The Five Siddha Mudrās (Verse 77)

1. Exercise Title & Verse

The Five Siddha Mudrās (Verse 77)

2. Sanskrit (IAST)

karaṅkiṇyā krodhanayā bhairavyā lelihānayā | khecaryā dṛṣṭikāle ca parāvāptiḥ prakāśate || 77 ||

3. English (Literal)

Through Karaṅkiṇī, Krodhanā, Bhairavī, Lelihānā, and Khecarī mudrās, at the time of yogic seeing, the supreme attainment becomes manifest.

4. Main Commentary (Bhāṣya)

Padārtha. The verse is built on five instrumental forms, each naming a seal or consummating mode of practice. Karaṅkiṇī comes from karaṅka, a skeleton or corpse-frame. In Singh's explanation, it sees the world and body as reduced to bare structure and dissolved into higher ether; in Lakshmanjoo's oral handling, it is the corpse-like stillness of lying flat without movement. The common force is death-like disidentification. Krodhanā is the wrathful seal. This is not ordinary anger. It is a fierce, tightened concentration used to break attachment. Bhairavī is the terrifyingly wakeful seal: the eyes stay open and outward, but the target of attention is inward. Lelihānā is the licking or savoring seal, where sweetness is not merely tasted but totalized until tasting absorbs the taster. Khecarī literally means "moving in the sky." Here the sky is consciousness itself. The crucial point is that this mudrā is not exhausted by a tongue position or any one bodily gesture; it is abiding in the space of awareness through action. Dṛṣṭikāla can mean the moment of direct seeing, and Lakshmanjoo also glosses it as the time of actual practice. Parāvāptiḥ means supreme attainment: the higher realization becomes manifest.

Anvaya. The sentence means: "Through the seals called Karaṅkiṇī, Krodhanā, Bhairavī, Lelihānā, and Khecarī, when yogic seeing occurs, the supreme attainment reveals itself."

Tatparya. This verse makes a new move in the text. It does not give one more single dhāraṇā like the immediately preceding verses. It compresses a whole family of consummating seals and links them to five siddha lineages. Lakshmanjoo makes that explicit: these are the ending states of the jñāna-siddhas, mantra-siddhas, melāpa-siddhas, śākta-siddhas, and śāmbhava-siddhas. So the verse is not asking the reader to collect exotic poses. It is showing that mudrā, in this scripture, can mean a whole stabilized mode of awareness in which body, breath, emotion, gaze, taste, and action have all been sealed into recognition. The five entries move from death-like stillness, to wrath, to unblinking inward-turned sight, to total savoring, to sky-like noncontraction in all acts. What unifies them is not posture but transmutation. Each takes a strong human mode and seals it so completely that Bhairava shines through it. That is what the verse newly clarifies.

Sādhana. Do not perform all five theatrically. Work only with the gate that is real and intelligible to you. In karaṅkiṇī, lie flat and let the body become so still that identification with animation loosens; the point is not collapse but freedom from body-drama. In krodhanā, take fierce immobility only long enough to gather force and cut attachment; if it turns into emotional acting, stop. In bhairavī, keep the eyes open and steady, let awareness turn inward, and allow the breath to come to a poised uncertainty between going out and coming in; the gaze stays out, the target stays within. In lelihānā, take one taste and let savoring become so complete that subject and object stop standing apart. In khecarī, while speaking, eating, touching, or moving, remain in the sky of awareness rather than falling wholly into the act. The common rule is exact: the bodily form may assist, but the mudrā begins only when awareness is sealed.

5. Jaideva Singh — The Logical

The verse is grammatically compact and should be read with care. The repeated instrumental endings in karaṅkiṇyā, krodhanayā, bhairavyā, lelihānayā, and khecaryā show the means: "through" or "by" these mudrās the result appears. Mudrā here is not a decorative hand gesture. Singh defines it as a technical disposition and control of the bodily organs that assists concentration and gives the joy of spiritual consciousness. Dṛṣṭikāle should not be reduced to optical vision alone. Singh records Lakshmanjoo's explanation of it as "on the occasion of the yogic practice," while the basic Sanskrit also allows the sense of the moment of direct seeing. The transmitted reading is parāvāptiḥ, "supreme attainment," and that should be preserved. Lakshmanjoo's oral gloss turns the fruition toward parā-vyāpti, supreme pervasion, which clarifies the experiential result without requiring emendation of the text. Singh's doctrinal arrangement is also exact: Karaṅkiṇī belongs to the jñāna-siddhas, Krodhanā to the mantra-siddhas, Bhairavī to the melāpa-siddhas, Lelihānā to the śākta-siddhas, and Khecarī to the śāmbhava-siddhas.

6. Swami Lakshmanjoo — The Lineage

This is the verse of five siddha-schools, not five random gestures. The decisive correction is his blunt one: khecarī mudrā is actually no mudrā. If you reduce it to tongue gymnastics or a pose, you have already missed the point. In his practical handling, bhairavī mudrā means eyes wide open without blinking, the mouth open, the breath fixed in uncertainty between going out and coming in, and the inner target held while the gaze remains outward. That is the operative hinge for this verse: outer form alone is useless unless awareness is placed exactly. He is equally exact about khecarī: one speaks, smells, eats, embraces, even acts in the world, yet remains above the act in ākāśa, the sky of consciousness. Not separate from the act, but above and through it. Lelihānā is the total savor of sweetness. Krodhanā is wrath used to shatter attachment, not to vent emotion. Karaṅkiṇī is corpse-like stillness at the end. When these are practiced rightly, supreme consciousness pervades.

7. Mark Dyczkowski & Christopher Wallis — Context & Philology

Direct verse-specific web material is limited but useful. In his official translation concordance, Wallis labels verse 77 as a cluster of five Krama mudrās and adds the caution that the Sanskrit commentaries are necessary to understand the verse. That directly supports reading the verse as compressed and commentary-dependent, not self-explanatory. Dyczkowski's official public translation likewise gives the verse as a fivefold cluster and renders the fruition as the revelation of supreme pervasion. No fuller verse-specific prose commentary from him was located in official public material during this pass.

Indirect context, clearly labeled as such, sharpens the practice. In his official article on verse 31, Wallis reconstructs khecarī mudrā as an advanced contemplative procedure of filling the central channel, stabilizing thought-free awareness at the brow, and breaching the upper bodily limit into the Sky of Consciousness; he then states that more information on the practice appears the second time it is mentioned, namely in verse 77. In his official Krama-lineage essay, he says explicitly that the bhairavī mudrā and khecarī mudrā named in verse 77 are meditative practices, not hand or body postures, and ties them to Yoginī-revealed Krama material. That is not direct verse commentary in the narrow sense, but it is highly relevant indirect context and a strong guard against trivializing the verse.

8. Daniel Odier — The Somatic Grounding

Odier's appendix rendering is highly interpretive, not lexical, so it should be used cautiously. Its useful bodily cue is totality. The gaze must be fully steady, the sucking fully absorbing, the threshold-state fully entered. Then mind opens into spatiality. For this verse the safest somatic use of Odier is narrow: bhairavī and lelihānā only become doors when the act is complete enough that half-participation ends.

9. Paul Reps — The "Sudden Hit"

Lie down as dead. Enraged in wrath, stay so. Or stare without moving an eyelash. Or suck something and become the sucking.

10. Upāya Type

Śāmbhavopāya. This is one of the rare cases where the assignment is explicit. Singh says, This dhāraṇā is Sambhava upaya. Lakshmanjoo says, This is śāmbhavopāya. That should still be read carefully, because the verse names a fivefold range of siddha consummations, not one flat technique. The safest formulation is that the cluster is gathered and culminated in śāmbhavopāya, especially through khecarī.

11. Resonance Check (Adhikāra)

This cluster suits a practitioner who can transmute strong states without dramatizing them: death-like stillness, fierce concentration, unblinking gaze, deep savoring, or full activity without loss of the sky of awareness. It is not an ideal entry-point for someone seeking only a mild relaxation exercise or someone likely to imitate outer forms for effect.

12. The "What Else?" — The Pitfall

The trap is performance. Then one lies like a corpse, makes an angry face, stares, tastes, or talks about spaciousness while the ordinary contracted self remains untouched. The moment the bodily display replaces the sealed placement of awareness, verse 77 has been reduced to theatre.

13. Verse-Specific Glossary

• karaṅka: skeleton or corpse-frame. Here it explains why karaṅkiṇī is a death-like seal of disidentification rather than a relaxation posture.
• melāpa: union, meeting, or confluence of powers; in this verse, the siddha-lineage associated with bhairavī mudrā and Yoginī-linked revelation.
• dṛṣṭikāla: the moment of yogic seeing, or the period of actual practice. Here it should not be reduced to literal eyesight alone.
• parāvāptiḥ: supreme attainment. Here it means the breakthrough of higher realization; Lakshmanjoo's oral language helps clarify its experiential sense as all-pervasive consciousness.
• ākāśa: space or sky. In this verse it matters as the felt openness of consciousness in which khecarī abides during activity.