Summary
Basavanna names the six stages: Bhakta, Maheshwara, Prasadi, Pranalingi, Sharana, and Aikya. He asks whether one can slowly speak of them as though one has become them. The question exposes the danger of turning Shatsthala into verbal claim.
He then asks: am I a diamond-bodied one? Have I drunk nectar? These images refuse premature certainty. Basavanna does not assume that he is unbreakable, deathless, or beyond falling.
The final line gives the teaching its force. If Shatsthala comes only into the spoken word and does not enter and fill the mind, then this body is fit to be burned. The Sharana-stage teaching is uncompromising: the stages must not remain on the tongue. They must enter the being before they can be truthfully spoken before Kudalasangama Deva.
Imagery & Symbolic Relevance
The six stages form the opening image. Bhakta, Maheshwara, Prasadi, Pranalingi, Sharana, and Aikya are not decorative names. They are living stages of transformation.
The phrase “slowly, slowly” gives the warning its edge. Basavanna is not objecting to the order of the path. He is objecting to speech that names the path without having become its truth.
The diamond-bodied image marks unbreakable firmness. Basavanna asks whether he has such a body. The implied answer is no. The seeker must not claim invulnerability before real ripening has occurred.
The nectar image marks deathless completion. Basavanna asks whether he has drunk nectar. Again, the implied answer is no. Completion cannot be assumed because the word has been spoken.
The spoken word is the decisive test. If the sixfold path remains only in speech, it has not done its work. The tongue may say “Bhakta,” “Sharana,” or “Aikya,” while the mind remains unfilled.
The body to be burned is the final severe image. This is not a call to bodily hatred. It is Basavanna’s fierce way of saying that an embodied life which speaks Shatsthala without being transformed by it has failed its sacred purpose.
Lingayoga
In Lingayoga, this vachana teaches the discipline of truthful self-measurement. The practitioner must not mistake knowledge of the six stages for realization of the six stages.
For Sharana Sthala, the practice-point is restraint from premature spiritual identity. The Sharana does not claim a stage because he can name it. He allows the path to enter the mind, transform the body, and ripen into lived truth.
This vachana also protects Shatsthala from becoming vocabulary. Bhakta, Maheshwara, Prasadi, Pranalingi, Sharana, and Aikya must remain living transformations before Kudalasangama Deva, not titles carried by speech alone.
Editorial Commentary
The severity of “burn this body” should be read as spiritual urgency. Basavanna is not rejecting the body as such. He is saying that the body has meaning only when the spoken path becomes embodied truth. The real issue is the gap between word and ripening.
Related Vachana
Supporting Vachana
Pranalingi Sthala Vachana 798 — The Touchstone of Truth
Pranalingi Vachana 798 supports this teaching by asking what fruit comes from singing ten thousand songs, even with their meaning, if the mind has not touched the Linga. It also rejects the claim “I have seen the great Linga” when the mind remains untouched. This prepares Vachana 897 directly. In Vachana 798, song, meaning, vow, discipline, and proclamation are tested by inward Linga-contact; in Vachana 897, the names of the six stages are tested by whether they have entered and filled the mind before Kudalasangama Deva.
Advancing Vachana
Aikya Sthala Vachana 899 — The Measure of the True Sharana
Aikya Vachana 899 advances this teaching by distinguishing outer completion from inward realization. It says that even eightfold worship and sixteen offerings do not establish true standing if the seeker has not touched Kudalasangama Deva within; only those who have seen Him within themselves are truly His Sharanas. This is the natural Aikya fulfillment of Vachana 897. In Sharana Vachana 897, Basavanna refuses to claim Shatsthala through speech alone; in Aikya Vachana 899, the criterion becomes direct inward seeing, where outer action and spiritual identity are measured only by inner realization.
