Śivasaṃhitā 3.59

The destruction of pāpa (sin, negative karma) and puṇya (merit, positive karma) is equally remarkable: prāṇāyāma eliminates not only accumulated bad but also accumulated good. This may seem disconcerting until the tantric vision is understood: both positive and negative karma are bondages, chains binding the jīvātman to the birth-and-death cycle. The yogin does not seek to accumulate more good karma but to transcend the karmic mechanism entirely.

The yogin who balances on their thumb during three hours of kumbhaka and appears insane to observers — this image has notable psychological honesty. The advanced practitioner operates in a state of consciousness so foreign to ordinary parameters that social language has no category for them except madness. India’s great siddhas were frequently marginalized socially for behaviors that ordinary community could not interpret.

Paricayāvasthā (third stage, that of intimate knowledge) beginning here is the state in which prāṇa abandons the iḍā and piṅgalā channels and stabilizes in suṣumnā. Practice no longer requires directional effort: the breath flows alone through the central channel. It is the threshold where technical yoga gives way to the spontaneity of the expanded consciousness state.