 |
| This image shows a feminine tree-like figure rooted in the earth, with countless colored leaves or petals spreading outward from her body like a living crown of manifestation. The roots suggest the hidden source, while the many colors suggest differentiation, variety, psychology, embodiment, and the countless forms taken by consciousness. It fits this chunk because Abhinava explains how the pure mantra-letters, originally forms of Mātṛkā, enter māyic differentiation and become the structures of bhāva-sṛṣṭi and bhūta-sṛṣṭi: inner formations, bodies, beings, errors, capacities, satisfactions, and bonds. Yet the same letters remain embraced by the original pure form and can give fruit as mantra. The image therefore captures Devī as the root of both bondage and liberation: from her arise the many colored forms of experience, but the whole spread remains connected to the same living source. |
The previous chunk closed with Devī as amūlā — rooted in a and yet rootless because beginningless; unknowable as an object because she is the knower, yet alone knowable because nothing exists apart from her; and finally as the equal source of all mantras and vidyās, neither deficient nor excessive in any tantra, method, rite, or time.
Now Abhinava turns to the darker and more technical side of the same truth: if the letters are pure mantra-forms, how do they become the differentiated structures of bondage? How does Mātṛkā, the Mother of liberating mantra, also become the net of pratyayas, the inner formations that bind the paśu?
The answer begins with māyic designation. The letters in themselves are śuddha-mantra-rūpa, pure mantra-forms. But when they enter the field of manifest naming, differentiation, and sequence, they become the machinery of bhāva-sṛṣṭi and bhūta-sṛṣṭi. Bhāva-sṛṣṭi is the inner creation of pratyayas: error, incapacity, premature satisfaction, limited attainment. Bhūta-sṛṣṭi is the embodied and elemental creation: divine, animal, human, and the whole hierarchy shaped by the guṇas.
But Abhinava does not leave this as dry taxonomy. He reveals the sharp point: these pratyayas are pāśas, bonds. They veil svarūpa. The bound being is not tied only by external objects, but by sound-penetrated inner formations — concepts, identities, interpretations, incapacities, comforts, attainments. No pratyaya arises without śabda-anuvedha, without being pierced by sound. Bondage itself is letter-formed.
This is severe, but not pessimistic. The same letters that become māyic designation and bondage remain embraced by their original pure mantra-form. The māyic letter-sequence is not cut off from Parā Vāk. The binding letter is the pure letter forgotten; the liberating mantra is the same letter remembered.
So this chunk traces the full descent and reversal: pure mantra-letters become māyic letters; māyic letters become pratyayas; pratyayas become pāśas; pāśas veil the Self and dry up the taste of supreme nectar. Yet those same letters, embraced by Śakti, become fruitful again as mantra and vidyā. Mātṛkā is both the root of bondage and the root of liberation.
Pure mantra-letters become māyic differentiated letter-creation
prakaṭākhyātirūpatāṃ māyīyāmuddiśya bhedo varṇānāṃ tathāhi - ta eva śuddhamantrarūpā varṇāḥ prathamaṃ pañcavidhaviparyayaśaktyādirūpapratyayātmakabhāvasṛṣṭitāmetya
“The difference among the letters is for the sake of manifest designation, which belongs to the māyic level. For thus: those very letters, whose form is pure mantra, first enter into bhāva-sṛṣṭi, the creation of inner states, whose nature consists of pratyayas such as the fivefold error, incapacity, and so on.”
Abhinava now makes the turn into bondage. The letters in themselves are śuddha-mantra-rūpa — pure mantra-forms. They are not originally dead phonetic units, not merely alphabetic marks, not inert sounds. In their pure nature, they are powers of consciousness, forms of Mātṛkā, living Śakti.
But when they are considered with reference to prakaṭa-ākhyāti-rūpatā, manifest designation, they appear as differentiated letters. This is the māyīya level: the field where things are named, distinguished, classified, made explicit, and treated as separate. Here a differs from ka, ka differs from ma, one mantra differs from another, one cognition from another, one being from another.
This difference is not false in the sense of useless illusion. It is necessary for manifestation. Without differentiation, nothing could be spoken, known, remembered, invoked, or ritually applied. But the danger begins when this māyic differentiation is taken as ultimate. Then the pure mantra-body becomes experienced as a world of fragments.
So Abhinava says that these very pure letters first enter bhāva-sṛṣṭi — the creation of inner states, dispositions, cognitive formations. This is crucial. Bondage begins not only with gross bodies and external objects. It begins in pratyaya, in the way consciousness forms inner determinations: error, limitation, incapacity, satisfaction, attainment, identity, interpretation.
The descent is subtle: pure sound becomes differentiated sound; differentiated sound becomes cognition; cognition becomes pratyaya; pratyaya becomes the inner architecture of bondage. The letters that in their pure form liberate as mantra also, when turned through māyic designation, become the machinery by which the bound being experiences a world.
This is the nerve of the chunk. Mātṛkā is not only the mother of mantra. She is also the mother of the structures by which consciousness becomes bound. The same letters that can reveal the Self can also weave the net of limitation when their pure nature is forgotten.
Creation is twofold: bhāva-sṛṣṭi and bhūta-sṛṣṭi
[dvidhā hi sṛṣṭiḥ - bhāvasṛṣṭirbhūtasṛṣṭiśceti tatra pratyayarūpā bhāvasṛṣṭiḥ tanmātrarūpā bhūtasṛṣṭiḥ |
“For creation is twofold: bhāva-sṛṣṭi and bhūta-sṛṣṭi. Of these, bhāva-sṛṣṭi is in the form of pratyayas, inner determinations or cognitive formations; bhūta-sṛṣṭi is in the form of tanmātras, the subtle elements.”
The gloss now explains the machinery of creation through a twofold division: bhāva-sṛṣṭi and bhūta-sṛṣṭi.
Bhāva-sṛṣṭi is the creation of inner formations. It is pratyaya-rūpā — made of pratyayas: determinations, mental structures, cognitive impressions, dispositions, ways consciousness takes form inwardly. This includes error, incapacity, satisfaction, attainment, and all the subtle patterns through which the bound being interprets reality.
This is important because bondage is not first a prison of matter. It is a prison of cognition. Before the world is experienced as external and solid, consciousness has already taken on structures of interpretation: “I am this,” “I lack this,” “I want this,” “I fear this,” “this is enough,” “this is impossible,” “this is mine,” “this is not me.” That is bhāva-sṛṣṭi.
Then comes bhūta-sṛṣṭi, the creation of elemental manifestation. It is tanmātra-rūpā — rooted in the subtle elements, the basis of sound, touch, form, taste, and smell. This is the movement toward the object-world: bodies, senses, species, elements, places, visible and tangible existence.
So the descent of the pure letters happens in two directions at once. They become inner psychology and outer world. They become the way the bound being thinks, feels, misperceives, desires, and becomes satisfied; and they also become the subtle-objective field that appears as the world.
This is why the taxonomy matters. Abhinava is not randomly borrowing categories. He is showing how the pure śuddha-mantra-rūpa varṇas, once entering māyic designation, become the full architecture of bondage: inner pratyaya and outer bhūta, mental world and elemental world, interpretation and embodiment.
The world that binds us is not only outside. It is also inside. And the inside and outside are both letter-born.
Bhāva-sṛṣṭi: error, incapacity, satisfaction, and attainment
tatretthaṃ bhāvaḥ
eṣa pratyayasargo viparyayāśaktituṣṭisiddhyākhyaḥ |
guṇavaiṣamyavimardāttasya ca bhedāstu pañcāśat ||
iti bhāvasṛṣṭiḥ |
“Here the meaning is as follows:
‘This creation of pratyayas is called viparyaya, aśakti, tuṣṭi, and siddhi.
Because of the disturbance caused by the disequilibrium of the guṇas, its divisions are fifty.’
Thus is bhāva-sṛṣṭi.”
The gloss now defines bhāva-sṛṣṭi, the creation of inner states. It is pratyaya-sarga — a creation made of cognitive formations. These are not outer objects yet. They are the inner structures through which the bound being experiences reality.
The four main categories are viparyaya, aśakti, tuṣṭi, and siddhi.
Viparyaya is error, misperception, inversion. Consciousness does not merely fail to know; it knows wrongly. It takes the non-Self as Self, limitation as identity, passing objects as refuge. This is the deep root of bondage.
Aśakti is incapacity, inability, impairment. The power is present in consciousness, but in the bound condition it appears blocked, weakened, obstructed. One cannot see properly, act properly, know properly, remember properly, turn inward properly. Śakti is not absent, but she is contracted.
Tuṣṭi is satisfaction or contentment, but here it is ambiguous. It can mean a partial resting, a premature satisfaction, a settling for less. The bound being finds a small comfort and mistakes it for completion. This is one of the subtler bonds: not pain, but shallow contentment.
Siddhi is attainment, accomplishment. Even this belongs to bhāva-sṛṣṭi when it remains inside the field of pratyaya. A power, success, clarity, or achievement may arise, but if it is still held as “mine” or treated as final, it remains part of the created mental structure.
The verse says these become fiftyfold through the disturbance of the guṇas. This is the Sāṃkhya-style machinery being absorbed into Abhinava’s vision. The guṇas become imbalanced; cognition differentiates; inner formations multiply. Error, incapacity, satisfaction, and attainment branch into many modes.
The important point is this: bondage is not only gross ignorance. It is an entire ecology of inner formations. We are bound not only by obvious delusion, but by incapacity, partial comfort, and even limited success. The net is subtle.
So bhāva-sṛṣṭi is the psychological universe born from the letters when they enter māyic differentiation. Pure mantra becomes pratyaya. Pratyaya becomes the inner architecture of the paśu. Consciousness does not merely see the world; it generates the very patterns through which the world is misread.
Bhūta-sṛṣṭi: divine, animal/non-human, and human embodiment
bhūtasṛṣṭiryathā
aṣṭavikalpo daivastairyagyoniśca pañcadhā bhavati |
mānuṣyaścaikavidhaḥ samāsato bhautikaḥ sargaḥ ||
tatra guṇavibhāgaḥ
ūrdhvaṃ sattvaviśālastamoviśālaśca mūlataḥ sargaḥ |
madhye rajoviśālo brahmādistambaparyantaḥ ||
iti brāhmaprājāpatyaindrapitryagāndharvayākṣarākṣasapaiśācā ityaṣṭadhā daivasargaḥ |
paśumṛgapakṣisarīsṛpasthāvarāḥ pañcadhā tiryagyoniḥ | saṃsthānasya caturṣvapi aviśeṣādeka eva mānuṣya iti |]
“As for bhūta-sṛṣṭi, elemental or embodied creation:
‘The divine creation is eightfold; the animal/non-human womb is fivefold; and the human is onefold. Such, in summary, is the elemental creation.’
There the division of the guṇas is:
‘Above, creation is vast in sattva; at the root, it is vast in tamas; in the middle, from Brahmā down to a blade of grass, it is vast in rajas.’
Thus the divine creation is eightfold: Brāhma, Prājāpatya, Aindra, Pitrya, Gāndharva, Yakṣa, Rākṣasa, and Paiśāca.
The non-human womb is fivefold: domestic animals, wild animals, birds, reptiles, and immobile beings. And the human is one, because in all four groups there is no fundamental difference of bodily structure.”
The gloss now turns from bhāva-sṛṣṭi, the creation of inner formations, to bhūta-sṛṣṭi, the creation of embodied beings and elemental manifestation. The first is the psychological world: error, incapacity, satisfaction, attainment. The second is the embodied world: divine beings, animals, humans, and the whole field of living forms.
This is why the twofold distinction matters. Bondage is not only “inside the mind,” and not only “outside in the body.” The letters become both. They become pratyaya, the inner structure of experience, and they become bhūta, the elemental and embodied field in which that experience unfolds. The paśu is bound through both psychology and embodiment.
The divine creation is said to be aṣṭavikalpa, eightfold. These are different divine or superhuman modes of embodiment: Brāhma, Prājāpatya, Aindra, Pitrya, Gāndharva, Yakṣa, Rākṣasa, and Paiśāca. The text is not asking us to pause in mythological curiosity. The point is classification: consciousness, through māyic differentiation, appears in many graded modes of embodiment, from luminous to dark, from subtle to gross.
The tiryagyoni, the non-human or “horizontal” womb, is fivefold: paśu, domestic animals; mṛga, wild animals; pakṣi, birds; sarīsṛpa, reptiles or crawling beings; and sthāvara, immobile beings such as plants. Again, the point is not zoology for its own sake. It is the descent of the pure letter-body into forms of life, instinct, movement, fixity, embodiment, and limitation.
The human class is said to be one because its saṃsthāna, bodily configuration, is not fundamentally divided in the same way. Human beings vary enormously by character, karma, capacity, culture, and cognition, but as a class of embodiment they are treated as one. The human condition is a single field where bhāva-sṛṣṭi and bhūta-sṛṣṭi become especially intense: inner pratyayas and embodied limitation meet in a self-reflective being.
Then the guṇas provide the vertical structure. Above, sattva is expansive: luminosity, subtlety, clarity. At the root, tamas is expansive: heaviness, obscuration, inertia. In the middle, rajas dominates: activity, striving, friction, becoming. From Brahmā down to a blade of grass, manifestation is structured through this unstable interplay.
This is the point to hold: Abhinava is absorbing a Sāṃkhya-like taxonomy into the mantraic vision. These categories are not independent metaphysics standing apart from Mātṛkā. They are what the pure letters become when they enter māyic differentiation. Sound becomes cognition; cognition becomes embodiment; embodiment becomes hierarchy, species, guṇa, capacity, limitation.
So bhūta-sṛṣṭi is the outer body of the same bondage whose inner body is bhāva-sṛṣṭi. The pure mantra-letter, forgotten as mantra, becomes a world of beings.
The five viparyayas veil the true nature
svarūpamāvṛṇvate pañca [avidyāsmitārāgadveṣābhiniveśāstamomohamahāmohatāmisrāndhatāmisrasaṃjñakāḥ pañceti
“The five [viparyayas] veil the true nature. They are avidyā, asmitā, rāga, dveṣa, and abhiniveśa — also known as tamas, moha, mahāmoha, tāmisra, and andhatāmisra.”
Now the taxonomy becomes psychologically sharp. The five viparyayas are not merely “wrong ideas.” They cover svarūpa — they veil one’s own true nature. This is the real point. Bondage is not just lack of information. It is a distortion in the very way consciousness reads itself.
The five are familiar from Yoga and Sāṃkhya-style language: avidyā, ignorance; asmitā, egoic “I-am-this” identification; rāga, attraction; dveṣa, aversion; and abhiniveśa, clinging to life, fear of dissolution, the deep survival-grip. Abhinava here is taking this inherited taxonomy and placing it inside the mantric vision: these are modes of bhāva-sṛṣṭi, inner creation born from the differentiated letter-field.
Avidyā is the basic covering. Consciousness does not recognize itself. It takes the partial as whole, the transient as stable, the object as final, the contracted self as the real self.
Asmitā is the narrowing of aham into ego. The supreme “I” becomes “I am this limited subject.” The infinite self-recognition collapses into identity: body, role, story, wound, achievement, fear, spiritual persona.
Rāga is the outward pull: “this will complete me.” The object is charged with borrowed ultimacy. Desire makes the finite thing glow as if it could replace the Self.
Dveṣa is the inverse bond: “this must not be.” Consciousness becomes trapped by rejection just as strongly as by attraction. What is hated becomes another center of bondage.
Abhiniveśa is the deepest contraction: the instinctive clinging to continuity, survival, possession of form. It is the fear of the collapse of the constructed self. Even learned people are not free from it because it lives below argument.
The alternate names intensify the same descent: tamas, darkness; moha, delusion; mahāmoha, great delusion; tāmisra, dark rage or frustrated grasping; andhatāmisra, blind darkness. These are not poetic exaggerations. They describe consciousness becoming progressively more entangled in misrecognition.
So the pure letters, when turned through māyic differentiation, do not only become external beings and worlds. They become these inner knots. The alphabet of Śakti becomes the psychology of bondage. The same power that can liberate as mantra can veil as viparyaya when its source is forgotten.
This is why Abhinava’s taxonomy is not dry. It is a clinical map of the bound condition. Svarūpa is not absent. It is covered. The work is not to manufacture the Self, but to see through the fivefold covering by which the Self has mistaken its own display for limitation.
Aśakti, tuṣṭi, and siddhi: incapacity, partial satisfaction, and limited attainment
ekādaśendriyavadhāḥ saptadaśa buddhivadā ity aṣṭāviṃśatiḥ ādhyātmikāś catasro bāhyāḥ pañceti tuṣṭayo nava ūhaśabdādhyayanatrividhaduḥkhavighātasuhṛtprāptidānāny aṣṭau siddhayaḥ | tatrāśaktayaḥ
bādhiryaṃ kuṣṭhatāndhatvaṃ jaḍatājighratā tathā |
mūkatā kauṇyapaṅgutvaklaivyodāvartamattatāḥ ||
ity ekādaśa etābaddhetukā buddher aśaktiḥ | svarūpato buddher aśaktiviparyayāt tuṣṭisiddhīnām ity uktā tuṣṭir yathā prakṛtyupādānakālabhāgyā ādhyātmikāḥ śabdādayaḥ pañcety uparamā api pañca bhavanti uparamaś ca sevādayo hi dhanārjanopāyāḥ sevakādīn duḥkhākurvantīti matvā duḥkhāvahakarmaṇo nivartanam |
“There are eleven impairments of the senses and seventeen impairments of the intellect, making twenty-eight incapacities. The satisfactions are nine: four internal and five external. The attainments are eight: reasoning, verbal instruction, study, removal of the three kinds of suffering, acquisition of friends, and giving.
Among the incapacities are:
‘Deafness, skin disease, blindness, dullness, loss of smell,
muteness, deformity of the hands, lameness, impotence, disorder of upward movement, and madness.’
These are the eleven. The incapacity of the intellect has these as its causes. The satisfactions and attainments are said to arise in relation to the incapacity and inversion of the intellect by its own nature. Satisfaction is, for example, internal satisfaction based on prakṛti, means, time, and fortune; and the five external satisfactions are connected with sound and the other sense-objects. There are also five forms of withdrawal. Withdrawal means ceasing from painful actions, thinking that means of acquiring wealth such as service cause suffering to servants and others.”
The taxonomy now becomes more detailed. After the five viparyayas that veil svarūpa, the text turns to aśakti, tuṣṭi, and siddhi — incapacity, satisfaction, and attainment. These are not random psychological labels. They describe how the bound being becomes structured: blocked, comforted, and partially empowered.
Aśakti means incapacity. The text divides it into sensory and intellectual forms: eleven impairments connected with the senses, and seventeen connected with buddhi, the intellect. The list is blunt: deafness, blindness, muteness, dullness, lameness, madness, and so on. We should not romanticize it. At this level, bondage includes concrete limitation in body, sense, mind, and cognition. The paśu is not bound only by wrong philosophy; the whole apparatus of experience can be weakened, distorted, or obstructed.
But the deeper point is not medical classification. The point is that Śakti, when contracted through māyic manifestation, appears as limited capacity. The same consciousness that is intrinsically all-powerful appears as a being who cannot hear, cannot see, cannot understand, cannot act, cannot integrate experience. Aśakti is Śakti appearing as blocked Śakti.
Then comes tuṣṭi, satisfaction or contentment. This is subtler. Satisfaction sounds positive, but in this taxonomy it can be a bond. One becomes satisfied with partial explanations: “it is just nature,” “it will happen through time,” “fortune will decide,” “this object is enough,” “this withdrawal is enough.” Such satisfaction may reduce agitation, but it can also freeze the search before recognition. The bound being becomes comfortable inside limitation.
This is psychologically very exact. Pain binds openly, but premature satisfaction binds quietly. A person may not be suffering intensely, yet still remain far from truth because some small comfort, doctrine, practice, identity, or resignation has become “enough.” Tuṣṭi is the sweetness of the cage.
Then comes siddhi, attainment. Even attainment appears inside bhāva-sṛṣṭi. Reasoning, instruction, study, removal of suffering, help from friends, giving — these are real powers, real improvements, real capacities. But if they remain inside the contracted structure of pratyaya, they are still not final liberation. They are attainments within the field, not the transcendence of the field.
This is an important correction. Abhinava is not despising reasoning, study, friendship, relief from suffering, or generosity. These matter. But he places them correctly. They can assist the path; they are not the ultimate recognition itself. A person can study, reason, reduce suffering, gain support, perform generous acts, and still remain bound if svarūpa is not recognized.
So this whole section is clinically sharp. The bound condition is not only ignorance. It includes incapacity, partial comfort, and even limited success. The cage has many textures: darkness, weakness, satisfaction, achievement. Some bars are painful; some are pleasant; some even look spiritual or noble.
That is why this taxonomy belongs inside the discussion of māyic letters. Once the pure mantra-body enters differentiated pratyaya, consciousness can become bound in many ways. It can misperceive. It can fail. It can settle too early. It can attain something partial and mistake it for the whole. The net of pāśa is not crude. It is intelligent, subtle, and woven through the very structures of cognition.
The fiftyfold bhāva-sṛṣṭi is sealed: error, incapacity, satisfaction, and attainment
viparyayabhedā bhavantyaśaktiśca karaṇavaikalyāt |
aṣṭāviṃśatibhedā tuṣṭirnavadhāṣṭadhā siddhiḥ ||
“The divisions of error arise; and incapacity arises from the defect of the instruments. Incapacity has twenty-eight divisions, satisfaction is ninefold, and attainment is eightfold.”
This verse seals the whole taxonomy of bhāva-sṛṣṭi. The bound inner world is not vague. It has structure. Consciousness, once contracted into the māyic field of differentiated pratyayas, does not merely become “ignorant” in a general way. It becomes patterned through specific forms: viparyaya, error; aśakti, incapacity; tuṣṭi, satisfaction; and siddhi, attainment.
The verse first says viparyaya-bhedā bhavanti — the divisions of error arise. Error is not one flat darkness. It branches. It becomes ignorance, egoic identification, attraction, aversion, clinging. It becomes many ways of misreading the Self as the non-Self and the non-Self as refuge. Error is creative in a dark sense: it manufactures a world of false certainty.
Then aśaktiś ca karaṇa-vaikalyāt — incapacity arises because of defect in the instruments. The bound being does not suffer only from wrong conclusions. The very instruments of experience may be damaged, obstructed, contracted: senses, body, mind, intellect, memory, discrimination, action-capacity. The problem is not only “I do not know.” Sometimes it is “I cannot yet know rightly because the instrument is not clear.”
Then the numbers are gathered: aśakti is twenty-eightfold; tuṣṭi is ninefold; siddhi is eightfold. This is the formal closure of the pratyaya-taxonomy. But the deeper meaning is more important than the arithmetic: bondage includes darkness, weakness, comfort, and success. That is psychologically exact.
Viparyaya binds through falsehood.
Aśakti binds through inability.
Tuṣṭi binds through premature contentment.
Siddhi binds when partial attainment is mistaken for completion.
That last point is important. The cage is not made only of pain and delusion. Some bars are made of satisfaction. Some are made of achievement. A person may be trapped by suffering, but also by relief from suffering. Trapped by ignorance, but also by cleverness. Trapped by failure, but also by spiritual or intellectual success that becomes identity.
So this verse is not just a scholastic summary. It is a map of how Mātṛkā, when forgotten as pure mantra-body, becomes the inner architecture of the paśu. The letters become pratyayas. Pratyayas become patterns. Patterns become bonds. And those bonds are not crude; they are subtle enough to include even satisfaction and attainment.
This prepares the next turn perfectly: Abhinava will now say that these very pratyayas are pāśas, bonds. The taxonomy is not neutral psychology. It is the anatomy of bondage.
These pratyayas are the pāśas of pāśava-sṛṣṭi
iti hi eta eva pratyayāḥ pāśavasṛṣṭirūpāḥ pāśā mukhyatayā yathoktam
svarūpāvaraṇe cāsya śaktayaḥ satatotthitāḥ |
yataḥ śabdānuvedhena na vinā pratyayodbhavaḥ ||
iti |
“Thus, these very pratyayas, being of the nature of pāśava-sṛṣṭi, the creation of the bound being, are principally pāśas, bonds. As it has been said:
‘Its powers are constantly arisen for the veiling of its own true nature,
because no pratyaya arises without being penetrated by sound.’”
Now Abhinava gives the real reason for the taxonomy. The list of viparyaya, aśakti, tuṣṭi, and siddhi was not inserted as dry Sāṃkhya psychology. These pratyayas are pāśas — bonds. They belong to pāśava-sṛṣṭi, the creation of the paśu, the bound being.
This is the turn that makes the whole section alive. A pratyaya is not just a thought. It is not merely a mental event passing through the mind. In the bound condition, pratyaya becomes a rope. It organizes perception, identity, incapacity, comfort, success, fear, and desire around a contracted center. The being does not merely have thoughts; the being is tied by the structures through which it thinks.
The verse says these powers are constantly arisen for svarūpa-āvaraṇa — the veiling of one’s own true nature. That is brutal and exact. The Self is not absent. It is covered. The true nature is not destroyed. It is wrapped in the very powers that arise from it. Śakti becomes the veil of Śakti. Consciousness becomes the pattern that hides consciousness from itself.
And then comes the key Abhinavian point: na vinā pratyayodbhavaḥ śabda-anuvedhena — no pratyaya arises without being pierced, penetrated, or infused by sound. This is huge. Cognition is not wordless in the deep sense. Even before explicit speech, even before articulated language, the structure of sound, sign, designation, and inner vibration is already involved. The mind’s formations are śabda-anuviddha — sound-penetrated.
So bondage is letter-born. The same Mātṛkā that liberates as mantra also binds as pratyaya when her pure nature is not recognized. The letters become inner designation. Inner designation becomes identity. Identity becomes bondage. A person says “I am this,” “I lack that,” “I cannot,” “this is enough,” “I have attained” — and each of these is a sound-shaped knot in consciousness.
This is why the taxonomy had to be included. Viparyaya binds by false naming. Aśakti binds by the naming of incapacity. Tuṣṭi binds by the naming of partial rest as enough. Siddhi binds by the naming of limited attainment as completion. All of them are pratyayas; all of them are sound-penetrated; all of them can become pāśas.
The tragedy is subtle: the power that should reveal svarūpa becomes the power that covers it. But the possibility of liberation is hidden in the same fact. If bondage is sound-structured, then mantra can cut through bondage not from outside, but at its root. The knot is made of Śakti; the release is also Śakti.
The arising of pratyaya is the loss of the supreme nectar
tathā
parāmṛtarasāpāyastasya yaḥ pratyayodbhavaḥ |
ityādi
“Likewise:
‘The arising of pratyaya for him is the loss of the taste of the supreme nectar,’ and so on.”
Abhinava now intensifies the meaning of pratyaya. In the previous point, pratyayas were named pāśas, bonds, because they veil svarūpa and because no pratyaya arises without being penetrated by sound. Now the condition is described even more viscerally: pratyayodbhava, the arising of a determinate mental formation, is parāmṛta-rasa-apāya — the loss of the taste of the supreme nectar.
This does not mean that every thought is evil. That would be too crude. It means that when consciousness becomes locked into pratyaya as a contracted determination — “this is what I am,” “this is what I need,” “this is enough,” “this is impossible,” “this object will complete me,” “this attainment is final” — the taste of the supreme nectar is obscured. The living fullness of saṃvid is replaced by a formed mental knot.
Parāmṛta-rasa is the taste of the supreme nectar: the innate savor of consciousness resting in itself, full, unfragmented, unpossessed. When pratyaya arises as bondage, that taste is lost, or rather covered. Awareness no longer tastes itself directly. It tastes its own contracted formation and mistakes that for reality.
This is psychologically exact. A thought can appear and immediately thicken into a world. A fear arises, and suddenly the whole field is fear. A desire arises, and the object becomes salvation. A spiritual identity arises, and the path becomes a costume. A partial insight arises, and the ego calls it realization. In each case, pratyaya does not merely “occur”; it replaces nectar with fixation.
So the line is severe: the bound pratyaya is the drying-out of amṛta. Consciousness still shines, but its taste is displaced into a limited formation. Instead of the open nectar of the Self, there is the cramped taste of concept, identity, grasping, fear, or partial satisfaction.
This is why mantra matters so deeply in this context. If pratyaya is sound-penetrated, then bondage is not merely intellectual. It is vibrational, linguistic, letter-formed. The wrong inner sound becomes a knot. But the same sound-body, restored to its pure mantra-nature, can return consciousness to parāmṛta-rasa. The poison and the medicine are both in Mātṛkā.
So this point continues the descent: pure letters become māyic differentiation; differentiation becomes pratyaya; pratyaya becomes pāśa; and pāśa is experienced as the loss of the supreme nectar. The bound being does not only think wrongly. He loses the taste of his own fullness.
Māyic letter-creation appears as audible sequence, yet remains embraced by the original pure form
evaṃ pratyayasṛṣṭitvāntarālīkaraṇena sphuṭaśrūyamāṇaśrutyātmakakramābhāsamānamāyīyavarṇasṛṣṭirādya-pāramārthikaśuddharūpāliṅgitā tattatkāryaphalaprasavadāyinī nirūpitā śrīpūrvaśāstre
“Thus, by being inserted into the creation of pratyayas, the māyic creation of letters appears as a sequence whose nature is clearly audible sound. Yet it is embraced by the original, ultimate, pure form, and is taught in the Śrīpūrvaśāstra as giving birth to the fruits of each respective action.”
Abhinava now gathers the descent into a single vision. The pure letters, once inserted into pratyaya-sṛṣṭi, appear as māyīya-varṇa-sṛṣṭi — a māyic creation of differentiated letters. They become audible, sequential, articulated: one sound after another, one letter after another, one name after another, one inner determination after another.
This is the level of sphuṭa-śrūyamāṇa-śruti-ātmaka-krama — a sequence whose nature is clearly heard sound. Here the letter is no longer only the pure mantra-body. It has become manifest sound, heard in sequence, used in cognition, naming, classification, and bondage. The non-sequential Mātṛkā becomes the audible chain of speech.
But Abhinava immediately prevents a wrong conclusion. This māyic letter-creation is still ādya-pāramārthika-śuddha-rūpa-āliṅgitā — embraced by the original, ultimate, pure form. This is the key. The māyic letters are not cut off from their pure source. Even when they appear as differentiated, audible, sequential, and bondage-producing, they remain held by the pure mantra-reality.
That word āliṅgitā matters. Embraced. The pure form does not abandon the māyic form. The original does not stand far away, disgusted by manifestation. The pure sound-body holds the differentiated letter-body inside itself. Māyā appears, but it is still wrapped in Parā Vāk.
This is why the same letters can bind and liberate. As māyic sequence, they become pratyaya, designation, identity, limitation, bondage. As pure mantra-form, they reveal the source. But these are not two unrelated alphabets. The binding letter is the pure letter forgotten. The liberating mantra is the same letter remembered.
So the world of sound is dangerous and sacred at once. Every name can become a chain. Every concept can become a cage. Every sentence can reinforce the paśu. But because the māyic letter is still embraced by the original pure form, the same sound can also become mantra, vidyā, recognition, release.
This is the Abhinavian tenderness inside the severity: even bondage is not outside the embrace. The pratyaya that covers the Self is made of the same Śakti that can uncover it. The letters descend into Māyā, but Parā never lets them go.
The Śrīpūrvaśāstra confirms: the Lord stirs the yoni through Śakti and emits corresponding letters
sarvaśāstrārthagarbhiṇyai * * * * * * * * (?) |
ityevaṃ-vidhayā
anayā saṃpabuddhaḥ sanyoniṃ vikṣobhya śaktitaḥ |
tatsamānaśrutīnvarṇāṃstatsaṃkhyānasṛjatprabhuḥ ||
ityādi
“In the Śrīpūrvaśāstra it is taught in such a way, beginning with the address: ‘To her who contains the meaning of all śāstras…’
‘Awakened by her, the Lord, stirring the yoni through Śakti, emitted letters corresponding to that sound and equal to that number.’
And so on.”
Abhinava now supports the whole movement through the Śrīpūrvaśāstra. The important phrase is sarvaśāstrārthagarbhiṇī — she who contains within herself the meaning of all śāstras. This fits perfectly. The Goddess is not merely one deity among others, not merely the presiding power of one mantra, not merely a sectarian object of worship. She is the womb in which the meaning of all revelation is held.
Then comes the decisive act: anayā saṃprabuddhaḥ prabhuḥ — the Lord, awakened by her. This is striking. Śiva is not shown as a solitary masculine creator acting independently. He is stirred, awakened, brought into expressive potency by Śakti. Without her, there is no emission of letters. Without her, consciousness remains unexpressed.
Then: sva-yoniṃ vikṣobhya śaktitaḥ — stirring his own yoni through Śakti. This returns us to the earlier logic of yoni, kṣobha, and letter-emission. The yoni is the generative matrix, the womb-field of manifestation. Kṣobha is the charged stirring, the agitation through which latent sound-power becomes creative. The letters are not emitted from inert silence; they arise from the stirred womb of Śakti.
And what does the Lord emit? tat-samāna-śrutīn varṇān tat-saṃkhyān — letters corresponding to that sound and equal to that number. The letters arise according to a precise resonance and measure. They are not arbitrary sounds. They correspond to the awakened Śakti-field. Their number, sound, and order are rooted in the vibration of that generative matrix.
This confirms the previous point. Māyic letter-creation appears as audible sequence, but it remains embraced by the original pure form. The letters can become differentiated, sequential, and operative, but their source is still Śakti-yoni stirred by the Lord’s awakened consciousness. The audible alphabet is the downstream expression of a deeper mantric womb.
So again, Abhinava refuses both reductions. Letters are not merely conventional signs invented by humans. But they are also not magical tokens detached from cognition. They are born from the conjunction of Śiva and Śakti: awakened consciousness stirring the generative matrix and emitting sound-forms corresponding to that inner resonance.
This is why the whole discussion of varṇa, mantra, pratyaya, and pāśa matters. The same letters that arise from Śakti-yoni can descend into māyic designation and bind; but because they are originally born from the awakened Śakti-field, they can also return consciousness to the source. The alphabet is both net and path, bondage and release, depending on whether it is grasped as māyic designation or recognized as pure mantra-body.
Embraced by those powers, the letters give the fruits of all desires
taistairāliṅgitāḥ santaḥ sarvakāmaphalapradāḥ |
“Being embraced by those [powers], they become givers of the fruits of all desires.”
Abhinava closes this movement with the word āliṅgitāḥ — embraced. This is the crucial word. The letters do not become fruitful merely because they are pronounced. They do not give results as dead phonetic units, as if mantra were a mechanical password inserted into the universe. They become sarvakāmaphalapradāḥ, givers of the fruits of all desires, when they are embraced by the corresponding Śaktis.
This is the difference between sound and mantra. A sound can be repeated by the tongue. A mantra must be held by Śakti. The same syllable can be empty noise, psychological self-suggestion, ritual habit, or living revelation depending on whether it is connected with its source. Without the embrace, the letter remains on the surface. With the embrace, it becomes a body of power.
That is why this point is so important for mysticism. The fruit does not come from the ego shouting sacred sounds into the void. The fruit comes when the letter is rejoined to the womb from which it arose. The Lord stirs the yoni through Śakti; the letters are emitted according to that sound and number; then, embraced by those powers, they become effective. The mantra works because it is not merely spoken — it is inhabited.
This also explains why mantra can bind or liberate. As māyic designation, letters become pratyayas. They name, divide, classify, harden, and produce the contracted world of the paśu. “I am this.” “I lack that.” “This is mine.” “I have attained.” “I am ruined.” These too are letter-forms, sound-shaped bonds. But when the same letters are recognized as Śakti-embraced, they reverse their movement. They no longer thicken bondage; they open the path back to the source.
So sarvakāmaphalapradāḥ should not be read cheaply. It does not mean the mantra becomes a vending machine for egoic desires. At the lower level, yes, mantras may bear specific fruits according to their powers. But the deeper point is sharper: every desire is secretly a distorted hunger for fullness. The object of desire may be wealth, love, protection, success, knowledge, power, healing, beauty, liberation — but beneath all of them is the same pressure: consciousness wants to recover its own completeness.
When the letters are embraced by Śakti, they can give the fruit because they touch the root of desire. They do not merely decorate the surface of longing. They enter the place where longing is born. They can fulfill, redirect, burn, purify, or dissolve desire according to the level of the sādhaka and the power of the mantra. Sometimes the fruit is external attainment. Sometimes the fruit is the collapse of the very desire that demanded attainment. Sometimes the fruit is not getting the object, but being released from the delusion that the object could complete you.
The real mantra does not simply obey the ego. It reveals the truth of the ego’s hunger. It may give. It may deny. It may intoxicate. It may dry. It may protect. It may expose. It may lead through bhoga, then riktatva, then bhoga-nivṛtti, then pūrṇatva. That too is sarvakāmaphalapradā — giving the true fruit of desire, not always the object desire imagines.
So this line is not a small ritual promise. It is the reversal of the whole descent described in the chunk. The letters fell into māyic differentiation and became pratyayas; pratyayas became pāśas; pāśas veiled svarūpa and dried up the taste of supreme nectar. But the letters were never abandoned. They remained embraced by the original pure form. And when they are again embraced consciously by Śakti, they become fruitful as mantra.
The same Mātṛkā who binds as name liberates as mantra. The same sound that creates the cage becomes the sound that opens it. The same letters that form the world of desire become the letters that reveal what desire was always seeking. This is why the embrace matters: without Śakti, the letter is a sign; with Śakti, the letter is a living doorway.
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