Near the Himalaya, close to Shri Gangaji, the deepest of all rivers, Shri Purnandasji sat with firm resolve in the posture of yogayukti. He entered dhyana-samadhi, filled with faith in Bhagavan.
Lions stood roaring nearby. He felt no fear.
He drew his apana vayu upward to merge with prana, not letting it descend. In that stillness, wisdom poured through him. He composed sakhi and shabda of pure jnana and described the path to the nirvana pada of moksha.
The infinite glory of Shri Purnandasji became manifest. Between the mountains of sunrise and sunset, who can truly describe it?
Unshakeable Stillness in the Face of Fear
Shri Purnanandji sat in samadhi beside the sacred Ganga in the high Himalayas, and lions came and roared around him. He did not flinch. The commentary says simply: kachhu sankha na maane, he felt no fear, no disturbance at all. This was not bravado or forced suppression of fear. It was the natural consequence of having moved his inner dwelling somewhere that roaring cannot reach. When the heart truly rests in Bhagavan, what appears threatening on the outside loses its power to destabilize what is within. The wildness of the world continues, but you are not in it in the way you were before. The lions are still lions. The sound is still sound. But you are elsewhere, in a silence that no creature can enter uninvited. This is the fruit of genuine samadhi: not the absence of the world, but the absence of the world's capacity to undo you.
Bhaktamal, chhappay 1803 (Nabhadas), tilak commentary
Faith as the Ground of Practice
The Bhaktamal describes Purnanandji as seated in yogayukti with vishvas, faith, as the very foundation of his stillness. He did not enter samadhi through technique alone. The practice was soaked in bhava, in the orientation of the heart toward the divine. This points to something many seekers overlook: yoga and bhakti are not separate roads. The breath follows where the heart leads. When faith is genuine, it is not a belief held at arm's length but a living current that flows through posture, through breath, through the quality of attention itself. Purnanandji's inner alignment was inseparable from his devotion. The discipline did not replace love; it gave love a form through which to deepen. Any practice undertaken with this quality of heart becomes more than technique. It becomes a continuous gesture toward Bhagavan.
Bhaktamal, chhappay 1803 (Nabhadas), tilak commentary
Directing What Pulls Downward Toward What Lifts
One of the most striking teachings preserved about Purnanandji is his practice of directing the apana vayu, the vital breath that ordinarily flows downward, upward to merge with prana. In yogic understanding, this reversal, called urdhva-gati, is a profound inner act: taking the very force that ordinarily disperses and grounds and redirecting it toward liberation. There is a beautiful teaching here for everyday life. So much of what pulls at us wants to take us downward: habit, distraction, the accumulated weight of old patterns. The practice is not to fight these forces but to redirect them. The energy that seeks the earth can be turned toward the sky. Nothing is wasted. The very heaviness of our difficulties, when met with awareness and sincerity, can become the fuel for ascent. What was pulling down becomes the ground from which we rise.
Bhaktamal tilak commentary on Purnanandji's yogic practice
Words Born from Silence
Purnanandji composed sakhi and shabda from within his Himalayan samadhi. Sakhi means verse-witnesses, compact utterances that testify to inner realization. Shabda are songs that carry the flavor of direct experience. The commentary calls these compositions nirmal, stainless, pure. Their subject was nirvana-pada: the state of liberation itself. What is remarkable is that words came out of wordlessness. A path was described by someone who had walked it to its source. This is the paradox at the heart of all great spiritual poetry: the deepest silence finds a way to speak, not to explain itself but to point toward itself. If you have ever been moved unexpectedly by a verse or a song, something in you already recognizes this. The words are seeds. They carry the scent of where they came from. Received rightly, they can work quietly in the heart for years.
Bhaktamal, chhappay 1803 (Nabhadas)
Glory Too Vast to Speak
Nabhadas ends his chhappay for Purnanandji with a question: between the peaks where the sun rises and where it sets, across the depths of the greatest river, who can truly speak of his boundless glory? Pootan pragat mahima ananta. The infinite glory became manifest. And no one can fully describe it. This question is the teaching. The saints of the Bhaktamal tradition understood that certain realities exceed the container of language. When a poet says that something cannot be spoken, that statement is itself a kind of speech, pointing past itself to what lies beyond. The glory Nabhadas gestures at is not the fame of conquest or recognition. It is immense, quiet, cold and clear, present only to those patient enough to climb high enough and sit still long enough. This is an invitation as much as a description. The vastness is available. The question is whether we are willing to stop talking long enough to perceive it.
Bhaktamal, chhappay 1803 (Nabhadas)
Hindi text from OCR scan (Khemraj Shrikrishnadas Prakashan, CC0). May contain errors.