Texts / Śivasaṃhitā / Verse 5.243

Śivasaṃhitā 5.243

Pañcamaḥ paṭalaḥ — Dhyāna

Sanskrit text

तथाष्टादशभिर्लक्षैर्देहेनानेन साधकः । उत्तिष्ठेन्मेदिनीं त्यक्त्वा दिव्यदेहस्तु जायते ।

Transliteration

tathāṣṭādaśabhirlakṣairdehenānena sādhakaḥ | uttiṣṭhenmedinīṃ tyaktvā divyadehastu jāyate |

Translation

With eighteen lakhs, with this same body the practitioner rises from the earth; the divine body (divya-deha) is born.

Commentary

The emergence of the divya-deha («divine body») at the eighteen lakhs threshold is the bodily alchemy that tantrism promised from its origins. The levitation (utkrānti) of the physical body from the earth is not a sideshow trick but the visible sign of a fundamental transformation of the material substrate: the prāṇa accumulated in the body has reached such density and subtlety that the forces normally binding it to gravity are transcended.

Aṣṭādaśa-lakṣa = eighteen lakhs (1,800,000 repetitions), dehenānena = with this same body (idaṃ deha = this body, the current body), uttiṣṭheta = would rise (ut = up, sthā = to stand, rise), medinīm = the earth (medas = marrow, fat; the earth as that which nourishes with its substance), divya-deha = divine or luminous body.

The doctrine of the divya-deha or siddha-deha (body of the realized) is shared by the Nāthas, the South Indian Siddhas, rasāyana alchemists and tantric traditions of the body. All describe the same transformation: the ordinary body (sthūla-deha) refined until becoming a vehicle of pure consciousness, free from ordinary body’s limitations yet capable of acting in the material world.