Śivasaṃhitā 4.61

This verse describes with precision the subtle physiopathology that Jālandhara-bandha corrects: the nābhistha vahni — the gastric fire residing at the navel — normally consumes the amṛta dripping from the sahasrakamala (the thousand-petalled lotus at the crown). This ‘combustion’ of vital nectar is the subtle physiological cause of aging and death according to the tantric worldview.

Sahasrakamala — ‘the thousand-petalled lotus’ — is the sahasrāracakra, the cranial dome where all the energy systems of the subtle body converge. The term cyuta (that which flows, that which falls, from the verb cyut-, to drip, to flow) describes the downward movement of amṛta that, without Jālandhara, is captured by the umbilical fire before it can be assimilated by consciousness. Practice reverses this dynamic: the cervical bandha acts as a dam.

The knowledge that ‘beings are born and die because of bindu’ (jāyate mriyate loke bindunā) positions bindu as the determining factor of conditioned existence. This principle has cosmological implications — bindu as the primordial point of condensation of consciousness into matter — and practical ones: the entire strategy of tantric hatha yoga can be read as an attempt to reverse the ‘fall’ of bindu, to restore the drop to the ocean of pure consciousness.