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| A useful image for laukika sequence: stellar evolution makes order, stages, and progression visually obvious — precisely the kind of krama Abhinava is ultimately pushing beyond. |
Ordinary action is sequential
tad uktam utpaladeva-pādaiḥ
sakramatvaṃ ca laukikyāḥ kriyāyāḥ kālaśaktitaḥ |
[laukikyā iti hastotkṣepaṇāpakṣepaṇādirūpāyāḥ | kālaśaktita iti ābhāsavicchedanapradarśanasāmarthyarūpāt pārameśvarāt śaktiviśeṣāt |]
“And as Utpaladeva has said:
‘The sequentiality of ordinary action arises from the power of Time.’
[‘Ordinary’ means action of the kind of raising and lowering the hand and the like. ‘From the power of Time’ means from a particular power of the Supreme Lord, whose capacity is to display appearances as cut up and separated.]”
Utpaladeva says that sequence belongs to ordinary action. That sounds obvious at first, but Abhinava is already preparing something more subtle. He is not saying simply that actions happen one after another. He is saying that this one-after-another structure belongs to a specific register: laukikī kriyā, ordinary action.
The gloss helps by making the example concrete: raising the hand, lowering the hand, one gesture following another. This is humanly immediate. Such action unfolds in steps, and that stepwise character is not accidental. It arises through kāla-śakti, the power that makes manifestation appear segmented, successive, and displayable as before and after.
That is the important point: sequence is not being treated as the deepest nature of action. It is already a conditioned appearance of action.
So the line is doing two things at once:
- it grants full reality to the ordinary experience of action as sequential,
- but it quietly places that sequentiality under a higher explanatory principle.
Abhinava is beginning to separate action itself from the way action appears under the ordering force of time.
So the point is simple:
ordinary action is sequential,
but its sequentiality is not ultimate —
it comes from kāla-śakti.
Kriyā is really vimarśa-śakti, though it appears sequential
atrāyaṃ tātparyārthaḥ —
laukikajñānavyavahāramūlajñātṛjñeyaprakāśane sāmarthyaṃ jñānaśaktir devasya |
tataiva saṃyojanādisvatantratātmā vimarśaśaktir eva kriyā |
sā tu vedyacchāyācchuraṇam acchatvād avacchedakam abhyupayatī kramavatī bhāti
vastuto ’kramatve ’pi |
“‘Eternal’ means: not having abandoned its prior nature. ‘Powerful’ means: not separate from the Lord. The intended meaning here is this: the capacity for manifesting knower and known, which is the root of ordinary cognitive activity, is the Lord’s jñāna-śakti. And from that very same source, the power of reflective awareness, whose nature is freedom in joining and the like, is precisely kriyā. But that kriyā, because it admits delimitation through the reflection of the object — owing to the transparency by which the shadow of the knowable can shimmer there — appears as though sequential, even though in reality it is non-sequential.”
This is the real turn.
Abhinava does not leave kriyā at the level of hand-movement and sequence. He says the deeper nature of kriyā is vimarśa-śakti — the power of reflective self-awareness. That is a major shift. Action, in its root, is not first mechanical movement. It is consciousness actively aware of itself and therefore free in relation to manifestation.
Then why does action seem sequential?
Because this kriyā accepts avaccheda, delimitation. Once the shadow of the object falls across it, once consciousness allows the knowable to shimmer in differentiated form, action begins to appear ordered, stepwise, successive. So sequence belongs not to kriyā in itself, but to kriyā as refracted through object-presentation.
That is the key distinction.
In itself: akramā.
In appearing through the object-shadow: kramavatī bhāti — it appears sequential.
So the point is not that ordinary sequential action is unreal. It is that its sequence is secondary. The deeper action underneath it is the Lord’s own vimarśa-śakti.
A simpler way to say it:
action looks step-by-step when consciousness is engaged with differentiated objects;
but in itself, action is the free pulse of awareness, not a chain of separate moves.
A useful analogy is this: imagine a whole form laid out at once, but revealed only through a narrow moving scan-line. To the scan, one portion appears first, then another, then another. From that restricted view, there seems to be birth, growth, decline, and disappearance. But to the one who sees the whole at once, the apparent sequence belongs to the scanning process, not to the total form itself.
That is close to Abhinava’s point. Kriyā appears sequential when consciousness is viewed through the segmented display of objects in time. But in itself it is not a chain of separate acts. Its real nature is the non-sequential pulse of vimarśa.
Even in the Māyā-pramātṛ condition, the sequence is swallowed when all is gathered into the Self
unmiṣite ’pi vedyagrāme māyā-pramātṛ-padam adhyāsīno ’pi bhagavān
yāvadeva bāhyābhyantara-rūpa-vedya-kulaṃ svātmani
prakāśasyātma-viśrānti |
iti
idam ity asya vicchinna |
ity ādi-nayena viśramayati prasate tāvat tanniṣṭho ’vabhāsana-kramo ’pi grasta eva
“Thus, since it is not delimited by time, its non-sequentiality remains established — what more is there to say here? Even when the whole field of objects has opened out, Bhagavān, though occupying the state of the Māyā-pramātṛ, so long as he brings the entire family of knowables, outer and inner in form, to rest in himself —
‘the light rests in the Self,’
‘the segmented “this” …’
— in this way, when he causes it to repose and expand there, then even the sequence of manifestation grounded in that is already swallowed up.”
Now Abhinava makes the point experiential.
He is no longer only speaking in principle about kriyā being non-sequential. He says: even when the field of objects has fully opened — inner and outer, all the differentiated “this”-contents — and even when Bhagavān is spoken of as occupying the condition of the Māyā-pramātṛ, still the decisive thing is whether all that is brought back to rest in the Self.
That is the key movement: viśramayati — he causes it to rest.
The outer and inner world do not have to vanish first as though they were unreal scraps. The issue is that they are gathered back into ātma-viśrānti, repose in the Self. And when that happens, the whole ordered sequence by which they seemed to unfold as separate manifestation is already grasta — swallowed.
That word matters. Not denied, not argued away, but swallowed.
So the point is very subtle:
sequence belongs to manifested appearance as long as consciousness is dispersed among the “this”-forms;
but when the whole object-field is re-gathered into the Self, the sequence does not stand independently.
This is a strong completion of the previous point.
Kriyā is not merely non-sequential in theory.
Its non-sequential nature is seen when the whole display is allowed to repose in the Self rather than remain scattered as outer and inner objects.
A simpler way to say it:
as long as attention is caught in separate appearances, the world looks step-by-step;
when all of that is re-gathered into the Self, the step-by-step order loses its independent hold.
That is why Abhinava can say the sequence is swallowed.
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