Parātrīṃśikā Vivaraṇa (Part 31): Kaulikī Siddhi in the Midst of Ordinary Action

 

Guruji Amritananda Natha is cooking with Amma: ordinary action is not a contradiction to Kaulikī siddhi. The kitchen can remain a kitchen, while consciousness is no longer hardened into mere objecthood.

Without consciousness, nothing can be stably said to be manifest or unmanifest

ṛte kim api eṣām aprakāśamānaṃ
[aprakāśamānam iti nīlāder arthajātasya nīlādirūpataiva yadi prakāśamānatā na punar artha-śarīrottīrṇā prakāśamānatā tarhi yathā jñānānutpāde sarvān prati tan nīlam eva bhaṇyate na kaṃcid vā prati vastuto vā svātmayeva tan nīlaṃ parasya para-niṣṭhatānupapatteḥ svātmany api vā na nīlaṃ nāpy anīlaṃ prakāśānugraheṇa vinā vyavasthānāyogāt tathā aprakāśamānatāpi iti aprakāśamānatā-prasaṅgoparatiḥ |]

“Without that, nothing whatsoever among these can be non-manifest.

[‘Non-manifest’ means this: if, in the case of an object such as blue, manifestation were only its being blue and not manifestation as surpassing the mere body of the object, then, when cognition does not arise, that blue would have to be spoken of as simply blue for everyone, or else for no one at all, or only in itself. But it cannot truly stand as belonging to another, since being established in another is impossible; nor, in itself, can it be said to be either blue or not-blue, because without the favor of manifestation no determination is possible. The same applies to non-manifestation. Thus the whole consequence of asserting non-manifestation collapses.]”

Abhinava is saying: once you separate things from prakāśa, you cannot even speak coherently about their being manifest or unmanifest. Both claims become unstable.

The example of “blue” makes this clearer. If blue were just sitting there in itself, apart from manifestation in consciousness, then what would that even mean? Blue for whom? Blue in what sense? Blue as belonging to itself alone? Even that does not hold, because without manifestation there is no stable determination at all.

That is the real point: appearance is not an optional extra added later to a fully formed thing. Without consciousness, the thing cannot be cleanly fixed even as what it supposedly is.

And Abhinava pushes it one step further. Not only “manifest blue,” but even “unmanifest blue” collapses under the same pressure. Because “unmanifest” is also a determination, and determination itself depends on prakāśa.

So the argument is not merely:
things need consciousness to be known.

It is stronger:
things need consciousness even to be stably speakable as this or that, manifest or unmanifest.

A simple way to put it:

without light, it is not that the object remains fully itself in darkness;
rather, the very claim that it is this definite thing becomes uncertain.

That is why this passage matters. It prepares the next turn toward kaulikī siddhi by establishing that the whole field of objecthood is already inseparable from consciousness.

Kaulikī siddhi arises precisely there

tatra kule bhavā kaulikī siddhiḥ —

tathātva-dārḍhyaṃ parivṛttya ānanda-rūpaṃ
hṛdaya-svabhāva-para-saṃvid-ātmaka-śiva-vimarśa-tādātmyaṃ
[hṛdaya-svabhāva iti spanda-svabhāvaḥ |]
tāṃ siddhiṃ dadāti anuttara-svarūpa-tādātmye hi kulaṃ tathā bhavati |

“There, in kula, arises the Kaulikī siddhi: the firmness of that condition, having turned around, becomes of the nature of bliss — identity with Śiva-vimarśa, which is the supreme consciousness whose nature is the heart. [‘Heart-nature’ means the nature of spanda.] It grants that siddhi, for only through identity with the very nature of Anuttara does kula become such.”

Now the argument turns from diagnosis to fulfillment.

The same kula that was described earlier as consciousness in a congealed mode is not rejected. It becomes the place where Kaulikī siddhi arises. That matters a lot. The hardened condition is not simply discarded as false material. It is turned.

That is the key word here: parivṛttya — by turning around, reversing.

What had appeared as firmness in objecthood now becomes ānanda-rūpa, of the nature of bliss. And this bliss is not sentimental emotion. It is identified very precisely as Śiva-vimarśa-tādātmya — identity with Śiva’s self-aware reflexive consciousness.

Then the gloss sharpens one more thing: “heart-nature” here means spanda-nature. So the heart is not a soft symbol. It is the pulsation, the living throb of consciousness itself.

And the final line is decisive: this does not happen by importing something foreign into kula. It happens only by identity with Anuttara itself. That is why the whole passage matters. The congealed state is not overcome by escaping consciousness’s own nature, but by recognizing it more fully.

A simple way to say the whole point:

the same consciousness that had hardened into objecthood can, by reversal, show itself as bliss and Śiva-vimarśa.
That reversal is Kaulikī siddhi.

Siddhi is stable establishment in one’s own Self

yathoktam

vyatireketarābhyāṃ hi niścayo ’nya-nijātmanoḥ |
vyavasthitiḥ pratiṣṭhāyā siddhir nirvṛttir ucyate ||

[svasattāyām anyābhāvaḥ anyābhāve svasya bhāva iti vyatirekānvayau |]

“As it has been said [source is the Ajaḍa-Pramātṛ-Siddhiḥ 12 of Utpaladeva]

‘For through exclusion and inclusion there is certainty regarding what is other and one’s own Self. Stable establishment, grounded in that certainty, is called siddhi and fulfillment.’

[Exclusion and inclusion mean: when one is present, the other is absent; when the other is absent, one’s own is present.]”

Now Abhinava gives a very exact doctrinal support for what siddhi means.

Siddhi is not being described here as a power-display, a miracle, or an acquisition added to the self from outside. It is pratiṣṭhā, stable establishment. The word matters. Siddhi is not excitement. It is settledness.

And that settledness rests on niścaya, certainty — a clear discrimination between what is “other” and what is one’s own true Self. The gloss explains this by vyatireka and anvaya: through exclusion and concomitance, one comes to see what really belongs and what does not.

That is important because Kaulikī siddhi in the previous line could easily be romanticized. This verse prevents that. The bliss and identity with Śiva-vimarśa are not vague ecstasies. They become siddhi only when there is stable certainty and establishment.

So the point is:
first there is reversal,
then recognition,
then establishment.

And only that settled establishment deserves the name siddhi.

A simple way to say it:

siddhi is not a passing high state;
it is when recognition becomes stable enough to stand in itself.

As Ramana Maharshi put it (in“Be As You Are, The Teachings of Sri Ramana Maharshi”), “The final obstacle in meditation is ecstasy; you feel great bliss and happiness and want to stay in that ecstasy. Do not yield to it… The calm is higher than ecstasy and it merges into samadhi.” He then adds that one is always consciousness, whether one knows it or not. So the point here is the same: siddhi is not a passing exalted state, but stable establishment in what does not come and go.

“Sadyaḥ” does not mean an ordinary day here

sadya iti śabdaḥ samāne ahani ity artha-vṛttiḥ
ukta-nayena [kālpanikaṃ ca adyatanatvam akālpanike saṃvid-vapuṣi kathaṃ syāt ity ukto nayaḥ |]
ahno ’navasthitatvāt samāne kṣaṇe ity atra arthe vartate |

“The word sadyaḥ normally has the sense ‘on the same day.’ But according to the reasoning already stated — namely, how could ‘today-ness,’ which is conceptual, apply to the non-conceptual body of consciousness? — since the day has no stable standing there, the word functions here in the sense of ‘in the same moment.’”

Abhinava now returns to temporal language and tightens it again.

Ordinarily, sadyaḥ means “on the same day,” something immediate in a temporal sense. But he says that meaning cannot be carried over directly into the domain of consciousness. Why? Because “day,” “today,” “this time” — all of that belongs to conceptual temporal division.

And he has already argued earlier that such divisions do not properly apply to akālpanika saṃvid-vapuḥ, the non-conceptual body of consciousness.

So he does not discard the word. He refines its meaning.

Here sadyaḥ no longer means calendar-time or even ordinary day-time. It means something more like immediacy without temporal extension — “in the same moment.”

That matters because the text is again refusing a crude transfer of ordinary language into the highest domain. Abhinava does not ban the word; he purifies it.

So the point is simple:
when temporal words are used for consciousness, they cannot be left in their ordinary sense.
They have to be read through the deeper logic of non-conceptual immediacy.

The “same moment” here is not mere resemblance, but resolution into reality

samānatvaṃ ca kṣaṇasya na sādṛśyam api tu tattva-paryavasāyy eva
evam eva sadyaḥ-śabdāt pratītiḥ |

“And the sameness of the moment is not mere similarity, but rather its resolution into the tattva itself. Thus should the meaning of the word sadyaḥ be understood.”

Now Abhinava gives the final precision.

If sadyaḥ means “in the same moment,” that still could be misunderstood. One might hear “same” as if it meant mere resemblance — one moment like another, or one instant similar to another. He rejects that.

The sameness here is not sādṛśya, not likeness. It is tattva-paryavasāna — resolution into reality itself.

That is a very strong clarification. It means the “same moment” is not a temporal unit compared with other units. It is sameness because it comes to rest in the same truth. The word is being pulled away from clock-time and toward ontological immediacy.

So the point is:
the “same moment” here does not mean a moment just like another moment;
it means a non-dispersed immediacy resolved into the tattva.

That is why sadyaḥ can still function here, but only after this purification of sense.