Parātrīṃśikā Vivaraṇa (Part 167): Icchā Enters the Great Sky of Bhairava

 

A seated yogin is absorbed in deep stillness before a vast shadowy divine presence, surrounded by a golden, dreamlike field. The crescent and the immense looming form suggest Bhairava’s great sky, where ordinary objectivity dissolves and the yogin becomes immovable in absorption. The image fits this chunk because Abhinava describes icchā entering the sky-being of the knowable field and passing into the limitless, motionless mahāvyoma, where even loud external sounds cannot bring the yogin back.

The previous chunk answered one of the central confusions around icchā: Śiva’s will is not lack-based desire. Abhinava showed that Brahman is pūrṇa, full, precisely because the desired is abhinna, non-different from it. Divine will does not reach toward an external object; it is fullness expanding into its own self-expression.

Now Abhinava continues to turn the phrase tṛtīyaṃ brahma — “the third Brahman” — through several further angles. The movement becomes highly technical, but the core remains the same: the “third” is not a fixed object. It is read as icchā, as Īśāna, as jñāna-śakti, as śuddha-sṛṣṭi, as the letter-body, as vyoman, as tejas, and finally as the full void of Bhairava.

First, from the standpoint of Īśāna, the third Brahman is will-form, expanded into lordship. Icchā is not psychological wanting; it is the lordly expansion of consciousness. Then Abhinava links this with the fourteen and the forty, showing that the tithi-structure and the tattva-structure are not separate systems, but mutually intermingled within the Heart.

He then shifts the angle from icchā to jñāna-śakti. Through unmeṣa, the opening flash of knowledge, the third Brahman is Īśāna himself. The first spanda of Kula-śakti rises within this structure, filling it and preparing it for ascent. Here again the numbers are not dead numerology; they are ways of describing living phases of Śakti’s self-unfolding.

From there Abhinava brings in the ū-kalā, the subtle point between jñāna-śakti and kriyā-śakti, and reads the third Brahman as śuddha-sṛṣṭi, pure creation. Relative to impure and mixed creation, this third Brahman is the pure creative field, endowed with the tithīśvaras as its Heart and the letters from ka to kṣa as the articulated body.

The passage then enters the language of the four śūnyas, sky, fire, and void. The third Brahman called icchā becomes vyomātma, sky-natured, endowed with tejas — first outwardly as solar/fire radiance, then inwardly as the subtle fire that follows the tithīśa. Finally, Abhinava intensifies this into paripūrṇa-śūnya, the complete void: not a sterile absence, but the Bhairava-natured fullness of the sky-ground.

The experiential climax comes when icchā, together with lordship belonging to its own nature, enters the sky-being of the knowable field. It rests briefly in a slight field of manifestation and then suddenly enters the limitless, immovable ground of the great void. The yogin absorbed there is so deeply entered into the vast sky beyond objectivity that even the sound of drums and bronze gongs cannot bring him out.

So this chunk continues the exploration of the third Brahman by moving from will as fullness into will as sky-like absorption: icchā expands into lordship, opens through knowledge, becomes pure creation, enters the letter-body, burns as tejas, dissolves into the full void, and finally rests in the immovable great sky of Bhairava.

From the standpoint of Īśāna, the third Brahman is icchā expanded into lordship

īśānāpekṣayā tṛtīyamicchārūpaṃ prasaravaśādbṛhadbhūtamīśānatāpannaṃ caturdaśānāṃ catvāriṃśata uktāyā yutaṃ parasparavyāmiśratā yatra

“From the standpoint of Īśāna, the third [Brahman] is will-form, icchā-rūpa. Through expansion it becomes great, bṛhat, and attains the state of Īśāna, lordship. In it, the fourteen and the previously stated forty are joined, mutually intermingled.”

Abhinava now continues to turn the phrase tṛtīyaṃ brahma — “the third Brahman” — through another angle. In the previous movement, he clarified that from the standpoint of icchā, the third is will. Now he looks from the standpoint of Īśāna, the Lord.

This matters because icchā is not being treated as small psychological desire. It is not the hunger of a limited creature looking for completion. Here icchā expands — prasara-vaśāt — and becomes bṛhat, great, vast, Brahman-like. Through that expansion it attains īśānatā, lordship.

So divine will is not lack. It is sovereignty.

Human craving says: “I want because I do not have.”
Īśāna’s icchā says: “I will because I am free to unfold myself.”

This is the difference between dependence and lordship. In the bound being, desire proves limitation. In Śiva, icchā proves freedom. The limited person is dragged by the desired object. Īśāna is not dragged by anything; the desired arises within his own power.

That is why Abhinava connects this with expansion. Icchā does not remain a hidden seed. It spreads, opens, becomes vast. But this spreading is not a fall into externality. It is the self-expansion of lordship. The Heart does not become less by manifesting; it reveals its greatness.

Then Abhinava brings in the fourteen and the forty. These refer back to the layered structures already discussed: the fourteenfold/tithi-related structure and the fortyfold Bhairava-tattva structure. Here they are yuta, joined, and more precisely paraspara-vyāmiśratā, mutually intermingled.

This is not arithmetic. It is not two lists pasted together. The fourteen and the forty penetrate one another inside the Heart. The mantraic-lunar structure and the tattvic-Bhairava structure are not separate compartments. They are two ways of reading one living reality.

So this first point gives the direction of the chunk: Abhinava is not offering a single flat interpretation of the third Brahman. He turns it like a jewel. From the standpoint of Īśāna, the third is icchā expanded into lordship, where the structures of tithi, tattva, and Bhairava interpenetrate.

The practical nerve is sharp: when will is contracted, it becomes need. When will expands from fullness, it becomes lordship. The same word icchā can either describe bondage or the first pulse of divine sovereignty. Abhinava is showing the root-form, before it collapses into lack.

The end of the tithīśvara is the first spanda of Kula-śakti

tithīśvarasyākulamayānuttarā kalanāntaḥ saṃhṛtiḥ - kulaśaktiprathamaspandastenānvitam |

“The end of the Lord of the tithis is the withdrawal into the Anuttara-kalā, whose nature is Akula; and it is endowed with the first spanda of Kula-śakti.”

Abhinava now shows what stands at the inner edge of this whole tithi-structure. The tithīśvara, the Lord of the lunar phases, does not merely end in a numerical completion. His “end” is saṃhṛti — withdrawal, contraction, reabsorption — into the Anuttara-kalā.

And this Anuttara-kalā is Akula-mayī — of the nature of Akula. This is important. Kula is the gathered field of Śakti, manifestation, body, power, letters, tattvas, ritual, and embodied totality. Akula is the transcendent, uncontained, Śiva-side — not outside Kula as an enemy, but prior to its articulation. So the tithi-cycle ends by withdrawing into Akula-natured Anuttara.

But Abhinava immediately adds the other side: it is endowed with the first spanda of Kula-śakti.

This is the crucial pulse. The structure withdraws into Akula, but it is not dead there. At that very edge, the first tremor of Kula-śakti appears. The Heart does not simply disappear into static transcendence. It returns to the unsurpassed, and from there the first vibration of manifestation stirs again.

So the movement is double:

saṃhṛti — withdrawal into Anuttara, Akula.
prathama-spanda — the first pulse of Kula-śakti.

This is the living hinge between transcendence and manifestation. The end is also the beginning. The completion of the tithi-cycle is not a dead closure; it is the point where the whole structure folds into Anuttara and the first Śākta tremor begins again.

This is why Abhinava’s technical language must not be read as dry counting. He is describing the pulse of the Heart itself. The lunar phases are gathered, completed, withdrawn; then, in the depth of Akula, the first spanda of Kula arises. Śiva rests; Śakti stirs. But they are not two separate events. They are the same Heart seen in withdrawal and emergence.

For sādhana, this is very practical. Deep absorption is not the end if it becomes inert. The state must be able to return as living Śakti. Likewise, action is not true if it has not touched the Akula-ground. The real Heart contains both: the power to withdraw everything into the unsurpassed and the power to let the first pulse of manifestation arise from that silence.

That is the secret of this line: the end of the tithīśvara is not exhaustion. It is the charged silence before the first spanda.

Through jñāna-śakti as unmeṣa, the third Brahman is Īśāna himself

unmeṣātmakajñānaśaktiyogena tṛtīyaṃ brahmeśānameva yadā [īśānasyaivaṃ tṛtīyabrahmatāmupapādayati yadetyādi |]

“When, through union with jñāna-śakti, whose nature is unmeṣa, the third Brahman is Īśāna himself — here Abhinava establishes how Īśāna himself is the third Brahman.”

Abhinava now shifts the angle again. First the third Brahman was read through icchā — will. Then this icchā expanded into īśānatā, lordship. Now he brings in jñāna-śakti, the power of knowledge, and defines it as unmeṣa.

Unmeṣa means opening, blossoming, the first flash of awareness, the sudden emergence of seeing. It is like the eyelid opening, but cosmically: consciousness does not merely remain closed in its own fullness; it opens. It becomes aware of its own possibility of manifestation.

This is not ordinary knowledge. Ordinary knowledge comes after the split: knower here, object there, act of knowing between them. But jñāna-śakti as unmeṣa is prior to that division. It is the first opening of consciousness toward manifestation while still remaining rooted in itself.

That is why Abhinava can say that through this jñāna-śakti, the third Brahman is Īśāna himself. Īśāna is not merely a deity occupying a direction. He is the lordly form of consciousness in which will and knowledge are not separated. Icchā expands as sovereignty; jñāna opens as illumination. Together they reveal Īśāna as the third Brahman.

This also protects the doctrine of icchā from being misunderstood. Divine will is not blind impulse. It is not arbitrary force. It is joined with jñāna-śakti. The will of Śiva is luminous. It knows itself as it opens. It does not stumble into manifestation unconsciously.

So the sequence is precise:

Ānanda is fullness.
Icchā is the first will of that fullness to unfold.
Jñāna is the opening illumination through which that unfolding becomes known.
Īśāna is the lordly form in which this will and knowing are one.

For sādhana, this is important. Human will becomes dangerous when separated from knowledge. Then it becomes craving, compulsion, fantasy, ambition, projection. But pure will joined to knowledge becomes lordly clarity. It moves, but it sees. It desires, but not from lack. It opens, but does not lose itself.

That is why Abhinava’s “third Brahman” is not a psychological desire dressed up in metaphysics. It is will illumined by the first flash of knowledge — icchā opened through unmeṣa into Īśāna’s sovereignty.

The first division is filled by the first spanda of Kula-śakti, ready to rise

caturdaśānāṃ tasyā eva tattvacatvāriṃśato yutaṃ prathamavibhāgo yatra tathāvidhaṃ bhavati tathā tithīśāntena kulaśaktiprathamaspandena samyak prarurukṣutayā anvitam saṃśabdo'tra bharaṇāpekṣaḥ

“When the first division of those fourteen and of that same fortyfold tattva-structure is joined in that way, it becomes endowed with the end of the tithīśa — the first spanda of Kula-śakti — in the sense of being fully ready to rise. Here the prefix sam is understood in the sense of filling or bearing.”

Abhinava now deepens the previous point. The third Brahman, seen through jñāna-śakti as unmeṣa, is not merely a still luminous principle. It contains a first division, a first articulation, a first internal opening of the fourteen and the forty. The structure begins to differentiate — but not yet as fragmentation. It is the first division inside unity.

This is where the phrase prathama-vibhāga matters. The first division is not the fall into brokenness. It is the first intelligible articulation of the Heart. Before this, everything is compacted in undivided fullness. Here the Heart begins to show its inner structure. The powers are not yet scattered; they are beginning to become readable.

And this first division is joined with tithīśānta, the end of the Lord of the tithis, which Abhinava identifies as the first spanda of Kula-śakti. Again, the “end” is not dead termination. It is the threshold where the lunar-mantric cycle touches the first tremor of Śakti.

The key phrase is samyak prarurukṣutayā anvitam — endowed with the complete readiness to rise. This is beautiful. The Heart is not yet fully unfolded into manifest sequence, but it is charged with ascent, with emergence, with the urge to rise. It is like the moment before a flame appears, when the heat is already gathered. Like a seed swollen before sprouting. Like breath just before speech.

This is not ordinary movement. It is Kula-śakti’s first spanda — the first living tremor of the gathered Śakti-field. Kula is the body of powers, the family of manifestation, the totality of Śakti’s articulated field. Its first spanda is the first pulse by which the undivided Heart begins to become the living universe.

Abhinava also explains the prefix sam as bharaṇa, filling or bearing. This matters because the structure is not merely “connected” mechanically. It is filled. It is impregnated with the first spanda. The Heart bears the rising power within itself.

So this point shows the exact instant between silence and manifestation. Not inert silence, not already externalized world — but the charged middle: the first division, filled with Kula-śakti, ready to rise.

For sādhana, this is extremely subtle. There are moments when awareness is not yet acting outwardly, but something has begun to stir inside. A word has not yet been spoken, but the force of speech is present. An action has not yet occurred, but the whole body already feels the movement forming. A realization has not yet become expression, but the Heart is full with its coming.

Abhinava is describing that cosmic moment: the Heart, still rooted in Anuttara, bears the first spanda of Kula-śakti and becomes ready for emergence. Not from lack. Not from agitation. From fullness preparing to rise.

Supported by the ū-kalā between jñāna-śakti and kriyā-śakti, the third Brahman is pure creation

tajjñānaśaktikriyāśaktimadhyakoṭirūpaprāṅnirṇīta-ūkārakalālambitoḍhatārūḍhyā yadetat brahma yatkiṃciccarācaraṃ tadaśuddhaśuddhāśuddhasṛṣṭyapekṣayā tṛtīyaṃ śuddhasṛṣṭyātmakaṃ yat ata eva tithīśvaraiḥ hṛdayabhūtatayā tadantaiśca kādikṣāntaiḥ samanvitam |

“That Brahman, by ascending through the support of the previously determined ū-kāra-kalā, whose form is the middle point between jñāna-śakti and kriyā-śakti, is whatever exists as moving and unmoving. Relative to impure creation and mixed pure-impure creation, it is the third, whose nature is pure creation. Therefore it is endowed with the tithīśvaras as its Heart, and with their endings, the letters from ka to kṣa.”

Abhinava now brings the movement into the ū-kalā, the subtle power of ū, previously determined as the middle point between jñāna-śakti and kriyā-śakti. This is not a random phonetic detail. In his vision, sound is the body of manifestation, and each vowel is a living power. Here ū functions as the support by which the third Brahman rises from knowledge toward action, without falling into impurity.

The phrase jñānaśakti-kriyāśakti-madhya-koṭi-rūpa is key. The ū-kalā stands at the middle edge between knowing and acting. It is not only knowledge, not yet full action. It is the charged threshold where awareness becomes capable of expression. Knowledge is no longer sealed inside itself; action has not yet become externalized scattering. The Heart is poised between illumination and manifestation.

This is why Abhinava speaks of āroha, ascent. Brahman is supported by this ū-kalā and rises through it. The movement is not downward fall but upward intensification. The same Heart that contains the first spanda of Kula-śakti now ascends through the middle point between knowledge and action, entering the field of pure creation.

Then comes the bold statement: this Brahman is yat kiṃcit carācaram — whatever exists, moving and unmoving. The whole field of living beings, bodies, objects, worlds, motions, and still forms is included. But it is read here from the standpoint of śuddha-sṛṣṭi, pure creation.

Abhinava distinguishes it from aśuddha-sṛṣṭi, impure creation, and śuddhāśuddha-sṛṣṭi, mixed pure-impure creation. This is important. The same universe can be read at different levels. Seen from contraction, it is impure creation: a world of separation, bondage, limitation, and objecthood. Seen from the mixed level, it is partly luminous, partly contracted. But from the standpoint of this third Brahman, it is śuddha-sṛṣṭyātmaka — of the nature of pure creation.

This does not mean that ordinary bondage is denied. Abhinava is never that sloppy. He is not saying that the bound person’s confusion is secretly “all fine.” He is saying that when the Heart is seen through its own pure structure — through jñāna, kriyā, ū-kalā, tithīśvaras, and the letter-body — creation is understood as pure manifestation of consciousness, not as alien matter or fallen objectivity.

Then he adds the letter-structure: it is endowed with the tithīśvaras as its Heart, and with their endings, the letters from ka to kṣa. The articulated consonantal body, from ka to kṣa, becomes the expressed body of this pure creation. The Heart is not mute. It becomes letters. The pure current becomes articulated sound. Sound becomes the structure through which the moving and unmoving universe appears.

This is the living bridge between mantra and cosmology. The alphabet is not merely a tool for language. It is the body of creation. The tithīśvaras are the Heart; the consonants are the articulated limbs. The universe is not outside mantra. It is mantra unfolded as world.

So this point is technical, but its force is clear: between knowledge and action stands the ū-kalā, the charged middle power. Supported by it, the third Brahman rises as pure creation, containing all moving and unmoving things, endowed with the lunar Heart and the full articulated body of letters. Creation, when recognized from this level, is not dirt. It is the voiced body of the Heart.

Through the four voids, the third Brahman called icchā becomes sky-like and endowed with tejas

atha śūnyacatuṣkānusṛtyā caturṇāṃ dharādīnāṃ daśā vināśātmikā vidyate yatra tadvyoma tena yutaṃ tṛtīyaṃ brahmecchākhyaṃ tithīśvarasyārkasya antena bāhyena tejasānvitam |

vyākhyātakrameṇa tṛtīyaṃ brahmeśanam etadapi evameva |

tṛtīyaṃ brahmecchākhyaṃ caturṇāṃ nabhaḥprabhṛtīnāmantardaśā yatra sādhāratayā samanvitaṃ tithīśāntasya vahneḥ tejaso yadanusaradrūpaṃ tena sahitaṃ vyomātma |

“Now, following the four voids: where there exists the state of dissolution of the four beginning with earth, that is the sky. Joined with that, the third Brahman called icchā is endowed with the external tejas at the end of the tithīśvara, the sun.

According to the sequence already explained, this third Brahman as Īśāna is also understood in the same way.

The third Brahman called icchā is where the inner state of the four beginning with sky is commonly present. It is joined with the following form of the tejas of fire at the end of the tithīśa; therefore, it is sky-natured.”

Abhinava now turns the same third Brahman through the language of the four voids, śūnya-catuṣka. The movement becomes more interior, more yogic, more elemental. The third Brahman called icchā is now read through dissolution, sky, and fire.

First, he says that when the four beginning with dharā, earth, enter a state of dissolution, that is vyoma, sky. Earth, water, fire, and air lose their hard independent density and dissolve into the space-field. The solid, fluid, burning, and moving aspects of manifestation are gathered into spaciousness.

This is important for the understanding of icchā. Earlier, icchā was shown as the will of fullness, not lack. Now it is shown as connected with vyoman, sky-like being. Pure will is not cramped. It is not the tight pressure of a needy ego. It is spacious, open, capable of containing the dissolution of the elements without panic.

Then Abhinava says that this third Brahman is endowed with bāhya tejas, external radiance, connected with the sun-like tithīśvara. So the sky is not dark emptiness. It is joined with radiance. Space and light belong together here. The void is not lifeless absence; it is luminous capacity.

Then he says that according to the sequence already explained, the same reading applies to the third Brahman as Īśāna. So again, icchā and Īśāna are not separate compartments. Will, lordship, sky, and radiance are different openings into the same Heart.

Finally, he gives an inner reading. The third Brahman called icchā is where the inner state of the four beginning with nabhas, sky, is present. Now the movement is not only the dissolution of the gross elements into outer sky, but the interiorization of sky and the subtler levels into the inner field. It is joined with the tejas of vahni, fire, at the end of the tithīśa. Therefore it is vyomātma — sky-natured.

This is a beautiful paradox: icchā is fire and sky together. Fire gives intensity, radiance, directional force. Sky gives vastness, openness, non-obstruction. If there is only fire, will becomes burning compulsion. If there is only sky, will becomes diffuse spaciousness without force. In the Heart, pure icchā is both: luminous spacious will.

This gives a practical key. Contracted desire is narrow and hot. It burns but has no sky. It presses, grasps, obsesses, fears loss. Abstract detachment may have sky but no fire; it floats, withdraws, refuses incarnation. Abhinava’s icchā is different. It has tejas without contraction and vyoman without passivity.

So this point deepens the earlier doctrine: divine will is not lack-based desire. It is the spacious radiance of consciousness. It can dissolve the gross elements into sky, hold the subtle powers inwardly, and still burn with fire. The third Brahman is icchā because the Heart is not inert; it is sky-like fire, luminous will, vast and unstained.

The third Brahman, flooded by the complete void, is Bhairava in nature

tathaiva tṛtīyaṃ brahma caturdaśayutaṃ tithīśāntasamanvitaṃ paripūrṇaśūnyarūpaplutyā bhairavātma |

“In the same way, the third Brahman — joined with the fourteen and endowed with the end of the tithīśa — is Bhairava in nature through immersion in the form of the complete void.”

Abhinava now intensifies the previous movement. The third Brahman was read through icchā, Īśāna, jñāna-unmeṣa, pure creation, the letter-body, sky, and tejas. Now he says that it is bhairavātma — Bhairava in nature — through paripūrṇa-śūnya-rūpa-pluti, immersion or flooding in the form of the complete void.

This is not ordinary emptiness. It is not absence, numbness, negation, or a dead blank. Abhinava says paripūrṇa-śūnya — the complete void, the full void. That phrase must be held carefully. It is void because it is free from objectified limitation. It is complete because it lacks nothing. It is empty of separative structure, but full as Bhairava’s own nature.

So the third Brahman is not merely sky-like in a soft contemplative sense. It is plunged into the full void where ordinary objecthood loses its solidity. The structures remain — fourteen, tithīśānta, icchā, tejas, vyoman — but they are flooded by the complete śūnya. They no longer stand as separate supports. They become transparent inside Bhairava.

This is the difference between a partial void and the Bhairava-void. A partial void can become dissociation, withdrawal, inner deadness, or subtle nihilism. The paripūrṇa-śūnya is not like that. It is full enough to dissolve everything without becoming nothing. It is the void that contains the seed of all manifestation, the sky in which the whole universe can arise without disturbing the Heart.

That is why Abhinava says bhairavātma. This void is fierce. It is not a quiet psychological space. It is Bhairava because it devours every boundary, every objectified support, every final claim of separateness. But it does not devour into non-being. It devours into fullness.

For sādhana, this is a serious warning. Not every experience of emptiness is the Heart. Not every blank state is realization. Not every silence is Bhairava. The real mark here is paripūrṇatā — fullness. If emptiness leaves the being dry, inert, dissociated, afraid of life, or subtly superior to manifestation, it is not this. The complete void of Bhairava is alive, vast, radiant, and capable of manifestation. It is empty because no object limits it; it is full because everything rests in it.

So the third Brahman becomes Bhairava-natured when icchā, sky, fire, tithi, and the whole structure are flooded by this complete void. Will is no longer narrow. Knowledge is no longer objectifying. Action is no longer scattered. The Heart stands as the full emptiness in which all powers are free.

Icchā enters the sky-being of the knowable field and passes into the immovable great void

icchā khalu nijasvabhāvabhūteśanasahitā vedyabhūmervyomasattāṃ yadākrāmati tadā kiṃcitprakāśabhuvi viśramya jhaṭiti aparyantāṃ kāṣṭhapāṣaṇaprāyāṃ niścalāṃ vyomabhūmimanupraviśati yatrāpavedyasuṣuptamahāvyomānupraviṣṭān yoginaḥ pratyucyate

bherīkāṃsyaninādo'pi vyutthānāya na kalpate |

“Indeed, when icchā, together with lordship that belongs to its own nature, enters the sky-being of the field of the knowable, then, having rested for a little in a field of slight manifestation, it suddenly enters the limitless, immovable sky-ground, almost like wood or stone. Concerning yogins who have entered the great sky beyond the knowable, like deep sleep, it is said:

‘Even the sound of drums and bronze gongs is not capable of bringing them out.’”

This passage must be handled carefully, because at first glance it can seem to contradict Abhinava’s whole vision. One could read it crudely and think: “So the goal is to become absorbed in a blank void, cut off from the world, immovable like wood or stone, unable to respond even to drums and gongs.”

But that is not Abhinava’s final doctrine.

The context matters. Here he is not suddenly abandoning the dynamic Trika vision of vimarśa, svātantrya, Śakti, participation, world-recognition, and the universal Heart. He is giving one specific decoding of tṛtīyaṃ brahma through the language of śūnya, vyoman, and icchā. This is a yogic reading of the Heart as the sky-like ground beyond the field of objects.

So the point is not: “Become inert.”
The point is: icchā can enter a level where the object-field loses its power to command consciousness.

That distinction is crucial.

Abhinava says that icchā, together with its own natural lordship — nijasvabhāvabhūta-īśana-sahitā — enters the vyoma-sattā of the vedya-bhūmi, the sky-being of the knowable field. This means that the field of objects is no longer encountered as dense, hard, external, and binding. It becomes sky-like. Objectivity opens into space.

Then there is a moment of resting in kiṃcit-prakāśa-bhūmi, a field of slight manifestation. Some trace of appearance remains. Consciousness has not yet completely withdrawn from the knowable. There is still a subtle luminosity, a faint field where something is present.

Then suddenly — jhaṭiti — it enters the aparyantā niścalā vyoma-bhūmi, the limitless, immovable sky-ground. This is the yogic depth of object-transcendence. The known has fallen away. The field of manifestation no longer pulls attention outward. The yogin is compared to wood or stone not because he is spiritually dead, but because ordinary sensory hooks cannot move him.

That is why the quotation says:

bherīkāṃsya-ninādo'pi vyutthānāya na kalpate — even the sound of drums and bronze gongs cannot bring him out.

This is not a praise of tamasic unconsciousness. Abhinava says apavedya-suṣupta-mahāvyoma — it is “like deep sleep” because the knowable field is absent, not because it is merely ordinary sleep. The comparison marks absence of objects and resistance to external awakening. But the entrance is through icchā and īśana, will and lordship — not through dullness.

Still, we should not romanticize this as the whole of realization. In Trika, a blank objectless absorption is not automatically the highest state. If it remains mere void, it is incomplete. Abhinava’s higher current always returns to saṃvid, vimarśa, ānanda, svātantrya, and the recognition of the world as Bhairava’s Heart. The yogin must not merely vanish into the sky; the sky must be recognized as the Heart of consciousness.

So this passage describes a powerful yogic absorption, but it must be placed inside Abhinava’s larger frame. It is a stage, doorway, or mode of entry through śūnya-vyoman, not a replacement for living recognition.

The danger is twofold.

If one rejects this passage, one makes Abhinava too soft, too “world-affirming” in a shallow modern way. He absolutely knows and accepts deep absorptions beyond objectivity.

But if one absolutizes this passage, one turns Trika into a void-samādhi doctrine, which is also wrong. Abhinava’s Heart is not inert emptiness. It is Bhairava — full, self-aware, free, capable of manifestation, recognition, and return.

So the clean reading is this:

At this level, icchā no longer runs toward objects. It enters the sky-being of the knowable field and passes beyond it. The yogin becomes immovable because objectivity has lost its authority. Even loud sound cannot drag awareness back outward.

But this is not the final celebration of blankness. It is the demonstration that pure will is sovereign enough not only to manifest the world, but also to withdraw the whole field of the knowable into the great sky of Bhairava.

The world is not denied.
The object-field is mastered.
The void is not final absence.
The sky-ground must be recognized as consciousness.

That is the Trika balance here.