Meaning and elaboration
Meaning: The supreme resting place of all beings, where all existence comes to its final rest.
Elaboration
Nishhtha means the final end, the firm foundation, or the ultimate conclusion. In Mahakali, this name reveals her as the absolute resting place of all existence.
The Ultimate Abode (Parama Dhāma) As Nishhtha, Kali is the final and inescapable destination of all beings and all phenomena. She is the very ground of being, the primordial substratum into which everything resolves. Just as rivers flow into the ocean, all names, forms, and passing realities ultimately merge into her boundless essence.
The Culmination of Existence This name shows Kali not only as the destroyer, but as the final consummation of every cosmic process. She is the great dissolution (Mahāpralaya), in which the entire universe, with all its forms and laws, returns to the unmanifest and undifferentiated state within her. For the individual soul (Jīvātman), Nishhtha is the highest liberation (Moksha), the return into the Divine beyond the cycles of birth and death (Saṃsāra).
The Firm Foundation (Aśraya) Nishhtha also carries the sense of a firm foundation. She is the indestructible basis upon which all creation rests and to which it returns. Even when all things dissolve, an immutable reality remains, and that reality is Kali herself. Her withdrawal of existence is not annihilation into nothingness, but reabsorption into her own supreme being.