Śivasaṃhitā 5.102

This verse maps the subtle anatomical path of suṣumnā nāḍī, the central prāṇic channel. Its course is not simply vertical: upon reaching the Brahmarandhra, the cranial aperture associated with liberation, it bends and connects with the Ājñā lotus, the center of supersensory perception located between the eyebrows. This inflection is rarely described with such precision in other haṭha texts.

The compound Brahmarandhra — literally ‘the cavity of Brahma’ — refers to the aperture at the crown of the skull, often equated with the anterior fontanelle. It marks the point through which, according to yogic tradition, consciousness departs the body at the moment of conscious death (mahāsamādhi). Its appearance here signals that suṣumnā is not merely physiological but soteriological in function.

Naming this channel the Gaṅgā carries profound purificatory symbolism. The sacred river, mythologically descending from heaven to earth, finds its interior counterpart in the nāḍī connecting the cosmic plane to the human body. This macrocosm-microcosm homology — sky mirrored in the spine — is a hallmark of the Tantric cosmology underpinning the Śivasaṃhitā’s entire framework.