On Transcendental Immanence.

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"Madhya Nandi" <madhya

"tantrasadhana " <tantrasadhana >

[Tantrasadhana] On the Essence of Tantra

Sat, May 1, 1999, 6:01 PM

 

 

Friends;

 

 

Permit me to initiate a discussion regarding the essential elements on which

tantra yoga is based. The following poem was conceived to embody what in my

view, are the three fundamental elements of the tantric view towards

Self-realization/transformation. Following the poem, I'll offer a few

comments and perhaps inspire some dialogue.

 

 

 

 

The Gnostic Soil

 

 

 

 

 

He stands tall on one arched foot,

left leg crossing the right--

His pedestal, the flaxen pasture,

spreads for miles in every direction,

His arms are raised high, wide and

lost to the pale sky, His radiant hair

stands on end, reclining toward heaven.

He is erect, His moistened linga

poised between heaven and earth--

held in her adoring kiss. She is

kneeling, breasts against His shining

thigh, arms thrust behind, palms open,

quivering in ecstasy, craving neither

earth nor sky, only Him, warm and

full in her waiting palate--

drunk with Him, drowning in Him,

surrendering through her willowy hair

the golden seed to the gnostic soil.

Her silver Voice sings of heaven,

His golden Dance furrows the musky earth,

She- the bovine ground of His endless horizon,

He- the quickening breath of Her eternal Song.

 

 

 

 

Madhya Nandi

 

 

 

In traditional Indian art, Shiva is often depicted as Nataraj, the cosmic

dancer. Shiva is cast in bronze. His body stands poised and still. He is

encircled by an arbor of flames. Shiva is also depicted as Ardhanarishwara.

Her left side depicts her female body, and his right side, the male.

 

Here are the very familiar Shiva and Shakti elements. Shiva representing

pure Awareness, the essential luminosity of consciousness, as such. And

Shakti, of course, names the dynamism of Shiva. Shakti is the vibrating,

motionful aspect of nondual consciousness.

 

There is, in sense, a third element. In my poem, one may see this element

portrayed in the activity of the female. Unlike traditional depictions of

Shiva and Parvati, where the couple are presented in a coital embrace, my

Shakti is drinking from Shiva's linga. The image is one of oral

intercourse.

 

The third essential element in tantric self-realization arrives with the

connubial activity of the two lovers. The lovers separately embody the

perfect expression of respectively, pure luminescence and pure vibration, or

sensation. Shakti, (Kundalini), pulsing in motionful ecstasy, slips Her

lover's linga between her lips, and drinks His golden seed, (pure

awareness).

 

Shakti is undiluted, (but chaotic), energy. She is pure, essential,

vibration, or "spanda", to use the sanskrit word. When Shakti, (vibration),

drinks the absolute Awareness of Her lover, Shiva, She draws His golden seed

into her quivering body. The ecstasy that occurs can be called,

transcendental immanence. When pure Awareness, essential luminosity, meets

pure vibration, or sensation, the result is everlastingly effervescing

Bliss, the finest, most subtle quality of Being. In the poem, Shakti drinks

the golden seed. The seed rises through Her body, absorbs Her very presence

and passes through Her "willowy hair" onto "the gnostic soil." The willow

is the tree that symbolizes rebirth. The tree surrenders to the ground the

seed that is the birth of its own renewal. The willow tree grows near

streams and rivers, and water, in general.

 

Shiva offers the seed, Shakti drinks, and pure Awareness/Vibration

fertilizes the ground of Her own Existence, (Consciousness). Shakti finds

in Shiva Her muse. Manifest and Unmanifest meet and become the eternal

Child that is the creative, utterly free motionful awarness that is life

Herself.

 

There is an additional element. No longer does chaos characterize

motionfullness. The essential marriage of the divine lovers, their

connubial bliss, is responsible for the appearance of order, of the spectrum

of human consciousness: tranquility and rage, beauty and ugliness, ecstasy

and alienation. The 'Child' of connubial bliss converts the raw essence of

motion and time into forests and highways, into vessels that signify volume

and fabrications that house and clothe.

 

The tantrika worships, in the form of a sadhana that often includes ritual,

postures, mantra and meditation, pure awareness and pure sensation. In the

marriage that is tantra sadhana, aspirants purify their experience of

Sensation and of the Awareness of Sensation, of transcendence and immanence.

The transformation of consciousness that accrues is the birth of the Child,

the Creative Being that is Universal Personhood. The end of Enlightenment,

for the tantrika, is the beginning of the Muse. Tantra is as tanta does.

One merges with the Sensation of all Being. One recognizes that univeral

Awarenes IS universal Sensation. In so doing, one imbibes both the immanent

context of her immediate world, culture, life, and the transcendental

awareness of all time, space and manifest Being at play on the stage of One

Moment, One Space and One Sensation. Tantrikas recognize a nondual,

holographic Universe where every part contains the whole and the whole

contains all parts. For the tantrika, the ultimate liberation is complete

identification with universal consciousness as his own Self. The unique

quality of this 'liberation' is that it is always equally an end and a

beginning. The self-realized tantrika experiences in the flow of change,

absolute stillness and in the expanse of space only one place. The

character of this recognition cannot help but effervesce. This

effervescence is the life of the Child in the arms of Her parents, Shiva and

Shakti, and these are not three but One.