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| Abhinava moves through space and sequential action only to show that consciousness is subtler than both. (aurora in Lapland) |
Propulsion as sequential action is ruled out here
avidyamānā deśa-kāla-gamana-āgamana-ādi-dvaita-sāpekṣā nut preraṇā
kramātmaka-kriyāmayī yatra tat anut
“Where there is no propulsion dependent on the duality of place, time, going, coming, and the like — no propulsion consisting of sequential action — that is anut.”
Abhinava begins by excluding another familiar model.
Usually, when we think of action, movement, or transmission, we imagine something like this:
first here,
then there,
moving from one point to another,
before and after,
departure and arrival.
That whole structure depends on duality:
place,
time,
going,
coming.
And it also depends on sequence — one step following another.
Abhinava says that this kind of preraṇā, propulsion or sending forth, does not apply here.
This is important because he is continuing the same cleansing movement as in the previous chunk. There he questioned initiation understood as consciousness being “sent” from guru to disciple. Here the point becomes more general: any action imagined as sequential movement through dualistic coordinates cannot define the highest.
So the issue is not action as such. The issue is kramātmaka-kriyā — action built out of sequence.
That is what he is setting aside.
A simple way to feel the point:
if something needs “from here to there,” “before and after,” or “now it has arrived,” then it still belongs to a field of divided terms. Abhinava is speaking about something subtler than that.
So this line is mostly preparatory, but clear:
the highest cannot be understood through the ordinary model of action as movement across dualistic coordinates.
Anuttara is even beyond space in the ordinary sense
ākāśādi lokaprasiddhyā tato ’pi sātiśayam anuttaram
tasyāpi hi ākāśādeḥ saṃyogi-ghaṭādi-citra-upādhi-vaśāt
samavāyi-śabdādi-yogāt ca syād api īdṛśī sakramā kriyā
“By common worldly understanding beginning with space, this is even more surpassingly Anuttara than that. For even in the case of space and the like, because of varied limiting adjuncts such as the pot conjoined with it, and because of association with sound and the like inhering in it, such sequential action may indeed still occur there.”
Abhinava’s point becomes clearer if we say it in more modern terms.
Space can feel like a good image for transcendence because it seems open, subtle, and not solid. But even physical space is still a field where things can be located, separated, related, and tracked. Objects can occupy different positions, motion can be described from one place to another, and ordered processes can still unfold there. Modern physics still works by locating events and objects in spacetime, not by treating space as beyond all relation.
Even vacuum does not save the analogy completely. In space, sound does not travel through vacuum because it needs a material medium, but electromagnetic radiation does propagate through vacuum, and physical events still occur there. So “space” is subtle, but it still allows relations, propagation, localization, and sequence.
That is close to what Abhinava is saying with older categories like pot, sound, and upādhi. Space is still a field in which differentiated happenings can occur. It can still host “this here,” “that there,” “before,” “after,” “movement,” and “relation.” So even space is too compatible with ordered activity to serve as the final image for Anuttara.
So the adjusted point is:
Anuttara is not merely more subtle than matter. It is also subtler than space understood as a field of locations and events. Space still permits sequence. Abhinava is moving toward something in which even that framework no longer holds.
In consciousness there is unbroken fullness and sovereign freedom
saṃvit-tattve tu sarvato ’navacchinna-pūrṇa-svātantrya-aiśvarya-sāre
vicchinna-camatkāra-maya-viśrāntyā
svīkṛta-śaṅkyamāna-upādhi-bhāva-sakala-idantāspada-bhāva-pūga-paripūrita-ahaṃ-ātmani
nirābhāse sadābhāsamāne
“But in the principle of consciousness, whose essence is unbounded fullness on all sides, sovereign freedom and lordship, with a repose made of unbroken marvel — in the Self as full ‘I,’ filled with the whole mass of all possible object-fields and states of limiting adjunct that may be accepted or imagined, while itself without outer image yet always shining…”
Now Abhinava turns from space to consciousness itself, and the whole register changes.
Space is open, but it is still a field of positions and events. Saṃvit is different. He describes it as anavacchinna-pūrṇa — unbounded fullness. Not empty extension, but fullness without edge.
Then svātantrya-aiśvarya-sāra — its essence is freedom and lordship.
That matters because consciousness is not a passive container. It is not just “there.” It is self-possessing and self-moving.
Then comes a phrase that is easy to miss but very important: vicchinna-camatkāra-maya-viśrānti. The repose here is not dull stillness. It is a resting made of unbroken marvel. So again Abhinava refuses a lifeless absolute. The deepest resting is alive from within.
And then the sentence becomes denser: all possible “this”-contents, all possible object-fields, even all conceivable limiting conditions, are already gathered into the ahaṃ-ātman, the Self as full I. In other words, consciousness does not need an external world to be completed by it. Whatever can appear as “this” is already held within the scope of aham.
That is why he says it is nirābhāsa and yet sadābhāsamāna. Without outer image, yet always shining. It does not stand as one more visible thing among visible things, but it is never absent.
A simpler way to say the whole point:
space can contain events;
consciousness already contains the whole possibility of appearing itself.
That is why Abhinava moves here. He is showing why the highest cannot be modeled on space. Space still allows things to happen in it. Consciousness, as he describes it here, is the deeper field in which even the distinction between container and contained has already been overtaken.
Therefore there is no place-, time-, or sequence-based order there
svīkārābhāsī-kṛta-anābhāse
idantābhāsa-tad-anābhāsa-sāra-deśa-kāla-apekṣa-krama-abhāvāt
akramaiv
“In that which makes even non-appearance appear as accepted appearance, because there is no sequence dependent on place and time as the basis of the appearance of ‘this’ and of its non-appearance — it is non-sequential indeed.”
Now the consequence is stated clearly.
If consciousness is as Abhinava has just described it — not one more object, not confined by place, not waiting in time, already full of all possible “this”-contents within aham — then krama, sequence in the ordinary sense, cannot really belong to it.
Why? Because sequence depends on a certain structure:
- first this appears,
- then that appears,
- here but not there,
- now but not then.
That whole pattern relies on deśa and kāla — location and time. It also relies on the distinction between appearance and non-appearance: this is present, that is absent, this has arrived, that has not yet arrived.
Abhinava is saying that in consciousness as such, that whole framework is secondary. It may govern the way things seem within manifested experience, but it does not define the Self.
That is why he says akramaiva — non-sequential indeed.
This does not mean that in ordinary life we stop seeing sequence. Of course we do: thoughts follow thoughts, sounds come one after another, actions unfold in order. His point is deeper: the ground in which all that appears is not itself stitched together by before-and-after.
A simpler way to feel this is:
a movie unfolds frame by frame on the screen,
but the screen is not itself sequential in the same way as the film.
That is close to the point, though Abhinava would go further: consciousness is not only the screen, but also the very power by which appearing and disappearing are known at all.
So this line means:
sequence belongs to the displayed order;
it does not belong ultimately to consciousness itself.
The highest kriyā is the inward throb of self-awareness
vimarśābhidhā kriyā iti
tad eva anuttaram atiśaya-mātre
“That action, known in traditions such as the Matsyodarīmata, is made of the uprising surge of self-reflection; it is called vimarśa-kriyā. And that alone is Anuttara in the sense of sheer unsurpassability.”
Now Abhinava says what action really is at this level.
It is not stepwise doing.
Not movement from one point to another.
Not transmission through space and time.
The true kriyā here is svātma-vimarśa-saṃrambha — the living surge of self-awareness. Consciousness turning upon itself, tasting itself, affirming itself. That itself is action.
This becomes even clearer once we notice the reference to the Matsyodarīmata. The traditional image behind it is the belly of a fish: it throbs inwardly, but without outward locomotion. That is the kind of action Abhinava has in view here — not external movement, but an interior pulse, an inwardly alive dynamism: i-consciousness throbs without movement, and for that reason it is beyond succession.
That fits the whole argument perfectly.
Abhinava has already ruled out action as:
- going and coming,
- sequence,
- propulsion,
- transfer,
- spatial progression.
So what remains as the highest sense of action cannot be ordinary motion. It has to be something more inward: consciousness not lying inert, but actively aware of itself. That is why he calls it vimarśa-kriyā.
So the image is actually very good. A fish may move through water, but here the comparison is not with swimming. It is with the subtle inward pulsation of life in the fish’s belly — movement without displacement. In the same way, the highest kriyā is not travel from point A to point B, but the inward throb of self-manifest awareness.
So the line means:
the highest action is not “doing something elsewhere”;
it is consciousness alive to itself,
moving without moving,
throbbing without sequence.
Here “anuttara” means sheer unsurpassability
tad eva anuttaram atiśaya-mātre
tamapo vidhiḥ dvivacana-vibhajya-upapade atra tarap
“That alone is Anuttara in the sense of mere unsurpassability. Here the suffix -tara is to be understood in that way.”
Abhinava closes the argument by fixing the sense of the word very carefully.
After ruling out propulsion, sequence, spatial transfer, and even space as a sufficient analogy, he says: this alone — the non-sequential surge of self-awareness — is Anuttara.
And then he adds the grammatical point so the reader does not slip back into the wrong meaning. Here anuttara is not being taken in the usual comparative sense, as though there were first one thing, then a “higher” thing beyond it. It means unsurpassable, pure atiśaya, sheer beyondness in the sense that nothing outruns it.
That matters because the whole passage was fighting against a subtle habit of mind:
to hear “higher” and immediately imagine a ladder,
to hear “beyond” and imagine distance,
to hear “action” and imagine sequence.
Abhinava now shuts that down at the level of the word itself.
So the final point is simple and important:
Anuttara here does not mean “the next stage up.”
It means that which cannot be exceeded because it is already the deepest reality of consciousness itself.
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