Tantra Illuminated: The Philosophy, History, and Practice of a Timeless Tradition - by Christopher Wallis

Introduction

Part of this book is historical. As a scholar, I help people to distinguish between new ideas and those that have been around for awhile, not in order to suggest that the old is better or inherently more legitimate than the new but so that readers may be equipped to accurately identify which ideas are persistent and widespread in the Tantrik traditions, and therefore central, and which ones are more peripheral. Why might this be an important point of discernment? From the practitioner’s point of view, the enterprise of learning to identify the central tenets of a given spiritual tradition is based on the axiom that any tradition preserves over time the most effective teachings and practices and discards those that have proven ineffective. Therefore, to identify the most prevalent Tantrik practices and ideas over the course of centuries of historical development is to identify practices and ideas that have been effective for countless practitioners. This process of identification allows us to innovate on a firm foundation of understanding, rather than—as many modern yoga teachers have done—filling the gaps in our knowledge by simply making up ideas based on idiosyncratic individual experience. Again, I do not mean to imply that a traditional way of thinking or technique will necessarily be more effective for you as an individual than a new one. But it is true that only time will tell if a new technique or teaching has sufficient efficacy to become an enduring part of a living spiritual tradition.

Unlike the history you might have been forced to learn in school, the history of the Tantrik traditions is a fascinating story that consists not merely of information, but of inspirational and powerful ideas—some of the most original ideas ever conceived concerning human potential. Historically, these ideas were inextricably wedded to transformative spiritual practices, some of which you may already be practicing. You see, some practices that originated within Tantra were handed down to the present but became unmoored from their original philosophical anchor points. (For example, the tradition of haṭha-yoga, the basis for modern yoga, originally grew out of Śaiva Tantra.) The Tantrik masters evolved their teachings and techniques as an unbroken whole, a well-crafted interconnected matrix designed to free you permanently from ignorance and suffering. So when you understand the profound and exquisite vision of reality that was originally taught in connection to these yogic practices, this knowledge empowers your own practice, keeps you inspired about your path, and gives you great clarity and focus. It is therefore practically useful for you to become more educated in the traditions that nurtured the practices of yoga that you cherish today.

THE MEANING OF THE WORD TANTRA

First off, tantra is a Sanskrit word with various straightforward usages, including “theory,” “doctrine,” or simply “book.” Though the word sometimes designates any sort of book, it more commonly refers to scriptural texts that are purported to have been divinely revealed by God or the Goddess. These tantras began appearing in India around the 6th century of the common era and continued to be composed in large numbers (hundreds of major texts and thousands of minor ones) for the next thousand years.

“Tantra” has a more specific meaning in the context of these revealed scriptures: it can refer to the system of practice presented by them. In general, we may say that each tantra presented a more-or-less complete system of spiritual practice. So a given guru would work primarily with a single tantra (though he would sometimes supplement it with related and subsidiary texts) and teach his disciple on the basis of that specific tantra. In this sense, then, tantra would simply mean “a system of spiritual practice articulated within a specific sacred text,” and people in the original tradition would thus ask each other, “Which tantra do you follow?”

However, the tradition does offer some interpretive etymologies of the word “tantra.” An interpretive etymology is a way of breaking down the word into component parts that allows an unpacking of the inner meaning of the word. The most commonly found etymology of “tantra” follows. It breaks down the word into the verbal roots √tan and √tra, the former meaning “propagate, elaborate on, expand on,” and the latter, “save, protect”. In other words, Tantra spreads (tan) wisdom that saves (tra). Here the second verbal root has a double meaning, for it alludes to the fact that Tantrik practices give us a means of strengthening and protecting ourselves from worldly harm, as well as bestowing the ultimate spiritual liberation (more on this later). We could equally well say that a tantra is a device (tra) for expanding (tan), as a mantra is a device for working with the mind (man), and a yantra is a device for controlling (yan). Modern teachers like to mention that the verbal root √tan means “stretch, expand,” saying that Tantra is so called because it stretches our awareness and expands our capacity for joy. This is a good example of a modern interpretive etymology, and though it is not found in the original sources, it is very much in their spirit.

The Tantrik scriptures themselves are always said to be spoken by a form of God or the Goddess; or, in Buddhist Tantra, a celestial Buddha or Bodhisattva, which arguably amounts to the same thing. The “fact” of whether the tantras were “really” divinely revealed was not a question that much interested the classical writers; issues of faith and belief were simply not as significant to them as those of efficacy and practice. Since one received the scriptural teachings from a trusted authority (the guru), one simply got on with the practice, and faith naturally increased as that practice started to show results.

WESTERN DEFINITIONS AND CATEGORICAL LISTS

An argument can be made that the Tantra is a mode of practice (and associated mode of viewing reality) that is not of any one religion, though it is found as the esoteric dimension of many religions. The religions that it influenced, in order of degree of influence, were Shaivism, Buddhism, Vaishnavism, Jainism, and Indian Islam. The innovations of Tantra were developed almost entirely within the first two religions in this list, then transmitted to the others. Between these two, Shaivism has historical priority, because many of the Buddhist Tantrik texts drew directly or indirectly on Śaiva tantras, while the reverse was rarely if ever the case. Though Shaivism was therefore the Tantrik religion par excellence, Buddhism eventually became thoroughly “Tantricized,” and in this form, it was transmitted to Tibet. Thus Tibetan Buddhism is almost completely Tantrik. Any attempt to define the Tantra as a general category, then, ought to encompass both Śaiva Tantra and Buddhist Tantra.

In no particular order, the features that characterize Tantra as a spiritual movement are:

• alternative path / new revelation / more rapid path

• centrality of ritual, esp. evocation and worship of deities

• proliferation in the number and types of deities (compared to the antecedent tradition)

• visualization and self-identification with the deity

• centrality of mantras

• installation of mantras on specific points of the body

• ontological identity of mantras and deities

• necessity of initiation and importance of esotericism/secrecy

• yoga (usually referring to meditation and visualization practices)

• ritual use of maṇḍalas, especially in initiation

• spiritual physiology (i.e. subtle body and cakras) and kuṇḍalinī

• mapping deities and pilgrimage sites onto the practitioner’s body

• linguistic mysticism

• importance of the teacher (guru, ācārya)

• addition of worldly aims, achieved through largely magical means

• lay/householder practitioners

• bipolar symbology of god/goddess

• nondualism

• revaluation of the body

• revaluation of ‘negative’ mental states

• importance of śakti (power, energy, goddess)

• revaluation of the status and role of women

• transgressive/antinomian acts

• utilization of ‘sexual yoga’

• the cultivation of bliss

• spontaneity (sahaja, a technical term)

• special types of meditation that aim to transform the individual into an embodiment of the divine after a short span of time

The last ten features really only apply to nondualist or “left current” Tantra (a term that will be explained further). There are six elements that constitute the most prominent features of classical Tantra: yogic meditation, mantras, maṇḍalas, guru, initiation, and ritual worship of the divine (using fire, water, flowers, scented pastes, and so on). Yet, despite their universality, these features cannot be taken to completely define Tantra by themselves, because all of them (except maṇḍalas) are also found to some degree in non-Tantrik Indian religions.

These six aspects are usually organized and given their specific form by the seventh universal feature of the Tantra, that of “deity yoga,” which entails working with the power of a particular aspect of the Divine to which one has been linked through initiation. This work takes place through use of the deity’s associated mantra, yantra, visualization, and/or consecrated image. Thus we return full circle to the beginning of our discussion: what distinguishes a practice as indisputably Tantrik is that it involves deities and their mantras that are revealed in explicitly Tantrik scriptures.

It is impossible to describe the whole field of Tantra in one book. The present volume therefore focuses almost exclusively on the teachings and practices of nondual Śaiva Tantra.

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

WHAT IS THE KĀMA-SŪTRA? WHAT DOES IT HAVE TO DO WITH TANTRA?

Nothing. The Kāma-sūtra is part of a branch of literature called Kāma-śāstra, or the science of pleasure. Its overall goal is the maximization of sensual pleasure as a valid end in itself. By definition, it is not Tantrik, because in the Tantra, the goal of pleasure, when present, is always subordinated to the goal of final spiritual liberation, which does not figure into the Kāma-sūtra. Simply reading the original texts will immediately reveal that they belong to a completely different class of literature.

BUT TANTRA IS ABOUT DIVINE SEXUALITY, RIGHT?

Only if you are interpreting that phrase very broadly indeed. If we survey the Śaiva Tantrik literature as a whole, we will see that sex per se is virtually absent as a topic. There is one lineage group, however, the Kaula, that teaches sensual practices and has what we might call a “sexualized” view of the world, seeing the whole of reality as the harmonious and joyous pulsating union of various sets of complementary opposites. In the original Tantrik sources, we do find some techniques for working with sexual energy and using it to activate kuṇḍalinī, but we find absolutely no physical techniques aimed at prolonging orgasm and so on. While there is such a thing as a Tantrik sexual ritual in the Śaiva tradition, it was taught in only one text out of many hundreds, and it is there called a secret and esoteric doctrine meant for a very few. (It is taught much more prominently in Buddhist Tantra, however.) The Tantrik sexual ritual was primarily a meditative exercise, not a pleasure-maximizing exercise. For more on the difference between original Tantra and the American new-age “Tantric sex” workshops, see the conclusion. Those workshops are about spiritualized sexuality (not necessarily a bad thing per se), whereas original Tantra is about a sensual and embodied spirituality (and even then, only in the Kaula schools).

The Philosophy of Nondual Śaiva Tantra

To step into the world of Śaiva Tantra is to enter a world of magic and mystery. Mind-expanding philosophy and arcane rites, pantheons of fierce goddesses embodied in mystic syllables, energy diagrams that map the many dimensions of reality, visualizations of power centers within the body, gestures that express the purest forms of consciousness, nectarean experiences of the sheerest ecstasy, wielders of supernatural power, and concepts that challenge the fundamental norms of ordinary society: these are just some of its features. In short, it is a world that encompasses the entire range of human spiritual and religious activity, from the most elevated and sublime contemplations of our inner nature to the strangest of superstitions. (We’ll be focusing on the former.) Some people today are interested only in the high philosophy of the Tantra, others in the purely practical techniques, others are curious about the entire historical picture.

For each narrative about the past shapes our experience of the present. While it is true that some narratives better approximate reality than others, the primary value narratives have lies in their usefulness for helping us create the world we want to live in. When they are not doing that, their value is questionable.

So like everyone, you have sold yourself a set of stories about how things are and how you are. When a set of stories doesn’t meet a person’s deepest needs, that person eventually starts seeking new ones. This is where religion comes in. A religion is a complex structure of narratives about reality intended to accomplish a specific goal (often labeled as “salvation” or “liberation”). A religion, then, is a metanarrative. When you engage with a spiritual tradition such as Śaiva Tantra, you are inquiring into whether its narratives about reality are sufficiently compelling and effective to warrant overwriting some of yours with some of its. (Of course, you are also enquiring into the efficacy of its practical techniques, but these are inseparably joined to its narratives.) According to Śaiva Tantra, embracing a more uplifting interpretation of reality is a necessary step on the way to complete transcendence of all narratives. Unlike the way it is seen by many religions, some branches of Tantra explicitly acknowledge that nothing that can be said in words is complete or absolute Truth. The Real cannot be adequately captured by language, and therefore all attempts to do so are approximations that have a relative utility. An approximation in language (i.e., a narrative) is useful insofar as it ultimately leads you beyond language to a desired experience of reality, which is itself a wordless, immediate state of personal revelation.

A spiritual movement originating in northern India that reached its peak in the 9th to 12th centuries, primarily characterized by:

1. Emphasis on direct experience of a divine reality that has transcendent and immanent aspects, called Śiva and Śakti respectively, with Śiva primarily understood as the pure consciousness that is ultimate ground of being and Śakti as the flowing energy making up the entire manifest universe.

2. Initiation into a guru-disciple relationship and an egalitarian kula (spiritual community).

3. Spiritual practice in four aspects: contemplation of View teachings, meditative ritual, yogic techniques of the subtle body, and the aesthetic cultivation of the senses, all aimed at accessing and assimilating the divine energy in all things, in order to achieve both worldly success and spiritual liberation.

NŚT holds that one thing alone exists: the Divine, in various permutations. To say that God alone is real is the same as saying everything that exists is God. In NŚT, to experience this divinity in and as all things is the goal of the practice. The Divine is here taught as having two aspects, the transcendent and the immanent. The transcendent aspect is called Śiva (SHEE-vuh) and personified as male divinity (God). Though Śiva is represented mythologically as having certain characteristics, Tāntrikas (followers of the Tantra) understand Śiva as pure Consciousness: nonpersonal, utterly transcendent of all limitations or qualities, beyond the reach of senses, speech, and mind—in short, the singular Light of Awareness that makes possible all manifestation; the quiescent and peaceful ground of all that is.

The immanent aspect of the divine (“immanent” means perceivable through the senses and the mind) is called Śakti (SHUCK-tee) and personified as female divinity (Goddess). That is, the entire manifest universe is the Goddess, and therefore ought to be reverenced as such. Now, Śiva and Śakti are actually one, not two, but are represented as two because they correspond to two interdependent aspects of reality, one of which is predominant in any given moment of experience. The two different experiences of the Divine represented by Śiva and Śakti are the enstatic, in which we turn within, surrender everything, and reach the quiescent and transcendent ground of our being; and the ecstatic, in which we express our divine nature in creative, dynamic, outward-going, and embodied ways. According to NŚT, both modes are necessary to fully know the Divine, and a harmonious balance of both is the only true spiritual liberation.

The cultivation of this state of awakened freedom originally took place in the context of a spiritual community guided by a spiritual master. (He was called a master not because he was everyone’s boss but because he had completely mastered himself.) Though people were required to take initiation formally in order to have access to the guru and to the scriptures, it is important to note that initiates were not required to renounce their jobs, possessions, or family life. That is to say, the Tantra was mostly a “householder” path, and renunciates were the minority. The practitioners were people like you and me, and they dealt with many of the same challenges of everyday life that we face today. They joined a kula, or community that rejected the significance of caste, class, and gender divisions, and they practiced a life-affirming spiritual discipline. This is part of the definition above because NŚT emphasizes the crucial importance of having a teacher, of proper initiation, and of the role of community. We could even say these are indispensable.

The third element of the above definition concerns the type of practice NŚT taught. While meditation, mantras, and ritual are central, these are also found in many other forms of Indian spirituality. What NŚT added was its innovative yogic techniques of the subtle body, plus the revolutionary notion that virtually anything can become a form of spiritual practice. This idea is based on the teaching that all things are manifestations of the Goddess. Therefore the body was seen not as a locus of sin and impurity, as in the pre-Tantrik tradition, but rather as a vehicle to realize divine reality. This led to a new emphasis on practices focused on the body and its energies and to the detailed mapping of the structure of the universe onto the body, which was seen as a microcosm of the whole. Likewise, the experiences of the senses were not viewed as distractions from spirituality but as opportunities to engage in divine worship. This was a more effective approach for people living in the world, for spiritual practice was no longer limited to ritual acts or ascetic renunciation. Thus this path was sometimes called “the new and easy method.” NŚT teaches that even mundane daily actions like washing the dishes and walking the dog are opportunities for experiencing the joy that flows naturally from the holistic awareness of being in full Presence.

In the Indian tradition, the first and most crucial step on the spiritual path is getting oriented to the View (darśana) of the path that you will walk. The Sanskrit word darśana is often translated as “philosophy,” but the connotations of that English word miss the mark. Darśana means worldview, vision of reality, and way of seeing; it is also a map of the path you will walk. We may understand the importance of View-orientation through an analogy: You might have all the right running gear, a snappy outfit and the best shoes, and you might be in great shape, but none of that will matter if you are running in the wrong direction. By contrast, if you first get properly oriented so that you are moving in the right direction, even if you go slow or have a funny walk, you’ll still get there in the end. Thus, orientation to the View is crucial even for those whose interest in the Tantra is entirely practical, for practice that is not founded on and aligned with right View (sad-darśana) is said to be fruitless. Note that “right View” is also the first step of the Noble Eightfold Path of Buddhism.

Having right View does not mean the ability to recite doctrine accurately. It means having marinated your mind and heart in the spiritual teachings until they illuminate your experience of reality. It means holding the teachings close until they become your beloved friends and allies, your unfailing supports. It means being able to offer them to others in your own way, through your own unique words and actions. (Note well though, being a good speaker of the View does not necessarily indicate inner attainment.) Finally, it means having seen through the pitfalls of wrong understanding that drain the teachings of their uplifting power.

THE VIEW

All that exists, throughout all time and beyond, is one infinite divine Consciousness, free and blissful, which projects within the field of its awareness a vast multiplicity of apparently differentiated subjects and objects: each object an actualization of a timeless potentiality inherent in the Light of Consciousness, and each subject the same plus a contracted locus of self-awareness. This creation, a divine play, is the result of the natural impulse within Consciousness to express the totality of its self-knowledge in action, an impulse arising from love. The unbounded Light of Consciousness contracts into finite embodied loci of awareness out of its own free will. When those finite subjects then identify with the limited and circumscribed cognitions and circumstances that make up this phase of their existence, instead of identifying with the transindividual overarching pulsation of pure Awareness that is their true nature, they experience what they call “suffering.” To rectify this, some feel an inner urge to take up the path of spiritual gnosis and yogic practice, the purpose of which is to undermine their misidentification and directly reveal within the immediacy of awareness the fact that the divine powers of Consciousness, Bliss, Willing, Knowing, and Acting comprise the totality of individual experience as well—thereby triggering a recognition that one’s real identity is that of the highest Divinity, the Whole in every part. This experiential gnosis is repeated and reinforced through various means until it becomes the nonconceptual ground of every moment of experience, and one’s contracted sense of self and separation from the Whole is finally annihilated in the incandescent radiance of the complete expansion into perfect wholeness. Then one’s perception fully encompasses the reality of a universe dancing ecstatically in the animation of its completely perfect divinity.

UNPACKING THE VIEW

All that exists, has ever existed or will ever exist, is one infinite divine Being, free and blissful, whose body is the universe and whose soul is consciousness. This philosophy, then, can be called theistic monism, which means 1) the view that only one thing really exists—i.e., that every person and object exists as a form or aspect of one basic reality (monism)—and 2) that that basic reality has an innate capacity for self-awareness, and therefore it can be called a being, a being whose nature is unbounded by any form of limitation (theism).

Though problematic, the only word we have in English to denote a completely unbounded conscious being is “God.” Thus all sentient beings, seen and unseen, are simply different forms of one divine Consciousness, which looks out at the universe that is its own body through uncountable pairs of eyes. To make it personal: you are not separate from God/dess and never have been. Indeed, you are the very means by which She knows Herself.

Another way of explaining this teaching is to say that all things are part of one vast field of energy, called the Light of Creation or the Light of Consciousness (prakāśa). This field of energy, vibrating at an incalculable number of different frequencies, is all that really exists. It is also called the Ocean of Awareness. Though we are experiencing it (and nothing but it) all the time, we do not realize that we are. We are like the fish in the story, asking skeptically, “What is this thing called water?” The last thing a fish would contemplate is the very medium of its existence. An ordinary being notices least that which is the greatest constant in his life. So, we pay little attention to the nature of the one thing present in every experience: Consciousness. We don’t perceive the fullness and potency of the divine reality in which we constantly partake because we exist in a state of contracted awareness, our powers limited and our perception narrowed to a tiny bandwidth.

To put it briefly, our brains synthesize an experience of reality through our limited senses, each of which functions as a different type of frequency analyzer directed at this fluxing field of energy all around us (and which we are not separate from). Sentient beings like us are simply nodal points of self-awareness, recursive movements of energy in an otherwise undifferentiated dynamic field. As thinking beings, we perform analytic and synthetic mental operations in our contemplation of reality. Some of those operations rigidify, becoming more or less durable and persistent mental constructs, which we then use as filters to select and interpret what we think is significant in reality, thereby narrowing further our already limited spectrum of perception. Then we make the final error of believing that the interpretive constructs we superimpose on reality are reality itself, instead of what they actually are, imperfect representations that served a particular need at a particular time. This wrong understanding causes us suffering. Indeed, it is the only cause of suffering.

THE ACTIVITY OF THE DIVINE

We have established that the fundamental nature of all beings is divine, and we have established what the Divine is—a completely autonomous blissful awareness. So, what does it actually do? Its activity is also fundamental to its identity, and that activity is of course the creation (and dissolution) of the manifest universe. But what is creation, really? It is nothing but the projection, the flowing forth, within the infinite field of Consciousness, of a vast multiplicity of apparently differentiated subjects and objects. Let’s define this subject-object pole, this basic twoness that the One appears as. Each object (= something that can be known) is an actualization of a timeless potentiality inherent in the Light of Consciousness (prakāśa). That is to say, each object is an embodiment of some facet of the One’s infinite being. Each subject (= any knower, a sentient being like you) also embodies that Light of Consciousness, but is further a reflexive movement of self-awareness, a specifically defined mode of the One’s self-reflection (vimarśa). That is, you (and every sentient being) incarnate a unique way for the One to reflect on its Self.

Thus for a sentient being, every encounter with any other being is an opportunity for reflecting on his own total nature. Recognizing yourself in the other being, and the other being in yourself, necessarily involves an expansion of your sense of identity. That is, it entails a realization that you have artificially limited yourself to a set of mental constructs (such as any set of “I am” statements), and this realization is simultaneously an opportunity for the expansion of your sense of identity. The process of expansion continues until you experience yourself in all things, and all things in yourself—the unbounded state of absolute fullness (pūrṇatā) that is oneness with God and final realization. Then, you no longer perceive yourself as a mother or an American or a doctor or a yogī but rather as the pattern of the whole universe currently playing that role and no more identified with it than the actor on stage believes he is really Hamlet, even as he plays his part passionately. This perspective brings a sense of meaning and presence to even the simplest acts. For when you sit and contemplate a stone, what is really happening is that the universe is contemplating itself as “stone.” Your perception of yourself as somehow separate from the Whole is nothing but ignorance.

To recap, then, this infinite Consciousness chooses not to remain static homogenous formless nothingness but rather condenses itself into form, manifesting itself (within the field of its own awareness) as a vast multiplicity of apparently differentiated subjects and objects, thus initiating a vast dance of self-exploration. Now, this act of creation is called a divine play or game (krīḍā), in the sense that this activity is fundamentally a free and joyous act of self-expression, done entirely for its own sake. The word “play” is simply used to indicate an activity that has no purpose outside itself, as well as pointing toward the notion that joy and love underlie and motivate the whole process. (For God so loved Herself, we could say, that She gave form to every aspect of Her being.) The doctrine of play shows us that the Tantrik View is not evolutionary, that it does not hold that reality will be intrinsically better or more beautiful at some future point (though your capacity to experience its beauty is always evolving!). The whole of divine reality is expressed fully in each moment.

Thus, this play of manifest creation, in which the Divine freely bodies itself forth as the universe, is the result of an impulse, a natural creative urge (icchā) within the Divine to express the totality of its self-knowledge (jñāna) in action (kriyā). These, then, are the three primary Powers (śaktis) of God, the three that denote what Śiva-Śakti does, as opposed to the even more basic triad above that denotes what Śiva-Śakti is (i.e., Consciousness, Bliss, and Freedom). The three Powers of Will, Knowledge, and Action naturally unfold in precisely that sequence, for the precognitive creative impulse toward joyful self-expression (icchā) must come first, surging up from the core of Being; and then it must equip itself with understanding (jñāna), i.e., with information about how energy flows most effectively in embodied forms; and then it can engage in empowered activity (kriyā), inevitably achieving its consummation. This process unfolds in each instant on all scales.

The natural question that most people have at this point is something like, “If this whole world is nothing but the free and voluntary self-expression of the divine Light, why is life so hard?” The problem with this question is that it demonstrates a lack of understanding of nonduality, for it can only be asked by a mind that does not include “hard” as an aspect of divine Light, one that is as beneficial and blessed in its own way as “easy” or “happy.” To put it another way, Śiva-consciousness rejoices equally in pain or pleasure, in happiness or sorrow, for both poles equally express its divine Being. God loves the whole of the creation that is himself, and since you are not separate from God, you have the capacity to love the whole of reality as well. This, of course, is the “tough nut” of nondual philosophy, and it cannot be resolved through intellectual understanding (which is rooted in duality), but only through a state of nondual experience brought about by dedicated spiritual practice.

Here we must distinguish suffering from pain. There’s nothing wrong with pain; it is both natural and beautiful. Natural in that it is a feedback mechanism by which nature protects us, and beautiful when it shows us our aliveness. For example, the intensity of the pain you feel when a loved one passes away is another form of your love for them—experienced in that way, it becomes a thing of sharp beauty. Suffering, however, is a mental state we could represent with statements like “This sucks!” “I hate this,” “I wish this wasn’t happening,” or “I don’t deserve this!” Most of what is unpleasant about human existence is not pain, but mind-created suffering. And we can be free of this suffering, for the scriptures tell us it is entirely a product of ignorance, of not seeing things as they truly are. The primary form of this ignorance is our misidentification of ourselves. This misidentification is a kind of forgetting: God incarnates as you, and in order to specifically become you, She has to forget the rest of her vast all-encompassing being. In other words, to fully manifest the particular aspect of herself that you are, She has to temporarily let go of all the other aspects of herself.

So, here you are: What you see of yourself, what you know of yourself, is simply the tip of a massive iceberg (to use one analogy). You look around, and all you can see is what shows above the water, so you imagine that’s all there is. Yet, the sages tell us, the pattern of the whole universe, of all that is, is imprinted on the deepest level of your being. You are not only part of the whole, you are the Whole. Realizing this brings the experience of joyous freedom because you perceive that with infinite options available to Her, Consciousness chose to become you. And furthermore, you are not a static entity but a dancing pattern of energy, an unfolding process—a perfect and integral instantiation of the divine process by which God reflects on herself and expresses herself.

To attain all the fulfillment you’ve ever dreamed of and more, you simply need to see the truth of your own Being: that infinite potential exists within you, for you are an expression of the Divine, and whatever manifests through you in this life, though not infinite, is to be honored as what you alone can add to the ever-expanding process of God’s grand self-exploration. Suffering will automatically fall away when you are able to simultaneously honor what is currently manifesting through you (the tip of your iceberg) as well as the whole of your divine being, a fullness you may not be able to “see” but can learn to palpably feel.

Those who gain an intimation of the fact that they are not seeing the full picture of reality will at some point feel an inner urge (icchā) to take up the path of the cultivation of spiritual wisdom (jñāna) and practice (kriyā). The purpose of walking the spiritual path, from the nondual Tantrik perspective, is simply to undermine your misidentification and directly reveal within the immediacy of your awareness the fact that the divine Powers of Consciousness, Bliss, Willing, Knowing, and Acting comprise the totality of your individual experience as well—thereby triggering a recognition that your true identity is that of the highest Divinity, the Whole in every part.

When you see yourself clearly, there comes a flash of recognition: you are a microcosmic expression of precisely the same divine powers that create, maintain, and dissolve this whole universe. When you experientially realize that the same beautiful and awesome powers that orchestrate the intricate and wondrous display of this entire creation are flowing within you, creating you even as you create with them, providing the very foundation of your whole experience of reality, there is a profound shift. Your fear and pettiness drop away as you harmoniously fall into the dance of life energy, realizing that you have been the only one who has ever limited your potential. An explosion of joy accompanies the realization that there is nothing to do, nothing to achieve, other than to fully embrace the divine powers that seek to manifest through you by expressing the entirety of your authentic being in the fullness of each moment, in an endless flow of such moments.

This state of awareness in which you are completely in tune with reality, immersed in your divine nature, is called samāveśa. You have touched this state, however fleetingly or incompletely, many times in your life. Recognize it as that state in which you are fully present with yourself and your surroundings, relaxed yet focused, expansive and free yet grounded in your real situation—embracing the reality of what is in the now. What is important about this state, from the Tantrik perspective, is not so much how good it feels but what you learn from it and how you grow from integrating it.

Is it really possible to be in such a state—that we may call Presence—all the time, or are the uppermost reaches of human potential impossible to sustain? The answer given by the Tantra is that it is, indeed, possible for Presence to become your default state. This does not imply that it is a static condition or that it does not need refreshing. Nevertheless, just as your default perception of reality is currently one of subject/object duality, with occasional revelations of the unity of being, that situation can become reversed, even permanently reversed, because unity is in fact the more fundamental reality. So, we may say that spiritual practice serves to repeat and reinforce experiential knowing of the Truth through various methods, until this vision of reality becomes the nonconceptual ground of every moment of your experience. That means it has passed beyond the level of philosophy and religion, beyond the level of words and thought, and has become a vibrating reality at the foundation of your being, spontaneously illuminating all that you experience. When this happens, your contracted sense of self and separation from the Whole is finally annihilated in the incandescent radiance of complete expansion into all-embracing perfect wholeness (pūrṇatā). Then, as Abhinava Gupta tells us, your perception fully encompasses the reality of a universe dancing ecstatically in the animation of its completely perfect divinity. This is liberation. This is awakening to the Truth. This is why you took birth.

For the Tantra, awakening (bodha) and liberation (mokṣa) are real, and they are the key concepts that drive the whole of the spiritual life. But there is a subtle and significant point here: as concepts, as goals, as destinations, they must eventually be transcended. After reaching a certain level of development, we discover that the simple teleology implied by the concept of liberation was actually a teaching tool. That is, the teaching that there is such a thing as “liberation” galvanizes a new seeker on the spiritual path and sets in motion a process that is inevitably beneficial, even though the seeker’s concept of liberation as a “thing” that she will one day attain is itself false. What we discover is that instead of walking a path to reach a specific final destination, we are walking it to learn how to walk it. The moment we fall into simple harmony with the walking, dissolving ideas about our destination or our identity as a walker, path and goal merge into one. In other words, liberation is complete when we are no longer waiting to be liberated. But that is not a teaching that is useful for beginners, since it can undermine their beneficial dedication to practice and encourage spiritual bypassing. Rather, it is a teaching the guru presents to individuals who have been successful in their practice but are still striving after their concept instead of surrendering to what’s already there for them.

In this sense, then, even individual “progression” on the path, in the sense of progressing from point A to point B, is an illusion. You are moving through a process, yes, and there is a kind of directionality to your moving, but it is not an evolution to some better state of being as much as it is a dissolving of that which prevents you from recognizing the truth that has always been right in front of you. So, to conclude, future-focused teleology as conceived by most religions is downplayed or at least nuanced by NŚT, even as it is affirmed that 1) there is such a thing as awakening; 2) if you’re not yet fully awake and free, you can be (indeed, you will be, if that is your heart’s desire); and 3) NŚT offers you the necessary guidance to experientially actualize that reality.

Ultimate freedom, then, is not an experience or a state of mind. It can’t be, because no experience or state of mind is permanent. An experience, however great and wonderful, cannot be the goal of the spiritual path, for as soon as it is gone, you want it again, and then you are not free—and radical freedom is the avowed goal of all yoga. So, this leads us to the necessary conclusion that pleasurable experience, however refined and pure, cannot be more divine than anything else. The pursuit of spiritual “highs” is not the path of yoga, Tantrik or otherwise. Nor is final liberation the result of a high experience. It is the result of total surrender of all your grasping, total opening to what is beyond all your stories.

So, what’s all this talk about ānanda, or bliss, in the Tantrik tradition? Simple: ānanda is the most common by-product of this deep surrender and opening to reality as it is. In fact, it is more than that: ānanda is a very important feedback mechanism for consciousness. If you believe you have given up your struggle and accepted what is and you do not experience ānanda (joy, relief, profound contentment, or similar) as a result, then that means you have actually surrendered to your dominant story about reality, rather than to reality itself. Surrendering to your story makes you feel defeated and depressed. Seeing things as they really are, and giving the full heart’s consent to reality as it is, always results in some form of ānanda, whether subtle, soft, sweet relief or astonishing, ecstatic, expansive joy. Ānanda in whatever form is what tells you that you have had a true seeing and a true dying away of your grasping limited self into divine reality. But, and this can hardly be said too many times, ānanda is simply the chief by-product of realization, it is not the goal of the path, and it is not more divine than anything else. If you think otherwise, you will starting grasping after it and building a new “spiritual” self-image around it, and then you are caught again. Probably the greatest pitfall on the spiritual path is confusing the by-products of realization with that which produces them, and this is why nondual Tantra clearly posits the goal of the path as Truth, not happiness. Make true seeing your goal, and more bliss than you can imagine will arise as a by-product of that journey; but the moment your sights shift to bliss as the goal, delusion begins to reassert itself. This is the key teaching that shortens the duration of the whole spiritual process more than any other single teaching, so I strongly advise you to work it deep inside.

So, everyone, everywhere, is doing exactly the same thing: living in precise accordance with their view of reality and trying to maximize their happiness and freedom in the most effective way they can see from within their worldview. And their view is built upon the basis of their experience, so arguing with it does no good (unless you know them well enough to base your argument on elements of their experience). Since everyone is doing the same thing, how can we call some evil and others good? We can say that some are more ignorant and others less so, because it is factually true that the strategies by which disconnected persons pursue their happiness will not be successful, but they believe that they will be successful. Thus, it is fair to say that they are in a temporary state of misalignment. As the teaching states: All beings are Śiva, in relative degrees of self-concealment or self-revelation.

Since all suffering, from a twinge of anger to agonizing guilt, is a feedback mechanism, all suffering is welcomed by the awake one as a gift and a blessing. Not in the artificial Pollyanna sense of “Oh, it’s really okay, I’m fine, let’s look on the bright side, somehow it’ll turn out okay,” but in the sense that no matter how much it hurts in the moment, she knows that it is part of a honing process which is perfectly calibrated to eventually center her in her unconditional freedom and love. It is a process that works insofar as we look into what the feedback is asking us to be aware of. Often we do not. We just try to get past the suffering; in which case it will arise again, and again, until we look into what we are being shown about the way we are holding reality. The moment you see clearly how you—and no one else—are responsible for your suffering, and how your view of things creates it, an irrevocable process has begun that will not stop until it has brought to an end all mind-created suffering.

Because everything contributes to this process, which tends only to your benefit, the awakened ones have always said, “Everything is a blessing,” or, perhaps more accurately, “Anything can be for a blessing.” The very word “Śiva” means blessing, so when the scriptures say that the world is śiva, they mean both that it is divine and that it is a blessing (there are actually no capital letters in Sanskrit). It is in this sense that we can say that reality is intrinsically auspicious (which means “conducive to success”), that reality is intrinsically good—not in the sense of good versus bad but in the deeper sense that anything can be for a blessing, and every experience offers itself to you as a guru, teaching you something about the deeper pattern. You don’t have to understand it with your mind; you simply open to it in full awareness and without resistance, whether it is painful or pleasurable, and the learning happens automatically.

THE CATEGORIES OF TANTRIK THOUGHT

Like all Indian philosophical systems, nondual Śaiva Tantra (NŚT) presents what seems at first a bewildering array of lists of various aspects of reality, all of which attempt to describe the experience of embodied consciousness in its various phases. Such categorical lists are a primary teaching tool for the tradition. Before you read this section, it is important to understand that each of these lists gives a more or less complete account of reality from one particular angle. To use an (imperfect) analogy, it’s like cutting a marbled cake from several different angles: each cut produces a different pattern of one and the same thing.

NESTED LAYERS OF CONSCIOUSNESS: THE TANTRIK FIVE-LAYERED SELF

The Tantrik vision of the self may be compared to a matryoshka or Russian doll: nested layers, proceeding from the gross to the subtle, the less essential to the more essential, as we move from the periphery to the core. There are, in total, five layers of the self in the Tantrik analysis:

• The physical body,

• the heart-mind/energy body,

• the prāṇa or life-force,

• the transcendent Void, and

• the Power of Awareness.

The last is your essential nature, the Self within the self. We should understand right at the beginning that these layers are not rigidly separated; in fact, as one Tantrik master tells us, “It is the nature of each layer to be pervaded by all the layers beneath it.” The subtler the layer is the more it can pervade other layers, which is why Consciousness, the subtlest of all, is all-pervasive. But this schema does not denigrate the body; in fact, the body is the only layer where all the layers of self can be experienced simultaneously.

The point to this map of ourselves is that suffering arises as a result of a failure to perceive the whole of your being and its natural hierarchy. This inability to perceive the whole comes from mistakenly identifying your “self” as only one or two of the layers we have described.

Our identification with the body is expressed in many thoughts or statements like “I am fat,” “I am thin,” “I am young,” “I am old,” “I am pretty,” “I am ugly,” and so on. Thoughts such as these indicate a belief that your identity is defined by your physicality. If you are identified with the body to the exclusion of the deeper layers of your being, then you will necessarily base your self-worth on your own and others’ opinions of your body. In this case, you are definitely setting yourself up for suffering, for the one universal truth of the body is that it will break down, age, decay, and die. If you believe you are this body and nothing more, that truth is terrifying.

The next layer is that of the heart-mind, or citta, which is pure Consciousness contracted into thoughts and feelings. We express our identification with the mind-layer in thoughts or statements such as “I am smart,” “I am stupid,” “I am competent,” “I am incompetent,” “I am happy,” “I am sad,” and so on. The last two may surprise you as examples of mind-identification. In Indian philosophy (as expressed in the Sanskrit language), the mind and the heart are not two different things, if by those terms we mean the locus of thought and the locus of emotion. Both thoughts and feelings are vibrations of citta, or the “mind-stuff.” They are actually two ends of a single spectrum.

When we are identified with our mind—that is, with our thoughts and feelings—to the exclusion of the other layers of our being, we suffer. For the mind changes even more rapidly than the body, a kaleidoscopic shifting display of imagery, words, ideas, and feelings, in which apparently sure ground turns out to be total fantasy. In an attempt to stabilize this mental domain, we repeat certain patterns of thought until they become ingrained habits. These are often not healthy patterns, but we prefer the comfort of their familiarity to the wide-open possibility that can seem like terrifying uncertainty. We can become very attached to creating a sense of security by rigidly defining how things “ought to be”; in reality, we are staving off the fear that comes with the realization that nothing is certain and we are very much not in control even of our own mind, let alone what happens to us. By contrast, the most amazing relief and sense of freedom come when we no longer see our identity and reality as defined by our thoughts and feelings. When we are not overly identified with the mind, we ride the flow of its energy, learning its flux like the surfer learns to ride the waves. We are merely amused by its foibles and petty fears and draw power from its intense feelings, whether “positive” or “negative.”

The next layer of the self is that of the prāṇa, which is usually translated as “vital energy” or “life-force.” At this layer, individuality is transcended, for we share this layer with all living beings. The movement of prāṇa, which is intimately connected to the breath, is vital for life to continue. In fact, prāṇa serves as the interface between the physical body and the mind and is the key to the mind-body connection, though it is subtler and more fundamental than either. It is, in a sense, the means by which the mind extends itself throughout the body in the form of what is called the “subtle body.” (More on that later.) Prāṇa constitutes a subtler and more essential layer of our being than the mind. Our identification with prāṇa is expressed in such statements as “I am energized,” “I am drained,” “I feel alive,” “I feel blah.” The amplification and depletion of prāṇa, which is connected to diet, exercise, sleep, and thought-patterns, is responsible for our general energy level and many of our moods as well. If you find yourself cranky or irritable or listless, with no clear external reason for it, it is often due to the energy-state of your prāṇa and can thus be addressed through food, exercise, sleep, or relaxation. Though it may be “natural” to be more strongly identified with the prāṇa layer than with any of the more external layers, over-identification with prāṇa puts us at the mercy of our moods. Taking our moods too seriously can prompt impulsive action that our mind- or body-layer may later regret (such as snapping at a loved one). We take prāṇa-based moods too seriously when we believe they are arising from the layer of the mind instead of simple prāṇa depletion or amplification (the widespread problem of reducing everything to our psychology).

The penultimate layer in our analysis of the self is that of the transcendent Void (śūnya). The Void, which is all-pervasive, is empty of all form and energy, absolutely still. It is, in a sense, Śiva without Śakti, or rather with Her existing as unexpressed potentiality. This is the layer our awareness occupies in the state of deep dreamless sleep. We can also access this layer while awake through meditation. Most people don’t identify with this layer; but many meditators who have reached the place of the transcendent and profoundly peaceful Void decide (upon emerging from it) that this is their real nature, declaring, “I am the Void,” or, more commonly something like, “I am not of this world; my true Self transcends all things.” Such people renounce all identification with the material world, body, and mind, becoming transcendentalists. They can attain deep states of peace but often cannot integrate these states into daily life, and thus they may fail to adequately take care of their body and become unable to relate to others easily. They may even become escapist and turn away from the beneficial work of engaging in relationships and improving the health of the ordinary mind and body. This is not the Tantrik path; a Tāntrika renounces nothing and seeks tirelessly to realize the Divine on all layers of being.

In the Tantrik View, the ultimate center of our being is absolute nondual nonlocal Consciousness (cit or saṃvit), beyond all other layers yet pervading them, making awareness of them possible. Consciousness is the secret pulsating core of your whole existence, mysterious because it is omnipresent and yet you don’t notice it. It is the most difficult “layer” of your self to grasp, because it is the power by which all grasping is done. It is the most difficult to perceive, for it is the power behind all perception. It is the core in the sense that it is the only aspect of yourself that is impossible to objectify. This Consciousness is absolutely not different from the supreme Divinity that is the essence of all things. It is all-embracing, present in all forms of awareness, including even the most contracted forms of self-identification with any of the previous layers. Because this core Consciousness is by definition simultaneously transcendent and immanent, when we are identified with it, we can experience any state as divine, not just the ones that are radically elevated from our ordinary experience. In other words, identification with our core Consciousness enables us to experience divinity in all things, because it is the divinity in all things. It is the perfect fusion of Śiva and Śakti, pure consciousness and all the forms of energy that it embraces. Therefore this “level” of your being cannot be pictured as topping the hierarchy of the layers of the self, because it pervades and subsumes the entire hierarchy.

The Tantrik model of the self invites us to ask where the locus of our constructed identity lies. On what level do we habitually fixate our awareness? In Paul Muller-Ortega’s phrase, what is our “individual identity assemblage point”? If it is on one of the more peripheral layers, we have more work to do. In working with this five- or six-layer model of the self in actual practice, we see the classic Tantrik twofold movement of transcendence followed by pervasion. That is, we are asked to engage in a contemplation practice of negation followed by a deeper affirmation. First, we reject identification of our real Self with our stuff, then with our body, then our mind, then the prāṇa, then the Void. When we realize our real Self as the core divine Consciousness, the simultaneously transcendent and immanent blissfully free Self-awareness, then we also realize that we are in fact all the layers of the self that we had previously negated. All those layers are seen as expressions of that nondual Consciousness. Identifying with the body, etc., ceases to be a problem when it is superseded by a deeper and truer identification. Thus we move from the erroneous perception “I am (only) this body,” to “I am divine Consciousness, vibrating in the form of this body.” Or, “I am all of these layers of being, and yet I am inexpressibly more than that!” (Note that as a statement in language, these experiences sound egotistical or ostentatious; but as deep wordless experience, they are not.)

THE FIVE (+1) POWERS OF GOD

The five Powers, or śaktis, are the primary way in which the nondual Śaiva Tantra describes the fundamental nature of the Divine. They are:

• CHIT-ŚAKTI—the Power of Consciousness

• ĀNANDA-ŚAKTI—the Power of Bliss

• ICCHĀ-ŚAKTI—the Power of Will or creative impulse

• JÑĀNA-ŚAKTI—the Power of Knowing

• KRIYĀ-ŚAKTI—the Power of Action

To put it another way, God/dess is simply the blissful conscious agent of all knowing and doing. There is also a sixth, all-important “meta-power” that encompasses the other five: Svātantrya-śakti, the Power of Freedom. This power is “meta” because it provides the context for the operation of the other five. In other words, the Divine exercises its five powers as an expression of its innate freedom and total autonomy.

These six Powers pervade all reality, and nothing exists separate from them. NŚT invites us to recognize the Powers as our own.

We have already discussed that the Power of Consciousness (cit-śakti, pronounced CHIT, like all c’s in Sanskrit) is the foundation of all reality, the only factor present in any experience whatsoever. The only question is whether it is predominant in any given experience. That is, at any given moment, either we are predominantly aware of some particular contracted reality, some particular object of consciousness, or we are predominantly aware of our subjectivity, of ourselves as conscious beings, of the fact of consciousness itself. In the latter case, contraction may still be present; it is simply subordinated in our awareness. For example, you may be experiencing something difficult or enjoyable, such as a painfully stubbed toe or an exquisite sunset, and enveloping that is the feeling-sense “I am a conscious being experiencing such-and-such a vibration in my awareness.” This perspective can be predominant in such a way that you are not any less present with the sunset or the stubbed toe. When you are predominantly aware of consciousness itself, you do not experience any form of contraction (such as a thought, pain, or pleasure) as a limitation. Whereas if you are predominantly aware of the contraction, you will necessarily be limited by identification with the body, mind, prāṇa, etc.—that is, with whichever layer of your being is predominant in the given experience.

We cultivate Awareness through meditation-focused spiritual practice, by which we progress in stages toward the state of constant awareness of our real nature, with our powers and potencies fully expanded—an awareness that is ever arising, ever new, ever refreshing itself (nityodita). Now, it is important to note that in the context of NŚT, the practice of meditation is primarily destructive in nature—that is, it allows you to strip away all your false limited notions about what you are, revealing your true nature, the core of being that is all you have ever been. As Abhinava Gupta teaches, if the false mental constructs about ourselves are destabilized then dissolved, the Heart will stand revealed in its fullness. Since you are already That, nothing need be added to make you perfect, though it is also the case that most of us will need to strengthen our capacities through exercising them if we wish to maintain our connection to our innate perfection. The process of uncovering the core reality of your being is very different from the kind of therapy aimed at making you feel better. For some, it can be very difficult, even searingly painful, to surrender the self-images in which so much energy has been invested; but it will inevitably result in a far vaster joy.

Common sense says there are many possible sources of happiness. However, when it comes to the experience of true Bliss that we all seek, of which happiness is a mere shadow, NŚT argues that it has one and only one cause. To understand this, reflect for a moment on the times in your life when you have felt totally free and contented, cut loose from all your cares and worries, when all seemed right with the world, and you fit perfectly into it—in other words, when you felt ānanda. You might think that each such moment had a different cause: in one case the beauty of nature, in another the applause of your peers, or the perfect ski slope, or the perfect lovemaking, or an awesome band, or the kindness of a friend, and so on. Is it the case that many different causes can bring about precisely the same result, that same joyous fullness, or do all these experiences have something in common? Upon reflection, you will see that all those moments did have one common element: you allowed yourself to be fully present and aware—you gave yourself over to the reality of the present moment and opened to its beauty. But there was nothing intrinsically more beautiful about that moment than any other, as others present will attest (otherwise, everyone would have had the same experience as you). It was just that you opened and connected with reality, rather than a concept of reality. In other words, the Power of Consciousness was activated and expanded, accurately connecting you with the universe of which you are a part. This openness, this conscious Presence, is the sole means of unveiling your innate Bliss. We disempower ourselves when we believe the cause of our greatest joy is something outside of ourselves, such as another person or a particular circumstance. Those external things can (at best) trigger an expanded and intensified awareness, which itself is the cause of the bliss.

Consider that most of us dwell in a world of our own thoughts, concepts, and projections; we are not fully connected with reality and thus are less likely to tap into the innate power and beauty of reality. Usually we are not fully present either because we fear the vulnerability entailed by such engagement with reality or because we find the present boring compared to our fantasy world. This explains why it is only when circumstances are either safe enough (for example, when we are sure of the love and good opinion of those around us) or exciting enough (for example, peak experiences in nature or at a festival) that we fully connect with the present moment. This leads us to the natural but false conclusion that such experiences are only possible in those conditions. The spiritual path teaches us how to open in other circumstances and thus discover that it is being open and aware that gives rise to true bliss, and nothing else.

Developing this crucial insight helps us understand that to access that bliss, we need only become more conscious. To achieve that end, we can adopt any one of a number of tools. These tools are always available to us! This realization empowers us by rescuing us from falsely fixating on a particular person or thing as the source of our joy. In fact, the whole spiritual path can be characterized as the development of internal triggers for this blissful awareness, so that we become totally free of the need for external circumstances to be anything other than what they are.

As a microcosm of God/dess, you too can tap into the Power of divine Will, a source of the infinite energy behind all creation. In order to do so, you must repose in Self-awareness. The more we access our real innate nature, the more we can draw on the unfailing power of the divine Will. The Will seeks self-expression for no reason other than the joy inherent in the act of self-expression. If you are tapping into icchā-śakti in your pursuits in life, be they dancing or computer repair, you will have a vast reservoir of energy to draw on. This is because when you are pursuing an activity as a form of self-expression, it replenishes you instead of draining you. Thus a yogī must find a way to express his innate nature through his career and life activities, and if he cannot, he must change them or become desiccated.

As a microcosm of the Divine, if you wish to express your creative impulse in action, whether as a stockbroker or a musician or a chef, you must first equip yourself with knowledge. You cultivate profound understanding of the specific ways in which energy flows in your chosen field of activity—i.e., its deep structures and laws of operation. The seeming paradox is that by submitting yourself to the discipline of mastering the knowledge of form and structure, you become capable of joyously free expression in that arena. For example, a great jazz musician or modern dancer is only able to improvise with such consummate virtuosity, with such freedom and focused passion, because she or he has mastered the forms and structures within which music operates and the body moves. It is in submitting ourselves to a discipline that we become truly free and capable of real self-expression; otherwise our creative energy is not sufficiently directed to accomplish anything. Similarly, no matter how much passion you have for walking the spiritual path, for that fervor to serve you, you must equip yourself with knowledge about the path, especially drawing on the wisdom of the masters who have themselves walked the path and successfully navigated its many pitfalls.

Any action done for its own sake, pure and selfless, with no agenda, as a spontaneous expression of your being, is a manifestation of kriyā-śakti and thus does not bind you further into the karmic cycle. One of my teachers says that when anyone wants to do something for him, he cautions them, “Please do this for me only if you can do it with all the delight of a child feeding a dog, because I don’t want to have to pay for it later.” That is his way of saying that he wants his relationships with others to be expressions of kriyā-śakti, not karmic bondage. The spiritual practices, unless they are done in a spirit of grasping after results, are all expressions of kriyā-śakti. That is why spiritual practice is most successful when you enjoy it for its own sake, experiencing it as a celebration of the Divine rather than as a means to an end.

THE FIVE ACTS OF GOD

If the five Powers describe the fundamental nature of God/dess, the five Acts describe what S/He does. In this sense they are expressions of the Power of Action (which of course never operates separately from Will and Knowing).

The five divine Acts (pañca-kṛtya) are not only what God/dess does; in fact, they are all S/He ever does. So, everything that is happening in the universe expresses one or more of these Acts. They are:

• SṚṢṬI—creation, emission, the flowing forth of Self-expression

• STHITI—stasis, maintenance, preservation

• SAṂHĀRA—dissolution, resorption, retraction

• TIRODHĀNA—concealment, occlusion, forgetting

• ANUGRAHA—revealing, remembering, grace

These Acts take place on all scales: from the grand macrocosmic processes of the creation and dissolution of this entire universe to the moment-to-moment processes that create and dissolve your subtle inner experience of reality.

NŚT teaches that our universe exhibits self-similarity, like a snowflake or a fractal, with the same patterns repeating on all levels. As above, so below. As without, so within. As here, so elsewhere. Thus the five Acts that are involved in the universal process are precisely the movements of our individual process as well. Our moment-to-moment experience of reality can be described in terms of these five.

The Krama school of NŚT teaches that we can observe the divine acts of sṛṣṭi, sthiti, and saṃhāra in the arising and falling away of each and every cognition. Whether the object of awareness is something we are thinking about (a concept) or something we are currently perceiving (a percept), it undergoes the same process. The cognition of it emerges out of an apparently blank or neutral “void” state, persists for a short time, then dissolves again into the void. Most cognitions trigger another related cognition so quickly that we cannot perceive any space between them—but we can perceive it at the end of what we call a “train of thought.” The dissolution of the last of a connected series of cognitions gives way to a perceptible space between thoughts, often experienced as a “coming back to yourself”—a natural return to greater awareness of ourselves and our environment in the present moment, which is simultaneously an expansion into open possibility. It is in this moment of connecting to reality, which provides an opportunity of self-reflection, that we choose to conceal or reveal to ourselves the fact of our agency in the whole process—that it is not something happening to us but a process in which our own consciousness is both agent and ground. The Krama-influenced Recognition school (Pratyabhijñā) teaches that this process of cognition, by which the field of our consciousness contracts into particular thought-forms and releases them again, something that happens countless times each day, holds the key to the liberating recognition of ourselves as a microcosmic expression of the whole of divine reality.

ĀBHĀSA THEORY PART ONE: THE STATUS OF “EXTERNAL” OBJECTS

The manifestation of an object of awareness necessarily requires the manifestation of a limited subject as well: the perceived implies a particular perceiver. This is what we call “the mind.” What we do not realize, however, is that the mind and its object are an apparent bifurcation of one principle: the Goddess Consciousness who is the ground of the whole process. It divides into two mutually correlated and coordinated contractions, reflections of each other as it were, manifesting in two spheres that we have labeled as “internal” and “external.” These labels conceal the fact that no “external” reality can be shown to exist that is independent of a corresponding “internal” reality. This invariable concomitance proves that they are aspects of each other. Modern cognitive science can accept that we create a mental image that is a representation or reflection of an actual external object; but from the perspective of NŚT, the object is equally a reflection of our cognition. In other words, it does not have existential priority. But, the objectioner replies, the object must have priority, because multiple different people perceive it and describe it similarly. No, NŚT replies, it need not have priority if those different perceivers are all aspects of one Perceiver, which differentiates itself precisely in order to view the object from different perspectives. (For no two people can have precisely the same perspective on anything, literally or figuratively, and this lack of redundancy is, in a sense, precisely what justifies each individual’s existence.)

Well, what about the opposite case, the objectioner asks—in cognition of a concept (as opposed to a percept). Surely then the subject has priority over the object, since the concept I contemplate is part of my own private reality. Not so, comes the reply: can you think of any concept that you could contemplate that has not also been contemplated by others? The very creation of a concept is a social act, a collective act of meaning-making, that from the perspective of NŚT is only possible because the individuals involved are all aspects of one being. Furthermore, in this philosophy, not only any concept but equally any object known by more than one individual is said to be cocreated by all those who perceive it. This explains both why no single individual has complete autonomy in the creation of her reality and why, to experience such unlimited autonomy, one must subsume one’s individuality in one’s universality (that is, one’s divinity). So, we have shown that the manifestation of the cognition of any object, however simple, is a process that cannot be separated from the manifestation of an “external” object, and vice versa—the two are aspects of one, mirroring each other as part of the dialectical process by which divine Consciousness reflects on itself and on the various dimensions of its being. Pondering this truth as a meditative exercise is an example of the Tantrik practice called bhāvanā, meditation or “creative contemplation.”

ĀBHĀSA THEORY: PART TWO MANY SHININGS OF THE ONE LIGHT

One more note on the nature of external objects. To fully understand how they manifest in Consciousness, we much touch on what is called ābhāsa theory. In this understanding of reality, all manifestation is a projection or “shining” (ābhāsa) of the one Light of Consciousness. Each object has its various characteristics, such as “tall,” “round,” “blue,” “male,” or “made of sandalwood.” Each of these various characteristics is called an ābhāsa, literally “a shining” within Consciousness. They are each a vibration of that one Light.

The practical application of ābhāsa theory is that it helps you to encounter reality as it is: various vibrations of energy analyzed by the different sense faculties and synthesized into an object by the mind, and then made the object of various judgments. Observing this process requires a step back and expansion into a meta-awareness that is considerably closer to our real nature, allowing us to hold a much bigger yet more subtle and more sensitive picture. I said closer to our real nature because ultimately we seek the ability to hold that broader perspective without the sense of detachment connoted by “step back.” Indeed, in the Tantra we seek that holistic meta-awareness even while fully engaged with the world.

We have seen that the very act of perceiving or thinking of something implies a whole interconnected theory of the nature of reality. But let us return to the sequential flow of a simple act of cognition, such as the awareness of the color blue or the feeling of happiness. First, the object emerges into conscious awareness: we are performing the act of creation or emission. Even if it is a familiar object, you never experience it exactly the same way twice; thus we are creating it anew each time. Now, the object must have some duration for it to be experienced as a reality. Thus, we perform the act of stasis (sthiti) when we hold a thought or percept in awareness, however briefly. It may mutate, unfolding as a series of connected ideas or images (each with their own mini reiteration of the cyclical flow), but still we stay with a particular line of thought, sustaining it until we release it.

When we feel “done” with that object of awareness, we release it, and it dissolves, merging back into the indescribable ground out of which it came—the Goddess Consciousness in Her fully expanded and all-encompassing form. This is the act of saṃhāra, dissolution or retraction. As mentioned above, just after the moment of dissolution, when we return to the timeless ground of all thought, there is a moment of opportunity. At that moment in which we have, however briefly, been returned to the ground of awareness, we have a choice: self-revealing or self-forgetting. We have the opportunity to recognize that this still, expansive, ground state of pure Consciousness in which we rest for but a moment is our true nature, the inherently blissful and free Self.

This is the great secret: we touch down in our fundamental nature many times a day—every single time we have released one thought or experience and before we turn to the next—yet we do not know how to repose in that Śiva-state, to savor its divine rasa (flavor); indeed, we do not even recognize the opportunity. Usually, when confronted with this moment of choice, we do not perform the Act of anugraha (revealing) but rather that of tirodhāna (forgetting or concealing). Instead of surrendering to the opportunity for ineffable self-awareness, we unreflectively initiate another train of thought as soon as possible, one that often begins as an evaluation of the previous train of thought. Needless to say, the likelihood of recognizing the opportunity in the moment of choice, the moment of “touchdown,” is greater the longer that moment lasts. Thus the yogī seeks to prolong the space between the thoughts. That’s where a meditation practice comes in.

To recognize that the space of expanded self-awareness between thoughts is their unchanging ground—to recognize that there is one eternal Perceiver of the arising and dissolving of the threefold cognitive process, and you are It—is supremely empowering and liberating, for in so doing you realize that you are always choosing your experience of reality, and you can also choose differently. You are not and never have been a victim of circumstance, for no one else can determine your inner state for you. True, choosing differently can be quite difficult at first because of the power of your saṃskāras (subliminal impressions of past experiences that influence how we see the present). We tend to repeat old familiar patterns rather than making new choices. Even so, identifying yourself as the ground of the process of thought instead of as your thoughts means that you are no longer at the mercy of those thoughts. You can choose to alter the way you experience reality, for you are the only one who creates and dissolves the cognitions through which you experience that reality.

THE 36 TATTVAS: PRINCIPLES OF REALITY

Central to Tantrik philosophy and cosmology is the system of the tattvas or “levels of reality.” The tattva system is a kind of map of the conscious being’s experience of reality.

TATTVA #0: THE HEART (Śiva/Śakti in perfect fusion)

This secret tattva, taught only in the esoteric nondual Tantrik sources, is the key to understanding the whole philosophy of nondual Tantra. It is #0 because it does not crown the hierarchy, for as we have seen, the “highest” tattva is absolutely transcendent Śiva. But the Ultimate Principle (paramārtha), tattva #0, is not transcendent; for to transcend is to go beyond and, thus, to exclude. In nondual understanding, the Ultimate must be that which simultaneously transcends and encompasses all things. It is the supreme paradox, for it expresses itself as the very substance of all things while simultaneously being something more than simply the sum of all perceptible realities. This absolute principle cannot be written in the tattva list, for it pervades the whole as the indefinable essence of all things, manifest or unmanifest. It is absolutely incomprehensible by the mind.

This all-pervasive and ultimate Reality, subtler than the subtlest, beyond the highest transcendent Śiva and yet closer to you than your own breath, equally present in the most sublime refined pure awareness of infinite openness and in the scent of the foulest excrement, its radiantly beautiful divine nature never tainted though it shines equally in the form of all that is called pure and impure—this is what Abhinava’s lineage calls the Heart (hṛdaya) or the Essence (sāra) of Reality.

This Heart, this Vibration, this Essence, is the light by which all things are illuminated, the reality by which all things are real. It is the omnipresent divinity, manifest equally in all things. Philosophers tend to object to this articulation of the nature of reality, saying that if everything is equally divine, the word “divine” loses its meaning and value, because something has value only in opposition to something else that doesn’t. While this objection is perfectly rational, it is operating on a level of understanding that for Tāntrikas is superseded by the immediate mystical experience that initiates share—an experience in which everything is indeed perceived as equally suffused with beautiful divine radiance, in which the total freedom and joy of being permeate the entire sphere of perception, and in which no phenomena whatsoever can be perceived as anything less than absolutely perfect. This vision of reality has been labeled “transrational” because of the fact that it cannot be fully understood by the ordinary mind, despite the fact that the one who has had the experience usually considers it the most intensely real experience of her life.

THE THREE IMPURITIES (WITH AN EXCURSUS ON THE DESCENT OF POWER)

Though the tattva schema purports to be a complete account of all the principles of reality, there are three important principles not enumerated in that list. (Some consider them as aspects of māyā-tattva; others suggest they are not in the list because they are not truly real.) These are the three malas, or “impurities”. The three malas constitute our experience of bondage. From the nondual viewpoint, they are not truly stains; they are simply ignorance, or rather limited perception, which Consciousness has taken on in order to become a finite individual, and which it can choose to relinquish at any time. The first and most basic of the three is the āṇava-mala or “Impurity of Individuality”; the second is the māyīya-mala or “Impurity of Differentiation”, and the third is the kārma-mala or “Impurity of Action”,

THE IMPURITY OF INDIVIDUALITY

As mentioned above, there comes a moment in the existence of an embodied soul (perhaps after many lifetimes) when it is done with the phase of contraction and begins to turn toward its own expansion. This turning may take place deep inside your being; you may not even be aware of it at first. But things that seemed exciting or fulfilling before—like gaining wealth, having lots of friends, getting wasted, making sexual conquests, being praised by others—no longer seem to do it for you. For most this “world-weariness” is a necessary step in opening to a deeper reality. The longer the gap of time between the subtle turn inward, toward expansion and the occurrence of śaktipāta or sudden awakening, the more intensely felt that awakening is.

I will briefly describe some signs and symptoms of this awakening. One of the most important signs is subtle but significant: when you close your eyes, take some slow, deep breaths, and turn your attention within, there is immediately a sense of presence, a sweetness in just being with your inner self. Those who have not received śaktipāta have little patience for turning within; they don’t see the point, for they don’t sense the Divine there. Furthermore, those who have received the Descent of Power manifest substantial changes in their lives, including some or all of these:

• You find worldly forms of “fun” are less satisfying.

• You are fascinated by spiritual teachings, even if you don’t understand them.

• You find yourself drawn to eat healthier food or otherwise honor your body.

• You feel respect or reverence towards spiritual teachers or those who have dedicated themselves to the path.

• Tears of joy or gratitude well up spontaneously, especially when witnessing acts of compassion or devotion.

• Your creative capacity is unleashed.

• Mantras are effective for you.

• Yogic practices, especially meditation, yield a significant benefit, even if they are challenging.

• You experience yourself as more vulnerable and sensitive, yet somehow more strong.

• You find it harder (for a time) to relate to friends who have no apparent spiritual sensitivity.

• When you read the words of a great spiritual master, they resonate on a deep level of your being, and you “get” them, even if you can’t explain them.

• When you get quiet and turn within, you feel a subtle “presence.”

When I say that you will have to let go of “positive” self-images as well as negative ones, I do not mean to imply that you discard your positive virtues; rather, you let go of the story about yourself that is based on those virtues. This is necessary because the self-image that you are a “good person” carries with it a raft of “shoulds” that ironically prevents you from expressing your innate virtue in a way that is organically responsive to the actuality of the present situation. Your real virtue is not based on a story about yourself; it is a natural expression of your essence-nature.

Nor does this process of letting go of everything you think yourself to be entail abandoning your roles and responsibilities in life. For what is at issue is not whether you are a wife, or mother, or doctor, but whether you identify yourself as that and that alone—and thus define and limit and circumscribe your experience of reality through those identifications. In other words, you don’t need to run away from all those responsibilities to attain liberation, because liberation in the Tantrik sense means going from the experience of being trapped in your life situation to the experience of continuously perceiving that you are the infinite creative Light of divine Presence, joyously playing the role of a wife, or mother, or doctor, and doing so in service to all beings. The metaphor of the actor and his role is perfect here: Does an actor feel miserable playing a role on stage, even the part of a tragic figure? No, because he knows that he will relinquish the role, that he is not bound by it, and that he will return to what he has never forgotten: his real identity. In fact, even as on one level the actor does experience the misery of his character, on a deeper level he experiences great joy in playing his part well! Imagine what your life would be like if you had that experience of joy in all your roles, if you retained a wordless awareness of your fundamental expansive, all-encompassing, complete, and perfect nature even as you went about performing the most mundane of tasks.

THE IMPURITY OF DIFFERENTIATION

The Impurity of Differentiation is that form of ignorance that causes us to perceive dualistically, that is, to see differences but not the underlying unity. It is the māyīya-mala that causes us to feel separate from all other beings, and from that which we perceive. The fundamental form of the māyīya-mala is subject-object differentiation. This means that you perceive the objects of your awareness as something separate and different from yourself. This wrong view leads either to a sense of the world as a persecuting threat or as a source of things to acquire. This is ignorance, for as we have seen, anything that exists within your consciousness is necessarily already an aspect of yourself. True seeing is seeing all beings within yourself and yourself within all beings. Only when we are focused on the most superficial layer of reality does difference seem to be the most fundamental reality.

If you are having a hard time seeing the other as yourself in another form, that simply means that you must expand your sense of self and take hold of the realization that the capacity to do both wonderful and terrible things exists within you and the other person in exactly the same degree. Overcoming māyīya-mala does not mean believing that all people are the same or that all are equally good. It means seeing the reality that all entities are different forms of the same thing, each subject to unique conditions. You can stay grounded in the Real by grasping that though there is only one substance to reality, it can manifest in an infinite variety of different forms. Of course, though all beings are God, some are highly contracted forms of God, expressing the divine Power of self-concealment by perpetuating ignorance and suffering. Seeing all beings as equally Divine does not mean equally approving the actions and viewpoints of all beings. It is vital that this particular point be understood with crystal clarity.

THE IMPURITY OF ACTION

The Impurity of Action or kārma-mala refers to the bondage of karma. As long as the first two malas are active, you will see yourself as a limited, separate being who must strive to give yourself every advantage at any cost. This viewpoint naturally gives rise to volitional actions with repercussions that will further enmesh the actor in bondage. The cycle of action that is motivated by ignorance and corresponding reactions is called karma. Only those actions performed out of ignorance and grasping create karmic repercussions.

The primary forms of that ignorance are attachment and aversion. Attachment is the conviction that we need something outside ourselves (success, a partner, the right job, approval, etc.) to be fulfilled. Aversion is the same vibration, only inverted: the conviction that we cannot be fulfilled until certain things are eliminated or avoided. When we are driven by attachment and aversion, we naturally commit divisive actions that can cause suffering for ourselves and others. The more overcome we are by a particular attachment or aversion, the more extreme our actions become (as in the case of someone who believes “I can’t live without him!”). The more extreme the beliefs motivating our actions, the greater the karmic repercussions. Only actions that arise spontaneously as an expression of our essence-nature, without personal motive of gain or loss, have no binding karmic repercussion.

The best way to overcome kārma-mala is to address the root from which it arises: become thoroughly convinced that there is nothing outside yourself that need be added to make you complete nor is there anything that need be subtracted to make you pure. This state of profound love and respect for your own being will, if achieved even in part, make it easier for you to perform actions without any selfish grasping motive and thus you will be free of karma. It should be noted here that an action can make you feel good and still be without selfish motive; the question is whether it spontaneously wells up from your Heart as a natural expression of your authentic nature. (So, an action can be Self-ish and not selfish, if you get my meaning.) It is the root, not the fruit, of an action that makes it selfish or not. Needless to say, if you are able to undermine and destabilize māyīya-mala, the belief in yourself as separate from other beings and objects, then kārma-mala will naturally start to fall away as well. Only if you see others as separate from you could you consider your own needs without considering theirs. So, the long and short of the Tantrik view on this is this: Don’t worry about karma. Focus on the more fundamental malas, and karma will take care of itself.

VĀK: THE FOUR LEVELS OF THE WORD (& THE SIX-FOLD PATH)

The form in which the highest divinity is worshipped in one school of NŚT (the Trika) is the Goddess called Parāvāk, “the Supreme Word,” or simply Parā. Parā is the Tantrik equivalent of the mainstream deity Sarasvatī, except that She is revered in the Trika as the highest principle of reality: She is also called Anuttarā, “the feminine Absolute.” In the Trika, the totality of existence is understood as an expression of the Supreme Word, and thus all beings are “the Word made flesh,” as it were. This concept is parallel to Greek thought (and the beginning of the Gospel of John) where “the Word” is the English translation of logos, denoting the deep structure of reality, the harmonic animating principle of the universe. In this view, everything is a harmonic vibration of the one Word.

Parāvāk, then, is both the power of inspiration and the organizing intelligence of embodied consciousness: the subtle patterning in Awareness that shapes both the world of things and the corresponding world of ideation and representation. The Word manifests in two different ways, and these mirror each other: signifiers and that which they signify. That is, the Word becomes both the symbolic units of language and the objects of experience to which they refer. These are the internalized and externalized dimensions of one Consciousness, the Goddess Parā (who is understood to be Mahādevī, i.e., the feminine aspect of Śiva). When we do not see the common root of both external objects of experience and the internal ideas that reflect them, we fail to realize their interdependence. For example, we erroneously believe that “external” reality shapes our inner world but not the other way around; whereas in fact, both aspects are constantly shaping and reshaping each other in a two-way dialectical process. The two sides of this process are described in Śaiva Tantra as each having three aspects, thus giving us the so-called Sixfold Path of Reality.

Signifier (vācaka), the inner Path    Signified (vācya), the outer Path    1. varṇa (phonemes, subtle pulsations)    4. kalā (5 major divisions of reality)    2. mantra (morphemes, thought-units)    5. tattva (36 principles of reality)    3. pada (words and phrases)    6. bhuvana (118 planes of reality)

From this point of view, the whole process of sādhanā is nothing but the process of carefully and slowly aligning our internal mental constructs of reality (vikalpas) with the actual patterns of reality itself, and of discarding those that cannot be so aligned. (Note that in the fully expanded mode of awareness, this process happens effortlessly of its own accord.) Putting it another way, sādhanā consists of learning how to cast aside our presumptions, to carefully observe what is happening around and within us, and then to surrender our various skewed stories about reality to Reality itself. (This is nondual language for what many religions call “submitting to the will of God.”) At some point, the effort involved in this process gives way to an epiphany, a deep and profound insight into the deep structures of Consciousness, into “the mind of God,” if you will, as a result of which the process of alignment unfolds more or less spontaneously.

This Sixfold Path is a pan-Śaiva doctrine, not just found in the Trika. However, it is the Trika that explores and builds a theology around the inner Path of the Signifier. It is this theology that I mean when I refer to the “linguistic mysticism” of the Trika.

The Trika articulates a doctrine of four levels of the Word in order to help us understand the inner Path, the process by which we each construct a particular experience of reality. Understanding all of this is crucial for those who wish to open themselves to the real nature of things and surrender mind-created suffering.

VAIKHARĪ VĀK: THE CORPOREAL LEVEL OF THE WORD

If we start from the most concrete, the first of the four levels is Vaikharī, the level of ordinary everyday articulate speech. Vaikharī functions on the level of duality, and in it, object-awareness is predominant. Human language is inherently dualistic, for each word achieves a particular meaning only by negating all other possible meanings. Further, spoken language is oriented to the objects of consciousness, and it operates analytically—that is to say, it helps our minds divide reality into discrete chunks and then sort and categorize them. This creates a problem, for if we believe that language reflects reality accurately, we will necessarily see reality dualistically. That is, we will perceive a world carved up into different chunks of differing values, a world of separate entities acting on (and often against) one another, instead of a continuum of unity in dynamically balanced interrelationship.

Indian philosophy has long articulated a powerful critique of the (usually) unconscious process by which we take a linguistic concept, which is really just a convenient shorthand designation for a complex process or set of factors, and believe that that term denotes a given static reality. That is to say, we mistake a linguistic symbol for a fact. This may not seem a big deal—mere philosophizing, you might say—but the consequences of this cognitive act of “reifying” a linguistic symbol are serious. In the realm of religion, we call it fundamentalism (which basically means believing that your religious text is literally true rather than symbolically true), and as we know, this has been responsible for some of the most vitriolic hatred and horrific bloodshed of the last hundred years. So, this is not “mere philosophy.” There are serious real-world consequences to these subtle processes by which we build up our picture of reality.

So, words do matter, not in terms of themselves but in terms of what they signify, what they point to or reveal about the way we are encountering and understanding our world. Additionally, words are important because they are forms of action, by which we affect (or inflict) change on the world around us. Our words are patterns of energy that powerfully shape other people’s experience of reality and our own, and therefore must be used with care.

MADHYAMĀ VĀK: THE INTERMEDIATE LEVEL OF THE WORD

The second level of the Word is Madhyamā, the level of thought or “internal discourse.” On this level, the process of knowing is more predominant than the things known (see the chart above). Language on this level is not like that which we speak; it is what some call “mentalese”—the language with which the mind thinks to itself: a mixture of words, images, fragmented phrases, and half-formed ideas. The Madhyamā level is the substrate for the formation of persistent dualistic thought-structures called vikalpas; in other words, this is the arena in which the mind formulates its thought-constructs—the forms of verbal symbolization that it then superimposes on reality. Vikalpas are essentially the distorted and oversimplified stories that we tell ourselves about reality and that we then reify or take as fact. The ability to distinguish that a vikalpa is a representation of reality—and possibly a faulty one—rather than reality itself is a crucial skill for the Tantrik yogī; some say the crucial skill.

The proverb that typifies Tantrik practice is “We rise by the support of the same ground that trips us.” It is important to note that our thought-constructs, our vikalpas, limit the range of possibilities for how we experience any given reality, yet cultivating purified thought-constructs—those aligned with the organic patterning of awakened consciousness—can by the same token expand our range of possibilities.

PAŚYANTĪ VĀK: THE VISIONARY LEVEL OF THE WORD

The cultivation of purified thought-constructs is very difficult to accomplish if we are not also working down into the third level, the Paśyantī or “visionary” level. This is a level beyond ordinary discourse, where the vibrations of thought and feeling seem entirely wordless. It is the level of precognitive Will (icchā śakti), the initial impulse of Consciousness toward expression. On this level of the Word there is no differentiation of space and time, and sound and light as well are synesthetically fused. The Word is very much active here, though in a compacted and concealed form. This is the plane of so-called nirvikalpa awareness: in this context that term does not mean “without thought,” but rather that the vikalpas (differential thought-constructs) have become converted into pure energy in very subtle forms. Because these are so deeply internalized, they have more power to influence us—for good or ill.

On this level, subjective awareness is dominant; that is, the subject-object split is scarcely operative for the various objects of experience have collapsed into the subject. We perceive the impressions of the various experiences as part of ourselves (again, with good or ill results, depending on the impressions). So, this is the level of our precognitive (that means prior to cognition, limiting the range of possible cognitions and shaping their character), deeply held beliefs about reality, woven into our sense of self, and all the stronger for being wordless. This level is called “visionary” because the pattern held here powerfully shapes our vision of reality, structuring our thoughts on the Madhyamā level and our words on the Vaikharī level. The subliminal impressions of past experiences (saṃskāras) held here constantly provide the template for our mental and physical engagement with reality. Hence, if our yoga does not reach to this level, lasting change is impossible. This is the level of deep healing, where our goal is to create a pattern in the deepest level of individual awareness that perfectly aligns with the cosmic divine pattern.

The model of the four levels of the Word helps us understand why it can be so hard to tell the difference between a “hunch” that expresses deep intuitive insight and one that expresses deep subconscious programming. We feel both viscerally, but while the former is completely reliable, the latter is only sporadically so. The difficulty in telling them apart is that both bear the mark of the Paśyantī level: the former rises from the fundamental level of the Word (see below) and passes through the Paśyantī level to reach the mind, while the latter rises from saṃskāras (subconscious impressions), which have been imprinted on the Paśyantī level.

We must therefore be skeptical of our hunches and investigate their real nature. One way to tell the difference between the arising of true intuitive insight (from the Parā level) and the arising of deep conditioning (from the Paśyantī level) is this: when we question the hunch, if it comes from saṃskāras, the mind will defend and justify it, arguing for its validity and pointing to the “evidence” that seems to corroborate it. By contrast, when we question a real intuition, it remains silent. The insight does not justify or explain itself, but offers itself as a gift. It takes practice to listen to the voice that is quieter than the mind.

PARĀ VĀK: THE SUPREME LEVEL OF THE WORD

That ultimate nature is the Supreme Word. It is totally beyond the distinction of the three planes described above and yet constitutes the deepest identity of each of them, the vibration from which they all arise. It is the realm of higher nonduality. That means it is a reality that coincides with no single plane, yet is that from which the various planes derive the capacity of performing their respective functions. Unlike the other three planes, it cannot be measured in terms of greater or lesser degrees of contraction for it embodies the very divine Freedom that presides over the appearance of contraction in its various forms and degrees. It is called the Supreme Word because, though beyond all verbalization, it constitutes the power of verbalization and symbolization. That is, it is the very essence of self-reflective awareness (vimarśa), the power by which Consciousness represents itself to itself in various forms, that it may know itself fully.

THE FIVE STATES OF AWARENESS

As you might imagine in a spiritual culture so preoccupied with the nature of consciousness, attention is given to the various states of awareness that each of us moves through every day: waking, dreaming, deep sleep, and so on. Of course, as usual, the Tantra has an argument to make about how many states of awareness there actually are. Many people not familiar with spiritual practice would say there are three. Meditators who have experienced samādhi (deep meditation) think there are four. Nondual Śaiva Tantra argues that there are five.

JĀGRAT: THE WAKING STATE

The ordinary waking state is one in which we tend to perceive ourselves primarily in terms of the physical body. In this state we are focused on (even lost in) the objects of perception, perceiving them in terms of their mutual differentiation and our resultant preferences. Though we call this “the waking state” to differentiate it from sleep and dreams, from the spiritual perspective it is the most unawake of all the states. As scholar Mark Dyczkowski has written, “[In this state, a person is] completely unconscious of his own subjective nature, [and] he never asks himself who he is. Whenever he sees an object, he immediately identifies with it and totally forgets himself as the perceiver.” This is why Abhinava Gupta calls this state “the unawakened.” Most people move through their waking life as if in a dream. Thus the Bhagavad-gītā says (I paraphrase), “What is day to most people is night to the person of wisdom, and vice versa.”

Within the waking state, we also experience the other states, for the first four states all interpenetrate each other. Dreaming-in-waking is the state we call daydream, reverie, or fantasy, in which we are lost in our mental impressions and almost unaware of our physical surroundings. Deep sleep-in-waking is a moment of completely blanking out, a spontaneously thought-free state in which one stares off into space. It is rare in adults but often observed in children or teens. It is a state of unity-consciousness, but we are not aware of it as such. (If we are aware, then it is really the following.) The Fourth-in-waking is a moment of spontaneous meditation, a thought-free state in which self-awareness is primary, even while perceiving the “external” world. This is called “true wakefulness” by Abhinava Gupta.

SVAPNA: THE DREAM STATE

In the dream state, we occupy our subtle body (sometimes called the “energy body,” it is composed of the prāṇa, subtle elements, and mental faculties), and we roam in the world of the impressions of our various experiences, exercising our capacity for imaginative mental representation. In this state there is unity-in-diversity (bhedābheda), for all the various elements of the dream state are unified by being aspects of a single mind. The dream world is not a creation of random firings in the brain but can tell us about our subconscious world. Therefore, there is the possibility of doing “dream yoga,” a topic addressed by Abhinava Gupta in chapter 10 of his Light on the Tantra. As he says there, “Wise ones experience dream as a form of inner knowing, which operates on known entities in whatever way it wants, independently of their external existence.” In other words, through dream yoga we can make inner shifts, rewrite our past, and have new insights.

Waking-in-dream, commonly called lucid dreaming, is an important part of dream yoga; for to make conscious choices in the dream world, you must learn how to wake up in it and realize you are dreaming. Otherwise lucidity in the dream state will come and go at random. Some people never experience this; but if you have, you can cultivate it. Dreaming-in-dream is the ordinary kind of dreaming, in which awareness is scattered and self-reflection is difficult. Deep sleep-in-dream is said to be a state in which one has greater self-awareness in the dream (because deep sleep is associated with subjectivity; see the chart above). Finally, the most important is the state of the Fourth-in-dream, that is to say, fully focused awareness while dreaming. It is said that if you can learn to practice meditation in the dream state, it bears fruit more rapidly than in the waking state.

SUSHUPTI: THE DEEP SLEEP STATE

In deep sleep we are immersed in pure subjectivity but without self-awareness. Entering this state every night is necessary for mental and physical health. In this state, we are temporarily free of our waking thoughts and our subconscious impressions, both of which can be taxing on our systems. From the yogic point of view, it is precisely because the deep sleep state is so close to pure subjectivity, the innermost Self, that it is refreshing and rejuvenating. The human being cannot survive long without deep sleep or meditation.

TURYA: THE FOURTH, OR TRANSCENDENTAL STATE

The transcendental state of meditation, commonly known as samādhi, consists of accessing the state of total subjectivity, the void of pure consciousness—with the usual objects of awareness (including thoughts) absent, the senses quieted, and even the subliminal impressions temporarily quelled. Simply, it is a state in which one accesses the level of deep sleep while completely awake and aware. Put another way, it is nondual awareness of pure subjectivity or “I-ness,” on the level of the individual Self (puruṣa, ātman), not the all-encompassing universal Self. Samādhi literally means “absorption,” because in classical yoga the most common method of achieving this state was to quiet the mind by focusing it one-pointedly on any object (a candle flame, the breath, etc.,) until the mind merged with the object of meditation and thus dissolved. In this state, the object alone shines forth, suffused with consciousness, yet free of any associations, interpretations, or cognitions.

For many Indian (and Asian) spiritual traditions, this is the highest state. They regard it as the only state untainted by the messy and limited manifestations of nature. Such schools of thought are “transcendentalist” in that they seek transcendence as their goal. But in the tradition of Śaiva Tantra called “Supreme Nondualism” (paramādvaya), which is the focus of this book, it is taught that we can exist in the stainless clear Light of Consciousness even in the midst of worldly activity. This is the condition known as turyātīta, “beyond the Fourth.”

TURYĀTĪTA: BEYOND THE FOURTH

As you might expect if you are starting to understand the pattern of reality in this philosophy, this state is not called “the Fifth” because it does not top a hierarchy; it is not comprehensible in hierarchical terms. Referred to as that state “beyond the Fourth,” Turyātīta is best described as the complete permeation of the first three states by the Fourth. It expresses the fundamental movement of the self-liberating autonomous consciousness: transcendence followed by pervasion of the mundane by the transcendent. Thus it is final liberation and full awakening, as the Tāntrikas conceive it, under another name.

In other words, the nondual Tāntrikas assert that it is possible to experience the supreme Light of the Divine in the midst of any and all worldly activities, and even in the midst of any and all moods or states of mind. To be more accurate, in this state we do not experience the Light in spite of our mood or condition or activity but as the very substance of those. The successful establishment of this state is Turyātīta, the liberation beyond that of the transcendentalists.

The History of Śaiva Tantra

Tantra originated as a distinctly Indian religious phenomenon, though in time it diffused through many Asian cultures. Our first certain evidence of it dates from 1,500 years ago in North India. This was a turbulent time in Indian history, for the great Gupta empire had crumbled, leaving numerous petty warring kingdoms. The uncertainty of life was at an all-time peak: there was no sure security of home, livelihood, or even one’s life. At such times people crave modes of empowerment, and it was to fill this need that the Tantra arose, offering new, more effective technologies for the transformation of mind, body, and environment. Though the Tantra did promise worldly advantages to some, what it ultimately had to offer was the greatest empowerment of all: the power to determine your own inner state, regardless of external circumstance.

It is difficult to be sure about the beginnings of Tantra, because the only early evidence we have consists of a couple of manuscripts and inscriptions carved on temple walls. However, through the mammoth efforts of Professor Sanderson, we now can draw some firm conclusions about Tantra’s origins. He has recently shown (with several hundred pages of evidence and argument) that Tantra was a spiritual movement that originally arose entirely within the religion of Shaivism and from there passed into Buddhism and Vaishnavism, propagating throughout the Indian subcontinent and into East Asia, Southeast Asia, and Indonesia.

EARLY ŚAIVA TANTRA: TWO STREAMS

On one side, sometimes called the “right current,” we have a dualistic tradition that

• emphasized worship of Śiva without Śakti,

• believed that liberation was solely the result of a powerful ritual initiation and subsequent ritual practice, and

• did not wish to challenge the social norms prescribed by the brāhmin priests of Vedic society, but rather sought their acceptance.

This current is called the Śaiva Siddhānta (siddhānta means “the established doctrine” or “the orthodoxy”). Its adherents were called Saiddhāntikas.

The left current of Śaiva Tantra—whose philosophy we referred to as “NŚT” throughout the first half of the book—was a primarily nondualistic group of lineages that are harder to pin down because they were less homogenized and institutionalized. In general, the left current

• emphasized worship of female divinities and fierce deities,

• taught that liberation could be attained in this life (not merely at its end) as the result of powerful spiritual experiences attained through the cultivation of insight and yoga, and

• chose to challenge the traditional social order in various ways, such as by empowering women and performing rituals with transgressive elements

These groups went by a variety of different names, but eventually tended to designate themselves with the term “Kaula,” which means “from the family (kula),” meaning the family of esoteric Tantrik goddesses.

THE COMMON CORE DOCTRINES OF ŚAIVA TANTRA

So what did the two streams have in common? They both adhered to the most basic doctrines of Śaiva Tantra, which we will summarize here. The individual soul is innately divine, that is, of the same nature as God, but exists in a veiled state, so that you are ignorant of your own true nature. Therefore, you suffer. Out of His compassion, the Lord has revealed scriptures that explain how the soul can be liberated from this bound state. These scriptures teach a ceremony of initiation called dīkṣā, in which powerful mantras (that are in fact aspects of Śiva’s own consciousness) burn away all the karma that would otherwise destine you to take birth many more times, thereby granting you the capacity to attain spiritual perfection and freedom during, or at the conclusion of, this very life. Anyone who was fit could be initiated, including women and lower-class people. (Nor were you required to become a renunciate after initiation.) You were considered fit if you had received something called “the Descent of Grace” or śakti-pāta. This was considered a private, interior spiritual event in which God awakens your longing for liberation by infusing you with His spiritual energy (śakti). This awakening causes you to seek out a guru for initiation. The guru then examines you for the “signs” by which he may infer that the Descent has taken place.

THE NINE MAIN SECTS OF ŚAIVA TANTRA

Above we have examined Śaiva Tantra in terms of two streams. The truth is there was a spectrum of groups, as the diagram below indicates. The further left on the spectrum a group is, the more it emphasizes the following features: nondualism, worship of the feminine, inclusion of women, transgression of social norms, occasional mortuary symbolism, and charismatic gurus. As we’ve just discussed, there is a near-total absence of these on the far right.

Now we will look at the nine main sects of Śaiva Tantra, in more or less chronological order. The development of these groups spans about five hundred years (600–1100 CE), with their literature slowly increasing in sophistication in over this period. We also see gradual shifts toward a householder rather than ascetic audience, more teachings on liberation rather than worldly attainments, and increasing attention to the goddess-centered nondualist groups. The geographical reach of the Tantra in this period is the entire Indian subcontinent, comprising modern India, Pakistān, Nepāl, Bhutan, Tibet, and Bangladesh, as well as parts of Cambodia, Vietnam, and Indonesia.

For each of the nine original Tantrik sects, I will list the form of the Deity worshipped, the principal mantra, and the principal scripture. These are the three features that most clearly distinguish one Tantrik group from another, for in traditional India practice was more definitive than doctrine. For example, people of different religious groups would ask each other not “What do you believe?” but rather “What do you practice?” or “Whom do you worship?”

A note on correct terminology: the word “sect” is associated in the minds of many with the sectarian history of religion in Europe, which consists of schisms, hatred, and violent struggle. This is not the case here; though there is evidence of competition and debate, there is in fact no evidence whatsoever of violence or open animosity amongst these groups. There was rather a considerable amount of sharing; so rather than the word “sect,” we can use a much nicer Sanskrit word, sampradāya, which means something like “lineage group, specific tradition, practice tradition,” and “school of thought” combined.

THE NINE SAMPRADĀYAS OF ORIGINAL ŚIVA-ŚAKTI TANTRA

• Śaiva Siddhānta – the Orthodox Doctrine

• Vāma – the Feminine

• Yāmala – the Couple

• Mantrapīṭha – the Throne of Mantras

• Amṛteśvara – the Lord of Nectar

• Trika – the Trinity

• Kālīkula – the Family of Kālī

• Kaubjika – Kubjikā’s Tradition

• Śrīvidyā – the Goddess of Auspicious Wisdom

SAMPRADĀYA 1: Śaiva Siddhānta

Deity: Sadāśiva
Visualization: white-bodied, five-faced, three-eyed, and ten-armed, in the posture of a meditating yogī.
Mantra: HAUṂ
Principal Texts: Kiraṇa-tantra, Parākhya-tantra, Kālottara

The Siddhānta was considered by most initiated Śaivas as the broad base of the tradition, the general revelation, while the Kaula texts were considered (by their adherents, at least) the specialized revelation. Thus, the Kaula texts assumed knowledge of much that was contained in the Siddhānta-tantras, inflecting or refining or transcending that knowledge in various ways. After describing all the differences between the two, this relationship may seem surprising. But remember that there are many commonalities between them, such as belief in the innate divinity of the soul, its obscuration, the importance of initiation, and so on. Furthermore, we should note that practice was, on the whole, much more important than doctrine in Śaiva Tantra, and between the right and left currents there were even more commonalities in practice than in doctrine. So you see, the Kaula scriptures were “specialized” in the sense that they needed only to include information on what differentiated them from the broad base of the orthodox Siddhānta.

It is important to note that much of the powerful yogic technology developed within the Tantra had its origins in the Siddhānta. Other groups borrowed extensively from the large Saiddhāntika repertoire of yogic practices (i.e., meditation techniques, prānāyāmas, subtle body practices linked with mantras, and so on). The Kaulas often came up with simpler, easier and more direct techniques of awareness cultivation, but these were often modifications of the standard Saiddhāntika forms.

SAMPRADĀYA 2: Vāma

Deities: the four sister-goddesses Jayā, Vijayā, Jayantī and Aparājitā, with their brother Tumburu-bhairava
Principal text: Vīṇāśikhā (only surviving text)

Though we know little about the Vāma sampradāya, we can see that it was significant as one of the earliest goddess-worshipping traditions to emerge in the previously highly masculine-oriented religious culture of India. It is also one of the earliest transgressive traditions, where power accrues to the worshipper in part through the breaking of social norms and their associated thought-structures.

SAMPRADĀYA 3: Yāmala

Deities: Aghoreśvarī (a.k.a. Caṇḍā Kāpālinī) with her consort Kapālīśa-bhairava
Visualization: pale yellow and white respectively, naked and wearing ornaments of human bone.
Mantra: [OṂ] HŪṂ CAṆḌE KĀPĀLINI SVĀHĀ
Principal text: Brahma-yāmala a.k.a. Picu-mata

In the ancient Yāmala tradition, which is aimed primarily at the power-seeking ascetic, we are deep in the shamanistic roots of Tantra described earlier: a world of magical powers and arcane rituals performed in the cremation ground on a new moon night, using human skulls and summoning spirit powers. The primary text of this tradition that has come down to us, the Brahma-yāmala, is primarily concerned with ritual, and contains a huge amount of material on the magical technologies wielded by Tāntrikas: mantric incantations, special hand gestures (mudrā), mystic diagrams, and so on. Now, the fact that the Brahma-yāmala is quoted a number of times by the later sophisticated Kaula writer and spiritual genius Abhinava Gupta in his Light on the Tantras shows us something important about the development of the classical tradition. Though Abhinava Gupta was not at all in accord with the type of Tantra presented in much of the Brahma-yāmala—for example, he preached against grasping after magical powers, seeing them as antithetical to spiritual liberation—he still can (and does) cite the text in support of his teachings on supreme nondualism (paramādvaya). This is possible because of an important doctrine found in the nondual tradition: that in His mysterious wisdom, Śiva has hidden nuggets of the Truth even in the dualistic and power-obsessed scriptures, nuggets that reveal themselves when the given text is “bathed in nondual awareness” by the reader. Thus an author like Abhinava can cite a text like the Brahma-yāmala without condoning everything that is found in it. This is important because it is a theology of scripture that is quite different from the one most Westerners are used to (in which all of the passages in a book like the Bible or Qur’ān are equally authoritative and divine). The guru is (as Brooks has argued) a kind of “living canon.” This means that if Abhinava were your guru, the parts of the Brahma-yāmala that he cites would be scripture for you, and not any other parts.

SAMPRADĀYA 4: Mantrapīṭha

Deities: Svacchanda-Bhairava, a.k.a. Svacchanda-lalita-Bhairava (Independent Bhairava or Bhairava of autonomous play) with consort Aghoreśvarī
Visualization: white, five-faced and three-eyed, eighteen-armed, wearing dreadlocks and a garland of human skulls
Mantra: HŪṂ
Principal text: Svacchanda-tantra

This sampradāya, which is known as the Mantra-pīṭha or Throne of Mantras, is important because of its great popularity for many centuries in Kashmīr, where Tantrik culture especially flourished. Its central text, a vast work called the Svacchanda-tantra, tells us much about Tantrik practice and cosmology but little about philosophy. The Mantrapīṭha tradition occupied a kind of middle ground between the Siddhānta and Kaula traditions we have discussed at some length; that is, it had some goddess-worship and some mildly transgressive elements (for example, wine or rice-beer would be offered to the deity but not consumed by the practitioner).

SAMPRADĀYA 5: Amṛteśvara

Deity: Amṛteśvara (Lord of Nectar)
Visualization: white, one-faced, and four-armed, with his consort Lakṣhmī
Mantra: OṂ JUṂ SAḤ
Principal text: Netra-tantra (The Scripture of the Eye)

This tradition did not command the exclusive devotion of a substantial group of followers like the others named here, but was influential nevertheless, especially in Kashmīr. This influence was possibly due to its unusually broad-minded and nonsectarian attitude: its central text teaches that the Amṛteśvara mantra may be used in the worship of any form of the deity without distinction, whether Viṣṇu, Gaṇesh, etc., and including even the Buddha (this is most unusual in the given cultural context). In other words, whatever form of the Divine you want to honor, you can preface your obeisance with the Amṛteśvara mantra. In so doing, you are acknowledging that all deities are emanations of the one Divine, the Lord of Nectar, whose nature is to bestow nectarean blessings on all His devotees.

We see this strategy of micro-macrocosmic correlation again and again on the part of the nondualists. In other words, whatever features are present in the nature of the Divine are also present in each individual, and the Tāntrikas are interested in mapping those features in detail and realizing each of them internally. Take note that since it is the deity that is primary in these systematic correlations, we are not seeing a deification of the human personality so much as an overwriting of the latter with the Divine personality that is its true nature and ground. That is, the central Tantrik teaching “you are God” should not be taken to indicate a kind of anthropocentric narcissism but something close to its opposite: that your real self is not what you think, is not your socially and psychologically constructed persona at all, but rather is the infinite Light of Consciousness, in which your whole personality and life history constitute a kind of fleeting thought, a moment of self-reflection.

SAMPRADĀYA 6: Trika

Deities: the three goddesses Parā, Parāparā, and Aparā
Visualization (of Parā): white, radiant, two- or four-armed, displaying cin-mudrā, a manuscript, a mālā, and a trident
Mantra: SAUḤ; also HRĪṂ
Principal text: Mālinī-vijaya-uttara-tantra; Vijñāna-bhairava-tantra

The Trika (Trinity) was an unusual sampradāya because, in its later phase, its doctrine encompassed duality, nonduality, and the inexpressible teaching beyond both duality and nonduality. This is why the great master Abhinava Gupta made the Trika the fulcrum of his summation and explanation of the whole tradition of Śaiva Tantra.

Adherents of the Trika worshipped three goddesses: the sweet and gentle Parā-devī (Supreme Goddess), flanked by Her two lower, fierce Kālī-like emanations, called Parāparā and Aparā. These three are understood as the embodiments of the following principles:

Parā	Parāparā	Aparā
Knower	Knowledge	Known
Willing	Knowing	Acting
Unity	Unity-in-diversity	Diversity
Emission	Stasis	Reabsorption

Parā is also short for Parā-vāk, “the Supreme Word.” She is the deep structure of reality, the organic patterning of Consciousness. She is characterized with the word pratibhā, a word with no English equivalent: it simultaneously means “intuitive insight,” “creative inspiration,” and “natural instinct.” This identity, plus her iconography, indicates that she is none other than the Tantrik manifestation of the popular deity Sarasvatī, goddess of speech, knowledge, art, learning, and creative inspiration. Actually, to put it more accurately, Sarasvatī is the exoteric, non-Tantrik, popular expression of Parā. Unlike Sarasvatī, Parā is venerated as the Supreme Divinity, not as a member of a pantheon of gods.

This points us toward the most unique feature of the Trika’s doctrine and practice: a complex and beautiful system of linguistic mysticism, whereby the phonemes of human speech (especially Sanskrit, the paradigmatic language) are thought to be concretizations of patterned vibrations of divine energy that are the foundation for all human thought and, simultaneously, the building blocks of the entire manifest universe. That is to say, on this view, the apparently dualistic division of words and objects (signifier versus signified) is ultimately grounded in a single nondual matrix of subtle vibration. That is called the Supreme Word, embodied as the Goddess Parā.

The Trika is the first group we have encountered that initiated women as full practitioners. We are now getting into the sects that practiced various forms of social transgression from within society; empowering women to pursue their own spiritual liberation (instead of accruing merit by proxy from their husband’s practice) was extremely transgressive in traditional Indian society.

Another scripture of the Trika, probably the most unusual of all the Śaiva Tantra scriptures of the early period, is called the Vijñāna-bhairava-tantra or “Scripture of the Wisdom-Bhairava.” This text teaches an esoteric form of the Trika in which a practitioner of high adhikāra (aptitude and qualification) cultivates deceptively simple methods for directly accessing luminous expanded Consciousness—in other words, methods for becoming perfectly centered in the absolute fullness of the natural state of awareness that results from dissolving all thought-constructs into their ground. Like nearly all Tantrik scriptures, the text takes the form of a dialogue between Śiva and Śakti.

It is important to situate this teaching in its proper context. It was not intended as an excuse to shortcut the process of real spiritual work. Rather, being given to an intermediate or advanced practitioner who had already made efforts in disciplining the mind and attaining clarity of heart through meditation and ritual, this teaching would come as a profound revelation, empowering her to begin to focus on what triggers that Bhairavī state in life apart from the spiritual practices with which she was already familiar. For that is the topic of much of the text: though it imparts a number of specific yogic exercises of breath, visualization, and subtle-body awareness (none of which have yet been adequately explained by the published translations), it also focuses on unconventional techniques for entering into expanded states of consciousness. These include:

• gazing at a blank wall, a vast open space, or the clear blue sky,

• spinning around and around and falling down,

• becoming aware of the space between thoughts or between breaths,

• gazing at the pattern of sunlight on the floor,

• meditating on the liminal state between waking and sleeping,

• accessing intensified awareness through pain of a piercing,

• contemplating that the sky is in your head,

• just repeating the vowel “a”, and

• simply sitting and doing “nothing” (nonconceptual meditation).

Additionally, there are meditations on pure thoughts, such as simply repeating (and feeling into the vibration of) phrases like “All this is Her play,” “Everything I think I know is a fabrication,” “I am the same as the Highest Divinity,” and “What is inside, is outside; what is outside, is inside.” Some of the teachings of this peculiar scripture cannot even truly be called techniques; rather, the text invites us to notice daily-life opportunities for accessing that expanded state that we might otherwise let slip by:

• the feeling of wonder from watching a magic show,

• the aftermath of an orgasm,

• following desire back to its source,

• listening to the vibration of live instrumental music or becoming one with the joyous feeling of a song,

• the arising of inner delight when savoring fine food and drink,

• the repetitive gentle motion of a swing or a carriage, and

• the energy of sharpened and heightened consciousness in any intense experience.

Actually, there is a subtle technique here, for in all of these experiences, we are to turn our awareness within toward the vibration of a specific feeling, not focus on an external object as we usually do. You can begin to see how the text presupposes a strong meditation practice.

SAMPRADĀYA 7:Kālīkula

Deity: Kālī Kāla-saṅkarṣiṇī (the Dark One, the Devourer of Time)
Visualization: no anthropomorphic form
Mantra: KHPHREṂ MAHĀCAṆḌA-YOGEŚVAṚ
Principal texts: Jayadratha-yāmala; Kālīkula-pañca-śataka

The Kālī-kula or “Family of Kālī” denoted several interrelated groups whose primary deity was Kālī, the beautiful Dark Goddess. To be clear, we are not speaking of the later Bengālī version of Kālī, the so-called “goddess of destruction” whose image is well known today. The Kālī worshipped by the Kālīkula was the all-encompassing Highest Divinity, the ground of being itself, ultimate Consciousness.

One of the groups of the Kālīkula rose to prominence and eclipsed all the others: it was called the Krama, which means “the Process,” “the Cycle,” or “the Sequence.” It was so named because its initiates worshipped the phases of the cognitive process (whether analyzed as five, twelve, or seventeen) as forms of the Goddess. The followers of the Krama viewed Kālī as the Supreme Divinity whose ultimate nature is formless—the insatiable void in the Heart of Consciousness, which the limited self cannot enter and survive. The Krama was unequivocally the most radical, transgressive, feminine-oriented, and nondualistic of all the Śaiva Tantrik groups. It was the Kaula path par excellence, for unlike the other sampradāyas it had no non-Kaula variant. The Krama was also (in its post-scriptural phase) the most sophisticated and subtle of them all in terms of its thinking, especially in the careful way it assimilated philosophical ideas with ritual practice, its determined attempt to make the latter truly meaningful. Thus, the Krama includes some of the most refined spiritual thinking in the same sphere as some of the most transgressive practice, a seeming paradox that fits well in a system that thinks of the Divine as precisely that which can meaningfully subsume all paradoxes within itself.

The Krama, despite its serious challenges to the social order, rose to a place of prominence in Kashmīr, counting many highly placed people (such as royal ministers) amongst its initiates. It influenced the Trika, which adopted some Krama doctrines, and the two schools finally became fused in the theology of Abhinava Gupta, who essentially propagated an esoteric Kaula Trika with a Krama core.

After the 10th century, the teachings of the Krama were primarily transmitted under the name of Mahārtha or Mahānaya, “the Great Teaching” or “the Great Way.” In the 11th and 12th centuries, three texts were composed by different authors on the teachings of the Mahārtha, all with the same title: Illumination of the Great Way (Mahānaya-prakāśa). All three are masterpieces of spiritual philosophy.

The text presents an extremely subtle and sophisticated explanation of Krama worship, presenting it as “embodying a process of the unfolding of sudden enlightenment in which Consciousness devours its own content and subjectivity to burst forth into the mind and senses as a transfigured mundane experience in which the polarity of liberation and bondage is obliterated.” In other words, in this process of spontaneous realization, Consciousness, as it were, takes hold of its own strength, realizing that all the concrete elements of experience are expressions of the One energy that is itself, and thus what before seemed ordinary appears as an extraordinary revelation, and mundane life becomes a source of wonder, unveiling its ever-present radiant freedom.

It is not surprising that the Krama did not survive, for its liberated ethos represented a tremendous challenge to the conservative, patriarchal, xenophobic, and deeply inhibited mainstream brāhminical culture. More than any other religious sect in premodern Indian history, the Krama repudiated hierarchies based on caste, class, or gender. Furthermore, its frank acceptance of sexuality and inclusion of that and other sensual elements in spiritual practice was at odds with the values of both the brāhmins and their Muslim conquerors, who brought North India under their sway in the 12th and 13th centuries. An additional factor undermining the survival of the Krama and related Kaula groups was the existence of plentiful false gurus, who used the teachings of transgressive nondual Tantra as an excuse for sexual exploitation and alcoholic overindulgence. We have evidence that the Krama responded to this behavior with sarcastic criticism, showing that teachers of this tradition were aware that its teachings could be quoted accurately by those with no real understanding of them:

Understanding the teachings on a mental level does not in any way require a person to understand the real inner state that they point to. This difference is precisely what makes the Krama an esoteric tradition—it embodies an understanding that, while it can be pointed to, cannot in fact ever be properly conveyed in words. There will always be those who are unable to grasp its real purport, and who even doubt there is such a level to be grasped, though they may be able to articulate well the ideas that point to it.

The explicit goal of Krama practice was liberation in this life through a radical and abiding awakening of blissfully free, expansively open autonomous awareness. This awakening was brought about through one of three methods:

• direct transmission (saṅkramaṇam),

• oral instruction (kathanam), and

• ritual worship with nondual awareness (pūjanam).

Direct transmission was thought to consist of an encounter with a fully awakened Master in which the disciple’s awareness, ripe for expansion, spontaneously fuses with that of the Guru in a moment of revelation that triggers a deep opening, a permanent shift. The Guru’s glance is the most commonly cited example of this transmission, though there are other forms as well. This method of realization was, of course, considered the rarest and quickest of the three.

Second is the method of oral instruction (kathanam), which in the Krama is also a kind of transmission of transformative power, in the form of condensed statements on the nature of ultimate reality called chummās, thought to have been revealed in by the divine Yoginīs of Uḍḍiyāna and passed down by the women of the tradition in the vernacular Kashmīrī language. The way to approach these esoteric teachings is through intuition rather than intellection, holding their vibration in awareness until the inner meaning spontaneously unfolds in a wordless state of realization.

The third category of Krama practice, then, is pūjanam or worship. The Krama carefully set itself apart from other Tantrik systems by creating a system of ritual worship that expressed its philosophical and metaphysical stance on the nature of Consciousness. Thus the worshipper makes offerings to goddesses that embody the powers of his or her own body, senses, mind, and awareness. The practitioner is required to understand the inner significance of ritual action that it may blossom into full nondual awareness—a requirement not found in the other Tantrik schools. In this way, the nature of Consciousness is unveiled through a meditation-in-action on the cyclical flow of cognition.

SAMPRADĀYA 8: Kaubjika

Deity: Kubjikā (the Crooked Goddess)
Visualization: dark blue, twelve-armed, and six-faced, including the faces of Parā, Kālī, and Tripurā
Mantra: AIṂ HRĪṂ ŚRĪṂ PHREṂ HSAUṂ
Principal texts: Kubjikā-mata-tantra; Manthāna-bhairava-tantra

The Kaubjika tradition is named for the Goddess Kubjikā, a complex figure who incorporates features of earlier Tantrik deities. Like Svacchanda-bhairava, she is simultaneously fiercely intense and sweetly benevolent. She is sometimes viewed as an emanation of Parā, connecting her with the Trika sampradāya, and indeed much of the root-text of the Kaubjika is adapted from the scriptures of the Trika.

For modern practitioners the primary significance of Kubjikā’s tradition lies in the fact that her scriptures are the main source for the theory and practice of kuṇḍalinī-yoga (including its six-cakra system) which later appeared in the texts of haṭha-yoga as well as through oral transmission all the way down to the present day.

SAMPRADĀYA 9: Śrīvidyā

Deity: Tripurasundarī, a.k.a. Lalitā
Visualization: young and beautiful, red, four-armed, with goad, noose, sugarcane bow and flower-arrows
Mantra: OṂ KA E Ī LA HRĪṂ HA KA HA LA HRĪṂ HA SA KA LA HRĪṂ; also AIṂ HRĪṂ SAUḤ
Principal text: Nityāṣoḍaśikārṇava; Yoginī-hṛdaya

We have seen that the theology of Kubjikā includes a divinization of passion and sexual desire, since the coupling of the Goddess and Śiva is responsible for the creation of reality. This theme comes to its fruition in the ninth and last sampradāya of classical Śaiva Tantra, known as the Traipura and better known as Śrī-vidyā, which means both “Auspicious Wisdom” and “the Sacred Goddess Mantra.” The Goddess is here pictured as the young and beautiful Lalitā (the Coquette, the Playful One) or Kāmeśvarī (the Goddess of Erotic Desire), Her skin the red color of passion. She is pictured seated atop the meditating Śiva prostrate in śavāsana, signalling that in this sect the embodied experience of passionate desire trumps the quiescent introversive meditative state, though that is still present as the ultimate ground of “pure” desire (that is, desire that arises as a spontaneous expression of embodied Consciousness instead of from conditioning). From the perspective of the Śrī-vidyā, desire (icchā) is the motive force of the universe, since without it nothing would arise and divine Consciousness would remain static. The work of the spiritual practitioner, then, is to first release her judgments concerning her own desires, judgments that cause a contraction of Consciousness, and secondly to merge her limited desire into the greater pattern of divine Will. This does not mean giving up desire but rather learning to want passionately what the Goddess wants, which necessitates becoming one with Her. What the Goddess wants is simply to flow in relational patterns of ever-greater harmony, and we naturally fall into that dance when our conditioned desires that arise from a false sense of lack have fallen away. But this cannot happen as long as we are judging or condemning them instead of seeing that they are the same energy as divine Will constrained by our ignorance from expressing themselves in maximum harmony.

KASHMIR SHAIVISM: THE REFINEMENT OF THE TRADITION IN ITS POST-SCRIPTURAL PHASE

We have already alluded to the fact that while Śaiva Tantra was pan-Indian, it particularly flourished in the valley of Kashmīr to the far north. Kashmīr is on the border of the geographical regions of Central Asia and South Asia, and was close to the routes of the Silk Road, and thus enjoyed a kind of cosmopolitan multiculturalism not seen in the Indian subcontinent. The Kashmīr Valley is protected by mountains on three sides, creating a perfect site for the capital of the little kingdom. This ancient city, situated by a large lake, was (and still is) named Śrīnagar (the Blessed City, the Goddess’ City). This exquisitely beautiful site was called the tilak (sacred forehead mark) of Mother India. All the Indian religions flourished there, especially the Śaiva, Śākta, Bauddha, Vaiṣṇava, and Saura traditions—that is, those devoted to the teachings of Śiva, Śakti, the Buddha, Viṣṇu, and Sūrya (the Sun-god) respectively. Furthermore, the kings of Kashmīr in the early Middle Ages were patrons of philosophy and the arts, allowing for the development of sophisticated philosophical schools side by side with a flourishing literary tradition of plays, ornate poetry, witty social satire, and carefully thought-out aesthetic theories.

It was in this environment that a crucially important post-scriptural or exegetical phase of Śaiva Tantra developed, a phase that would eventually make its influence felt all the way down to the tip of the subcontinent. “Exegesis” means explanation and interpretation of scriptural materials. So here we are broadly contrasting two chronologically successive and distinct phases of the Śaiva Tantrik tradition. The first is that of the nine sampradāyas detailed above, as revealed in anonymously written scriptures that claimed to be spoken by Śiva Himself (or, in the case of the Krama, Śakti Herself). These texts were often mysterious, elliptically worded, and focused on practice rather than philosophy. The second phase, then, consists of texts authored by named individuals, often highly educated people, who composed in a very different style of Sanskrit. Though their works were intended to explain the scriptures, either they are highly philosophical or they present a sophisticated theology. These authors show knowledge of the prevalent pan-Indian theories of knowledge and logic. Their arguments concerning the nature of reality are built on three levels: through reason, through appeal to the scriptures, and through appeal to personal experience.

We are now concerned with the second phase, the exegetical writings of the Śaiva Tantrik masters from Kashmīr. It is this body of literature that has been called “Kashmīr Shaivism” since the early 20th century and taught in the West under that name but entirely disassociated from the full context of Śaiva Tantra and its scriptures, which have just been outlined in detail. This happened because, though much of the Tantrik tradition had been forgetten, in the early 20th century some scholars started reading the philosophical texts in isolation from their context and published on them in English, coining the phrase Kashmīr Shaivism in the process. These publications, which continued sporadically through the rest of the 20th century, showed little to no knowledge of the powerful practices of the tradition. Even today, there are still no accurate translations of the original Sanskrit sources on kuṇḍalinī and the subtle-body practices so crucial to the classical tradition. Furthermore, 20th century writings on Śaiva philosophy often present it as rarefied and esoteric speculation on the ultimate nature of Reality little connected to “real life.” And yet the primary concern of the original Tantrik authors was to give an accounting of how Consciousness creates the reality of our moment-to-moment experience of life.

To return to our main topic: the ancient exegetical writers of Kashmīr, inspired by the scriptures, created coherent and elegant systems of thought not found in the earlier period. This spiritual thinking, it should be emphasized, was never divorced from practice, even at its most esoteric.

In the 9th century, the Trika and the Krama rose to prominence in Kashmīr, not among the masses, but in a circle of individuals with connections to the royal court. These two sampradāyas counted amongst their initiates extremely learned individuals, even geniuses. They composed works that gave these two groups much greater philosophical sophistication and respectability. More importantly, several of these authors were, according to the tradition, fully liberated and awakened spiritual masters, whose words vibrate with the full power of their attainment, giving us the most direct insight into the nature of reality possible through words. Therefore, their writings came in time to be revered as equivalent to scripture.

The masters of the Spanda (Vibration) lineage drew on both the Trika and the Krama in the composition of their works, furthering a synthesis that had begun in the scriptures themselves. The first and most original of these master philosophers was Vasugupta (c. 825–875 CE). He revealed the text known as The Aphorisms of Śiva (Śiva-sūtra).

Vasugupta’s disciple was named Kallaṭa (c. 850–900 CE). His great work is the Stanzas on Vibration (Spanda-kārikās). In it, he expanded on his Guru’s teachings and added to them, drawing more on texts of the Kālīkula, though the Stanzas also maintained a sect-neutral—but clearly nondualistic—philosophical stance. The central concept of this work of great beauty and spiritual power is that God is nothing but the vibrant pulsation of Consciousness, moving through successive phases of expansion and contraction. The Stanzas received no fewer than seven commentaries, one by the author himself and two others of note by Kṣemarāja and Rājānaka Rāma, a disciple of Utpala Deva

Approximately two generations after Kallaṭa, another lineage was born, this one consisting of masters initiated into the Trika but again writing in a language that transcended sectarian boundaries. Its first guru was Somānanda (c. 900–950), who wrote The Vision of Śiva (Śiva-dṛṣṭi). In the first verse of this work, he implies that his ability to author it arose from a state of oneness with the Divine. Usually the author of a spiritual treatise begins with a homage to God, to invoke divine blessings and remove obstacles to the completion of the work. But since Somānanda felt no separation between himself and God, he prayed rather that the Divine should simply honor itself through him (after warding off any obstacles, that as a nondualist, he also saw as being nothing but God).

Somānanda’s disciple was the great siddha master Utpala Deva (c. 925–975), who simultaneously possessed one of the greatest intellects and one of the most passionately devotional hearts in the whole documented history of nondual Śaiva Tantra. Utpala wrote many works, but is best known and remembered for two remarkable books. The first of these is the Stanzas on the Recognition of [Oneself as] the Lord or Īśvara-pratyabhijñā-kārikās. It is from this work that the Pratyabhijñā or “Recognition” school gets its name.

ABHINAVA GUPTA: POLYMATH, SCHOLAR, AESTHETE, POET, AND MAHĀSIDDHA

When studying the writings of the nondual Śaiva Tāntrikas of Kashmīr, there is one figure who appears as the lynchpin of this branch of the tradition, the convergence point of much that had come before and the source of much that was to come after: the unparalleled master Abhinava Gupta (c. 975–1025 CE). Abhinava’s parents were advanced Tantrik practitioners who conceived him in Kaula ritual. He was thus said to be yoginī-bhū, “born of a yoginī,” and thereby possessing a special capacity for liberation.

In time, Abhinava studied with many gurus—around seventeen in total—and received direct transmission in the Trika, Pratyabhijñā, Krama, and Saiddhāntika lineages, lacking only a direct transmission of the Spanda, the works of which he nevertheless studied carefully. He described himself as a bee, going from flower to flower, collecting the nectar of each of these branches of the tradition in order to make them all into the sweetest honey. But it was not until he met his true master (sadguru) that he had an experiential realization of all that he had studied. This meeting was like that of Rumi and Shams, for Abhinava was already an expert scholar of the scriptures and not lacking in spiritual experience. Yet something was missing: the final descent of grace (śaktipāta), triggering the complete and permanent expansion into all-encompassing blissful nondual awareness, expressed and grounded in embodiment. It was said in the Kaula tradition that this state could only be granted by a guru who had attained it. This guru, for Abhinava, was a man named Śambhu Nātha. He came to Kashmīr from the great śakti-pīṭha or holy place of Jālandhara, in the Puñjab. Śambhu was a master of both forms of the Trika (Kaula and non-Kaula), having been taught by a guru from Mahārāṣṭra, the probable birthplace of the Trika lineage. It was to this master that Abhinava attributed his Self-realization, and thus he praised him before all his other teachers.

Having come fully into his attainment, Abhinava then wrote his mature works. All of these are written from the perspective of the Trika, which was his primary reference point due to the influence of his sadguru Śambhu Nātha. However, Abhinava maintained his commitment to the teachings of the Krama, incorporating these as the esoteric core of his theology. His primary works include his Commentary on the Mālinīvijaya, notable for its mystical explanation of the origin and nature of the Śaiva Tantrik canon; his commentary called Unfolding the Thirty Verses of Parā (Parātriṃśika-vivaraṇa); and most notable of all, his magnum opus,

The Tantrāloka is a monumental explication of Tantrik practice and philosophy in over 5,800 verses. It is encyclopedic in its scope though not organized like an encyclopedia, for instead of just enumerating theories and practices, it brings them all into a coherent framework in which everything has its place and everything makes sense in relation to the whole. It is, then, an awesome work of synthesis, which presents to the reader a vision of Śaiva Tantra as a unified system: far-reaching in its scope, powerful in its cohesion, and complex yet clear in its interrelations. To accomplish this synthesis, of course, he has to explain apparent contradictions amongst the scriptures, which were originally addressed to differing audiences in varying periods. He does so by creating a hierarchy of understanding. For example, he explains that dualism is a valid view of reality at one level of understanding and development and that, therefore, God compassionately revealed the dualistic scriptures for those who could not yet comprehend or relate to nondualism. Nondualism, then, is both a higher understanding and a higher experience that one can progress to. Beyond it there an even higher teaching: paramādvaya, or “supreme nondualism.” This is the view that simultaneously encompasses and subsumes both dualism and nondualism, the view that goes completely beyond the notion of “levels of understanding.” It is the inexpressible experience of the totality of reality in which no perspective is excluded, for each is seen as fitting into the pattern of a greater whole. However, it is very clear that in Abhinava’s viewpoint, one must carefully ascend through ever more refined levels of understanding in order to reach that all-inclusive state of no-levels. One cannot attempt to leap straight to that realm, lest all understanding decay into incoherent relativism.

By Abhinava’s time, the Tantra had extended its reach into the domain of exoteric religion. Yet ever faithful to his esoteric goals, Abhinava works to prevent the decay into routine and mindless adherence to rule that such involvement usually implies. He teaches that the mantras, meditations, and rituals of the Tantra are living embodiments of the Divine, and that they have no real use if separated from the energy that is full and complete Consciousness. Once they have lost their power through the practitioner’s lack of understanding, faith, or awareness, they become like dead bodies that can only be brought back to life through contact with a guru for whom they are still vibrating with life-energy, imbued with śakti. Thus Abhinava allows the Tantra to encompass the domain of religion as well as spirituality, but ever labors to infuse the potency of the esoteric realm of the latter into the exoteric realm of the former. This, after all, is the real goal of the Tantra: to experience the Divine not just in rarefied “spiritual” environments but in every aspect of mundane life.

POST-CLASSICAL TANTRA AND THE ADVENT OF HATHA-YOGA

After the dissolution of the institutional base for Śaiva Tantra with the coming of Islam, it was the Kaula-influenced lineages, with their grassroots noninstitutionalized structure, that survived best. At the same time, the word “Kaula” increased in ambiguity as it became a kind of free-floating signifier associated with a wide variety of transgressive and bodily practices that proliferated in this post-classical period of late Tantrism (roughly 1300 onward). One of the results of the loss of the institutional base for the Tantra (both Śaiva and Buddhist) in this period, and the evaporation of huge amounts of funding that base formerly attracted, is that the householder tradition which had been dominant in the classical period began to contract and disappear, slowly making the wandering ascetic Tantrik yogīs the main holders of the tradition. This was problematic in that, though these yogīs were supported by the general public (with food and sometimes shelter), they were also feared and regarded with suspicion, since so many of them were known to pursue supernatural powers. It was also a problem because these often illiterate or partially literate wandering sādhus did not systematically document their yogic discoveries. Furthermore, some of these Tantrik yogīs made a living by performing magical rituals on behalf of clients who wanted wealth, a woman, or to hurt an enemy. This, then, was the beginning of the process by which the Tantra acquired a bad name during the late medieval and early modern period.

We will briefly chart the development (some would say decline) of the Tantra into what, in the post-classical period, came to be called haṭha-yoga. Much more research is called for into this subject, but very recent work done by European scholars has shed some much-needed light. In the 12th to 13th centuries, the South Indian Śāmbhavānanda lineage of Śaiva Tantra (see sampradāyas #8 and 9) featured a yogic practice centered on the ascent of kuṇḍalinī energy through six subtle centers called cakras. This is precisely the system we find in the later haṭha-yoga texts.

Before we come to modern yoga, let’s clarify a little more the relationship between haṭha-yoga, the forerunner of modern yoga, and Śaiva Tantra. Compared to the latter, the haṭha-yoga texts have a marked lack of View teachings (“philosophy”), probably due to the loss of the patronage that made such profound learning possible in the period of classical Tantra. They also jettison the complex mantra system that largely defined classical Tantrik practice. Yet most of the practices found in the haṭha-yoga texts are simplified from those of classical Tantra, as we shall see. Thus these texts can be seen as an attempt to capture the most essential Tantrik practices, especially those of the subtle body, in the face of the dissolution of the classical tradition. This explains why the language of these texts is relatively simple: they wanted to be understood by people who could not undertake the years of education required by the classical Tantrik systems.

The general organizing principle in the classic (i.e., most influential) haṭha-yoga texts is the concept of the rise of the latent innate Goddess Power, or kuṇḍalinī-śakti. This term, and the subtle body physiology that it implies, is quintessentially Tantrik. It is found described in the Tantrik scriptures under that and alternate names, such as kula-kuṇḍalī and kaulikī-śakti, terms that allude to the definition of kuṇḍalinī as the fundamental organizing intelligence of embodied Consciousness.

The person mostly responsible for the creation of what scholars call “modern postural yoga,” as practiced in some form today by more than 20 million people in the West, drew heavily on haṭha-yoga teachings. His name was Kriṣhṇamācārya, and his school of yoga founded in Mysore, South India, in the 1930s was the arena for the constitution of the modern discipline. As commonly practiced today, modern postural yoga (MPY) is a form of exercise that often bears only a slight resemblance to the haṭha-yoga tradition that inspired it. Though most of its postures are of a twentieth-century coinage, at least eighty of them can be documented as deriving from premodern haṭha-yoga, in addition to the non-postural elements, which all derive from that source. Scholar Mark Singleton’s work has shown us that despite claims to the contrary, MPY is a product of modern globalization, having early 20th-century European and American exercise forms (such as “harmonial gymnastics”) as its other influences.

I think it is legitimate to argue that when modern yoga teachers seek to re-embed postural yoga practice in a spiritual context and further seek to align themselves with the ancient system of thought that fits most harmoniously with that practice—thereby empowering and enhancing it—then the system that makes most sense to align with is the very one that modern yoga can ultimately be traced back to: that of classical Śaiva Tantra.

An Introduction to the Practice of Śaiva Tantra

As mentioned in the history section, to practice the Tantra, to have access to its scriptures, and to have access to a guru, the prospective student must undergo initiation. Historically, initiation was open to anyone who really wanted it and whose sincere longing was demonstrated through reverent and loyal devotion to the tradition (bhakti), offerings of selfless service (sevā), and financial offerings proportionate to one’s income (dāna, dakṣinā). The longing for initiation was thought to be a direct result of a spiritual awakening called śakti-pāta, the “Descent of Grace” or “Influx of God’s Power.”

The Descent of Grace might be called a conversion experience because it is an awakening that brings a person to the spiritual path, regardless of whether that person previously had any spiritual inclinations whatsoever. Such an awakening is a part of every spiritual tradition, but it is given especial prominence in Śaiva Tantra, for a person could not be initiated unless the initiating guru had good reason to believe that the applicant had experienced the śaktipāta awakening.

Inspired by my comparative study of religion, I take śaktipāta to be one name for a real, universal, culturally-independent human experience, a shift in consciousness that is a biological potentiality in all humans. If we strip away the cultural and religious ideas that are usually immediately attached to this experience, we find remarkably similar features of the experience cross-culturally. Śaktipāta, whatever we call it, is a transformative direct experience of what some call “God,” others call “the inner Self,” and still others call “Buddha-nature”; an experience that consecrates one to the spiritual path. Some people experience two such transmissions of grace: one, usually milder, that initiates their seeking for a path or a teacher, and another, more powerful one, when they have found that path or teacher.

Whether one’s śaktipāta is subjectively weak or strong, it has the same effect: it is a life-changing experience, forever altering how one sees reality, though such alteration is immediate in the case of a strong śaktipāta and gradual in the case of a weak one. It is such a profound “game-changer” that those who have not had this awakening often find it hard to believe such a thing could be real and suppose it to be the product of wishful thinking, an overactive imagination, or a diseased mind. But those who have had it never doubt that they have been given a glimpse of the hidden order of things, of something much more real and meaningful than that which most people call reality.

THE CONTEXT OF PRACTICE: ŚAKTIPĀTA AND DĪKSĀ

Since it transcends individual will, there is nothing that can be done to trigger śaktipāta, other than ardently praying for it and trying to be as open as possible toward it. As you might have intuited by now, to reserve initiation only for those who had had this awakening experience was an attempt to create authentic spiritual community, groups of people for whom religion was not civic or cultural or political but a deeply felt experiential reality. Of course, how often this ideal was actually fulfilled in practice, we have no way of knowing. Still, it is clear that the idea was widespread in the tradition that all initiates should have received this infusion of divine grace.

Śaktipāta is a profound moment of turning a corner at the deepest level of your being: a choice made by your Śiva-self to begin to bring the contracted phase of existence to an end by initiating the process of expanding back into the fullness of your true nature.

DĪKṢĀ: THE RITE OF INITIATION AND ITS EFFECTS

Initiation was the central rite of all forms of Tantra throughout most of its history. It served a crucial role in the psychology of the religion, for it addressed the deep-seated cultural belief in karma, or the repercussion of actions performed in past lives. Since the number of previous incarnations was held to be incalculable, one’s storehouse of karma was vast, far more than could be resolved in a single life. This oppressive belief made the goal of radical freedom (mokṣa), the power to determine one’s own inner state, seem unreachably remote. One of the most significant features of the new Tantrik teaching, then, was that the ceremony of initiation (dīkṣā)—or rather the divinely revealed mantras employed during that ceremony—liberated one from all karma destined to bear fruit in future lives, thereby bringing the goal of the path within the reach of a single lifetime.

In traditional Indian society, rites of passage were only given to those with the proper adhikāra, which means something like “entitlement” or “qualification.” Adhikāra for initiation into Vedic study was determined entirely by the caste and gender of one’s birth, so the Tantrik teaching that candidates for initiation were accepted on the basis of the evidence of their śaktipāta alone (as adjudged by a qualified guru or ācārya), without reference to other factors such as caste, class, gender, or ethnicity, was a radical departure from the norm.

If you have had some success in sādhanā and then receive śaktipāta, it’s like getting an injection of rocket fuel. If you have not yet experienced this profound awakening, this powerful infusion of divine grace (rudra-śakti), though there is nothing you can do to make it happen, you can greatly increase its likelihood by ardently praying for it, stoking the fire of your longing, and practicing being as open to it as possible. If the spiritual path is the dominant feature of your life and you can palpably feel the effects of the yogic practices and mantras, then you have received śaktipāta and just didn’t have the name for it. In the case of dīkṣā the issue is more complex; some type of initiation, or a ceremony that has the same effect, would seem to be required for authentic Tantra.

Western sentiments about the figure of the guru are often highly charged and polarized, with strong feelings for and against. Though the Indian tradition has also expressed a wide range of opinions over the centuries, the centrality of the guru in every kind of Tantra cannot be denied. As far as the original tradition is concerned, you must have a living guru to be a Tāntrika, though the extent of the direct involvement of that guru in your spiritual life might vary. One model that was probably followed quite a lot was that of taking samaya-dīkṣā at a relatively young age, for example between sixteen and twenty-four, and living for a period in the guru’s home (guru-kula) with other samayins. This allowed the initiate to receive a thorough grounding in the system while being observed in this probationary period as to suitability for the full nirvāṇa-dīkṣā. Usually, after receiving the latter, the initiate would become an independent householder. As a householder, s/he would take turns with other disciples of the guru in sponsoring regular gatherings at the guru’s home for ritual, satsang, eating together, and receiving the guru’s teachings. As mentioned, this is one model of how a community of co-initiates (guru-kula) would function. There were probably others.

You were to practice seeing your guru as Lord Śiva made flesh, either when s/he was engaged in ritual practice and formal teaching (right current) or all the time (left current). This was of course done for the spiritual benefit of the devotee, not the guru. In time a practice of guru-yoga developed in the Tantrik tradition, in which one’s guru is contemplated in inner meditation as identical with Supreme Śiva. This sort of thing makes the Western mind, attached as it is to the value of independent self-determination, quite nervous. Many I’ve talked to criticize the practice of guru-yoga, and all paths that recommend it, because of the various abuses perpetuated by fraudulent gurus over the years. But this only indicates a misunderstanding of the practice. One does not in fact need to relinquish one’s self-determination, or at any rate not to another human being. There is simply nothing in the practice of guru-yoga that indicates the disciple ought to give up her capacity for independent critical thinking. Though this might seem very strange, the practice of seeing one’s guru as Lord Śiva does not require one to actually believe he is Śiva. That is, in this practice, one is not engaging with the guru as human being at all but as divine Essence. One does not, therefore, need to “divinize” his personality or convince oneself that his humanity fits an abstract ideal of perfect conduct that in fact no one can ever achieve. Indians seem to understand this principle instinctively and can practice guru-yoga assiduously without necessarily paying attention to anything their guru says that is not coming from a very deep place. Not understanding this has been responsible for some tragic self-brainwashing on the part of Western disciples of gurus, and some of these gurus have, unfortunately, been happy to go along with it (though if the gurus were Indian, they may not even have realized the delusive psychological state the Western devotee was in). In the end, according to this tradition, it is up to individuals to keep their wits about them and exercise discernment; and if they fail to do so, and are taken by a fraudulent guru, they have no one to blame but themselves.

Now, I have implied that this practice has everything to do with the disciple’s own efforts and nothing to do with the guru. However, the more perfectly integrated the guru actually is with the Absolute, the less difficult it is for the devotee to practice guru-yoga. That is, it is easier to follow the sādhanā of seeing the guru as divine if his state of union with the Divine is more or less complete and his conduct is, therefore, not much of a bar to that sādhanā. Thus, we are met with the (to the Western mind) bizarre paradox that the less evolved the guru is, the more perfect must be one’s devotion to him. And if you have the karmic misfortune to be working with a false guru, your devotion must be absolutely sublimely perfect for the guru-yoga to work (of course, if you actually realize that is the situation, you will probably choose to move on). This might sound dangerous to you, unless you remember that guru-yoga is not necessarily about doing everything your guru tells you—discernment must always be operative in that dimension, for you cannot shortcut your individual process of realization. The practice of seeing the guru as divine in spite of his human flaws—in other words, of having unconditional love for him—is preparatory to extending that sentiment to all other beings.

UPĀYA: THE THREE SKILLFUL MEANS TO LIBERATION

These are three different modes of cultivating liberating spiritual insight; though they are distinct, they all lead to the same goal, that of samāveśa, or continuous immersion into divine Reality. The goal can be reached, says Abhinava, through śāmbhava-upāya, the method of accessing Consciousness through direct intuition; through śākta-upāya, the method that emphasizes working with the energy of thought-constructs and the feelings they produce; through āṇava-upāya, the method that emphasizes the physical body, breath, and imagination; or through all three, simultaneously or sequentially.

Since Tantrik practice seeks nothing less than a total integration of our being, the realization of ourselves as an undivided, unitary mass of awakened consciousness, it makes sense that Abhinava discusses Tantrik sādhanā as something that must function on all three levels of body, heart-mind, and spirit. Even if we primarily pursue one of the three modalities, it must necessarily come to entail the other two in order to achieve its perfection. Thus, as we progress in practice, these three distinct parts of ourselves (body-mind-spirit) start to seem less and less distinct, until, as Abhinava says, the nectar of blissful self-awareness floods and overflows the internal dams that divide us, dissolving all distinctions. Then we experience ourselves as one united whole, a mass of blissfully self-aware Consciousness (cidānanda-ghana), spontaneously responding with the whole of our being to each moment of experience.

ŚĀMBHAVA-UPĀYA THE DIVINE MEANS

The subtlest—that is, the most refined, direct, and difficult to grasp—of the three upāyas is that called śāmbhava. Though it is a method, there are no practices as such at this level, at least none that can be explained in ordinary words, for this level transcends all conceptual thought.

Śāmbhava works with and requires only the Power of pure Will (icchā-śakti), the spontaneous creative upsurge of Consciousness, as well as the metapower of Autonomy (svātantrya-śakti). It is the direct intuition we can have of pure Being by bringing attention to the upsurge of the dynamic flow of Consciousness’ will to perceive (totally independent of what is perceived). Such intuition (pratibhā) results in wordless insights into some facet of the truth that blossom spontaneously and in an instant. It emphasizes subjective awareness, not objective, especially the transcendental unity of the subject with all he perceives. It accesses the spacious and expansive sky of pure Consciousness (cidākāśa). This level of awareness functions “within the undivided realm of Śiva’s pure Consciousness, which, free of all thought-constructs, [constitutes] the universal subject who contains within himself all objectivity.” In other words, the śāmbhava level is the level of total unity-consciousness into which all apparent duality is subsumed. But it reaches beyond unity-consciousness as well, for ultimately it accesses the infinitely vast stainless void of the Mind of Śiva that transcends both existence and non-existence—containing within it all that is and all that is not.

In teaching the “practice” of śāmbhava-upāya, we can emphasize three primary aspects. The first is that this upāya is a way of grace. The practice of it consists primarily of opening to grace in every moment. One who is truly ready to practice on this level sees no distinction between the spiritual and the mundane and moves through the world expecting (and therefore finding) divine teachings and learnings around every corner. She sees the guru not just in her teacher but in all beings. She realizes and feels that grace is being offered constantly and, therefore, ceaselessly opens to receive it. She sees the divine Light in all people and situations. Though not yet constant, that is her baseline. (As you might have noticed, on the śāmbhava level path and goal are not sharply distinguished.) Working the śāmbhava-upāya involves the way you move through the world; it touches all the moments of life in which you are not doing formal spiritual practices. If you are always just “going about your business,” believing you know who you are and what you are doing, you will miss many of the subtle unexpected movements of grace that are constantly being offered to you. Hence you cultivate a kind of divine unknowing here, for not knowing can be a state of openness and aliveness. This upāya invites you to explore the delicate and expansive joy of hovering on the knife-edge of divine uncertainty.

The second aspect of the practice of śāmbhava is the Spanda teaching of “catching hold of the first moment of perception,” or rather “bringing attention to the initial arising of an energy state” (different ways of translating unmeṣa-daśā-niṣevaṇa). In this practice, you tune in to the will to perceive the arising of each new experience, before the analytical and labeling mind gets involved. You can learn, through moment-to-moment nonanalytical awareness of your energy state, to become sensitive to the arising throughout the day of any mood, state, or feeling. Rather than leap to the thought, “This is hunger,” or “This is sadness,” or “This is contentment,” you simply notice the initial subtle shift and rest in what that particular vibration feels like. If your interpretations of experience follow too closely upon the arising of experience, as they do for most people, you may not be ready to practice this subtle upāya. But for those whose minds have slowed down sufficiently (usually through meditation) to parse the phases of cognition, there is the possibility of “catching hold” of the initial burgeoning of a perception and dwelling in the simple flowing of awareness itself, prior to any application of mental understanding.

No instructions are given in the text: simply perceive and become absorbed, allow the mind to dissolve, and entry into Śiva-consciousness spontaneously occurs. Now, if you think this is easy, then you are probably mistaking a trance state for this Śiva-state. Entering into trance states is not what is meant here, but something much more difficult for most people to attain: clear wakeful presence, effortlessly free of all thought-constructs. By contrast, a trance state is dull, numb, or sometimes pleasantly luminous but hazy, without sharp wakeful clarity. Even dwelling in the real Śiva-state for a few moments is a successful beginning to śāmbhava-upāya practice. However, if effort is involved, other than the subtle act of simply giving yourself into flowing presence, then you are not at śāmbhava-upāya level but rather āṇava-upāya. Śāmbhava feels more like surrendering and opening than focusing.

The third and final aspect of śāmbhava practice, an aspect that is very important in the Trika, is working with mantras on nonconceptual levels. Nonconceptual mantras are ones that have no semantic value, no specific meaning, but are considered to be vibrations of the Divine (like OṂ, AIṂ, and HRĪṂ). In this practice, the subtle (i.e., inaudible) phonetic units of the mantra are experienced within, taking on their essential nature as modes of Śiva’s awareness. The practitioner directly accesses these modes of expanded consciousness, which express fundamental potencies of the Divine, by means of the Sanskrit syllables that embody them.

ŚĀKTA-UPĀYA THE EMPOWERED MEANS

The Empowered Means focuses on shedding mental constructs that are not in alignment with reality (aśuddha-vikalpas) and the cultivation of wisdom, that is, modes of understanding that are in alignment with reality (śuddha-vikalpas). The process of the cultivation of wisdom is precisely analogous to the practice of yoga āsanas, for it challenges us to stretch our understanding by adopting postures of awareness. In adopting these postures, we seek to discover the alignments that create both greater strength and stability and greater ease and flow. We allow these postures to supplant old ways of holding ourselves and our world, ways that are not in alignment and thus create dis-ease.

In śākta-upāya, it is the Power of Knowing (jñāna-śakti) that is predominant. Since this upāya does not utilize external supports, but rather emphasizes the process of cognition over objects cognized, it is appropriate for those who wish to work directly with the heart-mind. In Abhinava’s formulation, śākta-upāya primarily consists of refining, purifying, polishing, and perfecting our mental representations of reality (vikalpas) until they are fully aligned with the divine order, the true nature of things. In simpler terms, we replace our “negative” or misaligned stories with “positive” or aligned stories. When our mental representations become fully aligned with reality, they fall away, for we don’t need them anymore. We can experience the beauty of reality without any story at all. Thus śākta-upāya naturally terminates in śāmbhava-upāya, wherein there is immediate intuitive apprehension of Reality without the intervention of the thinking mind.

Now, one of the most fascinating critiques of popular Western notions of self that Indian philosophy can offer is this: “mind” and “heart” are two different names for one and the same thing; they merely emphasize different aspects of that entity. That is to say, the Indian tradition holds that the locus of emotion and the locus of thought are one and the same, and therefore subconscious thoughts frequently manifest as emotions, and subconscious emotions as thoughts. It takes a few minutes (or years) to fully assimilate the implications of this. For one thing, it thoroughly undermines the American tendency to privilege feeling over thought or vice versa. A couple generations ago, people were taught to trust their reason over and against their wayward, irrational emotions. Emotion was seen as an unreliable guide to action. Nowadays, by contrast, we are told, “Listen to your heart,” which unfortunately often really means, “Get in touch with your deeper programming.” We are told, “Follow your heart,” which unfortunately often is taken to mean, “Do what you want, putting aside reason, regardless of the consequences.” If you watch television interviews as a sample, it seems that no one asks for reasoned opinions anymore: “What’s your feeling on that?” “I really feel that. . . ” which is usually just a way of giving an unthinking opinion that the person won’t be obliged to defend because, after all, it is his feeling. I am critiquing this side of things more sharply because it is the current trend, but of course the other side is just as dangerous.

The implications of this are crucial on the yogic path. First, it means that emotional states are often linked to a subconscious thought or thought-pattern. Whenever we are pulled from our natural state into a contracted state, we are almost always engaged in thinking about reality in a way that gives rise to that particular mood. Disliking the mood, or disliking yourself for having the mood—even if it is black depression, horrendous jealousy, or what have you—is missing the mark, for the mood expresses our natural embodied intelligence and signals that self-reflection is needed. Nature never acts without reason, and therefore every form of disease invites reflection. (This should not of course be taken to mean that whatever terrible state you find yourself in is “deserved.” That kind of thinking is nothing more than a subtle form of self-hatred. Nor does it mean, “The universe is trying to show me something.” That is often just the Judeo-Christian god of judgment under another name.) When we investigate, being ruthlessly honest and radically sincere with ourselves, we usually find that our “bad day” (or week, or month) was sparked by a negative thought-pattern, perhaps barely noticed at the time, which we believed and spun into a story, a picture of how reality is, one that is untrue and is disempowering to us. Nothing can drain us of our life-force energy (prāṇa-śakti) faster and more effectively than a well-spun story (vikalpa) that is not in alignment with reality. The problem is, we are often not even aware of our stories. Specifically, the more the current story fits in with our generalized picture of reality (our fears about how reality “really is”), the less it stands out in our awareness. It must be ferreted out with self-reflection.

A Tāntrika strives to see every state of mind, every mood and feeling, as a gift of the Goddess. The Tāntrika has two modes of learning about her true nature: learning from states of expansion, and learning from states of contraction. It is an absolutely false view to think that one mode is better than the other, or to measure your worth as a human being or competence as a yogī on the basis of how much time you spend in an expanded state and how much in a contracted one. True expansion into the fullness of your divine nature begins when you radically relinquish all such dualistic judgments. Such true expansion takes little or no effort to maintain, for it means entering into our true nature, whereas the dualistic type of expanded state takes effort to maintain, for we are still caught in the pairs of opposites—and every pole must eventually give way to its opposite. It is the natural law.

If you are a “heady” person, not fully in touch with your feelings, you have a tool in your hands now that you understand the link between thoughts and emotions that we have discussed. Note which opinions and views you hold strongly, if seemingly dispassionately, and trace them to a place in your being where they exist as pure emotion. For example, you may have strong opinions about what constitutes “justice” or “fairness.” I’ll wager that if you trace these abstract views to your emotions, you might discover suppressed anger about the time(s) when you were wronged. Seek it out and unlock its power. And when you do this, you are not so much moving from one center to another (such as from intellectual “mind” to emotional “heart”) as much as uncovering the hidden threads of energetic structures that are larger than you realized. Once again, thoughts and feelings exist as a continuum, where the “thought” end is defined by its wordiness, its rationalization, and partial suppression of the full charge of the bhāva (“feeling, state of heart-mind”) in question, and the “feeling” end is defined by its lack of wordiness and appearance of the full charge of energy in the given bhāva. When we discover the feeling component of a thought, or the thought hidden behind a feeling, we are bringing into full awareness the totality of the condensed energetic structure, which helps reveal its real nature and its effect on our reality.

Vikalpas are, for the most part, like programs downloaded from the Internet that affect how your computer operates. We download programs from parents, teachers, television, and so on, from before the moment we can understand language onward. Some we are aware of; others manage to download themselves under our radar. All these programs get installed on the “hard drives” of our brains, and can even rewrite the code of our operating systems. If we download and install a “virus”, it can take over completely, forming a limited view that seems impossible to escape. We start to work with śākta-upāya when we become aware that the way we see and experience reality is largely (in some cases, entirely) dictated by the network of programs that have been installed and that there are yet entirely different ways of experiencing reality unavailable to us until we do some reprogramming. Studying and internalizing spiritual philosophy is indeed “brain-washing” ourselves in the literal sense; we’re cleansing ourselves of programs not in alignment with ultimate Reality. Such a process is express of your svātantriya-śakti or power of autonomy, for now you are consciously directing the writing of the code instead of automatically installing whatever is presented to you, as you did as a child. You are reprogramming yourself with the truth, for you know the result is freedom, connection, appropriate response to your situation, and self-determination. Sometimes, though, we encounter serious resistance in this process of challenging everything we thought we knew as the old programs violently reassert themselves. You might go through a phase of seeing your teacher as a self-righteous, self-satisfied manipulator; the teachings as bullshit; and your spiritual community as full of fakes. It is natural for episodes of cognitive dissonance to arise in this process. When you connect to your Core, you know you are in the right place, doing the necessary work, so you can ride out such episodes.

This teaching gives you a great test to determine whether you are experiencing Reality or just a mental construct of reality (for if the construct is sufficiently refined, it can be very difficult to discern its presence). If someone else’s opinion or argument or words in any form can rob you of the feeling or power or integrity of your spiritual experience, even a little bit, then your so-called “experience” either is or has become a vikalpa, not (yet) rooted all the way into Reality (which is not to say it has no benefit). This is why gurus with wisdom will send their disciples back home to their families at a certain point or tell them to get a job. Living in the bubble of spiritual community, or around others who all more or less agree with your values, you may think you have attained a high level. Around those who think you are a freak or weirdo for practicing this path at all, let alone agree with its principles, you will see your real attainment and come into your real situation. As my teachers say, when the rubber meets the road, you will find out what you really have. Humbled, you may have to begin again, but this time the beginning will be a real beginning. You have seen that living in a vikalpa (mental construct) of the spiritual life is not the goal. The goal is direct experience of reality, unmediated by vikalpas. With clear seeing, you can get real results in your practice.

Now, if we read this passage just to feel good about ourselves, as an “affirmation,” we are cheating ourselves of the power of the practice of vikalpa-saṃskāra. Instead, we must take it—or any other passage we wish to work with in this way—through the following steps. This is the bhāvanā-krama or stages of contemplation. This could all happen in one day or over many days.

Ensure that the passage resonates with you. If not, massage the wording until it does, or find another passage that does. Look up any words that you don’t know well; become very comfortable with the meaning of the passage on the vaikharī level, the level of the literal words. Traditionally, you would memorize the passage in this stage. Ponder its meaning more deeply; allow your mind to roam through associated ideas. Ask yourself, “How would I experience the world if I felt the truth of this statement fully?” Imagine how you might move through the world if you were living the statement fully. (This is the madhyamā level.) When you reach a point where you start to become slightly bored with your passage, and think you understand it thoroughly, sit with it (or part of it, such as the final sentence in the above passage) and meditate. Let it be a mantra. Invoke the power of grace, and ask for deeper understanding than can be gotten through the intellect. Then allow whatever arises to arise. If the meditation becomes stagnant, ask the deeper wisdom, “Is there anything more?” and sit and wait quietly. (This is the paśyantī level.) For a few days, go to sleep with the passage, wake up with the passage, and revisit it several times throughout the day. In self-reflection, examine any resistance you have to receiving its wisdom on the deepest level of your being and inquire into the causes. Then let it go, but observe how the wisdom you have internalized shows up in daily life experience.

I could add more stages, but at this point the process becomes highly organic and individual. One may begin the process again with another passage. If this practice, which is sometimes called “insight meditation,” is done correctly, it results in the teaching becoming fully assimilated at the deepest level. You know this has happened because you can explain the teaching clearly using language wholly different from that in which you learned it (for example, to a friend or family member who doesn’t have a spiritual practice like yours and doesn’t know the jargon). As one of my teachers used to say, “If you can’t show it, you don’t really know it!” If you have deeply assimilated a teaching, you recognize its “energy signature” and can therefore spot the same teaching when it appears in a different religious tradition that uses different language for it. But most significantly of all, an assimilated teaching is a living reality: without having to remember the teaching mentally, it is a pulsing power within you, a power of grace that can open you to experiencing the divinity of any given moment. It is an ally, like a mantra or a deity.

What does it mean to offer something into the Highest Divinity? It means to dissolve your perception of it as being something other than the one divine Awareness. It means to melt away the thought-constructs by which you see your offering as anything other than God. Now, since some things are easier to see as divine than others, Abhinava suggests that, in the context of ritual, we start by offering objects that are pleasing to the aesthetic sense. When seeing, smelling, tasting, and touching that which is beautiful, it takes little to no effort to repose in awareness. We might take the example of a poem that strikes us as very beautiful: the moment the poem ends, we do not immediately dissect its meaning; rather, for at least a few seconds, we simply rest in the rasa or flavor of awareness created by the poem. This repose within innate awareness is called viśrānti and is very important in Abhinava’s teaching. If the repose is expanded by aesthetic rapture and includes a measure of loving self-awareness, it is called ānanda, commonly translated as bliss but actually connoting something much more subtle than excitement or even ecstasy.

In the state of ānanda, one does not differentiate the object of awareness from oneself, and so by loving it, one is loving oneself, one is loving the very power of awareness that is God. So the practice of pūjā begins with those things one finds beautiful, so that one can observe what it is like to repose (even for a moment) in a state in which there is no differentiation between the object, one’s awareness of it, and the divine Power that makes all awareness possible—with the whole experience englobed by a love for the sheer fact of being aware. Notice that when someone smells a sublime scent or tastes sublime food, they close their eyes for a moment; they are savoring consciousness itself, not dwelling on so-called objective reality. This is a tiny kernel of the aesthetic rapture that Abhinava invites us to cultivate.

However, he tells us to offer all things into the Highest Divinity, not just the ones we most like. This tells us that the aesthetically pleasing pūjā is just a training ground for a more difficult practice. The principle at work here is that of overspill—that is, when you cultivate the experience of beauty, you expand your capacity to experience the beautiful. When you cultivate the experience of love, you expand your capacity to love. It’s as if you get a kind of momentum of love going, and then it spills over and you find yourself able to love people who previously challenged you. Consciously allowing this overspill is crucial if we wish to become free of our enslavement to the preferences of the mind.

Therefore, after practicing reposing in the sweetness of beauty-flavored consciousness at your altar of worship for some time, begin trying it with other experiences. To do this practice, when you are aware of something that repulses or frightens or bores or amuses you, try bringing your awareness to the fact of your own subjectivity—to consciousness itself, flavored by its object, rather than the illusion of subject-object duality. Become fascinated by the “texture,” “color,” and “flavor” of a consciousness temporarily imbued with the object in question. Then relish and give thanks for the fact that you are aware at all. In this way, go beyond your superficial like or dislike of the object, and become absorbed by the miracle of consciousness itself. Finally, remember to offer all states of mind and heart into God, by contemplating that they are vibrations of the one energy and realizing their non-difference from That.

Just as the āsanas of modern postural yoga challenge our bodies, stretching them in new ways, repatterning and creating over time a whole new body, in śākta-upāya we hold expanded understandings, “postures of the mind,” that function to reshape our consciousness, creating a whole new mind. This mind is fresher, more open and more luminous, with a greater capacity for childlike wonder coupled with mature wisdom. It is also much more flexible and adaptable, responding appropriately to all kinds of situations. It is clear and strong, free of unneeded detritus. To attain this mind, saturate it with the nectarean words of the masters and sages. But do not be content with understanding those words; work them into the very tissues of your being until your whole being vibrates with them!

Once you have worked extensively with the energy (śakti) of your own thoughts and feelings, you can tune in more and more effectively to “the powers operating in all of life’s activities as particular pulsations (viśeṣa-spanda) in the universal rhythm (sāmānya-spanda) of the Power of Consciousness.” This practice cannot be described in a step-by-step method, for it consists of a deep and grounded attentiveness to the subtle patterns of energy moving in and as all things, patterns that consist both of repeating universals and of unique-to-that-moment particulars. Suffice to say that this practice begins to unfold spontaneously when you have heightened your awareness and slowed down the pace of your life enough to look deeper than the surface of things. When you no longer are projecting your mind-world onto everything, you naturally start to notice the rhythmic dance of life-energy all around you. This integration into the deeper pattern can give rise to astonishing synchronicities, even a sense of magic, as seeing how everything fits with everything else allows your own life to flow more effortlessly.

ĀṆAVA-UPĀYA: THE INDIVIDUAL, EMBODIED MEANS

Any spiritual practice that an external observer can see and identify falls under the heading of “the Embodied Means,” which thereby covers the great majority of religious acts. For the majority of practitioners, especially those who are just beginning a spiritual practice, āṇava-upāya is the most appropriate method. The word āṇava (“individual”) derives from aṇu, a term that refers to an individual embodied soul (= jīva), a contracted form of Consciousness. So āṇava-upāya, the individual/embodied means, is the appropriate starting place for those who experience themselves in that way: as individuals for whom plurality appears as the most “real” level of reality. In other words, those who see things as concretely differentiated most of the time, i.e., nearly all of us. Āṇava-upāya is thus the method that emphasizes objects of awareness (rather than focusing on awareness itself), primarily the body, breath, and centers of the subtle body. It primarily utilizes the Power of Action (kriyā-śakti). Therefore, it is the easiest of the three means to understand and practice. It helps to refine awareness, making it more subtle, such that the other two means become more accessible.

The techniques of āṇava-upāya, conceived generally, are all those usually grouped under the headings of yoga and kriyā: meditation, prāṇāyāma, visualization, mantra repetition, activation of the subtle centers, bodily postures, and meditative ritual performance. Nearly all of these were transmitted into the haṭha-yoga tradition (except the last, which was transmitted into Hindu temple culture) and from there into modern yoga. So nearly all of the practices taught under the name of yoga today would be considered āṇava-upāya.

Since you are already familiar with many of the practices of yoga that have survived down to the present, let’s look at how these practices are presented in the mature classical Tantra, with reference to Abhinava Gupta’s Light on the Tantras and Essence of the Tantras. There we find much more subtle versions of the commonly known practices. He describes these techniques: Meditative visualization of the flow of the powers of consciousness through the sense-faculties (dhyāna); meditation on the flow of the vital energies (prāṇa-uccāra); meditation on empowered seed-syllables, subtle mantras that are synchronized with the breath (varṇa-uccāra); performing yogic postures (karaṇa); performing ritual worship (pūjā), in which the divine energy worshipped can be installed in internal substrates, such as the breath, or (more commonly) external substrates, such as maṇḍalas and deity images.

ONLY GOD CAN WORSHIP GOD: TANTRIK RITUAL THEORY

When we investigate Tantrik practices of yoga and ritual, the divisions and irreconcilable differences that seemed so clear on the level of doctrine—such as dualism versus nondualism—frequently dissolve. Thus, even though doctrinally the Saiddhāntika dualists hold that the individual soul and God are eternally separate, they also hold, along with the nondualists, that only God can worship God and that, therefore, one must transform oneself into a Śiva in order to worship Śiva. The difference between becoming “a” Śiva versus meditating on your innate universal Śiva-nature, while of importance to philosophers, is likely to seem academic to practitioners, especially when in both cases the forms of the ritual are more or less identical. Remember that the whole Tantrik tradition shares the same ritual structure and types of yogic practice, regardless of doctrine. What defines your lineage as opposed to someone else’s is primarily the specific mantra you are initiated into, the form of the Deity to which it corresponds, and that form’s retinue of related mantra-deities. Secondarily, what differentiates you is the understanding that underlies and fuels your practice. I say secondarily from the perspective of the practice manuals; but in fact the view you hold of and in ritual performance ends up being crucial, for it directs the energy of your efforts toward one goal or another, to spiritual liberation or to something less.

Here is where the dualists and nondualists really part ways in the ritual arena: the former don’t believe that it matters whether ritual brings about an inner experience, whereas the latter hold that ritual is only meaningful and effective to the extent that it successfully brings about an inner experience. In other words, the nondualists rigorously resisted the tendency toward routinization and mechanization that exists in every religion. This is discussed in the masterful and seminal article by Alexis Sanderson, “Meaning in Tantric Ritual.” There he explains that ritual can be meaningless, meaningful in a weak sense, or meaningful in a strong sense. It is meaningful in a weak sense if the ritual performer has an intellectual understanding of the symbolic meaning of the ritual and its purpose. It is meaningful in a strong sense, however, if the ritual expresses and evokes in him a liberating awareness of reality as he performs it.

Even if you believe that you are one of the rare ones who don’t need it, a daily yoga and kriyā practice can only benefit you, since it will stabilize, integrate, and enhance the spontaneous realizations of Truth that you have had. If, like me, you have ever had a wonderful spiritual experience and thought that you would certainly dwell forevermore in the awareness it brought, yet found it slipping away in the ensuing days and weeks, that is because you had an insufficient daily practice. You could not hold the energy of the experience because your vessel was weak and leaky. Practice strengthens the vessel and plugs its leaks. The master Abhinava Gupta certainly didn’t need a daily yoga/kriyā practice, but he did one all the same, either for the joy of it or, perhaps, because even the state of final awakening, which is not static, requires ongoing nourishment. (If you seek a path with a goal of complete cessation, a point at which you can finally just stop, Tantra is not your path.)

The factors of action are the ritual agent, the object of his worship, the instrument(s) of that worship, the purpose of the worship, the point from which the worship proceeds, and the locus of the worship (these correspond to the different grammatical cases of the Sanskrit language). So in other words, Abhinava is saying that the correct understanding that ought to be cultivated in ritual performance is this: “I, God, worship God, by means of God, on God, from God, and for the sake of God alone.” This is called “the nonduality of the factors of action.” It is the realization that all these different elements—cause, effect, agent, instrument, and discursive purpose—are only different from the perspective of the mind. In fact, they are all Consciousness, the one white light diffracting itself as it were into a spectrum of colors to make beautiful art. This viewpoint presents ritual as play, done for no other reason than to express and embody our innate divinity. Not only is this the only possible view for a nondualist to have of ritual, it is a crucial understanding to have if we wish to avoid the strengthening of the āṇava-mala that is caused by ritual performed with the false view “I, a helpless pathetic creature, petition a separate deity for his favor, that I might be blessed with some advantage.” Not only is it false view for the obvious reason, but also because the goal of liberation will never be reached by the accumulation of advantages. This view is spiritual materialism, an insidious impostor masquerading as the true spiritual life.

Abhinava teaches that ritual with nondual understanding is a practice ground, a rehearsal space for experiencing nonduality in daily life. Ritual worship is a paradigm to be actualized and embodied in one’s daily activities.

That is to say, by practicing nondual awareness within the intensified and controlled context of ritual action, we pave the way for spontaneously arising nondual awareness in all our mundane activities. In other words, by the “overspill” principle, once we experience the nonduality of the factors of action intensely enough in the context of ritual or yoga, then we start to spontaneously experience the same in everyday life. Washing the dishes or walking down the street, taking care of the children or carrying the laundry: all become the beautiful play of God, the one Actor, the one Light diffracting itself into these various colors. Without duality of action (the mind-world of “I need to get this done; if I give this to that person then this will happen; he did this to me and now I have to do this;” etc.) we relax into natural ease and flow, listening to and serving the organic movements of the deeper pattern and surrendering doership. (This sounds like a very high attainment to some, but in fact it is your natural state, revealed when your mental constructs about action are dissolved.) And indeed, if this overspill into everyday life does not take place, you are maintaining the artificial divide between spiritual and worldly life characteristic of dualistic religions. If you notice such a divide, then the Tantra challenges you to erase those artificial boundaries, because the spiritual life is not serving its real purpose if it remains confined to the yoga studio or temple or meditation room.

THE STRUCTURE OF TANTRIK RITUAL

The heart of Tantrik ritual practice in the classical period had nothing to do with temples and public religion. Instead, it was the rite that initiates performed every day in private with their own small, personal consecrated image as the foundation of Tantrik ritual. When we look at the mainstream of Tantra throughout the era of its flourishing, we see that to be a Tāntrika meant, first and foremost, to be an initiate into the veneration of a specific Tantrik mantra-deity and to do worship of that deity every day.

What are these “deities” (devas) really? The answer to that question varies widely depending on which sect we are looking at. For some, they are considered actual “persons,” incomprehensibly powerful beings whom we can enter into relationship with, and who are empowered by our worship even as we are blessed by them. For others, the deities are simply particular vibrations of the Light (deva actually means “shining one”), harmonic frequencies as it were of the One energy, experienced by us as distinct flavors of exalted Consciousness. What I find interesting is that Tāntrikas on both ends of the spectrum just described agree that the primary mantra of a deity is that deity in sound form. Thus, unlike in some other religions, you can (and must) have direct contact with your deity every day: by reciting their mantra, you are caressing their “sonic body” with your very tongue.

Thus, when we enquire into the nature of a Tantrik deity, we find four aspects in play, three “bodies” (mūrti) and one essence (svabhāva). From coarse to subtle, less essential to more essential, we have 1) the anthropomorphic, iconographic image of the deity (having so many arms, holding certain symbolic implements, etc.); 2) the maṇḍala or mystic diagram of the deity (nowadays also called yantra); 3) the mantra of the deity; and 4) the essence-nature or energy of the deity, which may or may not inhabit any of the previous three bodies. The mantra is the most essential of the three bodies because the deity’s energy always inheres in it if you received it in an alive state, that is, if you were initiated into it by a qualified guru or ācārya for whom it is fully alive. By contrast, the deity must be summoned into the first two bodies on every occasion of worship. This is why we use the phrase “mantra-deity” to refer to the fundamental form of energy that an initiate works with in ritual.

It is crucial to note here that the energy of the deity can equally well be summoned into an internal substrate (such as a visualization) as well as an external one (such as a statue, image, or mystic diagram). Indeed, the inner rite is primary, for the external rite cannot be performed without the inner one, but the reverse is not true.

Daily Tantrik ritual has these three basic components:

1. Worship of the door-guardians and removal of obstacles

2. Five types of purification/divinization (pañca-śuddhi) and inner worship (antar-yāga)

3. External worship

External worship can sometimes be omitted (according to some authorities), indicating that the inner worship is the indispensible feature of the daily practice.

UNDERTAKING A TANTRIK SĀDHANĀ IN THE MODERN WORLD

Given that some readers of this book will want to undertake the practice, and given my own belief that a revival of a practice tradition of nondual Śaiva Tantra would be of benefit to all beings, I will here address some of these challenges and how they might be overcome. Even if you disagree that the issues addressed below constitute real hurdles, you are always well served by tempering headlong enthusiasm into careful, responsible, devoted engagement.

First is the problem of access. Most of the Tantrik lineages have died out, most of the scriptures are unpublished, nearly all of them exist only in Sanskrit, and many of them exist in such a linguistically corrupted condition that only the best European scholars can repair them (there are virtually no American scholars with adequate linguistic training to do this). The issue of access is linked to that of secrecy; the tradition has always protected itself from dilution by giving out powerful teachings sparingly and only to those who prove their dedication.

Now, this book helps mitigate the problem of access and of secrecy but introduces a further problem: some who read it will believe that they are qualified to undertake the practice by the very fact of having read it. In fact, the tradition is unanimous in declaring that mantras and practices obtained from a book are inert and useless unless activated in relationship with a qualified teacher. Believing otherwise can lead you astray.

Another issue in the potential revival of Śaiva Tantra is the problem of its connection to the culture in which it finds itself. This requires some explanation. Historically, Shaivism spread only to those regions of the world in which the orthodox brāhminical culture of India preceded it—specifically, Southeast Asia and Indonesia. This was because Śaiva Tantra was for the most part inextricably linked to the Vedic religion that it transcended. That is, the initiation ritual that was so central to the Tantra was carefully calibrated to eradicate the sense of egoic identity that was constructed by brāhminical society. You have no doubt gathered by now that the dissolution of self-images or identity constructs is central to the liberative process of Tantrik practice, and this is encoded in its initiation rituals. Now, if these rituals were to be performed in (say) the Judeo-Christian United States, they would have to be rewritten to eradicate the specific identity constructs that are not Veda-determined but Bible-determined (where “Veda” and “Bible” include all the rules, programs, and narratives about reality sanctioned by the orthodoxy of those particular communities).

Now, what is particularly interesting about the Tantra is that in this process it did not seek to condemn or repudiate the religious culture it liberated the initiate from. Quite the opposite. A Tāntrika was supposed to maintain his respectable outer civic and religious identity, if only as a kind of costume to conceal an empowered “Tantrik Self” free of all socially-constructed determinants and compulsions. It is this latter Self that the Tāntrika sees as her real identity, so she does not feel bound by the role she plays in normal society (what one Tantrik scholar calls the Clark Kent/Superman paradigm). The Tāntrika was not to see the socially sanctioned civic religion as having any spiritual value whatsoever, except where it pointed toward the esoteric Tantrik revelation that alone could lift one out of social and egoic constructs of identity (since actualizing the Tantrik Self was not the mere replacement of one religious identity with another, but rather meant realizing one’s essence as the absolutely indescribable, transindividual, transmental, all-encompassing and unlimited Light of Consciousness itself). Thus, a faithful revival of original Tantra would have to be tailored to the specific culture that it transcends. This makes sense if we understand that freedom is not attained by merely asserting it—one must thoroughly see and understand that which is transcended, or the transcendence is illusory, whereby one has merely replaced one identity construct with another, and is therefore equally limited. To live in a vikalpa of the Truth is far distant from living in the Truth, though it may feel good relative to one’s previous identity.

Śaiva Tantra as traditionally conceived could not exist without the base of the transcended, that is, the specific civic cultural and religious identity that it expands out of. To put it another way, there is a strange but true paradox in operation here: you must first have a strong and healthy ego in order to go beyond all ego. There must be a specific identity for you to transcend, otherwise your process of transformation is not sufficiently rooted in the real. In medieval India, that identity was highly Veda-determined, and thus everyone had more or less the same set of hang-ups. This is not the case in the diverse modern West. This hurdle could be overcome if the guru designed an initiation ritual specific to each individual, but this presupposes that he has a clear grasp of each individual’s psychology.

The next problem I wish to address is the public perception of Tantra as primarily connected with sex. With regard to the Indian tradition, as we have seen, this is manifestly untrue: none of the scriptural sources of Śaiva Tantra teach a sexual ritual or sexual techniques of any kind. One of the post-scriptural sources does teach a sexual ritual drawn from the Kaula tradition: this is chapter 29 of Abhinava Gupta’s Tantrāloka. But this is not the source for modern American neo-tantra, since a) it has never been translated, and b) the meditative rite it describes is almost wholly unlike what is taught in “Tantric sex” workshops. What, then, is the source of the latter? Though it remains mysterious, it is likely that all teaching of so-called “Tantric sex” in North America can ultimately be traced back to Pierre Bernard, a.k.a. “Oom the Omnipotent,” who taught a bizarre and idiosyncratic version of yoga and tantra beginning in San Francisco in 1905.

For centuries, the Western imagination has been titillated by its image of the “exotic Orient” and fascinated by apparent evidence of a much more advanced sexual culture, as exemplified by everything from Japanese geishas to the Indian Kāma-sūtra. This helps explain why early Western interest in Tantra focused on rumors of a strange sexual rite. Some, disgusted by the notion, proffered it as evidence of the moral degeneration of India; others, profoundly attracted by the same notion, thought it might be the key to bringing sex out of the realm of sin. But virtually none had any direct experience of the reality behind the rumors. People like Pierre Bernard and Aleister Crowley, lacking access to the original sources, simply invented their own “sex magick” rites, inspired by the little they knew of Tantra, and these have now evolved for over a hundred years.

The Krama tradition, while providing for a detailed ritual life, does not require it, allowing for a practice centering solely on the contemplation and internalization of the compressed power-statements called chummās that contain revelatory teachings in seed-form, if these are properly received from a qualified teacher and worked with in the context of a community of initiates. This option makes the Krama the logical school of choice for modern Western practitioners to align themselves with, along with the fact that, as the school that most successfully freed itself from dominant cultural programs we would probably call sexist and racist, it was naturally the most empowering to women and the most likely to initiate non-Indians. I would argue that the Krama is the Tantrik school par excellence, the consummation of the tradition, in that it takes dimensions of Tantrik thought that are nascent or partially inhibited in other schools and allows them to come to full development. In other words, of all the Tantrik traditions, the Krama is the most transcendent of the cultural framework that birthed it. Furthermore, it is the most sophisticated in its analysis of Consciousness, articulating a meditation on the process of cognition that is universal, applying as it does to all sentient beings. And finally, it is the Śaiva school most closely aligned with certain Buddhist Tantrik lineages that are still alive today (i.e., Dzogchen and Mahāmudrā), which constitute an allied sister tradition to the Krama. For these reasons and more, to be explored in another publication, the Kaula Krama or Mahārtha presents itself as the school of nondual Śaiva Tantra that 21st century Westerners could practice most authentically.

AFTERWORD: MODERN SURVIVALS OF ŚAIVA TANTRA; OR, “WHERE CAN I LEARN MORE?”

If you have been captivated by the subject matter of this book, it’s natural to ask how you can learn more, and who among the contemporary teachers of Tantra and Tantrik yoga are “the real deal.” First, as noted in the introduction, we must confront the sad fact that, in some quarters at least, the word “Tantra” has become almost wholly severed from its original meaning. It is safe to assume that when the word “Tantra” is used in connection with sex and partner work on the New Age and alternative spirituality scene, in almost every case that teacher or workshop has no connection to the original tradition.

By making a distinction between something like “original” or “classical” Indian Tantra and what we may call “modern Western neo-Tantra” I do not intend to suggest that the latter is useless or illegitimate. It may be very helpful for some people in improving their quality of life. What I would like to challenge is the historical claim some of these teachers make that what they teach is linked in some way—or in any way—to the Indian tradition and the contents of these mostly unpublished Sanskrit texts. If what they teach is valuable and effective, no such historical claim is necessary. If it is not, no such claim can render their teaching otherwise.

It is certainly true that Tantra is still a living tradition, though it is also true that what has survived into the present day is a highly attenuated form of the original tradition. If we seek Tantra’s survivors, we must look not to sex manuals but rather to those contemporary spiritual lineages that have studied, practiced, and preserved the original teachings and transmitted those teachings in some form to the West.

“The proof is in the pudding” must be our watchword, and we must be very honest with ourselves in assessing the real results we have obtained from following a particular practice. What makes this difficult is the fact that you must give spiritual practice a chance to work, and depending on your level of development, it is hard to be sure that a given practice is not working for you in less than six months. But human psychology being what it is, when you have invested as much as six months into a particular path, you might convince yourself that it is working better for you than it actually is because you have become attached to it as part of your identity and don’t want to feel that you have chosen wrongly. So what I recommend is this: do some research and use your discernment to choose a practice that is likely to have some benefit for you, and after six to twelve months take a break from that practice, a break in which you engage in radically honest reflection about how far you’ve come. As part of this reflection, to compensate for your own self-denigration or self-aggrandizement you must solicit the input of those who are close to you and can see your changes. Positive changes should be showing up in your day-to-day real life. If you are not getting the results you want, look for another practice and/or teacher.

Should you gather wisdom-teachings and practices from as many gurus as possible to give you the best chance of attaining the goal? The traditional view is that without having a “root-Guru,” this would be spiritually disabling, since, not having a clear outline of the big picture, you will not know how to correctly fit together what various teachers give you. People who “guru-shop” do not go deep with any one system, and thus end up like the proverbial man who dug a dozen holes three feet deep and thus never struck water, as he would have had he dug just one thirty-foot well. Such dilettantish spiritual materialism will not set you firmly on the path. Rather, having gotten a full download from one trustworthy teacher that orients you thoroughly, you may then go to others teachers for unfolding and enhancement of what you have received (not out of any sense of the inadequacy of your root-Guru). This is very different, for you are not sampling different paths, but seeking different ways of understanding the one path to which you have given your heart. On this perspective, you are doing the practice of seeing all authentic gurus as forms of your root-Guru.

DZOGCHEN: THE TANTRIK YOGA OF THE NYINGMAPAS AND BÖNPOS

If you have resonated strongly with the teachings in this book, especially those of the Krama, but are more drawn to the aesthetic and culture of Buddhism than that of any of the above practice teachers, then you will feel very much at home with a good Dzogchen teacher. Note that Dzogchen defies easy categorization as Buddhist Tantra, since it declares itself as being “beyond Tantra” and since it holds views that are not so clearly Buddhist—because they are so close to Śaiva views, and because Dzogchen is taught just as frequently by adherents of the other major Tibetan religion, Bön.

Dzogchen teaches that all phenomena arise within consciousness, and thus there is nothing other than consciousness, yet it is itself empty of anything that can be named: it is openness beyond concept.This rigpa, though formless and absolute, possesses qualities—namely indestructibility, incorruptible purity, nondiscriminating openness, flawless clarity, profound simplicity, all-pervading presence, and equality within all beings. It is unconditioned, not originated from causes or conditions, and blissful. This is all exactly as in NŚT. In fact, I have not yet been able to identify a significant difference between the two schools (though this may be due to my relative ignorance of Dzogchen), despite the fact that they supposedly belong to two separate religions. Thus we see more evidence that Tantra was and is a spiritual phenomenon that is transreligious.