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| This image reflects the chunk’s core: true darśana is not ordinary outward looking, but doubtless seeing from the Akula ground where the waves of time and perception have subsided. |
The previous movement ended by showing that the Śākta-sealed practitioner can gather mantra, mudrā, and gaṇa into the Self, and that consciousness is not measured by time even while it manifests the variegated power of time. Past and future do not stand as independent realities outside awareness; memory, anticipation, question, answer, and waking manifestation all arise within the same present field of saṃvit.
Now Abhinava deepens this through the example of dream. A short interval in waking life can contain, in dream, the experience of days, watches, years, and elaborate temporal variety. This is not a minor psychological observation. It demonstrates that time is not an external container into which consciousness is placed. Time expands, contracts, and varies according to the pramātṛ’s mode of manifestation. The knower does not merely live inside time; consciousness displays time as one of its powers.
From this, the passage turns toward saṃhāra, the great withdrawal, identified with the supreme Hara and called Akula. The scattered waves of manifestation subside into the Akula ground. Only from this ground can the next movement of seeing be understood properly. Darśana here is not ordinary visual perception. It is vision after withdrawal, vision from the field where the waves have set.
Abhinava then traces how the Devatā’s icchā becomes the movement of forms, how seeing is linked with eating, consuming, continuous movement, and the restraint of the senses. The language is fierce because he is not describing passive observation. True seeing is a Śākta process: the desired object is first held within icchā, then begins to appear through jñāna-śakti as a slight differentiation within consciousness, while the senses are drawn back from outward scattering.
So this chunk continues the previous teaching on inward containment and timelessness, but now applies it to darśana itself. Seeing is no longer the eye reaching outward toward an external object. It is the play of icchā, jñāna-śakti, Rudra’s powers of restraining and melting, and the Akula ground where all waves subside. The practitioner sees without doubt because vision has been drawn back into its source.
Dream shows that time-variety arises within the pramātṛ
kiṃ ca jāgrati kasmiṃścidghaṭikābhimatāpi yā |
tasyāmeva pramātāraḥ svapnagāścitratājuṣaḥ |
dinapraharavarṣādivaicitryamapi cinvate ||
“And further: within what, in waking, is considered only a certain short interval — even a ghaṭikā — dream-knowers, possessing varied experience, may perceive the diversity of days, watches, years, and so on.”
Abhinava now continues the inquiry into time through the example of dream. This follows directly from the previous movement. He has just said that true reality is not measured by time, even though consciousness manifests the variegated power of time. Now he gives the experiential proof: dream.
In waking life, a small interval may pass — perhaps only a ghaṭikā, a brief measured unit. Yet within that same interval, the dream-pramātṛ may live through long sequences: days, watches of the night, years, journeys, histories, events, relations, fear, joy, loss, discovery. The outer measure is short, but the inner temporal field may be vast.
This is not a casual observation about dreams. Abhinava is using dream to break the naïve belief that time is an independent container in which consciousness sits. If time were simply an external objective box, then one short waking interval could not contain such a large dreamed duration. But experience shows otherwise: time expands, contracts, multiplies, and takes on different shapes according to the mode of the knower.
The key word is pramātāraḥ — knowers. The dream is not discussed merely as a mental image. It is a mode of knowerhood. In dream, a pramātṛ arises and inhabits a whole world. That dream-knower has his own temporal field, his own sequence, his own “before” and “after,” his own apparent duration. The waking person later says, “It lasted only a little.” But inside the dream, the experience had its own temporality.
So Abhinava is not merely saying “dreams are strange.” He is saying: look carefully at what dream reveals about time. Time is tied to the mode of manifestation of consciousness. The pramātṛ does not simply receive time from outside; time is configured within the field of the pramātṛ.
This supports the previous claim that past and future do not stand independently. Memory, anticipation, dream, waking, question, answer — all are modes in which consciousness manifests temporal variety. The same awareness can display a year in a moment, or make a moment feel vast. Time is real as Śakti’s manifestation, but not ultimate as an independent ruler over consciousness.
The phrase svapnagāḥ citratājuṣaḥ is important: the dream-knowers partake of variety. Dream shows the creative power of consciousness in a concentrated way. It can generate space, sequence, story, time, bodies, voices, fear, and meaning without needing the same external conditions that waking consciousness assumes. The dream world is not nothing; it is a real manifestation at its level. But its time is clearly dependent on consciousness.
This is why the example belongs here, after the discussion of the sealed practitioner. The practitioner who is sealed by Śākta spanda no longer takes time as an unquestioned external master. He sees that time is one of consciousness’s powers. What appears as past, future, dream, waking, memory, anticipation, and vision is configured within the Self’s own manifestation.
So the first point opens the new movement with precision: dream proves that temporal variety is not absolute. A short waking interval may contain a vast dreamed duration. Therefore the real source of time must be sought not in external measure, but in the pramātṛ’s mode of manifestation.
The clock gives one measure.
The dream gives another.
Consciousness contains both.
A recently reported modern case gives a striking parallel, though it should be handled cautiously because the public reports are secondary and not all details are medically verified. Clélia Verdier, a 19-year-old from Lyon, was reported to have spent around three weeks in a medically induced coma and later described an intensely realistic inner life that felt like seven years, including marriage and raising children. Whether every detail is accurate or not, the case illustrates exactly the kind of temporal elasticity Abhinava is pointing toward: a short external interval can contain, for the experiencing subject, an immense inner duration.
This does not prove Abhinava’s metaphysics by itself, and we should not force it to. But it makes the ordinary assumption about time less secure. Human experience already shows that time is not simply received as a fixed outer container. In dream, coma, memory, trauma, ecstasy, and deep absorption, duration can stretch, collapse, multiply, or become strangely dense. Abhinava’s point goes far deeper than psychology, but such cases help a modern reader understand why he turns to dream as evidence: the measure of time depends on the mode of the pramātṛ, the knower.
The supreme Hara is saṃhāra, called Akula
iti nītyā prakṛṣṭo haraḥ saṃhāro'kulākhyaḥ
“By this reasoning, the supreme Hara is saṃhāra, the withdrawal, called Akula.”
Abhinava now draws the doctrinal consequence from the dream-time example. If vast temporal variety can arise inside what is, from the waking standpoint, only a brief interval, then time cannot be the final container of consciousness. The pramātṛ is deeper than the temporal field it experiences. Time appears, expands, contracts, and varies inside awareness.
From this reasoning — iti nītyā — he moves to prakṛṣṭa Hara, the supreme Hara.
Hara means the one who takes away, withdraws, draws back. Here Abhinava identifies him with saṃhāra, the great withdrawal. This is not destruction in a crude sense. It is the reabsorption of the scattered field into its source. The many times, many objects, many forms, many waves of experience are gathered back.
The dream example showed temporal plurality arising within consciousness. Now saṃhāra shows the reverse movement: the whole spread is drawn back into the one ground. Days, years, bodies, worlds, memory, anticipation, dream, waking — all the apparent expansion is capable of being withdrawn. The power that withdraws is Hara.
And this supreme withdrawal is called Akula.
This word is crucial. Kula is the manifest grouping, the family, the aggregate, the articulated field of Śakti: letters, powers, tattvas, bodies, senses, mantras, mudrās, gaṇas, worlds. Akula is not opposed to Kula as a hostile negation. It is the transcendent ground that is not itself one more member of the group. It is the ungrouped source from which the group arises and into which it subsides.
So Abhinava is not abandoning Śakti after speaking of Śākta sealing. He is showing the inner polarity: Kula unfolds as the field; Akula withdraws and grounds it. The Śākta current touches the universe from all sides, but the supreme Hara draws the whole field into the Akula ground where the waves subside.
This is why the point follows the time discussion. Time belongs to the unfolded field. Dream-time, waking-time, memory, future, duration, sequence — all are movements in Kula. Saṃhāra is the return of that movement into Akula. The one who knows this is not trapped by the temporal display. He sees time as Śakti’s play and withdrawal as Hara’s power.
The phrase is brief, but the turn is immense: from the elasticity of dream-time to the metaphysical principle of withdrawal. Consciousness manifests time; Hara withdraws the manifestation. The supreme ground is Akula, beyond the grouped waves, yet never separate from the power that displays them.
So this point marks the descent into deeper seeing. Before true darśana can be explained, the waves must first be understood as withdrawn. Ordinary seeing happens within the spread of forms. Abhinava is preparing another kind of seeing: vision from the Akula ground, after saṃhāra, where the temporal and sensory waves no longer command the field.
The movement turns toward Sadāśiva through jñāna-śakti
tato'nantaramabhipretaṃ
pretaśabdavācyasadāśivatattvaniviṣṭajñānaśaktyābhimukhyena
“After that, what is intended is approached through orientation toward jñāna-śakti, established in the Sadāśiva-tattva, which is indicated by the word preta.”
After naming the supreme Hara as saṃhāra, called Akula, Abhinava turns to what follows that withdrawal. Once the waves of time, dream, waking, and temporal variety are drawn back, the movement does not simply end in blankness. From Akula-saṃhāra there is a turn toward jñāna-śakti, the power of knowing, established in Sadāśiva-tattva.
This is a delicate transition. Saṃhāra is not annihilation into nothing. It is withdrawal into the ground from which a higher mode of manifestation can appear. The scattered field is gathered back; then a subtler seeing becomes possible. This is why Sadāśiva enters here. Sadāśiva is not the fully objectified field of “this.” It is the level where the “I” still predominates and “this” begins to appear only faintly within it. It is the threshold where manifestation is not yet hardened into external objecthood.
The phrase preta-śabda-vācya is difficult and should not be over-romanticized. Abhinava is likely working with a technical word-play or śāstric decoding in which preta points toward Sadāśiva-tattva. We should not force a crude meaning of “corpse” here, though that resonance may hover in the background of Tantric language. The safer reading is that he is identifying a term in the root verse or mantraic sequence with Sadāśiva through the inner logic of the tradition.
The important movement is this: after Akula-saṃhāra, the practitioner becomes oriented toward jñāna-śakti seated in Sadāśiva. This prepares the next explanation of darśana, seeing. True seeing will not be ordinary sensory looking. It will arise from a level where the object is not fully externalized, where the desired form is still held inside the “I” as a subtle emergence.
This continues the time argument precisely. In dream, time unfolds within the pramātṛ. In saṃhāra, the temporal spread is withdrawn into Akula. Now, through Sadāśiva’s jñāna-śakti, form begins to appear again — but not yet as a hard external object. It appears from within consciousness, faintly differentiated, still soaked in the “I.”
So this point is a hinge. The passage has moved from the elasticity of time to withdrawal, and now from withdrawal toward luminous seeing. The waves have gone down. The ground is Akula. From that ground, jñāna-śakti begins to face the intended object through the Sadāśiva level, where seeing is still rooted in the Heart rather than scattered outward through the senses.
The Devatā’s icchā becomes the kalana of forms and the consuming movement of seeing
devatāyā icchāyā rūpaṃ
rūpāṇāṃ kalanam
sākṣasya sendriyasya rūpasyādanaṃ bhakṣaṇamatanaṃ
[ada bhakṣaṇe ata sātatyagamane iti dhāt |]
ca sātatyagamanaṃ kṛtvā
“The form of the Devatā’s icchā is the measuring or articulation of forms. For the visible form together with the senses, seeing is eating, consuming, and going continuously — according to the roots ad, ‘to eat,’ and at, ‘to go continuously.’”
Abhinava now enters the inner mechanics of darśana, seeing. But this is not ordinary seeing, where an eye looks outward at an already external object. He begins from devatāyā icchāyā rūpam — the form of the Devatā’s will.
This matters. Seeing begins in icchā, not in the eye. The object is first held in the movement of divine will. Before it becomes a clear external form, before it stands as “this object over there,” it is gathered in the Devatā’s icchā. The root of perception is not passive reception; it is Śakti’s will to reveal.
Then he says this icchā becomes rūpāṇāṃ kalanam — the kalana of forms. Kalana can mean measuring, forming, articulating, bringing into determinate presentation. The forms are not merely lying outside waiting to be photographed by the senses. They are shaped, measured, made manifest within consciousness. Seeing is already creative articulation.
This continues the previous point on Sadāśiva. At that level, the object has not yet hardened into full externality. It is still a slight differentiation within the “I.” Now icchā begins to move as jñāna-śakti, and forms begin to be measured out. The object emerges, but its root is still inward.
Then Abhinava uses the fierce language of ādana, bhakṣaṇa, and atana — taking in, eating, consuming, and continuous movement. The gloss gives the roots: ad, to eat; at, to go continuously. This is not decorative etymology. It changes the meaning of seeing.
To see is to consume form.
The eye does not merely stand apart from the visible. The visible enters the field of awareness. It is taken in, assimilated, drawn into the knower. Every act of perception is a subtle eating. The form is “outside” only at the surface. In actual seeing, it is brought into consciousness, tasted, processed, made part of the field.
This is why Abhinava says sākṣasya sendriyasya rūpasya — the visible form together with the senses. The senses are not neutral windows. They are powers of contact, taking, consuming, moving. They carry form into cognition. Seeing is a movement of Śakti through the senses, not a mechanical optical event.
And sātatyagamana, continuous going, is also essential. Perception is not a static snapshot. It is a flow. The object appears, is taken in, held, shifted, re-seen, connected, dissolved, renewed. Seeing moves. The senses move. Icchā moves into jñāna. The form moves from inward possibility into manifest appearance and then back into the field of awareness.
This is why the language feels almost visceral. Abhinava wants us to stop thinking of perception as a clean distance between subject and object. Seeing is contact. Seeing is taking in. Seeing is eating. Seeing is the Devatā’s will moving continuously through the senses and forms.
But this must not be made crude. He is not saying that the eye physically devours the object. He is showing the energetic and cognitive structure of perception. The form is consumed in the sense that it is drawn into awareness and made part of the knower’s field. The visible is not left outside. It becomes interiorized through the act of darśana.
This prepares the next movement. If seeing is consuming and continuous movement, then true seeing will require the senses to be restrained from outward scattering and drawn back by Rudra’s powers. The object must not be lost in externality. It must be taken into the Heart without doubt.
So this point makes darśana fierce. Seeing is not passive looking. It is the Devatā’s icchā becoming form, form becoming measurable, the senses consuming appearance, and consciousness continuously moving through what it reveals.
Drawn by the powers of restraining and melting, he sees without doubt
rodhanadrāvaṇarūpaśaktibhirākṛṣṭaḥ
paśyati asaṃdigdhaṃ kṛtvā
etaduktaṃ bhavati
“Drawn by the powers whose forms are restraining and melting, he sees, having made it free from doubt. This is what is being said.”
Abhinava now names the forces that make true seeing possible: rodhana and drāvaṇa — restraining and melting.
This is one of the most practical points in the passage. Ordinary seeing is not neutral. The eyes open, the senses rush outward, and immediately the mind begins to scatter. A form appears, and the old machinery starts: “I like this,” “I dislike this,” “I want this,” “I fear this,” “What does this mean for me?” “How can I possess it?” “How can I avoid it?” The object is not simply seen; it is seized by memory, desire, fear, naming, comparison, and projection.
That is paśu-seeing.
The eye touches the form, but the mind instantly wraps it in vikalpa. The object becomes external, hard, separate, charged. The seer stands here, the seen stands there, and between them moves attraction, aversion, doubt, hunger, anxiety. This is why ordinary seeing is exhausting. The senses do not merely show the world; they pull the being into dispersion.
So first comes rodhana — restraining.
Rodhana does not mean destroying the senses. It means stopping their blind outward rush. The eye still sees, but it no longer runs after the object. The mind still registers form, but it does not immediately become enslaved by reaction. The old scattering is checked. The object is not allowed to drag the whole being outward into fragmentation.
This is extremely concrete. In ordinary life, one can feel the difference. A person sees something attractive and is pulled outward. Sees something threatening and contracts. Sees something painful and recoils. Sees something desirable and begins to imagine. Sees something ambiguous and becomes restless. That is seeing without rodhana. The object commands the inner field.
In true darśana, the outward rush is restrained. The senses become quiet without becoming dead. They become precise without becoming hungry. They no longer leak the Self into the object.
But restraint alone is not enough. If there is only restraint, the result may be stiffness, suppression, dryness, or dissociation. The object remains hard, and the practitioner merely refuses to react. That is not Abhinava’s vision. So there is also drāvaṇa — melting.
Drāvaṇa melts the hardness of the seen object. The form is no longer experienced as a solid external thing standing against consciousness. The boundary softens. The object’s apparent otherness begins to dissolve. It is not denied; it is melted back into the field from which it arises. The seer does not annihilate the seen. He sees it as Śakti’s form, as appearing within consciousness.
This is the difference between suppression and recognition. Suppression says: “Do not look. Do not react. Control yourself.” Recognition says: “See fully, but do not exile the object from the Heart.” Rodhana restrains the outward scattering. Drāvaṇa melts the object’s separateness. Together they make darśana possible.
That is why Abhinava says the practitioner is ākṛṣṭaḥ — drawn by these powers. He does not produce this seeing by muscular effort. The Rudra-śaktis draw him inward. Something deeper than ordinary will pulls the senses back into the Heart. The eye sees, but the seeing is gathered. The mind knows, but the knowing is not scattered. The form appears, but the form is already softened into consciousness.
Then: paśyati asaṃdigdhaṃ kṛtvā — he sees, having made it free from doubt.
This doubtlessness is not the crude certainty of someone insisting, “I am right.” It is not intellectual confidence. It is not the fanatic certainty of belief. It is doubtless because the distance between seeing and source has been removed. The object is no longer guessed from outside. It is seen from within the field that manifests it.
Ordinary seeing doubts because it sees fragments. It sees surfaces and tries to infer the whole. It sees an expression and guesses the heart. It sees an event and invents a story. It sees a form and projects memory onto it. Therefore ordinary perception is mixed with doubt even when it feels confident.
Realized seeing is different. It does not mean omniscient theatrical clairvoyance in every ordinary matter. It means that, in the moment of true darśana, the object is not held as an alien fragment. It is drawn back into the current of Śakti. The senses are restrained from scattering, the form is melted from external hardness, and the knower sees from the Heart. There, doubt has no place to grip.
A practical example: an ordinary person sees another person’s face and immediately overlays history, desire, resentment, fear, attraction, status, personal need. He does not see the person; he sees his own vikalpa wrapped around the person. A clearer seeing restrains that rush. Then the hardened projection begins to melt. The person is seen more directly, with less hunger, less fear, less story. In realized seeing, this reaches its highest form: the seen is not reduced to personal projection at all. It is seen as a wave of the same consciousness.
So darśana is not passive looking. It is a Śākta transformation of perception.
The senses are not thrown away. They are reclaimed. The visible world is not rejected. It is melted out of crude objecthood. The knower is not made blank. He is drawn by Rudra’s powers into a seeing where the object no longer stands outside the Heart.
This is why the sequence matters:
First, icchā holds the object inwardly.
Then jñāna-śakti begins to reveal it.
Then the senses would normally rush outward.
Rodhana restrains that rush.
Drāvaṇa melts the object’s separateness.
Then the practitioner sees without doubt.
This is the practical anatomy of sacred seeing.
The paśu sees and is pulled outward.
The yogin sees and draws the seen back into the Heart.
The realized one sees from the place where seer, seeing, and seen have already begun to melt into one Śākta current.
Only then does paśyati become true darśana.
Darśana arises when icchā becomes jñāna-śakti and the senses are drawn back
yadidaṃ darśanaṃ nāma
tatsarvataraṅgapratyastamayākhyākulasattādhirūḍhasya
anantamahimasvātantryayogāt icchāśaktimataḥ
saivecchā svāntargatā iṣyamāṇavastuna īṣadasphuṭabhedāvabhāsanarūpajñānaśaktyātmakatāmeti
tajjñānaśaktiviśeṣaspandanarūpasamastendriyāṇāṃ bahīrodhanam
etadeva sātatyagamanam
tacca drāvaṇaṃ
tadeva bhakṣaṇam
ete eva vamanabhakṣaṇe darśanasya sarvaprathaikamayatvāt
prathāyāśca tathāvidhavaicitryayogāt
aniścitobhayālambanatvamapi sthāṇupuruṣādāvapi asaṃdigdhameva
“What is called seeing is this: for one established in Akula-being, known as the setting of all waves, and endowed with the infinite greatness of freedom, that very icchā-śakti, inwardly containing the desired object, becomes jñāna-śakti in the form of a slight, not-yet-fully-clear manifestation of difference. The special vibration of that jñāna-śakti restrains all the senses outwardly. This itself is continuous movement; this is melting; this itself is eating. These alone are vomiting and eating, because seeing is one with all manifestation, and because manifestation possesses such variety. Even where there is an uncertain double support, as in the case of a tree-stump and a person, it is still without doubt.”
Abhinava now gives the inner anatomy of darśana. This is not ordinary seeing. Ordinary seeing begins with the assumption that there is a subject here, an object there, and the senses stretch outward to capture it. Abhinava reverses the entire structure. True seeing begins from Akula-sattā — the being of Akula, the ground where all waves have set.
The phrase sarva-taraṅga-pratyastamaya is decisive: the setting, subsiding, or sinking down of all waves. The waves are the movements of objectivity, time, sensory scattering, desire, fear, memory, conceptual division. In ordinary seeing, the waves are active. The object appears, and immediately the inner sea begins to move: attraction, aversion, naming, comparison, doubt, story. But here the seer is adhirūḍha, established upon the Akula-being where those waves have already gone down.
So seeing does not begin from agitation. It begins from the settled ocean.
This seer is also endowed with ananta-mahima-svātantrya-yoga — the infinite greatness of freedom. That matters because the object does not appear by compulsion. In ordinary perception, the person is struck by the world. He is dragged by forms. He is pulled by what appears. Here, the power of seeing belongs to freedom. The seer is not invaded by objects; the desired object arises within the freedom of consciousness.
Then Abhinava states the central process: icchā-śakti itself, containing the desired object inwardly, becomes jñāna-śakti. The object is first held in will, in the inward movement of Devī’s intention. It is svāntargata, contained within. Then it begins to appear as knowledge — not as a fully external object, but as īṣad-asphuṭa-bheda-avabhāsana, a slight and not-yet-fully-clear manifestation of difference.
This is extremely subtle. Before the object becomes hard and external, before it is fully “that thing over there,” it trembles inside consciousness as a slight differentiation. The object begins to emerge, but it has not yet fallen into crude otherness. This is the Sadāśiva-like zone of seeing: “I” remains dominant, and “this” begins to shimmer within it.
That is true darśana at its root. Not the eye chasing an object, but icchā becoming jñāna while the object is still inwardly held.
Then comes the role of the senses. The special vibration of this jñāna-śakti becomes samastendriyāṇāṃ bahīrodhanam — the outward restraint of all the senses. This does not mean the senses are destroyed. It means they are stopped from scattering outward into externality. They no longer rush toward the object as if it were outside the Heart. Their outward momentum is restrained by the spanda of jñāna-śakti itself.
This is where the previous point on rodhana and drāvaṇa becomes clear. Rodhana restrains the outward rush. Drāvaṇa melts the object’s hard separateness. Here Abhinava says that this same process is sātatyagamana, continuous movement; drāvaṇa, melting; and bhakṣaṇa, eating.
Seeing is continuous movement because consciousness does not freeze into a static object. It keeps moving through manifestation. Seeing is melting because the object’s external hardness dissolves back into awareness. Seeing is eating because the object is taken into the field of the knower. It is not left outside as alien. It is consumed into consciousness.
Then he adds the fierce pair: vāmana and bhakṣaṇa — vomiting and eating. This language is intentionally strong. Seeing both emits and consumes. Consciousness throws forth the visible world and takes it back in the same act. The object appears outwardly, yet is inwardly assimilated. Darśana is not passive reception; it is the pulsation of manifestation itself.
This is why he says darśanasya sarva-prathā-eka-mayatvāt — seeing is one with all manifestation. Prathā is appearing, shining-forth, manifestation. Seeing is not a small sensory event inside a private organism. Seeing is the same principle by which reality appears at all. The eye is only one doorway. The deeper seeing is consciousness manifesting itself.
And because manifestation has such variety, Abhinava can even include uncertain perception — sthāṇu-puruṣa, the classic case of mistaking a tree-stump for a person. Even there, he says, there is a kind of doubtlessness. This sounds strange at first. But the point is not that the empirical judgment is always correct. The point is that the appearing itself is certain. Whether the object is determined as “stump” or “person,” manifestation has occurred. The prathā is undeniable. The uncertainty concerns the constructed object; the appearing itself is not doubtful.
This is a subtle but powerful distinction. Ordinary cognition doubts the object: “Is it a man or a stump?” But Abhinava is pointing deeper: the manifestation as such is not in doubt. The field has appeared. Consciousness has displayed form. The object may be indeterminate between two supports, but the fact of appearing is firm.
So this entire point redefines darśana.
Seeing is not the senses going outward.
Seeing is icchā becoming jñāna.
Seeing is the desired object emerging within consciousness as slight difference.
Seeing is the restraint of the senses from outward scattering.
Seeing is the melting of externality.
Seeing is the eating and emitting of form.
Seeing is one with manifestation itself.
The paśu sees objects and is captured by them.
The yogin sees forms as movements of Śakti.
The one established in Akula sees from the place where all waves have already set, and from that stillness the world appears and is consumed in the same act.
That is why true darśana is free from doubt. Not because every conceptual identification is infallible, but because the appearing of consciousness is self-luminous. The world may waver between stump and man. The Heart does not waver in its own manifestation.
Bhairava remembers and sees directly, drawn by Rudra’s powers
evaṃ duṣkṛtamayī parameśaśaktiḥ
evaṃ tu asau parāpararūpasmṛtiśaktimān bhairava ityāha praharadvayetyādi
evaṃ tu smaran jāyate vyoma vidyate yatra puryaṣṭake śūnye ca
tatpramātṛrūpatāmādadhānaḥ
praharopalakṣitaṃ darśanākhyaṃ rūpaṃ yadā punaḥ punaḥ parāmṛśati smaratyapi ca
prāgvat sākṣātpaśyatyasaṃdigdhamākṛṣṭo rudraśaktibhiḥ
iti saṃbandhaḥ |
“In this way, the power of Parameśa operates even through what is formed of difficult or adverse action. Thus he says, with the expression ‘two watches’ and so on, that this Bhairava is endowed with the power of memory whose form is both higher and lower. Remembering in this way, he becomes the knower of the space that exists in the puryaṣṭaka and in śūnya. When he again and again reflects upon, remembers, and directly sees the form called darśana, marked by the watches of time, then, as before, he sees it directly and without doubt, drawn by the Rudra-powers. This is the syntactic connection.”
Abhinava now closes the movement by returning to smṛti, remembrance. After the analysis of darśana as icchā becoming jñāna-śakti, after the restraint and melting of the senses, after seeing was shown as the very play of manifestation, he gathers the point into Bhairava’s power of memory.
The phrase duṣkṛtamayī parameśaśaktiḥ is difficult and should be handled carefully. We should not build too much on it as though the reading were entirely transparent. But the direction seems to be that Parameśa’s Śakti can operate even through what appears adverse, distorted, karmically difficult, or bound up with duṣkṛta. This would fit the wider movement: even the uncertain, the mixed, the ambiguous, the temporally conditioned, and the apparently impure can be drawn into the power of recognition. Nothing is outside Śakti’s capacity to reveal.
Then Abhinava says that Bhairava is parāpara-rūpa-smṛti-śaktimān — endowed with the power of memory whose form is both higher and lower. This is important. Bhairava’s remembrance is not one-sided. It does not remember only the supreme while rejecting the lower. Nor does it remain trapped in lower empirical memory. It holds both: the higher and the lower, the transcendent and the manifest, the Akula ground and the Kula display.
This is the mature form of smṛti. Ordinary memory binds because it repeats past impressions and reinforces identity. A person remembers insult, pleasure, loss, fear, desire, and becomes more deeply woven into the same pattern. But Bhairava’s memory is different. It remembers the supreme through the manifest. It does not let the lower stand alone as a closed fact. It holds the lower in relation to the higher, and therefore memory becomes liberating rather than binding.
Then Abhinava says: evaṃ tu smaran jāyate vyoma vidyate yatra puryaṣṭake śūnye ca tatpramātṛrūpatām ādadhānaḥ. Remembering in this way, he becomes the knower of the space present in the puryaṣṭaka and in śūnya. This returns to the earlier discussion of body, prāṇa, puryaṣṭaka, and śūnya. These layers were not to be rejected; they were to be entered by awakened subjectivity. Now Bhairava’s remembrance makes him the pramātṛ of the space within them.
This is subtle and powerful. The puryaṣṭaka, the subtle body-complex, and śūnya, the void-state, can become traps if taken as final. A practitioner may become fascinated by subtle experience or by emptiness and mistake them for the end. But Bhairava’s memory penetrates them. It assumes the form of the knower there. It does not get lost in the subtle body or void; it knows the space within them.
Then comes the repeated movement: punaḥ punaḥ parāmṛśati smaratyapi ca — again and again he reflects upon it and remembers it. This is not mechanical repetition. It is living re-contact. The form called darśana, marked by the measures of time such as the prahara, is repeatedly brought back into awareness. The seeing is not allowed to collapse into one past event. It is remembered, re-entered, re-touched.
And then: sākṣāt paśyati asaṃdigdham — he sees directly, without doubt.
This returns us to the whole point of the chunk. Dream showed that time is variable within the pramātṛ. Akula-saṃhāra withdrew the waves. Sadāśiva’s jñāna-śakti allowed the object to appear as slight differentiation within icchā. Rodhana and drāvaṇa restrained and melted the senses. Darśana was shown as manifestation itself, both eating and emitting form. Now Bhairava, endowed with this higher-lower memory, directly sees.
The final phrase gives the force behind this seeing: ākṛṣṭo rudraśaktibhiḥ — drawn by the Rudra-powers.
This is not self-generated fantasy. It is not the mind repeatedly imagining a sacred vision. He is drawn. The Rudra-śaktis pull the field into clarity. They restrain, melt, attract, and disclose. The practitioner remembers, but this remembrance is not merely mental effort. It is assisted, seized, and drawn by the powers of Rudra.
So the closure is exact. True darśana is not passive perception, not ordinary memory, not imagination, not clairvoyant theatre. It is the direct seeing that arises when the field has been withdrawn into Akula, when icchā becomes jñāna-śakti, when the senses are restrained and melted, when memory holds both the supreme and the manifest, and when Rudra’s powers draw the practitioner into doubtless vision.
Bhairava remembers — and therefore sees.
But this memory is not nostalgia or mental recall.
It is the power that reconnects the lower to the higher, the seen to the Heart, time to the timeless, and the object to the Śakti that manifests it.
That is why the final syntactic relation matters. The one who remembers in this way sees directly, without doubt, because he is drawn by Rudra-śaktis. Seeing is no longer the eye’s outward hunger. It is the Heart’s recognition of its own manifestation.
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