Poetic Rendering
O Lord, the bliss of Your glance
it flows through every vein like dawn of light.
Your presence hums in my breath,
Your touch glimmers upon each pore.
Every hair upon my body has turned into an eye,
each pulse a beam of sight,
each breath a whisper of Your name.
Within the hollow of my palm, the Linga rests
a tiny axis of creation.
I gaze and it ignites;
it glows not as stone but as universe.
Light rises from within, my mind becomes fragrance,
love (rati) ripples like cosmic music,
and all sorrows fall away like dust after rain.
O Koodalasangamadeva,
seeing You again and again,
I am seen by You
and in that seeing, the seer melts into light.
This vachana is Basavanna’s ecstatic testimony of non-dual union (Aikya) achieved through the direct experience of Lingayoga. It describes the culmination of the spiritual path, where the distinction between the worshipper and the worshipped completely dissolves. The Linga held in the palm is no longer an external object of devotion but is revealed as the very core of the devotee’s own consciousness and the structural essence of the cosmos. This is not a metaphorical description but a record of an experiential reality (anubhava) where the microcosm of the individual body (pinda) recognizes its identity with the macrocosm (brahmanda). The vachana maps the journey from formal worship to formless realization, where the act of seeing becomes an act of being, and the seeker becomes the Sought.
Spiritual Context
Core Spiritual Principle: The Identity of Microcosm and Macrocosm (Pinda-Brahmanda Aikya). The individual body (pinda) is not separate from the cosmic body (brahmanda). The Linga is the pivotal point (axis mundi) that, when truly realized, reveals this identity. Spiritual practice is the process of making this implicit identity an explicit, lived experience.
Cosmic Reality Perspective: This is the non-dual state par excellence. Shiva (the transcendental consciousness) and Shakti (the immanent, creative energy) are experienced as one seamless reality. The “glance” is Shakti’s dynamic movement; the “light” is Shiva’s static being. The vachana describes the moment when the seeker’s awareness becomes congruent with this singular reality, experiencing the cosmos as their own body and their body as the cosmos.
Historical Reality (Anubhava Mantapa Context): This vachana represents the pinnacle of the Lingayoga mystical testimony. It served as both an inspiration and a validation for the community. It proved that the path of direct personal devotion (bhakti) and inner worship (antara puja) could lead to the same supreme realization (paravidya) claimed by orthodox ascetic traditions, but here achieved within a life of engagement, with the Linga literally in hand.
Interpretation
“Every hair upon my body has turned into an eye.” This signifies the death of localized, egoic perception and the birth of holistic, omnidirectional awareness. Consciousness is no longer housed in the body; the body is now a manifestation of consciousness.
“It glows not as stone but as universe.” This is the alchemical transformation of perception. The material symbol is fully realized as the spiritual reality it signifies. The ishtalinga sheds its finite form to reveal its infinite content.
“Seeing You again and again, I am seen by Youand in that seeing, the seer melts into light.” This describes the final dissolution of the triad of perception. There is no separate seer, a separate act of seeing, or a separate object seen. Only the unified field of luminous awareness remains this is Koodalasangamadeva as process and state: the union (sangama) in the present moment (koodala) that is divinity (deva).
The Cosmic Reality
Anga (Human Dimension): The Anga is fully sanctified and realized as the Vishvarupa (Cosmic Form). It is no longer a limited vessel but the expressed form of the Divine itself. Every cell is a shrine.
Linga (Divine Principle): The Linga is realized as both the transcendent source (“light”) and the immanent pattern (“axis of creation”) within all forms. It is the singularity containing the plurality.
Jangama (Dynamic Interaction): Jangama here is the state of perpetual, dynamic unity. It is the lived reality where the “gaze” is not an action but a mode of beinga constant, joyful recognition of the Linga in every atom of existence. The distinction between worship, worshipper, and the worshipped has ceased.
Shata Sthala
Primary Sthala: Aikya. This vachana is the definitive experiential map of the Aikya stage. It is not a theoretical postulate but a sensory, emotional, and cognitive description of complete union. The self is irrevocably established in the identity with the Divine.
Supporting Sthala: Pranalingi. The journey to this peak requires the complete mastery and sublimation of the life-force described in the Pranalingi stage. The infusion of prana with Linga-consciousness (“Your presence hums in my breath”) is the necessary precondition for its final dissolution into the light of Aikya.
Practical Integration
Arivu (Awareness Practices): Practice “feeling-awareness.” Move beyond mental concepts to directly sense energy in the body. Feel the aliveness in the hands, the pulse, the breath. Contemplate these not as biological functions but as movements of the divine Shakti, leading to the recognition that all sensation is a form of the Linga’s “touch.”
Achara (Personal Discipline): The discipline is to maintain the attitude of the inner offering (antara puja) throughout the day. Treat every actseeing, touching, breathingas an act of worship directed toward the Linga within the palm and, by extension, within all things.
Kayaka (Sacred Action): Let your work be an expression of the cosmic energy now flowing through you. Act with the effortless precision of nature, as a tree grows or a river flows, knowing you are an instrument of the divine axis.
Dasoha (Communal Offering): Offer your state of being as inspiration. Your peace, joy, and embodied unity become a living teaching (satcharitra) for the community, showing the tangible fruit of the path.
Modern Application
“Fragmented Perception and Disembodiment.” Modern life trains us to perceive through abstract concepts (screens, labels, ideologies) and live in our heads, divorced from somatic awareness. This leads to alienation from our own bodies, from others, and from the living world.
This vachana is a guide to radical re-embodiment and ecological consciousness. It teaches how to turn the body from a problem to be managed into a portal to the cosmic. It offers a way to heal the mind-body split by experiencing the world not as an external object “out there,” but as a living, conscious presence with which we are in continuous, sacred exchange.
Essence
The map is not the land,
until you walk it with your soul.
The icon is not God,
until your gaze makes the two whole.
I looked until the looking burned,
and from the ash, a truth was learned:
The held, the holder, and the hand
are one bright sea upon one sand.
This vachana describes a Phase Transition in Consciousness. Like ice melting into water, the solid, separate structure of the egoic self (the individual Anga perceiving a separate Linga) undergoes a thermodynamic shift through the heat of focused devotion (bhakti) and knowledge (jnana). It transitions into a fluid, non-local state of awareness where the boundaries defining “self” and “other” dissolve into a unified field of energy and consciousness.
Imagine your awareness is a single drop of water. You spend your life observing the ocean (the Divine) from the outside, appreciating its vastness. Then, one day, you roll into it. Suddenly, there is no “drop” and “ocean.” There is only wetness. You are the ocean experiencing itself as a drop, and the drop experiencing itself as the ocean. Basavanna’s vachana is the account of that moment of merging.
This speaks to the deepest human yearning for wholeness, for an end to the loneliness of being a separate self. It confirms that this wholeness is not a fantasy but a realizable state of being, where the ache of separation is permanently healed in the bliss of union. It is the resolution of the subject-object divide that is the root of all existential suffering.
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