Harināma Kīrtanam · Verse 24

The twenty-fourth verse holds a moment of quiet stillness amid the philosophical activity of the surrounding stanzas. Practitioners count many practices: nāma-japa (recitation), rāga-yoga (devotional song-yoga), and the rest, as the ways one departs. They count six stages of the inner climb (the ṣaḍ-ādhāra of verse 9). And this one, the seeker, sits with eyes wide open in one same state, and finds that this state itself cannot be counted.

The verse is the work's most direct testimony to what is sometimes called sahaja-samādhi, the natural settling of the mind into recognition without effort. The countings are real; they are not refused. They simply do not exhaust the state. The state itself is the uncounted.

If you have come to this verse with a long count of practices behind you, with the suspicion that you have done many things and arrived nowhere countable, the verse names what is on the other side of the counting: a still place where the eyes are open and the count stops.

The Living Words

Eṇṇunnu nāma-japa-rāga-ādi pōyiṭuvān. They count name-japa, rāga, and the rest, as ways of going. Eṇṇunnu is to count, to enumerate; nāma-japa is the recitation practice the work has been advocating since verse 5; rāga is the music-yoga of devotional song; pōyiṭuvān is for departing, for crossing over.

Eṇṇunnu āṟupaṭi kēṟi kaṭappattinu. They count six steps for climbing and crossing. Āṟupaṭi is six steps (the same as ṣaḍ-ādhāra of verse 9); kēṟi-kaṭappu is climbing-and-crossing. The verse names two enumerations the practitioners use.

Kaṇṇum miḻiccu ivan irikkunnu ore nilayil. This one (the seeker) sits with eyes open in one same state. Kaṇṇum miḻiccu is with eyes wide open; ore nilayil is in one continuous state. The verse changes register from the third-person plural (they count) to the third-person singular about himself (this one sits).

Eṇṇāvatalla Hari Nārāyaṇāya namaḥ. It cannot be counted; salutation to Hari Nārāyaṇa. Eṇṇāvatalla is the Malayalam negative-passive: it is not what is countable. The state the seeker has settled into is itself uncountable.

Scripture References

The Heart of It

The verse stages a quiet contrast. On one side, the practitioners count: if you do this many japas, if you climb this many chakras, if you pass through these many states, you will arrive. The Sanskrit-Malayalam tradition has, for centuries, given these countings as the path. Verses 7 (the daily bow), 9 (the six chakras), and 18 (japa amid agitation) all gave countable practices. The countings are real and useful.

On the other side of the countings is something that is not countable. The seeker, after enough counting, sits in one same state with eyes open, and the state cannot be counted. The Sanskrit-canon name for this is sahaja, spontaneous, natural. The Aṣṭāvakra Saṁhitā's recognition (also at verse 13) is this: when the I-self has been recognized as the same as the Lord, the practitioner sits, eyes open, in one continuous state, and there is nothing to count. The Yoga-tradition's sahaja-samādhi names the same condition.

The verse does not refuse the countings. It does not say the practitioners are wrong. It says, with quiet confidence, that the countings lead to a place where the counting stops. The eyes do not close; the body does not collapse into trance; the seeker sits, like an ordinary person sitting in a room, and the state is simply the uncounted state of being-present.

If you have come to this verse with a long history of practices that did not work, the verse offers a small re-framing. The practices were not for the countable result; they were for the uncountable state on the other side. The state arrives, in this tradition's testimony, at the moment the counting stops. The seeker who has stopped counting may already be in the state and not have noticed because the state is, by definition, uncountable.

The Bhagavad Gītā, in its sixth chapter, names this still settling. Yatroparamate cittaṁ niruddhaṁ yoga-sevayā; yatra caivātmanātmānaṁ paśyann ātmani tuṣyati. Where the mind, restrained by the practice of yoga, comes to rest; where, by the Self, the Self is seen, and one rejoices in the Self. Krishna's Sanskrit names the uparamate, the coming-to-rest. Verse 24's kaṇṇum miḻiccu... ore nilayil (eyes open, in one continuous state) is the same Sanskrit uparamate in Malayalam.

The verse closes with the work's standard salutation. Hari Nārāyaṇāya namaḥ. Even in the state that cannot be counted, the bow can. The bow remains, when everything else has stopped.

The Saints Who Walked This Road

Two saints whose lives walked into the verse-24 uncounted state.

Ramaṇa Mahāṛṣi (already named in verse 14), in the small upstairs hall at Aruṇācala, sat with eyes open, sometimes for hours, the visitors gathered around him. The descriptions of him by the disciples Paul Brunton and Major Chadwick all return to the same image: the eyes that watched without watching, the body in one continuous state, the silence that was not absence but presence. The verse-24 eyes wide open in one same state is the closest Malayalam description of what the modern world saw at Tiruvannamalai.

Kāraikkāl Ammaiyār (verse 18), in the cremation ground at Tiruvāḻaṅkāḍu, sang Aṟputat-tiruvantāti in the body she had asked Śiva to give her: a peyy-form, skeletal, not desirable to anyone, sitting open-eyed at the cremation fires while the verses arrived. The Tamil tradition records her there, in one same state, for the rest of her life. The body image is the woman at the cremation fires, the eyes open, the Tiru-nāmam on the lips, the count of the dead at the gaṅgā-bank not affecting her count of the Lord.