Part V — Nāmas 84–111 (Ślokas 34–40): The Mantra-Body and the Ascent of Kuṇḍalinī
ॐ श्रीमात्रे नमः · oṃ śrīmātre namaḥ
The form becomes mantra
Part V enters the esoteric heart of the hymn. With the war over, desire itself is revived — restored, purified, to its source. Then the names turn inward and upward: the Goddess's very body is read as the three kūṭas of the root-mantra, fulfilling what the opening nyāsa announced and what the body-description quietly marked; she is named through the secret vocabulary of kula and akula and samaya; and at last the hymn traces the rise of the coiled power through the centres of the subtle body, piercing the three knots, to the thousand-petalled lotus and the down-raining nectar. The fourfold treatment holds, and the same key now turns in the body itself: the ascent of kuṇḍalinī is the adhyāropa-apavāda enacted in the flesh — each knot a layer of the primal superimposition, each piercing an un-saying, until the power that coiled itself into a world uncoils into the recognition that it was never bound.
॥ श्रीललितासहस्रनामस्तोत्रम् ॥
The Thousand Names — Ślokas 34–40 (Nāmas 84–111)
Śloka 34
हर-नेत्राग्नि-संदग्ध-काम-संजीवनौषधिः ।
श्रीमद्वाग्भव-कूटैक-स्वरूप-मुख-पङ्कजा ॥ ३४॥
hara-netrāgni-saṃdagdha-kāma-sañjīvanauṣadhiḥ |
śrīmad-vāgbhava-kūṭaika-svarūpa-mukha-paṅkajā ǁ 34 ǁ
The war is over, and the first thing restored is desire. The same kāma that, burnt to ash, had hardened into the demon is now revived by the Goddess as the very herb of life — desire returned to its source, no longer binding craving but icchā-śakti, the creative will that is awareness's own self-delight. And with the next name the great mantra-uddhāra begins: the hymn now reads Her very body as the three kūṭas of the pañcadaśī, fulfilling what the nyāsa announced at the threshold and what the kūṭa-boundaries marked in the body-description. Form is about to become mantra, and mantra the gateway to the silent Self.
84. हरनेत्राग्निसंदग्धकामसंजीवनौषधिः — Hara-netrāgni-sandagdha-kāma-sañjīvanauṣadhiḥ
Translation: The herb of life that revives Kāma, consumed by the fire of Hara's (Śiva's) eye.
Adhyāropa–Apavāda: The very desire that, burnt to ash, had given rise to the demon born of that ash is here brought back to life — by Her. The apavāda: desire is not finally to be destroyed but restored to its source. Burnt and repressed, kāma had hardened into the contraction; revived by the Goddess, it is desire returned to its true nature — not binding craving but icchā-śakti, the creative will that is awareness's own self-delight. The war ends, and love is given back its life, purified — no longer the root of bondage but the first stirring of the Self toward itself.
Śrī Vidyā: The reviving of Kāma after the victory is read as the return of icchā-śakti to its place; in the Śrī Vidyā the kāma-principle (the kāmarāja) is central, and Kāmeśvarī revives it as her own first power — the will-to-manifest, now turned toward grace rather than grasping.
85. श्रीमद्वाग्भवकूटैकस्वरूपमुखपङ्कजा — Śrīmad-vāgbhava-kūṭaika-svarūpa-mukha-paṅkajā
Translation: Whose lotus-face is one in essence with the vāgbhava-kūṭa (the first section of the mantra).
Adhyāropa–Apavāda: Now the great identification: Her face is the vāgbhava-kūṭa, the first cluster of the mantra. The apavāda: to call the face “the seed of speech” is already to stop seeing flesh and to see sound — the form is being read as mantra, and mantra is the bridge by which form dissolves into its sonic essence and the essence into the silence beyond all sound. The face described blossom by blossom in the opening ślokas returns here not as a face but as a syllable-cluster of the Self.
Śrī Vidyā: This is the mantra-uddhāra: the body of the Goddess mapped onto the three kūṭas of the pañcadaśī. The face is the vāgbhava-kūṭa, the realm of speech and knowledge (jñāna-śakti); as the nyāsa declared at the outset, this kūṭa is the bīja.
Śloka 35
कण्ठाधः-कटि-पर्यन्त-मध्यकूट-स्वरूपिणी ।
शक्तिकूटैकतापन्न-कट्यधोभाग-धारिणी ॥ ३५॥
kaṇṭhādhaḥ-kaṭi-paryanta-madhya-kūṭa-svarūpiṇī |
śakti-kūṭaika-tāpanna-kaṭyadho-bhāga-dhāriṇī ǁ 35 ǁ
86. कण्ठाधःकटिपर्यन्तमध्यकूटस्वरूपिणी — Kaṇṭhādhaḥ-kaṭi-paryanta-madhya-kūṭa-svarūpiṇī
Translation: Whose form from below the throat to the hips is the very form of the madhya-kūṭa.
Adhyāropa–Apavāda: From neck to hip She is the middle cluster of the mantra. The apavāda continues: the trunk, the seat of the heart and breath, is read as the kāmarāja-kūṭa, the section of desire-joined-to-power (icchā wedded to kriyā). Body becomes mantra section by section; what was a torso is now a band of syllables, and the contemplative who once beheld the form now sounds it.
Śrī Vidyā: The madhya- (kāmarāja-) kūṭa governs the body from throat to hip — exactly the boundary marked at the throat in the body-description; the nyāsa named this kūṭa the śakti. It is the central section, the heart of the pañcadaśī.
87. शक्तिकूटैकतापन्नकट्यधोभागधारिणी — Śakti-kūṭaika-tāpanna-kaṭyadho-bhāga-dhāriṇī
Translation: Who holds the region below the hips as one with the śakti-kūṭa.
Adhyāropa–Apavāda: Below the hips She is the third cluster, the śakti-kūṭa. The apavāda completes the equation: the whole body, crown to sole, is now resolved into the three sections of a single mantra — three bands of sound where there had seemed to be a form. The very figure so lovingly built in the first ślokas is dissolved into its sonic essence; to know Her body is to know the mantra, and to sound the mantra is to pass beyond both into the Self the mantra names.
Śrī Vidyā: The śakti-kūṭa governs hip to feet — the boundary marked at the hips in the body-description; the nyāsa named it the kīlaka, the bolt. With the three kūṭas laid over the three regions, the pañcadaśī and the Goddess's body are declared one.
Śloka 36
मूलमन्त्रात्मिका मूलकूटत्रय-कलेबरा ।
कुलामृतैकरसिका कुलसङ्केत-पालिनी ॥ ३६॥
mūla-mantrātmikā mūla-kūṭa-traya-kalebarā |
kulāmṛtaika-rasikā kula-saṅketa-pālinī ǁ 36 ǁ
88. मूलमन्त्रात्मिका — Mūla-mantrātmikā
Translation: Whose very Self is the root-mantra.
Adhyāropa–Apavāda: She is not merely indicated by the mantra; She is its self. The apavāda: where deity and mantra are one, the worshipped and the means of worship collapse together — and since the mantra is finally only sound resolving into silence, She who is its self is the silence at the root of all sound, the awareness from which the first syllable arises. To be the root-mantra is to be that to which every mantra returns.
Śrī Vidyā: The non-difference of deity and mantra (mantra-devatayor abhedaḥ) is a first principle of the tradition; She is the mūla-mantra, the pañcadaśī, in its very being.
89. मूलकूटत्रयकलेबरा — Mūla-kūṭa-traya-kalebarā
Translation: Whose body is composed of the three clusters of the root-mantra.
Adhyāropa–Apavāda: The identifications of the last names are gathered into one: Her whole body (kalebara) is the three kūṭas. The apavāda: a body made of three syllable-clusters is no body of flesh at all — it is the recognition that what appears as embodied form is, at its root, structured sound, and structured sound is structured consciousness. The kalebara dissolves into the kūṭa-traya, and the three into the one awareness that sounds them.
Śrī Vidyā: The kūṭa-traya — vāgbhava, kāmarāja, śakti — are the three sections of the pañcadaśī, correlated with the three bindus, the three guṇas, the three states, and the three peaks of the Śrī Cakra's meru; Her body as the kūṭa-traya is the fullest statement of the mantra-uddhāra.
90. कुलामृतैकरसिका — Kulāmṛtaika-rasikā
Translation: Who delights in the one nectar of the kula.
Adhyāropa–Apavāda: A turn to the secret savour — She relishes the “nectar of the kula.” The apavāda: kula here is read as the totality, the embodied flow of energy, and its nectar is the rasa of pure being-consciousness tasted at the summit; She “alone savours” it because there is no second to taste it, the enjoyer and the enjoyed being one. The deepest enjoyment is awareness relishing its own undivided fullness.
Śrī Vidyā: Kulāmṛta is the nectar of the kaula path, the amṛta that floods from the sahasrāra; She is its sole rasikā, connoisseur of the inner nectar that the coming ślokas will name as the sudhā-sāra raining down.
91. कुलसङ्केतपालिनी — Kula-saṅketa-pālinī
Translation: The protectress of the secret sign (saṅketa) of the kula.
Adhyāropa–Apavāda: She guards the saṅketa, the coded sign of the tradition. The apavāda need not strain against the esoteric: the deepest secret guarded is not a cipher but the simplest, hardest truth — that the Self alone is — which stays hidden not by Her concealment but by the seeker's own outward gaze. She “protects” it by being it; the secret keeps itself until the gaze turns in.
Śrī Vidyā: The kula-saṅketa is the secret protocol of the kaula transmission, guarded within the parampara and disclosed only to the initiate; She is its pālinī, the power that both veils and, in grace, unveils.
Śloka 37
कुलाङ्गना कुलान्तःस्था कौलिनी कुलयोगिनी ।
अकुला समयान्तःस्था समयाचार-तत्परा ॥ ३७॥
kulāṅganā kulāntaḥsthā kaulinī kula-yoginī |
akulā samayāntaḥsthā samayācāra-tatparā ǁ 37 ǁ
These names turn on the technical vocabulary of the esoteric schools. Kula, in this tradition, can mean the Śakti, the embodied flow of energy, the triad of knower-knowing-known, or the channels and the Mūlādhāra; Akula names Śiva, the transcendent ground. The pair Kaulinī … Akulā thus holds Śakti and Śiva together in a single breath. Samaya then names the inner path — the worship in which Śiva and Śakti are contemplated as equal (sama) at the sahasrāra, the line associated with the Samayācāra. The schools differ on the weight given to the kaula and samaya readings; this commentary follows neither sectarian line, reading both as figures of the one non-dual recognition, and defers to the practitioner on the finer points of the parampara.
92. कुलाङ्गना — Kulāṅganā
Translation: The noble lady (aṅganā) of the kula.
Adhyāropa–Apavāda: She is the “woman of the kula.” The apavāda: read with kula as the embodied energy and aṅganā as the feminine, the name says simply that the immanent power wears a feminine face — the energy-side of the one reality, which the seeker meets as the Mother before knowing it as the Self. The lady is awareness in its aspect of active, embracing presence.
Śrī Vidyā: Kulāṅganā is the Śakti as the presiding feminine of the kaula path; the term also evokes the faithful, cultured woman — the power that abides loyally within the kula, the system of energies.
93. कुलान्तःस्था — Kulāntaḥsthā
Translation: Who abides within the kula.
Adhyāropa–Apavāda: She dwells “inside” the kula. The apavāda: if kula is the whole web of embodied energies, to dwell within it is to be the indwelling awareness — antaḥsthā, the inner-stationed — present in every node of the energy-body as its witness, never a part of the web yet nowhere absent from it. She is the within of all that is within.
Śrī Vidyā: Kulāntaḥsthā is the Śakti immanent in the channels and centres of the subtle body, the power seated within the kula of nerves and energies that the yogin traverses.
94. कौलिनी — Kaulinī
Translation: Kaulinī — the goddess of the kaula, the union of Kula and Akula.
Adhyāropa–Apavāda: The name gathers kula and its transcendence into one feminine: Kaulinī, in whom Śakti (kula) and Śiva (akula) are not two. The apavāda: the single word holds immanence and transcendence together — energy and its ground named as one — so that the name itself enacts the non-dual, refusing to let the Self (akula) and its power (kula) fall apart.
Śrī Vidyā: Kaulinī is the union of kula (Śakti) and akula (Śiva) — the central recognition of the kaula tradition; She is the power in which the embodied and the transcendent are realised as one reality.
95. कुलयोगिनी — Kula-yoginī
Translation: The yoginī of the kula (the supreme adept, and the lineage of yoginīs).
Adhyāropa–Apavāda: She is the kula's own yoginī — both the adept and the power of yoga itself. The apavāda: yoga is union, and the kula-yoginī is the very power of joining by which the apparently separate is restored to the one; She is not a yoginī who practises union but the union that every practice seeks — awareness's own self-joining.
Śrī Vidyā: Kula-yoginī names the Goddess as chief of the yoginīs of the kaula lineage and as the kuṇḍalinī-śakti herself, the yogic power that, rising, unites the centres — anticipating the ascent the coming ślokas describe.
96. अकुला — Akulā
Translation: Akulā — she who is beyond the kula, of the nature of Akula (Śiva).
Adhyāropa–Apavāda: Now the counter-term: She is akulā, “not of the kula” — the transcendent. Having just been named as the kula in five ways, She is now named as its negation; and the two names, held together, say that the immanent and the transcendent are one and the same Goddess. To be both kula and akula is to be neither as opposed to the other — the non-dual that the very pairing points to.
Śrī Vidyā: Akula is a name of Śiva, the ground above the kula; that She is Akulā places Her as the transcendent itself, so that Kaulinī and Akulā together declare the identity of Śakti and Śiva — the heart of the doctrine.
97. समयान्तःस्था — Samayāntaḥsthā
Translation: Who abides within the samaya (the inner discipline of identity, at the sahasrāra).
Adhyāropa–Apavāda: She dwells in the samaya, the “agreement,” the inner convention of identity. The apavāda: samaya is glossed as the equality (samatā) of Śiva and Śakti, contemplated within; to dwell in the samaya is to abide in that recognised sameness — awareness resting in the realised non-difference of ground and power, the inner station where worship is no longer offered to an other.
Śrī Vidyā: Samaya names the internal worship at the sahasrāra where Śiva and Śakti are contemplated as equal (sama); Samayāntaḥsthā is the Goddess as the indwelling object of that purely internal upāsanā — the line associated with the Samayācāra.
98. समयाचारतत्परा — Samayācāra-tatparā
Translation: Who is intent upon the samayācāra (the internal, identity-based discipline).
Adhyāropa–Apavāda: She is “wholly given” to the samayācāra. The apavāda: that the Goddess herself is tatparā, intent upon the inner discipline of sameness, means the practice and its deity face the same direction — both turned toward the identity of Self and power. The worshipper's inward turn and the Goddess's own nature coincide; She is devoted to the very recognition that She is.
Śrī Vidyā: Samayācāra is the internal mode of worship, centred at the sahasrāra upon the equality of Śiva-Śakti; that She is tatparā in it has been read (notably in the Samaya school of Lakṣmīdhara) as the hymn's endorsement of the internal path — a point on which the schools differ.
Śloka 38
मूलाधारैक-निलया ब्रह्मग्रन्थि-विभेदिनी ।
मणिपूरान्तरुदिता विष्णुग्रन्थि-विभेदिनी ॥ ३८॥
mūlādhāraika-nilayā brahma-granthi-vibhedinī |
maṇipūrāntar-uditā viṣṇu-granthi-vibhedinī ǁ 38 ǁ
From here the hymn traces the rise of the coiled power through the centres of the subtle body, piercing the three knots (granthi). Read in the non-dual key, the ascent is the apavāda enacted in the flesh: each granthi is a node of the primal superimposition — a layer of the knot by which the one was bound into the appearance of many — and each piercing is an un-saying, a loosening of identification, until the risen power reaches the crown and the deathless nectar floods down.
99. मूलाधारैकनिलया — Mūlādhāraika-nilayā
Translation: Whose sole abode is the Mūlādhāra, the root-support centre.
Adhyāropa–Apavāda: She is seated at the base, the Mūlādhāra, the root centre. The apavāda: the “one abode” at the very base is where the power lies coiled and dormant — awareness at its most contracted, asleep at the root, having forgotten its own height. To name Her sole dwelling as the base is to fix the starting-point of the return: the Self is “here,” at the lowest, even before it is known to be everywhere.
Śrī Vidyā: Mūlādhāra is the root cakra at the base of the spine, seat of the dormant kuṇḍalinī; She is its sole resident, the coiled power awaiting the ascent.
100. ब्रह्मग्रन्थिविभेदिनी — Brahma-granthi-vibhedinī
Translation: Who pierces the Brahma-granthi (the first knot).
Adhyāropa–Apavāda: She breaks the first knot, the Brahma-granthi, low on the axis. The apavāda: this knot is the tie to the gross — the identification with the physical, the body taken as the self, the dense belief in materiality. To pierce it is the first un-saying: the loosening of “I am this body,” the first layer of superimposition undone as the power begins to rise.
Śrī Vidyā: The Brahma-granthi binds at the Mūlādhāra–Svādhiṣṭhāna region, the knot of attachment to the physical and to creation; its piercing frees the power for ascent toward the heart.
101. मणिपूरान्तरुदिता — Maṇipūrāntar-uditā
Translation: Who arises (shines forth) within the Maṇipūra centre.
Adhyāropa–Apavāda: Risen past the first knot, She dawns at the navel-centre, the Maṇipūra. The apavāda: udita, “arisen, dawned” — the power that lay dormant now dawns at the navel, the place of fire and transformation; awareness, loosening its grip on the gross, begins to know itself as more than the body. The verb is one of sunrise: the Self beginning to rise upon its own horizon.
Śrī Vidyā: Maṇipūra is the navel cakra, the centre of fire, the “city of jewels”; the kuṇḍalinī, having pierced the lower knot, becomes manifest here as she ascends.
102. विष्णुग्रन्थिविभेदिनी — Viṣṇu-granthi-vibhedinī
Translation: Who pierces the Viṣṇu-granthi (the second knot).
Adhyāropa–Apavāda: She breaks the second knot, the Viṣṇu-granthi, at the heart. The apavāda: this knot is the tie to the subtle — the bondage of feeling and attachment, of the affections and the sense of being a distinct experiencer; the heart's clinging to its loves and its identity. To pierce it is the second un-saying: the loosening of “I am this one who feels and relates,” the subtle layer of the superimposition undone.
Śrī Vidyā: The Viṣṇu-granthi binds at the heart (Anāhata), the knot of attachment to the subtle and to one's own preservation; its piercing frees the power toward the higher centres.
Śloka 39
आज्ञा-चक्रान्तरालस्था रुद्रग्रन्थि-विभेदिनी ।
सहस्राराम्बुजारूढा सुधासाराभिवर्षिणी ॥ ३९॥
ājñā-cakrāntarālasthā rudra-granthi-vibhedinī |
sahasrārāmbujārūḍhā sudhā-sārābhivarṣiṇī ǁ 39 ǁ
103. आज्ञाचक्रान्तरालस्था — Ājñā-cakrāntarālasthā
Translation: Who dwells in the space within the Ājñā cakra (between the brows).
Adhyāropa–Apavāda: She stands now within the Ājñā, the centre between the brows, the place of command and of the inner word. The apavāda: ājñā is “command,” and here the will and the discriminating intellect have their seat; the power risen to this centre is awareness near its own clarity, where direct knowing supersedes the lower mind. She abides in the very interior of the faculty of insight.
Śrī Vidyā: Ājñā is the cakra between the eyebrows, seat of the inner command and of the two-petalled meeting of iḍā and piṅgalā; She abides within it, where the duality of the channels resolves toward the central.
104. रुद्रग्रन्थिविभेदिनी — Rudra-granthi-vibhedinī
Translation: Who pierces the Rudra-granthi (the third and last knot).
Adhyāropa–Apavāda: She breaks the last knot, the Rudra-granthi, at the brow. The apavāda: this is the subtlest tie — the bondage to the causal, the deepest “I am the knower, the doer, the one who is aware,” the final residue of the separate self that persists even when body and feeling are transcended. To pierce it is the last un-saying, the dissolution of the root ego-knot; beyond it there is no longer anyone bound, and the power passes freely to the crown.
Śrī Vidyā: The Rudra-granthi binds at the Ājñā, the knot of attachment to the causal and to the subtle “I”; its piercing is the final liberation of the power for its rise into the sahasrāra.
105. सहस्राराम्बुजारूढा — Sahasrārāmbujārūḍhā
Translation: Who has risen to (mounted) the thousand-petalled lotus (sahasrāra).
Adhyāropa–Apavāda: The three knots pierced, She reaches the crown, the thousand-petalled lotus. The apavāda: there is, properly, nowhere left to “rise” to — the sahasrāra is not a higher place but the recognition, when every knot is loosed, that the power and its ground were never apart; the ascent completes by discovering it had no distance to cross. The Self, having seemed to climb from the base, finds itself at the crown that it always was.
Śrī Vidyā: Sahasrāra is the thousand-petalled lotus at the crown, the seat of Śiva; the kuṇḍalinī's arrival there is her union with Śiva — the consummation of the yoga, Śakti rejoined to her ground.
106. सुधासाराभिवर्षिणी — Sudhā-sārābhivarṣiṇī
Translation: Who pours down a rain of the essence of nectar (sudhā).
Adhyāropa–Apavāda: At the union of the crown, the deathless nectar floods down. The apavāda: this raining sweetness is the fruit of the whole apavāda — when the knots are undone and power meets ground, what is tasted is the immortal fullness that was always the case, now flooding the whole body-cosmos. The nectar is not gained from elsewhere; it is the bliss of the Self, released the moment its self-binding is seen through.
Śrī Vidyā: The sudhā-sāra is the lunar nectar (amṛta) that, at the union in the sahasrāra, streams down through the body, flooding and renewing it — the celebrated nectar-flood of kuṇḍalinī-yoga, identified with the bliss of Śiva-Śakti union.
Śloka 40
तडिल्लता-समरुचिः षट्चक्रोपरि-संस्थिता ।
महाशक्तिः कुण्डलिनी बिसतन्तु-तनीयसी ॥ ४०॥
taḍillatā-samaruciḥ ṣaṭ-cakropari-saṃsthitā |
mahāśaktiḥ kuṇḍalinī bisatantu-tanīyasī ǁ 40 ǁ
The ascent complete, the hymn names the risen power herself — lightning-bright, poised above the six centres, the Mahā-śakti, the Kuṇḍalinī. And it closes on a paradox: she who is the power that built the worlds and now dissolves them is “finer than a lotus-fibre.” The greatest is the most subtle; the force that projected the whole superimposition and retracts it again is slenderer than the thinnest thread — for it was never a thing among things, only the single fineness of consciousness itself. The image was foreseen in the body-description, where the waist “fine as a lotus-fibre” first hinted at this central thread.
107. तडिल्लतासमरुचिः — Taḍillatā-samaruciḥ
Translation: Whose radiance is like a creeper of lightning (taḍit-latā).
Adhyāropa–Apavāda: The risen power flashes like a vine of lightning along the axis. The apavāda: lightning is the instantaneous, the un-graspable flash — and a “creeper” of it is that brilliance running the length of the central channel; awareness, fully risen, is not a steady object but this lightning-quick self-revealing, seen and not seizable, the sudden illumination in which the whole axis stands revealed at once.
Śrī Vidyā: The risen kuṇḍalinī is likened to a streak of lightning (taḍit-latā) for her sudden, brilliant, vertical flash up the suṣumṇā — the classic image of the awakened power.
108. षट्चक्रोपरिसंस्थिता — Ṣaṭ-cakropari-saṃsthitā
Translation: Who is established above the six cakras.
Adhyāropa–Apavāda: She stands “above the six” — beyond the Mūlādhāra-to-Ājñā series. The apavāda: to be above the six centres is to be beyond the entire structured ascent — not a seventh station in the series but that which transcends the series altogether; the centres are rungs, and She is what stands free of the ladder once it is climbed. Awareness is not the highest cakra but the witness of all six.
Śrī Vidyā: Beyond the six cakras (Mūlādhāra to Ājñā) lies the sahasrāra and the transcendent; She is saṃsthitā above them, established in the supreme station where the ascent culminates and is surpassed.
109. महाशक्तिः — Mahāśaktiḥ
Translation: The great Power (Mahā-śakti).
Adhyāropa–Apavāda: She is named, simply, the great Power. The apavāda: “power” seems to imply one who wields it, but Mahā-śakti is power without a second — not a force belonging to some agent, but the sole dynamism of the one reality, which is at once the power and its possessor. There is no Śiva standing apart who owns this śakti; the power and the ground are one, named now from the side of power.
Śrī Vidyā: Mahā-śakti is the supreme energy, non-different from Śiva as his very nature (śakti and śaktimat being one); she is the single power that creates, sustains and dissolves — here, the risen kuṇḍalinī recognised as that cosmic power.
110. कुण्डलिनी — Kuṇḍalinī
Translation: Kuṇḍalinī — the coiled power.
Adhyāropa–Apavāda: The great name itself: the coiled. The apavāda: she is “coiled” because, contracted, awareness lies wound upon itself, asleep to its own infinitude — and the whole yoga is the uncoiling, the straightening of the wound power into the vertical of its full extent. The coil is the contraction (the adhyāropa); the uncoiling is the retraction (the apavāda); and the one who coils and uncoils is the single Self, at play in binding and release.
Śrī Vidyā: Kuṇḍalinī, “the coiled,” is the power coiled three-and-a-half times at the Mūlādhāra; her awakening and ascent to union with Śiva at the crown is the very heart of this yoga — she is the Goddess as the indwelling power of liberation.
111. बिसतन्तुतनीयसी — Bisatantu-tanīyasī
Translation: Finer than the fibre of a lotus-stalk (bisa-tantu).
Adhyāropa–Apavāda: The cadence: the great Power is “finer than a lotus-fibre,” slenderer than the thinnest thread. The apavāda lands here with full force — the force that projected and now dissolves the entire cosmos is the most subtle of all, for it was never a thing among things, only the single fineness of consciousness, finer than the finest object because it is no object at all. The greatest is the subtlest; the power that is everything is, to every grasp, almost nothing — and so cannot be grasped, only be.
Śrī Vidyā: The risen kuṇḍalinī in the central channel is described as finer than a lotus-fibre — the suṣumṇā and the power within it of an unthinkable subtlety; the image, recalling the waist “fine as a lotus-fibre” in the body-description, marks the supreme subtlety of the Śakti at the summit of the ascent.
Devanagari per the sanskritdocuments.org recension (Brahmāṇḍa Purāṇa, Uttarakhaṇḍa; Hayagrīva–Agastya saṃvāda). Transliteration, translation, and commentary original to this edition. — End of Part V.
