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The Missing Body Between Two Voids (Verse 44, Dhāraṇā 21)

1. Exercise Title & Verse

The Missing Body Between Two Voids (Verse 44, Dhāraṇā 21)

2. Sanskrit (IAST)

pṛṣṭhaśūnyaṃ mūlaśūnyaṃ yugapad bhāvayec ca yaḥ | śarīranirapekṣiṇyā śaktyā śūnyamanā bhavet || 44 ||

3. English (Literal)

Whoever contemplates simultaneously the void above and the void at the root becomes, by the power that is independent of the body, one whose mind is void.

4. Main Commentary (Bhāṣya)

Padārtha. Pṛṣṭhaśūnyam here means the upper space, not the back of the torso. Singh glosses it as the void above, and Lakshmanjoo's practical handling confirms the top-side sense. Mūlaśūnyam means the void at the root or base, the lower pole of bodily reference. Yugapat is decisive: not first above and then below, but both at once. Bhāvayet here means one should actively sustain this contemplation until it becomes experientially operative. Śarīra-nirapekṣiṇyā śaktyā means "by the power that does not depend on the body." The verse is pointing to a current of awareness that no longer needs the body's outline as its support. Śūnyamanā does not mean dull, blank, or absent. It means the mind has become open, unsupported, and free of its ordinary object-making.

Anvaya. The sentence hangs together plainly: "One who simultaneously contemplates the upper void and the root void becomes, through the power that is independent of the body, void-minded."

Tatparya. This verse makes a new turn in the spaciousness sequence. Verse 43 spreads space around the body in all directions. Verse 44 becomes narrower, more exact, and more forceful. Instead of surrounding the body on every side, it places awareness only at the upper and lower poles. Why this reduction? Because the aim here is not panoramic vastness by itself. The aim is unsupportedness. When awareness is held simultaneously in the space above and the space below, the usual felt middle, "my body right here," loses its unquestioned reference-point. That is why the verse does not merely promise a feeling of openness; it names śarīra-nirapekṣiṇī śakti, the power that is no longer body-dependent. The bodily frame ceases to be the thing on which awareness leans. What drops away is not consciousness but bodily dependence within consciousness. Verse 45 will add the heart and make a different refinement. This verse is the stricter two-pole hinge that loosens body-reference first.

Sādhana. Sit upright or remain very still. Let the region above the crown be clearly open. Let the region below the root of the body be equally open. Do not alternate between them. Hold both simultaneously. Then do the crucial thing Lakshmanjoo insists on: try to find the body between those two voids. Do not reconstruct it from habit, memory, or muscular tension. Let awareness test whether the body is actually being found or only presumed. If the practice is ripening, the body begins to feel unsupported, less locatable, almost missing. Do not force dissociation and do not go numb. The criterion is subtler: bodily reference loosens, and with it the mind's ordinary constructions loosen. The verse is complete only when the two voids stop being imagined scenery and begin to erase the felt need for bodily support.

5. Jaideva Singh — The Logical

The grammar is compact and exact. Pṛṣṭha-śūnyam and mūla-śūnyam are accusative singular neuter compounds functioning as the paired objects of bhāvayet: what is to be contemplated is the upper void and the root void. Yugapat is an adverb, and it governs the whole operation: the two are not successive stations. The instrumental phrase śarīra-nirapekṣiṇyā śaktyā means "by the power that is not dependent on the body." The verse is not saying the body is destroyed; it is saying the relevant śakti does not rely on bodily location for its functioning. Śūnya-manā is a bahuvrīhi sense, "one whose mind is void." Singh's own note also matters: he explicitly glosses pṛṣṭhaśūnya here as the void above and classifies the dhāraṇā as śāktopāya. That prevents an easy collapse into a merely anatomical reading.

6. Swami Lakshmanjoo — The Lineage

The practical hinge is uncompromising: first feel voidness above and voidness below, then try to find the body. If the body is still solidly there for you, the process is not complete. That is Lakshmanjoo's correction. The verse is not asking for two pleasant regions of blankness. It is asking for such intense simultaneous awareness of the upper and lower voids that the body's support is lost and the body goes "missing." He explicitly says this is śāmbhavopāya with the slightest touches of āṇavopāya because top and bottom are still taken from the body at the start, but the completion is the dropping of bodily dependence itself.

7. Mark Dyczkowski & Christopher Wallis — Context & Philology

Direct verse-specific support is available from 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, published May 1, 2025). He translates pṛṣṭhaśūnya as the upper space at the crown and mūlaśūnya as the space in the root, and he glosses śarīra-nirapekṣiṇī as the Power not reliant on the physical body. That is a useful philological and practical clarification, because it shows why verse 44 is not just a weaker restatement of verse 43. The practice has narrowed to a vertical pair so that awareness can become unsupported by bodily reference.

Direct official Dyczkowski support exists in the ATK PDF translation (https://www.anuttaratrikakula.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Vijnaanabhairava.pdf, p. 8): the yogin contemplates the void above and the void in the root, and by the body-independent power becomes devoid of mind. That gives reliable translation support, but no extended verse-specific Dyczkowski commentary was located in this pass. Wallis's pedagogical label of this verse as an āṇava-upāya practice is useful contemporary context, not sufficient grounds to override the explicit traditional classifications preserved locally.

8. Daniel Odier — The Somatic Grounding

Feel the body from its two open ends. Above the crown, space. Below the pelvic root, space. Stay with both until the trunk is no longer being held as a dense block suspended between them. The sensation to trust is not blankness but a strange bodiless support, as if the body were hanging in openness rather than resting in itself. Odier's wording, "bodiless energy," is exact enough here: the bodily outline loosens, but awareness does not.

9. Paul Reps — The "Sudden Hit"

Kind Devi, enter etheric presence pervading far above and below your form.

10. Upāya Type

Use restraint. The explicit sources do not give one uncontested label. Singh directly classifies this dhāraṇā as Śāktopāya. Lakshmanjoo directly teaches it as Śāmbhavopāya with the slightest touches of Āṇavopāya because the practice begins from top-and-bottom bodily reference but completes itself only when bodily dependence drops out. The safest judgment is therefore: this is a border practice on the Śākta/Śāmbhava edge, entered through slight āṇava support.

11. Resonance Check (Adhikāra)

This practice suits a practitioner who can hold two poles of attention at once without strain and who will not panic when the ordinary felt outline of the body begins to loosen. It especially fits someone who can distinguish living openness from blank dissociation.

12. The "What Else?" — The Pitfall

The trap is to imagine black space above and below while unconsciously tightening the jaw, abdomen, back, or pelvic floor to keep the body located in the middle. Then nothing has become unsupported. You are holding the body in place with muscular bracing while pretending to dissolve it.

13. Verse-Specific Glossary

  • pṛṣṭhaśūnya: here the upper space above the body, practically the open region at or above the crown; despite the broader lexical range of pṛṣṭha, that is the operative sense in this verse.
  • mūlaśūnya: the lower space at the root or foundation of the body, the lower pole whose simultaneous contemplation loosens bodily support.
  • nirapekṣiṇī: not dependent on, not leaning on, not requiring as a reference-point; here it qualifies the śakti that no longer relies on bodily positioning.
  • śūnyamanā: one whose mind has become spacious and unconstructed; not stupor, not vacancy, but openness freed from its usual object-fixation.