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Dhāraṇā 69: The Body As Sky Without Sides (Verse 92)

1. Exercise Title & Verse

Dhāraṇā 69: The Body As Sky Without Sides (Verse 92)

2. Sanskrit (IAST)

vyomākāraṃ svamātmānaṃ dhyāyed digbhir anāvṛtam | nirāśrayā citiḥ śaktiḥ svarūpaṃ darśayet tadā || 92 ||

3. English (Literal)

One should meditate on one's own self [or body] as having the form of the sky, not enclosed by the directions. Then the power of consciousness, free of support, reveals true nature.

4. Main Commentary (Bhāṣya)

Padārtha. Vyomākāram means having the form of the sky: open, uncontained, ungraspable as a solid thing. Here it does not mean staring at outer sky or fantasizing cosmic vastness. Svam ātmānam literally means one's own self, but the lineage insists that in this verse it means the lived body, the body as immediately felt. Dhyāyet means one should contemplate or make vivid in awareness. Digbhir anāvṛtam is the turning word: not covered, enclosed, or wrapped over by directions. Lakshmanjoo makes the force unmistakable by glossing it as the absence of sides, no east, west, north, south, no left-right enclosure. Nirāśrayā citiḥ śaktiḥ means the power of consciousness becomes supportless, no longer leaning on an object, contour, or mental prop. Svarūpaṃ darśayet means true nature is disclosed. The sources preserve a fruitful ambiguity here: either your true nature is revealed, or consciousness reveals her own nature.

Anvaya. The sentence runs cleanly: meditate on your own body-self as sky-like and unbounded by directions; then consciousness-power, having no support, reveals true nature.

Tatparya. This verse makes a more radical move than the earlier space-practices. Verse 43 spatialized the body in all directions at once. Verse 82 made the body supportless. Verse 92 goes further by attacking the body's sidedness itself. That is what this verse newly contributes. The body is not merely imagined as floating in space, nor merely surrounded by spaciousness, nor even simply hollow. It is taken as sky and at the same time stripped of directional casing. The practical point is exact: so long as the body is still being held as a thing with definite flanks, front, back, above, and below, awareness still has a subtle support. When those orienting boundaries loosen, consciousness no longer braces itself against bodily contour. Then citi-śakti stands unsupported and reveals itself. This is why the verse must not be reduced to a poetic visualization exercise. Imagining vastness is the entry cue. Loosening the body's contour until sidedness relaxes is the actual turn.

Sādhana. Sit steadily and feel the whole body at once. First let the body be sensed as volume rather than as parts. Then shift the volume toward vacancy: chest, abdomen, throat, skull, limbs, all as open interior rather than packed substance. Now apply the sharper instruction. Let left and right lose insistence. Let front and back lose insistence. Let above and below lose insistence. Do not scan through the directions one by one and do not build a six-sided emptiness. The verse opens when sidedness softens simultaneously. If an image of blue sky appears, let it remain secondary. The real practice is the loosening of bodily contour, not the maintenance of scenery. When awareness briefly has nothing local to lean on, do not rush to replace that with breath-control, mantra, or thought. Stay bright there. The doing is only this much: body as vacancy, vacancy without sides. The non-doing is equally important: no forcing, no numbing, no dissociative blankness.

5. Jaideva Singh — The Logical

The grammar is compact and precise. Vyomākāraṃ svam ātmānam is the accusative object-complex governed by dhyāyet: one meditates on one's own self as sky-formed. Digbhir anāvṛtam is a further qualifier, literally not enclosed or covered by the directions. The nominative feminine nirāśrayā agrees with citiḥ śaktiḥ, not with the practitioner, so the real supportlessness belongs properly to consciousness-power. Singh's note then gives the doctrinal consequence: when the aspirant holds the self in this sky-like, directionless way, citi-śakti is freed of thought-constructs and shines in her nirvikalpa condition, which is the essential Self. The verse is therefore not about empty outer extension; it is about the removal of limiting adjuncts so consciousness may stand self-revealed. Singh explicitly classifies it as śāktopāya.

6. Swami Lakshmanjoo — The Lineage

Keep the correction exact: here ātmānam does not mean the individual soul. It means the body. The awareness is placed on the whole body as absolute vacuum. Then comes the hinge without which the verse is missed: there must be no sides at all, not east, west, north, south, not even the felt sensation of bodily sides. Do not merely think of a vast space around the body. The body itself must lose its sidedness. Lakshmanjoo glosses digbhir anāvṛtam exactly that way, as not supported by directions. When the body's directional casing drops, God-consciousness remains supportless and reveals her real nature. He is explicit that this is śāktopāya, not āṇavopāya.

7. Mark Dyczkowski & Christopher Wallis — Context & Philology

Direct public evidence is concise but useful. In Hareesh's official concordance, Verse 92 is titled "The nature of the sky" and classified Y68 ~ B2: https://hareesh.org/blog/2023/9/27/vijaana-bhairava-tantra-translation-concordance-part-two . That public classification supports reading the verse as a genuinely śākta practice. Wallis' translation makes a practical point that matters: the sky-nature is treated as identical with one's own being, while the power of awareness is supportless like the sky itself, not merely thinking about sky.

Dyczkowski's official PDF preserves the same core sense and adds the decisive footnote: https://www.anuttaratrikakula.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Vijnaanabhairava_undivided.pdf . There he records that Lakshmanjoo takes ātmānam to mean body here, and that Ānandabhaṭṭa glosses svarūpam as svaṃ rūpam, so consciousness reveals her own nature rather than only "one's own" nature. Bäumer's rendering on the same Hareesh concordance page independently confirms both of those moves by translating "one's own body" and "reveals her own nature." No fuller public prose commentary or free transcript specifically on Verse 92 from Wallis or Dyczkowski was located in this pass. Indirect context only: in Hareesh's 2025 discussion of the closing verses of the VBT, dhyāna is defined as a motionless, formless, supportless mind rather than visualization of a deity-body. That is not commentary on Verse 92 itself, but it helps distinguish the imaginal entry from the supportless culmination.

8. Daniel Odier — The Somatic Grounding

Feel the body from within as unoccupied room, then subtler than room. Ribs, abdomen, throat, skull, flanks, back: not filled, not heavy, not defending an inside. Then let even the side-walls disappear. The body does not become a giant cosmic image. It becomes simple radiant spatiality with no edge insisting on itself. When the flanks stop saying left and right, the verse has become bodily.

9. Paul Reps — The "Sudden Hit"

Feel yourself as pervading all directions, far, near.

10. Upāya Type

Śāktopāya. Singh states this directly. Lakshmanjoo also explicitly calls it śāktopāya and rejects an āṇava reduction. Wallis' concordance classification, Y68 ~ B2, converges with the same reading.

11. Resonance Check (Adhikāra)

This dhāraṇā suits a practitioner who can feel the body as a single field rather than as a collection of parts and who can tolerate the loosening of bodily edges without anxiety. It especially fits someone with strong proprioceptive sensitivity who is ready for a practice that becomes less and less object-based as it matures.

12. The "What Else?" — The Pitfall

The trap is to picture yourself floating in a huge blue sky while the body still feels like a solid object with clear flanks, front, back, and interior. Then spaciousness is only imagined scenery, the contour remains intact, and consciousness never actually becomes supportless.

13. Verse-Specific Glossary

  • vyomākāra: sky-formed. In this verse it means the body-self is taken as open spatial presence, not as a solid thing placed inside space.
  • digbhir anāvṛtam: not enclosed by directions. Here it means bodily sidedness has relaxed rather than merely being thought about philosophically.
  • nirāśrayā: supportless. Here it means awareness is no longer leaning on bodily contour, directional orientation, or any other mental foothold.
  • svarūpa: true nature. Here the sources preserve two live readings: your true nature is revealed, or consciousness reveals her own nature. The practice points to the same event of self-disclosure either way.