Dhāraṇā 20: The Body as Boundless Space (Verse 43)¶
1. Exercise Title & Verse¶
Dhāraṇā 20: The Body as Boundless Space (Verse 43)
2. Sanskrit (IAST)¶
nija-dehe sarva-dikkaṃ yugapad bhāvayed viyat | nirvikalpa-manās tasya viyat sarvaṃ pravartate || 43 ||
3. English (Literal)¶
One should contemplate space in one's own body in all directions, all at once. For one whose mind is free of conceptual constructions, everything unfolds as space.
4. Main Commentary (Bhāṣya)¶
Padārtha. Nija-dehe means "in one's own body." The verse does not begin with outer sky or metaphysical space in the abstract; it begins with the felt body as the immediate field of practice. Sarva-dikkaṃ means all directions, the whole directional spread: right and left, front and back, above and below as one field. Yugapat is the controlling word. It means simultaneously, not by succession, not by sweeping attention around the body one side at a time. Bhāvayet means one should evoke, contemplate, or imaginatively establish. This matters because the practice may begin with a deliberate felt-imagination, but it is not meant to remain a mental picture. Viyat means sky, space, openness. Here it is not dead emptiness but open spatial presence. Nirvikalpa-manās means a mind free of dividing constructions, a mind no longer busy producing inside/outside, body/world, here/there as hard opposites. Pravartate means "comes forth," "unfolds," or "turns into": for such a practitioner, everything begins to show itself as space.
Anvaya. The sentence runs plainly like this: "One should contemplate open space in one's own body in all directions simultaneously. For one whose mind has become free of conceptual division, everything unfolds as space."
Tatparya. This verse marks the new turn after verse 42. The previous verse worked through a sequential ascent of mantra and subtle sound into void. Verse 43 drops that ladder. No phonemic sequence, no upward tracing, no stage-by-stage refinement is foregrounded now. Instead, the whole body is spatialized at once. That is the fresh clarification this verse contributes to the sequence. Spaciousness is not reached only by rising beyond sound; it can be disclosed by releasing the body's apparent enclosure in every direction simultaneously. This must not be turned into abstract metaphysics or a slogan that "everything is nothing." The point is practical and perceptual. As long as the body is being held as a solid thing surrounded by other solid things, mind keeps generating division. When the body's whole directional spread is felt as open and continuous with surrounding space, the division begins to fail. Then "everything becomes space" does not mean that objects vanish physically. It means the contracted way of holding them loosens, and experience opens into non-opposed spacious awareness.
Sādhana. Sit upright and close the eyes. First feel the body as a whole, not as separate parts. Then evoke the sense that within the skin and all around the skin there is the same open space. Include right, left, front, back, above, and below together. Do not move attention around the body in a circle. The verse fails if you build the space one wall at a time. At the beginning, a simple intentional thought such as "space everywhere in and around this body" is acceptable; Lakshmanjoo is explicit that the practice can begin with that support. But do not keep feeding the sentence. Let the all-at-once felt openness replace the verbal thought. When thought starts naming sides, distances, or boundaries, relax the naming and return to simultaneous openness. If the practice ripens, the body's gross sidedness loses force and the field becomes one undivided spatial presence.
5. Jaideva Singh — The Logical¶
The verse is structurally compact but exact. The locative nija-dehe anchors the practice in the practitioner's own body; the scripture does not ask for outer cosmology first. The phrase sarva-dikkaṃ ... yugapat must be read together: all directions are to be held in one act of contemplation, not as separate objects. Nirvikalpa-manās is a compound meaning "one whose mind is without vikalpas," that is, without differentiating thought-constructs. Even the verb matters: pravartate is not merely "is thought to be" but "unfolds" or "comes forth," indicating a shift in how the whole field appears. Singh isolates two non-negotiable conditions: yugapat and nirvikalpa-manās. If either fails, the dhāraṇā has not matured. He then gives the doctrinal consequence with unusual sharpness: the practitioner enters the śūnyātiśūnya plane, the absolute void beyond distinctions. This is why he classifies the verse as śāktopāya: the support is subtle contemplative awareness rather than gross ritual or breath mechanics.
6. Swami Lakshmanjoo — The Lineage¶
Sit in a posture, close the eyes, and feel from the right side, the left side, the front, the back, and finally above and below that there is nothing there, only voidness. The mechanical secret is that this is not done after thoughtlessness has already been achieved. In the beginning you deliberately maintain the thought of voidness around the body. That is why Lakshmanjoo says the entry is āṇavopāya: the body and its sides are still being used as supports. Then comes the decisive correction. Do not stop with the idea "my body is surrounded by nothing," and do not wait for some blank state to descend by itself. Maintain nirvikalpa-manas by not allowing fresh impressions to crowd in. As that support stabilizes, the body, its sides, and its grossness dissolve from the field, and only voidness remains. He names the movement exactly: āṇavopāya sentenced to śāmbhavopāya.
7. Mark Dyczkowski & Christopher Wallis — Context & Philology¶
Christopher Wallis's official article, "Vijñaana-bhairava-tantra verses 43-48: the Spaciousness practices" (https://hareesh.org/blog/2025/5/1/vijaana-bhairava-tantra-verses-43-48-the-spaciousness-practices), is directly useful here. It clarifies the key terms of the verse and, most importantly, makes explicit that the body's openness is continuous with surrounding space. His handling of viyat as "spacious openness" keeps the practice from collapsing into a merely negative idea of void. The same article also makes the sequence logic explicit: verse 43 is the wide all-direction disclosure, while verses 44 and 45 then narrow the spaciousness to upper/root and upper/root/heart configurations. Via Wallis's article, Ānandabhaṭṭa's commentary adds a further caution: the "ultimate space" here is not a concept of absence but what appears when conceptualizing void and non-void drops away.
Mark Dyczkowski's public contribution located in this pass is direct translation support rather than extended commentary. His official PDF, Vijnaanabhairava_undivided.pdf (https://www.anuttaratrikakula.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Vijnaanabhairava_undivided.pdf), renders the verse as meditation on the Void within one's own body in all directions simultaneously, after which everything becomes void for the practitioner. The official ATK course page (https://www.anuttaratrikakula.org/vijnana-bhairava/) offers only indirect context: it says he teaches the text by thematic clusters such as breath and void, but no free verse-specific exposition for 43 was public in this pass.
8. Daniel Odier — The Somatic Grounding¶
Feel the body's volume, not just its outline. Chest, back, belly, throat, skull: let them be sensed as luminous interior room rather than packed substance. Then let the skin stop behaving like a barricade. The same space that seems to be inside is also outside, pressing equally from right, left, front, back, above, and below. When that is felt bodily, the body no longer sits in space like a sealed object; it is experienced as a modulation of space.
9. Paul Reps — The "Sudden Hit"¶
Imagine spirit simultaneously within and around you until the entire universe spiritualizes.
10. Upāya Type¶
Do not flatten this verse to one label. Singh explicitly classifies it as Śāktopāya because the decisive operation is simultaneous contemplative awareness culminating in nirvikalpa openness. Lakshmanjoo, however, explicitly teaches the entry as Āṇavopāya because one begins with the body's sides as supports, and then says it is "sentenced to Śāmbhavopāya" when those supports dissolve. The tightest reading is therefore graded rather than single-label: body-based entry, subtle contemplative opening, supportless absorption.
11. Resonance Check (Adhikāra)¶
This dhāraṇā suits the practitioner who can sustain panoramic attention without turning it into analysis. It especially fits someone who can feel the body volumetrically and can tolerate a practice with very little narrative or object-content once it opens.
12. The "What Else?" — The Pitfall¶
The trap is to sweep attention around the body in sequence, right side, left side, front, back, above, below, as if you were painting emptiness onto six walls. The verse opens only when the whole directional field is held at once.
13. Verse-Specific Glossary¶
- viyat: open sky-like space. In this verse it means lived spacious openness, not a nihilistic blank.
- yugapat: simultaneously, in one act of awareness. Here it specifically forbids step-by-step directional scanning.
- nirvikalpa-manas: a mind free of dividing conceptual constructions. Here it means the collapse of the body/world split that the mind keeps reasserting.
- śūnyātiśūnya: "the void beyond void." Singh uses it for the state reached when even distinctions about voidness have fallen away.