Within the Kaulājñānanirṇaya, inner worship (antaryāga) and outer worship (bāhyarāga) are presented as related yet hierarchically ordered dimensions of practice, with a clear emphasis on the superiority of the inner. Outer worship consists of ritual acts directed toward external deities, employing physical offerings, mantras, and ceremonial observances. Such practices are framed as appropriate for those still oriented toward form, material implements, and conventional religious structures. They function as a preparatory discipline, stabilizing devotion and orienting the practitioner toward the Kaula vision, but they do not themselves embody the highest realization.

Inner worship, by contrast, is described as the true Kaula sacrifice, enacted entirely within consciousness. Here the practitioner internalizes the deity, the maṇḍala, and the offerings, so that the body and subtle energies become the field of worship. Breath, thought, emotion, and awareness themselves are offered, and the subtle body—its channels and centers—serves as the inner maṇḍala. In this mode of worship, the distinction between temple and worshipper, offering and offered, begins to lose its rigidity, as all are gathered into a single interior act of devotion and insight.

The text links this inner worship directly to non-dual realization, in which Śiva and Śakti are recognized within one’s own awareness rather than sought outside. When worship is internalized in this way, the highest form of adoration is simply abiding in the state where worshipper, worship, and deity are no longer experienced as separate. Outer ritual then either falls away or is reinterpreted as a symbolic expression of an already-realized inner state, rather than a means to reach it. In this sense, antaryāga is not merely a more subtle technique but the consummation of Kaula practice, the point at which ritual, yoga, and knowledge converge.

At the same time, the Kaulājñānanirṇaya does not dismiss bāhyarāga as useless or misguided. Outer worship retains a legitimate role in purifying tendencies, strengthening faith, and preparing the mind for the more demanding interior work. Yet to remain confined to external observances is portrayed as a sign of spiritual immaturity, a clinging to the surface of the tradition rather than entering its heart. The esoteric thrust of the text lies precisely in this reorientation: the secret of Kaula is that genuine worship unfolds in the interiorized, non-dual awareness that outer rites only hint at.