VBT verse 52 ~ Yukti #25 ~ deha-śuddhi (an āṇava-upāya practice suitable for intermediate practitioners):
कालग्रिना कालपदादुत्थितेन स्वकं पुरम् ।
प्लुष्टं विचिन्तयेदन्ते शान्ताभासस्तदा भवेत् ।। ५२ ।।
kālāgninā kāla-padād utthitena svakaṃ puram |
pluṣṭaṃ vicintayed ante śāntābhāsas tadā bhavet || 52 ||
One may imagine that one’s own body is incinerated by the Fire of Time rising from the feet; at the end [of this process] there is the radiant shining of pure tranquillity / one becomes the peaceful shining. || 52 ||
Word-by-word breakdown: kālāgninā = by the Fire (agni) of Time (kāla); kāla-padāt = lit., from the foot that is Time; utthita = rising (in instrumental case to agree with kālāgninā); svakam = one’s own; puram = body, fortress, city; pluṣṭaṃ = scorched, incinerated; vicintayet = one may imagine; ante = at the end; śāntābhāsaḥ = quiescent radiance, peaceful shining; tadā = then; bhavet = there will be, or, one may become.
Now we are at a transition point in the text. We leave behind the spaciousness practices, at least for now, and we encounter some traditional Tantrik Yoga practices. Of course in some sense everything in the Vijñāna-bhairava-tantra is traditional; but it’s also important to remember that this is very much an atypical tantra within the tradition. Usually tantras are much longer than the VBT, running to thousands of verses instead of 160. Most tantras offer an in-depth exploration of the four primary topics of the Tantrik tradition, which are jñāna (wisdom & doctrine), yoga (usually referring to energy body practices, meditative practices, and awareness cultivation), kriyā (ritual) and caryā (daily life observances & temporary vows). Nearly every tantra covers those four topics.
By contrast, the Vijñāna-bhairava-tantra presents 112 practices framed by nondual View teachings (the first 23 verses and the last 23 verses). Many of the practices taught are only found in this text, some are found in a very small handful of texts, and a few are ubiquitous throughout the Tantrik tradition. So when I say that deha-śuddhi is a ‘traditional’ or ‘classical’ practice I mean it is a practice found in virtually all the tantras.
Verse 52 alludes to the practice of deha-śuddhi without spelling out its details, which would already be known to any Tantrik initiate. The verse goes like this:
“One may imagine that one’s own body is incinerated by the Fire of Time rising from the ‘foot of time’; at the end of this process there is the shining of [pure] tranquility.” (literal translation)
To understand this verse, we have to be familiar with the foundational Tantric teaching that the body is a microcosm of the whole universe. And to understand that, we need to talk a little bit about Indian cosmology. In medieval Indian tradition, not only Tantric but Purānic as well, the universe was conceived of metaphorically as a gigantic egg within which there are many dimensions and planes of existence. According to Śaiva Tantric sources, there are 118 dimensions or planes of existence, of which this Earth plane is only one (see Tantrāloka ch. 8). It is a fairly complex cosmology which is, again metaphorically, described as the brahmāṇḍa, the Egg of Brahmā.
This image of the multiverse is found in many sources. At the base of the Egg of Brahmā, there was said to be an eternal flame called kālāgni, the Fire of Time. This Fire is sort of like a pilot light in that when it’s time for the universe to be destroyed it blazes up and consumes the entire universe, dissolving it back into the pure potentiality from which it came.
The body is a microcosm of the universe in Tantrik Yoga, so just as the Fire of Time blazes up and consumes that whole universe, in the practice of deha-śuddhi the whole body (or rather the body-image) is devoured by this Fire. This is, again, a foundational Tantrik practice found throughout the tradition. In it, according to Abhinavagupta, what is really consumed and dissolved is the socially constructed ‘self’. The socio-culturally constructed psychological self is offered into this Fire.
In the practice, when one imagines the Fire rising through the body, one is offering into that fire all of one’s self-images, and the body-image especially. We offer into this Fire all our conceptions about ourselves, especially those that come from social conditioning. Just as the fire of time will dissolve and destroy the entire universe, so the universe of separate selfhood is to be destroyed, dissolved in this fire on daily basis—traditionally this was a practice that most tāntrikas would do every day. Once learned, it is a practice you can do in just a few minutes, and it is a powerful way to remind yourself that you are not your story about yourself. You are not this socio-culturally constructed person. There is nothing wrong with having a socio-culturally constructed personality of course—this is about becoming free of the belief that that construct is oneself. Once free of that false belief, the socially constructed personality is seen as merely the role that one plays, as in a theatrical drama (cf. Śiva-sūtra 3.9), without any need to believe that one is the character one is portraying. We are invited to portray our character to the best of our ability without ever believing that we are the character, any more than we are anything else.
This practice is in a sense burning away identification with the separate self little by little every day, until you experience yourself as the one divine Actor who plays and portrays all the characters, the radiant no-thing-ness that takes on form and dances in the various roles that it has to play. (I am not randomly shifting metaphors here, because in the tradition itself the metaphor of actor and dancer are used interchangeably in this context.)
Let’s look more closely at the words of the verse.
Kālāgninā means “by the Fire of Time.” This is significant not only because it is naming this specific Fire that will consume the whole universe when it is time for it to dissolve, but also that the Fire of Time burns away the constriction of linear time itself. To explain: the autobiographical notion of self, your whole story of yourself, exists only within the context of a conception of linear time. This autobiographical ‘self’ that you imagine you have or are is built up largely out of memories and other forms of conditioning. Your self-images are based on and contingent on memories, both mental (in the mind) and emotional (in the body). We are invited through our spiritual practice to learn how to access a state of pure timelessness, a state independent of this conception of linear time.
Modern physics also suggests that linear time is a mental construct, a specific way that human consciousness has of perceiving reality that’s not necessarily intrinsic to reality itself. The Fire of Time burns away the autobiographical self by releasing us from the bondage of experiencing ourselves solely within linear time, dependent upon our past. Everyone who has cultivated a deep meditation practice has experienced this total timelessness, even if just for a few timeless moments. They don’t feel like moments of course, they feel like an immersion into pure timeless being itself.
Next we have the phrase kāla-padāt, literally “from the foot of time,” an odd phrase which the commentator simply glosses as “from the big toe of the right foot.” The ‘pilot light’ that starts the fire that consumes the whole body is located in the big toe of the right foot. Why does the VBT use this odd phrase, “the foot of time”? Probably to again connect it to that notion of the Fire of Time which can blaze up from the lowest point and consume the whole.
In the second half of the verse we see the phrase svakaṃ puram, one’s own body or one’s fortress—puram can mean either. And indeed, there is a way in which this sense of separate selfhood or limited individuality walls us off from our natural state of oneness with the whole. The body-image as a kind of mental fortress, an image of our self behind which we can hide—this is to be burned away. One should imagine one’s own body-fortress as pluṣṭam, as incinerated, scorched, burned away. At the end of this practice (ante), one may experience śāntābhāsa, the radiant shining of pure tranquility. Śānta is of course related to the word śānti, peace. Śānta means peaceful and ābhāsa means radiant shining, but also in the Trika literature it can means ‘a particular way that consciousness can shine forth’. In this teaching, all the qualia of experience are ābhāsas, ways that consciousness shines. Here we have the shining forth of our natural capacity for tranquil peacefulness, actualized by the practice. It is important here to realize that this is not a peacefulness we need to attain, but rather is our natural state, revealed when body-image and socially constructed self are burned away, even for just a moment. Even though they come back again (due to their saṃskāras), they come back in a weakened form, and that is why this practice is repeated many times.
In the traditional practice, as is so often the case in Tantrik Yoga, there are several elements that are to be entrained or synced up, namely visualization (dhyāna), mantra and mudrā. I’ll give two of these elements here, as the moving mudrā used in the practice is easy to demonstrate but hard to describe in words.
In the dhyāna, you imagine or visualize a tiny but incandescent white-hot flame in the tips of both big toes. The fire starts spreading and rises through the body over the course of say a minute or less. One can track the rise of the fire with the hands by doing the so-called mahāmudrā (a term that means completely different things in different contexts), as demonstrated 19 minutes into this video. As the fire rises, you can repeat the deha-śuddhi mantra three times, or just once at the conclusion of the fire’s rise. That mantra is Oṃ Saḥ sabāhyāntarāṃ tanuṃ dahayāmi Phaṭ! (ॐ सः सबाह्यान्तरां तनुं दहयामि फट्) Another variation, given by Śivopādhyāya, is Oṃ rkṣryūṃ tanuṃ dahayāmi namaḥ, but that should only be used by practitioners familiar with piṇḍa mantras.
In conclusion, is this a practice of “burning away all that you are not” or “letting go of what doesn’t serve you”? Not exactly. Rather than trying to mentally sort what should be be burned and what shouldn’t, in this practice you’re invited to throw everything into the fire, literally everything that you think you are, up to and including your heart and soul, because as one nondual teacher says: “nothing false will survive and nothing true will perish.” The truth cannot be burned or destroyed, so we just throw everything into the fire, because what you consider your soul is actually just a subtle layer of self-image, and what you truly are cannot be created or destroyed. (On this, see Oscar Wilde’s wonderful children’s story, “The Happy Prince.”)
THE PRACTICE (or scroll down for a guided practice video): Take a few deep breaths. Let the eyes close and feel your whole body. Let yourself realize that even if you are not thinking about your self-images or your body-image, they are there under the surface of conscious awareness. Your body image influences how you experience your embodiment. Resolve to offer this body image and all your self-images into this fire. Bring your awareness to the tips of both big toes imagining (or feeling, if you can), that there is an incandescent white-hot tiny flame inside the big toes of both feet. First the right and then the left. This flame starts spreading through the feet, the ankles. You can track the rise of this flame with the mudrā, open hands, because you’re not holding on to anything. You’re releasing everything into this fire. Feel or even imagine that the incandescent white-hot fire is rising through the body. It is rising through the legs. The whole pelvic area catches fire. Flames licking up the back, the fire is now inside and outside the body. (It’s not a literal fire, so you don’t imagine the flesh itself burning.) The whole body becomes enveloped in flames rising through the upper torso, the arms, the head, until everything, the whole body and subtle body, is in flame with this white-hot incandescent fire. Offer into this fire everything that you think you are, all your ideas about yourself. You might let a few of those ideas arise as verbal thoughts: e.g., I am such and such kind of person—whatever arises. I am not good enough. Offer that into the fire. I am a good person; I am a kind person—offer that into the fire. Anything that you think you are. Let it all burn. All the so-called positive self-images as well as so-called negative self-images, let them all burn. The flame blazes brighter and brighter consuming everything. (At this point you can intone the deha-śuddhi mantra.) As the fire dies down, it leaves behind nothing whatsoever. Enter into pure transparent being now. Just become the pure open transparency that you actually are.
It doesn’t matter if there are any thoughts or feelings, they are just vibrations of energy within the pure open transparency that you are.
To conclude, let the pure transparency thicken into form as a physical body. Experience the physical body as a direct expression of that pure transparency; nothing but consciousness made flesh.
Conclude the practice by gazing at the body with fresh eyes. Take in the vision of your own body as a direct expression of pure transparent awareness.
For a moment at least, see the body without all your ideas about it. Regard yourself without all your ideas about yourself. Who or what are you without reference to memory or self-concept? That’s a question that has no answer in words—you feel the answer. What is the body minus all my ideas about it?
ALTERNATIVE TRANSLATIONS of verse 52:
a) One should contemplate in the following way: “My body has been burnt by the fire of Kālāgni rising from the toe of my right foot.” He will then experience his (real) nature, which is all peace. (SINGH)
b) One should imagine that one’s own body has been burnt (to ashes) by the Fire of Time that has arisen from the (toe of the left) foot. Then, in the end, the peaceful state will manifest. (DYCZKOWSKI)
c) One should meditate on one's own fortress (the body) as if it were consumed by the Fire of Time, rising from the foot. At the end (of this meditation) the peaceful state will appear. (BÄUMER)
d) One should visualize one's body being burnt by the Fire of Time arising from the big toe of the right foot. Then at the end (of that burning), one shall be healed. (DUBOIS)
e) One should contemplate that one’s own body has been burnt by Kaalagni, arising from the movement of time. Then at last one will experience tranquillity. (SATSANGI)
f) Imagine one’s own body being burnt by a destructive fire, rising from the right foot, to the top. Then one will attain a calm splendour. (CHAUDHRI)
g) If one were to meditate on his body being burnt, as it were by the fire of all-consuming time (arising from the toe of his right foot), he would have the possibility of realising the Supreme, which is of the nature of supernal peace. (Singh & Maheśvarānanda)
h) On doit se concentrer intensément sur sa propre forteresse comme si elle était consumée par le feu du Temps qui surgit du pied de (ce) Temps. Alors, à la fin, se manifeste la quiétude. (SILBURN)
i) On doit visualiser notre propre corps (comme étant) consumé par le Feu de la fin des temps qui surgit du pied droit. À la fin, nous paraissons guéris. (DUBOIS)
j) Man soll darüber meditieren, daß die Burg des eigenen Körpers vom Feuer der Zeit verbrannt wird, aufsteigend vom (rechten) Fuß. Am Ende erlangt man den Zustand des Friedens. (BÄUMER)
k) [El yogui] debe meditar intensamente en el Fuego del Tiempo ardiendo desde el pie del tiempo hasta consumir su ciudadela corporal. Al final, como consecuencia, la paz resplandecerá. (FIGUEROA)
l) Focus on fire, fierier and fierier, which raises from your feet and burns you entirely. When there is nothing left but ashes scattered by the wind, know the tranquillity of space which returns to space. (ODIER)
m) Focus on fire rising through your form from the toes up until the body burns to ashes but not you. (REPS)
VBT verse 53 ~ Yukti #26 ~ jagat-dagdha (an āṇava-upāya practice suitable for intermediate practitioners)
एवमेव जगत्सर्वं दग्धं ध्यात्वा विकल्पतः ।
अनन्यचेतसः पुंसः पुंभावः परमो भवेत् ।। ५३ ।।
Evam eva jagat sarvaṃ dagdhaṃ dhyātvā vikalpataḥ |
Ananya-cetasaḥ puṃsaḥ puṃbhāvaḥ paramo bhavet || 53 ||
In exactly the same way, imagining the whole world incinerated [by fire], a person of disciplined mind experiences the supreme state of man through this contemplation. || 53 ||
Word-by-word breakdown: evam = thus, in this way; eva = emphasis; jagat = world; sarvam = whole, entire, all; dagdham = burnt, incinerated; dhyātvā = meditating, visualizing, imagining; vikalpataḥ = due to this idea; ananya-cetasaḥ = of disciplined mind, one whose heart-mind is one-pointed; puṃsaḥ = a person; puṃ-bhāvaḥ = the mental-emotional state of a person, or, taking pum as equivalent to puruṣa, the state of the soul; paramaḥ = supreme, highest, ultimate; bhavet = comes to be.
This verse is a powerful meditation on impermanence. Let’s begin by contemplating the fact that virtually the only thing one could say that is true in all times, places and circumstances is, “this too shall pass.” This meditation on impermanence is not just the province of Buddhist tradition, but it is also very significant in the Śaiva tradition as well. This verse gives us one way of meditating on impermanence.
This contemplation functions in two different but related modes. First is that the contemplation that everything passes away: everything we know now will at some point cease to be. Everything that arises subsides. We contemplate this here by imagining the world on fire, but it has nothing to do with literal fire. You’re burning your attachment to things being a certain way. The only way that we can be liberated and awake, the only way that we can abide in love with reality as it is, is through a profound and deep acceptance of impermanence, change, and mortality.
One great meditation master of the 20th century had his students do this contemplation daily. He said, “Every night when you go to bed, burn everything. Imagine your whole business, your whole career burns, your house, your belongings, your possessions—all that material reality is burned. You release it, you let it go completely. And then go to sleep, free of everything, and wake up with the world reborn, with the world refreshed, the world appearing once again, similar to how you might remember it from yesterday, but also distinct. Each day everything is born anew.”
I think this is quite a beautiful practice. People get a little anxious about this practice and say, “Oh, I can burn everything—but not my loved ones”. Well, that bond of love is indestructible, that can’t be burned because that which is unborn is also undying. Love is that by virtue of which the universe comes into being in the first place. In this contemplation you are burning your attachment to all your relationships appearing in a particular way. You’re burning your attachment to the people you love always being there in physical form, but the bond of love itself is indestructible. We offer everything into the fire, we offer our attachment to what our life looks like, what our relationships look like, because all of that will change anyway, and all of that will pass away.
There is a quote I love, I don’t know who said it, but it is simply this: “Love fiercely, because this all ends.” That’s a great way to phrase this contemplation, because this contemplation is not meant to lead us into morbidity or depression. It is meant to lead us into a fiercer, more alive love. If you actually know, if you actually contemplate every day that everything is impermanent and temporary, then you will love more fiercely. It is very easy for us as human beings to take things for granted. The best antidote to that is to remember this all ends. Love fiercely because this all ends.
Let’s look at the verse more specifically:
vikalpataḥ—through this imagination, this imaginative practice
ananya-cetasaḥ—a person with focused mind, who is fully focusing on and accepting the reality of impermanence
puṃbhāvaḥ paramo bhavet—will attain the supreme state of the soul.
This last is a very interesting phrase. If we take pum as equivalent to puruṣa, it means “such a person will become the supreme soul-bhāva”, meaning to say, one will enter into the ultimate and most fundamental state of the soul. Only when we fully accept the reality of impermanence can we finally come to rest within our true nature, which is to love what is but also allow it to pass away when its time has come. As a great master said, “let what comes come, let what goes go, and find out what remains.” What is it that is unborn and undying? It is being itself. The power by which you are aware of anything at all, the power by which you are aware of my words right now—is the fundamental beingness of the universe. It is a self-aware universe. You are the means by which the universe is aware of itself in whatever form. Awareness embodies itself in countless different forms to look at itself from countless different angles. Each and every form is temporary and passes away, but the very act of the self-aware universe is unborn and undying. That’s what you fundamentally are—the capacity of the universe to be aware of itself.
While contemplating the impermanence of all form, we also contemplate the eternality of the power by which form is perceived. We contemplate that as unborn and undying, the timeless ground of being. We come to rest in that, and that’s when impermanence seems, as indeed it is, completely okay. Life is terrifying or overwhelming if you don’t know how to come to rest in the ground of your own being. Impermanence is terrifying or disturbing. So this practice challenges you to see how much you can come to rest in the ground of your being, because if it is still difficult to accept the impermanence of all things, then that’s a cue to you to go further in learning how to truly come to rest in the ground of your being.
THE PRACTICE (or scroll down for a guided practice video): Take a few deep breaths. At first feel into, if it is available to you, the still silent presence that you are. Whatever may be the state of the body, whatever may be the state of the mind or of the environment. Underneath it all is the still silent presence. Surrounding and permeating it all is the still silent presence. Let yourself be what you are—the still silent presence. From the perspective of the still silent presence you are ready to be okay with the burning of the world. Imagine, if you will, the primordial fire of time which consumes all things, beneath the earth rising up through the ground. The flames are appearing all around everywhere. The world is on fire. Your immediate surroundings are on fire. Everything is catching fire as the flames mount higher and higher. Can you repose in the center? All that has arisen must pass away. Find the quite peace in accepting that it’s your natural state. You don’t need to force it as the world burns around you from earth all the way up to the highest heavens. Let everything burn. After the flames die down and everything is gone, perhaps you can feel the quite urge within reality to rebirth itself, to recreate itself anew. It does recreate itself anew over and over again. In a moment, when you open your eyes, I invite you to see a world reborn, fresh. Very slowly you are opening your eyes and looking around you and at your own body. It is not like it was before, it might look the same, but it is reborn. Moment after moment. If you truly had the eyes to see, you would see that everything is reborn every moment. It is because of this constant process of rebirth that change occurs, and change is inevitable. Offer everything into the fire in this contemplation, challenge yourself to a radical acceptance of the truth of impermanence. And love fiercely because this all ends. If this dhāraṇā, this contemplation, was impactful for you, you might want to go for a walk outside and see the world reborn. While contemplating everything you see and everything you know will pass away. Nothing you see is your story about it. It is constantly reborn. Only mental projection causes us to see it as the same as it was before. Explore this within yourself.
ALTERNATIVE TRANSLATIONS of verse 53:
a) In this way, if the aspirant imagines that the entire world is being burnt by the fire of Kālāgni, and does not allow his mind to wander away to anything else, then in such a person, the highest state of man appears. (SINGH)
b) Having meditated in this way by imagining that the entire universe has been burnt away, a person whose mind is undistracted possesses the soul’s supreme state. (DYCZKOWSKI)
c) Meditating in this way by imagining that the entire world has been burnt, a person whose mind is undisturbed will attain the highest human condition. (BÄUMER)
d) In that very (same) way, one should contemplate the whole world being burnt, without anything remaining (avikalpatah). For the One entirely focused on that, the One supreme state shall happen. (DUBOIS)
e) In the same way, having meditated with an unwavering and one-pointed mind on the entire universe being burnt (by Kaalagni), that man becomes a godman or attains a supreme state of manhood. (SATSANGI)
f) Similarly, meditate with undivided attention, that the entire world is burnt by fire. That person then attains the highest state. (CHAUDHRI)
g) In this way, alternatively if one were to meditate on the whole world getting burn (by the fire of time) with firmness, one has the possibility of realising the highest form of his being. (Singh & Maheśvarānanda)
h) De même, après avoir médité en imagination sur le monde entier comme étant consumé (par les flammes), l’homme dont l’esprit est indifférent à toute autre (chose) accédera à la plus haute condition humaine. (SILBURN)
i) De cette même manière on doit visualiser sans hésiter le monde entier comme étant consumé. L’homme qui ne pense à rien d’autre deviendra l’Homme supreme. (DUBOIS)
j) Wenn man auf ähnliche Weise mit Hilfe der Vorstellung darüber meditiert, daß die ganze Welt verbrannt ist, dann erlangt man mit einem Geist, der von nichts anderem abgelenkt ist, den höchsten menschlichen Zustand. (BÄUMER)
k) Del mismo modo, el hombre que libre de representaciones mentales contempla cómo [el Fuego del Tiempo] consume el universo entero, totalmente concentrado, alcanza la suprema realidad humana. (FIGUEROA)
l) See the entire world as a blazing inferno. Then, when all has turned to ashes, enter bliss. (ODIER)
m) Meditate on the make-believe world as burning to ashes, and become being above human. (REPS)
Practice video: