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| Arunachala beyond time |
Basically in this text Abhinava is doing self-inquiry, but in a more sophisticated way. Not in Ramana’s stripped methodical form, of course. Abhinava is operating with a much denser architecture: śakti, vāk, tattvas, grammatical person, manifestation, deity, recognition. But the movement is similar in one crucial respect: he does not let the mind stop at the surface form of experience.
A statement seems to be about her, about then, about that.
And Abhinava keeps pressing: who is really speaking? where do these distinctions arise? what is their ground? can they define consciousness itself?
Then the whole thing is drawn back into aham.
It is self-inquiry conducted through the full body of manifestation: language, theology, cosmology, and cognition all get pulled back to the same center.
Ramana cuts straight through.
Abhinava circles, unfolds, differentiates, then recollects.
Different style. Same wound opened in the ego.
“Today” appears only by a constructed temporal cut
sūryādisaṃcārāyatta-dinavibhāgakṛtādyatanānavacchedāt
“Because the delimitation called ‘today’ is produced by the division of day, which depends on the movement of the sun and the like.”
Yes — the shift can feel abrupt unless we state what Abhinava is doing.
He is still working on the problem of parokṣa and directness, but now he approaches it through grammar and temporal usage. The hidden question is: when speech says something like “she said,” or uses forms connected with pastness, presentness, or indirectness, what exactly is being assumed there? Are these distinctions truly rooted in consciousness itself, or are they later constructions?
So the move to adyatana — “today,” present-day reference — is not random. He is testing one of the most ordinary temporal categories and showing that even this depends on a constructed division.
“Today” feels immediate and obvious. But Abhinava points out that it is not self-existing. It depends on the cutting up of time by reference to the movement of the sun and similar markers. Without that division, “today” does not stand on its own.
That matters because he is loosening the grip of ordinary temporal language. If even “today” is not absolute, then the temporal distinctions built into speech are less ultimate than they seem. And once that is seen, one can stop projecting those divisions back into saṃvid itself.
So the shift from parokṣa to today is really a shift from:
“this level is called indirect”
to
“let us examine how such categories of indirectness, presentness, and temporal location are actually formed.”
He is exposing their relativity.
And that prepares the deeper point to come: if “today” is already a constructed cut imposed on experience, then it cannot belong in the same way to the akālpanika saṃvid-vapus, the unconstructed body of consciousness.
So this line is a wedge. Abhinava takes a category that feels obvious and immediate — “today” — and begins to show that it is already downstream from conceptual partition. That is why it appears here, right after the discussion of parokṣa. He is not changing topic. He is pushing the same critique deeper, into the grammar of temporal experience.
“Today” is not absolute, even across cosmic scales
brahmaṇo ’nekakalpasaṃmitam ahaḥ tato ’pi viṣṇuprabhṛteḥ
with the glossed context:
brahmaloko hi merūrdhvavartī sūryas tv adhovartī iti kathaṃ tatrādyatanatvavyavahāraḥ sūryādisaṃcāreṇa paricchidyate ity arthaḥ
“For Brahmā, a day is measured by many kalpas; and for Viṣṇu and the others, even beyond that.”
Glossed sense:
“Brahmā’s world is above Meru, while the sun is below; so how could the usage of ‘today’ there be delimited by the movement of the sun and the like? That is the point.”
Abhinavagupta now widens the argument.
It is not only that “today” depends on a constructed division. It also changes radically depending on the level from which one speaks. What counts as a day for human beings is not what counts as a day for Brahmā. And beyond that, other divine levels have other measures still.
So “today” is not a self-evident unit built into reality. It is relative to the system within which time is being measured.
Even within our own solar system, a “day” is not one fixed thing. A day on Earth, a day on Mars, and a day on Saturn are not the same measure. The word remains the same, but the temporal cut changes with the world in which it is applied. So already at that level we can see the point: “today” feels immediate, yet it is relative.
Abhinava is making a far stronger version of that argument. If temporal designation varies even across cosmic levels, then adyatana — “today-ness” — clearly cannot be something absolute belonging to consciousness as such.
That is why the move matters. He is steadily stripping ordinary temporal language of ultimacy. What seems immediate is already conventional, scale-bound, and dependent on a frame.
So the deeper point begins to emerge: if “today” changes with the order of manifestation, then it cannot define the nature of the unconstructed consciousness in which all such orders appear.
Even inwardly, “day” can be measured by the movement of prāṇa
antaś ca prāṇacārādau
prāṇīyaśatasahasrāṃśe ’pi aharvyavahāraḥ
“And inwardly too, in the movement of prāṇa and the like, there is usage of ‘day,’ even in relation to a hundred-thousandth part of vital process.”
Now Abhinavagupta closes the escape route.
One might still think: “Fine, outer cosmic days vary. But at least day is still an objective external measure.” He cuts deeper. Even inwardly, day can be reckoned through the movement of prāṇa. So temporal division is not only astronomical. It can also be tied to subtle vital rhythm.
That matters because it shows that “day” is not a single fixed unit at all. It is a designation imposed relative to a process — outer or inner.
So the argument is widening in two directions at once:
not only across cosmic scales,
but also into psychophysical interiority.
That makes the point much stronger. Temporal categories are not rooted in some absolute self-standing structure. They are framed according to systems of measurement.
And this also helps explain the earlier shift from parokṣa to temporal language. Abhinava is dismantling the ordinary confidence with which grammar treats distinctions like “present,” “past,” “today,” “indirect,” as though they were simply built into reality. He is showing that they depend on perspective, process, and convention.
For one person, a day is sunrise to sunrise. For another, working nights, the lived “day” begins in darkness and ends after dawn. The same word covers different lived cuts. Abhinava is making a much subtler version of this: even the most ordinary temporal units are already constructed.
So this line pushes the argument toward its real target. If “day” can be set by solar motion, divine scale, or vital rhythm, then “today-ness” is clearly not something native to pure consciousness. It is a way of partitioning experience after the fact.
“Today-ness” is therefore a conceptual construction
iti avasthitaṃ kālpanikaṃ ca adyatanatvam
“Thus ‘today-ness’ is established as something conceptualized, a construction.”
Now he states the conclusion plainly.
After showing that “today” depends on solar movement, varies across cosmic levels, and can even be reckoned by prāṇic rhythm, Abhinava says: therefore adyatanatva is kālpanika.
That word matters. He is not saying “today” is useless or unreal in the ordinary practical sense. He is saying it is constructed, conceptually imposed, not intrinsic to consciousness itself.
So the ordinary feeling that “today” is something immediate and self-evident is being cut through. It feels primitive and obvious, but it is already downstream from division, convention, and standpoint.
That is why this point is so important for the shift from grammar back to metaphysics. Temporal language does not simply mirror reality as it is in itself. It organizes experience from within a particular framework.
Midnight feels like a hard edge between one day and the next, but that edge is not written in the sky. It is a convention tied to a system of reckoning. Abhinava’s point is deeper, but similar in structure: “today” feels immediate only because the mind forgets the framework that produced it.
So this line is a real hinge. Once adyatanatva is seen as kālpanika, one can no longer casually project such temporal cuts back into the nature of pure consciousness. That is exactly the move he is preparing for next.
How could a constructed “today” belong to unconstructed consciousness?
akālpanike saṃvidvapuṣi katham (?) iti nyāyāt
“By this reasoning: how could ‘today-ness’ belong in the unconstructed body of consciousness?”
Abhinavagupta has not been dismantling “today” as an isolated curiosity. He has been clearing the ground for this question. If adyatanatva is constructed, frame-bound, dependent on solar motion, divine scale, or prāṇic rhythm, then how could it belong to saṃvid-vapus, the very body of consciousness, which is akālpanika — not constructed?
That is the point.
So the contrast is sharp:
- adyatanatva = produced by division and conceptual imposition
- saṃvid = not produced that way
And once that is seen, ordinary temporal grammar loses its power to define the deepest level. Words like “today,” “then,” “she said,” “I said,” “past,” “present” — all of them belong to the order of partitioned manifestation, not to consciousness in its own nature.
That is why the earlier move from parokṣa to “today” was not random at all. Abhinava is stripping away the assumption that the grammatical distinctions we use in ordinary speech can be naively transferred to the level of Parā-vāk.
A simple way to feel the force of it: a map may divide land into borders, zones, and colors, but the earth itself is not made of those lines. They are imposed for orientation. In the same way, “today” helps orient experience, but consciousness itself is not made of “today-ness.”
So this question is not rhetorical decoration. It is the knife. It cuts grammatical time away from the nature of consciousness and prepares the return to the deeper recognition of Parā-vāk.
The real meaning must be recovered through grammatical sequence
bhūtānadyatana-parokṣārtha-paripūraṇāt parokṣottamapuruṣakrameṇa vimṛśet
“Therefore one should understand it by completing the sequence of meanings such as past, non-present, indirect, and through the order of the third person and the first person.”
This is compressed, but the movement is clear enough.
Abhinavagupta is now saying: once we see that categories like “today,” “past,” and “indirect” are constructed, we should not remain trapped in their surface grammatical use. We have to complete them, carry them through, and reflect on what they are really doing.
That is why he speaks of paripūraṇa — filling out, completing. The ordinary grammatical sequence is not simply rejected. It is re-read and brought to completion.
And the mention of parokṣa and the shift of persons matters. The surface form may make it sound as though “she” spoke, or as though what is being referred to lies at a distance. But if those grammatical distances are not intrinsic to consciousness, then one must not stop there. One has to move through the sequence from indirectness and third-person form toward the deeper first-person recognition.
So the grammar is being used, but also surpassed.
That is the point. Abhinava is not anti-language. He is anti-naivety about language. He uses grammatical distinctions as clues, then shows that they must be inwardly resolved.
So this line prepares the culmination: what looked like a statement about “her” saying something in some temporally marked past is going to be gathered back into aham. The third person and the indirect are not the final truth of the utterance. They are the outer shell that must be completed in recognition.
“I myself am that Parā-vāk Devī who spoke thus”
ahameva sā parāvāgdevīrūpaiva sarvavācyavācakāvibhaktatayā evamuvāca iti tātparyam
“The intended meaning is: ‘I myself am that very Parā-vāk, in the form of the Goddess, who in the undivided state of all signifier and signified spoke thus.’”
Now the whole grammatical detour lands.
What looked like a statement about someone else, at some time, saying something, is drawn back into its real center: aham eva sā — “I myself am that.”
That is the point of the whole argument. Once temporal distinctions like “today” are seen as constructed, and once indirectness and third-person reference are no longer taken as ultimate, the utterance can be recovered in its real form. It is not finally about a distant “she.” It is the self-recognition of consciousness itself.
And Abhinava makes that center unmistakable: parāvāg-devī-rūpā — Parā-vāk in the form of the Goddess. So the speaker is not an empirical individual. It is the deepest speech-power itself, the divine self-luminous ground.
The phrase sarvavācyavācakāvibhaktatayā matters enormously. The speaking takes place in the state where all signifier and signified are still undivided. So this is not ordinary speech reporting on a prior reality. It is the primordial utterance from before the fracture of meaning and expression.
That is why the line has such force. Grammar had introduced distance: pastness, indirectness, person. Abhinava uses all that only to bring it back to immediacy. The truth of the utterance is not “she said.” It is “I am that very one.”
So the passage ends where it had to end: not in linguistic analysis for its own sake, but in recognition. The real speaker of the utterance is the one consciousness, speaking from its own undivided fullness as Devī.
“I was asleep and babbled”
supto ’haṃ kila vilalāpa iti evam eva upapattiḥ
“In just this way the explanation works, as in the expression: ‘I was asleep and babbled.’”
This example is there to make the grammatical move easier to understand.
Abhinavagupta has just taken an utterance that seems a bit distant or indirect and brought it back into first person: “I myself am that Parā-vāk who spoke.” That can feel abrupt. So he gives an ordinary example.
When someone says, “I was asleep and babbled,” the speaker is talking now about something said in another state. The sleeping person and the waking speaker are not the same in mode, but we still naturally say “I said it.”
That is the whole point.
So in the same way, even if the utterance first appears in a more indirect or grammatically distanced form, it can still be gathered back into the deeper I. The present recognition reclaims what was spoken from another level.
Abhinava is basically saying:
this kind of shift is already normal in ordinary language,
so do not be surprised when the text finally resolves into
“I myself am that Parā-vāk.”
So the example is not mystical. It is grammatical and experiential. He is using a familiar sentence to justify why a deeper self can appropriate an utterance that, on the surface, seemed to belong to another state or another form.
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