Śivasaṃhitā 4.60

This verse contains one of the text’s most lapidary sentences: maraṇaṃ bindupātena, jīvanaṃ bindudhāraṇe — ‘death through the fall of bindu, life through its retention’. The equation is direct and unambiguous: the entire vital cycle revolves around the economy of bindu. This is not asceticism but alchemy: retention does not mean suppression but transformation.

The first part of the verse describes Jālandhara-bandha anatomically: agalaśirājāla — ‘the network of tendons of the throat’ — employs jāla (net, mesh) to describe the cervical muscular and tendinous framework that is ‘bound’ or ‘closed’ with neck contraction. Hṛdaye cibukaṃ nyaset — ‘place the chin at the heart’ — is the classic instruction to bring the cibuka (chin, lower jaw) toward the hṛdaya (heart, chest). The position creates the throat lock that prevents the fall of amṛta.

Bindupāta — ‘the fall of bindu’ — refers not only to physical ejaculation but to any dispersal of concentrated creative energy: mental orgasm, the squandering of vitality in scattered activities, the loss of attention. Jālandhara-bandha acts as the cervical ‘key’ that closes the upper conduit through which bindu could spill downward: its function is to preserve soma in the cranial region where it can be assimilated by consciousness.