The verse plays on the Siddhar habit of compressing an entire hierarchy of practice into a single pivot-term: jñāna. In many Siddhar and wider Śaiva/Advaita-inflected yogic frameworks, ‘yoga’ can denote techniques (breath, locks, inner heat, mantra, concentration) and also the achieved state of integration. Karai Siddhar’s line suggests a criterion for authenticity: yogic methods are ultimately validated only when they ‘subside into’ (ஒடுங்கி) jñāna—i.e., when the practitioner’s identity with technique, effort, and altered states collapses into stable, lucid knowing.

The phrase ‘ஒடுங்கி நின்றால்’ (“if it stands having subsided/withdrawn”) is crucial: it does not merely say yoga leads to knowledge, but that yoga must be absorbed into knowledge—implying a laya (dissolution) of the instrumental into the essential. In this reading, jñāna is not book-learning; it is the immediate recognition/awareness in which the movements of practice and the distinctions of ‘practitioner–practice–goal’ quiet down. Then ‘யோகமதே யோகமுறும்’ can be heard as: yoga becomes yoga (i.e., becomes what it always claimed to be), and ‘யோக யோகம்’ names a superlative or reflexive summit—“the yoga that is the yoga of yoga,” the consummation or quintessence of yogic striving.

Siddhar subtext often also includes a medical-alchemical critique: powers, sensations, and energetic attainments (siddhis, inner heat, breath-control effects) are not the final measure. Only when these are integrated into clear knowing—free of compulsion, display, and egoic appropriation—does the yogic path become complete. The verse therefore preserves a deliberate ambiguity: it both honors yoga and relativizes it, making jñāna the final solvent in which all yogas resolve.