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| A paired mandalic image of the Supreme Heart. In one image, the Goddess appears in the upper orb while a Bhairava abides below; in the reversed companion, the positions are inverted. At the center, a spiral heart-space joins the two poles, while serpent-bands and flowering branches frame the whole. Together the pair suggests the circulation of grace and awareness, the union of Śiva and Śakti, and the yogic realization of the hṛdaya-bīja within the body. |
After sealing the Anuttara doctrine and placing siddhi-oriented yoga beneath the fullness of jīvanmukti, Abhinava now lets the remaining text descend into yogamārga, the path of yogic practice. This transition is important. The highest truth has already been established: the Heart is not produced, the bīja is always arisen, pūjā is ultimately the living recognition of Consciousness, and Anuttara leaves no real space for constructed bhāvanā. Yet not every practitioner stands steadily in that recognition. Therefore the text now gives a method — not because the Heart is absent, but because the practitioner may still need a way to stabilize, enter, and taste it through yogic contemplation.
The root verse instructs the sādhaka to meditate on the bīja without beginning or end, located in the middle of the blossoming tithis, placed within the Heart-lotus, and to practice constantly upon the lunar essence. This is already a shift in tone. The previous sections unfolded the metaphysics of the Heart, the always-arisen pūjā, and the nondual inclusion of all differentiation. Here the same Heart is approached through a concrete contemplative image: the Heart-lotus, the bīja, the moon, the tithis, the nectar, and the subtle current of practice.
Abhinava first explains that the Heart-bīja is anādyanta, without beginning and end, because it has no coming and going. It is not a mantra that appears at one moment and disappears at another in its true nature. It is satatodita, always arisen. The practitioner may enter it through practice, but the bīja itself is not newly produced by practice. It is the ever-present Heart, now approached through yogic concentration.
The bīja is said to stand in the middle of the blossoming tithis because it is fullness. The tithis, lunar phases, suggest expansion, measure, growth, and the unfolding of kalās. But the Heart-bīja is not lost in this unfolding. It abides in the center, as the fullness around which the lunar movement becomes meaningful. The yogic image therefore carries the same doctrine already established: expansion and contraction, fullness and measure, moon and Heart, practice and recognition are all gathered around the same center.
The Heart-lotus too must be read carefully. Abhinava does not reduce it to a crude anatomical object. The lotus is a way of speaking about the Heart under the aspect of contraction and expansion. A lotus closes and opens; the Heart gathers and unfolds. So the meditation on the Heart-lotus is not merely inner visualization. It is a contemplative way of entering the same pulse that the previous chunk described as the expansion and contraction of Consciousness.
Then Abhinava introduces a yogic interpretation associated with Bhaṭṭa Dhaneśvara Śarmā. Here the language becomes more technical and bodily: the lunar essence, the sixteen kalās, nectar, nāda, mudrā, the beak-like seal, the drawing and tasting of amṛta, the relation of moon and sun, and bodily signs such as horripilation, tears, trembling, and stillness. This must be handled carefully. These are not casual poetic images, and they are not to be flattened into psychology. They describe a subtle yogic process in which the Heart-bīja is practiced as living lunar nectar, sound-current, and embodied transformation.
At the same time, we should not let the technicality obscure the main movement. The practice is still centered on the Heart-bīja. The yogic details are not separate from Anuttara; they are a method for the practitioner who needs a concrete contemplative approach. The bīja remains beginningless and endless. The Heart remains always arisen. The moon-essence and nectar imagery are not creating the Heart; they are ways of letting the practitioner enter and taste what has already been established as the supreme Heart.
The text has not abandoned the high doctrine; it is giving it a yogic body. The Heart that was defined as sphurattā now becomes the Heart-bīja in the lotus. The always-arisen pūjā now becomes constant practice. The supreme fullness now becomes lunar nectar. The metaphysics becomes method.
The doctrine descends into the body.
But the center remains the same: the beginningless Heart-bīja, always arisen, shining in the lotus of the Heart.
The text now descends from Anuttara into yogic method
taṃ yogamārgaṃ nirūpayituṃ granthaśeṣo'vatarati
ādyantarahitaṃ bījaṃ vikasattithimadhyagam |
hṛtpadmāntargataṃ dhyāyetsomāṃśaṃ nityamabhyasyet || 33 ||
“To explain that path of yoga, the remainder of the text now descends.
‘One should meditate on the bīja, without beginning and end, abiding in the middle of the blossoming tithis, placed within the Heart-lotus; one should constantly practice the lunar essence.’”
Abhinava now marks a real transition. The previous movement established the nature of Anuttara in detail: the Heart as the one sphurattā, the always-arisen pūjā, the fearless movement through all domains, the insufficiency of constructed bhāvanā at the highest level, and the superiority of jīvanmukti over siddhi-seeking. Now, after that high seal, the text does not simply stop. It descends into yogamārga, the yogic path.
This descent should not be misunderstood. The text is not returning to a lower doctrine because the Anuttara teaching was incomplete. It is not saying that the Heart now has to be produced by yogic technique. Rather, Abhinava is turning toward the practitioner who still needs a method — someone who cannot simply abide in firm Heart-recognition, but needs a concrete contemplative approach, a way to stabilize the bīja in the subtle body, to enter the Heart through practice, and to taste the lunar current of the mantra.
So the word avtarati — “descends” — is important. The teaching descends from the already established summit into a method suited to practice. This is not a fall from truth. It is compassion toward the practitioner’s actual condition. Anuttara is the truth; yogamārga is the way that truth is made approachable for one who still needs meditation, repetition, visualization, subtle placement, and constant abhyāsa.
The root verse gives the whole structure in compressed form. The sādhaka is to meditate on the bīja that is ādyanta-rahita, without beginning and end. This bīja is not merely a syllable that starts when it is pronounced and ends when the sound fades. In its real nature, it is the Heart-bīja, always present, without coming and going. The practice does not create it; practice discovers and stabilizes attention in it.
The bīja is also vikasat-tithi-madhyagam — situated in the middle of the blossoming tithis. This brings in the lunar symbolism. The tithis unfold like phases, measures, kalās, progressive openings of fullness. But the bīja stands in their middle, not as one fragment among fragments, but as the center around which this lunar unfolding becomes intelligible. The practice is therefore not merely “visualize a moon.” It is to contemplate the bīja as the center of the expanding lunar fullness.
Then comes hṛtpadmāntargatam — placed within the Heart-lotus. Again, this is not a crude anatomical localization. The Heart-lotus is the yogic symbol of the Heart under the aspect of contraction and expansion. A lotus closes and opens; the Heart contracts and expands; consciousness withdraws and manifests. So the bīja is to be meditated upon inside the Heart-lotus because the yogic body becomes the field where the cosmic pulse is practiced inwardly.
Finally, the verse says somāṃśaṃ nityam abhyasyet — one should constantly practice the lunar essence. This introduces the next layer of explanation: soma, moon, nectar, kalā, amṛta, nāda, and subtle yogic experience. But already the direction is clear. The Heart-bīja is practiced as a lunar essence, something cooling, nourishing, full, subtle, and nectar-like. The fierce fire of the previous sections is not denied, but here the method turns toward the moon-current of the Heart.
This is a major change in texture. Earlier, the emphasis was on recognition, self-offering, inner fire, and the burning of vāsanā-seeds. Now the text begins to speak in the language of lunar practice: blossoming tithis, Heart-lotus, soma, nectar, and constant abhyāsa. The same Heart is being approached from a different angle. What was established as metaphysical truth now becomes a yogic object of meditation.
The key is to keep the hierarchy clear. This practice is not higher than Anuttara. It is a descent from the established Anuttara teaching into method. The bīja remains beginningless and endless. The Heart remains always arisen. The soma-practice does not manufacture the supreme state; it gives the practitioner a way to enter it through the body, breath, subtle current, and contemplative repetition.
So this opening verse is not merely technical. It marks the beginning of the final practical movement: the doctrine takes a yogic body.
The Heart that was defined as sphurattā now becomes the bīja in the Heart-lotus.
The always-arisen pūjā now becomes constant practice.
The supreme fullness now begins to appear as lunar nectar.
The summit has already been shown. Now the text teaches how one may approach it through yogic contemplation.
The Heart-bīja is beginningless and endless because it has no coming or going
etadeva hṛdayaṃbījaṃ dīpakābhāvāt gamāgamaśūnyatvāt satatoditatvācca anādyantaṃ
“This very Heart-bīja is without beginning and end, because there is no limiting indicator, because it is empty of coming and going, and because it is always arisen.”
Abhinava now explains why the bīja is called ādyanta-rahita, without beginning and end. This is not merely a poetic description. He gives reasons: it has no dīpaka, no limiting indicator or external marker that would make it begin here and end there; it is gamāgama-śūnya, empty of coming and going; and it is satatodita, always arisen.
This is essential. A spoken mantra has a beginning and an end. The tongue begins the sound, the breath carries it, the syllable becomes audible, then the sound fades. A written bīja has boundaries on a page. A mentally repeated bīja seems to arise in one moment and disappear in the next. But Abhinava is not speaking only of the gross appearance of the mantra. He is speaking of the Heart-bīja in its real nature. As Heart-bīja, it is not produced by pronunciation, writing, or mental repetition. Those are ways the sādhaka approaches it. They do not create its essence.
The bīja is beginningless and endless because it is not an event inside time. It is the seed-form of the Heart’s own self-revelation. It does not travel from absence into presence and then vanish again into absence. It is not absent before japa and present after japa. It is always already there as the living center of sphurattā, the flashing aliveness by which even the act of remembering, meditating, or reciting appears.
This matters practically because the sādhaka easily mistakes practice for production. He thinks: “When I meditate, the bīja appears. When I stop meditating, the bīja disappears. When I do japa well, the Heart is present. When I fail, the Heart is gone.” At the level of personal experience, this may feel true. Attention comes and goes. Clarity comes and goes. Absorption comes and goes. The felt presence of mantra may strengthen or weaken. But Abhinava is pointing deeper: the Heart-bīja itself does not come and go. Only the practitioner’s recognition of it fluctuates.
This is why satatodita is such an important word. The bīja is always arisen. It does not wait to be awakened like a dead object. Practice is not the act of making the bīja exist; it is the act of aligning the contracted mind with what is already arisen. The sun is not produced by opening the eyes. The opening of the eyes only removes the blindness. In the same way, abhyāsa does not manufacture the Heart. It gradually removes the practitioner’s misalignment with the ever-arisen Heart-bīja.
This also protects the yogic method from becoming mechanical. The upcoming practice speaks of the Heart-lotus, lunar essence, nectar, kalās, nāda, mudrā, and bodily signs. These are powerful contemplative and yogic images. But none of them should be understood as creating the real bīja. They are methods of entry. They are ways of bringing body, breath, imagination, and subtle awareness into relation with the Heart. The essence remains beginningless and endless.
So this point keeps the hierarchy intact. The text has descended into yogamārga, but it has not abandoned Anuttara. Even here, at the beginning of yogic practice, the bīja is defined by Anuttara qualities: no beginning, no end, no coming, no going, always arisen. The yogic method is not a factory of realization. It is a disciplined mode of turning toward the ever-present.
There is also a severe spiritual implication here. If the bīja is always arisen, then forgetfulness is not the absence of the Heart. It is the contraction of recognition. The sādhaka cannot say, “The Heart was not there.” More precisely, he must say: “I was not available to what was already shining.” This is not meant to produce guilt. It is meant to remove fantasy. The Heart is not unreliable. The practitioner’s attention is unreliable. The bīja does not fail to arise. The mind fails to notice what is always arisen.
This makes practice both humbling and hopeful in a sober sense. Humbling, because the practitioner cannot claim to produce the sacred through effort. Hopeful, because the sacred is not distant. The Heart-bīja does not need to be dragged from some remote heaven. It is nearer than the effort to find it. It is the seed of the very awareness in which the search occurs.
So when the verse says to meditate on the bīja without beginning and end, it means: do not treat the bīja as a temporary object appearing inside the mind. Meditate on it as the ever-arisen Heart, empty of coming and going, beyond temporal boundary, present before the act of meditation, present during the act of meditation, and present when the act dissolves.
The practice begins in time.
But the bīja practiced is not bound by time.
The bīja stands in the middle of the blossoming tithis as fullness
tadeva vikasat paripūrṇatvaṃ yātaṃ tithīnāṃ madhyagaṃ - hṛdayatvāt
“That very bīja, blossoming and having reached complete fullness, stands in the middle of the tithis — because it is the Heart.”
Abhinava now explains the phrase vikasat-tithi-madhyagam — “abiding in the middle of the blossoming tithis.”
The bīja is not only beginningless and endless. It is also vikasat, blossoming, and paripūrṇatvaṃ yātam, having reached fullness. This brings in the lunar structure of the verse. The tithis, the lunar phases, are measures of growth, unfolding, increase, fullness, and decline. They represent a rhythm of manifestation. The moon does not appear all at once in the visible sky. It waxes, expands, fills, becomes complete, and then wanes. So the tithis carry the symbolism of measured unfolding.
But Abhinava says the bīja stands in the middle of them.
This is important. The Heart-bīja is not merely one phase inside the lunar sequence. It is not trapped in the partiality of waxing and waning. It is the center from which the phases become meaningful. It is the fullness hidden in the very movement of measure. The lunar phases may unfold in sequence, but the Heart is the center of their sequence, because the Heart is the place where expansion and contraction are held together.
This connects directly to the previous chunk. The Heart expands and contracts. It gathers and unfolds. It rests and flashes forth. Now that same doctrine is expressed through lunar imagery. The tithis blossom; the bīja remains in their middle as fullness. The moon waxes and wanes, but the Heart-bīja is not merely waxed or waned. It is the living center of the whole lunar rhythm.
So the sādhaka is not simply meditating on a decorative moon-symbol. He is meditating on the fullness that stands within the measured unfolding of time and energy. The tithis are measures. The Heart is the center that is not exhausted by measure. The phases blossom, but the bīja is their inner fullness.
This also matters practically. The practitioner’s experience also has phases. Clarity waxes and wanes. Devotion waxes and wanes. Energy waxes and wanes. Concentration waxes and wanes. Sometimes the practice feels luminous and full; sometimes dry and partial. If one identifies only with the phases, one becomes unstable. One becomes excited during expansion and discouraged during contraction. One thinks the Heart is present when the moon is full and absent when the light decreases.
Abhinava’s teaching cuts that mistake.
The Heart-bīja is in the middle of the tithis. It is present through the whole rhythm, not only at the pleasant peak. The phases move around it. The fullness is not only the visible full moon; fullness belongs to the Heart that holds the entire cycle.
This is a subtle but powerful correction. Spiritual life often becomes addicted to full-moon states: intensity, sweetness, clarity, tears, power, expansion, visible signs, inner nectar, beautiful meditation. But the Heart is not only there. The Heart is also the center during decrease, silence, obscuration, dryness, and return. The bīja is not destroyed when the phase changes.
The phrase hṛdayatvāt — “because it is the Heart” — is the key. The bīja stands in the middle because the Heart is the middle in the deepest sense. Not a spatial middle only, but the center where the whole cycle is gathered. The Heart is the point where expansion does not become scattering and contraction does not become loss. It is the center of the lunar wheel, the place where the rhythm of manifestation remains rooted in fullness.
This also explains why the bīja is described as paripūrṇa, complete. The bīja is small only externally. A seed looks small, but it contains the whole tree. A bīja looks like a syllable, but it contains the whole field of practice, the whole cycle of tithis, the whole movement of Śakti. Its fullness is not quantitative size. It is intensity of containment.
The Heart-bīja is the seed in which the lunar current is gathered.
The tithis unfold as sequence.
The bīja holds them as fullness.
The moon moves through phases.
The Heart remains the center of the movement.
So the meditation now becomes more precise. The sādhaka is to contemplate the bīja not as a transient sound, and not as a phase-bound image, but as the fullness in the middle of the blossoming lunar cycle. The practice enters time and measure, but it is anchored in what does not come and go.
This is why the yogic method still remains faithful to Anuttara. It uses phases, symbols, lotus, moon, nectar, and kalās, but it does not absolutize any phase. The Heart is the center of all phases.
The bīja is beginningless and endless.
And in the middle of the blossoming tithis, it stands as fullness.
The Heart-lotus is the living field of contraction and expansion
tadeva saṃkocavikāsadharmopacaritapadmabhāve kande guhye hṛdaiva dhyāyet
“One should meditate on that very bīja with the Heart itself, in the hidden bulb/root, under the condition of lotus-nature, figuratively applied because of its qualities of contraction and expansion.”
Abhinava now explains why the verse speaks of the Heart-lotus. He does not let the image become crude. The lotus is not merely a decorative yogic picture placed inside the chest. Nor is it simply an anatomical organ. The lotus-image is used because of saṃkoca and vikāsa — contraction and expansion. A lotus closes and opens. The Heart gathers and unfolds. Consciousness contracts inward and expands outward. So the “Heart-lotus” is a yogic way of speaking about the living pulse of the Heart.
This is important because spiritual imagination can become very literal. The practitioner hears “Heart-lotus” and begins to imagine a fixed inner flower, as if the goal were to construct a stable picture inside the body. That may have preliminary value as support, but Abhinava is doing something subtler. The lotus is not the essence. The lotus is an image used because it carries the rhythm of the Heart: closing, opening, gathering, blossoming. The real object of meditation is the Heart-bīja, and the lotus is the symbolic form under which the Heart’s pulsation becomes contemplatively accessible.
The phrase kande guhye also matters. The bīja is contemplated in the hidden root or bulb. The lotus does not begin from the visible petals. It has a hidden source, a root, a generative base. This fits the whole movement of the passage. The sādhaka is not being asked to meditate on outer display, but on the secret source from which blossoming arises. The petals may open, the tithis may unfold, the lunar essence may be tasted, but the practice goes toward the hidden root of the Heart.
And Abhinava says hṛdaiva dhyāyet — one should meditate with the Heart itself. This is a very precise phrase. The Heart is both the field and the instrument of meditation. One does not meditate on the Heart merely from the head, as an observer constructing an inner object. One meditates with the Heart. The Heart recognizes the Heart-bīja in the Heart-lotus. The practice is therefore not a detached visualization exercise. It is a self-turning of awareness into its own root.
This protects the method from becoming mechanical. If one visualizes the lotus only as a mental image, the practice remains externalized inside the mind. It may be subtle, but it is still “I am here, the lotus is there, I am looking at it.” Abhinava’s phrase moves deeper. The meditation must be done hṛdā, by the Heart, with the Heart, from the Heart. The subject of meditation has to soften into the field being meditated upon.
The lotus-symbol also continues the previous teaching on lunar phases. The tithis blossom, the bīja stands in their middle, and the Heart-lotus opens and closes. The whole practice is built on a rhythm: fullness, unfolding, inward gathering, outward expansion, nectar, sound, and return. This is not static iconography. It is a contemplative anatomy of pulsation.
This is where the yogic method remains faithful to the earlier metaphysics. The previous chunks described the Heart as expanding and contracting the universe, as the source of creation and withdrawal, as the place of repose and re-emergence. Now the same doctrine is brought into meditation. The sādhaka enters that cosmic pulse through the Heart-lotus. The universe expands and contracts; the lotus opens and closes; the bīja remains in the center; the Heart practices itself.
So the instruction is not: invent an inner flower and stare at it.
The instruction is: enter the hidden Heart-root where contraction and expansion are already happening, and meditate on the beginningless bīja there with the Heart itself.
That is a very different practice.
The lotus is the image.
The pulse is the meaning.
The Heart is both the place and the one who meditates
Bhaṭṭa Dhaneśvara’s reading: the lunar essence, nectar, nāda, and embodied transformation
kiṃ ca asya dhyānamāha somāṃśaṃ ṣoḍaśakalātmakaṃ somarūpam abhitaḥ samantādasyet kṣipet - paripūrṇacandrasyāsya hṛtkarṇikāniveśikalayā svasvadvādaśāntagapuṣpādyudayasthānāt āhṛtāmṛtasparśaḥ prodyannādānusāracumbikālakṣaṇakākacañcupuṭamudrāmudritaḥ punastadapasṛtaśiśirāmṛtarasāsvādavikasvarahārdasomaprasarannādanirmathitasudhāpānapūritacandramāḥ punaḥ sūryakalodayamayānackasakāramātraviśrānto romāñcastobhotpatanarvāṣpakampastambhādyanugṛhītadeho'bhyāsaṃ kuryāditi bhaṭṭadhaneśvaraśarmā |
“And further, he explains its meditation: one should cast or project all around this lunar essence, whose nature is the sixteen kalās and whose form is soma.
According to Bhaṭṭa Dhaneśvara Śarmā: by means of the kalā installed in the pericarp of the Heart of this full moon, touched by the nectar drawn from the respective places of arising — such as the dvādaśānta and the flower — sealed by the kāka-cañcu-puṭa-mudrā, whose characteristic is the kissing/fusion that follows the rising nāda, and then, as that cool nectar-taste flows away again, with the Heart-moon blossoming, with the moon filled by drinking the nectar churned by the spreading nāda, and again resting only in the sa-kāra made of the arising of the solar kalā, the practitioner should perform the practice, his body graced by signs such as horripilation, upward surge, tears, trembling, and stillness.”
Abhinava now brings in a technical yogic interpretation attributed to Bhaṭṭa Dhaneśvara Śarmā. The tone shifts again. We are no longer speaking only of the Heart-bīja as beginningless, endless, always arisen, or placed in the Heart-lotus. Now the verse is read through a concrete subtle practice involving the moon, sixteen kalās, nectar, nāda, mudrā, the dvādaśānta, the Heart, sun and moon currents, and bodily signs of yogic intensity.
The key term here is somāṃśa — the lunar essence, the moon-part, the nectar-bearing portion of the practice. Bhaṭṭa Dhaneśvara reads it as ṣoḍaśa-kalātmaka, composed of the sixteen lunar kalās. This means the practice is not merely a vague contemplation of coolness or moonlight. It is tied to the full lunar structure, to the complete moon, to the fullness of kalā. The bīja in the Heart-lotus is practiced as a lunar fullness whose essence is nectar.
The image is dense: the paripūrṇa-candra, the full moon, is connected with the Heart. The hṛt-karṇikā, the pericarp of the Heart-lotus, becomes the place where a kalā is installed or entered. Nectar is drawn from subtle points such as the dvādaśānta, the point beyond the body often treated as a subtle terminus of the vital current, and from other places of arising described through imagery such as the flower. The practice involves bringing this nectar-current into relation with the Heart-moon.
This is not decorative poetry. It is subtle yogic physiology. The sādhaka is not merely imagining a moon in the heart because it is beautiful. He is engaging a current: drawing, touching, sealing, tasting, letting the nectar descend or circulate, and allowing the Heart to blossom through that cool lunar rasa. The lunar symbolism means fullness, nectar, coolness, nourishment, soma, and the amṛta aspect of the Heart.
Then comes nāda. The practice follows the rising sound-current — prodyan-nāda. This is important because the Heart-bīja is not only visual or lunar; it is sonic. The current of nāda rises, and the mudrā seals the movement. The kāka-cañcu-puṭa-mudrā, the “crow-beak enclosure/seal,” is described through a kind of kissing or joining that follows nāda. We should not pretend to reconstruct the full practical technique from this passage alone, but the direction is clear: sound, subtle gesture, and nectar are integrated. The practice is not merely mental. It includes body, breath, subtle sound, and seal.
The moon is then filled by drinking the nectar churned by the spreading nāda — prasaran-nāda-nirmathita-sudhā-pāna-pūrita-candramāḥ. This is a striking image. Nāda churns nectar. The moon drinks that nectar and becomes filled. The Heart-moon blossoms through the taste of the cool amṛta. Again, this is yogic language for a real inner process: the sound-current stirs the subtle field, nectar is released or tasted, and the Heart-center becomes filled and expanded.
Then the passage says the practitioner again rests in the sa-kāra, connected with the arising of the solar kalā. This indicates that the lunar current is not isolated from the solar current. Soma and sūrya, moon and sun, cool nectar and radiant heat, are being brought into a cycle. The Heart-practice is not merely lunar passivity. It includes the solar emergence and the resting of the mantraic element in that rise. The practice therefore holds both cooling nectar and fiery emergence, both moon and sun, both rasa and power.
Finally, Bhaṭṭa Dhaneśvara mentions bodily signs: romāñca, horripilation; stobha, a kind of upward surge or arresting impact; aśru, tears; kampa, trembling; stambha, stillness or immobilization, and similar signs. These are described as gracing the body. This should be handled carefully. Such signs are not the essence of realization. They are not to be imitated, chased, or used as proof of superiority. But in this yogic context, they indicate that the practice has entered the body deeply enough to affect the embodied system. The mantra, nectar, nāda, and Heart-moon are not remaining as abstractions; they shake, cool, fill, and arrest the body.
This is where the passage becomes very concrete. The doctrine has descended into embodiment. Earlier, Abhinava established that the Heart is the one sphurattā shining within and everywhere. Here, that same Heart is practiced as a lunar bīja in the lotus, tasted as nectar, stirred by nāda, sealed by mudrā, and registered in the body through trembling, tears, stillness, and rising force. The metaphysics has entered the nerves.
But the hierarchy still matters. These signs are not the goal. The goal is not to tremble, cry, or display yogic effects. The goal is the steady entry into the Heart-bīja. The signs may come as grace of the process; they may also not come visibly. If the practitioner clings to them, the practice becomes siddhi-hunger or experience-hunger. If they arise and are offered back into the Heart, they remain part of the yogic unfolding.
This is especially important because this section follows the warning about siddhi-oriented practice as lower than jīvanmukti. We should therefore read the technical practice with sobriety. Abhinava is not inviting fascination with inner phenomena for their own sake. He is showing a yogic method through which the Heart-bīja may be approached by those who need method. The lunar nectar, nāda, mudrā, and bodily signs are meaningful only when they serve the Heart, not when they become new possessions of the practitioner.
So Bhaṭṭa Dhaneśvara’s reading gives a first yogic body to the root verse. The beginningless bīja becomes the full moon in the Heart. The blossoming tithis become the sixteen kalās. The Heart-lotus becomes the place where nectar is drawn and tasted. Nāda churns the inner soma. Mudrā seals the current. Sun and moon interact. The body is touched by signs of inner transformation.
The doctrine has not been abandoned.
It has become practice.
The teachers’ reading: kalā-grāsa, the seventeenth kalā, and the ever-arisen Heart-japa
ādyantarahitaṃ sakāramātraṃ ṣoḍaśākārāditithisahitaṃ kalāgrāsakrameṇa hṛdaye'ntarnikṣipet nālikājalākarṣaṇavat calanakampanaspandanasamāviṣṭamūlādhāratrikoṇabhadrakandahṛnmukhamudrāsu yugapadeva vilaṃmbitamadhyadrutataratadatiśayādidhārāprāptivaśagalitasūryasomakalājālagrāse ādyantarahitaṃ kṛtvā ādyantābhyāmetadbījamātṛkāpekṣayā aukārasakārābhyāṃ rahitaṃ viśleṣaṇayuktilabdhavīryaparicayaṃ dhruvaṃ visargātmakaṃ vikasatāṃ pañcadaśānāṃ tithīnāṃ yanmadhyaṃ tithirahitameva grastakālaṃ ṣoḍaśaṃ tato'pi gacchati yat saptadaśī kalā ityuktam somasya ṣoḍaśātmakam āmṛtamaṃśaṃ hṛtkamale dhyāyet tadeva nityamabhyasyedityasmadguravaḥ
“Our teachers explain it thus: one should place inwardly in the Heart the beginningless and endless sa-kāra alone, together with the sixteenfold form and the tithis, through the sequence of devouring the kalās.
Like drawing water through a tube, in the root-base, triangle, auspicious bulb, Heart, mouth, and mudrās — all pervaded by movement, trembling, and spanda — through streams that arise simultaneously in slow, middle, fast, faster, and more intense modes, the network of solar and lunar kalās melts and is devoured. In this way, one makes it beginningless and endless.
With reference to this bīja-mātṛkā, it is without beginning and end because it is free from au-kāra and sa-kāra as beginning and end. Through the method of separation, one becomes acquainted with its vīrya. It is fixed, of the nature of visarga. It is the middle of the fifteen blossoming tithis, itself beyond tithi, devouring time; it is the sixteenth, and beyond even that goes what is called the seventeenth kalā.
One should meditate in the Heart-lotus on the amṛta-portion of Soma, whose nature is sixteenfold. This very thing should be constantly practiced — so say our teachers.”
Abhinava now brings in the interpretation of his own teachers — asmadguravaḥ — and the commentary becomes even denser. The earlier reading of Bhaṭṭa Dhaneśvara Śarmā gave the practice through lunar nectar, nāda, mudrā, the full moon in the Heart, and bodily signs. Here the teachers read the same root verse through kalā-grāsa, the devouring or absorption of the kalās, and through the hidden logic of the sixteenth and seventeenth lunar powers.
The practice begins with sakāramātra, the bare sa-kāra. This is important because the bīja is being treated not merely as a full audible syllable, but as something that can be analytically opened, separated, and brought to its vīrya. The teachers say it should be placed inwardly in the Heart together with the sixteenfold structure and the tithis, through the sequence of kalā-devouring. So the practice is not just “visualize the moon in the heart.” It is a subtle process of gathering, melting, consuming, and interiorizing the solar and lunar measures of manifestation.
The image nālikā-jala-ākarṣaṇavat — like drawing water through a tube — is very concrete. The current is not vague. Something is being drawn inward, pulled through a channel, absorbed into the Heart. The passage names several loci: mūlādhāra, the root base; trikoṇa, the triangle; bhadra-kanda, the auspicious bulb or root-center; hṛd, the Heart; mukha, the mouth; and mudrā. These are not isolated points. They are part of one subtle current, pervaded by calana, movement, kampana, trembling, and spandana, pulsation.
This means that the practice is not static visualization. It is current, tremor, pulsation, absorption. The yogic body becomes a field where the kalās are drawn, melted, and consumed. This continues the whole doctrine of the Heart as expansion and contraction. Here, the cosmic rhythm is practiced through subtle embodiment. The solar and lunar kalās are not left as external cosmological symbols; they are drawn into the practitioner’s own field.
The passage also speaks of streams arising in different intensities — slow, middle, fast, faster, and beyond. This suggests that the process is not one flat movement. The current can thicken, accelerate, intensify. The sādhaka’s practice may pass through different rhythms of absorption. The network of sūrya-soma-kalā, solar and lunar kalās, melts and is devoured. This is kalā-grāsa: the measured powers of manifestation are consumed back into the Heart.
This is why the bīja becomes ādyanta-rahita, beginningless and endless. At the ordinary level, a bīja may have beginning and end, letters and sequence, sound and cessation. But through the method of separation — viśleṣaṇa-yukti — one comes to know its vīrya. The bīja is freed from its apparent beginning and end, here described with reference to au-kāra and sa-kāra. What remains is dhruva, fixed, and visargātmaka, of the nature of visarga.
This is a crucial move. The practice is not merely about repeating the bīja as a sound-form. It is about discovering the potency hidden in the bīja by separating, devouring, and returning its measurable components to the visarga-source. The bīja is no longer experienced as a finite syllable with a start and finish. It becomes a doorway into the pulse of emission itself.
Then comes the lunar doctrine. The bīja is placed in the middle of the fifteen blossoming tithis, yet that middle is itself tithi-rahita, beyond tithi. It devours time — grasta-kāla. This is very subtle. The practice uses lunar measures, but its center is beyond measure. It uses tithis, but it leads to what is beyond tithi. It uses time, but the Heart consumes time. The fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth kalā language shows exactly this movement: from measured lunar fullness toward the hidden surplus beyond ordinary measure.
The sixteenth is already fullness. But the text says that beyond even that goes what is called the saptadaśī kalā, the seventeenth kalā. This is the secret excess beyond the full moon’s visible completeness. It is not merely fullness as completion of a cycle; it is the transcendence of the cycle through the hidden amṛta-essence. The Heart is not only the full moon. It is the nectar beyond the full moon.
So the instruction becomes: meditate in the Heart-lotus on the amṛta-aṃśa of Soma, whose nature is sixteenfold. This lunar essence is to be constantly practiced. But by now we see that the “lunar essence” is not simply coolness or aesthetic moon-symbolism. It is the nectarous surplus of the Heart beyond measurable phases, beyond ordinary time, beyond the coming and going of practice.
This is why this section is so technical. Abhinava is not giving ornamental mysticism. He is recording a real yogic hermeneutics of the verse, where letters, kalās, tithis, solar and lunar currents, visarga, spanda, time, and the Heart-lotus are all woven into one practice.
The practical meaning is this: the practitioner takes what appears sequential, measured, temporal, lunar, bodily, and sonic, and draws it inward until it reveals the beginningless Heart-bīja. The tithis are used, but transcended. The kalās are invoked, but devoured. The bīja is analyzed, but only to discover its indivisible vīrya. The moon is contemplated, but what is tasted is the amṛta beyond time.
So the yogic method is still faithful to Anuttara.
It uses measure to reach the immeasurable.
It uses the lunar phases to reveal the tithi-less center.
It uses the body to disclose the Heart.
It uses the bīja to enter the visarga-source from which the bīja itself shines.
Soma is Bhairava born from the union-shock of Umā and the Lord
tathāhi - sahomayā bhagavatyā saṃghaṭṭātmakasamāpattikṣobheṇa tattvanirmathanātmanā vartate iti somo bhaṭṭārakaḥ tasya samagrabhāvāvayavinaḥ paripūrṇāhamātmanoṃ'śo nīlasukhādiḥ tadevamabhyasyati
“For thus: Soma-Bhaṭṭāraka exists through the agitation of samāpatti whose nature is conjunction with Bhagavatī Umā, and whose nature is the churning of the tattvas. Of that Lord, whose whole being is complete and whose nature is the fullness of ‘I,’ the portions are blue, pleasure, and the like. Thus one practices this.”
Abhinava now explains Soma in a striking way. Soma is not merely the physical moon. It is not merely a cool lunar substance. It is Soma-Bhaṭṭāraka, the Lord as soma, arising through the shock of union with Bhagavatī Umā. The phrase is sahomayā bhagavatyā saṃghaṭṭātmaka-samāpatti-kṣobha — the agitation or tremor of samāpatti whose nature is conjunction with Umā.
This is not ordinary calm moon-symbolism. Soma arises from saṃghaṭṭa, contact, conjunction, collision, intimate meeting. It is born from the kṣobha, the tremor, of union. The lunar nectar is therefore not passive coolness. It is the rasa released by the meeting of Śiva and Śakti, Bhairava and Bhairavī, prakāśa and vimarśa. The moon is full because the union has churned the tattvas.
The text says this process is tattva-nirmathana-ātmaka, of the nature of churning the tattvas. This is a powerful phrase. The tattvas are not just metaphysical categories listed in a chart. In this yogic context, they are churned, stirred, pressed, agitated until nectar is released. The whole structure of manifestation becomes a churning field. Soma is not outside the tattvas; Soma is released when the tattvas are churned by the union-shock of the divine pair.
This connects beautifully with the earlier fire imagery. There, the vāsanā-seeds were burned in the great fire of Parabhairava, kindled by the friction of Śiva and Parāśakti. Here, the same polarity appears in a lunar register: the conjunction of Umā and the Lord churns the tattvas and releases soma. Fire burns the seeds; moon releases nectar. Both are movements of the same Heart.
Abhinava then describes Soma-Bhaṭṭāraka as samagra-bhāva-avayavin, the whole whose limbs are all states or beings, and paripūrṇa-aham-ātman, whose nature is the full “I.” This is crucial. Soma is not a fragmentary substance. He is the Lord whose body is the totality and whose essence is the complete aham. The nectar is not separate from supreme I-consciousness. The lunar essence belongs to the full “I” of the Heart.
Then the text says that nīla-sukha-ādi, “blue, pleasure, and so on,” are portions or aspects of that Soma. We should be careful here. This likely points to various experienced aspects, forms, colors, tastes, or experiential qualities that arise as portions of the full Soma-consciousness. They are not independent goals. They are parts of the total Lord whose nature is complete I-consciousness.
This is the point where the yogic imagery becomes metaphysically grounded. The practitioner is not chasing nectar as a subtle pleasure. He is not practicing moon-yoga for refined inner sensation alone. The soma to be practiced is the Lord as the nectarous fullness of the Heart, born of Śiva-Śakti conjunction, churning the tattvas, and expressing the complete “I.”
So the practice has voltage.
It is not “cool moon meditation” in a soft aesthetic sense.
It is the tasting of the nectar released when the whole structure of manifestation is churned by divine union.
This also explains why the earlier bodily signs may arise: tears, trembling, horripilation, stillness. If the practice truly touches this level, the body is not indifferent. The tattvas are being churned; the Heart-moon is filling; the nāda is stirring; soma is being tasted. The practice enters the embodied field, and the embodied field responds.
But again, the goal is not the sign. The goal is entry into the Heart-bīja through the soma-current. The nectar is meaningful because it belongs to paripūrṇa-aham, the complete I-consciousness. If the practitioner takes the nectar as a private experience to possess, he falls back into contraction. If he recognizes it as Soma-Bhaṭṭāraka, the lunar Lord of the full Heart, then the experience becomes upāya.
So this section reveals the inner meaning of somāṃśa.
Soma is the Lord.
Soma is born from the union-tremor of Umā and the Lord.
Soma is released by churning the tattvas.
Soma is the nectarous aspect of the complete “I.”
And this is what the sādhaka constantly practices in the Heart-lotus.
Another reading: the Heart-to-dvādaśānta current and the filling of the lunar kalās
anye tu hṛtsthānāt dvādaśāntaṃ yaścāraḥ ṣaṭtriṃśadaṅgulaḥ tatra sūryarūpatayollāsya bahirardhatuṭimātraṃ viśramya avināśyamṛtākhyavisargarūpasomakalodaye sapādāṅguladvitayamātrāyāṃ tuṭau tuṭau pratyekaṃ candrakalāparipūraṇe pañcadaśyāṃ tuṭau pūrṇāyāṃ hṛtpadme pūrṇaśca bhavati ardhatuṭimātraṃ ca tatrāpi viśrāntiḥ evaṃ ṣoḍaśatuṭyātmā ṣaṭtriṃśadaṅgulaścāro bhavati ityavasthāyāmādyantarahitam anastamitatvāt vikasatsu dvitīyādiṣu antargataṃ somāṃśaṃ visargarūpaṃ hṛtpadmamadhye viśliṣya saptadaśātmakaṃ pariśīlanena dhyāyan kalāgrāsābhyāsaṃ kuryāt ityādi samādiśan sarvaṃ caitat yuktameva mantavyam |
“Others, however, explain it thus: the movement from the Heart-place to the dvādaśānta is thirty-six aṅgulas. There, having flashed forth in the form of the sun, and having rested outside for only half a tuṭi, when the soma-kalā arises in the form of visarga, called imperishable nectar, then in each tuṭi — measuring two and a quarter aṅgulas — each lunar kalā is filled. When the fifteenth tuṭi is full, the Heart-lotus too becomes full, and there also there is repose for half a tuṭi. Thus the movement of thirty-six aṅgulas consists of sixteen tuṭis.
In this condition, because it is unsetting, it is without beginning and end. Among the blossoming tithis beginning with the second, one should separate within the middle of the Heart-lotus the somāṃśa, whose nature is visarga, and, meditating on it through practice as being of the nature of the seventeenth kalā, one should perform the practice of kalā-grāsa. All this, as taught, should be regarded as valid.”
Abhinava now records another interpretation of the same root verse. This reading is more technical and spatial. It traces a subtle movement from the hṛtsthāna, the Heart-place, to the dvādaśānta, the subtle terminal point beyond the body. The measure is given as thirty-six aṅgulas, which already suggests that this is not merely poetic imagery but a precise yogic mapping of the current.
The movement rises as sūrya-rūpa, in the form of the sun. It flashes outward, rests briefly, and then the lunar side appears: the soma-kalā arises as visarga-rūpa, the form of emission, called imperishable nectar. So again we have the familiar Śaiva polarity: sun and moon, radiance and nectar, emergence and repose, heat and coolness, projection and return. The practice is not one-sided. The solar current flashes forth; the lunar nectar fills and returns.
The passage then measures the process through tuṭis. In each tuṭi, each lunar kalā is filled. By the fifteenth, fullness is reached, and the Heart-lotus also becomes full. Then there is a brief repose. The whole thirty-six-aṅgula movement is described as consisting of sixteen tuṭis. This gives the practice a subtle rhythm: extension, flashing, resting, lunar filling, completion, repose, and return into the Heart.
This is dense material, and we should not pretend to reconstruct the full practical technique from it. But the doctrinal movement is clear. The practice uses measure in order to reach what exceeds measure. It uses a counted current, spatial extension, lunar phases, solar emergence, and subtle timing; yet the aim is the ādyanta-rahita bīja, the beginningless and endless Heart-bīja that does not truly rise and set.
This is why the text says it is anastamita, unsetting. The sun rises and sets; the moon waxes and wanes; breath moves; subtle currents travel; kalās fill and are devoured. But the Heart-bīja, in its real nature, does not set. The yogic movement is practiced within sequence, but it points to what is not exhausted by sequence.
The key phrase is somāṃśaṃ visargarūpam — the lunar essence whose nature is visarga. Soma is not merely cool lunar substance. It is tied to visarga, to the power of emission, release, overflow, and creative pulsation. The practitioner is to separate or discern this somāṃśa in the middle of the Heart-lotus and meditate upon it through practice as saptadaśātmaka, of the nature of the seventeenth kalā.
The seventeenth kalā is crucial because it exceeds the ordinary counted fullness. Fifteen tithis reach lunar fullness; the sixteenth indicates fullness more deeply; but the seventeenth suggests the surplus beyond the measured lunar cycle, the hidden nectar beyond visible completion. So the practice of kalā-grāsa, the devouring of kalās, is not merely the consumption of phases. It is the return of measurable powers into the unmeasured Heart.
In simple terms: the current rises from Heart to dvādaśānta, flashes as solar radiance, rests, fills through lunar nectar, completes the lunar sequence, returns to the Heart-lotus, and there the practitioner discerns the soma-visarga as the secret seventeenth kalā. The practice takes the whole measured structure of subtle embodiment and consumes it back into the beginningless Heart-bīja.
So this alternative reading continues the same core theme of the verse. The bīja is without beginning and end. It is placed in the Heart-lotus. It is lunar, nectarous, and full. But here the verse is unfolded through a precise yogic current: Heart, dvādaśānta, thirty-six aṅgulas, sixteen tuṭis, sun, moon, visarga, lunar filling, and kalā-grāsa.
The body becomes a measured mandala.
The current becomes a rosary.
The moon becomes nectar.
The kalās are filled and devoured.
And the Heart remains the beginningless center of the whole movement.
The Triṃśikā is an Anuttara-sūtra, so the verse carries infinite meanings
atra cāvṛttyānantaṃ vyākhyānaṃ sūtratvādupapannameva yata uktam anantārthasūtraṇātsūtram iti triṃśikā cānuttarasūtram iti guravaḥ | evaṃ pūrveṣvapi ślokasūtreṣu || 33 ||
“And here, because this is a sūtra, endless interpretation through repetition is entirely appropriate. For it is said: ‘It is a sūtra because it strings together infinite meanings.’ And the teachers say that the Triṃśikā is an Anuttara-sūtra. The same applies also to the previous verse-sūtras.”
Abhinava now closes the commentary on verse 33 with a hermeneutic seal. This is very important, because the verse has just been interpreted in several different ways: through the beginningless Heart-bīja, through the blossoming tithis, through the Heart-lotus, through the lunar essence, through Bhaṭṭa Dhaneśvara’s nectar and nāda reading, through the teachers’ kalā-grāsa interpretation, and through this alternative Heart-to-dvādaśānta current. A lesser reader might ask: which interpretation is the real one?
Abhinava’s answer is: the verse is a sūtra.
And a sūtra is not exhausted by one interpretation.
He cites the definition: anantārtha-sūtraṇāt sūtram — it is called a sūtra because it strings together infinite meanings. This does not mean that one may invent anything arbitrarily. It means that a true sūtra condenses a living field of meaning. Its words are compact, but their depth is not exhausted by a single surface reading. The sūtra functions like a seed: small in form, immense in unfolding.
This is especially true here because the teachers say the Triṃśikā is an Anuttara-sūtra. That phrase carries weight. It means that the text is not merely a collection of verses about a doctrine; it is a sūtra of Anuttara itself. Its verses are compressed openings into the unsurpassed Heart. Therefore, multiple valid unfoldings can arise from the same verse, provided they remain faithful to the Anuttara-core.
This also explains why Abhinava preserves several interpretations instead of flattening them into one. The Heart-bīja can be read mantraically, lunar-yogically, kalā-wise, visarga-wise, bodily, cosmologically, and contemplatively. These readings are not necessarily competitors. They are different openings of the same condensed sūtra. The verse is not a dead line with one mechanical meaning. It is a living knot of doctrine and practice.
But this principle must be handled carefully. “Infinite meanings” does not mean uncontrolled fantasy. It does not mean that every projection of the mind is equally valid. The interpretations must be rooted in the wording, the śāstra, the practice-lineage, and above all the Anuttara meaning. A sūtra permits infinite depth, not arbitrary distortion. Its meanings are infinite because the Heart is inexhaustible, not because interpretation has no discipline.
This is very relevant to the whole project of commentary. A superficial translation gives one layer. A scholastic gloss gives another. A yogic reading opens another. A metaphysical reading opens another. A lived recognition opens yet another. The verse can be returned to again and again, and each return may reveal a new contour. That is not inconsistency. That is the nature of a true sūtra.
Abhinava also says: evaṃ pūrveṣv api śloka-sūtreṣu — the same applies to the previous verse-sūtras. This retroactively confirms the whole style of the Vivaraṇa. The earlier verses too were not merely simple statements. They were sūtra-like condensations, carrying layered meanings: ritual, mantra, phoneme, tattva, body, consciousness, guru, bhakti, self-offering, fire, bīja-awareness, and Anuttara.
So this closing note justifies the abundance of the commentary. The text is not being over-explained from the outside. The commentary is drawing out what the sūtra has compressed. The verse is small because it is dense, not because it is simple.
This gives the perfect closure to verse 33. The bīja is beginningless and endless; the Heart-lotus holds the lunar essence; the soma-current can be practiced in several ways; kalās may be filled, devoured, and surpassed; the seventeenth kalā may be contemplated; and all these readings are valid because the Triṃśikā is an Anuttara-sūtra.
The sūtra is a seed.
The commentary is its unfolding.
And because the seed is Anuttara, its meanings are not exhausted.
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