Parātrīṃśikā Vivaraṇa (Part 124): When Purifier and Purified Collapse into Bhairava

Śiva seated behind and within the human form, while Śakti radiates between them, suggesting the divine power by which the bound being is inwardly transformed.

The previous part ended by showing that bondage belongs to the nara-state, the contracted condition of consciousness. The gross malas — Āṇava, Māyīya, and Kārma — are the visible architecture of bondage: the “I” loses its freedom, the world appears as separate, and action becomes binding. But Abhinava also showed that the net of bonds exists subtly above, before it becomes gross. Difference is first threaded in the subtle field, and only later does it become the thick bondage of ordinary life.

Now he enters one of the strongest movements of the whole text.

This part is not merely about purification. It is about the final truth of purification. At first, the structure is necessary: there is śodhya, what must be purified; śodhaka, the purifier; and śodhana, the act of purification. Without this, the path collapses into cheap nonduality. The knot must be worked with. The bonds must be purified. Śakti must function. Mantra, ritual, Vāk, and recognition must enter the contracted field.

But Abhinava now shows that this structure is not final.

The thunderbolt comes through Somānanda’s verse from the Śivadṛṣṭi: Śiva enters our own form and, by His supreme Śakti, removes the obstruction in Himself, through Himself. This is not devotional ornament. It is the whole Trika vision in one flash. The bound being is not outside Śiva. The obstruction is not outside Śiva. The power that removes it is not outside Śiva. Śiva appears as the nara, bears the contraction, and removes it by His own Parā Śakti.

This changes everything. Ritual action is no longer a small ego manipulating divine forces from outside. All kriyā — mantra, nyāsa, worship, purification, offering, inner practice — has this same hidden structure: Śiva, in the form of the practitioner, loosens His own knot through Śakti. The sādhaka acts, but the deeper actor is Bhagavān. The method works, but the method is Śakti. The obstruction is real, but it is Śiva’s own self-concealment.

Then Abhinava becomes even more radical. Even the distinction between purifier and purified must progressively dissolve. The means cannot be absolutized. One must abandon dharma and adharma, truth and untruth, and finally even that by which one abandons them. This is not nihilism. It is the final purification of the method itself. If the purifier remains separate from the purified, duality survives inside the sacred. If purification remains something to cling to, the last bond has only become holy.

So this part is a peak because almost every point strikes at a deeper layer of spiritual identity. First the bound one is shown to be Śiva in contraction. Then the purifier is shown to be Śiva’s own Śakti. Then the method itself is shown to be provisional. Then even the act of abandoning must be abandoned. And finally Abhinava seals it: in the simultaneity of speech, thought, perception, and subtle movement, Bhairava alone is fully present.

This is where the text stops being merely metaphysical architecture and becomes direct recognition. One may speak one thing, think another, half-form another verbal current, and see another — yet the field is not divided into many selves. Bhairava alone is present as the whole density of experience. Not behind it only. Not above it only. Fully present in it.

And this is not confirmed by sectarian identity, institutional lineage, or inherited vocabulary. Abhinava invokes anubhava-saṃpradāya — the lineage of experience. The real transmission is not merely belonging to a tradition. It is the cultivation of instruction until the meaning becomes undeniable in one’s own consciousness. Once this is seen as svasaṃvinmaya, made of one’s own awareness, denial itself becomes artificial.

So this part is a summit. It shows the path using purification, then burning through purification; using distinction, then dissolving distinction; using the method, then releasing even the method. What remains is not a purified ego, not a successful practitioner, not a possessor of lineage, but Bhairava recognizing Himself in the whole field.

The net of bonds belongs to the nara-state

narātmanaḥ pāśajālasya iti nirṇayaḥ |

“Thus the conclusion is that the net of bonds belongs to the nara-state.”

Abhinava now seals the previous analysis of the pāśa-jāla, the net of bonds. The bonds — Āṇava, Māyīya, and Kārma mala, together with their subtle roots — belong to nara, the contracted being. Not to Bhairava in His full freedom, not to Parā in Her uncontracted fullness, but to consciousness as narrowed into the limited experiencer.

This is important because it keeps the doctrine exact. Bondage is real at the level of nara, but it is not ultimate. The paśu is bound because consciousness has entered contraction. The net is woven around the limited mode of the Self, not around the Self in its absolute nature.

So this line is a boundary-marker. The bonds are not imaginary in the lazy sense; they genuinely structure the experience of the limited being. But they are also not final truth. They belong to the nara-ātman, the self as contracted subject. Once the standpoint shifts back toward Bhairava, the whole status of bondage begins to change.

This prepares the next citation from Somānanda. If the net belongs to nara, then who removes it? Not some external rescuer. Śiva Himself, entering the form of the bound being, removes the obstruction through His own supreme Śakti. The drama of bondage and liberation happens inside consciousness itself.

Śiva, entering our form, removes the obstruction in Himself by supreme Śakti

yathoktaṃ śrīsomānandapādaiḥ śivadṛṣṭau

asmadrūpasamāviṣṭaḥ svātmanātmanivāraṇe |
śivaḥ karotu parayā namaḥ śaktyā tatātmane ||

“As Śrī Somānanda has said in the Śivadṛṣṭi:

‘Entering into our form, may Śiva, by His supreme Śakti, remove the obstruction in Himself, through Himself. Homage to Him whose nature is that.’”

Abhinava now brings in Somānanda, and the whole discussion suddenly catches fire. After all the analysis of bonds, malas, purification, speech-levels, contraction, and the nara-state, this verse says the heart of the matter with unbearable directness: Śiva enters our form.

He does not stand outside the bound being as a distant god looking down upon a fallen creature. He does not send help from elsewhere into a separate soul. He becomes present as the very form of the one who is bound — asmad-rūpa-samāviṣṭaḥ, entered into our own condition. The nara, the contracted being, is not outside Śiva. The bound form itself is already occupied by Him.

Then the verse becomes even more radical: Śiva removes the obstruction in Himself, by Himself, through Parā Śakti. The obstruction is not some foreign substance standing outside consciousness. It is a self-contraction within Śiva’s own field. And the power that removes it is not external either. It is His own supreme Śakti, the same power by which He manifests, conceals, binds, reveals, and liberates.

This is why the line is so powerful. It destroys the crude picture of bondage and liberation. There is not a helpless creature here and a separate rescuer there. There is Śiva appearing as the bound one, Śiva bearing the obstruction, Śiva applying Śakti, Śiva removing the obstruction in Śiva. The whole drama happens inside consciousness. The chain and the key are not two substances. Both belong to His own power.

And yet this does not make bondage fake in a cheap way. The obstruction is felt. The nara-state is real as contraction. The pāśa-jāla hurts. The malas bind. But their reality is not ultimate separation. They are real as Śiva’s self-veiling, not as something outside Him. Therefore liberation is not escape from a second reality. It is the internal clearing of Śiva’s own self-concealment.

The verse also explains why Śakti is indispensable. Śiva does not remove the obstruction by sterile transcendence. He does it by Parā Śakti. The same supreme power that enters manifestation is the power that opens manifestation from within. Śakti is not an accessory to liberation. She is the living force by which the contracted form is pierced, softened, expanded, and returned to recognition.

So Somānanda’s verse is not devotional ornament. It is the entire Trika vision compressed into prayer. Śiva is the bound one. Śiva is the purifier. Śakti is the purifying power. The obstruction is in Him, the removal is by Him, the liberation is His own self-recognition. Homage is offered not to a distant savior, but to the One whose nature is exactly this astonishing intimacy.

This is why the verse belongs here. Abhinava has just shown that the net of bonds belongs to the nara-state. Now Somānanda reveals the deeper truth: even that nara-state is not outside Śiva. The bound heart is already entered by Him. Liberation begins because the One who is hidden inside the bondage turns toward Himself through His own supreme Śakti.

Śivadṛṣṭi indicates that all ritual action has this same structure

iti sarvakriyākalāpe evaṃrūpatāsūcakaṃ śivadṛṣṭau

“Thus, in the Śivadṛṣṭi, this indicates that the whole collection of ritual actions has this very nature.”

Abhinava now draws out the implication of Somānanda’s verse. The point is not limited to one beautiful prayer. It applies to sarva-kriyā-kalāpa — the entire collection of ritual actions. Every act of purification, mantra, nyāsa, worship, offering, recitation, and inner practice has this same structure: Śiva enters the contracted form and, by His own supreme Śakti, removes the obstruction within Himself.

This changes how ritual must be understood. Ritual is not a small individual trying to manipulate divine forces from outside. It is not a paśu mechanically applying a sacred technique to climb toward a distant god. In its deepest truth, ritual is Śiva acting within the contracted field through Śakti. The sādhaka performs, yes — but the deeper agency is Bhagavān’s own freedom moving through the sādhaka’s form.

So every kriyā has this hidden structure. The mantra is Śiva’s speech-power. The nyāsa is Śiva installing His own Śakti in the body He has entered. The purification is Śiva removing His own self-veiling. The offering is Śiva returning manifestation to Himself. The whole ritual field becomes intelligible only when this is seen.

This does not make practice unnecessary. It makes practice sacred in the strongest sense. The action matters because it is the site where Śakti operates. But the practitioner must not mistake the surface doer for the final doer. Behind the hand, the mantra, the breath, the visualization, and the offering, the same movement is taking place: Śiva, in the form of the bound one, loosening the knot by His own power.

Even purifier and purified progressively dissolve

tatrāpi ca uttarottaraṃ śodhyaśodhakānāmapi vigalanam

“And there too, progressively, even the purified and the purifier dissolve.”

Abhinava now takes the next dangerous step. First he established the structure of purification: there is śodhya, what is to be purified, and śodhaka, the purifier. This distinction is necessary within practice. The bonds belong to the nara-state; Śiva, through Parā Śakti, removes the obstruction. Ritual action has this same structure.

But now he says that even this structure does not stand forever. Uttarottaram — progressively, further and further — even the distinction between purifier and purified undergoes vigalana, melting, dissolution, falling away.

This is not a denial of practice. It is the completion of practice. At one level, the distinction is real and useful: contraction must be purified; mantra, Vāk, Śakti, and ritual action function as purifier. But if the purifier remains forever separate from the purified, duality remains. The method itself would become another subtle bond.

So Abhinava begins to show the final movement: first one needs purification; then one sees that purification too belongs to the field of Śiva’s own self-revelation. The purified, the purifier, and the act of purification are not ultimately three separate realities. They are phases of one consciousness loosening its own contraction.

This is the same ruthless nonduality he applies everywhere. He does not prematurely dismiss method, but he also does not absolutize method. The ladder must be climbed, but the ladder is not the final sky.

Abandon even the means by which abandonment happens

tyaja dharmamadharmaṃ ca ubhe satyānṛte tyaja |
ubhe satyānṛte tyaktvā yena tyajasi tattyaja ||

“Abandon dharma and adharma. Abandon both truth and untruth.

Having abandoned both truth and untruth, abandon that by which you abandon them.”

Abhinava now brings in a verse that cuts with terrifying precision. First, abandon dharma and adharma — not because ethical life is meaningless at the ordinary level, but because even the polarity of merit and demerit belongs to the field of bondage when one clings to it as final. Then abandon satya and anṛta — truth and untruth. Even the subtler distinction between what is true and false must eventually be crossed, because the supreme cannot be held as an object inside the mind’s oppositional machinery.

But the final line is the real blade: yena tyajasi tat tyaja — abandon that by which you abandon. This means: do not make the method into a final idol. Do not cling to purification. Do not cling to renunciation. Do not cling to discernment itself as a new identity. The knife that cuts the knot must also be released. Otherwise the knife becomes the last knot.

This is the direct continuation of Abhinava’s point that even śodhya and śodhaka, the purified and the purifier, progressively dissolve. At first, the distinction is absolutely necessary. There is bondage; there is a purifier; there is practice; there is mantra; there is Śakti; there is the work of loosening contraction. Without that, one falls into cheap nonduality. But if, after purification has done its work, one still holds tightly to the purifier as separate, then purification has not finished. The method has become a refined pāśa.

The verse is ruthless because it attacks even spiritual success. A person may abandon adharma and become attached to dharma. Then they may abandon crude dogma and become attached to truth. Then they may abandon falsehood and become attached to the act of being the one who sees through falsehood. Each step is subtler, but the “I who abandons” remains. And as long as that remains hardened, bondage survives in a more elegant form.

So this is not moral nihilism and not anti-practice. It is the final hygiene of practice. Use dharma. Use truth. Use discrimination. Use mantra. Use purification. Use śāstra. Use Śakti’s blade. But when the crossing has happened, do not carry the boat on your head. Do not worship the scalpel after the surgery. Do not build a throne for the purifier and call it liberation.

Here Abhinava is pointing to the stage where even sacred distinctions melt back into Bhairava. The purified, the purifier, and purification itself are seen as movements inside one consciousness. Śiva, having entered the bound form, removes His own obstruction by His own Śakti — and then even the structure “Śiva removes obstruction” must be released into direct recognition. What remains is not a purified ego, not a successful practitioner, not a collector of methods, but the uncontracted fact of Bhairava Himself.

Even purifier and purification are ultimately what must be purified

tadiyametāvatī dhārā yacchodhakamapi śodhanamapi śodhyameva - iti

“This whole stream comes to this: even the purifier and the act of purification are themselves what is to be purified.”

Abhinava now states the terrifying conclusion of the previous verse. The whole current of instruction reaches this point: not only the obvious impurity must be purified. Not only the paśu, the contracted being, must be purified. Even the śodhaka, the purifier, and śodhana, the act of purification itself, must ultimately be treated as śodhya — something to be purified.

This is the point where practice begins to burn its own scaffolding.

At first, the distinction is necessary. There is bondage; there is mantra; there is Śakti; there is purification. Without that distinction, one falls into cheap nonduality and leaves the knot untouched. But once purification has done its work, the structure itself cannot remain as a final truth. If “I am being purified,” “this is the purifier,” and “this is the process” remain fixed, then duality has survived inside the sacred method.

So Abhinava is not rejecting purification. He is completing it. The purifier purifies the purified, and then the purifier itself must be purified of its separateness. The act of purification must be purified of being grasped as an act. The method must release itself.

This is a very high and dangerous teaching. If taken too early, it becomes laziness: “Nothing to purify, all is Bhairava.” But taken at the proper point, it is exact. The final impurity is the subtle clinging to the purifier as something other than Bhairava. The last knot is the sanctified knot.

So the stream comes to this: even the holy instrument must dissolve. Even Śakti as method must return into Śakti as pure recognition. Even the blade that cuts bondage cannot remain held as separate from the hand of Bhairava.

The Ṣaḍardhaśāstra teaches the simultaneous presence and single superiority of the three

śrīṣaḍardhaśāstre evoktam ekotkarṣaḥ tisṛṇāmapi cāsāṃ yugapat sthitirbhavatyeva

“And this has been said in the Śrī Ṣaḍardhaśāstra itself: there is one superiority, and these three certainly stand simultaneously.”

Abhinava now turns from the dissolution of purifier, purification, and purified to the simultaneity of the three. The three here continue the same current: the three Goddesses, the three speech-levels, the threefold structure through which purification operates. They may be distinguished for the sake of practice and explanation, but they do not finally stand as three separate substances.

The phrase ekotkarṣaḥ is important. There is one excellence, one superiority, one upward force. The three do not compete. Vaikharī, Madhyamā, and Paśyantī are not three disconnected layers arranged like dead steps. They are three modes of one Vāk, one Goddess, one current of consciousness. Their distinction is real as function, but their life is one.

And then Abhinava says yugapat sthitiḥ — they stand simultaneously. This is not ordinary simultaneity like three objects lying on a table at the same time. It means that in the living operation of consciousness, these levels are co-present. When one speaks, thinks, sees, and recognizes, the levels are not neatly isolated. Vaikharī may be outwardly active, Madhyamā inwardly structuring, Paśyantī silently holding the compact vision. They function together.

This prepares the next experiential example: one may speak one thing, conceptualize another, babble another without concept, and see another. Consciousness is not a single-file line where only one layer operates at a time. It is layered, simultaneous, and all-formed.

So this point is crucial. Abhinava is not merely making a metaphysical claim. He is describing the texture of lived awareness. The threefold purifier, though analytically distinguished, is one living simultaneity inside Vāk.

Experience shows simultaneity: one speaks, conceptualizes, babbles, and sees different things at once

vakti hyanyat vikalpayaṃśca anyat jalpatyavikalpameva anyatpaśyati

“For one speaks one thing, conceptualizes another, babbles yet another without concept, and sees another.”

Abhinava now gives an experiential proof for the simultaneous presence of these layers. This is not abstract metaphysics. It is visible in ordinary awareness. A person may be speaking one thing outwardly, thinking another inwardly, producing some half-formed sound or verbal residue without clear conceptual structure, and seeing something else at the same time.

This is exactly how consciousness actually works. It is not a single thin line. It is layered. The mouth may be speaking one sentence; the mind may be forming another thought; a stray verbal current may be running without full meaning; the eyes may be receiving a visual field. Vaikharī, Madhyamā, Paśyantī-like seeing, and less formed verbal movement can all be active together.

So when Abhinava says the three stand simultaneously, he is not asking the reader to accept a doctrine blindly. He points to experience itself. We already live this layered simultaneity. Speech, thought, pre-conceptual seeing, and perception do not wait politely in line for one another. They overlap, interpenetrate, and operate within one consciousness.

This also supports the previous claim that purifier, purification, and purified eventually dissolve into one current. The threefold structure is real functionally, but it is not three isolated compartments. In lived awareness, the levels are already mutually present. The apparent sequence is a way of analysis; the actual consciousness-field is more simultaneous, more dense, more all-at-once.

Abhinava’s point is simple and devastating: look carefully. You are already not functioning as one flat layer. Consciousness speaks, thinks, sees, and half-speaks in overlapping modes. The threefold Vāk is not merely in the śāstra. It is in experience.

In all this, Bhairava alone is fully present

atra tu paripūrṇa eva tāvati bhagavān bhairava eva

“But here, throughout all this, it is only Bhagavān Bhairava who is fully present.”

Abhinava now gives the inner seal of the whole movement. One speaks one thing, thinks another, produces another half-formed verbal current without clear concept, and sees yet another object. Experience is not a flat line. It is layered, dense, simultaneous. Vaikharī is moving outward as speech. Madhyamā is shaping inner thought. Paśyantī is holding a subtler seeing. Other currents flicker at the edge of concept. And yet Abhinava says: in all this, Bhairava alone is present — paripūrṇa, fully.

This is crucial. The multiplicity of functions does not mean a multiplicity of separate consciousnesses. The mouth speaks, the mind thinks, the eye sees, the inner speech mutters, the subtle awareness holds another meaning — but there are not five different selves inside. There is one full Bhairava appearing as all these layers at once. The many currents are real as expressions, but their life is one.

This is why the previous example matters. Abhinava is not asking us to believe in an abstract simultaneity of three Goddesses. He points to direct experience. Even now, in ordinary life, awareness can speak, think, see, remember, anticipate, and half-form words at the same time. Consciousness is already wider than the narrow spotlight we usually identify with. We mistake one surface stream for the whole self, but Bhairava is present as the whole field.

And he is not present partially. That is the force of paripūrṇa. Bhairava is not hidden behind speech while speech itself is somehow lower. He is not merely the witness behind thought. He is not standing outside perception as a detached observer. He is fully present as the speaking, as the thinking, as the seeing, as the half-formed movement, as the knowing of all of them, and as the ground in which their simultaneity does not tear consciousness apart.

This also completes the movement about purifier and purified. If one isolates the purifier, the purified, and the act of purification, one remains in division. But when the field is seen fully, Bhairava is the one appearing as all three. The impurity is His contraction. The purifier is His Śakti. The purification is His self-recognition moving through the knot. Nothing stands outside Him.

So this line is not a decorative nondual conclusion. It is the direct answer to the entire anxiety of multiplicity. The levels are many, the functions are many, the speech-currents are many, the bonds and purifications are many — but the fullness is one. Bhairava does not become less full because He appears as layered experience. His fullness is precisely that He can appear as all of it simultaneously without losing Himself.

The practitioner’s task is therefore not to flatten experience into blankness. It is to recognize the one fullness already shining in the layered density of experience. Speaking, thinking, seeing, purifying, being purified — all of it is the body of Bhairava when seen without contraction.

This meaning cannot be denied because it is confirmed by the lineage of experience and one’s own consciousness

ityādyanubhavasaṃpradāyopadeśapariśīlanena - asyārthaya svasaṃvinmayasyānapalāpanīyatvāt

“Through the cultivation of the instruction transmitted in the lineage of experience, this meaning — being made of one’s own consciousness — cannot be denied.”

Abhinava now gives one of the most important seals in the whole passage. The claim that Bhairava alone is fully present in the layered simultaneity of speech, thought, seeing, and purification is not merely a doctrine to be believed. It is confirmed through anubhava-saṃpradāya-upadeśa-pariśīlana — the cultivation of instruction belonging to the lineage of experience.

This phrase is devastatingly precise. Abhinava does not merely say “sampradāya.” He says anubhava-saṃpradāya. The real current is not only a historical chain, not only a sect, not only a formal identity, not only the prestige of having received dīkṣā in some line. All of that may matter at its own level, but it is not the heart. The heart is the transmission of experience — the current in which the teaching becomes verified in one’s own consciousness.

This cuts through a very common spiritual delusion. A person may belong to a lineage and still not see. A person may inherit names, robes, mantras, doctrines, titles, and institutional legitimacy, while the inner recognition remains untouched. Sampradāya can become identity. It can become social capital. It can become “my tradition,” “my guru-line,” “my superiority,” “my authorization.” But Abhinava points to something more demanding: a sampradāya whose substance is anubhava, direct lived recognition.

And yet this is not individualistic self-invention. He does not say “private experience alone.” He says upadeśa-pariśīlana — the careful cultivation of instruction. There is teaching, transmission, repeated contemplation, refinement, practice. But the teaching must ripen into svasaṃvit, one’s own consciousness. If it remains outside, as inherited vocabulary, it has not yet fulfilled itself.

That is why the meaning is anapalāpanīya — impossible to deny. Not because one has been forced by dogma. Not because a lineage certificate proves it. Not because a śāstra says so and the disciple must submit. It becomes undeniable because it is recognized as svasaṃvinmaya — made of one’s own awareness. The teaching points to the structure of consciousness itself; once seen there, denial becomes artificial, because the denial itself arises within that same consciousness.

This is the difference between belonging to a tradition and being carried by its living current. One can belong outwardly and remain untouched inwardly. One can also cultivate the instruction so deeply that the teaching becomes self-confirming in awareness. Then the sampradāya is no longer only behind one as genealogy. It is alive in the present act of seeing.

So this line is not a small epistemological note. It is Abhinava’s standard of real transmission. The doctrine of Bhairava’s fullness must be confirmed in the lineage of experience, through instruction, practice, and one’s own consciousness. Otherwise it remains speech about Bhairava. When it ripens, it becomes Bhairava recognizing Himself as the very field in which speech, thought, perception, purifier, purified, and purification arise.