Taking his stand on the essence of the Word, lying beyond the activity of breath (prana), resting in oneself with all sequence eliminated. After having purified speech, and after having rested it on the mind, after having broken its bonds and made it bondfree—after having reached the inner light, he with knots cut, become united with the Supreme Light.

(Vakyapadiya: 1.131)

And this is sabdapurva yoga. Meanwhile let us go back to the four feet of the Cow.

When the Supreme Word, says Abhinavagupta, when it divides itself, one says its body becomes triple, and it is then called pashyanti, madhyama and vaikhari, which is crude.

The Ultimate Word, can it ever become human? one may ask. The answer is simple. Just as Shiva created Parvathi to play with, in dance or chess, so the ultimate silence or Para Vak wanted to play with itself, and created its three states. And again just as nothing happened to Shiva when Parvathi and he played, the Para Vak is inherent in every word, however gross it might seem. And poetry then is exercise, the sadhana, by which you get back, seek back if slowly from the expression to the expressed, from existence to essence, from vaikhari to the para.

‘All things,’ continues Abhinavagupta, ‘the stones, the trees, the birds, the men, the gods, the demons are all nothing else but the venerable Supreme Word in the form of Shiva—Sarvasarvatmanaiva parameshwara rupinaste iti.’

* * *

We Indians, as you know, we love numbers. Or is it that numbers love us. (May I remind you, your numerals came from us.) We love to talk of the three gunas, the four estates of man, the nine rasas, and so on. In fact in discussion between pundits, even today, according to the context, you say three or four or nine, often only showing your fingers, meaning the gunas, the estates, the asramas or the nine rasas. How impressive and how ridiculous scholars can be. 1 am of course talking of Indian pundits. Once recently when I asked a pundit in Madras what tamas meant in the Vedas—it meant darkness or just dusk, as some have interpreted it—my Pundit, rings on his fingers, shawl on his shoulders, chewing his betel, going to spit off the betel juices, down the verandah, every ten minutes, showed me seven fingers meaning there are seven interpretations. He never once said what his own opinion was. Maybe pundits are not allowed to have opinions. But not being a pundit, I can say, maybe dusk is a better word, or twilight, than darkness for tamas in the Vedas. It fits better with the meaning, whether Sayana has explained it thus or not.