sides of the thing rather than as anything architectural. The dissolving he glosses, as he does elsewhere in these portals, as a coming to rest.
Commentary
Any bowl in the house will do, and the whole instruction fits in a sentence: look into a jar, and drop the walls. It is one of the two or three most testable verses in the book.
The vessel is not the object and neither is the clay. The vessel is a device for giving the eye a bounded piece of emptiness to rest on, at which point the boundary is discarded and what is left is the emptiness without an edge — the same move the twenty-fifth portal made with the skin, now with something you can pick up.
Two words carry the claim. Tatkṣaṇāt: absorption follows the same instant the walls are let go, not after a period of concentration. And tanmaya, made of that — the working principle stated at the seventeenth portal, applied here to a space you can see across the room.
Word by word
ghaṭa+ādi+bhājane — in a vessel such as a jar (n. loc. sg.; KSTS ghaṭādi- with the retroflex, for the e-text's ghatādi-); dṛṣṭim — the gaze (f. acc. sg.); bhittīḥ — the walls (f. acc. pl.; KSTS bhittīs with long ī, the accusative plural the sense needs, for the e-text's bhittis); tyaktvā — having left aside, dropped (gerund of √tyaj); vinikṣipet — one should cast (3rd sg. opt. of vi-ni-√kṣip); tat+layam — absorption into that (m. acc. sg.); tat+kṣaṇāt — from that very instant (m. abl. sg.); gatvā — having gone (gerund of √gam); tat+layāt — from absorption into that (m. abl. sg.); tat+mayaḥ — made of that, of its nature (m. nom. sg.); bhavet — one becomes (3rd sg. opt. of √bhū)
Cast your gaze on a treeless place, a hill, a wall, or the like;the mental state dissolved, one is born whose turnings of thought have dwindled
Translation · colloquial
Cast the gaze on a treeless place, a hill, a wall, anything of that sort;the state of mind dissolves, and you come out of it with the turning worn away.
Practice
Find a place that gives the eye nothing to work on: a treeless stretch, a bare crag, a blank wall. Set your gaze there and leave it. Do not elaborate; there is nothing to elaborate. Whatever the mind was holding thins and dissolves on its own, and what remains is a mind whose turnings — its vṛttis, its habitual movements — have dwindled.
Śivopādhyāya reads the three examples as one thing: an empty quarter, a direction with nothing in it. And he names why it works — the absence of any support. That is worth carrying, because nine portals back the practice was to apprehend that there is no support and not flinch; here the landscape simply takes the support away, and nothing is required of you but to keep looking. He heads this group 'the contemplation that is the binding of the gaze'. On the ending he goes further than the verse: where the mūla stops at a person whose turnings have dwindled, he says such a one comes to be of the form of the great light.
Śivopādhyāya’s commentary
Śivopādhyāya collapses the three examples into one criterion — an empty quarter, a direction with nothing in it — and names the mechanism: the absence of any support for the eye. He also carries the verse past where it stops. The mūla promises only a person whose turnings of thought have dwindled; he says such a one comes to be of the form of the great light. He heads this group of portals 'the contemplation that is the binding of the gaze'.
Commentary
The wall returns. The tenth portal offered it as one example among many; here it gets a verse of its own, in company with a bare hill and any treeless stretch of ground. All three defeat the eye by giving it nothing to work on. The mind is not being asked to stop. It is being placed somewhere its usual occupation is unavailable, and left to run down.
What deserves attention is how modest the promise is. No Śiva, no dawning, no supreme state: what arises is a person whose turnings of thought have dwindled. That is the same word the twenty-eighth portal used, and it is the plainest claim in the collection.
A book of a hundred and twelve doors that is willing to say of one of them only that it makes you quieter is a book worth trusting slightly more elsewhere.
Word by word
nir+vṛkṣa+giri+bhitti+ādi+deśe — on a spot such as a treeless [tract], a hill, a wall, and so on (m. loc. sg.); dṛṣṭim — the gaze (f. acc. sg.); vinikṣipet — one should cast (3rd sg. opt. of vi-ni-√kṣip); vilīne — dissolved (ppp of vi-√lī, loc. sg., locative absolute); mānase — mental (m. loc. sg., with bhāve); bhāve — state, [mental] content (m. loc. sg., locative absolute with vilīne); vṛtti+kṣīṇaḥ — one whose turnings [of mind] have dwindled (bahuvrīhi, m. nom. sg.; KSTS -kṣīṇaḥ, glossed kṣīṇasamastavṛttiḥ, for the e-text's -kṣiṇaḥ); prajāyate — comes into being, arises (3rd sg. pres. mid. of pra-√jan)
Meditate on the knowing of two things; take hold of the middle between them;drop both at once, and in the middle the reality shines forth
Translation · colloquial
Meditate on the knowing of two things, and take hold of the middle between them;let both go at once, and in the middle what is real shines out.
Practice
Hold two things in awareness at once — any two objects or states will do. Meditate on the knowing in which both of them stand, and settle into the middle between them. Then the move that matters: drop both together, at one stroke, not one after the other. In that middle the reality shines out. You do not construct it.
Śivopādhyāya says what the middle is, and it is not a neutral space lying between the two. It is the emptiness by which the two are two — the gap that makes them separate things at all. Which is why any pair will serve: whichever pair you take, the gap is the same gap. And he answers the hard part. Dropping two things simultaneously is difficult to will, and doing it in sequence leaves you holding the second. His gloss on 'dropped at once' is: dismissed by not looking at them. You do not drop them; you cease to regard them, and one act of not-looking covers both because it is aimed at neither. He also reads the settling as a third step after the finding — meditate the middle, actually catch it, and only then resort to it with one-pointedness. He heads this portal 'the contemplation that is without support'.
Śivopādhyāya’s commentary
Śivopādhyāya defines the middle: not a neutral zone between the two things but the void by which the two are delimited — the emptiness that makes them separate at all, which is why any pair whatever will serve. And he supplies the method for the hard word. 'Dropped both at once' he glosses as dismissed by not looking at them: you do not let go of two things in one act of will, you simply cease to regard them, and a single not-looking covers both because it is aimed at neither.
Commentary
This is the rule of which the opening breath verses were a special case. There it was the two ends of a breath; here it is any two things whatever, and the madhya — the middle — is stated in its general form for the first time.
Three moves, and the order matters. Hold two. Find the knowing in which both of them stand, which is already a shift from the objects to what is aware of them. Then drop both, and the word is yugapat, together, at one stroke.
Dropping them in sequence does not work, and that is the ordinary failure: let go of the first and you are simply left holding the second, which is not a middle but a new object.
What the verse claims for that gap is that it is not a gap. Something shines there — prakāśate, the verb this text keeps for what is not produced by the practitioner.
Word by word
ubhayoḥ — of both (gen. du.); bhāvayoḥ — of the two objects [or states] (m. gen. du.); jñāne — in the knowing, the cognition (n. loc. sg.); dhyātvā — having meditated (gerund of √dhyai); madhyam — the middle (n. acc. sg.); samāśrayet — one should take hold of, resort to (3rd sg. opt. of sam-ā-√śri); yugapat — simultaneously, at once (adv.); ca — and; dvayam — the pair (n. acc. sg.); tyaktvā — having dropped (gerund of √tyaj); madhye — in the middle (n. loc. sg.); tattvam — the reality (n. nom. sg.); prakāśate — shines forth (3rd sg. pres. mid. of pra-√kāś)
When the object has faded from sight, awareness — held back — must go to no other at all;then, through that state of the middle, contemplation unfolds exceedingly
Translation · colloquial
When the thing you were looking at has faded, hold the awareness back and let it go to nothing else at all;then, standing in that middle, the holding opens out beyond measure.
Practice
A form you have been holding in the mind's eye fades. The verse means a deliberate visualisation — Śivopādhyāya names the three-eyed, four-armed one — and the moment it is about is the moment it goes. Do not rebuild it, and do not let attention slide on to whatever offers itself next: not to a body, not to a pot, not to anything seen. Hold it back, exactly where the form was. That is the whole instruction.
He is candid that the holding-back takes acquired skill — checked and set in place, he says, by skill got from practice. And he quotes the yoga tradition to explain why an object-meditation is set up only to be dropped: even where meditation has a support, one gives up the meditator and the meditation, because what is really to be reached is rest in a middle that has no object to rest on. The mind then is like a lamp in a windless place.
His reading of the last line is the one to carry. What unfolds is not an experience in the sitting. Bhāvanā, he says, is the deposit left by resting in the middle — the trace laid down each time you have stood in a gap and not filled it — and 'unfolds' means that deposit wakes up. What you are doing accumulates.
Śivopādhyāya’s commentary
Śivopādhyāya names the fading object as the three-eyed, four-armed deity held in visualisation, and is candid that holding awareness back takes skill acquired by practice. He quotes the yoga tradition — the mind like a lamp in a windless place — to explain why a meditation with an object is set up only to be let go: what is to be reached is rest in a middle with nothing to rest on. And he reads the last line unexpectedly. Contemplation, for him, is the deposit left by resting in the middle, and 'unfolds' means that deposit is awakened — not a flowering within the sitting but something accumulating across them.
Commentary
The mirror of the portal before, and much the more available of the two. There you had to arrange two objects and let go of both together; here you arrange nothing.
Objects fall away by themselves all day long — a thought finishes, a sight passes, a task ends — and each time there is a fractional interval in which awareness stands unassigned before it takes up the next thing. The instruction is only to decline the next thing. This is the same seam that the celebrated ninety-fifth portal finds in a sneeze and a fright, approached deliberately instead of by ambush.
The verse does not say a vision opens, or a state: bhāvanā itself, contemplation, blossoms — the practice turns out to have been a bud, and refusing the next object is what lets it open.
Word by word
bhāve — the object (m. loc. sg., locative absolute; the vivṛti identifies it as the dhyeya-vastu, the thing meditated on, 'in the form of the three-eyed, four-armed one'); nyakte — concealed, gone out of sight (ppp, loc. sg., locative absolute with bhāve; KSTS, glossed antarhite. The Vedabhāṣyakāra gives nyaktam = truṭitam, tirohitam, and Śivopādhyāya marks it a chāndasa usage; the e-text's tyakte 'let go' has no witness here); niruddhā — held back, restrained (ppp of ni-√rudh, f. nom. sg., with cit); cit — awareness (f. nom. sg.); na eva — not at all; bhāva+antaram — another object (n. acc. sg.); vrajet — should go [to] (3rd sg. opt. of √vraj); tadā — then (adv.); tat+madhya+bhāvena — through the state of [being in] the middle of that (m. inst. sg.); vikasati — blossoms, unfolds (3rd sg. pres. of vi-√kas); ati — exceedingly (adv., with vikasati); bhāvanā — contemplation, cultivating awareness (f. nom. sg.)
Contemplate this whole body, or indeed the world, as made of awareness,all at once, with a mind free of constructing thought — the highest dawning
Translation · colloquial
Hold this whole body, or the world just as well, as made of nothing but awareness,all at once, with a mind that makes nothing, and the highest dawn comes.
Practice
Contemplate this whole body as made of awareness — or the world, if that comes easier. What carries the weight is yugapat, all at once: not limb by limb, not thing by thing, and with a mind free of constructing thought while it does so. Held whole and unconstructed like that, the contemplation is the highest dawning the verse names.
Śivopādhyāya gives the body its extent — from the feet to the ends of the hair — and then guards it: in every part, and without sequence. Every part, no order. 'Free of constructing thought' he reads as a positive condition rather than an absence: pervaded by the flashing wonder of consciousness, all around, within and without.
And he ends with the shortest instruction in his whole commentary. Behind it he puts a maxim — what shines is not separate from the light, or it could never be something known at all — and then, instead of leaving you with an argument, he turns it into the practice itself: contemplate that the light is shining. Not that the body is awareness, which is a proposition and can only be agreed with. That the shining is shining.
Śivopādhyāya’s commentary
Śivopādhyāya gives the body its extent — feet to the ends of the hair — and then guards the instruction: in every part, and without sequence. Every part, no order. 'Free of constructing thought' he takes positively, as being pervaded by the flashing wonder of consciousness. And he ends with the shortest instruction in his commentary. Behind it lies a maxim — what shines is not separate from the light, or it could never be known at all — but he does not leave you with the argument. He turns it into the practice: contemplate that the light is shining.
Commentary
This portal and the forty-second are twins, and reading them together is worth more than reading either alone. Both offer the same choice of scale — this body, or the whole world, whichever you can actually hold. Both insist on yugapat, all at once, no touring from part to part. And each names one of the two great predicates this school gives to reality: here it is made of awareness, there it is filled with joy. Cit and ānanda, the two things Śiva is said to be, handed over one at a time as contemplations a person can attempt.
The difficulty is not the idea, which is easy to assent to and worth nothing assented to. It is holding a whole body as awareness without the mind starting to explain how that might be true — which is the moment the practice ends and thinking about the practice begins.
Word by word
sarvam — whole, entire (m. acc. sg.); deham — the body (m. acc. sg.); cit+mayam — made of awareness (m. acc. sg.); hi — indeed (emphatic particle); jagat — the world (n. acc. sg.); vā — or; paribhāvayet — one should contemplate all round, thoroughly (3rd sg. opt. caus. of pari-√bhū); yugapat — all at once, simultaneously (adv.); nirvikalpena — free of constructing thought (n. inst. sg., with manasā); manasā — with the mind (n. inst. sg.); parama+udayaḥ — the highest dawning, supreme arising (m. nom. sg.)
From the striking together of the two breaths — within or without, at their end —the yogi is a vessel where the knowledge of sameness rises up
Translation · colloquial
Where the two breaths strike together, inside or outside, at the end of either,the one practising becomes a vessel in which the knowing that all is one comes up.
Practice
Attend to your two breaths — prāṇa moving out, apāna moving in — at the point where they strike together, and at the far end of each: within, where the in-breath dies away, or outside, where the out-breath does. You do not make this meeting happen; it happens at every turning of breath. One who keeps returning there becomes a vessel in which the knowledge of sameness rises.
Śivopādhyāya fixes both ends: within is the heart, without is the twelve-finger point — the two stations this whole book runs between, and the same interval he found in the heart's space at the twenty-sixth portal. What he says about the meeting itself is worth having exactly. Difference has not been scored into it, as a stylus has not yet marked the surface; it is bereft of both the going out and the coming in; it is very nearly a void. And what rises is, in his word, evenness of seeing — not a piece of knowledge about sameness but a level regard.
Śivopādhyāya’s commentary
Śivopādhyāya fixes both ends of 'within or without': within is the heart, without the twelve-finger point. On the meeting itself he is precise and it is all subtraction — difference not yet scored into it, bereft of both the going out and the coming in, very nearly a void. And what rises he calls evenness of seeing, a way of looking rather than a thing known.
Commentary
The breath returns after forty portals, with a new word for the same place. Not a pause now and not a turning: saṃghaṭṭa, a striking-together, two currents meeting hard. Kashmir Śaiva writers make this a technical term for the union of opposites wherever it occurs, and choosing it here recasts what the opening verses treated as an interval into a collision — something happening, not something absent.
Nothing has to be arranged. The meeting occurs at every turn of every breath, within and without, whether or not anyone is present for it.
What is promised is unusually specific and unusually sober: not bliss, not Śiva, but the knowledge of sameness — an even-ness in which the difference between the two breaths, and then between rather more than that, stops being load-bearing.
Word by word
vāyu+dvayasya — of the pair of breaths (n. gen. sg.); saṃghaṭṭāt — from the striking together, the meeting (m. abl. sg.); antaḥ — within (adv.); vā — or; bahiḥ — outside (adv.); antataḥ — at the end [of their course] (adv.); yogī — the yogi (m. nom. sg.); samatva+vijñāna+samudgamana+bhājanam — a vessel for the rising up of the knowledge of sameness (n. nom. sg.)
Remember the whole world, or your own body, as filled with your own joy;all at once — by that very nectar of your own — one is made of the highest joy
Translation · colloquial
Remember the whole world, or your own body, as brimming with your own joy;all at once, by that sweetness which is your own, you are made of the highest joy.
Practice
Remember — the verse's word — the whole world, or this body, as filled to the brim with your own joy. Remember, as if recalling something already true, and all at once, not by degrees. The means is your own amṛta, your own nectar; nothing is imported from elsewhere. Filled in that way, you become made of a joy higher still.
Śivopādhyāya makes 'your own' exact: it is the joy of the self with objects let go — yours in the precise sense that nothing is being enjoyed. And where the verse asks you to hold a world filled with joy without that costing anything, he answers with the oldest verse in the tradition: that is full, this is full, from the full the full comes forth, and taking the full from the full the full alone remains.
His last line gives this portal its own character. Two verses back the world shone as light. Here, he says, the world shines as the congealed sap of consciousness — joy that has thickened and set into shapes. That is what makes remembering the right verb: you are not filling anything, you are recognising what the thing already is.
Śivopādhyāya’s commentary
Śivopādhyāya reads 'your own joy' as the joy of the self with objects let go — yours in the precise sense of having no object. He answers the verse's arithmetic with the oldest verse in the tradition: from the full the full comes forth, and taking the full from the full, the full alone remains. And he sets this portal explicitly against the one two back, quoting its opening words: there the world shone as light; here it shines as the congealed sap of consciousness — joy that has thickened and set into shapes.
Commentary
Smaret — remember. The verb is the verse. Not imagine, not construct, not generate: recall, in the way one recalls something that was true all along and had slipped the mind. That single choice separates this from a mood-manufacturing exercise, and it also sets the standard for doing it honestly, because a remembering that has to be worked up is not a remembering.
Twice over the text says the joy is your own — your own joy, your own nectar. Nothing is being drawn down from anywhere, and there is no one to petition.
This is the twin of the fortieth portal, awareness there and joy here, and between them they hand over the two things this tradition says reality is. The instruction is not to believe either. It is to remember one of them for as long as you can hold it.
Word by word
sarvam — whole, entire (n. acc. sg.); jagat — the world (n. acc. sg.); sva+deham — one's own body (m. acc. sg.); vā — or; sva+ānanda+bharitam — filled with one's own joy (acc. sg.); smaret — one should remember, bring to mind (3rd sg. opt. of √smṛ); yugapat — all at once (adv.); sva+amṛtena — by one's own nectar (n. inst. sg.); eva — precisely, that very (particle); para+ānanda+mayaḥ — made of the highest joy (m. nom. sg.); bhavet — one becomes (3rd sg. opt. of √bhū)
Vijñāna Bhairava, verse 66 · dhāraṇā 43 · Feeling · śāmbhavopāya · no means · gross → causal
कुहनेन प्रयोगेण सद्य एव मृगेक्षणे
समुदेति महानन्दो येन तत्त्वं प्रकाशते
kuhanena prayogeṇa sadya eva mṛgekṣaṇe samudeti mahānando yena tattvaṃ prakāśate
Translation · literal Sanskrit
By a conjuror's trick, doe-eyed one — at oncea great joy rises up, and by it reality shines forth
Translation · colloquial
Watch a conjuror do the impossible, doe-eyed one, and at once —a great gladness rises, and by that gladness what is real shows itself.
Practice
Conjure something and enter it, such as a garden that isn't there, and yourself strolling in it — and then, since it is yours to arrange, your body falling away, limb by limb, and then being reformed, and you unharmed throughout. The joy the verse promises is the wonder of it, and what the wonder shows is that you were never the thing that dissolved. Lose your body, and be made whole.
Śivopādhyāya is precise about which faculty is being used. His word for the effect is astonishment, and his example runs to a full compound: a magical garden fashioned by a juggler, the flowering trees standing in it, your own self roaming about inside it, your own limbs severed and joined back together. On seeing that, he says, the thought-free state arises that very instant. Wonder does the work, and it does it before anything can be arranged.
Kuhana also means tickling, and most modern renderings take it that way — which would make this the one portal needing another person in the room. Our only commentator saw the ambiguity and closed it: not tickling, he says, and then describes the garden. We follow him, and note the road not taken.
Śivopādhyāya’s commentary
Śivopādhyāya does not read the verse's word as tickling. He reads kuhana as stage magic — the employment of wondrous illusion — and describes it: a garden conjured by a juggler, the flowering trees standing in it, one's own self roaming about within, one's limbs severed and joined again. On seeing that, he says, the thought-free state arises that very instant. What suspends thought here is astonishment.
Commentary
A scripture that tells you to go and watch a conjuring trick. The theatre is real and so is the argument under it: astonishment is one of the few conditions that reliably suspends the mind's running commentary on itself, and it does so instantly and without any credit to the practitioner.
Śivopādhyāya's example is worth reading twice, because what he describes is not a card trick — a garden that is not there, and you walking about inside it, and your own limbs coming apart and joining again while you stand there unharmed. What is staged is your own dissolution, and the wonder arrives before the mind can get as far as deciding whether to be frightened. That makes it engineered spontaneity, a contradiction the text is untroubled by; the ninety-fifth portal will collect a whole list of the same kind.
The instruction that matters is the one about where to stay: in the wonder, not in the trick. The trick is over in a second. What it opened is not.
His reading also removes what would otherwise be this portal's oddity. Read as tickling — the sense the practice note sets out and declines — this would be the only one of the hundred and twelve needing another person in the room. Read as he reads it, it needs no one.
Word by word
kuhanena — by tickling, by a trick or jest (n. instr. sg.); prayogeṇa — by the application, the putting to use (m. instr. sg.; with kuhanena: 'by the use of tickling'); sadyas — at once, on the spot (indecl.; sadya eva in sandhi); eva — emphatic particle, right then; mṛga+īkṣaṇe — O doe-eyed one, whose eyes are a deer's (f. voc. sg., addressing the Goddess); samudeti — rises up, surges (sam-ud-√i, 3rd sg. pres. act.); mahā+ānandaḥ — great joy (m. nom. sg.); yena — by which (m. instr. sg., relative); tattvam — reality, the real (n. nom. sg.); prakāśate — shines forth, becomes manifest (pra-√kāś, 3rd sg. pres. mid.)
Dam all the currents; let the śakti of prāṇa rise, slowly —at the moment of the crawling-ant touch — supreme happiness spreads wide
Translation · colloquial
Dam every current, and let the power in the breath rise, slowly;at the moment of the ant-tingle, the greatest happiness spreads wide.
Practice
Sit and seal the body's openings — ears, eyes, nostrils, mouth, and the two below. Let the śakti of prāṇa rise on its own, slowly, without forcing, from the base upward. At some moment a touch comes, like an ant creeping under the skin. That touch is the appointed moment. Do not scratch it away and do not chase it; let supreme happiness spread out from it.
Śivopādhyāya explains what that touch is for, and it is not what a modern reader expects. Yogins use it to take a measurement. At that moment, he writes, they establish: having risen from such a station, today prāṇa has reached that one. The outward reach of the breath is tested in a windless room by the drift of a cotton-wisp; the inward reach is tested by the ant-touch. It is the inner counterpart of the wisp — the instrument by which you learn where you have got to.
He closes with the reason any of this belongs in a book of contemplations. Prāṇa made subtle calms the mind; the mind's calm calms prāṇa; and by prāṇa's calm the thought-constructs waste away.
Śivopādhyāya’s commentary
Śivopādhyāya reads 'dam all the currents' as the sealing of six openings — ear, eye, nose, mouth, and the two below — and the natural course of the breath as running from the heart out to twelve fingers beyond the nose and back again, the same two stations he named three portals ago. The ant-touch he treats as an instrument: at that moment, he says, yogins take a measurement of how far prāṇa has risen, as the drift of a cotton-wisp in a windless room measures the breath outside. His closing account of why any of this belongs here: prāṇa made subtle calms the mind, the mind's calm calms prāṇa, and by prāṇa's calm the thought-constructs waste away.
Commentary
The most physically specific report in the book. The crawling-ant sensation is not a metaphor invented here — it is named across yoga literature as a recognisable thing that happens to people who sit still and quiet the senses for long enough, and its familiarity is why the verse can use it as a landmark without describing it further.
What the verse does with it is the interesting part. The sensation is not a side effect to be tolerated or a milestone to be logged. It is the door, and the moment of its arrival is the appointed moment.
Three cautions belong here. Chasing the tingle guarantees you will manufacture one, and a manufactured one leads nowhere; simply perceive what is there, if anything. Sealing the nostrils and the mouth together is breath retention under another name, whatever else it is called, so the caution at the fourth portal holds here too and the seal comes off before it is too uncomfortable, not after. And śanaiḥ — slowly — is the only word in this book's energetic practices that reads like a safety instruction. Take it as one.
Word by word
sarva — all (in compound); srotas — currents, streams (the flows of the body and senses; in compound); nibandhena — by binding, by damming up (m. instr. sg.); prāṇa+śaktyā — by the śakti of prāṇa, the power of the vital breath (f. instr. sg.); ūrdhvayā — going upward (f. instr. sg., agreeing with śaktyā); śanaiḥ — slowly, gently (indecl.); pipīla+sparśa+velāyām — at the moment of the ant-touch, the sensation as of ants crawling (f. loc. sg.); prathate — spreads, widens out (√prath, 3rd sg. pres. mid.); paramam — supreme, highest (n. nom. sg.); sukham — happiness (n. nom. sg.)
Between the fire and the poison cast the mind made of pleasurealone, or filled with breath — one is joined to the joy of love
Translation · colloquial
Between the fire and the poison, cast the mind that is made of pleasure,cast it alone, or filled with breath, and you are joined to the joy of love.
Practice
When desire is awake and the mind is made of pleasure, cast that mind into the middle — between what the verse names only as the fire and the poison. Cast it bare, or carried on a filled breath, and hold to the middle between the two. There one is joined to the joy of love itself, not to its occasion.
Śivopādhyāya heads the verse with the pair the whole Trika turns on: contraction of śakti and expansion of śakti, and their middle. Fire is the resting-place of contraction, at the upper kuṇḍalinī above the brow. Poison is the place of expansion at the lower — and the word is not poison but the root that means to pervade, which is why it names the pole that spreads. Between them is the middle channel, and the mind made of bliss is cast there. He then offers a second reading with measurements, out of the Kaula scriptures: fire is the wind-station named Agni, four fingers above the genitals and below the navel; poison is the station named Viṣa in the middle of the genitals; the pleasure-filled mind is cast between them. As to the manner of doing it, he says only that it is to be done as it was heard — such is the tradition of the yogins.
He also gives the reason this run of portals takes desire for its field. The joy of desire, he writes, is higher than the other joys because it causes the forgetting of every object. Not because it is strong. Because nothing else so reliably empties the field.
Śivopādhyāya’s commentary
Our note called this the most locked verse in the book. Śivopādhyāya unlocks it twice. First: fire and poison are the contraction and the expansion of śakti — the upper kuṇḍalinī above the brow and the lower at the base — with the middle channel between them. Poison here is not poison but the root meaning to pervade, which is why it names the pole that spreads. Second, 'or else': fire is the wind-station named Agni, four fingers above the genitals and below the navel; poison the station named Viṣa in the middle of the genitals; and he quotes the Kulāmnāya for the list. The manner of doing it, he says, is done as it was heard — such is the tradition of the yogins. And his reason for the whole erotic run: the joy of desire is higher than other joys because it causes the forgetting of every object.
Commentary
Fire and poison, named and not explained. We had this down as the most locked verse in the book, and the readings proposed since — two centres of the body, two phases of arousal, two named channels — are all reconstructions.
Śivopādhyāya unlocks it twice and declines to choose. Fire and poison are the contraction and the expansion of śakti: the upper kuṇḍalinī above the brow and the lower at the base, with the middle channel between them. Poison here is not poison at all but the root meaning to pervade, which is why it names the pole that spreads. Or else — his word — fire is the wind-station Agni, four fingers above the genitals and below the navel, and poison the station Viṣa between them. As for how it is done, he says only that it is done as it was heard.
What you can read without any key is the structure, and by now it is familiar: a middle, entered between two things, with the mind cast there rather than led. What is new is the material. This begins a run of portals that take erotic arousal as the field of practice, frankly and without apology, and the last line draws the distinction the whole run depends on: one is joined to the joy of love, not to its occasion. It is the same distinction the text makes about music, and it is harder to keep here.
Word by word
vahneḥ — of fire (m. gen. sg.); viṣasya — of poison (n. gen. sg.); madhye — in the middle, between (n. loc. sg.); tu — and, but (particle); cittam — the mind (n. acc. sg.); sukha+mayam — made of pleasure (adj. n. acc. sg., with cittam); kṣipet — one should cast, throw (√kṣip, 3rd sg. opt.); kevalam — alone, by itself (n. acc. sg. with cittam, or adverbial); vāyu+pūrṇam — filled with breath (adj. n. acc. sg., with cittam); vā — or (particle); smara+ānandena — with the joy of love, of desire (smara: erotic love, also the god of love; m. instr. sg.); yujyate — one is joined, yoked (√yuj, 3rd sg. pres. passive)
śaktisaṃgamasaṃkṣubdhaśaktyāveśāvasānikam yat sukham brahmatattvasya tat sukhaṃ svākyam ucyate
Translation · literal Sanskrit
The pleasure that comes at the close of absorption in the śakti churned up by union with the śaktiis the pleasure of brahman's reality — that pleasure is called one's own
Translation · colloquial
The pleasure that comes at the close of being taken into her, churned up by the union itself,is the pleasure of what is ultimately real; and that pleasure is called your own.
Practice
This verse describes what happens, not a technique. In union with a partner — the śakti, the embodiment of energy — arousal deepens into absorption, and at the very close of that absorption a pleasure arrives, as a bell goes on ringing once it has been struck. When it comes, recognise it: this is the pleasure of the reality of brahman, and it is your own. It was never manufactured by the other body.
Śivopādhyāya is exact about the standing of the other person. Union, he says, is merely the cause of the bliss being made manifest — the way a lamp is the cause of a pot being seen — since the bliss is one's own already. He quotes for it: creation is not born from the liṅga, nor from the bhaga, nor from the seed; śakti, leaping up as bliss, creates herself by herself. And at the close, he says, the consideration of the duality of woman and man has been let go, and there is resting in one's own self alone.
He also quotes the warning, which is the tradition's own and not a modern scruple: embraced by his wife he knows nothing outer and nothing inner — the śruti speaks this as an illustration; a fool takes it for an injunction.
Śivopādhyāya’s commentary
Śivopādhyāya gives the image the verse withholds: the pleasure at the close has the form of the after-ringing of a bell — still the same event, no longer being struck. He calls union merely the cause of the bliss being made manifest, not of its being produced, and quotes for it: creation is born neither from the liṅga nor the bhaga nor the seed; śakti, leaping up as bliss, creates herself by herself. And against the obvious misuse of the doctrine he quotes a second verse — embraced by his wife he knows nothing outer or inner; the śruti speaks this as an illustration, a fool takes it for an injunction.
Commentary
Not an instruction — a description, and then a recognition. Everything in the verse is happening anyway; the practice is knowing what it is when it comes.
The word the whole thing turns on is the last: svākhya, one's own. The claim is that the pleasure arriving at the end of that absorption was never produced by the other body, which was its occasion and not its cause.
Two things follow, and they pull opposite ways. It is why the text can call this the pleasure of the reality of brahman without any hedging at all, which shocked later readers and is one reason this literature stayed hidden. And it is a doctrine that can be turned into a licence for using a person as an apparatus. Nothing in this book, which is throughout a conversation between two who love each other, gives any warrant for that.
Word by word
śakti — the śakti, here the partner in union (first member, in compound); saṃgama — union, coming together (in compound); saṃkṣubdha — churned up, aroused (ppp. sam-√kṣubh, in compound); śakti — the energy so aroused (second occurrence, in compound); āveśa — absorption, being taken over (in compound); avasānikam — belonging to the end, occurring at the close (adj. n. nom. sg., qualifying sukham; the whole compound: 'occurring at the end of absorption in the energy churned up by union with the śakti'); yat — which (n. nom. sg., relative); sukham — pleasure (n. nom. sg.); brahma+tattvasya — of the reality of brahman (n. gen. sg.); tat — that (n. nom. sg.); sukham — pleasure (n. nom. sg.); svākyam — one's own (adj. n. nom. sg.; KSTS prints svākyam and Śivopādhyāya derives it — svakam eva svākyam, svaka + ṣyañ in svārtha, vṛddhi and -ya exactly as cāturvarṇya from caturvarṇa. The form is regular, and an earlier conjecture svākhyam was withdrawn on the evidence of the print); ucyate — is called, is said to be (√vac, 3rd sg. pres. passive)
From the sheer fullness of the memory of pleasure with a woman — the licking, the churning, the pounding —even with the śakti absent, mistress of the gods, a flood of joy would rise
Translation · colloquial
Out of the sheer weight of remembering pleasure with a woman, the licking, the churning, the pounding,even with no one there at all, mistress of the gods, a flood of joy would rise.
Practice
No partner is needed, and the verse says so. Sit and remember — concretely, without haste — the full intensity of pleasure with a woman: the licking, the churning, the pressing. Śivopādhyāya glosses all three without a flicker of embarrassment: the tasting of the wine of the mouth, which is to say kissing all over; the stirring of the principal limb, or embracing; pressing again and again, or the marks of nails. Let memory do what the body once did. If the recollection is whole, a flood of joy rises even with the partner absent.
His account of why it works he attributes to Abhinavagupta. The remembered touch is reflected in the field of that touch — the channel of the middle, the supreme śakti, uncontrived — and being reflected there it stirs the same power, even though no touch has been presented from outside. The surface within registers it either way.
And his word for what you do is exact: turning to face it. That bliss, he says, is your own, and it arrives by your turning towards it; the woman is not the cause of it there.
Śivopādhyāya’s commentary
Śivopādhyāya glosses the three acts without euphemism — the tasting of the wine of the mouth, the stirring of the principal limb, pressing again and again or the marks of nails — and then explains the mechanism on Abhinavagupta's authority, naming him: the touch remembered in its fullness is reflected in the field of that touch, the channel of the middle, and so stirs the same power though nothing has been presented from outside. His word for the practice is turning to face it.
Commentary
The previous verse made a claim; this one runs the experiment. If the joy is genuinely one's own, then it should be reachable with the other person absent — and the verse says it is, provided the remembering is whole.
That is the argument, and it is why the Sanskrit is as explicit as it is: three physical acts named without euphemism, because a decorous memory would not have the fullness the verse requires and the demonstration would fail. We have not softened them for the same reason.
Two notes on reading it now. The gendered phrasing is the text's own — a male practitioner is assumed, as almost everywhere in this literature, though the questioner throughout is the Goddess — and readers may transpose without loss. And the instruction is memory, not fantasy: what is asked for is recollection of something that happened, in its own weight.
Word by word
lehana — licking (n., in compound); manthana — churning (n., in compound); ākoṭaiḥ — by the pressings, poundings (m. instr. pl.; the three name the acts of love-play, instrumental to the remembering); strī+sukhasya — of the pleasure with a woman (n. gen. sg., dependent on smṛteḥ); bharāt — from the fullness, the sheer intensity (m. abl. sg., ablative of cause: from the fullness of the memory of pleasure with a woman); smṛteḥ — of the memory, the recollection (f. gen. sg., dependent on bharāt); śakti+abhāve — in the absence of the śakti, the partner (m. loc. sg.); api — even (particle); deveśi — O mistress of the gods (f. voc. sg., addressing the Goddess); bhavet — there would arise (√bhū, 3rd sg. opt.); ānanda+samplavaḥ — a flood, an inundation of joy (m. nom. sg.)
When a great joy arrives, or a kinsman is seen after a long time,meditate on the joy welled up — dissolve into it, the mind made of it
Translation · colloquial
When a great joy arrives, or a loved one is seen after a long time,meditate on the joy that has welled up; melt into it, and let the mind be made of it.
Practice
This begins with something that befalls you: a great joy arrives, or you see one of your own people again after long absence. Śivopādhyāya makes both concrete — for a man worn down by poverty, a fortune arriving with no strings on it; or a son or a friend home at last from a long time abroad. At that moment turn the mind to the joy itself as it wells up, not to the money or the person.
His instruction is one clause and it is the sharpest statement of the method these portals share: seize only the welling-up itself. Not what the joy is about, not who brought it — only the fact of its rising. Held there, inwardly minded, you come to rest in the joy alone.
Śivopādhyāya’s commentary
Śivopādhyāya makes both occasions concrete: for a man worn down by poverty, an inexhaustible fortune arriving with no thorn in it; or a son or friend home from a long time abroad. His instruction is one clause — seize only the welling-up itself — and where our text says dissolve, he says come to rest.
Commentary
Seeing one of your own people again after a long absence is not an ascetic's occasion. This is the gentlest of the joy verses, and the most revealing about who the text was written for.
There is no monastic requirement anywhere in these hundred and twelve — no renunciation, no withdrawal, no cell — and a book that puts family reunion in the same list as absorption in union and the tasting of food is making an argument about ordinary life by its choice of examples alone.
The technique, shared with the four portals around it, is a single redirection: the occasion supplies the energy, and attention turns from the occasion to the state it produced. From the kinsman to the gladness at seeing them. The verse asks you to keep going until there is nothing but the gladness, which is a harder thing to do to a person than to a jar.
Word by word
ānande — joy (m. loc. sg., locative absolute); mahati — great (m. loc. sg., agreeing); prāpte — attained, arrived at (ppp. m. loc. sg., locative absolute); dṛṣṭe — seen (ppp. m. loc. sg., locative absolute); vā — or (particle); bāndhave — a kinsman, one of one's own people (m. loc. sg.); cirāt — after a long time (abl. used adverbially); ānandam — the joy (m. acc. sg.); udgatam — welled up, arisen (ppp. ud-√gam, m. acc. sg.); dhyātvā — having meditated on (gerund, √dhyai); tat+layaḥ — whose dissolution is in that, dissolved into it (bahuvrīhi, m. nom. sg.); tat+manāḥ — whose mind is that (bahuvrīhi, m. nom. sg.); bhavet — one should become (√bhū, 3rd sg. opt.)
Vijñāna Bhairava, verse 72 · dhāraṇā 49 · Feeling · śāktopāya · a means of mind · gross → subtle
जग्धिपानकृतोल्लासरसानन्दविजृम्भणात्
भावयेद् भरितावस्थां महानन्दस् ततो भवेत्
jagdhipānakṛtollāsarasānandavijṛmbhaṇāt bhāvayed bharitāvasthāṃ mahānandas tato bhavet
Translation · literal Sanskrit
From the blossoming of savor and joy — the delight that eating and drinking bring —dwell on the state filled full — from that, great joy arises
Translation · colloquial
From the opening out of savour and delight that eating and drinking bring,dwell in that state of being filled full, and out of it comes a great joy.
Practice
When you eat or drink, do not hurry past what follows. Śivopādhyāya makes the meal itself plain: whatever bare morsel stops the excess of hunger, water or milk enough to stop thirst. What the verse attends to comes after. In the absence of food, he says, the channels of the body go dry; when food is there, the savour spreads through them, and joy follows on that. The savour he means is not taste but the body's own moistness returning — and the delight is felt as the limbs are felt, the hands and the feet, shining out.
Then dwell on what he calls the state of the fullness of your own body. Held and cultivated so, that small satisfaction becomes great joy — for, as the śruti he quotes has it, he verily is savour, and having obtained savour one becomes possessed of bliss.
Some, he notes, read the verse as being about wine and the ritual substances. He does not condemn them. He asks a question instead — whether in a state of extreme intoxication there is any contemplation of reality at all — and then says that if there is, such people are blessed and to be saluted, and one should not censure them but bow.
Śivopādhyāya’s commentary
Śivopādhyāya reads the verse's savour as the body's moisture, not its taste: without food the channels go dry, with it the savour spreads through them, and joy follows on that. The state of being filled he makes concrete — the fullness of one's own body — and the food itself minimal, whatever bare morsel stops hunger. Of those who read the verse as being about wine and the ritual substances he asks only whether in a state of extreme intoxication there is any contemplation of reality at all; and adds that if there is, such people are to be saluted and not censured.
Commentary
Taste is the way in, not the practice. The verse names the savour and then moves straight past it to bharitāvasthā, the state of being filled, and that is what you are asked to dwell on. Fullness rather than flavour; the after rather than the during. It is not mindful eating as that is usually taught.
Notice what it does not licence. Nothing here recommends seeking out better food. The fullness after plain bread is the same fullness the verse means, and a practice that becomes a reason to eat well has quietly changed its object back to the savour.
Read plainly it is the most domestic instruction in the book: a minute at the end of a meal, sitting still, attending to a satisfaction the body produces on its own several times a day and that almost nobody stays for.
Word by word
jagdhi — eating (f., in compound); pāna — drinking (n., in compound); kṛta — produced, brought about (ppp., in compound); ullāsa — delight, upsurge (m., in compound); rasa — savor, taste (m., in compound); ānanda — joy (m., in compound); vijṛmbhaṇāt — from the blossoming, the expanding open (n. abl. sg.; whole compound: 'from the blossoming of the savor and joy whose upsurge is produced by eating and drinking'); bhāvayet — one should contemplate, dwell upon (√bhū caus., 3rd sg. opt.); bharita+avasthām — the state of being filled, fullness (f. acc. sg.); mahā+ānandaḥ — great joy (m. nom. sg.); tataḥ — from that, thence (indecl.); bhavet — arises, comes to be (√bhū, 3rd sg. opt.)
For the yogin whose self is one with the matchless happiness of tasting song and the other objects of sense,the mind having climbed into it, made of it — they have that for a self
Translation · colloquial
For one who has gone one with the matchless happiness of tasting song, and everything else the senses taste,the mind having climbed in and been made of it, that is what they have for a self.
Practice
Listen to song, or take up whatever savouring of the senses gives you a happiness nothing else equals. Give yourself to it whole, until self and happiness are one thing. The verse's condition is total: the mind must climb into the song and be made of it.
Śivopādhyāya's word for what does the work is not pleasure but wonder — the wonder of the song-sound taken in by the ear, the wonder of seeing an exceedingly beautiful form, the savouring of sweet tastes. What follows from that wonder is a happiness matchless and beyond comparison, and reachable, he says, only in your own experience; no one can tell you from outside whether you have had it. Being made of it he calls absorption into the touch of śakti — the same phrase he uses of what a remembered touch stirs — and from that, identity: the becoming of the nature of supreme brahman.
Śivopādhyāya’s commentary
Śivopādhyāya's word here is wonder, three times over: the wonder of the song-sound taken in by the ear, the wonder of seeing an exceedingly beautiful form, the savouring of sweet tastes. The happiness that follows he calls matchless and reachable only in one's own experience. Being made of it he names absorption into the touch of śakti — the same phrase he uses of the remembered touch three portals back — and he calls the whole portal śāmbhava, where we have called it śākta.
Commentary
One of a small group of verses that take an ordinary pleasure and treat it as a legitimate door — and the reason they can is stated here in technical terms. The mind does not enjoy the song; the mind climbs into it and becomes it, and identity with the object is what the practice is made of. Sufi sama' is the developed institution of the same argument, and it defends itself the same way.
Two cautions the text does not give. The condition is total, and a divided attention that is half enjoying and half watching itself enjoy satisfies none of it. Do not do this while driving, or during anything else that needs your attention for safety. And the door is genuinely a door: the happiness is the occasion, not the destination, and a practice that stops at the occasion is just a good evening out.
Word by word
gīta+ādi — song and the rest (input prints gitādi with short i; in compound); viṣaya — sense objects (in compound); āsvāda — savoring, tasting (in compound); asama — unequalled (in compound); saukhya — happiness (in compound); ekatā — oneness (in compound); ātmanaḥ — whose self (m. gen. sg., closing the bahuvrīhi, agreeing with yoginaḥ: 'whose self is one with the unequalled happiness of savoring song and other objects'); yoginaḥ — of the yogin (m. gen. sg.); tat+mayatvena — through consisting of that, being made of it (n. instr. sg.); manas+rūḍheḥ — from the mind's having climbed into it (manorūḍhi, f. abl. sg.); tad+ātmatā — the state of having that as one's self, identity with that (f. nom. sg.)
Vijñāna Bhairava, verse 74 · dhāraṇā 51 · Feeling · śāktopāya · a means of mind · subtle
यत्र यत्र मनस् तुष्टिर् मनस् तत्रैव धारयेत्
तत्र तत्र परानन्दस्वरूपं सम्प्रवर्तते
yatra yatra manas tuṣṭir manas tatraiva dhārayet tatra tatra parānandasvarūpaṃ sampravartate
Translation · literal Sanskrit
Wherever the mind finds contentment, hold the mind right therethere, in each such place, the essential form of supreme joy comes forward
Translation · colloquial
Wherever the mind is content, hold the mind right there;and there, in each such place, the highest joy comes forward in its own shape.
Practice
Wherever the mind comes to rest content — the verse sets no limit on the object — hold the mind exactly there. Contentment is the sign that a door stands open, and in each such place, held rather than passed through, the essential form of supreme joy comes forward of itself.
Śivopādhyāya is careful about which word is doing the work. Contentment, he says, means gladness of mind, not the agitation of mind the text will speak of later. A thing that stirs you up is not what the verse is talking about; and holding the mind there, he insists, includes restraining it — one must not, failing to restrain it, be thrown by the agitations of thought out of the steadiness one had.
His own example is the face of a desirable woman, and he is exact about the condition. What is to be held, so far as one is able, is the recognition: I am Śiva, whose nature is consciousness and bliss, and this is my own display. Held that way, the verse means what it says. Pursued instead in simple bondage to desire, he writes — and here he sets down the whole catalogue of love-making without a trace of squeamishness — one casts oneself into a pit.
His standard for anyone not yet free is modest and worth keeping: even on seeing surpassing beauty, become, according to your own capacity, purified and unattached — not defiled.
Śivopādhyāya’s commentary
Śivopādhyāya does not read this as the permissive verse. Contentment, he says, means gladness of mind and not the agitation of mind spoken of later; and holding the mind there includes restraining it — 'one should restrain the mind' is also fitting, he writes, or else the Vijñāna-bhairava would contradict the Gītā, which he quotes on desire, anger and greed as the threefold gate of hell. His own example is the face of a desirable woman, and his condition is a recognition held while looking: I am Śiva, and this is my own display. Pursued instead in bondage to desire — and he catalogues the acts of love without squeamishness — one casts oneself into a pit. For anyone not yet free his standard is modest: even on seeing surpassing beauty, become, according to your own capacity, purified and unattached, not defiled.
Commentary
After eight instances — a tickle, a union, a memory, a reunion, a meal, a song — comes the rule. Wherever the mind finds contentment, that is a door; hold it there.
This is the most permissive sentence in the book and it is also the one most easily turned into an excuse, so the safeguard it does contain deserves weight. The word is tuṣṭi, contentment: the settled state, not excitement and not craving. A thing that leaves you reaching for more of it has not produced tuṣṭi and is not what the verse is talking about, and that single distinction does most of the work of keeping this from being a licence for indolence. The other instruction is the harder one. Do not trade the pleasing thing for what you imagine to be a holier one. The impulse to leave a genuinely contenting object for something more “spiritual” is precisely the impulse this verse forbids.
Word by word
yatra yatra — wherever, in whatever place (indecl., distributive); manas+tuṣṭiḥ — contentment of the mind (f. nom. sg.); manaḥ — the mind (n. acc. sg., second occurrence); tatra eva — exactly there (indecl.); dhārayet — one should hold, keep fixed (√dhṛ caus., 3rd sg. opt.); tatra tatra — there, in each such place (indecl., distributive); para+ānanda+sva+rūpam — the essential form, the own-nature, of supreme joy (n. nom. sg.; svārūpa with metrically long ā for svarūpa); sampravartate — comes forward, sets itself in motion (sam-pra-√vṛt, 3rd sg. pres. mid.)
When sleep has not yet come and the outer field of sense has vanished,enter that state with the mind — the supreme Goddess shines forth
Translation · colloquial
Sleep has not yet come, and the outside world has already gone;reach that state with the mind, and the highest Goddess shines out.
Practice
Lie down for sleep and stay attentive. There is a threshold where the outer field has already gone — sounds and sights extinguished — but sleep itself has not yet arrived. The verse says that state is to be reached with the mind: enter it deliberately and hold to neither side. There the supreme Goddess shines forth.
Śivopādhyāya describes it as a gap between two coverings. Darkness is coming down over the mind's activity; the five outer objects have already vanished from view; and in the middle stands the one state with nothing covering it. That is why so ordinary a moment can carry so large a claim, and why it does not last — both coverings are moving.
His word for how you stay there is worth more than any amount of advice about not falling asleep. The state is to be taken up, he says, by the bracing of your own awareness: not attention aimed at something, but awareness taking hold of itself. And he quotes the Vāsiṣṭha for it — the state that comes into being at the beginning of sleep, at the end of waking; one who dwells upon that state directly enjoys imperishable bliss.
Śivopādhyāya’s commentary
Śivopādhyāya sets the threshold between two coverings: darkness coming down over the mind's activity, the five outer objects already gone from view, and in the middle the one state with nothing over it. What holds you there he calls the bracing of your own awareness — awareness taking hold of itself rather than of anything else. He quotes the Yogavāsiṣṭha for the same threshold, and calls the portal śāmbhava where we have called it śākta.
Commentary
Everyone crosses this threshold twice a day and almost nobody is present for it: the band where the senses have already shut down and sleep has not yet taken over. The verse asks you to enter it deliberately and stay.
The practical difficulty is exact, and worth saying plainly because it will be your entire experience of this practice at first. Attending keeps you awake, and letting go enough to arrive drops you over the edge into sleep. The band is narrow and most attempts end in sleeping, which is the ordinary outcome and not a failure.
Later traditions built whole disciplines in this territory, the Tibetan dream and sleep yogas most systematically, and there is no need to suppose any borrowing; the doorway is standard issue.
Note the disproportion the verse is content with: the highest claim in its vocabulary attached to the most banal moment of the day.
Word by word
anāgatāyām — not yet come (ppp. an-ā-√gam, f. loc. sg., locative absolute); nidrāyām — sleep (f. loc. sg., locative absolute); praṇaṣṭe — perished, vanished (ppp. pra-√naś, m. loc. sg., locative absolute); bāhya+gocare — the outer field, the range of the senses (m. loc. sg.); sā — that (f. nom. sg.); avasthā — state, condition (f. nom. sg.); manasā — by the mind (n. instr. sg.); gamyā — to be reached, to be entered (gerundive of √gam, f. nom. sg.); parā — supreme (f. nom. sg.); devī — the Goddess (f. nom. sg.); prakāśate — shines forth (pra-√kāś, 3rd sg. pres. mid.)
When space is dappled by the light of the sun, a lamp, or the like,settle the gaze right there — the form of one's own self shines forth
Translation · colloquial
When the air is dappled by the light of the sun, or a lamp, or anything like them,settle the gaze right there, and the shape of your own self shines out.
Practice
Find a place where light breaks space into patches — brightness scattered through shadow, dappled air. Śivopādhyāya offers three: by day, the open space above and below mottled by sunlight; at night, the great space dappled by moonlight, both within the moon's orb and outside it; or indoors, one part of a room filled by the halo of a lamp and variegated by its flame. Settle your gaze right there, on the mottled space itself and not on the source of the light. Keep the eyes unblinking and let looking become the whole of what you do. In that dappled space the form of your own self shines out — and what one sees, he says, is the whole world-born mass in the shape of a solid mass of consciousness.
He knows this practice has a reputation. Patañjali promises that saṃyama on the sun yields knowledge of the worlds, and on the moon knowledge of the array of the stars, and he quotes both. Then he sets them aside: even during that concentration, the shining forth of your own form is simply your own nature becoming one with the space of consciousness, and that is the principal fruit, being the most worth having. Knowledge of the worlds is a by-fruit.
Śivopādhyāya’s commentary
Śivopādhyāya gives three settings — daylight mottling the open air, a lamp's halo filling part of a room, and, best of all, moonlight dappling the great space within the moon's orb and outside it. He quotes Patañjali's promise that saṃyama on the sun yields knowledge of the worlds and on the moon knowledge of the stars, and then sets it aside: becoming one with the space of consciousness is the principal fruit, and knowledge of the worlds only a by-fruit of the concentration.
Commentary
Dappled light is the visual equivalent of the not-quite-object: patterned enough to hold the eye, too meaningless to interpret. That is what makes it work where a picture would not.
The instruction is careful about where to look — at the mottled space, not at the sun or the lamp doing the mottling — and the difference is the difference between a practice and staring at a light, which will only hurt you. Leaf-shadow moving on a wall will do it, and costs nothing.
What shines forth is named more intimately here than almost anywhere else in the book: not Bhairava, not the Goddess, not reality, but the form of your own self — the same becoming-what-you-attend-to that the text has been building on since the seventeenth portal, turned now to something you can find on an ordinary afternoon.
Word by word
tejasā — by the light, the brilliance (n. instr. sg.); sūrya+dīpa+ādeḥ — of the sun, a lamp, and the like (m. gen. sg.); ākāśe — space (n. loc. sg., locative absolute); śavalīkṛte — made dappled, mottled, variegated (ppp. of śavalī-√kṛ, n. loc. sg., locative absolute; KSTS prints śavala-, the older form of śabala, and the vivṛti uses it in its own prose — candrajyotsnayā śavale); dṛṣṭiḥ — the gaze (f. nom. sg.); niveśyā — to be settled, made to enter (gerundive of ni-√viś caus., f. nom. sg.); tatra eva — right there (indecl.); sva+ātma+rūpam — the form of one's own self (n. nom. sg.); prakāśate — shines forth (pra-√kāś, 3rd sg. pres. mid.)
Vijñāna Bhairava, verse 77 · dhāraṇā 54 · Body · āṇavopāya · with a support · subtle
करङ्किण्या क्रोधनया भैरव्या लेलिहानया
खेचर्या दृष्टिकाले च परावाप्तिः प्रकाशते
karaṅkiṇyā krodhanayā bhairavyā lelihānayā khecaryā dṛṣṭikāle ca parāvāptiḥ prakāśate
Translation · literal Sanskrit
With karaṅkiṇī; with krodhanā; with bhairavī; with lelihānā;with khecarī — at the moment of the gaze, the supreme attainment shines forth
Translation · colloquial
With the seal of the skeleton, with the wrathful one, with Bhairavi, with the one who licks,with the walker in the sky: at the moment of the gaze, the highest arrival shines out.
Practice
This verse presupposes five mudrās — karaṅkiṇī, krodhanā, bhairavī, lelihānā, khecarī. A mudrā here is a seal: a whole-body attitude, gaze included, that stamps consciousness with its shape.
Śivopādhyāya glosses all five, and read together they describe five colourings of a single act of looking. Karaṅkiṇī sees the universe as a bare skeleton, motionless, like a corpse. Krodhanā is intent with wrath. Bhairavī is the naked power of seeing. Lelihānā is one-pointed to devour, tasting everything again and again in fullness. Khecarī is the gaze stretched far out for the sake of beholding space, moving always in the open. He derives the names again from what each one does: from experiencing the body as a skeleton, karaṅkiṇī; from dissolving the traces one is made of, lelihānā; from standing uncovered in the sky of awareness, khecarī.
Then the verse's own contribution, which is exact: the supreme attainment shines at the moment of the gaze — not during the holding, at the moment of looking.
He is careful about where this comes from. What he has written, he says at the end, is the instruction of the tradition of the Siddhas and the Yoginīs. These are seals received by being shown. If one of them is yours, the verse tells you when it opens. If none is, you now know what they are, which is not the same as holding one.
Śivopādhyāya’s commentary
Śivopādhyāya spends four plates here — the longest comment in the book — and glosses all five mudrās three separate times: plainly, then by assigning each to a class of adepts, then by deriving each name from what it does. He closes by naming his source as the tradition of the Siddhas and Yoginīs, and sends anyone who wants more to Abhinavagupta's Vivaraṇa.
Commentary
Five seals named and none of them explained. That is what the verse does, and it is no longer what this edition can say about the tradition.
Śivopādhyāya glosses all five three times over: plainly, then by assigning each to a class of adepts, then by deriving each name from what it does. Read together the glosses converge on something usable. These are not five postures but five colourings of a single act of looking: the universe seen as a bare skeleton, motionless as a corpse; intentness with wrath; the naked power of seeing; a one-pointedness that devours, tasting everything again and again; and the gaze stretched out into open space and moving there.
That makes the verse's own contribution exact, and it is a matter of timing — the supreme attainment shines at the moment of the gaze, not during the holding.
What he does not claim is that any of it can be had off a page. Such is the instruction of the tradition of the Siddhas and the Yoginīs, he writes, and he sends anyone wanting more to Abhinavagupta. A mudrā of this kind is a whole-body attitude transmitted by being shown, and a description read alone yields a posture rather than a seal. So the descriptions are here, on his warrant. Holding one is still a separate matter.
Word by word
karaṅkiṇyā — by karaṅkiṇī, 'she of the skull' (f. instr. sg.; name of a mudrā); krodhanayā — by krodhanā, 'the wrathful' (f. instr. sg.; a mudrā); bhairavyā — by bhairavī, the consort-form of Bhairava (f. instr. sg.; a mudrā); lelihānayā — by lelihānā, 'the ever-licking' (intensive part. of √lih used as a name; f. instr. sg.; a mudrā); khecaryā — by khecarī, 'she who moves in the sky' (f. instr. sg.; a mudrā); dṛṣṭi+kāle — at the time of the gaze, the moment of seeing (m. loc. sg.); ca — and (particle); parā+avāptiḥ — the supreme attainment (f. nom. sg.); prakāśate — shines forth (pra-√kāś, 3rd sg. pres. mid.)
On a soft seat, on one buttock, hands and feetset down on no support — by dwelling on that, awareness becomes supreme and full
Translation · colloquial
On a soft seat, resting on one buttock, with the hands and the feetset down on nothing at all: keep at that, and what you know of yourself goes highest and full.
Practice
Take a soft seat — cloth or something like it, and genuinely soft. Settle your weight onto one hip alone, and set your hands and feet down so that nothing supports them; let them rest on air. The body is now lightly off balance and unpropped, and must keep making small corrections it cannot hand over to habit.
Śivopādhyāya adds what to do there, and it is not nothing. From that heightened condition, let awareness quicken through all the limbs, portion by portion, until it covers the whole body. As it goes, he says, the mind's darkness and restlessness melt off and what remains is sattva — clear, light, unagitated.
That is why the seat is soft. A hard one would recruit exactly the discomfort the practice is designed to melt away. Through dwelling in it, awareness becomes full and supreme of itself.
Śivopādhyāya’s commentary
Śivopādhyāya supplies the object the verse withholds: from the heightened condition of that unpropped posture, awareness is quickened through all the limbs, portion by portion, until darkness and restlessness melt off and the mind is left sattvic. He also treats the single hip as characterising the posture rather than defining it.
Commentary
The verse names no object at all: no breath, no sound, no image, no emptiness to contemplate — only an arrangement of the body and the instruction to stay in it.
Śivopādhyāya supplies what it withholds, and his answer is worth having: out of the heightened condition of that unpropped posture, awareness quickens through the limbs portion by portion until dullness and restlessness melt off.
Ours is smaller and does not contradict his. What the arrangement does is remove settling — weight on one side, hands and feet on nothing, so the body is very slightly off balance and must keep making corrections it cannot delegate to habit. You can neither forget the body nor get comfortable in it, and between those two failures is a narrow band of continuous unforced attention.
Note the first two words. A soft seat: the text specifies comfort in the same breath that it removes support, and that is characteristic of the whole collection. Nothing in these hundred and twelve is austerity. Difficulty appears only where difficulty is doing a job.
Word by word
mṛdu+āsane — on a soft seat (n. loc. sg.); sphijā — with the buttock (sphij, f. instr. sg.); ekena — one (instr. sg., with sphijā); hasta+pādau — hands and feet (dvandva, acc. dual); nirāśrayam — without support, resting on nothing (adverbial acc.); nidhāya — having set down, placed (gerund, ni-√dhā); tat+prasaṅgena — through that engagement, by dwelling on that (m. instr. sg.); parā — supreme (f. nom. sg., predicative); pūrṇā — full (f. nom. sg., predicative); matiḥ — awareness, the mind (f. nom. sg.); bhavet — becomes, arises (√bhū, 3rd sg. opt.)
Sit down well on a seat, the two arms held half-bent,place the mind in the sky of the armpit — through its dissolving there, one comes to stillness
Translation · colloquial
Sit down properly on a seat, both arms held half bent,and put the mind in the open space of the armpit; it dissolves there, and you come to stillness.
Practice
Sit down well on your seat. Hold both arms half-bent, curved away from the body so that a hollow of empty space opens beneath each armpit. Śivopādhyāya reads the sky of the armpit as the space of both armpits together — not one pocket but a single emptiness spanning the body, held open by the two arms.
Place the mind there — attend to the empty space itself, not to the arms that frame it. As the mind dissolves into that space, stillness comes. The peace arrives through the dissolving, not through effort.
Śivopādhyāya’s commentary
Śivopādhyāya gives this portal two words. The one that matters: the sky of the armpit is the space of both armpits — a single field, not a pocket under one arm.
Commentary
The sky of the armpit. This book keeps finding sky in absurdly small places — inside a jar, inside the skull, inside the heart, and now in the hollow under a bent arm — and the joke is also the argument. Space does not get grander by being large, and a practice on the emptiness beneath your own arm is not a lesser version of a practice on the emptiness above the world.
The arms are the frame, not the object. Half-bent is enough to open the hollow, and no more is asked of them.
What the verse promises is modest and mechanical, in the register of the thirty-seventh portal: not a dawning but śama, stillness, arriving through the dissolving rather than through any effort of yours. And nobody watching would notice you doing it.
Word by word
upaviśya — having sat down (gerund, upa-√viś); āsane — on a seat (n. loc. sg.); samyak — properly, well (indecl., with upaviśya); bāhū — the two arms (m. acc. dual); kṛtvā — having made, holding (gerund, √kṛ); ardha+kuñcitau — half-bent (adj. m. acc. dual, with bāhū); kakṣa+vyomni — in the sky of the armpit, the hollow space beneath the arm (n. loc. sg.); manaḥ — the mind (n. acc. sg.); kurvan — making, placing (pres. act. part. of √kṛ, m. nom. sg.); śamam — peace, stillness (m. acc. sg.); āyāti — one comes to, attains (ā-√yā, 3rd sg. pres. act.); tat+layāt — through dissolution into that (m. abl. sg.)
Let the gaze fall, frozen, on some thing of gross form;before long — the mind made supportless — one goes to Śiva
Translation · colloquial
Let the gaze fall and go still on some solid thing;before long, with the mind left standing on nothing, you go to Shiva.
Practice
Choose one solid thing — a pot, a stone, a wall; Śivopādhyāya's second example is a body. Let your gaze fall on it and freeze there: he glosses 'frozen' as neither opening nor closing the eyes. No blinking, no roving, no naming what you see. You are not studying the object; you are letting the gaze go rigid.
He reads one more instruction out of the verse's little word 'and': while the eyes rest on the gross object, the seeing is also to be aimed inward. Outward and inward at once — which is why he heads this portal with the name of the mudrā rather than with a stage of practice.
The mind, given nothing to do with what the eyes hold, loses its footing. Supportless, he says, means vikalpa done away with: the naming, comparing, judging traffic simply stops. Before long the mind stands without support, and that standing is the going to Śiva.
Śivopādhyāya’s commentary
Śivopādhyāya heads this the bhairavī ground — a fourth register alongside his śāmbhavī, śāktī and āṇavī — and reads the verse's stray 'and' as adding that the gaze, while frozen on the gross object, is also aimed inward. Supportless he glosses as vikalpa done away with.
Commentary
The frozen gaze is old and widely practised — the later manuals call it trāṭaka — and this verse is precise about what ruins it. Not blinking is the easy part. What matters is that you are not studying the object: the moment the mind begins naming what the eyes hold, or noticing its texture, or admiring it, the practice has been replaced by looking at something.
One caution, because we named this portal among the risky ones and owe it the note: never hold the gaze on the sun, on a close flame, or on any bright source, and let the eyes water and blink when they insist — a held gaze is not a contest with the eyelid, and forcing it past the point of strain buys nothing the practice wants. A candle at a safe distance is the usual object, with the ordinary care any open flame asks for.
The eyes stay busy while the faculty that makes sense of what they see is given nothing to do, and it is that faculty losing its footing which the verse calls making the mind supportless. Nirādhāra is the word, and it returns two portals later.
So the shape of it: a gross, solid, entirely ordinary object used as the means to a mind resting on nothing. The support is what gets you to supportlessness.
Word by word
sthūla+rūpasya — of gross form (gen. sg., qualifying bhāvasya); bhāvasya — of a thing, an existent object (m. gen. sg.); stabdhām — frozen, motionless (f. acc. sg.); dṛṣṭim — gaze (f. acc. sg.); nipātya — having made [it] fall upon (gerund, caus. of ni-√pat); ca — and; acireṇa — before long (instr. sg. as adverb); nirādhāram — without support (n. acc. sg.); manaḥ — the mind (n. acc. sg.); kṛtvā — having made (gerund of √kṛ); śivam — Śiva (m. acc. sg.); vrajet — one goes to (opt. 3rd sg. of √vraj)
Tongue at the middle, the mouth thrown wide — cast awareness into the centresounding ha with the mind — then, into the quiet, one dissolves
Translation · colloquial
Tongue held at the middle, the mouth thrown wide, cast your awareness into the centre;sound ha in the mind, and then you dissolve into the quiet.
Practice
Open the mouth wide. Let the tongue rest in the middle, free of palate and teeth. Drop your attention into that open hollow.
There, sound ha — with the mind only, no voice, no pushed breath. Śivopādhyāya is exact about which sound: the bare letter ha with no vowel attached to it. Not 'ha' said quietly, but the aspirate alone, with nothing to carry it. Try it and you will find it is a different act from saying a syllable inwardly.
He also explains why this letter. The breath already carries a mantra of its own — haṃ going out, saḥ coming in; by sa it goes out, by ha it enters again. In this posture the outward sa has nowhere to go, and what remains to be sounded is ha alone. (There is a second reason worth knowing: ha is the last sound of the Sanskrit alphabet, which in this school runs from a to ha as reality runs from Śiva to Śakti. To sound ha is to sound the far end of manifestation.)
Keep the mouth open, the tongue free, the silent vowelless ha sounding. When even that settles, dissolve into the quiet it leaves behind. As in the sixteenth portal, the practice is an ending — except that here the sound was never audible in the first place.
Śivopādhyāya’s commentary
Śivopādhyāya specifies the sound exactly: the bare letter ha with no vowel attached. He explains the choice from the breath's own mantra — haṃ out, saḥ in — noting that in this posture the outward sa cannot go, so ha alone is left to sound. He reads the whole portal as khecarī mudrā, with the tongue turned back into the hollow of the skull and the gaze fixed between the brows, quoting the Vivekamārtaṇḍa for the definition; we have kept the plainer reading the verse's own words give.
Commentary
Mouth wide, tongue hanging free of palate and teeth: the arrangement makes cheating impossible. There is nowhere to swallow the sound and nothing to shape it with, so the ha has to be made in the mind alone while the body holds an open hollow that would let a real one out.
The letter is not arbitrary. Ha is the last sound of the Sanskrit alphabet and the sound the breath makes leaving the body, and in this school's phonetic theology the alphabet runs from a to ha as reality runs from Śiva to Śakti — so to sound ha is to sound the far end of manifestation, the outbreath of the world.
Then it stops, and what it leaves behind is the object. As in the sixteenth portal, the practice is an ending. Here the sound was never audible in the first place.
Word by word
madhya+jihve — [the mouth] with the tongue in the middle (loc. sg., loc. absolute); sphārita+āsye — with the mouth spread wide open (loc. sg., loc. absolute); madhye — into the centre (loc. sg.); nikṣipya — having cast (gerund of ni-√kṣip); cetanām — awareness (f. acc. sg.); ha+uccāram — the utterance of ha (m. acc. sg.); manasā — with the mind (n. instr. sg.); kurvan — making (pres. part. m. nom. sg. of √kṛ); tataḥ — then; śānte — in the stilled, the quiet (loc. sg.); pralīyate — one dissolves (pres. 3rd sg. ātmanepada of pra-√lī)
Settled on a seat or a bed, contemplate as supportlessyour own body — as the mind wears thin, in an instant the stored leanings wear out
Translation · colloquial
Settled on a seat, or lying on a bed, hold your own body as resting on nothing;and as the mind wears thin, in an instant what you have been storing up wears out.
Practice
Sit on a seat, or lie down on a bed. Śivopādhyāya lingers on the surface — hide, silk, cotton, velvet, cool smooth cloth — because for him the softness is not scenery. At the very moment of contact, he says, a condition made of bliss wells up and the mind wears thin. Let that happen.
Then contemplate your own body as having nothing beneath it — no bed, no floor: hanging in nothing. He marks the step that makes this work: even the felt sense of your own body melts away, the touch-awareness by which you know you have one, and it is after that melting that the form you consider is genuinely free of any support.
The mind, finding no ground under the body, fades. Let it fade. In that instant, the verse says, the mind's old stored leanings are worn away with it — and he glosses it flatly: at once, free of latent traces.
That last claim is the largest in the book. Set against experience it is hard to credit: what a strong sitting reliably does is suspend the store, not empty it, as anyone who has come out of a deep retreat and met their family can report. A state opened is not a structure changed, and reading a verse like this as a promise of permanent alteration has wrecked more practitioners than any of the difficult techniques have. We record that Śivopādhyāya does not share this caution — he takes the verse at its word. The contemplation itself is excellent either way.
Śivopādhyāya’s commentary
Śivopādhyāya makes the soft surface causal rather than incidental: at the very moment of contact a bliss-condition wells up and the mind wears thin. He names the step our note leaves out — even the felt sense of the body melts — and then glosses the verse's largest claim without softening it at all: at once, free of latent traces.
Commentary
The claim at the end of this verse is the largest in the book. Āśaya is the store of latent dispositions — the sediment of a life, the tendencies that reassert themselves the moment attention lapses — and the verse says it is worn out kṣaṇāt, in an instant. Śivopādhyāya does not soften it: free of latent traces.
Set against a life of practice the claim needs one distinction, between what a sitting does and what a lifetime does. A strong sitting reliably suspends the store. It does not empty it, as anyone who has come out of a long retreat and met their family can report.
Over years the suspension comes easier and becomes something close to second nature, and the store does thin — but it is still there, and this is what gets called, harshly, killing the ego. So take free of latent traces as the end state, the small self finished and the Self standing permanently revealed, and not as the report of an afternoon.
What the verse describes exactly is the instant in which the store is not operating. That is real and it is available now. Until the rest arrives, Bhairava is in the background, more or less present in the foreground, and that alternation is its own instruction.
Word by word
āsane — on a seat (n. loc. sg.); śayane — on a bed (n. loc. sg.); sthitvā — having settled (gerund of √sthā); nirādhāram — supportless (m. acc. sg., with svadeham); vibhāvayan — contemplating, making vividly present (pres. part. caus. m. nom. sg. of vi-√bhū); sva+deham — one's own body (m. acc. sg.); manasi — the mind (n. loc. sg., loc. absolute); kṣīṇe — faded, wasted away (loc. sg., loc. absolute; text reads kṣiṇe); kṣaṇāt — in an instant (m. abl. sg.); kṣīṇa+āśayaḥ — one whose store of latent dispositions is worn out (m. nom. sg., bahuvrīhi); bhavet — one becomes (opt. 3rd sg. of √bhū)
Now settled on a moving seat, or through the slow sway of the bodywhen the mind's state is wholly stilled, Goddess, one attains the divine flood
Translation · colloquial
Now settled on something that moves, or simply swaying the body slowly,when the state of mind has gone wholly quiet, Goddess, a flood comes that is not of this world.
Practice
Ride something that sways. Śivopādhyāya's examples are not gentle ones — a cart, an elephant, a horse — and he calls the seat very unsteady: motion you are given rather than motion you supply. Or, seated still, rock the body yourself, slowly, and keep it slow.
Do nothing else; let the motion be the whole of it. Thought is lulled by the swaying and the state of the mind settles toward calm. The flood is not something you fetch — when the calm is complete, it comes. What comes, he says, is the flowing stream of the bliss of consciousness belonging to the supreme space: the same open space the sky portals work with, arriving here by way of a moving seat.
Śivopādhyāya’s commentary
Śivopādhyāya wants a genuinely lurching seat — his examples are a cart, an elephant, a horse — and glosses the divine flood as the flowing stream of the bliss of consciousness belonging to the supreme space, which puts this portal next to the sky practices rather than on its own.
Commentary
Every infant is rocked and every long cart ride does this to its passengers. The verse simply asks you to stay awake for it.
Slow, repetitive, unwilled motion gives the mind a rhythm it cannot argue with and nothing to do, and thought subsides without being suppressed — which is why this is one of the few portals here that will work on somebody who has never meditated and does not intend to.
It permits either a seat that moves or a body that moves itself, and śanaiḥ, slowly, is doing the same work it did at the forty-fourth portal: too fast and this becomes stimulation instead.
The last line is careful. The flood is not attained by the rocking. It comes when the calm is complete, and the rocking only completes the calm.
Word by word
cala+āsane — on a moving seat (n. loc. sg.); sthitasya — of one settled (pres. part. gen. m. sg. of √sthā); atha — now, or again; śanaiḥ — slowly (instr. pl. as adverb); vā — or; deha+cālanāt — from a moving, a swaying, of the body (n. abl. sg.); praśānte — fully calmed (loc. sg., loc. absolute); mānase — mental (loc. sg., loc. absolute); bhāve — state, condition (m. loc. sg., loc. absolute); devi — O Goddess (f. voc. sg.); divya+ogham — the divine flood, stream (m. acc. sg.); āpnuyāt — one would attain (opt. 3rd sg. of √āp)
Gazing on the stainless sky, the gaze unbrokenthe whole self stilled — and that instant, Goddess, one wears Bhairava's body
Translation · colloquial
Gazing at a spotless sky, and never letting the gaze break,the whole self gone still: and that instant, Goddess, you wear Bhairava's body.
Practice
Find open sky with nothing in it — no cloud, no bird, no branch at the edge of vision. Look into it and hold the gaze unbroken. Śivopādhyāya reads 'unbroken' quite physically: without interruption, because the eyes are neither opening nor closing. Not blinking is the instruction. Beyond that, no wandering and no refocusing on distance, since there is no distance to find.
Let the body go motionless — 'the self stilled', which he glosses simply as a motionless body. In that arrest, at once, the form you wear is Bhairava's.
Of everything else in the verse he says only that it explains itself by being said. It is the one portal in this book where the commentator, who elsewhere will spend four pages on five words, finds nothing to add.
Śivopādhyāya’s commentary
Śivopādhyāya glosses two words — unbroken means unblinking, the self stilled means a motionless body — and then writes that the rest explains itself by the mere saying of it. It is the only place in his commentary where he declines to comment.
Commentary
The eyes are open on something with no feature to rest on, the body is still, and the verse claims the result in the same instant — no sequence, no stages, nothing to get better at. No support at all, which is what makes it the hardest of the easy-sounding ones.
That immediacy is the mark of the third kind of means: it either happens or it does not, and effort is precisely what is in the way.
Unbroken sky-gazing is a principal practice in the Tibetan Dzogchen and Bon manuals, held there with the same stillness of the eyes, and there is no need to suppose either tradition took it from the other. A cloudless sky is a rare piece of equipment, and it works on whoever looks.
Word by word
ākāśam — the sky, space (n. acc. sg.); vimalam — stainless, clear (n. acc. sg.); paśyan — beholding (pres. part. m. nom. sg. of √dṛś/paś); kṛtvā — having made (gerund of √kṛ); dṛṣṭim — the gaze (f. acc. sg.); nirantarām — unbroken, without gap (f. acc. sg.); stabdha+ātmā — whose whole self is frozen still (m. nom. sg., bahuvrīhi); tat+kṣaṇāt — from that very instant (abl. sg.); devi — O Goddess (voc.); bhairavam — of Bhairava, Bhairava's (n. acc. sg. adj.); vapuḥ — body, form (n. acc. sg.); āpnuyāt — one would attain (opt. 3rd sg. of √āp)
Vijñāna Bhairava, verse 85 · dhāraṇā 62 · Space · śāktopāya · a means of mind · subtle → causal
लीनं मूर्ध्नि वियत् सर्वम् भैरवत्वेन भावयेत्
तत् सर्वम् भैरवाकारतेजस्तत्त्वं समाविशेत्
līnaṃ mūrdhni viyat sarvam bhairavatvena bhāvayet tat sarvam bhairavākāratejastattvaṃ samāviśet
Translation · literal Sanskrit
Contemplate the whole sky dissolved into the crown of the head — as Bhairavaand all of that enters the reality of light that bears Bhairava's shape
Translation · colloquial
Hold the whole sky dissolved into the crown of the head, and hold it as Bhairava;and all of it goes into the reality of light that has Bhairava's shape.
Practice
Sitting, take the whole sky into mind — all of space at once — and contemplate it as gathered and dissolved inside the crown of your head, and that indrawn sky as Bhairava. Śivopādhyāya locates it a little differently from the way the word 'crown' sounds: the principal place, he says, is the one called heart-and-brahmarandhra, and the verse he quotes has space dissolving in the heart and in the brahmarandhra both. Take it as an axis rather than a point.
He also says what the indrawn sky is like. It is space, or it is darkness — black, because it has swallowed the portion of light that makes things different from one another. It is filled to the brim with everything there is, now inward. And because it withdraws all, it has the form of Time.
Hold everything in that one place. When the contemplation ripens, all that is held there passes into light bearing Bhairava's shape — the space made of consciousness. The wondrous fruit, he says, of contemplating everything as that black form is becoming the supreme space oneself.
Śivopādhyāya’s commentary
Śivopādhyāya glosses the crown as the place called heart-and-brahmarandhra, and reads the indrawn sky as darkness as well as space — black because it has swallowed the light that makes difference — and as Time, because it withdraws all. He quotes the Mālinīvārtika for it, and this is where his three darkness portals begin.
Commentary
The whole of space is gathered and dissolved into the crown of your head: the largest available object put into one of the smallest available places. The earlier space practices expanded you into the sky; this one runs the film backwards.
It is the same wager the armpit verse made from the other end, and the collection keeps returning to it — if space is genuinely space, its size is not one of its properties, and a practice can move it around.
What is asked of you is only the holding. The last line uses the school's own technical word for what follows: samāveśa, entry, being taken into. It is not something a practitioner performs. In this text the practitioner arranges a condition and the entry happens, and the verse is careful to put that in a verb you are not the subject of.
Word by word
līnam — dissolved, merged (n. acc. sg.); mūrdhni — in the head, the crown (m. loc. sg.); viyat — the sky, open space (n. acc. sg.); sarvam — entire (n. acc. sg.); bhairavatvena — as Bhairava-ness, as being Bhairava (n. instr. sg., manner); bhāvayet — one should contemplate (opt. 3rd sg. caus. of √bhū); tat — that (n. nom. sg.); sarvam — all (n. nom. sg.); bhairava+ākāra+tejas+tattvam — the reality of light whose shape is Bhairava (n. acc. sg. compound); samāviśet — would enter into (opt. 3rd sg. of sam-ā-√viś)
A something known gives duality; the outer light in its turn is darknessknowing Bhairava's form as Viśva and the rest, one bears unending light
Translation · colloquial
Know any one thing and already you are two. The light out there shows you nothing but things, so as seeing goes it is a kind of dark.Know that the all, and everything that follows from it, is Bhairava's own form — and the light you carry has no end.
Practice
Śivopādhyāya reads the three terms of this verse as the three states. A something known — a pot, a wall — is waking, and it is where difference begins. The light outside, which shows only such things, is dream, lit by nothing but the residue of waking. The darkness is deep sleep, which he calls the enjoyment of not-knowing. Consciousness taking itself to be each in turn is Viśva, then Taijasa, then Prājña. So: pass through the three, and stop in none of them. What is Bhairava here is the Fourth — not a state standing beside the others but what does not change across them, and what has nothing outside it to stand against. The light such knowing carries has no end because there is no longer anything outside it to be dark.
Śivopādhyāya’s commentary
Śivopādhyāya reads the verse’s three terms as the three states — waking, dream, dreamless sleep — so viśva is not ‘the universe’ but Viśva, the waking self, with taijasa and prājña taken in by ‘and the rest’; Bhairava is तुरीयस्वरूपं, the Fourth (plates 0082–0083). He announces the frame himself — अत्र इयं वेदान्तशास्त्रप्रक्रिया, ‘here this is the procedure of the Vedānta śāstra’ — and closes on ‘all this is verily brahman’. The frame is his, and Vedāntic; the verse is Trika.
Commentary
One of the very few verses here that argues rather than instructs, and the argument is compressed almost past legibility.
Knowing a something produces a split — a knower here, a known there — so every act of ordinary cognition manufactures the duality it then reports. From which the startling second clause: the outer light, the light by which we see things, is a kind of darkness, because all it can show is separated objects.
This is the recognition philosophy of Kashmir in one line, and the remedy is not to stop knowing. It is to know the whole of what appears, at once, as a single form, so that nothing is left standing opposite you to be known.
Whether that can be done on purpose is exactly what divides the third kind of means from the other two. The verse offers no method because there is none to offer.
Word by word
kiñcit — something, a mere something (n. nom. sg.); jñātam — known (past part. n. nom. sg. of √jñā); dvaita+dāyi — duality-giving (n. nom. sg.); bāhya+ālokaḥ — the outer light (m. nom. sg.); tamaḥ — darkness (n. nom. sg.); punaḥ — again, in turn; viśva+ādi — the all and its origin, beginning with the universe (n. acc. sg., adj. to rūpam; the received line reads 'Viśva and the rest', taking viśva as the name of the waking self and the series as the three states — waking, dream, dreamless sleep. That is Śivopādhyāya's frame and he announces it himself as the procedure of the Vedānta śāstra. The compound alone will not give it); bhairavam — of Bhairava (n. acc. sg. adj.); rūpam — form (n. acc. sg.); jñātvā — having known (gerund of √jñā); ananta+prakāśa+bhṛt — bearer of unending light (m. nom. sg.)
In just this way, on a black night as the dark fortnight comes on — a long whilecontemplating the form made of darkness, one will come to the form of Bhairava
Translation · colloquial
Just the same on a black night, as the dark half of the month comes on, and for a long while:hold the shape that darkness makes, and you will come to the shape of Bhairava.
Practice
Wait for the dark half of the month, and a night gone fully black — Śivopādhyāya glosses the verse's 'bad night' as a night covered over by cloud, so new moon and overcast together. Go where no lamp reaches.
Stay a long while — the verse says long — with the eyes open on the blackness, contemplating that darkness itself as a form before you. He names this one, in closing, the contemplation of darkness with the eyes open, and pairs it with the portal that follows, which is the same contemplation with the eyes closed. He also treats it as continuous with the two verses before it: the same dark, met first inwardly and then out here.
Do not people it with images. Held so, the dark form you are watching and the form of Bhairava arrive as one.
One honest warning, which is ours and not his. Sustained looking into total darkness produces visual noise in nearly everyone — drifting shapes, false light, faces — because a visual system given no signal starts inventing one. The instruction not to people the dark with images is the whole difficulty of this practice, and it is not a small one.
Śivopādhyāya’s commentary
Śivopādhyāya glosses the bad night as one covered over by cloud, and names this the contemplation of darkness with the eyes open — pairing it with the next portal, which is the same contemplation with them closed. He reads it as continuous with the two verses before it rather than standing alone.
Commentary
The night twin of the sky-gazing portal: there a featureless bright, here a featureless dark, and the same demand that the eye be given nothing it can work with.
It is also one of only two or three practices in the book with a logistical requirement — the dark fortnight, a moonless night, no lamp — which in most modern places is harder to arrange than the text could have imagined. Ciram, a long while, is worth marking: this is the only portal besides the twenty-eighth to say anything about duration, and it says the opposite.
One honest warning. Sustained looking into total darkness produces visual noise in nearly everyone — drifting shapes, false light, faces — because a visual system given no signal starts inventing one. The instruction not to people the dark with images is the whole difficulty of this practice, and it is not a small one.
Word by word
evam eva — in just this way; durniśāyām — on a black, forbidding night (f. loc. sg.); kṛṣṇa+pakṣa+āgame — at the coming of the dark fortnight (m. loc. sg.); ciram — a long while (adverbial acc.); taimiram — made of darkness (n. acc. sg., with rūpam); bhāvayan — contemplating (pres. part. caus. m. nom. sg. of √bhū); rūpam — form (n. acc. sg.); bhairavam — of Bhairava (n. acc. sg. adj.); rūpam — form (n. acc. sg.); eṣyati — one will come to, will reach (fut. 3rd sg. of √i)
In just this way — both eyes first closed on the blackness in frontthen thrown wide — contemplating that as Bhairava's form, one becomes made of it
Translation · colloquial
Just the same again: both eyes closed first on the blackness in front of you,then thrown open; hold that as Bhairava's shape, and you are made of it.
Practice
This needs no night — Śivopādhyāya says so directly: it works even in the absence of the dark fortnight and a clouded night.
First close both eyes. Attend to the blackness that stands in front of them — seen, not imagined — and contemplate it as the form of Bhairava; black-appearing, he says, and made of darkness. When that holds steady, open the eyes wide and find the same dark form spread before you, unbroken by what appears in it. Stay with it. You become made of what you contemplate — and what you become made of, he says, is light.
One plain observation. What you actually see with the eyes shut is not black. It is a mottled, drifting grey, and the Sanskrit says as much — a black appearance, a black glow, rather than an absence. Attending to it as something rather than as nothing is the shift the verse wants.
Śivopādhyāya’s commentary
Śivopādhyāya confirms that this one needs no night at all, keeps the two steps distinct — first the eyes closed, afterwards thrown wide on the same black — and finishes the arc that began two portals back: contemplating the darkness, one becomes made of light.
Commentary
The domestic version of the verse before, requiring neither a moonless night nor anywhere to go — and it repays doing because of its second half.
First establish the dark as a form with the eyes closed; then open them, and find the same form still there, unbroken by what is now appearing in it. That two-step is the pattern the whole tradition depends on: a condition found in the shelter of a practice, then deliberately carried across the boundary into a room with things in it. Almost everything that fails in contemplative life fails at that boundary.
One plain observation. What you actually see with the eyes shut is not black. It is a mottled, drifting grey, and the Sanskrit says as much — a black appearance, a black glow, rather than an absence. Attending to it as something rather than as nothing is the shift the verse wants.
Word by word
evam eva — in just this way; nimīlya — having closed (gerund of ni-√mīl); ādau — at first (loc. sg. as adverb); netre — the two eyes (n. acc. dual); kṛṣṇa+ābham — the black appearance, black glow (n. acc. sg.); agrataḥ — in front (adverb); prasārya — having opened wide, spread (gerund, caus. of pra-√sṛ; object taken as netre); bhairavam — of Bhairava (n. acc. sg. adj.); rūpam — form (n. acc. sg.); bhāvayan — contemplating (pres. part. caus. m. nom. sg. of √bhū); tat+mayaḥ — made of that (m. nom. sg.); bhavet — one becomes (opt. 3rd sg. of √bhū)
Vijñāna Bhairava, verse 89 · dhāraṇā 66 · Body · āṇavopāya · with a support · subtle → causal
यस्य कस्येन्द्रियस्यापि व्याघाताच् च निरोधतः
प्रविष्टस्याद्वये शून्ये तत्रैवात्मा प्रकाशते
yasya kasyendriyasyāpi vyāghātāc ca nirodhataḥ praviṣṭasyādvaye śūnye tatraivātmā prakāśate
Translation · literal Sanskrit
When any sense whatever, through a blocking blow and through restrainthas entered the emptiness without a second — right there the ātman shines forth
Translation · colloquial
When any sense at all, through a blocking blow and through being held back,has gone into the emptiness that has no second, right there the self shines out.
Practice
Take any one sense and bring it to a stop — palms sealed over the ears, eyes pressed shut. Śivopādhyāya reads the verse's two methods as three. There is the blocking blow, made by something outside that overpowers the sense. And there is restraint, which he divides: the stop that arises of its own accord, and the stop you bring about by effort. The first of those three asks nothing of you but that you notice.
Then follow the stopped sense back in. You do not attend to the blocking; you go in along the sense to the place its object used to occupy. Where its object was, there is now an emptiness with no second thing in it. Enter there and become firmly established in it — the inward-facing state, he calls it.
Immediately thereupon, he says — not gradually — exactly there, the ātman shines out: the self that was doing the sensing, found where the sensing stopped.
Śivopādhyāya’s commentary
Śivopādhyāya makes three doors of the verse's two: the blow from outside, the restraint that arises of its own accord, and the restraint brought about by effort. Entering the emptiness he glosses as becoming firmly established in the inward-facing state, and he adds that the shining follows immediately rather than by degrees.
Commentary
The seventeenth portal's formula returns — any whatever, take your pick — and the two methods offered here are startlingly unequal in refinement and offered as equals. A blocking blow: palms clamped over the ears, eyes pressed shut. Or restraint: the same stop made from inside, with nothing touched. Crude and subtle, listed with no preference, which is characteristic of a book whose ninety-fifth portal will treat a sneeze as seriously as a samādhi.
What separates this from merely plugging your ears is the follow-back. You do not attend to the blocking; you go in along the stopped sense to the place its object used to occupy, and stay in what is there instead.
And what shines there is named unusually: not Bhairava and not the Goddess but the ātman — the one who was doing the sensing, found where the sensing stopped.
Word by word
yasya kasya — of whichever whatsoever (gen. sg.); indriyasya — of the sense-faculty (n. gen. sg.); api — even; vyāghātāt — through obstruction, a blocking blow (m. abl. sg.); ca — and; nirodhataḥ — through restraint, suppression (abl. in -taḥ); praviṣṭasya — of [that faculty] having entered (past part. gen. sg. of pra-√viś, continuing indriyasya); advaye — non-dual, without a second (n. loc. sg.); śūnye — in the emptiness (n. loc. sg.); tatra eva — right there; ātmā — the self, ātman (m. nom. sg.); prakāśate — shines forth (pres. 3rd sg. ātmanepada of pra-√kāś)
For one reciting the letter a — no bindu, no visarga — a greatflood of knowing rises all at once, Goddess — the highest lord
Translation · colloquial
Recite the letter a with nothing added to it, no point above, no breath after, and a greatflood of knowing rises all at once, Goddess: the highest lord.
Practice
Recite the open vowel a — the bare sound, with nothing to close it: no bindu, the nasal hum written as a dot, and no visarga, the trailing breath written ḥ. Some, Śivopādhyāya notes, do this while the breath is held.
He is clear that the two marks being stripped are not merely punctuation. Bindu is the awareness of undividedness, the knowledge of non-duality; visarga is the act that emits the whole spread of difference — every other letter, from ka onward, being its work. What is left when both are gone stands before either: not the knowledge that all is one, and not the outpouring that makes things many.
He also hears the letter's own name as an instruction. A-kāra: that whose means of making is not present. It is the sound a mouth makes by opening, requiring no articulation at all, and what you are practising is the sound that is not made. He calls it the Unsurpassed, and calls the contemplation of it the thinking of nothing whatever.
Let it repeat, plain and unfinished. What follows is not something you do: suddenly, the verse says, a great flood of knowing rises — the highest lord. Keep to the endingless a, and be available to what rises.
Set it beside the sixteenth portal, which attended to the ending of OM: there the door was the finish, here it is the refusal of one.
Śivopādhyāya’s commentary
Śivopādhyāya reads the two stripped marks as more than phonetics: bindu is the knowledge of non-duality, visarga the act that emits the whole spread of difference. What is left stands before both. He hears a-kāra as 'that whose means of making is not present', calls the contemplation the thinking of nothing whatever, and notes that some recite it while the breath is held. He quotes the Dvayasaṃpatti of Vāmananātha, which cites this very verse as scripture — the same work, under a second name and a second spelling, that he leans on again at the taking up of the full I-ness. Vāmana and Hrasva both mean short, and the verse he draws from it is the same verse in both places.
Commentary
A is the sound a mouth makes by opening — the first letter, requiring no articulation at all — and in this school's phonetic theology it is Śiva's own letter, the counterpart of the ha that the fifty-eighth portal put in an open mouth. Between them the two verses hold the whole alphabet, which is to say the whole of manifestation, at its two ends.
What is stripped away here are precisely the two marks that let a syllable finish: the bindu that closes it into a hum, the visarga that lets it breathe out. Without them the sound has no way to end, and reciting something that cannot conclude is the practice.
Set it beside the sixteenth portal, which attended to the ending of OM: there the door was the finish, here it is the refusal of one. Sahasā — suddenly — is how the verse says the rest arrives.
Word by word
a+bindum — without bindu, the nasal point ṃ (m. acc. sg.); a+visargam — without visarga, the final breath ḥ (m. acc. sg.); ca — and; a+kāram — the letter a (m. acc. sg.); japataḥ — of one reciting (pres. part. gen. m. sg. of √jap); mahān — great (m. nom. sg.); udeti — rises up (pres. 3rd sg. of ud-√i); devi — O Goddess (voc.); sahasā — suddenly, all at once (instr. as adverb); jñāna+oghaḥ — flood of knowing (m. nom. sg.); parama+īśvaraḥ — the highest lord (m. nom. sg.)
Vijñāna Bhairava, verse 91 · dhāraṇā 68 · Sound · āṇavopāya · with a support · subtle → causal
वर्णस्य सविसर्गस्य विसर्गान्तं चितिं कुरु
निराधारेण चित्तेन स्पृशेद् ब्रह्म सनातनम्
varṇasya savisargasya visargāntaṃ citiṃ kuru nirādhāreṇa cittena spṛśed brahma sanātanam
Translation · literal Sanskrit
Of a letter joined with its visarga, set awareness on the visarga's endwith the mind supportless, one touches brahman, the everlasting
Translation · colloquial
Take a letter that carries its breath after it, and set awareness on the very end of that breath;with the mind resting on nothing, you touch what is everlasting.
Practice
Sound a letter that closes with visarga — aḥ. The visarga is the light out-breath at the end, an h that thins away into nothing. Put your awareness on the very end of that breath — the point where the sound is over and nothing has yet replaced it. The mind waiting there has nothing to hold. With that unsupported mind, the verse says, you touch brahman, which does not end.
Śivopādhyāya adds that the ending is not to be engineered. The visarga comes to its end of itself, he says, out of an excess of touching your own inward-facing nature: attend inward hard enough and the outward emission simply runs out. He also reads the same word a second way — not at the end of the visarga but in the very nature of the visarga — which makes the emission itself the place you rest rather than the thing you wait out. Either is the practice.
Śivopādhyāya’s commentary
Śivopādhyāya calls the visarga the instrument of the bound condition — the outward emission by which one is bound at all — so its ending is the withdrawal of that apparatus, brought about by an excess of inward attention rather than by managing the breath. He offers a second reading of the same word as a locative: make awareness in the very nature of the visarga. And where our note reads the verb as a brief touch, he writes that once knowing has nothing to rest on, the touch of the supreme brahman is constant.
Commentary
This closes a set of four portals working one seam in sound: the silence after OM, both edges of any letter whatever, a syllable with no way to end, and now the ending itself taken as the object.
Visarga is the light breath at the close of a syllable, written as two dots — and in this school it is also a technical term for emission, the outpouring by which Śiva becomes a world. So attending to where a visarga finishes is attending, in miniature, to where emission stops. Whether that resonance is doing any work in the practice or only in the theology is a fair question, and the practice stands without it.
Note the verb, which is the most modest result-word in the whole book. Not becomes, not attains, not enters. One touches brahman — a hand laid on something briefly, and taken away.
Word by word
varṇasya — of the letter (m. gen. sg.); sa+visargasya — accompanied by visarga (m. gen. sg.); visarga+antam — ending at the visarga, [set] on the visarga's end (f. acc. sg., adj. to citim); citim — awareness (f. acc. sg.); kuru — make (imper. 2nd sg. of √kṛ); nirādhāreṇa — supportless (n. instr. sg.); cittena — with the mind (n. instr. sg.); spṛśet — one would touch (opt. 3rd sg. of √spṛś); brahma — brahman (n. acc. sg.); sanātanam — everlasting (n. acc. sg.)
Meditate on your own self shaped like the sky, unbounded in any directionthen citi, the śakti with nothing to rest on, shows her own nature
Translation · colloquial
Meditate on your own self shaped like the sky, fenced in by no direction at all;then the power that is awareness, having nothing to rest on, shows you what she really is.
Practice
Sit and meditate on your own self as space — the shape of sky, with no covering in any direction: nothing above, nothing below, nothing at any side that bounds you. Śivopādhyāya is careful about what that means: sky-shaped means formless, and formless does not mean a nothing. Unenclosed by the directions, he says, is simply all-pervading. Be that unwalled extent, steadily. When it holds, awareness herself — citi, the śakti, left with no base to stand on — shows you her own nature. The showing is hers; the unwalled self is yours to keep.
Śivopādhyāya’s commentary
Śivopādhyāya glosses 'unenclosed by the directions' as all-pervading, and then guards the other phrase: sky-shaped means formless — but not, he says, a mere nothing.
Commentary
The exact inversion of the sixty-second portal. There the sky was drawn into the crown of the head; here the self is opened out until it has the shape of sky and no direction closes it. Read together they say that which way round you do it does not matter, which is itself the teaching.
What is worth noticing is the word describing awareness when the walls are gone: nirāśrayā, with nothing to rest on. That word and its cousin nirādhāra have run through half a dozen portals now — a frozen gaze, a body imagined unsupported, the end of a visarga — and they are all producing the same condition by different routes.
And the last line disowns the result in the usual way. She shows her own nature. You do not find it, and you are not the one doing the showing.
Word by word
vyoma+ākāram — having the form of the sky (m. acc. sg.); svam — one's own (m. acc. sg.); ātmānam — self (m. acc. sg.); dhyāyet — one should meditate on (opt. 3rd sg. of √dhyai); digbhiḥ — by the directions (f. instr. pl.); anāvṛtam — uncovered, unbounded (m. acc. sg.); nirāśrayā — baseless, without support (f. nom. sg.); citiḥ — awareness (f. nom. sg.); śaktiḥ — power, śakti (f. nom. sg.); sva+rūpam — [her] own form, own nature (n. acc. sg.); darśayet — would show (opt. 3rd sg. caus. of √dṛś); tadā — then
Pierce some limb first with a sharp needle or the likethen yoke awareness to that very place — a stainless way into Bhairava
Translation · colloquial
First pierce some part of the body with a sharp needle or something like it,then yoke your awareness to that one place: a clean road into Bhairava.
Practice
The verse is blunt, and Śivopādhyāya does not soften it: prick some part of the body with a sharp needle. He restricts it about as far as it will go — a finger or a thumb, with a needle or a thorn — and our own caution about this portal stands unchanged.
What he changes is where the attention goes. Not to the pain: to the awareness that is undergoing it. Yoke your knowing to that one spot and be collected in the power of awareness that is the experiencer of the sting — not the flinch, not the story, and not the sensation either, but the one feeling it. Attended that way, he says, stainless knowledge whose object is Bhairava does come about.
Śivopādhyāya’s commentary
Śivopādhyāya restricts the limb to a finger or a thumb and the instrument to a sharpened needle or a thorn, and his verb is 'having cut'. But he puts the attention not on the pain: one is to be collected, he says, in the power of awareness that is the experiencer of the needle's pain.
Commentary
Here the book asks something we would not pass on without comment. A needle in the skin is the most commanding object a person can produce on demand — a small bright pain admits no wandering at all, which is exactly why it works as a concentration device and exactly why it is not safe.
Nothing in this text screens who is reading it, and a verse that sets a needle beside a good meal and a piece of music has not weighed the difference in risk. For anyone with any history of hurting themselves, this door should stay shut, and we would say the same to anyone who finds the idea attractive rather than merely interesting.
What the practice actually consists of — attention pinned to a single point of sensation, without the flinch and without the story — is available from a stubbed toe, from the crawling-ant tingle of the forty-fourth portal, and from any pain that arrives on its own. The ninety-fifth portal makes precisely that case.
Word by word
kiṃcit — some (n. acc. sg.); aṅgam — limb, part of the body (n. acc. sg.); vibhidya — having pierced (gerund of vi-√bhid); ādau — first (loc. sg. as adverb); tīkṣṇa+sūcī+ādinā — with a sharp needle or the like (instr. sg.); tataḥ — then; tatra eva — right there, at that very place; cetanām — awareness (f. acc. sg.); yuktvā — having yoked, fixed (gerund of √yuj); bhairave — in, into Bhairava (m. loc. sg.); nirmalā — stainless, clear (f. nom. sg.); gatiḥ — going, way, access (f. nom. sg.)
'The inner apparatus, mind and the rest, is not within me' — contemplate thisthrough the absence of thought-constructs, one is abandoned by thought-constructs
Translation · colloquial
'The inner machinery, mind and all the rest of it, is not inside me' — hold that;and with nothing being made of anything, you are the one the makings have walked out on.
Practice
Sit quietly and put this to yourself, in the concrete form Śivopādhyāya gives it: the inner machinery — mind, judgment, the sense of an I — is not inside this body. Look for the organ where it is supposed to be and find no such thing there. Then let the denial widen: not in the body, not inside anywhere, not yours, not the furniture of a self. Hold it as a felt conviction, not an argument. Thought-constructs need that machinery to stand on; as the conviction deepens they lose their footing. When they go, do not build anything in their place. Remain in what is left when they have left you.
Śivopādhyāya’s commentary
Śivopādhyāya reads 'within me' as within my body: the inner organ does not exist inside this body. He supplies the sentence's syntax and stops there, saying nothing about the second line.
Commentary
Hold, as a felt conviction rather than a proposition, that the inner apparatus is not in you. Mind, discriminating intellect, the I-maker: standard equipment in Indian psychology, the machinery every school agrees a person runs on, and the verse asks you to find it not yours, not inside, not the furniture of a self. Not that it is unreal, and not that you should suppress it.
The mechanism is structural. Thought-constructs need that apparatus to stand on, and when the conviction settles they lose their floor.
Then comes the sentence the whole book could be summarised by, and it is worth reading twice for its grammar. Not that one abandons thought-constructs, which would be another act of the very machinery in question. One is abandoned by them. They leave. You are what is left when they have gone.
Word by word
citta+ādi+antaḥkṛtiḥ — the inner apparatus, mind and the rest (f. nom. sg.; antaḥkṛti ≈ antaḥkaraṇa, the inner instrument); na — not; asti — is, exists (3rd sg. pres.); mama — of me, my (gen. sg.); antar — within (indecl.); bhāvayet — let one contemplate, cultivate the conviction (3rd sg. opt. caus.); iti — thus, closing the quoted thought (indecl.); vikalpānām — of thought-constructs (m. gen. pl.); abhāvena — through the absence (m. inst. sg.); vikalpaiḥ — by thought-constructs (m. inst. pl.); ujjhitaḥ — abandoned, left behind (past part., m. nom. sg.); bhavet — one becomes (3rd sg. opt.)
Vijñāna Bhairava, verse 95 · dhāraṇā 72 · Awareness · śāktopāya · a means of mind · causal
माया विमोहिनी नाम कलायाः कलनं स्थितम्
इत्यादिधर्मं तत्त्वानां कलयन् न पृथग् भवेत्
māyā vimohinī nāma kalāyāḥ kalanaṃ sthitam ityādidharmaṃ tattvānāṃ kalayan na pṛthag bhavet
Translation · literal Sanskrit
Māyā is by name the bewilderer; parceling out stands as kalā's workreckoning such characters of the tattvas, one does not become separate
Translation · colloquial
The great illusion is called the bewilderer by name, and parcelling out is the parceller's own work;reckon such marks in the things the world is made of, and you do not come apart from them.
Practice
Śivopādhyāya names this one: a dhāraṇā of standing aside. He prefaces it with the old line that the strands move among the strands — and then asks, in his own words, what has come to me?
Take the tattvas, the principles that build your experience, one at a time. Māyā bewilders by spreading difference out — and bewildering is her property, not mine. Kalā's property is a little doing; the vidyā-tattva's is a little knowing. Reckon each veil as a function doing its named job, and each time, notice that the property belongs to the veil and not to you. Reckoning them so, the verse says, you do not become separate. Śivopādhyāya puts it positively: what you come into is the recognition of non-difference — and discriminating is how you get there, not what you arrive at.
Śivopādhyāya’s commentary
Śivopādhyāya heads this a dhāraṇā of standing aside, prefaced by the Gītā's 'the strands move among the strands' and his own 'what has come to me?'. Bewildering, he says, is māyā's property, not mine; kalā's property is a little doing, and the vidyā-tattva's a little knowing. Not becoming separate he reads positively, as coming to recognise non-difference — and then quotes the Sāṃkhya formula that liberation comes of discriminating prakṛti from puruṣa, having just made discrimination the means to non-difference rather than the end.
Commentary
A scholastic practice like the thirty-third portal, and it needs a word of apparatus. In this system a person is not a fragment of the divine but the whole of it wearing a set of restrictions — māyā and the sheaths under her, of which kalā is the one that cuts unlimited power down to the size of a particular doer.
The verse asks you to take each of these in turn and reckon it as a function doing its named job: this is bewilderment, bewildering; this is limitation, limiting. The Sanskrit enacts what it asks, using one root three times over — kalā's kalana, reckoned by one who is kalayan.
What the practice rests on is a simple and testable claim: a limitation you have watched operating as a limitation stops being the shape of you. Naming the veil is not removing it. It is stopping mistaking it for a face.
Word by word
māyā — Māyā, the power of bewilderment (f. nom. sg.); vimohinī — deluding, the bewilderer (f. nom. sg.); nāma — by name (indecl.); kalāyāḥ — of kalā, [the principle of] limited agency (f. gen. sg.); kalanam — parceling out, the act of limiting (n. nom. sg.); sthitam — stands as, is settled (past part., n. nom. sg.); iti+ādi+dharmam — character such as this (m. acc. sg.; 'the dharma beginning thus'); tattvānām — of the tattvas, the constituent principles (n. gen. pl.); kalayan — reckoning, considering (pres. part., m. nom. sg.); na — not; pṛthak — separate, apart (indecl.); bhavet — one becomes (3rd sg. opt.)
A desire springs up in a flash — look at it, and lead it to quietthe very place it sprang from — then, in that very place, it dissolves
Translation · colloquial
A wanting springs up in a flash: look straight at it, and lead it to quiet.The very place it sprang from is the place where, then and there, it dissolves.
Practice
There is nothing to set up. Wait for what happens many times an hour: a desire flashing up — let this be mine. Catch one at the instant of arising and look straight at it, inwardly, before it turns into plans. Then bring it quickly to quiet — not by argument, but by holding it in the looking. Śivopādhyāya adds the reason it goes: the wanting was never in you, only shown midway by not-knowing, and not-knowing is of the nature of space. It dissolves where it rose. Stay at that place.
If you cannot catch it in time — and Śivopādhyāya raises this objection himself, because one wanting is only followed by the next — there is a second way in, and it asks nothing of your speed. Let two wantings come. Attend to the place where the first has finished and the second has not yet formed: the opening that is felt spreading through everything at the end of the two thoughts. Hold both thoughts in that single act of noticing. That opening is where each of them came from, and holding it wears both of them away.
Śivopādhyāya’s commentary
Śivopādhyāya glosses the place a desire dissolves into as the blessed Spanda in the form of unmeṣa, and quotes Vasugupta for it. He also raises the obvious objection — that one cannot always bring a desire to quiet, since another follows it — and answers with a second practice: meditate on the unmeṣa felt pervasively at the end of the two thoughts, holding both in one act of connecting, and both are worn away. He notes that pure consciousness, being formless, contains no desire at all; the wanting is shown midway by ignorance, and ignorance is of the nature of space.
Commentary
Everything depends on the first word. Jhagiti — in a flash, at the instant. You are to catch a desire at its arising, before it has become an intention and long before it has become a plan, and by then it is no longer the object this verse is talking about. That is the whole difficulty, and it is a matter of speed rather than of virtue.
What follows is not suppression and not argument: you look at it, and the looking itself leads it back. The verse's claim about where it goes is precise and can be checked — a desire watched at its source dissolves into the source, and what interests the text is not that the wanting stopped but that you are now standing at the place wanting comes from.
Read this one together with the portal two doors along, which gives the opposite instruction on the same material.
Word by word
jhagiti — in a flash, all at once (indecl.); icchām — a desire (f. acc. sg.); samutpannām — arisen, sprung up (past part., f. acc. sg.); avalokya — having looked at it (gerund); śamam — quiet, stilling (m. acc. sg.); nayet — let one lead [it] (3rd sg. opt.); yataḥ — from which place (indecl. abl.); eva — the very (emphatic); samudbhūtā — it sprang up (past part., f. nom. sg.); tataḥ — then, thereupon (indecl.); tatra — there, in that place (indecl.); eva — precisely (emphatic); līyate — it dissolves, melts away (3rd sg. pres. mid.)
Vijñāna Bhairava, verse 97 · dhāraṇā 74 · Feeling · śāktopāya · a means of mind · subtle → causal
यदा ममेच्छा नोत्पन्ना ज्ञानं वा कस् तदास्मि वै
तत्त्वतो ऽहं तथाभूतस् तल्लीनस् तन्मना भवेत्
yadā mamecchā notpannā jñānaṃ vā kas tadāsmi vai tattvato 'haṃ tathābhūtas tallīnas tanmanā bhavet
Translation · literal Sanskrit
When no desire of mine has arisen, no knowing — who then am I?in truth I am that very condition — let one become dissolved in it, mind on it
Translation · colloquial
When no wanting of mine has come up, and no knowing either, who am I then?In truth I am exactly that condition; melt into it, with the mind on nothing else.
Practice
Watch for the gap in which nothing is wanted, nothing is being known and nothing is being done — it occurs, briefly, on its own. In that gap ask: who am I then? Do not answer in words. The verse answers for you: in truth you are that very condition. So let the mind sink into it and rest there, dissolved in it, the mind given over to it.
Śivopādhyāya adds a correction worth having. What you meet there is not confined to the gap. Consciousness and beatitude, wanting, knowing and doing are the Self's own powers in every state, he says, and not only at that moment. The gap is the occasion, not the location — it is simply where nothing is covering what is always the case.
Śivopādhyāya’s commentary
Śivopādhyāya takes 'knowing' to stand for action too, so the verse's pair is the familiar triad of will, knowledge and action. His answer to the question is flat: in that condition there is no 'I' at all, only consciousness and bliss. And he adds that these powers belong to the Self in every state, not merely in that moment.
Commentary
The question is not rhetorical and it is not to be answered. It is an instrument for staying in a condition that has already opened — the small gap, which does occur, in which nothing is wanted and nothing is being known.
Ramana Maharshi's self-enquiry is this question and this method, eleven hundred years later, and there is no reason to think he had it from here; the enquiry is available to anyone who notices the gap and declines to fill it.
What makes this verse Saiva rather than Vedantic is the second line: the condition is not a stripped-back witness but the whole thing, and one is asked to dissolve into it rather than stand behind it observing.
Word by word
yadā — when (indecl.); mama — my (gen. sg.); icchā — desire (f. nom. sg.); na — not; utpannā — arisen (past part., f. nom. sg.); jñānam — knowing, cognition (n. nom. sg.); vā — or (indecl.); kaḥ — who (m. nom. sg.); tadā — then (indecl.); asmi — I am (1st sg. pres.); vai — indeed (indecl.); tattvataḥ — in truth (indecl.); aham — I (nom. sg.); tathā+bhūtaḥ — become thus, of that very condition (past part., m. nom. sg.); tat+līnaḥ — dissolved into that (m. nom. sg.); tat+manāḥ — with mind on that (m. nom. sg., bahuvrīhi); bhavet — let one become (3rd sg. opt.)
When a desire has arisen, or a knowing — settle the mind into itsure it is the self, mind on nothing else — then, sight of what is
Translation · colloquial
When a wanting has come up, or a knowing, settle the mind right into it,certain that it is yourself, with the mind on nothing else; and then you see what is.
Practice
When a desire arises, or a sudden knowing, do not follow it out toward its object. Śivopādhyāya puts the cut exactly: abandon the mental construct of the object, and keep the arising. Set the mind inside the stirring itself, holding it with the conviction that this is nothing but ātman — your self — and let nothing else into attention. By that alone, he says, comes knowledge of what is finally real; and he quotes the old line, this Self is brahman. Held so, the stirring opens and the real nature of things shows itself. Notice this differs from stilling the desire: here you enter it.
Śivopādhyāya’s commentary
Śivopādhyāya makes the cut precise: abandon the construct of the object, not the desire. He quotes 'this Self is brahman' as scripture for it, and classifies the portal — this is contemplation with form, otherwise called contemplation with a support.
Commentary
Two portals ago a rising desire was led back to quiet. Here one is entered and ridden.
The text sets opposite instructions on the same material almost side by side and ranks neither, which is worth pausing on: a collection built to be authoritative would have chosen. This one is choosing to say that both are doors, and that which one is yours today is not a question a book can answer.
What makes this the more radical of the pair is the instrument named — ātmabuddhi, the conviction that the stirring is the self. Not a disturbance to be pacified, not an intruder, not evidence of a fault: a movement of what you are, entered as such. That is the sentence separating this tradition from every renunciate reading of the same phenomenon, and it is stated here without argument, as though obvious.
Word by word
icchāyām — in a desire (f. loc. sg.); athavā — or else (indecl.); jñāne — in a knowing (n. loc. sg.); jāte — when it has arisen (past part., loc. sg., locative absolute); cittam — the mind (n. acc. sg.); niveśayet — let one set [it], make it enter (3rd sg. opt. caus.); ātma+buddhyā — with the conviction [that it is] the self (f. inst. sg.); an+anya+cetāḥ — with mind on nothing else (m. nom. sg., bahuvrīhi); tataḥ — then (indecl.); tattva+artha+darśanam — the seeing of the real matter, sight of what is (n. nom. sg.)
Knowing is without cause — resting on nothing — made of wandering errorin reality it is no one's — contemplating so, beloved, one is Śiva
Translation · colloquial
Knowing is causeless, groundless, and made of wandering error;in truth it belongs to no one at all. Hold it so, beloved, and you are Shiva.
Practice
Take any moment of ordinary knowing — seeing the cup, remembering a name — and examine it. It has no cause you can find behind it, no ground it rests on, and it wanders and errs. Above all, look for its owner: whose is it? In reality, no one's. When 'mine' falls away from knowing, what remains contemplating is Śiva. Let the search for an owner fail, and rest in the failing.
Śivopādhyāya offers one image for the middle of this. To think 'this is that same cup' is, he says, like saying 'this is that same current of the Vitastā' — the river of his own valley. Same channel, same name, and not for one moment the same water.
Śivopādhyāya’s commentary
Śivopādhyāya heads this a śākta practice, and says the verse casts a sidelong glance at the Buddhist view: knowing alone, momentary, a series, with no knower and no substrate belonging to it. He then takes that analysis further than this edition asks the reader to go — no stable self, no pot, not even the eye and the light — and illustrates it with the river of his own valley: to think 'this is that same pot' is like saying 'this is that same current of the Vitastā'. He caps it with what the Buddhists have not: one devoted to contemplating so is Śiva himself.
Commentary
Kin to the seventy-fourth portal's question, turned from wanting onto knowing. Take any ordinary cognition — the cup seen, the name recalled — and look for what it belongs to.
The verse asserts three things about it that a reader is free not to grant: that it has no cause, no support, and is made of wandering error. The practice does not require granting them. It requires the fourth move, which is the search for an owner, and that search can be conducted by anyone honestly and will produce the same result. There is no one there.
What is strange and precise in the instruction is where it asks you to stop: not at the conclusion that knowing is unowned, which is a thought like any other, but in the failing of the search — the moment the looking finds nothing and has not yet reported it.
Word by word
nir+nimittam — without cause (n. nom. sg.); bhavet — is, turns out to be (3rd sg. opt.); jñānam — knowing, cognition (n. nom. sg.); nir+ādhāram — without support, resting on nothing (n. nom. sg.); bhrama+ātmakam — delusive in nature, made of wandering error (n. nom. sg.); tattvataḥ — in reality (indecl.); kasyacit — of anyone, anyone's (gen. sg.); na — not; etat — this (n. nom. sg.); evam+bhāvī — one who contemplates thus, whose being is thus (m. nom. sg.); śivaḥ — Śiva (m. nom. sg.); priye — beloved (f. voc. sg.)
What is by nature consciousness is in every body — no difference anywhereso, contemplating all this as made of that, a person conquers becoming
Translation · colloquial
What is awareness by its nature is in every body, and nowhere is there any difference;so hold that all of it is made of that, and a person is the conqueror of becoming.
Practice
As you move among people and animals, hold this: what looks out of each body has consciousness for its nature, and in that there is no difference anywhere — no more of it here, no less there. Śivopādhyāya puts it at full strength: from a worm up to Sadāśiva, no difference at all; and he quotes a verse saying that the very awareness in the sun that ornaments the sky is the same one in the belly of a worm in a hole in the ground. Then widen it: everything whatever is made of that. The verse asks for sustained contemplation, not a passing thought. A person who keeps it up outgrows the round of becoming.
Śivopādhyāya’s commentary
Śivopādhyāya takes the claim further than the verse does — from a worm up to Sadāśiva, he says, there is no difference at all — and quotes a verse for it: the same awareness that is in the sun ornamenting the sky is the one in the belly of a worm in a hollow of the earth. But he then restricts what may be drawn from it. 'Contemplating', he insists, means holding the knowledge and nothing else, and not the act of sitting down to eat with a dog or a dog-cooker; otherwise, he asks with a quoted verse, what would separate a seer of reality from a dog eating filth? This edition does not follow him there. The restriction is his, not the verse's, and the reader should have both.
Commentary
In a book almost wholly concerned with what happens inside one person, this verse turns and faces outward, and it is the nearest thing here to an ethic. What looks out of every body has consciousness for its nature, and there is no difference anywhere — not less of it in one, not more in another. The word is deha, body, not manuṣya, human, and the text does not qualify it.
A person actually holding this cannot treat a body as an instrument, which is a live question in a collection that elsewhere takes union with a partner and a needle in the skin as doorways.
Read it against the forty-sixth and the seventieth: it does not cancel them, it sets the terms on which they could be practised without harm.
Śivopādhyāya draws the claim wider than we do — from a worm up to Sadāśiva, no difference at all — and then narrows what may be done with it: contemplating means holding the knowledge, he says, and not sitting down to eat with a dog-cooker. Even he sets social bounds on conduct, and as a practical matter that may be sound: holding the knowledge that there is no difference anywhere does not by itself tell you how to behave. Yet the verse says no difference anywhere and qualifies nothing; the restriction is an import, and the particular sensibility it protects is his century's rather than ours.
Word by word
cit+dharmā — having consciousness as its nature (m. nom. sg., bahuvrīhi; the unstated subject, the self); sarva+deheṣu — in all bodies (m. loc. pl.); viśeṣaḥ — distinction, difference (m. nom. sg.); na — not; asti — is (3rd sg. pres.); kutracit — anywhere (indecl.); ataḥ — hence (indecl.); ca — and (indecl.); tat+mayam — made of that (n. acc. sg.); sarvam — everything (n. acc. sg.); bhāvayan — contemplating (pres. part., m. nom. sg.); bhava+jit — conqueror of becoming (m. nom. sg.); janaḥ — a person (m. nom. sg.)
Vijñāna Bhairava, verse 101 · dhāraṇā 78 · Feeling · śāktopāya · a means of mind · subtle → causal
कामक्रोधलोभमोहमदमात्सर्यगोचरे
बुद्धिं निस्तिमितां कृत्वा तत् तत्त्वम् अवशिष्यते
kāmakrodhalobhamohamadamātsaryagocare buddhiṃ nistimitāṃ kṛtvā tat tattvam avaśiṣyate
Translation · literal Sanskrit
In the field of desire; anger; greed; delusion; drunken pride; envystill the understanding utterly — that reality is what remains
Translation · colloquial
In the field of wanting, of anger, of greed, of confusion, of drunken pride, of envy,hold the understanding utterly still, and that reality is what is left standing.
Practice
You cannot schedule this one. It becomes available when desire, anger, greed, delusion, drunken pride, or envy is actually up. Śivopādhyāya explains why the book chooses these six: a passion at full strength has, of its own accord, already destroyed every other movement of the mind. The field is cleared for you. What remains is to use it.
Do not flee the passion and do not feed it. In its very field, bring the understanding to a dead stop — no verdict, no story, no next move — and make it one-pointed. Śivopādhyāya splits the technique in two according to which passion it is. For anger and for doubt: the tortoise drawing in its limbs, a contraction that calms. For elation and for the urge to rush: the great expansion, spreading the movement wide until it pervades. Either way the passion spends itself, and what is left standing when it has passed is the reality.
Śivopādhyāya’s commentary
Śivopādhyāya says why these six: a heightened passion of its own accord consists in the destruction of every other mental movement, so the field is already cleared. He gives two contrary techniques — the tortoise's drawing in of its limbs, for anger and doubt; the great expansion and pervasion, for elation and rushing. He calls this the śāmbhava ground rather than the śākta. And he adds a warning this edition does not repeat: non-yogins, he says, are simply deluded here.
Commentary
The six named here are the standard inventory of what wrecks a person, and what this verse does with them is neither of the two things traditions usually do. It does not ask you to leave the field, and it does not ask you to convert the energy into something better. It asks for the understanding to go dead still while the passion is at full strength, and to leave it standing.
The difficulty is specific and worth naming: anger in particular does not arrive as raw force but with a case to make, a wholly convincing account of who was wrong. Nistimitā means not making the case — not refuting it either, since a refutation is another verdict.
What is claimed is that the passion spends itself against that stillness and something remains standing when it has gone. Nobody can do this on demand at the beginning. It is worth attempting anyway, badly.
Word by word
kāma — desire (compound member); krodha — anger (compound member); lobha — greed (compound member); moha — delusion (compound member); mada — drunken pride (compound member); mātsarya — envy (compound member); gocare — in the field, the range [of these] (m. loc. sg., closing the compound); buddhim — the understanding (f. acc. sg.); nistimitām — utterly still, motionless (f. acc. sg.); kṛtvā — having made (gerund); tat — that (n. nom. sg.); tattvam — reality (n. nom. sg.); avaśiṣyate — remains, is left over (3rd sg. pres. pass.)
The world is made of conjury — or spread out like a paintingor whirling — for one who contemplates and sees it all so, happiness rises
Translation · colloquial
The world is a conjuring trick, or else laid out flat like a painting,or else spinning; and for the one who holds it so and sees it so, happiness rises.
Practice
The verse offers three ways of seeing the world: as a conjuror's illusion, as a painting, or as whirling. Take whichever holds. Śivopādhyāya says what the whirling is — birth and everything after it — and gives the image for it: trees and mountains streaming past someone sitting in a boat. Nothing out there is going anywhere, and you are not moving either. What he calls the universe here is not just the objects but the whole arrangement of grasper and grasped. Meditate that way and see it all; happiness rises.
Śivopādhyāya’s commentary
Śivopādhyāya glosses 'the universe' as the world consisting of the grasped and the grasper, and 'whirling' as birth and what follows it — like the trees and mountains that stream past someone riding in a boat.
Commentary
Indrajāla is not illusion in the philosophical sense — it is stage magic, the conjuror's show, and the difference matters. The verse is not saying the world is not there; it is saying the world is produced the way a trick is produced, with the appearance arriving whole and nothing solid behind it.
It offers two alternatives with equal weight: a painting, spread out and perfectly still, or a whirling, all movement and no substance. Take whichever your eye can hold. That the text is indifferent between three incompatible pictures tells you it does not care about your metaphysics, only that the seeing be live — both participles in the last line, contemplating and seeing, the second stopping this from being a thought you have about the day afterwards.
What rises is only sukha, happiness. The claim is small and it is exactly what people report.
Word by word
indrajāla+mayam — made of conjury, of a magician's show (n. nom. sg.; indrajāla, lit. 'Indra's net,' the stock word for stage-magic); viśvam — the world, the whole (n. nom. sg.); vyastam — spread out, displayed (past part., n. nom. sg.); vā — or (indecl.); citrakarma+vat — like a painting, like picture-work (indecl.); bhramat — whirling, wandering (pres. part., n. nom. sg.); vā — or (indecl.); dhyāyataḥ — of one contemplating (pres. part., m. gen. sg.); sarvam — all of it (n. acc. sg.); paśyataḥ — of one seeing (pres. part., m. gen. sg.); ca — and (indecl.); sukha+udgamaḥ — the rising of happiness (m. nom. sg.)
Vijñāna Bhairava, verse 103 · dhāraṇā 80 · Awareness · śāktopāya · a means of mind · subtle → causal
न चित्तं निक्षिपेद् दुःखे न सुखे वा परिक्षिपेत्
भैरवि ज्ञायतां मध्ये किं तत्त्वम् अवशिष्यते
na cittaṃ nikṣiped duḥkhe na sukhe vā parikṣipet bhairavi jñāyatāṃ madhye kiṃ tattvam avaśiṣyate
Translation · literal Sanskrit
Do not set the mind down in pain; do not fling it about in pleasureBhairavī, let it be known — in madhya, what reality remains?
Translation · colloquial
Do not set the mind down in pain, and do not fling it about in pleasure;Bhairavi, let this be known: in the middle, what is real, and what is left?
Practice
Pain will come, and pleasure; the practice is the placement of the mind when they do. When it hurts, do not set the mind down into the hurt. When it delights, do not fling the mind out into the delight. Śivopādhyāya names what both amount to: laying the properties of the inner machinery over your own clear self, in the two forms I am happy and I am wretched.
Stand in madhya — the centre between the two — and from there let the question be asked: what reality is left? Ask it live, each time; do not answer it from memory. Śivopādhyāya keeps the imperative pointed at you — investigate for yourself — and then says what the enquiry finds: the one consciousness that is both the witness of pleasure and pain and the thread connecting them. Take that as his report and not as your answer.
Śivopādhyāya’s commentary
Śivopādhyāya reads both halves of the instruction as one fault — superimposing the inner organ's properties on the pure self, as 'I am happy' and 'I am wretched'. He keeps the verse's question addressed to the reader, glossing it 'investigate for yourself', and then gives its outcome: what remains in the middle is the one principle of consciousness that both witnesses the two and connects them.
Commentary
Two different verbs, and the difference is a precise piece of psychology. Pain is what the mind is set down into, deposited, laid to rest in as though it were a place to live. Pleasure is what the mind is flung about after, scattered outward, chasing. Those are genuinely the two failures, and they are not the same failure with the sign reversed.
Between them is madhya, the middle, the term this book has been building since its opening breath and which has now been applied to two objects, two breaths, two moments, and here to the whole affective life.
What is unusual is the ending. Almost alone with the seventy-fourth portal, this one closes on a question rather than a claim, and the question is to be asked in the moment, with the pain or the pleasure still present. Answered from memory it is worth nothing.
Word by word
na — not; cittam — the mind (n. acc. sg.); nikṣipet — let one set [it] down, deposit (3rd sg. opt.); duḥkhe — in pain (n. loc. sg.); na — nor; sukhe — in pleasure (n. loc. sg.); vā — or (indecl.); parikṣipet — let one fling [it] about, scatter (3rd sg. opt.); bhairavi — O Bhairavī (f. voc. sg.); jñāyatām — let it be known (3rd sg. impv. pass.); madhye — in madhya, in the middle (loc. sg.); kim — what (n. nom. sg.); tattvam — reality (n. nom. sg.); avaśiṣyate — remains (3rd sg. pres. pass.)
Leaving behind attachment to one's own body, contemplating 'I am everywhere'with mind firm, with a gaze that looks on nothing else, one becomes happy
Translation · colloquial
Let go of the hold your own body has on you, and hold instead that you are everywhere;with the mind firm, with a gaze that looks at nothing else, you become happy.
Practice
Sit with the mind made firm. Drop the standing assumption that you live inside this one body — Śivopādhyāya is exact about what goes: not the body, and not even attachment to it, but being the one who knows from inside it. Hold instead: I am everywhere. Not a picture of travelling about; an immediate placement, renewed each time it slackens, and that renewal is what the firm mind means. Keep the gaze single, resting on nothing else.
Śivopādhyāya adds the one distinction that keeps this from being a phrase anyone can say all afternoon. What is being taken up is the full I — the one that has everything inside it, as Sadāśiva has. What is being put down is the limited I, and it is only that one, he says, that is to be shunned. He closes with a line from Tapasvirāja: this ghoul called 'I', whose fangs are mine-ness and who drinks the blood of people's courage, by the mere remembrance of you becomes a servant. It is not killed. It is put to work.
The happiness follows the conviction; it is not held separately in view.
Śivopādhyāya’s commentary
Śivopādhyāya heads this the taking up of the full I-ness and the abandoning of the I-ness invested in the body — and glosses the verse's 'attachment' as being the knowing subject in one's own body. 'I am everything' is to be held as Sadāśiva and Īśvara hold it, he says, and not as the Śiva who is pure consciousness alone. He then reports a real dispute: the author of the Tattvamañjarī denied even the universal I-feeling, siding with the Buddhists, who hold that where there is a self there is an other, and from that division come attachment and aversion. Against them he sets the Vimarśadīpikā, his own former teacher, and Śrī Hrasvanātha in the Advayasaṃpatti — Vāmananātha's Dvayasaṃpatti under its other name — and settles it in a phrase: it is the limited I-feeling that is to be shunned. He ends with Tapasvirāja: this ghoul called 'I', with its fangs of mine-ness, thirsty for the blood of people's courage — by the mere remembrance of you it becomes a handmaid.
Commentary
The trouble with this verse is that it is very easy to say and can be said all afternoon without anything happening. I am everywhere costs nothing as a sentence.
What rescues it is the instrument the verse specifies — a firm mind — and firmness here does not mean strain but return: the contemplation slackens within seconds, and the practice is putting it back, and putting it back again, until the placement holds for longer than it takes to notice it.
Note what is dropped first. Not the body, but the assumption of being lodged in it, which is a different and more precise target.
And note the size of the promise, which is the same size as several of its neighbours: one becomes happy. This text is grandiose about its metaphysics and remarkably restrained about what it says will happen to you.
Word by word
vihāya — leaving behind (gerund); nija+deha+āsthām — attachment to one's own body (f. acc. sg.; KSTS nijadehāsthāṃ, which the vivṛti splits nije dehe āsthāṃ and glosses svadehe mamatāṃ, my-ness in one's own body — the proper object of vihāya. The e-text had nijadehasthaṃ); sarvatra — everywhere (indecl.); asmi — I am (1st sg. pres.); iti — thus, the content of the contemplation (indecl.); bhāvayan — contemplating (pres. part., m. nom. sg.); dṛḍhena — firm (n. inst. sg.); manasā — with mind (n. inst. sg.); dṛṣṭyā — with a gaze, a seeing (f. inst. sg.); na+anya+īkṣiṇyā — looking at nothing else (f. inst. sg.); sukhī — happy (m. nom. sg.); bhavet — one becomes (3rd sg. opt.)
The knowing of a jar and the like, or the desire and the rest within mewas never born at all — it has gone everywhere; contemplating so, one goes everywhere
Translation · colloquial
The knowing of a jar or anything like it, or the wanting and the rest of it inside me,was never born at all; it has gone everywhere. Hold it so, and you go everywhere.
Practice
Notice a knowing as it lights on some object — a jar, says the verse, anything at hand. Notice a desire stirring in you. Now contemplate: this knowing was not born in the jar, and this desire was not born in me; neither has a birthplace, because each is already everywhere. Hold that through the day's perceptions and wants. One who contemplates so goes everywhere with them.
Śivopādhyāya draws out what 'already everywhere' costs. If the knowing is not mine, then the jar knows too, by way of my knowing — and everything from a worm up to Sadāśiva knows and wants by way of me, and the worm knows all of it back. He quotes Somānanda: the jar knows the knowable by way of me, and I by way of the jar; knowing his own self through the many existents, Śiva abides. That is what the contemplation is holding, and it is not a figure of speech.
Śivopādhyāya’s commentary
Śivopādhyāya reports two readings of this verse and rejects the first. Others, he says, take it that none of it ever came to be at all, contemplated as emptiness. His own is that the knowing is not within me alone — the particle 'at all' having slipped out of place — but has arisen all-pervading. What follows he states without softening: jars too know, by way of our knowing; everything from Sadāśiva down to a worm knows and desires by way of me, and the worm likewise knows all of them. He quotes Somānanda's Śivadṛṣṭi for it: the jar knows the knowable by way of me, and I by way of the jar; knowing his own self through the many existents, Śiva himself abides.
Commentary
This belongs to a short run — from the seventy-sixth portal to the eighty-third — that takes apart the ordinary account of perception one joint at a time. There, a knowing with no owner. Here, a knowing with no birthplace. Next, attention moved off both ends of the transaction and onto the join.
What is elegant about this one is its symmetry: the usual account has knowing starting either out there in the jar or in here in me, and the verse denies both in the same breath, leaving the cognition with nowhere it began. The reason given is not that it is unreal but that it is already everywhere, which is a stronger and stranger claim.
And it is to be held while perceiving and wanting, through an ordinary day of jars and wishes — not settled once and filed.
Word by word
ghaṭa+ādau — in a jar and the like (m. loc. sg.); yat — which (n. nom. sg.); ca — and (indecl.); vijñānam — the knowing, cognition (n. nom. sg.); icchā+ādyam — desire and the rest (n. nom. sg.); vā — or (indecl.); mama — my (gen. sg.); antare — within, inside (loc. sg.); na eva — not at all (indecl.; here negating local birth); sarva+gatam — gone everywhere, omnipresent (n. nom. sg.); jātam — born, arisen (past part., n. nom. sg.); bhāvayan — contemplating (pres. part., m. nom. sg.); iti — thus (indecl.); sarva+gaḥ — going everywhere, all-pervading (m. nom. sg.)
Vijñāna Bhairava, verse 106 · dhāraṇā 83 · Awareness · śāktopāya · a means of mind · causal
ग्राह्यग्राहकसंवित्तिः सामान्या सर्वदेहिनाम्
योगिनां तु विशेषो ऽस्ति सम्बन्धे सावधानता
grāhyagrāhakasaṃvittiḥ sāmānyā sarvadehinām yogināṃ tu viśeṣo 'sti sambandhe sāvadhānatā
Translation · literal Sanskrit
Awareness of grasped and grasper is common to all embodied beingsbut for yogis there is a difference: attention held in the joining
Translation · colloquial
Awareness of what is grasped and of who grasps it is common to everyone with a body;for those who practise there is one difference: the attention is held in the joining.
Practice
Take any perception — a cup seen, a bird heard. Object and knower are given together in it; that pairing is common to every embodied being, from the highest to a worm, and needs no practice. The yogi's one difference is where attention rests: in the joining of the two.
Śivopādhyāya says exactly what resting there consists of, and it is worth taking from him rather than working it out. In ordinary seeing the object is there and the one seeing has vanished into it. Attentiveness is not forgetting the one seeing. Keep the cup, and keep, at the same time and without turning to look at it, the fact that there is someone here it is appearing to. Hold both and you are in the seam. That is the whole of the practice, and it is available in every perception you will have today.
Śivopādhyāya’s commentary
Śivopādhyāya makes the yogi's attentiveness precise: it is the not-forgetting of the grasper. The pairing of knower and known is common to everything from Sadāśiva down to a worm; the difference is only that the yogi does not lose the knowing subject while the object is present. Some manuscripts read the sentence so that the attentiveness too is common to all, which would remove the verse's distinction altogether.
Commentary
Here is the book's most compact definition of a yogi, and it says nothing about what a yogi experiences. Everyone has the pairing of knower and known. It comes free with being embodied, requires no training, and is going on in you now. The single difference named is where attention rests: not on the cup, not on the one seeing the cup, but on the meeting of the two. It is the madhya again in epistemological dress, the middle located this time in the seam of every perception you will have today.
The word is sāvadhānatā, attentiveness — an ordinary one, the same you would use for a careful clerk.
Śivopādhyāya makes it precise as the not-forgetting of the grasper, and this is where the commentary and experience come apart. Subjectivity can fade. There is sometimes no one at home; or what remains is not a knower standing off from a known but a single person, Bhairava and Bhairavī playing off one another. His not-forgetting names the practice well and describes its far end badly. What the yogi does not lose is better put as the joining itself, which was the verse's own word before the gloss tightened it.
Word by word
grāhya — the grasped, the object (compound member); grāhaka — the grasper, the knower (compound member); saṃvittiḥ — awareness [of both] (f. nom. sg.); sāmānyā — common, shared (f. nom. sg.); sarva+dehinām — of all embodied beings (m. gen. pl.); yoginām — of yogis (m. gen. pl.); tu — but (indecl.); viśeṣaḥ — a difference (m. nom. sg.); asti — there is (3rd sg. pres.); sambandhe — in the relation, the joining (m. loc. sg.); sa+avadhānatā — attentiveness, the keeping of attention (f. nom. sg.)
As in oneself, so in another's body — let one feel the awareness therelet go of regard for one's own body — within days one becomes pervading
Translation · colloquial
As in yourself, so in another's body: feel out the awareness that is there,and let go of your regard for your own body; within days you spread through everything.
Practice
Choose another body — a person across the room, an animal. Feel the sentience in it as directly as you feel your own; the verse asks for felt experience, not inference or imagining. The paired move: let regard for your own body go — its comfort, its claim to be where you live. The verse gives its own timescale: kept up over days, this widens you until you pervade.
Śivopādhyāya spends more space on this portal than on any other, and his help is to make the second move first. Notice that consciousness has never in fact depended on a body. It persists in dream when the gross body has dropped away, and in dreamless sleep when even the subtle one has — otherwise, he asks, if someone put the question 'who slept?' to you, what would you answer? Three bodies come and go; the one that knows them does not. Once that has been seen rather than granted, feeling the sentience in another body is not an extension of your reach but the removal of a restriction, and the verse's few days are not a training period. And in the highest sense, he says, 'another's body' means every body: the whole world is my own body, and not this wretched scrap of one.
Śivopādhyāya’s commentary
This portal draws Śivopādhyāya's longest comment. He argues that dependence on a body was never a fact: consciousness runs continuously through waking, dream, deep sleep and the fourth state, while the gross, subtle and causal bodies each drop away in turn — otherwise, he asks, if the question 'who slept?' were put to you, what would your answer be? He reports the practice being done on dead bodies as well as living ones, with entry into them for the sake of play, and the powers of mastery and of attaining whatever is wished as its fruit in the living; the yogin's own wish, he says, is the only measure. Then he turns it around: in the highest sense 'another's body' means the whole of the knowable, felt as one's own limbs — the entire world is my body, and not this wretched scrap of one. He quotes the Virūpākṣapañcāśikā: one who has stepped out of the universe-body into a single frame is the living dead, breath rattling in the throat. And he ends by affirming, without hedging, that in just a few days one becomes all-pervading.
Commentary
The practice form of what the seventy-seventh portal asserted. And it is worth being clear about what it is not: not loving-kindness, not wishing another well, not imagining their circumstances. The verb asks for felt experience of the sentience in that body, as directly as you have your own — a stranger and harder thing than compassion, and it does not require you to like the person.
The second half is what makes it work and what makes it hard. Regard for your own body has to be let go in the same movement, because as long as one body is the place you live from, another's sentience can only be inferred.
The timescale is given only here and at the twenty-eighth portal: within days. Śivopādhyāya affirms it without a hedge, and our earlier doubt was aimed at the wrong thing. Days is not implausible for the state — the felt boundary of a body can go in an afternoon, and this practice is built to take it. What does not arrive in days is the settling in which it stops coming back.
He points at that himself when he turns the verse around: in the highest sense another's body means the whole of the knowable, felt as one's own limbs — the entire world is my body, and not this wretched scrap of one.
Word by word
sva+vat — as in oneself (indecl.); anya+śarīre — in another's body (n. loc. sg.); api — too, even (indecl.); saṃvittim — the awareness, sentience (f. acc. sg.); anubhāvayet — let one bring [it] into felt experience (3rd sg. opt. caus.); apekṣām — regard, concern (f. acc. sg.); sva+śarīrasya — for one's own body (n. gen. sg.); tyaktvā — having given up (gerund); vyāpī — pervading (m. nom. sg.); dinaiḥ — within days (m. inst. pl., time within which); bhavet — one becomes (3rd sg. opt.)
Vijñāna Bhairava, verse 108 · dhāraṇā 85 · Awareness · śāmbhavopāya · no means · causal
निराधारं मनः कृत्वा विकल्पान् न विकल्पयेत्
तदात्मपरमात्मत्वे भैरवो मृगलोचने
nirādhāraṃ manaḥ kṛtvā vikalpān na vikalpayet tadātmaparamātmatve bhairavo mṛgalocane
Translation · literal Sanskrit
Make the mind supportless — form no dividing thoughtsthen, the self being the highest self — Bhairava, deer-eyed one
Translation · colloquial
Make the mind stand on nothing, and make no dividing thoughts at all;then this self, being the highest self, is Bhairava, deer-eyed one.
Practice
Sit and take every support away from the mind: no image, no breath to follow, no word to lean on. Śivopādhyāya adds the half that is easy to miss — the inner supports go too, not only the outer ones. When a dividing thought starts to form, do not form it; let the construction stop unbuilt. What has to be declined is small: he calls it the sliver of construing, and says that being a separate person consists in precisely that sliver, while the constructless condition is brahman itself. The verse names what remains when the mind stands nowhere and no construct is built: the self as the highest self — Bhairava. Return there whenever a prop reappears.
Śivopādhyāya’s commentary
Śivopādhyāya glosses 'supportless' as having abandoned both outer and inner support — the pair to the portal ten back, which he classified as contemplation with a support. What is to be declined he calls the sliver of construing: by that sliver, individuality; by the constructless condition, brahman-hood.
Commentary
Half a dozen portals have arrived at a supportless mind by some means — a frozen gaze, a body imagined hanging in nothing, the last of a breathed-out visarga, a self opened to the shape of the sky. This one asks for it directly and offers nothing to do it with.
That is what puts it in the third kind of means: there is no method here, only the condition, and either it is available or the verse has nothing to give you today.
The Sanskrit does something in the second half that a translation can only approximate — do not construct the constructs, the noun and the verb from one root. The instruction is placed at the moment of forming rather than after it. Not the removal of a thought that has arrived, which is another thought, but declining to build the one now assembling itself.
Word by word
nirādhāram — without support (n. acc. sg. adj.); manaḥ — the mind (n. acc. sg.); kṛtvā — having made (gerund, √kṛ); vikalpān — dividing thoughts, mental constructs (m. acc. pl.); na — not; vikalpayet — should construct (3rd sg. opt. caus., vi-√kḷp; cognate accusative with vikalpān); tadā — then; ātma+paramātmatve — in the [state of] the self being the highest self (n. loc. sg.); bhairavaḥ — Bhairava (m. nom. sg.); mṛga+locane — O deer-eyed one (f. voc. sg.)
Vijñāna Bhairava, verse 109 · dhāraṇā 86 · Awareness · śāktopāya · a means of mind · causal
सर्वज्ञः सर्वकर्ता च व्यापकः परमेश्वरः
स एवाहं शैवधर्मा इति दार्ढ्याद् भवेच् छिवः
sarvajñaḥ sarvakartā ca vyāpakaḥ parameśvaraḥ sa evāhaṃ śaivadharmā iti dārḍhyād bhavec chivaḥ
Translation · literal Sanskrit
All-knowing, doer of all, pervading everything: the highest lord —that very one am I, of Śiva's nature — held firm, one becomes Śiva
Translation · colloquial
All-knowing, doer of everything, spread through everything: the highest lord.That very one am I, of the same nature; hold it firm, and you become Shiva.
Practice
This is a conviction held, not an image seen. Take the sentence the verse gives — the one who knows everything, does everything, fills everything, the highest lord: that very one is what I am — and hold it. Śivopādhyāya states it in both directions: he alone am I, I alone am he. And he says what holding it firmly means: holding it with no doubt in it. Not as a mood but with firmness, the way you hold a fact. Return to it whenever it slackens. The verse says the becoming follows from the firmness itself.
He also says this is only half. The recognition has two parts — I am that, and this world is my own expansion — and the second is the next portal. Keep them together, and the claim being made here stops sounding like a claim about oneself.
Śivopādhyāya’s commentary
Śivopādhyāya calls this the śākta ground, and glosses 'of Śiva's nature' as having Śiva's own properties, transparency and autonomy. He states the identity both ways round — he alone am I, I alone am he — and takes 'held firm' to mean held with no doubt in it. He also says this verse and the next are the two halves of one recognition: I am that, and this world is my own expansion.
Commentary
The boldest sentence in the book, and its predicates repay attention. All-knowing, pervading everything — those any non-dual tradition would allow. But the second is doer of all, and identity with an agent is precisely what a Vedāntin would not affirm of the absolute, which knows and pervades but does not act.
This school's highest reality does act, and what you are asked to claim identity with includes the acting. That is not a small difference, and it is why this tradition's liberated person is free within the world rather than free of it.
The method is one word: dārḍhyāt, from firmness. Not from insight, not from grace, not from having earned it — from the holding, kept up and returned to. The verse is content to say that a conviction held firmly enough stops being a conviction.
Word by word
sarvajñaḥ — all-knowing (m. nom. sg.); sarva+kartā — doer of all (m. nom. sg.); ca — and; vyāpakaḥ — pervading [all] (m. nom. sg.); parama+īśvaraḥ — the highest lord (m. nom. sg.); saḥ — that one (m. nom. sg.); eva — very, precisely; aham — I (nom. sg.); śaiva+dharmā — having Śiva's attributes (m. nom. sg., bahuvrīhi in -dharman); iti — thus [closing the held conviction]; dārḍhyāt — from firmness (n. abl. sg., ablative of cause); śivaḥ — Śiva (m. nom. sg.; KSTS orders the pāda dārḍhyād bhavec chivaḥ where the e-text had dārḍhyāc chivo bhavet — same sense, and both scan as pathyā); bhavet — one becomes (3rd sg. opt., √bhū)
As waves to water; flickers of flame to fire; light to the sun —so these waves of the world, spread into difference, are mine alone — Bhairava's
Translation · colloquial
As waves are to water, as flickers are to fire, as light is to the sun,so these waves of a world, spread out into differences, are mine alone, and I am Bhairava.
Practice
Watch anything that moves or shows itself — a bird, traffic, your own thoughts rising. Say inwardly what the verse says: this is a wave, and a wave is not other than its water. The verse speaks in Bhairava's own voice, and that voice says mine — meaning the I that you are. Let each thing you notice fold back into the one it belongs to.
Śivopādhyāya insists this is the second half of a pair, and that the pair matters. The portal before claims: I am that. This one claims: and all of this is my own expansion. Take them together, and he draws the consequence that saves this from being a rule against thinking — even the making of dividing thoughts, he says, is my own expansion, whose mark is autonomy. So the thoughts rising are not an exception to what you are watching. They are the clearest case of it.
Śivopādhyāya’s commentary
Śivopādhyāya treats this verse and the one before as one recognition in two parts — I am that, and this expansion is mine — and grows unusually hot with those who read the second line otherwise, calling them self-styled scholars and fools for not seeing that the Lord taught two verses for two separate practices. He quotes Abhinavagupta on what 'I am that' means: not some separate self, but that which is of the nature of light, and no other. And he draws the consequence plainly: even the making of dividing thoughts is my own expansion, whose mark is autonomy.
Commentary
Three images for one relation — waves and water, flickers and fire, light and sun — and all three are chosen so that the appearance is fully real. A wave is not a mistake about water. This is the corrective to any reading of the seventy-ninth portal that turns the conjuror's show into unreality: nothing here is being dismissed, only re-attributed.
Note who is speaking. The verse is in Bhairava's own voice and says mine, and the practitioner is asked to take that sentence up in the first person — this is the recognition on which the whole Kashmiri school is named.
The very last verse of the book will use the same figure once more, the sun reflected in water, to make the final and slightly different point: a real reflection of a real sun, in the wrong place.
Word by word
jalasya — of water (n. gen. sg.); iva — as, like; ūrmayaḥ — waves (f. nom. pl.); vahneḥ — of fire (m. gen. sg.); jvālā+bhaṅgyaḥ — flickerings of flame (f. nom. pl.); prabhā — light, radiance (f. nom. sg.); raveḥ — of the sun (m. gen. sg.); mama — of me (gen. sg.); eva — alone, indeed; bhairavasya — of Bhairava (m. gen. sg.); etāḥ — these (f. nom. pl.); viśva+bhaṅgyaḥ — waves of the universe (f. nom. pl.); vibheditāḥ — set apart, spread into difference (f. nom. pl., past part. caus., vi-√bhid)
From whirling and whirling with the body till it falls swiftly to the groundwith the śakti of agitation come to rest, the supreme state is born
Translation · colloquial
From whirling and whirling with the body until it drops fast to the ground,when the power that was churning comes to rest, the highest state is born.
Practice
Choose soft ground with nothing to strike. Spin with the whole body — keep going past the point of control — until you drop. The fall is part of the method, not an accident to avoid. Lie where you fell. The spinning has roused a live force in the body, and that force has an end. Attend to the moment it runs out: the verse locates the supreme state exactly there.
Śivopādhyāya reads the whirling less wildly, and his reading is the one to use if spinning is unwise for you. He takes it as the worshipper going round and round the shrine and its offerings, or the walker whose body is fit from roaming the roads day and night. Circle something, steadily and long enough that the body is carrying its own momentum; then let yourself down. What ceases, on his reading, is not agitation of mind but the sheer impetus of the moving body, still running on after it has stopped. Attend to that running out.
Śivopādhyāya’s commentary
Śivopādhyāya sets the whirling in a worshipper's circumambulation of the shrine and its offerings, or in the momentum of a hard-walking traveller fit from the roads, rather than in ecstatic spinning. And the force that comes to rest he calls the force of momentum — the body's impetus, still running on after it has come to the ground, and then running out.
Commentary
The same architecture as the breath forced and released, the bindu watched out, the long vowel let go — make something, then attend to its ending — but here the thing made is a whirlwind in the whole organism, and the ending is a collapse. The verse is honest that the fall is method rather than accident.
It is also the second physically dangerous portal in this book, and we would say more than it does: soft ground, nothing within reach to strike, nothing to fall from, and for anyone past middle age or unsteady this one is best admired rather than performed.
The Mevlevi turning is a different discipline and no borrowing is being claimed either way — that turning is sustained, controlled and does not end on the floor. What this verse wants is specifically the moment the roused agitation runs out.
Word by word
bhrāntvā bhrāntvā — having whirled and whirled (gerund, √bhram, doubled for continued repetition); śarīreṇa — with the body (n. instr. sg.); tvaritam — swiftly (adv.); bhuvi — on the ground (f. loc. sg.); pātanāt — from the falling (n. abl. sg., ablative of cause); kṣobha+śakti+virāmeṇa — through the coming-to-rest of the force of agitation (m. instr. sg.); parā — supreme (f. nom. sg.); saṃjāyate — is born, arises (3rd sg. pres. mid., sam-√jan); daśā — state, condition (f. nom. sg.)
Or when the supports fail one, or through unknowing, the mind dissolves away —when the churning of absorption into Anāśritā, the śakti so born, is at its end — Bhairava's body
Translation · colloquial
Or the thing you were leaning on gives way, or you simply do not know — and the mind comes undone.Something has been roused that leans on nothing. When its churning quiets, what stands there is Bhairava's own body.
Practice
This verse describes what happens, not what you perform, and Śivopādhyāya makes the shape of it plain: two ways in, one result. Either the props give out — you cannot hold the thing you were using — or you simply do not know, the knowing is not there. Either way the mind dissolves. What is roused he names: Anāśritā, the power that rests on nothing, which is why nothing you had been resting on was needed. Her absorption comes with a wavering, and the wavering has an end. When it stops, do not reach for the method again. Stay in the settling: what stands there is Bhairava's form, and it is the bliss of your own experience, not a new thing arriving.
Śivopādhyāya’s commentary
He names the power that is roused: शक्तौ अनाश्रिताख्यायां, ‘in the śakti called Anāśritā’ — the power that rests on nothing, which is why nothing you had been resting on was needed (plate 0106). He also makes the verse two causes with one result — failure of the props, or unknowing — rather than three parallel routes.
Commentary
The most generous verse in the collection, and the one to give anyone who has decided they cannot meditate. Everything it lists is a failure: the supports gave out, you could not manage the method, you did not understand what you were doing, or the mind simply melted and none of it was yours.
And the verse says a śakti was roused all the same, and that its churning has an end, and that the end is the door. Structurally this is what half the book has been teaching — attend to the finish, not the thing — applied now to the finish of an attempt rather than of a breath or a note.
The instruction is only not to reach for the method again when it collapses. Sit in the settling of a practice that did not work, and what stands there, the verse says, is Bhairava's own form.
Word by word
ādhāreṣu — with regard to the supports (m. loc. pl.); athavā — or else; aśaktyā — through incapacity (f. instr. sg.; avagraha marks the privative); ajñānāt — through unknowing (n. abl. sg.; avagraha marks the privative); citta+layena — through the dissolution of the mind (m. instr. sg.); vā — or; jāta+śakti+samāveśa+kṣobha+ante — at the end (anta, loc. sg.) of the agitation (kṣobha) of the absorption (samāveśa) into the śakti that has arisen (jāta; the received line names that śakti Anāśritā. The name is Śivopādhyāya's identification of which śakti is meant, not the compound's — nothing in the Sanskrit supplies it); bhairavam — belonging to Bhairava (n. nom. sg. adj.); vapuḥ — form, body (n. nom. sg.)
Hear this transmission, Goddess — I speak it in full:aloneness is born at once — the two eyes no sooner stilled
Translation · colloquial
Hear this handed-down teaching, Goddess; I speak it out in full:aloneness is born at once, the two eyes no sooner gone still.
Practice
Let the eyes stop. Not a stare at something — an arrest of the eyes themselves: lids open, gaze unmoving, focused nowhere. The verse calls this a handed-down teaching and gives no preparation and no stages. Hold the stillness of the two eyes and nothing else. What it promises is immediate: aloneness — awareness standing single, no longer paired with any object.
Commentary
The only verse in the hundred and twelve that announces itself — hear this transmission, I speak it in full — and having done so it offers no preparation, no stages and no support. Just stop the eyes.
The distinction between this and staring is the whole practice: a stare is fixed on something, and here nothing is being looked at, the gaze arrested and focused nowhere. It is harder than it sounds, because eyes never actually stop; they make small involuntary jumps continuously, and what is being asked for is not muscular but a stopping of the looking.
One word here is borrowed. Kaivalya, aloneness, is the goal of the Sāṃkhya and Yoga schools and not native to this one, where the aim is usually fullness rather than isolation. It appears here for what it names precisely: awareness standing single, no longer paired with an object.
Word by word
sampradāyam — the transmitted teaching (m. acc. sg.); imam — this (m. acc. sg.); devi — O Goddess (f. voc. sg.); śṛṇu — hear (2nd sg. impv., √śru); samyak — rightly, in full (adv., with vadāmi); vadāmi — I speak (1st sg. pres., √vad); aham — I (nom. sg.); kaivalyam — aloneness, the isolation [of awareness] (n. nom. sg.); jāyate — is born (3rd sg. pres. mid., √jan); sadyaḥ — at once (adv.); netrayoḥ — the two eyes (n. loc. du.); stabdha+mātrayoḥ — merely stilled, no sooner fixed (loc. du.; locative absolute with netrayoḥ)
Vijñāna Bhairava, verse 114 · dhāraṇā 91 · Sound · āṇavopāya · with a support · subtle → causal
संकोचं कर्णयोः कृत्वा ह्य् अधोद्वारे तथैव च
अनच्कम् अहलं ध्यायन् विशेद् ब्रह्म सनातनम्
saṃkocaṃ karṇayoḥ kṛtvā hy adhodvāre tathaiva ca anackam ahalaṃ dhyāyan viśed brahma sanātanam
Translation · literal Sanskrit
The two ears closed, and the lower door likewise,meditating on what has no vowel, no consonant, one enters the everlasting brahman
Translation · colloquial
The two ears closed, and the lower door closed in just the same way,meditate on what has no vowel and no consonant, and you enter what is everlasting.
Practice
Stop the ears — press them closed — and draw the lower door, the opening at the base of the trunk, shut with the same firmness. Śivopādhyāya gives the way it was done: press it with your own heel, the way the seated posture sets the heel beneath you. In the sealed quiet a sound remains that no mouth could say: no vowel in it, no consonant. Meditate on that unspellable resonance. The verse says it is the way in, and that what you enter is the everlasting brahman.
Śivopādhyāya’s commentary
Śivopādhyāya takes the lower door to be the anal aperture, pressed shut with one's own heel. He glosses 'ahala' as free of consonants, and calls the form an Aiśa reading — the Lord's own usage, the tradition's name for the scriptures' irregular Sanskrit. Of the sound itself he says only that the rest is plain.
Commentary
The body is sealed at both ends of the trunk, ears and lower door, which is the ordinary way anyone finds an inner sound.
The two negations in the third line are technical jokes. Ac and hal are the grammarians' shorthand for the vowels and the consonants — between them the entire alphabet, which in this school is the entire manifest world. So a sound with neither is not merely wordless; it is what is left when everything sayable has been subtracted, and the verse names it by taking away Sanskrit itself. This closes the sound sequence that ran through the silence after OM, the letter with no ending, and the breath at the close of a syllable.
Honesty requires one observation: what you hear with the ears blocked is at first your own circulation and the noise a nervous system makes with nothing to listen to. Every tradition that works with unstruck sound begins there. Whether what the verse points at is that noise attended to differently, or something else that appears behind it, we do not know and will not pretend to.
Word by word
saṃkocam — contraction, closing (m. acc. sg.); karṇayoḥ — of the two ears (m. gen. du.); kṛtvā — having made (gerund, √kṛ); hi — indeed; adhas+dvāre — at the lower door (n. loc. sg.); tathā eva ca — and in the same way; anackam — without vowel (n. acc. sg.; ac = the vowels in the grammarians' shorthand); ahalam — without consonant (n. acc. sg.; hal = the consonants); dhyāyan — meditating on (m. nom. sg. pres. part., √dhyai); viśet — one should enter (3rd sg. opt., √viś); brahma — brahman (n. acc. sg.); sanātanam — everlasting (n. acc. sg.)
Standing beside a well or any great chasm, gazing down from above,for one whose mind forms no dividing thought — at once, wholly, unmistakably — the mind dissolves
Translation · colloquial
Stand at the edge of a well, or any long drop, and look down.If no dividing thought forms, the mind goes — all at once, all of it, past mistaking.
Practice
Find a real drop — a well, a gorge, a mountain edge with the ground far below. Śivopādhyāya is clear that you stand beside it, not over it: the Sanskrit locative here is the one that means near, as in 'the cows lie down at the banyan'. From there, look down into the depth with an unmoving eye — without naming it, measuring it, or telling yourself anything about it. Kept free of thought and held on that depth, the mind does not thin out gradually; he says the quieting is certain, and immediate. Stay with the gone-ness rather than the vertigo.
Śivopādhyāya’s commentary
Śivopādhyāya reads the locative as one of proximity — one stands beside the chasm, not over it — and cites the grammarians' stock example, 'the cows lie down at the banyan'. 'And the like' takes in a mountain peak as well as a well. He makes the second line's condition explicit: it holds for one of whom it is true that his mind is such that no dividing thought exists in it, which he notes is a bahuvrīhi with a bahuvrīhi inside it. What follows at that instant he calls, more modestly than the verse, the quieting of the mind — and he keeps the verse's certainty entire.
Commentary
This is the only portal that recruits a reflex you cannot override. A real drop under your eyes stops the mind because a very old part of the nervous system takes the controls, and the verse is using that seizure as the method. Read it beside the portal three doors along, which takes terror and hunger and the moment before a sneeze as they arrive: this one manufactures the same suspension on purpose.
Two cautions. Brace yourself against something solid, and do not do this alone at a real edge — the practice wants the depth, not the risk. And read the fourth word of the second line as a condition rather than a promise: it works for one whose mind forms no dividing thought, which is precisely the capacity a beginner does not have, and without it a chasm produces only vertigo and a good story.
The verse is unusually emphatic — at once, wholly, unmistakably — and that pile of certainty is worth noticing in a book that mostly says one becomes happy.
Word by word
kūpa+ādike — at a well or the like (m. loc. sg.); mahā+garte — at a great pit, chasm (m. loc. sg.); sthitvā — having taken one's stand (gerund, √sthā); upari — above; nirīkṣaṇāt — from gazing down, fixed looking (n. abl. sg., ablative of cause); avikalpa+mateḥ — for one whose mind is without dividing thought (f. gen. sg.); samyak — completely (adv.); sadyaḥ — at once (adv.; text sadyas); citta+layaḥ — dissolution of the mind (m. nom. sg.); sphuṭam — clearly, unmistakably (adv.)
Vijñāna Bhairava, verse 116 · dhāraṇā 93 · Awareness · śāmbhavopāya · no means · causal
यत्र यत्र मनो याति बाह्ये वाभ्यन्तरे ऽपि वा
तत्र तत्र शिवावस्था व्यापकत्वात् क्व यास्यति
yatra yatra mano yāti bāhye vābhyantare 'pi vā tatra tatra śivāvasthā vyāpakatvāt kva yāsyati
Translation · literal Sanskrit
Wherever the mind goes, to the outer or even to the inner,right there is the state of Śiva. Since he pervades all, where will it go?
Translation · colloquial
Wherever the mind goes, outward or even inward,right there is Shiva's own state. He is everywhere; where would it go?
Practice
Do not rein the mind in. Let it go where it goes — out to a sound or a worry, in to a memory or an ache — and each time it lands, notice that what it has landed on is already the state of Śiva. There is no wrong destination; nothing lies outside what pervades everything. Ask the verse's own question of each wandering: where could it go? Śivopādhyāya answers it as flatly as the verse does — nowhere at all — because space, time and form shine only by having light for their substance, and that light is not cut off anywhere.
He also says where this portal stands, and it is worth knowing before taking it up. This is not one practice among the hundred and twelve; it is the seventh samādhi, the constant one, which depends on no effort and is reached by the ripening of six that do. And he quotes the tradition's own version of this verse, which states the conditions the verse leaves silent: when identification with the body has melted away, and the highest Self is known — then wherever the mind goes, there are samādhis. Until then the wandering is only wandering, and there is other work.
Śivopādhyāya’s commentary
Here Śivopādhyāya keeps a promise made sixty portals earlier. This state, he says, is what the Yogaśāstra calls the constant samādhi, of the nature of direct realisation and dependent on no effort — the seventh, reached by the ripening of six that come before it. He enumerates them from the Vākyasudhā: samādhi with construction threaded with the seen and threaded with the word, and samādhi without construction, like a lamp in a windless place — each practised first inwardly in the heart, then on an outer support such as sun, moon or sky. With these six, that text says, let one pass the time unceasingly. And it carries this verse's own twin, which supplies the conditions this one leaves silent: when identification with the body has melted away and the highest Self is known, then wherever the mind goes, there are samādhis.
Commentary
The most quoted verse in the collection, and the one that appears to dissolve it. If every place the mind lands is already the state, then nothing in the preceding hundred and ninety verses was ever necessary. The argument closes not with an instruction but with a rhetorical question answered by a word of grammar — because he pervades, nowhere cut off. There is nowhere else.
It is also the most easily abused verse here, and the tradition supplies its own reply, which is better than any warning of ours. Śivopādhyāya places this state seventh: the constant samādhi, dependent on no effort, reached by the ripening of six that depend on effort entirely. And he quotes a near-twin of the verse, which states the conditions this one leaves silent — when identification with the body has melted away and the highest Self is known, then wherever the mind goes, there are samādhis.
So the preceding verses were not made unnecessary. They are the ladder, and this describes standing off it; the effortlessness is the fruit of effort and not its refutation. Until then the wandering is only wandering, and there is other work.
Word by word
yatra yatra — wherever (doubled for distribution); manaḥ — the mind (n. nom. sg.); yāti — goes (3rd sg. pres., √yā); bāhye — to the outer (loc. sg.); vā — or; abhyantare — to the inner (loc. sg.); api vā — or even; tatra tatra — right there, in each such place; śiva+avasthā — the state of Śiva (f. nom. sg.; KSTS śivāvasthā, glossed avasthā avasthānam and required by the pathyā cadence — the e-text's śivāvāsthā is not a word); vyāpakatvāt — because of [his] all-pervadingness (n. abl. sg., ablative of cause); kva — where? (interrogative); yāsyati — will it go (3rd sg. fut., √yā)
Wherever the consciousness of the all-pervading one shows itself along the road of a sense,for its nature is that alone — by dissolving into awareness, the self is filled full
Translation · colloquial
Wherever the awareness of the one who fills everything shows itself along the road of a sense,since that alone is its nature, melt into awareness there, and you are filled full.
Practice
Catch consciousness in the act of showing itself — at the eye as seeing, at the ear as hearing, at the skin as touch. Śivopādhyāya takes the verse's 'road of a sense' as the physical aperture: the hollow of the eye, and the rest. What appears along each such road is not private property; it is the awareness of the one who pervades all, and it is nothing but that. He gives the reason: were the blue anything in excess of consciousness, it could not be known at all — as the many-coloured reflections in a mirror are nothing but the mirror. Let the perceiving mind dissolve into that bare awareness at the very door where it flashed — into consciousness itself, which he calls the wall the world is painted on. Fullness of self is its settling.
And he gives the image to hold while doing it: as the orb of the sun is nothing but light become dense, so consciousness, congealed, shines in the form of the world.
Śivopādhyāya’s commentary
Śivopādhyāya takes 'the road of a sense' to be the physical aperture — the hollow of the eye and the rest — and settles the verse's difficult word: the blue has consciousness alone for its property, since anything in excess of consciousness could not be known at all, as the many-coloured reflections are nothing but the mirror. What one dissolves into he calls the wall the world is painted on. And he closes with the tradition's image: just as the orb of the sun is nothing but light become dense, so consciousness itself, congealed, shines in the form of the world.
Commentary
A word here misleads anyone who knows the other school. Tanmātra is the Sāṃkhya term for the subtle elements behind the senses, but it is not doing that work in this verse — here it is just that alone, the point being that what shows up at a sense door is nothing other than the pervading one's own awareness.
Note the verb again: it is made manifest, passive, the same grammar of disclosure that has run through this book wherever something important arrives. Nothing is being shut, unlike the blocked senses of the sixty-sixth portal, and nothing is being attended to for its own sake. The catch is made at the door itself, in the flash of seeing before it becomes a seen thing.
And the result-word is worth holding beside its neighbour: fullness of self, this school's preferred vocabulary, three verses before another portal will call the same destination a dwelling of the void. The book uses both languages and never troubles to reconcile them.
Word by word
yatra yatra — wherever (doubled); akṣa+mārgeṇa — by the pathway of a sense-organ (m. instr. sg.); caitanyam — consciousness (n. nom. sg.); vyajyate — is made manifest (3rd sg. pres. pass., vi-√añj); vibhoḥ — of the all-pervading [lord] (m. gen. sg.); tasya — of that [manifested consciousness] (gen. sg.); tat+mātra+dharmitvāt — because its nature is that alone (n. abl. sg., ablative of cause); cit+layāt — through dissolving into awareness (m. abl. sg.); bharita+ātmatā — the condition of a self filled full (f. nom. sg.)
At the start and end of a sneeze; in terror; in grief; over a chasm; fleeing a battle;in sharp curiosity; at the onset of hunger and at its end — there, made of brahman's own being, is the state
Translation · colloquial
At the start of a sneeze and at its end; in terror; in grief; over a chasm; running from a battle;in sharp curiosity; when hunger comes on and when it goes: there, made of being itself, is the state.
Practice
Nothing here is performed; these states arrive. A sneeze gathers and lets go. Fear jolts, grief hollows, a drop yawns underfoot, you run, curiosity seizes you, hunger bites and is fed. At the raw verge of each — before the story about it forms — being itself stands open. Your work is availability: know the list, and when one of these takes you, fall toward the gap instead of past it.
Śivopādhyāya's word for what arrives is occasion. On each such occasion, he says, the one who is awake enters; and he does not soften what he says about the one who is not. So the preparation is not for the sneeze. It is everything else you do.
Śivopādhyāya’s commentary
Śivopādhyāya reports a variant in which brahman's being does not compose the state but stands close by — right at hand — in each of these moments. He calls each of them an occasion, and says the well-awakened one, having considered this, enters at it, while the unawakened is here simply a fool. He names the ground: this is the ground of Śambhu.
Commentary
The most anthologised list in the book and the most misread. Nothing in it is performed: a sneeze, a fright, a grief, the pull at the edge of a drop, a rout, a curiosity that seizes you, the bite of hunger and its relief. Every one is involuntary, and the instruction is not to arrange them but to be awake when they arrive.
What they share is a seam — a moment in which the ordinary machinery of wanting and knowing is knocked out of gear and has not yet re-engaged. The text's claim is that the gap is not empty.
Śivopādhyāya's word for what comes is occasion, an opening that arrives rather than a state produced, so our reading is his; but he adds a condition we would not have dared, that to the unawakened this is a sneeze and he is here simply a fool.
Both halves are true at once and they do not cancel. A portal does nothing for someone unprepared — and there was never a moment when the one standing at it was not already Bhairava. The preparation is not for the sneeze. It is everything else you do.
Word by word
kṣuta+ādi+ante — at the beginning (ādi) and end (anta) of a sneeze (loc. sg.); bhaye — in fear (n. loc. sg.); śoke — in grief (m. loc. sg.); gahvare — at a chasm, in a deep place (n. loc. sg.); vā — or; raṇāt — from battle (m. abl. sg.); drute — in having fled (loc. sg., past part. of √dru; with raṇāt, 'in flight from battle'); kutūhale — in keen curiosity (n. loc. sg.); kṣudh+ādi+ante — at the beginning and end of hunger (loc. sg.); brahma+sattā+mayī — made of the being of brahman (f. nom. sg.); daśā — state (f. nom. sg.)
While things are being remembered, cast the mind into the place directly seen;one's own body made supportless, the lord streams forth
Translation · colloquial
While something is being remembered, throw the mind into the place you are actually looking at;your own body left with nothing to rest on, and the lord comes pouring through.
Practice
Let something remembered arise — a place, a scene, an old encounter. Do not fight the image and do not feed it. Instead find what the memory is made of: you are remembering it only because it was once undergone, and that undergoing is still here, underneath the picture. Throw the mind into that. Not away from the memory — through it, into the direct experience that is its ground.
Śivopādhyāya is explicit that the verb here is cast, not release, and gives the reason in four words: memory is preceded by experience. Let the body too lose its inner prop, as if what carried it were taken away. Then what streams forth is the one awareness that has been holding the remembering and the experiencing together all along.
Śivopādhyāya’s commentary
Śivopādhyāya reads the verb as cast into, not let go: while things are being known by memory, the mind is to be thrown into the field of direct experience that underlies them — his reason being that memory is preceded by experience. The place seen, on his reading, is that experiential ground. What then streams forth he calls the Lord whose very form is direct experience: the single awareness that synthesizes the remembering and the experiencing, the remembered and the undergone.
Commentary
The instruction is one small displacement from what everyone else advises, and the displacement is the whole practice. Faced with an intrusive memory, most traditions say let go of the image. This verse says cast the mind — throw the holder, not the held. Whether the remembered place stays or fades is not the business. The specification matters: a place once seen, not an invented one; the practice needs the particular pull only an actual recollection has.
Śivopādhyāya reads a step further. Memory is preceded by experience, so the place directly seen is not a rival object but the ground the memory was made out of, which means the mind is not being moved from one thing to another at all. There is no object of remembrance standing apart.
And the same throw can be made once more, into what underlies both the remembering and the place seen — made there it is no longer a displacement of the mind but the letting go of it. Then the body loses its inner prop as well, that supportless condition this book keeps arriving at from every direction, and what fills the unpropped space is not blankness. The lord streams forth: an expansion where the logic of the practice would predict a void.
Word by word
vastuṣu — things, objects (n. loc. pl.); smaryamāṇeṣu — being remembered (pres. pass. part., loc. pl.; locative absolute with vastuṣu); dṛṣṭe — seen (past part., m. loc. sg.); deśe — place (m. loc. sg.); manaḥ — the mind (n. acc. sg.); tyajet — one should let go, abandon (3rd sg. opt., √tyaj; the received line reads 'cast … into', which is Śivopādhyāya's own gloss: he replaces tyajet with prakṣipet, cast into. The root carries 'abandon' unaided, and the throw comes from him); sva+śarīram — one's own body (n. acc. sg.); nirādhāram — supportless (n. acc. sg.); kṛtvā — having made (gerund, √kṛ); prasarati — spreads forth, streams out (3rd sg. pres., pra-√sṛ); prabhuḥ — the lord (m. nom. sg.)
Settle the gaze on some object, then slowly draw it back —and that knowing with the thought bent on it: Goddess, one's dwelling is the void
Translation · colloquial
Let your eyes settle on something, then draw them slowly back;and that knowing, with the thought still bent on it — Goddess, the place you live is empty.
Practice
Rest the eyes on any one thing until the seeing settles. Then withdraw — slowly, so slowly the object seems to fade rather than be left. Draw back with the gaze the knowing of the thing, and the particular thought that was bent on it. What you are left holding is not blankness pursued but emptiness inhabited: the verse says you become the one whose dwelling it is.
Śivopādhyāya offers a way of doing the drawing-back that is worth having. Either contemplate the void directly, or use what he calls the inward aim with the outward gaze: leave the eyes open and outward, and let the aim alone turn in. He glosses dwelling as rest. It is a place to stop, not a thing to reach.
Śivopādhyāya’s commentary
Śivopādhyāya construes the second line as the continuation of the withdrawal: what is drawn back is the knowing of that object together with the conceptualization aimed at it — not the mind entire, only the construing bent on that thing. What becomes a dwelling of the void is then the practitioner: one whose repose, he glosses, is in the void. He offers a second method beside contemplation of the void — the inward aim held with the outward gaze — and reports a variant reading, dissolution into the void, for dwelling in it.
Commentary
The exact reverse of the frozen gaze. There the eyes were pinned open on an object until the sense-making faculty lost its footing; here they settle first and are then drawn back off it, and the withdrawal is the method.
Everything hinges on the adverb — slowly, the same dosage word that governed the crawling tingle and the rocking body. Done briskly this is only looking away. Done at the right speed the object seems to recede of itself, and three things retire in step: the thing, the knowing of the thing, and the mind that knew it. This is the fourth limb of classical yoga performed on one sense in slow motion.
The destination gets a name found nowhere else in the book — a dwelling of the void, emptiness as a place one lives rather than a lack one attains. Compare the fullness promised three portals back. Same door, opposite vocabulary.
Word by word
kvacit — on some, on any (loc. sg.); vastuni — object (n. loc. sg.); vinyasya — having placed, settled (gerund, vi-ni-√as); śanaiḥ — slowly (adv.); dṛṣṭim — the gaze (f. acc. sg.); nivartayet — one should turn back, withdraw (3rd sg. opt. caus., ni-√vṛt); tat — that (n. acc. sg.); jñānam — the knowing [of the object] (n. acc. sg.); citta+sahitam — together with the mind (n. acc. sg.); devi — O Goddess (f. voc. sg.); śūnya+ālayaḥ — a dwelling of the void (m. nom. sg.; KSTS śūnyālayo, glossed śūnye ālayaḥ — viśrāntiḥ and required by the pathyā cadence — the e-text's śūnyālāyo is not a word); bhavet — one becomes (3rd sg. opt., √bhū)
From devotion's overflow, the understanding born in one detached —that is the śakti of Śaṅkara; cultivate her always, and from that, Śiva
Translation · colloquial
The understanding that is born in one who has let go, out of devotion brimming over,is Shankara's own power; hold to her always, and out of that, Shiva.
Practice
Two conditions meet: you want nothing for yourself, and devotion rises anyway, past its usual banks. A particular quality of mind is born there — clear, warm, unowned. The verse says that mind is not your feeling but the śakti of Śaṅkara, a name of Śiva: his power, present in you. Cultivate her constantly — return to that state, dwell in it, let it deepen. From that dwelling, Śiva.
Śivopādhyāya, asked what devotion is, quotes a definition that starts by saying what it is not: falling at the feet is not devotion to a Lord who is everywhere — there is nowhere to fall toward. For those made of feeling, he says, devotion is the contemplation of becoming one with him. Which tells you what cultivate her always is asking for, and what it is not.
Śivopādhyāya’s commentary
Śivopādhyāya defines devotion by quotation, and the definition opens by excluding the obvious: falling at the feet is not devotion to the all-pervading supreme Lord. For those whose very nature is feeling, it runs, devotion is the contemplation of becoming one with him. He glosses overflow as simply abundance. The quoted verse is given without attribution.
Commentary
The only devotional portal in the hundred and twelve, and it sets two conditions that look incompatible. Devotion past its banks, in someone who wants nothing. Put that way it is a test: the overflow counts only when there is no one left asking for anything, which quietly excludes most of what passes for religious feeling.
And what is said to be born is mati, a quality of mind, an understanding. Not an emotion, though an emotion is what produced it.
The verse then does the move this book does everywhere with anything valuable: it takes it out of your hands. What rose in you is not your love; it is Śiva's own power, and you are the place where she showed.
And uniquely here the instruction is constancy — always, not at a moment or in a flash. Every other portal describes an occasion. This one describes a residence.
Word by word
bhakti+udrekāt — from the overflow, surging excess, of devotion (m. abl. sg.); viraktasya — of one detached, free of craving (m. gen. sg.); yādṛśī — of whatever kind (f. nom. sg., relative); jāyate — is born (3rd sg. pres. mid., √jan); matiḥ — understanding, quality of mind (f. nom. sg.); sā — that (f. nom. sg., correlative); śaktiḥ — śakti, power (f. nom. sg.); śāṅkarī — belonging to Śaṅkara [Śiva] (f. nom. sg.); nityam — always (adv.); bhāvayet — one should cultivate, dwell on (3rd sg. opt. caus., √bhū; KSTS prints the causative — the e-text's bhavayet is not a form); tām — her (f. acc. sg.); tataḥ — from that, thereupon; śivaḥ — Śiva (m. nom. sg.)
Vijñāna Bhairava, verse 122 · dhāraṇā 99 · Awareness · śāktopāya · a means of mind · subtle → causal
वस्त्वन्तरे वेद्यमाने शनैर् वस्तुषु शून्यता
ताम् एव मनसा ध्यात्वा विदितो ऽपि प्रशाम्यति
vastvantare vedyamāne śanair vastuṣu śūnyatā tām eva manasā dhyātvā vidito 'pi praśāmyati
Translation · literal Sanskrit
While one thing is being known — emptiness, gradually, in the [other] thingsmeditating with the mind on that very emptiness, even while knowing, one grows still
Translation · colloquial
While one thing is being known, emptiness comes, little by little, into the others;meditate with the mind on that very emptiness, and even in the midst of knowing you go quiet.
Practice
Let attention rest on one thing — a cup, a sound, a flame. While that one thing is known, every other thing has fallen empty of your attention. Turn the mind to that emptiness itself rather than to the object. Hold it there. You do not need to stop knowing the one thing; the verse allows the knowing to continue. Even while it is known, everything settles.
Śivopādhyāya defines the emptiness twice over, and the second definition is the one to hold. Negatively it is simply their not-appearing just now. Positively it is the light of consciousness, which is what was there when the objects stopped showing up. So you are not attending to a lack. Attend with what he calls non-conceptual awareness rather than with the thinking mind, and what settles, he says, is that you become of the nature of quiescent brahman.
Śivopādhyāya’s commentary
Śivopādhyāya defines the emptiness plainly: it is the other things' not-appearing at that time. He then says what it is positively — its nature is the absence of the knowable, and its form is the light of consciousness. The mind with which it is meditated on he glosses as non-conceptual awareness. He also pairs this portal with the slow withdrawal of the gaze: there a single object is seen and the thought about it withdrawn; here all the other knowables are taken as empty while the one goes on being known.
Commentary
You produce a void continuously, all day, simply by attending to anything — because whatever you are not attending to has gone empty for you. There is nothing to manufacture. The practice is to turn round and take that as the object: not the cup, but the world's absence around the cup.
The permission in the last line is what makes this unusual. You need not stop knowing the one thing. Nearly every meditative model treats the surviving object as the last obstacle, and this verse says the stillness arrives with it still standing there.
Attending to the ground rather than the figure is one modern way to put it, though the verse claims more than a perceptual trick. What is being attended to is not merely the unnoticed remainder but emptiness itself, which the object was obscuring by being interesting.
Word by word
vastu+antare — [when] one thing among [all] (n. loc. sg.); vedyamāne — is being known (pres. passive part., n. loc. sg.; locative absolute with vastvantare); śanaiḥ — gradually, little by little (adv.); vastuṣu — in the [other] things (n. loc. pl.; KSTS śanair vastuṣu, where the vivṛti supplies the 'all' in its own gloss sarvavedyeṣu tadanyeṣu — the e-text had sarvavastuṣu); śūnyatā — emptiness (f. nom. sg.); tām — that [emptiness] (f. acc. sg.); eva — very, precisely; manasā — with the mind (n. instr. sg.); dhyātvā — having meditated (gerund); viditaḥ — [though still] knowing (past part. of √vid, m. nom. sg., of the meditator); api — even, although; praśāmyati — he grows still (3rd sg. pres., pra+√śam)
Vijñāna Bhairava, verse 123 · dhāraṇā 100 · Awareness · śāktopāya · a means of mind · causal
किंचिज्ज्ञैर् या स्मृता शुद्धिः सा ऽशुद्धिः शम्भुदर्शने
न शुचिर् ह्य् अशुचिस् तस्मान् निर्विकल्पः सुखी भवेत्
kiṃcijjñair yā smṛtā śuddhiḥ sā 'śuddhiḥ śambhudarśane na śucir hy aśucis tasmān nirvikalpaḥ sukhī bhavet
Translation · literal Sanskrit
The purity the little-knowing prescribe is, in the vision of Śambhu, impurity;for nothing is pure, nothing impure — therefore, free of dividing thought, become happy
Translation · colloquial
What people who know a little call purity is, in the seeing of Shambhu, impurity;nothing is pure and nothing is impure, so let the dividing stop, and be happy.
Practice
This is a conviction to carry, not a posture to hold. When the judgment arises — this is clean, that is defiled, I am fit or unfit today — see it as a rule made from partial knowledge. In the seeing that belongs to Śambhu, a name of Śiva, such purity does not stand. Drop the division wherever you catch it at work, and let the ease that follows be the fruit.
Śivopādhyāya spends four pages on this verse, more than on any other, and the argument is worth carrying with the practice. The rules are not abolished; they are confined. Purification by clay is a limb of ritual action, so let it hold for whoever is doing ritual — but nowhere, he says, has anyone written that one is qualified for knowledge only when clean. His own reason for setting the ablution aside is not disdain but attention: when you wash the body you look at the body, and looking is how identification gets back in.
And he quotes the condition under which the verse is safe. Nothing here is enjoined and nothing forbidden — except one thing: the mind must be made steady in the reality, with great effort; and in whatever way that becomes attainable, so let one act. Of such a person it is then said that he is like one armed with a mantra against poison, who eats poison and is not deluded by it. The freedom belongs to the mantra.
Śivopādhyāya’s commentary
Śivopādhyāya gives this verse four pages, more than any other, and identifies its target precisely: the purity of the law-books, cleansing with clay and water, prescribed by men of small understanding. He does not abolish it — purification is a limb of ritual, he says, so let it hold for whoever is qualified for ritual; but nowhere has it been said that one is qualified for knowledge only when clean. His own reason for dropping it is that washing makes one look at the body, and even a knower of reality may come to identify with what he looks at. He then answers the Gītā's praise of purity with the Skandapurāṇa's sevenfold bath, in which the mental bath is the chief and water merely one of seven, and answers the appeal to dharma out of the Yājñavalkyasmṛti itself: the supreme dharma is the seeing of the self by yoga.
Before the verse he quotes at length the passage in which nothing whatever is enjoined and nothing forbidden — no purity, no dietary rule, no vow, no pilgrimage, nothing of another's name or lineage — and then its one exception: this alone is laid down as a rule, that the yogin must with great effort make the mind steady in the reality, and conduct himself in whatever way makes that attainable. Of such a yogin, he quotes, it is said that he is like a man armed with a mantra against poison, who eats poison and is not deluded by it. He closes conciliatory: even one who has not given up washing becomes happy, once there is purity of mind.
Commentary
The most socially dangerous sentence in the collection, and the tradition knew it. The chain is fierce: what people of small knowledge prescribe as purity is, in Śiva's own seeing, not pure — it is the impurity, because a rule that sorts the world into clean and defiled is itself the defilement it claims to remove. This is the antinomian nerve of the whole tantric movement stated in half a verse.
It needs one guardrail, which the verse does not supply and we will. What is being dismantled is the judging, not the conduct; read as permission it becomes a well-worn excuse, and the check on it is the portal about consciousness in every body.
Śivopādhyāya, who gives this verse more space than any other, reaches the same guardrail from the other side. Nothing whatever is enjoined and nothing forbidden, he quotes — and then the single exception: that the yogin must make the mind steady in reality, and conduct himself in whatever way makes that attainable. Conduct is not released. It is re-anchored to a harder measure.
The live modern form of the rule is smaller and more personal than ritual bathing: not clean enough, not calm enough, not ready today, not the sort of person this is for. That verdict is the one this verse dissolves.
Word by word
kiṃcit+jñaiḥ — by those who know [only] a little (m. instr. pl.); yā — which (f. nom. sg.); smṛtā — is taught, prescribed (past part., f. nom. sg.); śuddhiḥ — purity (f. nom. sg.); sā — that (f. nom. sg.); aśuddhiḥ — impurity (f. nom. sg.; KSTS prints sā 'śuddhiḥ with the avagraha, sā aśuddhiḥ; the e-text dropped it and inverted the half-verse, which the next pāda na śucir hy aśuciḥ rules out); śambhu+darśane — in the vision of Śambhu (n. loc. sg.); na — not; śuciḥ — pure (adj., nom. sg.); hi — indeed, for; aśuciḥ — impure (adj., nom. sg.); tasmāt — therefore (abl.); nirvikalpaḥ — free of dividing thought (m. nom. sg.); sukhī — happy (m. nom. sg.); bhavet — one should become (3rd sg. opt., √bhū)
Vijñāna Bhairava, verse 124 · dhāraṇā 101 · Awareness · śāmbhavopāya · no means · causal
सर्वत्र भैरवो भावः सामान्येष्व् अपि गोचरः
न च तद्व्यतिरेकेण परो ऽस्तीत्य् अद्वया गतिः
sarvatra bhairavo bhāvaḥ sāmānyeṣv api gocaraḥ na ca tadvyatirekeṇa paro 'stīty advayā gatiḥ
Translation · literal Sanskrit
Everywhere, being is Bhairava — in plain view, even in the ordinaryand apart from that no other exists — thus the way is without a second
Translation · colloquial
Everywhere, whatever is, is Bhairava, and he is in plain view even in ordinary things;and apart from him there is nothing else at all: so the way has no second.
Practice
Whatever presents itself — a wall, a chore, an ordinary face — attend to the bare fact that it is. That being, the verse says, is Bhairava, and it stands in plain view in the common thing as much as in the exalted one. When the mind proposes something higher elsewhere, return: apart from this there is no other. Walk through the day on that footing.
Śivopādhyāya turns the same line toward people, and toward you. What is in plain view, he says, is the flash of I know, I do — which is going on in everyone, including everyone without a trace of discrimination, and which is one and the same flash in all of them. He quotes: whom even the dull know, whom even the women carrying water know. And then he asks the question the whole book has been circling: if it is more plain than anything, what is the use of a method? The net of means cannot illumine Śiva. Does the sun need a lamp?
Śivopādhyāya’s commentary
Śivopādhyāya takes the ordinary to mean ordinary people rather than ordinary things: it is graspable, he says, even among those without discrimination, because in every knower the awareness I know, I do flashes out plainly, and that awareness is one. He is careful to add what being is not — not, as with the Buddhists and their like, a form empty of the knowable, but the real, the self that knows. And he draws the conclusion the verse invites: the Lord is nothing but the form I, and he is simply manifest, so what use are the three means? The net of means cannot illumine Śiva; does the thousand-rayed sun shine by a pot? He quotes the Mahārthamañjarī — whom even the dull know, whom even the water-carrying women know — and then the Veda, where the cowherds and the water-carriers see him and all beings see him.
Commentary
Read this beside the verse a few doors back about wherever the mind goes; they are close but not the same. That one located the state in every destination. This one says the bare fact that anything is at all — bhāva, being, before any of its qualities — is Bhairava, and that this is in plain view.
The word is gocara, within range, originally the ground a cow can graze: not hidden, not esoteric, available to an ordinary look. And then the flat clause that ends the search: apart from that, no other exists.
Which is the point of the ordinary things named in the first line. A text that has spent two hundred verses on chasms, mudrās, needles and unstruck sound finishes by saying the plain wall will do, and that anything the mind proposes as higher and elsewhere is the one thing that certainly is not it.
Word by word
sarvatra — everywhere (adv.); bhairavaḥ — Bhairava (m. nom. sg.); bhāvaḥ — being, existence (m. nom. sg.); sāmānyeṣu — in ordinary [things, people] (loc. pl.); api — even; gocaraḥ — within range, in plain view (m. nom. sg.); na — not; ca — and; tad+vyatirekeṇa — apart from that (instr. sg.; the text prints vyatirekteṇa); paraḥ — [something] other (m. nom. sg.); asti — exists (3rd sg. pres., √as); iti — thus; advayā — without a second, nondual (f. nom. sg.); gatiḥ — the course, way (f. nom. sg.)
Vijñāna Bhairava, verse 125 · dhāraṇā 102 · Awareness · śāktopāya · a means of mind · causal
समः शत्रौ च मित्रे च समो मानावमानयोः
ब्रह्मणः परिपूर्णत्वात् इति ज्ञात्वा सुखी भवेत्
samaḥ śatrau ca mitre ca samo mānāvamānayoḥ brahmaṇaḥ paripūrṇatvāt iti jñātvā sukhī bhavet
Translation · literal Sanskrit
The same to enemy and friend; the same in honor and in contemptbecause brahman is utterly full — knowing this, become happy
Translation · colloquial
The same to an enemy and to a friend, the same in honour and in contempt,because what is real is full to the brim: know that, and be happy.
Practice
Recall someone who opposes you and someone who loves you; recall a moment of honor and one of humiliation. Set them side by side and look for what is equally present in each — brahman, the one reality, lacking nowhere. The verse asks knowing, not forcing: you do not manufacture warmth toward the enemy, you see that nothing is missing anywhere. Rest in the evenness that follows.
Commentary
The reasoning is what distinguishes this from ordinary counsel about equanimity. It does not ask you to feel warmly toward an enemy or coolly toward praise; it gives a reason from which the evenness is meant to follow — because brahman is complete, lacking nowhere, and therefore not more present in the friend or less in the adversary. The word is knowing, not forcing.
Very similar lines appear in the Bhagavad-gītā, which tells you this vocabulary was common property of the period rather than borrowed in either direction.
One honest caution, since sameness language is easily misused: what the verse addresses is the interior weather of honour and contempt, and it does not say that harm and kindness are the same thing or that you should stop protecting yourself and others. Evenness toward a person is not indifference to what they do.
Word by word
samaḥ — the same, even (m. nom. sg.); śatrau — toward an enemy (m. loc. sg.); ca ... ca — both ... and; mitre — toward a friend (n. loc. sg.); samaḥ — the same (m. nom. sg.); māna+avamānayoḥ — in honor and in contempt (m. loc. dual); brahmaṇaḥ — of brahman (n. gen. sg.); paripūrṇatvāt — because of [its] complete fullness (n. abl. sg.); iti — thus; jñātvā — having known (gerund, √jñā); sukhī — happy (m. nom. sg.); bhavet — one should become (3rd sg. opt., √bhū)
Vijñāna Bhairava, verse 126 · dhāraṇā 103 · Awareness · śāktopāya · a means of mind · subtle → causal
न द्वेषम् भावयेत् क्वापि न रागम् भावयेत् क्वचित्
रागद्वेषविनिर्मुक्तौ मध्ये ब्रह्म प्रसर्पति
na dveṣam bhāvayet kvāpi na rāgam bhāvayet kvacit rāgadveṣavinirmuktau madhye brahma prasarpati
Translation · literal Sanskrit
Cultivate no aversion anywhere; cultivate no desire anywherein release from desire and aversion, brahman glides forth in the madhya
Translation · colloquial
Do not work up a dislike for anything anywhere, and do not work up a wanting for anything either;let go of both, and in the middle what is real glides forward.
Practice
Watch for the two movements: toward and against. When aversion starts up at anything, do not build it; when desire starts, do not build it either. You are not suppressing what arises — you are declining to cultivate it. In the release from both pulls a middle opens — the madhya, the centre between them — and into it brahman unfolds of itself. Your work is only the not-building.
Śivopādhyāya's whole comment on this verse is two words: glides forth means blossoms open. Not something coming in from outside once you have made room, but something opening where it already was, the way a flower opens. The middle is not a doorway. It is the place.
Śivopādhyāya’s commentary
Śivopādhyāya's entire comment on this verse is two words: glides forth means blossoms open. Brahman does not enter the middle from elsewhere; it unfolds there, as a flower opens. He heads the verse as teaching the ground of Śambhu.
Commentary
The verb is the joke and the instruction. Bhāvayet — cultivate, cause to become — is the word this book uses everywhere for meditation itself. So the sentence reads: do not practise aversion; do not practise desire.
The text treats the two pulls as contemplations you are already performing with great diligence, rehearsing the grievance, dwelling on the wanted thing, and asks only that you stop doing the exercise. Nothing is being suppressed. What arises is left to arise and simply not built on, which is a far smaller and more achievable thing than not feeling it.
And in the gap where the building would have gone, the book's oldest word returns for the last time: madhya, the middle — first found between two breaths, then between two thoughts, two objects, two moments, and now between the two motions that organise a whole life. Brahman is said to glide into it, the way something enters a room that has been emptied.
Word by word
na — not; dveṣam — aversion (m. acc. sg.); bhāvayet — one should cultivate (3rd sg. opt. causative, √bhū); kva+api — anywhere, toward anything; na — nor; rāgam — desire, attachment (m. acc. sg.); bhāvayet — one should cultivate (3rd sg. opt.); kvacit — anywhere; rāga+dveṣa+vinirmuktau — in complete release from desire and aversion (f. loc. sg. of vinirmukti); madhye — in the centre (loc. sg.); brahma — brahman (n. nom. sg.); prasarpati — glides forth, creeps in (3rd sg. pres., pra+√sṛp)
Vijñāna Bhairava, verse 127 · dhāraṇā 104 · Space · śāmbhavopāya · no means · causal
यद् अवेद्यं यद् अग्राह्यं यच् छून्यं यद् अभावगम्
तत् सर्वम् भैरवम् भाव्यं तदन्ते बोधसम्भवः
yad avedyaṃ yad agrāhyaṃ yac chūnyaṃ yad abhāvagam tat sarvam bhairavam bhāvyaṃ tadante bodhasambhavaḥ
Translation · literal Sanskrit
What cannot be known; what cannot be grasped; what is empty; what goes into absencecontemplate all that as Bhairava — at the end of that, awakening arises
Translation · colloquial
What cannot be known, what cannot be got hold of, what is empty, what goes out into nothing:hold all of it as Bhairava, and at the end of that attempt, the waking comes.
Practice
Take as your object exactly what refuses to be an object: whatever cannot be known, cannot be held, what is empty, what has gone into absence — the sound that has died away, the space behind a thought. Śivopādhyāya pushes the category further than that, and the push matters: his example is the sky-flower, which did not fade but never was. Even that, he says, has the throb of being-ness, and so is not outside Bhairava. Contemplate it as Bhairava himself, not as a mere blank. Stay with it without asking it to become something. At the end of this contemplating, the verse says, awakening arises.
Śivopādhyāya’s commentary
Vimarśadīpikā, quoted at length; Maheśvarānanda quoted by name (महेश्वरानन्दपादैः). Footnote, plate 0118 line 8: MSS ga and pu read ज्ञानदशा for ज्ञेयदशा. Footnote, plate 0119 line 21: MSS ka and pu lack the passage from सद्भाव to अनुप्राण.
Commentary
Four negations, each removing a way a thing could be an object for you — unknowable, ungraspable, empty, gone into absence — and then the sentence that makes the verse: contemplate all that as Bhairava.
This is the whole difference between this tradition's emptiness and a merely privative one, and it is his sentence before it is ours: the ground of emptiness contemplated by the sons of the Sugata is one thing, he writes, and that of the worshippers in the Goddess's way another. What you are asked to sit with is not a nothing but a someone.
The fourth negation is the one to watch. What goes into absence sounds like things that have ceased — a sound died away, the space behind a thought. He glosses it instead with the sky-flower, which never existed at all, and insists that even that has the throb of being-ness; Maheśvarānanda, quoted here, presses it to a question — what difference in being-ness is there between a flower and a flower in the sky? The category is not things that have gone. It is things that were never there.
There is also an impossibility in the grammar: the gerundive says it is to be contemplated, and contemplation needs something to rest on, which the first line has just taken away. Which is why the awakening is placed, as so often here, at the end of the attempt rather than in it.
Word by word
yat — what (n. nom. sg., four times, distributive); avedyam — not to be known (gerundive with a-, n. nom. sg.); agrāhyam — not to be grasped (gerundive with a-, n. nom. sg.); śūnyam — empty (n. nom. sg.); abhāva+gam — going into non-being (n. nom. sg.); tat sarvam — all that (n. nom. sg.); bhairavam — as Bhairava (predicate); bhāvyam — is to be contemplated (gerundive of causative √bhū, n. nom. sg.); tat+ante — at the end of that (loc. sg.); bodha+sambhavaḥ — the arising of awakening (m. nom. sg.)
Constant; without support; empty; pervading; free of reckoning —place the mind in that outer sky, and enter the spaceless
Translation · colloquial
Constant, standing on nothing, empty, spread everywhere, free of all reckoning:put the mind in that outer sky, and go into what has no sky at all.
Practice
Sit where you can face open sky. Place the mind in that outer space and let it take on what it rests in: nothing held, nothing leaned on, no edge, pervading everywhere, empty of all reckoning. Stay until mind and sky agree. Then go further — enter what has no space at all, where even the sky is left behind. Do not read that last step as a vanishing. Śivopādhyāya is emphatic at exactly this point: what is entered is an abode, and it is not empty.
Śivopādhyāya’s commentary
Śivopādhyāya heads this ground Śākta and no other. The mind made into outer sky is knowing whose nature is vimarśa, brought to samāpatti by the qualifiers the verse supplies, beginning with constancy. Then, when supportless consciousness rises, what one enters is an abode gone forth out of space — and he says of it that it is not empty. Footnote, plate 0120 line 8: MSS ka, ga and pu read इति शाक्त्येव.
Commentary
Five adjectives are hung on the open sky — constant, unsupported, empty, pervading, free of all reckoning — and every one of them is a description this school uses for the absolute. The verse is smuggling its metaphysics in as weather.
That is the operating principle behind every space practice in the collection, stated here more fully than anywhere else: the mind takes on the properties of what it is placed in, so a mind set in something with no edges eventually has none.
Then the last word takes the ladder away. Having got you into the sky, the verse asks you to enter the spaceless, which means the sky was a support too and now goes the way of the others.
Practically, this wants real sky — cloudless, no horizon line, nothing for the eye to work on. Like the moonless dark of the sixty-fourth portal, the requirement is a field with no features in it.
Word by word
nitye — constant, eternal (loc. sg.); nirāśraye — without support (loc. sg.); śūnye — empty (loc. sg.); vyāpake — pervading (loc. sg.); kalana+ujjhite — abandoned by reckoning, free of limiting activity (loc. sg.; all five agreeing with bāhyākāśe); bāhya+ākāśe — in the outer space, the open sky (m. loc. sg.); manaḥ — the mind (n. acc. sg.); kṛtvā — having placed (gerund, √kṛ); nirākāśam — the spaceless (n. acc. sg.); samāviśet — one should enter fully (3rd sg. opt., sam+ā+√viś)
Vijñāna Bhairava, verse 129 · dhāraṇā 106 · Awareness · śāktopāya · a means of mind · subtle → causal
यत्र यत्र मनो याति तत् तत् तेनैव तत्क्षणम्
परित्यज्यानवस्थित्या निस्तरङ्गस् ततो भवेत्
yatra yatra mano yāti tat tat tenaiva tatkṣaṇam parityajyānavasthityā nistaraṅgas tato bhavet
Translation · literal Sanskrit
Wherever the mind goes — that very thing, with that very mind, that very instantlet it go; by settling nowhere, one thereby becomes waveless
Translation · colloquial
Wherever the mind goes, that very thing, with that very mind, that very instant,let go of it; and by settling nowhere at all, you become waveless.
Practice
Sit and let the mind move as it will. Wherever it goes — a plan, a sound, a memory — drop that very thing, with that same mind, in that same instant. Do not choose a better object; the method offers none. It is refusal to alight. And it is not one clean refusal: Śivopādhyāya writes it as gone again, and again drawn back, an indefinite series rather than a single sitting, which is why he reaches for the word abhyāsa — practice, the thing you do repeatedly. Settling nowhere, the mind runs out of places to make waves, and what remains is waveless.
Śivopādhyāya’s commentary
Patañjali cited by number; Gītā quoted by number; Gītā 6.35 paraphrased. Footnote, plate 0121 line 2: MSS ka read निरालम्बनतायुक्त्या.
Commentary
The first half of this verse is word for word the first half of the portal thirteen doors back, and the second half says the opposite. There, wherever the mind goes is the state of Śiva, so let it go. Here, wherever the mind goes, drop that, instantly.
The book sets the two readings of one line a few pages apart, ranks neither, and leaves you to find out which one is yours today — exactly as it did with the rising desire that was led back to its source in one verse and ridden in another.
Note the instrument: with that very mind. There is no second, cleaner faculty standing by to do the releasing; the mind that grabbed is the mind that lets go, which is why this can be done at all. And note that no better object is offered, ever. The method is only the refusal to alight, and the result is the ocean image this book has used before — no waves, because nothing has landed on the water.
Word by word
yatra yatra — wherever (adv., distributive); manaḥ — the mind (n. nom. sg.); yāti — goes (3rd sg. pres., √yā); tat tat — that very [thing] (n. acc. sg., distributive); tena+eva — with that very [mind] (instr. sg.); tat+kṣaṇam — at that instant (adverbial acc.); parityajya — abandoning (gerund, pari+√tyaj); anavasthityā — through not settling [anywhere] (f. instr. sg. of anavasthiti); nistaraṅgaḥ — waveless (m. nom. sg.); tataḥ — thereby, then; bhavet — one becomes (3rd sg. opt., √bhū)
By the Light he makes all things resound; giver of all; pervading the whole —so, from unbroken utterance of the word Bhairava, one becomes Śiva
Translation · colloquial
By the light he makes everything sound out; he gives everything; he fills the whole of it.So, from saying the word Bhairava without a break, you become Shiva.
Practice
Utter the word Bhairava, aloud or within, and keep the utterance unbroken. Let the name carry what Śivopādhyāya hears inside it: the light of consciousness, the power of action that makes all things resound, and the giving and pervading that the second line names. You are not describing him from outside; the continuous sounding itself does the work. Sustained without gap, the verse says, it leaves you Śiva.
Śivopādhyāya’s commentary
Four plates of philology, and the place in the whole commentary where he is most openly in dispute with his own tradition — against a widely attested variant, against the ancient भरण-रवण-वमन derivation, and against Kṣemarāja by name. Footnotes: 0122 line 9, MSS sa and pu lack भैरव … विमृशति; 0122 line 20, MSS ka and pu variant, blotted and unresolved; 0123 line 12, ga and pu read भरणपोषणेति; 0124 line 3, ga and pu read ईरयति कम्पयतीति; 0124 line 4, ka, kha and pu read तं वातीति; 0124 line 5, ka and pu read निमीलनमेव विधेयमिति; 0124 line 18, ka and pu read भाजनमिति.
Commentary
The first line is a nirukta, a meaning-etymology, and should not be mistaken for linguistics: what a derivation of this kind does is load the syllables, so that whoever utters the word sounds all its senses at once — he by whose light everything cries out, the giver of all, the one who pervades. Meaning is packed into a sound so the sound can carry it.
Śivopādhyāya spends four plates on precisely this and is openly at odds with his own tradition, arguing against the old bearing-and-crying derivation and against Kṣemarāja by name. On the philology he is right and our earlier note was not: the name is not built out of fear.
The fear is a separate claim and it survives. Bhairava is the terrifying form, and this is nearly the only place in the hundred and twelve where the book lets that show; everywhere else he is simply awareness and the name has gone quiet. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom — the line is the Bible's and not the tantra's, and it is exact here. Met early and from outside, he terrifies, and goes on terrifying until he is found within and known as oneself. That thou art. The terror was never in the etymology; it is in the distance.
The practice lacks a good deal: no rosary, no count, no seed-syllable, no hour. One word, and one requirement — that the uttering not break.
Word by word
bhayā — by the Light [of consciousness] (f. instr. sg. of bhā, a regular feminine ā-stem; the vivṛti glosses bhayā saṃvitprakāśarūpayā and again bhayā jñānātmikayā śaktyā, and the word carries the nirukti the verse is built on — bhā + ai + rava. Śivopādhyāya names the rival reading bhriyāt, found in numerous manuscripts, and rejects it as na sādhu; an earlier conjecture bhiyā 'with fear' was withdrawn on that evidence); sarvam — everything (n. acc. sg.); ravayati — makes resound (3rd sg. pres. causative, √ru; the vivṛti glosses it ravayati vimṛśati — makes resound, that is, brings to awareness); sarva+daḥ — giver of all (m. nom. sg.); vyāpakaḥ — pervading (m. nom. sg.); akhile — in the whole (loc. sg.); iti — thus [runs the derivation]; bhairava+śabdasya — of the word Bhairava (m. gen. sg.); santata+uccāraṇāt — from unbroken utterance (n. abl. sg.); śivaḥ — [one becomes] Śiva (m. nom. sg., predicate; bhavati understood)
Vijñāna Bhairava, verse 131 · dhāraṇā 108 · Awareness · śāktopāya · a means of mind · subtle → causal
अहं ममेदम् इत्यादि प्रतिपत्तिप्रसङ्गतः
निराधारे मनो याति तद्ध्यानप्रेरणाच् छमी
ahaṃ mamedam ityādi pratipattiprasaṅgataḥ nirādhāre mano yāti taddhyānapreraṇāc chamī
Translation · literal Sanskrit
'I', 'this is mine', and the rest — when such convictions comethe mind goes to what has no support; driven on by meditation on that, one is stilled
Translation · colloquial
'I', and 'this is mine', and the rest of it: when such certainties come up,the mind goes to what has no support; driven on by holding to that, you go quiet.
Practice
Catch the mind in the act of saying 'I,' 'this is mine.' Instead of following what the thought claims, look for what it stands on. The small I finds nothing under it — that much the search does reliably. But do not stop at the vacancy, because Śivopādhyāya does not: what the looking arrives at is not an absence but a thing, the full I, which was never the one making the claim. Let the momentum of that very looking carry you. Meditation on the supportless, pressed on, ends in calm.
Śivopādhyāya’s commentary
प्रेमैव ब्रह्म केवलम्, and three quoted verses on self-love, one of them Upaniṣadic in substance. Maheśvarānanda named. Footnote, plate 0125 line 4: MSS ga and pu read सत्ताया.
Commentary
The same search that an earlier portal ran on an ordinary cognition, now run on the one case where everybody is certain of the answer. I; this is mine. Do not argue with the claim and do not analyse it — look for what it rests on, and keep looking.
What the verse reports is that the mind, hunting for the owner, arrives at the supportless, which is the word this book has been circling since the frozen gaze.
Note the mechanism named in the last line: preraṇā, a driving-on, a momentum. The practice is not the conclusion that no one is there — that is a thought like any other, and cheaply had. It is the impetus of the failing search, which carries past the point where the searching stops.
Self-enquiry as taught in the last century has the same shape and arose independently; nothing is being claimed about influence in either direction.
Word by word
aham — I (nom. sg.); mama — mine (gen. sg.); idam — this (n. nom. sg.); iti+ādi — and so forth, such [thoughts]; pratipatti+prasaṅgataḥ — on the occasion of [such] cognition, conviction (abl. in -taḥ); nirādhāre — into what has no support (loc. sg.); manaḥ — the mind (n. nom. sg.); yāti — goes (3rd sg. pres., √yā); tat+dhyāna+preraṇāt — through the driving-on of meditation on that (n. abl. sg.); śamī — possessed of calm, stilled (m. nom. sg.)
Eternal; all-present; without support; pervading; sovereign of the whole —meditating on the words moment by moment, one's aim is fulfilled — true to their meaning
Translation · colloquial
Everlasting, present everywhere, standing on nothing, spread through all, master of the whole:hold the words moment by moment, true to what they mean, and what you came for is done.
Practice
Take the words themselves: eternal, all-present, without support, pervading, sovereign of the whole. Say them, moment after moment, as words that mean something rather than a chant emptied of sense — Śivopādhyāya takes them as words to be recited and not merely held in mind. Let each one open toward what it names. Meditated this way, the verse says, they fulfil themselves in you — the aim is accomplished in proportion to the meaning.
Śivopādhyāya’s commentary
Pāñcarātra cited कटाक्षेण; Bhaṭṭanārāyaṇa's Stavacintāmaṇi. Footnote, plate 0126 line 1: MSS ka and pu read निराकार for the mūla's निराधारो — a variant on the verse, not on the comment. Further footnotes: line 4, ka and pu अर्थानुरूपक; line 5, kha and pu नित्यत्वादिस्वरूपत; line 6, kha and pu कृतार्थः कृतकृत्य.
Commentary
The five words listed here are the five predicates hung on the open sky a few portals back, lifted out and given to you as words. And the last phrase is the whole point, easy to skim past: the aim is accomplished in conformity with the meaning. What you get is proportional to how much of the sense is actually alive in you while you hold them.
Set that against the portal two doors earlier, where an unbroken utterance of a single name does the work whether or not you are attending to what it means. The book offers both and does not choose — sound that operates on its own terms, and language that operates only through understanding — which is the same even-handedness it showed with desire, and with the wandering mind.
Note the frequency word. Moment by moment: not a phrase said once and rested in, but a meaning that has to be renewed continuously because meanings go dead in seconds.
Word by word
nityaḥ — eternal (m. nom. sg.); vibhuḥ — all-present (m. nom. sg.); nirādhāraḥ — without support (m. nom. sg.); vyāpakaḥ — pervading (m. nom. sg.); ca — and; akhila+adhipaḥ — sovereign of the whole (m. nom. sg.); śabdān — the words (m. acc. pl.); prati+kṣaṇam — moment by moment (adverbial); dhyāyan — meditating on (pres. part., m. nom. sg., √dhyai); kṛta+arthaḥ — one whose aim is accomplished (m. nom. sg.); artha+anurūpataḥ — in conformity with [their] meaning (adverbial abl.)
All this stands unreal, wearing the look of a conjuror's showwhat reality has a conjuror's show? — holding this firmly, one goes to peace
Translation · colloquial
All of this stands here unreal, wearing the look of a conjuror's show;and what is real about a conjuror's show? Hold that firmly, and you go to peace.
Practice
Look at whatever stands before you and try the thought on it, firmly: all this is unreal, wearing the look of a conjuror's show. Then press the question the verse asks — what reality does a conjuror's show have? Do not answer it cleverly; let it stand. It is the firmness of this seeing, kept up against habit, that carries you into peace.
Śivopādhyāya’s commentary
The heading is the citable thing here: वेदान्ताभिमताम् इन्द्रजालधारणाम् आह. It is the tradition's own commentator naming the Vedāntin provenance of this portal.
Commentary
The conjuror returns, and this verse disagrees with the earlier one. There the show was fully real as appearance and only wrongly attributed; here the first word is flatly unreal, and this is as close as the collection comes to the illusionism of the Vedāntins, which sits awkwardly in a tradition insisting the world is Śiva's actual self-expression.
We take the earlier verse as the book's settled view and this one as a device — note that what is offered is a question, and that the operative word is the same one used for the great identity claim: from firmness.
You are not asked to believe a metaphysics. You are asked to put a question to whatever is in front of you and keep putting it, without letting the mind close it with a clever answer. And the promise is correspondingly modest. Not liberation, not Bhairava's own form. Peace.
Word by word
atattvam — not the real, unreality (n. nom. sg.); indrajāla+ābham — having the look of a conjuror's show (n. nom. sg.); idam sarvam — all this (n. nom. sg.); avasthitam — stands, is situated (past part., n. nom. sg.); kim — what? (n. nom. sg.); tattvam — reality (n. nom. sg.); indrajālasya — of a conjuror's show (n. gen. sg.); iti — thus [asking]; dārḍhyāt — from firmness [of conviction] (n. abl. sg.); śamam — to peace (m. acc. sg.); vrajet — one should go (3rd sg. opt., √vraj)
Vijñāna Bhairava, verse 134 · dhāraṇā 111 · Awareness · śāktopāya · a means of mind · causal
आत्मनो निर्विकारस्य क्व ज्ञानं क्व च वा क्रिया
ज्ञानायत्ता बहिर्भावा अतः शून्यम् इदं जगत्
ātmano nirvikārasya kva jñānaṃ kva ca vā kriyā jñānāyattā bahirbhāvā ataḥ śūnyam idaṃ jagat
Translation · literal Sanskrit
For the changeless ātman, where is knowledge — where, for that matter, actionouter things hang upon knowing; hence this world is empty
Translation · colloquial
For a self that never changes, where is knowing, and where, for that matter, is doing?Outer things hang upon being known; and so this world is empty.
Practice
Consider the ātman — the self — as this verse presents it: without change. Ask where, in what does not change, knowing could take place, or doing. Then notice that every outer thing hangs on being known; withdraw the knowing and nothing of the world stands on its own. Hold both sides until the conclusion is seen rather than argued: this world is empty. The verse ends there. Śivopādhyāya does not — what settles after that conclusion, he says, is pure consciousness, and the attaining of the state beyond which there is nothing further.
Śivopādhyāya’s commentary
The Candrajñāna, quoted at length. Its final line — तस्माच् छून्यं जगद् ध्यायेद् यत्र नश्येत् कदाचन — is the instruction he takes the verse to be giving.
Commentary
An argument in two moves: nothing can happen in what does not change, so neither knowing nor doing belongs to the self; and everything outer depends on being known, so with the knowing withdrawn nothing stands. Hence emptiness.
A reader who has been paying attention will notice this contradicts the portal where you claimed identity with the doer of all — where agency was precisely what made this tradition's absolute different from the Vedāntin's. The contradiction is in the text and not in our reading of it.
The honest thing to say is what the whole collection has been demonstrating: this is an anthology of doorways, assembled by people who cared whether a door opened and not whether the doors could be arranged into a system. A changeless self is the premise that works for this practice. Twenty-five verses ago an acting self was the premise that worked for that one. Both are here, and the book does not appear to be troubled.
Word by word
ātmanaḥ — of the self (m. gen. sg.); nirvikārasya — without change (m. gen. sg.); kva — where? (rhetorical, twice); jñānam — knowledge (n. nom. sg.); ca vā — and, for that matter; kriyā — action (f. nom. sg.); jñāna+āyattāḥ — dependent on knowing (m. nom. pl.); bahir+bhāvāḥ — outer things, external existents (m. nom. pl.); ataḥ — hence; śūnyam — empty (n. nom. sg.); idam — this (n. nom. sg.); jagat — world (n. nom. sg.)
Vijñāna Bhairava, verse 135 · dhāraṇā 112 · Awareness · śāmbhavopāya · no means · causal
न मे बन्धो न मोक्षो मे भीतस्यैता विभीषिकाः
प्रतिबिम्बम् इदम् बुद्धेर् जलेष्व् इव विवस्वतः
na me bandho na mokṣo me bhītasyaitā vibhīṣikāḥ pratibimbam idam buddher jaleṣv iva vivasvataḥ
Translation · literal Sanskrit
No bondage is mine, no release is mine — bogeys, these, for someone afraidall this is a reflection in the understanding, the way the sun lies in water
Translation · colloquial
No bondage is mine, and no release is mine either: these are bogeys, and only for someone afraid.All of it is a reflection in the understanding, the way the sun lies in water.
Practice
Say it as your own, and test it: no bondage was ever mine, no release either — those are bogeys, frightening only to one already frightened. Then look at the whole scene of bound-and-freed the way you look at the sun lying in water: a reflection of the understanding, vivid, and not the thing itself. Let hope and fear stand down together. And then, because this is where he chooses to close the hundred and twelve, let go of the understanding the whole scene is being reflected in.
Śivopādhyāya’s commentary
Kalhaṇa the poet quoted by name, with the scarecrow-and-elephants verse; the sage Śuka; the Bṛhadāraṇyaka's from a second, fear arises. Footnote, plate 0128 line 2: MSS ga and pu read बालस्यैता, these are bogeys for A CHILD, where the KSTS prints भीतस्यैता, for one who is afraid. Our English follows the printed text per the standing rule, but the variant is worth the margin: it says in one word what our commentary says in a phrase about the word being nursery-grade. And his series does not stop where the text's own count does: immediately after this verse he heads the next one 'having spoken of the abandonment of the inner instrument, he states the dhāraṇā of the abandonment of the outer instruments' — so VBT 135 is for him the inner-instrument dhāraṇā and VBT 136 its outer counterpart. The hundred and twelve are the text's own count, stated in the verses that follow; the division into dhāraṇās past that point is his.
Commentary
The hundred and twelve end not on a technique but on the withdrawal of the frame the techniques were set in. Bondage and release are named vibhīṣikā, and Śivopādhyāya's gloss is better than our nursery-grade: the straw man in the field, whose whole office is to frighten sparrows. Kalhaṇa, the one poet he names, extends it exactly — set in the forest, what could it do against trampling wild elephants? Gauḍapāda makes the same move in the Māṇḍūkya Kārikā, where there is no cessation and no arising, no one bound and no one seeking, no one freed; that comparison is ours and not his.
The simile does the rest. The sun in water is not a false sun; it is a real reflection of a real sun, in the wrong place — and, he adds, the wrong way up. He names the water, too: it is the buddhi, and the two images floating in it are I am bound and I am free.
Which is why he does not stop where we stop. Let one abandon the intellect itself, he says: the last move is to drop the surface on which the whole scene of bound-and-free is being cast. That, and not a hundred-and-thirteenth practice, is the end of the book.
Word by word
na — not; me — mine, for me (gen. sg.); bandhaḥ — bondage (m. nom. sg.); na — nor; mokṣaḥ — release, liberation (m. nom. sg.); me — for me (gen. sg.); bhītasya — for one who is frightened (m. gen. sg.); etāḥ — these (f. nom. pl.); vibhīṣikāḥ — bogeys, scare-figures (f. nom. pl.); pratibimbam — a reflection (n. nom. sg.); idam — this (n. nom. sg.); buddheḥ — of the understanding (f. gen. sg.); jaleṣu — in waters (n. loc. pl.); iva — as, like; vivasvataḥ — of the sun (m. gen. sg.)
Mūla text established against Kashmir Series of Texts and Studies vol. VIII, Vijñānabhairava with the Uddyota of Śivopādhyāya, ed. Mukunda Rāma Śāstrī, Bombay 1918 (public domain). All 224 lines were collated against the printed plates; every departure from the electronic text we began from is shown with the verse it belongs to.
Original English rendering and practice notes made for this reader directly from the Sanskrit, 2026. No existing translation was used as a source, and none is reproduced here.
The verses are ninth-century and public domain. Everything made here — the English, the notes, the commentary — is CC BY 4.0. Credit the edition and say what you changed.