Nartaka Ātmā: The Body as Śakti’s Costume in the Dance of Liberation

Kālī seated upon the prone body of Śiva on the battlefield, surrounded by corpses, worshiped by the gods — the body as the ultimate throne of the Goddess.

Among readers of Abhinavagupta, there circulates a subtle but powerful misunderstanding. It goes like this:

“The body matters in the beginning, when one still needs rituals, mantras, and gestures. But in the higher stages of Tantra—in śākta-upāya, śāmbhava-upāya, and anupāya—the body is no longer important. It was only a crutch for beginners, to be cast aside once subtler means are attained.”

On the surface, this view seems plausible. After all, Tantra itself describes a gradation of means. In the ānava-upāya, the body is central: ritual, breath, visualization, mantra-placement. In the śākta-upāya, emphasis shifts to the energy of awareness itself; in the śāmbhava-upāya, to direct intuition of the Self; and in the anupāya, effort dissolves entirely into pure grace. Anyone reading these categories with a certain lens may think: “Aha! So the higher you go, the less the body matters.”

This half-truth is why the misunderstanding has such staying power. It appeals to a common spiritual instinct: the belief that spirit must transcend flesh, that the gross must be left behind for the subtle. The ascetic impulse whispers that the body is heavy, unreliable, impure—while mind, awareness, and grace are pure and lofty. Many traditions reinforce this: the body is often framed as obstacle or cage, a skin to be shed.

And yet—this is precisely what Kaula Tantra rejects.

Abhinavagupta did not teach that the body is a “low stage” to be abandoned. Quite the contrary: he repeatedly affirmed the body as a temple, a city of the Yoginīs, the perfect altar of worship. In Kaula vision, the very distinction between “low” and “high” dissolves: body, breath, mind, awareness, grace—all are expressions of Śakti. To reduce the body to a discarded husk is to betray the very core of Kaula teaching.

In fact, it is only because the body is sacred that the higher upāyas are even possible. Awareness does not float in the sky; it pulses in your veins, vibrates in your breath, flickers in your senses. Grace descends into a vessel, and that vessel is the human form. Even when one rests in pure awareness, it is this body that radiates the light, moves in the world, and becomes a field of Śiva’s play.

For Abhinavagupta, liberation did not mean discarding embodiment. It meant divinizing it—seeing every limb and every act as Śakti’s own dance.

The Body as Temple

If there is one theme that resounds through the Kaula current, it is this: the body is not a shell to be abandoned, but a temple to be awakened. Abhinava doesn’t leave this as metaphor; he sings it explicitly in his Dehasthadevatācakra Stotra:

Saṃsphuradanubhavasāraṃ sarvāntaḥ satatasannihitam |
Naumi sadoditamitthaṃ nijadehagadevatācakram || 15 ||

This way (ittham) I praise (naumi) the always vibrating (saṃsphurat), always (sadā) rising (uditam), always present (satata-sannihitam), transcendental — lit. “at the end of everything” — (sarvāntaḥ) Wheel of the Deities innately pervading the body (nija-dehaga-devatā-cakram), as It is the Essence of perception (anubhava-sāram). (v. 15)

 

What this verse is saying (and why it matters)

• nija-dehaga-devatā-cakram — “the wheel/circle of deities” native to one’s own body. Not imported from outside, not symbolically imagined: innate.

• saṃsphurat / sadoditam / satata-sannihitam — ever-vibrant, ever-arising, ever-present. The deity-wheel in the body is not an occasional ritual state; it is the continuous, pulsing condition of embodiment when seen rightly.

• sarvāntaḥ — “at the end/limit of all things,” i.e., transcendent while immanent. Kaula collapses the false split: the deity-wheel is both here (the body) and beyond (the end of all).

• anubhava-sāram — the essence of direct experience. What sanctifies the body is not dogma but lived recognition; Śakti shines as the core of perception itself.

Taken together, Abhinavagupta is not saying, “Treat the body as a crude prop for beginners.” He is saying: recognize the already-present cakra of deities in your own body and praise it as the very essence of awakened experiencing.

From hymn to practice

This hymnatic vision is operationalized in Tantrāloka’s Kaula ritual (ch. 29):

• deha-śuddhi (purifying/clarifying the body by fire-visualization) reconstitutes the “light-body” in awareness.

• nyāsa (placing phonemes that are the Goddess’s own body of sound) limb by limb reveals flesh as mantra and skin as shrine — a practical recognition of the “deities-in-the-body” the hymn praises.

Thus, when we speak of the “body as temple,” we are not leaning on a loose paraphrase; we’re naming exactly what Abhinavagupta prays and practices: the body houses a native wheel of deities, ever-vibrant, ever-present, the essence of direct realization.

 

Body and Liberation

The misunderstanding runs deep: that once realization dawns, the body is left behind, like a burned-out wick after the flame. But Kaula does not whisper this lie. Kaula roars the opposite: the flame and the wick are one, and both shine with Śakti’s fire.

Yes, the śāstras speak of upāyas—ways. Some begin with the body (ānava-upāya), some with the currents of awareness (śākta-upāya), some with pure will (śāmbhava-upāya), and some with effortless grace (anupāya). Each has its mode, its doorway. But none negates the body. For how could they? The body is the field where all doorways open. Even when the yogin dissolves into pure awareness, it is this body that throbs with the recognition, that radiates the current into the world.

For most, the body is the beginning. Ritual, breath, mantra — these are not “lower crutches,” they are Śakti’s hands leading us home. But for the liberated, the body does not fade into irrelevance. It becomes transparent, a play of light. Every act is divine. To walk is to circumambulate, to speak is to praise, to eat is to offer, to sleep is to rest in Śakti’s lap.

Abhinavagupta, through his tradition, makes this uncompromisingly clear: the liberated one perceives every movement of the body as Śiva’s own dance. There is no profane act left. No corner of flesh or gesture of hand is outside the mandala. The body does not end at liberation — it flowers.

This is Kaula’s fierceness: to reject the lie that “higher” means bodiless. To see instead that higher means embodied divinity without remainder. The body was never an obstacle, never a husk. It was always Śakti’s throne, waiting to be recognized.

 The Dancer and the Costume

The sages of the Kaula current never spoke of the Self as a ghost drifting above the body. They saw it as a dancer. The awakened ātmā is not static—it moves, pulses, vibrates. Śiva Himself is not an abstract stillness, but a nartaka, the cosmic performer.

And every dancer needs a stage. Every dancer needs a costume.
What is the costume of the Self? This body.

This flesh is not a burden to be shed, but the shimmering garment Śakti has woven for the play. The beating of the heart is the drum. The flow of breath is the flute. The gestures of the hands are mudrās offered to the cosmos. To mistake the costume for a prison is blindness; to discard it as irrelevant is arrogance. But to recognize it as Śiva’s own attire—that is Kaula vision.

Liberation does not strip the dancer naked of form; liberation reveals that the entire fabric of embodiment is already divine silk. The Self dances, and the body flashes as His radiant costume.

So the aphorism is uncompromising: nartaka ātmā [Śiva Sūtras 3.9] — “The Self is the dancer.”

The yogin who knows this no longer despises the body, no longer imagines it a husk. He bows to it as Śakti’s gift, Śiva’s robe, the glittering raiment of the eternal dance.