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| The very process of manifestation is Śakti |
At Paśyantī, signifier and signified are not yet split
asphurat yatra vācyavācakaviśeṣayoḥ abhedaḥ
“At that level there is a non-difference of the distinction between signified and signifier, not yet flashed forth.”
Abhinavagupta is not merely saying that speech has not yet become external. He is saying something subtler: even the distinction between vācya and vācaka — between meaning and its expression — has not yet flashed forth.
That matters. Usually we imagine that first there is a thing meant, and then later a word comes to express it. Abhinava is pointing to a level prior even to that division. At Paśyantī, meaning and expression are still undivided within consciousness.
So this is not yet the world of language as we ordinarily know it. It is not yet the stage where an inner content stands over against a separate verbal form. The split has not yet crystallized.
That is why the word asphurat is so good here. The distinction has not yet “flashed out,” not yet become explicit, not yet burst into separable visibility. The two are present, but not in divided form.
This gives the line real force. It suggests that language in its deepest root is not first division but unity. Separation comes later. Articulated speech is downstream. At the source, what is meant and what expresses it are not yet two.
That also means that discursiveness is not the origin of meaning. The split between content and expression, between inner and outer word, is already a later event. Paśyantī stands closer to the source, where the living whole has not yet fractured into paired elements.
So this is not a minor technical point. It is a profound statement about the nature of manifestation through language. At its root, meaning does not first exist in isolation and then seek expression. It is born together with expression in an undivided luminous field.
In Madhyamā, distinction appears, but within identity
madhyamā punaḥ tayoreva vācyavācakayoḥ bhedam ādarśya sāmānādhikaraṇyena [tādātmyena] vimarśavyāpārā
“Madhyamā, however, is the operation of reflective awareness in which the distinction between those two — signified and signifier — is shown, but in a relation of common identity.”
Or more simply:
“In Madhyamā, meaning and expression do appear as distinct, but still within a shared identity.”
Now the split begins, but not fully.
In Paśyantī, the distinction between signifier and signified had not yet flashed forth. Here, in Madhyamā, it does appear. Abhinavagupta says plainly: bhedam ādarśya — the distinction is shown. So something has changed. The two are no longer wholly unseparated.
But this is not yet full separation. That is the crucial point. The distinction appears sāmānādhikaraṇyena, and the gloss makes the force even sharper: tādātmyena — by identity, by being of one essence.
So Madhyamā is a middle condition in the strict sense. Meaning and expression are no longer undivided as before, yet they are not torn apart into external duality. They are distinguishable, but still inwardly one.
That is why this level matters. It shows that manifestation does not leap straight from pure unity into hardened division. There is an intermediate mode where distinction has emerged, yet the bond of identity has not been lost.
This is a strong correction to the ordinary mind, which tends to think in blunt oppositions. Either one thing, or two things. Either complete identity, or complete separation. Abhinava is more exact. There is a stage in which distinction is real, but still held within identity.
That has force far beyond speech theory. It is a pattern of manifestation itself. The many do not first become real by breaking away. They can emerge as distinct while remaining rooted in non-separation.
So Madhyamā is not yet the world of externalized speech. It is the inward field where differentiation has begun, but not yet hardened into apartness. Meaning and expression now face one another, but still from within a common luminous ground.
In Vaikharī, the distinction becomes fully explicit
vaikharī tu tadubhayabhedasphuṭatāmayyeva
“Vaikharī, however, consists precisely in the full explicitness of the distinction between those two.”
Or more simply:
“In Vaikharī, the distinction between signifier and signified becomes fully manifest.”
Here the process reaches open articulation.
What was still undivided in Paśyantī, and then distinguished without loss of identity in Madhyamā, now becomes fully explicit in Vaikharī. Abhinavagupta says: tadubhayabhedasphuṭatāmayī — it is made of the clear, manifest distinctness of the two.
This is the level of fully unfolded speech, where meaning and expression stand forth as plainly differentiated. The word is here, the meaning is there. Speaker and spoken, sound and sense, expression and what is expressed — these now appear in open structure.
That does not make Vaikharī false. It makes it late.
This is an important point. Abhinava is not condemning articulated speech. He is locating it. Vaikharī is not error in itself. It is the outermost stage of a process whose roots lie deeper. The problem begins only when this final differentiated level is taken as primary and self-sufficient, as though language began here and had no more inward source.
A simple analogy may help. In the birth of a melody, there is first a compact musical whole not yet separated into distinct notes — this is like Paśyantī. Then the melody begins to take inward form in the mind of the composer: phrases, intervals, and direction are already becoming distinct, but it remains unspoken — this is like Madhyamā. Finally it is sung, played, or written out in clear sequence — this is like Vaikharī.
That is why this sequence matters. Paśyantī, Madhyamā, Vaikharī are not merely categories. They show a progressive exteriorization. First, no split. Then distinction within identity. Then explicit separation.
And this has a larger significance. The outer world too is often taken as though it were self-standing simply because it is explicit. But explicitness is not ultimacy. What is most visible is not always what is deepest.
So Vaikharī is the necessary realm of manifest communication, but also the realm most prone to illusion if cut off from its source. It is speech fully spread out, speech in the mode of open difference. Clear, useful, operative — and yet downstream from a more inward unity.
This whole structure is already established in one’s own awareness
iti tāvat vyavasthāyāṃ svasaṃvitsiddhāyāṃ
With the gloss:
tatra sphuṭabhedasya svānubhavasiddhatvāt na pramāṇagamyam etad iti bhāvaḥ
“Thus this whole arrangement is established in one’s own awareness.”
Gloss:
“Because the explicit distinction there is established by one’s own experience, this is not something reached by external proof — such is the sense.”
This is a crucial sentence, because Abhinavagupta stops the whole discussion from becoming mere theory.
He has laid out the sequence — undividedness, distinction within identity, full explicit differentiation. And now he says: this structure is svasaṃvit-siddha. It is established in one’s own awareness.
That matters. He is not asking the reader to accept an exotic doctrine on authority. He is saying that the later stages, especially the explicit differentiations of speech, are already given in direct experience. One does not need a separate proof for that. It is self-evident in lived awareness.
The gloss makes that even sharper: where distinction becomes fully explicit, that fact is already known through svānubhava, one’s own experience. So this is not something imported from outside by argument alone.
That gives the whole discussion a different tone. Abhinavagupta is not building a speculative ladder in empty space. He is articulating a structure whose outermost levels are already available in immediate experience, and from there tracing them back inward toward their subtler ground.
Abhinava begins from what is experientially obvious and then leads thought back toward what is subtler.
That is why this sentence has fire. It tells the reader: this teaching is not alien to your own awareness. Its deepest reaches may be subtle, but its manifest structure is already present in experience itself.
So the point is methodological as well as philosophical. The path inward does not begin by rejecting experience. It begins by seeing more precisely what is already given in it.
The same Parā-vāk remains truly present in all the later stages
yaiva parāvāgbhūmiḥ saiva ... taduttaraṃ paśyantyādidaśāsv api vastuto vyavasthitā
tayā vinā paśyantyādiṣu aprakāśatāpattyā jaḍatāprasaṅgāt
“That very ground of Parā-vāk itself remains truly present even in the later stages beginning with Paśyantī. For without it, in Paśyantī and the rest there would follow non-luminosity and the consequence of inertness.”
Abhinavagupta does not allow the higher ground to be treated as something left behind once differentiation begins. That very Parā-vāk-bhūmi remains really present in the later stages. Not symbolically, not as a remote cause only, but vastuto vyavasthitā — actually established there.
That matters. It means the lower stages are not self-sufficient layers stacked beneath a lost origin. The origin is still alive within them.
Then he gives the reason with complete bluntness: without that, Paśyantī, Madhyamā, and Vaikharī would fall into aprakāśatā — non-luminosity — and the result would be jaḍatā, inertness.
Speech is not alive by itself. Differentiation is not self-illuminating. Language, cognition, articulation — all of it remains luminous only because the deeper ground is still present within it. Remove that, and what remains is mechanism without light, structure without awareness, motion without inwardness.
That is why Abhinava’s speech theory is not merely about language. It is about manifestation itself. The differentiated levels are real, but they are not autonomous. Their life is borrowed from the ever-present luminous source within them.
Everyone knows this in music. Some melodies are correct, polished, and quickly forgotten. Others may be simple, yet they enter millions of people and remain there for decades. The notes alone do not explain the difference. Something alive passes through one and not the other. So too here: the later stages of speech do not shine by structure alone. They live only because Parā-vāk remains present within them. Without that, speech would still have form, but no inner life.
So Abhinavagupta is saying something radical and simple: the outer word is luminous only because the innermost word is still present within it. Without that presence, speech would be nothing but inert form.
At the highest level there is no “this,” “thus,” “here,” or “now”
tatra ca idam evam atra idānīm ityādibhedakalanā na kācit
“And there, there is no construction of distinctions such as ‘this,’ ‘thus,’ ‘here,’ and ‘now.’”
Abhinavagupta is stripping away the basic coordinates by which ordinary cognition organizes experience. Idam — this. Evam — thus, in this manner. Atra — here. Idānīm — now. Object, mode, place, and time. He says that at that highest level there is no such construction of differentiation.
That matters because these are not minor additions. They are the ordinary framework of experience itself. The mind does not merely perceive; it immediately places things: this thing, in this way, here, now. Reality gets distributed into coordinates.
Abhinava is pointing to a level prior to that entire operation.
So this is not yet the world of objecthood. Not yet the world of localization. Not yet the world of temporal marking. The first and highest ground is before that whole architecture has arisen.
This line does not merely say the highest is beyond language in some vague way. It says more precisely that the primary differentiations by which the mind sets up a world have not yet been cast.
And that also explains why later manifestation can arise at all. Once “this,” “thus,” “here,” and “now” begin, a world becomes spread out. But at the source, before those cuts are made, there is no divided field yet.
So the point is not emptiness as blank negation. It is prior fullness before cognitive partition. Before object, mode, place, and time are laid out, there is the undivided luminous ground.
From the power of the supreme mantra down to fully manifest differentiation
tata eva ca paramahāmantravīryavisṛṣṭirūpāyā ārabhya vaikharīprasṛtabhāvabhedaprakāśaparyantaṃ yat iyaṃ parā vāgbhūmiḥ
“And precisely from that there extends this ground of Parā-vāk, whose nature is the outpouring of the power of the supreme mantra, all the way to the manifestation of differentiated states as fully unfolded in Vaikharī.”
This line gathers the whole movement into one sweep.
Abhinavagupta is not speaking of disconnected levels stacked one above another. He is describing one continuous unfolding. From the paramahāmantra-vīrya — the potency of the supreme mantra — there extends the whole arc down to the full disclosure of differentiated states in Vaikharī.
That matters because it refuses a broken universe. The outermost articulated level is not cut off from the highest. What appears below is the extension of what is present above.
The phrase visṛṣṭirūpāyā is strong here. This is not static being. It is emission, outpouring, release. But the outpouring is not chaotic. It is still the unfolding of Parā-vāk-bhūmi itself. The source remains the source even in extension.
So the fully differentiated world of articulated expression is not outside the mantra-power. It is that power carried outward into explicit manifestation.
So thus speech in its most external form is still not merely human chatter or dead linguistic mechanism. At root it belongs to a much deeper current. The same power that abides as supreme concentration unfolds all the way into the spread of manifest differences.
And this sharpens the whole sequence we have been following:
first no distinction,
then distinction within identity,
then clear differentiation,
and now the reminder that the whole process is one emission of a single ground.
So the movement downward is not a fall into something alien. It is extension. Expansion. Disclosure.
In ordinary life, distance often does become rupture. A child leaves home, a branch is cut from the tree — and what has gone outward may truly become severed from its source. That is why human beings fear differentiation. But Abhinavagupta’s point is that manifestation is not like that. The many emerge, spread out, and become explicit, yet they do not fall outside the source from which they arise.
That is why this line matters. It protects differentiation from becoming severance. The many may spread out, but they do not escape their source. Even Vaikharī, at the farthest edge of explicitness, is still reached by the current of the supreme mantra-power.
Parā-vāk as self-marvel and the unbroken “I”
svacamatkṛtimayī svātmanyeva prakāśanamaye viśramya sphurati tadevaṃ sphuritam avicchannatāparamārtham aham iti
“Made of self-marvel, she shines forth while resting in her own Self, which is pure luminosity; and that very shining, in its unbrokenness, has as its highest meaning: ‘I’.”
Parā-vāk is svacamatkṛtimayī — made of self-marvel. But the sentence goes further. She shines forth while resting in her own Self alone, a Self that is nothing but luminosity. This is crucial. The flashing does not arise by leaving itself. It shines from repose in itself.
Then comes the deepest point: that very flashing, in its unbroken continuity — avicchannatā — has as its supreme truth aham.
This is not the egoic “I” of contraction and separation. It is the primordial aham, the self-revealing pulse of consciousness before division. The source is not merely being, not merely light, not merely unity. It is self-luminous presence tasting its own shining as “I.”
That is why the line has such force. The whole movement from Parā to Vaikharī is not a mechanical cascade. At the heart of it is uninterrupted self-revelation. And the innermost name of that revelation is aham.
The differentiated stages of speech are possible only because the luminous ground remains present within them. And that ground is not inert or blank. It is consciousness resting in itself, flashing forth in self-marvel, and knowing itself in the deepest sense as I.
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