Śivasaṃhitā 2.4

This verse asserts one of tantric yoga’s most ambitious claims: the entire macrocosm is contained within the human body. The three worlds of classical Vedic cosmology are not external realities separate from the practitioner but dimensions faithfully reproduced in the body’s inner architecture. The body does not merely mirror the universe — it houses it completely.

The term trailokya encompasses the three realms of classical cosmology: bhūloka, bhuvarloka, and svarloka. Meru, the sacred cosmic axis and mountain at the center of the universe, is here identified with the spinal column. The verb saṃveṣṭya (‘surrounding’, ‘encircling’) conjures an image of all cosmic principles orbiting this vertebral axis as planets around a sun.

This macrocosm-microcosm correspondence forms the epistemological foundation of Haṭha Yoga: to know one’s own body is to know the universe. Practice is not an escape from the world but its deepest comprehension. Tantric texts such as the Kubjikāmatatantra and Kaulajñānanirnaya elaborate this homology extensively; here the Śivasaṃhitā distills it with remarkable economy.