Summary
Basavanna has grasped awareness and known awareness, yet he is free from the delusion that awareness itself is Kudalasangama Deva.
He has encountered forgetfulness and forgotten forgetfulness, but he is not one who, through forgetfulness, calls the Lord forgetfulness.
When body and Prāṇa recede, he does not retain the deluded possessive claim, “This body is Yours.”
The final declaration resolves the whole movement: if there were an awareness separate from the awareness through which Kudalasangama Deva is known, Basavanna would have seen it. By the Lord’s own truth, he sees no such separate awareness.
Imagery & Symbolic Relevance
The vachana contains no external natural or household comparison. Its imagery is formed through grasping, knowing, forgetting, receding, holding, separating, and seeing.
The opening movement concerns Arivu—awareness or knowing.
Basavanna speaks of grasping awareness and knowing awareness. Awareness can therefore become something examined, experienced, or conceptually understood.
He then rejects the statement “You are awareness” as bhrānti, delusion.
The correction is precise. A faculty or condition that can be grasped and known cannot become an adequate definition of Kudalasangama Deva.
The vachana does not stop with awareness. It turns to its apparent opposite: Marahu—forgetfulness.
Basavanna speaks of encountering forgetfulness and forgetting forgetfulness. Forgetfulness too is a changing condition. It arises, functions, and passes.
He therefore refuses the forgetful claim “You are forgetfulness.”
Awareness and forgetfulness appear as opposites, but neither is allowed to become the Lord’s definition. Basavanna does not select one and reject the other; he passes beyond both identifications.
The next field is body and Prāṇa.
The body and vital movements recede from their former prominence. Yet the body remains present as something that can still be held and spoken of.
At this point, even the devotional declaration “the body is Yours” is examined.
That statement still contains two positions:
a body regarded as possession;
and a Lord regarded as its owner.
Basavanna calls the remaining attachment to this possessive formulation a bhrānti-sūtaka, a defiling condition created by delusion.
The line marks a movement beyond the language of separate possession. The body is no longer privately claimed, but neither is a separate claimant retained merely to say, “I give this body to You.”
The final line turns from all these rejected identifications toward seeing.
Basavanna speaks of the awareness that has known You, or the knowing through which Kudalasangama Deva is known.
He then asks whether another awareness can be placed separately beside it.
His answer is absolute: he sees no such separate awareness.
The final statement neither equates Kudalasangama Deva with an ordinary faculty nor establishes a second knowing outside Divine realization.
The complete movement is therefore exact:
awareness is grasped and known;
the claim “You are awareness” is rejected;
forgetfulness is encountered and forgotten;
the claim “You are forgetfulness” is rejected;
body and Prāṇa recede;
the possessive division “the body is Yours” is relinquished;
and no knowing remains separately beside the knowing through which Kudalasangama Deva is realized.
Lingayoga
In Lingayoga, awareness, remembrance, body, and Prāṇa all participate in practice, but none becomes an independent definition of Linga.
The seeker must neither reduce Kudalasangama Deva to an inward faculty nor retain that faculty as a private possession claiming to know Him from outside.
The body too ceases to function as the property of a separate giver. Worship matures beyond “my body offered to Your ownership” into embodied life without an independent possessor.
The practical measure is the final line: awareness remains truthful when no second knowledge stands apart from knowing Kudalasangama Deva.
Editorial Commentary
Arivu means awareness, knowing, or understanding.
The first line distinguishes between awareness as something grasped and Kudalasangama Deva, who cannot be adequately defined by that grasped awareness.
Bhrānti means delusion, mistaken identification, or confused perception.
Marahu means forgetfulness, oblivion, or loss of remembered awareness.
The phrase concerning forgetfulness rejects the claim that Kudalasangama Deva can be identified with unknowing any more than with ordinary knowing.
Deha–Prāṇa joins body and vital life.
Hiṅgi indicates receding, withdrawing, or losing former prominence.
“Deha nimmadu” means “the body is Yours.” Within this Aikya movement, even this possessive relation retains a distinction between possession and possessor.
Bhrānti-sūtaki means one affected or defiled by mistaken identification.
Bhinnavittu means placing apart, holding separately, or establishing difference.
The closing declaration is conditional and emphatic: if Basavanna had seen an awareness separate from the awareness through which Kudalasangama Deva is known, he would acknowledge it; by the Lord’s own truth, he sees none.
Related Vachana
Supporting Vachana
Sharana Sthala Vachana 799 — Knowledge That Is Not Knowing
Sharana Vachana 799 tests knowledge through concrete animal examples. The dog, elephant, and cock possess forms of functional knowing, yet such capacity does not by itself become true Jñāna.
Its final measure is absolute: every knowledge that does not know Kudalasangama Deva remains ignorance.
It prepares Vachana 1020 directly. Sharana Vachana 799 first separates functional knowledge from Divine knowing. Vachana 1020 carries this further: even the awareness through which the Lord is known cannot be retained as a separate possession standing outside Him.
Advancing Vachana
Aikya Sthala Vachana 1344 — When Linga Is Anga and Anga Is Linga
Vachana 1020 removes separate knowing and the possessive division between body and Lord.
Vachana 1344 advances this into explicit relational identity: Linga is Anga and Anga is Linga; Linga is Prāṇa and Prāṇa is Linga. Nothing remains to be separately shown as present or sought as absent, and uninterrupted Linga alone abides.
Thus the absence of separate awareness in Vachana 1020 deepens into the declared non-separation of Linga, Anga, and Prāṇa in Vachana 1344.
