Hindu Tantra

Timeless awareness is the essence of Dzogchen. Time experienced within timeless awareness is also an expression of the essence of Dzogchen. Dzogchen is an ancient form of Tibetan mystic humanism. Dzogchen makes the essential distinction between mind and awareness. A person can be located in mind alone and locked in time. As a person shifts from being located in mind alone (mindfulness) and goes beyond mind alone (mindfulness), one becomes aware of their own awareness. As we focus our awareness on our own innermost awareness, vast dimensions of awareness begin to open and self-reveal its nature to us. Awareness is a multidimensional experience and this awareness is infinite in its horizons. The innate qualities of awareness are spaciousness or openness or emptiness. Another quality of our awareness is luminous radiance and still another is awareness as energy. Awareness is alive and is both vast stillness and unceasing movement. The Union of Mind and Awareness When a person is able to experience the union of their mind and their awareness, then the person has a simultaneous experience of being in time and in timeless awareness. The mind is the place of thinking, feeling, sensation, memory and imagination and the mind is the mode of knowing singularity and difference in the world. This is the realm of ordinary knowingness and this is the realm of duality. Our mind is the realm of time. This time bound knowing is the knowing of you and I, us and them, this or that in time and place.

This article focuses on the erotic aspects of a particular mystical worldview, the “erotic mysticism” of Abhinavagupta, the Hindu Tantric sage of Kashmir (ca. 975–1025 CE). In particular, I concentrate on Abhinavagupta’s intertwining of consciousness and sexuality, as one example of his interpretative capacities. I focus on consciousness and sexuality, precisely because of the lack of attention that sexuality often gets in academic discussions of the seemingly abstract notion of consciousness. For Abhinavagupta, these two “polarities” are reconnected in his form of Tantra that I will refer to as “erotic
mysticism.”

This paper is a study of the significance of body and touch in the embodied thinking and lifeworld of the Hindu Tantric visionary Abhinavagupta (c. 975–1025 C.E.). I elucidate Abhinavagupta's embodied phenomenology of Śiva-Who-Is-Being, focusing on his multivocal metaphor of the pulsating heart and its divine sense-energies. I show that Abhinavagupta understood the central act of salvation, the recollection (vimarśa) of Being, or ultimate consciousness, as being a bodily felt process. Abhinavagupta drew on an earlier body of discourse and practice, the Kaula Trika substratum, whose pivotal ritual was that of sexual union. Thus, Abhinavagupta recovered the body and senses for consciousness in a sensuous and erotic phenomenology, so that vimarśa was understood precisely as the “body's recollection of Being,” the bodily felt awareness of the Pulsating Heart.

It is not easy to understand the nature of the guru and understanding the nature of the guru can be bewildering. There is often bewilderment about the guru. One source of the bewilderment is that people think that the guru is an individual person and for most people the understanding that the guru is not a person has been foreclosed. The guru is not a person. And when people see and believe the guru is a person, such a belief will create illusions about the person whom they think is the guru, and their own relationship with the person whom they see as the guru will fall into various forms of the psychology of transference. Moreover, the true and pervasive nature of the guru will be concealed and the power of the guru limited and anthropomorphized, and politicized. To use Heideggerian language the ontic dimension will become the focus and the ontological dimension becomes foreclosed. In fact, the guru is not an entity, the guru is not a thing, and the guru is not even a being. The guru is the field of Being. The guru is the field of Being's manifestation of understanding, manifestation of protection and manifestation of self-revelation. The guru is the radiance of primordial awareness. The contemporary master of Kashmir Shavism, Swami Muktananda would teach, using the language of theology, " the guru is the grace bestowing power of God. " He would also say " The guru is your own innermost awareness and you must get beyond your mind to experience the guru as your own awareness. " Vehicle-ness It is also equally true that a person can be vehicle of the guru. Even you and I can be a vehicle for the guru. The light of the guru can manifest and shine forth through you and me, and through everyone. The power of the guru does not manifest only through institutional religious teachers as some would like you to think, but most often this manifestation is through

The Tantras selected here give few clues about geographical locations. Of the six short passages, the third alone mentions a place called the “Garlanded” (Mālinī) Mountain and a ravine or cave named Kokila, which may refer to sites in the far northeast of India, in the state of Arunachal Pradesh, such as the ruined temple site called Malini- than in the Siang Hills. This area borders Tibet, Myanmar, and Bhutan and is home to numerous tribal communities speaking dozens of languages and hundreds of dialects. Its green forests and high mountains host some of the most biodiverse wilderness in India, with over 750 species of birds and hundreds of mammals, including snow leopards, red pandas, and gibbon apes.

These six short passages translated from the Sanskrit depart from the narrative format and instead present Tantric-guided visualizations and hymns of praise to the so-called goddess of desire, Kāmeśvarī. They are all about vivid description, characteristics of the practitioner, and praise for the goddess’s power. The first two pieces are from the Nityākaula, a previously untranslated Tantra predating the eleventh century and the sole surviving representative of the Nityā cult, as described in the essay. This important early Tantra has barely reached the present, for it survives in a single damaged palm-leaf manuscript from Nepal. The frequent ellipses (. . .) in the first passage flag places where the text is damaged and unreadable. The passage from the Ciñciṇīmatasārasamuccaya serves as a midpoint that elaborates on the nature and power of Kāmeśvarī. The latter three passages are from the Vāmakeśvarīmata, a Tantra of slightly later origin that expands the goddess’s retinue and links her to the famous diagram of nine interlocking triangles, called the Śrīcakra. The passages are thus arranged sequentially to illustrate the historical flow of religious influence from the Nityā cult to that of Tripurasundarī, who is still actively worshiped today in the popular Śrīvidyā tradition.

This volume is general, but a serious and in-depth study of distinct temple ritual cult of Kerala. Kerala tantra still remains to be a less explored subject. There is no exclusive study on the ritual peculiarities of Kerala Tantra. This book focuses filling that gap covering extensively the prominent characteristics of the unique ritual cult of Kerala.

Human sexuality is ubiquitously experienced around the planet because every human being is a sexual being. However, how sexuality is explored and constrained differs within every cultural system. This paper  examines Hindu Tantric Sexuality (HTS) by first defining Hindu Tantra and exploring a mythological origins stories, which shaped the sexualization of Hindu Tantra.  The paper's final section contrasts a Biblical understanding of human sexuality with Hindu Tantric sexuality.

*This paper includes sexually explicit material. Be advised.

The felt sense of whoness is not a me-ness…me is self-fixation and in fact the sense of whoness can free us from objectified self-fixation. The sense of me often replaces the sense of who. When the experiential nonconceptual felt sense of who is not known or experienced, the felt sense of me-ness arises desperately. The sense of who is unfixatedness and this innate sense of no-thingness can be found and even experienced as ongoing timeless awareness in time. Innermost awareness in its manifestation can be experienced as whoness, no-thingness and open knowingness. The sense of me-ness is self-fixated, self-referencing and this me-ness can obscure the experiential arising of whoness. The sense of me-ness reflects the being in mind alone, and the sense of whoness reflects being deeply within the awareness field. Whoness manifests most directly as pause and within the pause. The pause is unbound in betweeness…the space in between..transitional spaciousness. When the spaciousness of the breathless breath opens whoness can be felt as uncontained and unbound. Whoness is experiential openness….openess without a name or prior to name. We may say openness prior to mind. Dasein to use Heideggarian language. When the breathless breath manifests the experience is always mysterious. What does breathless breath mean? Breathless means no breath, there is no breath. The word breath here, in this context signifies that there is no breath but there is respiration. There is this inner most experience of no breath, no inhaling or exhaling of air and yet there is respiration. There is a respiration without breath and beyond breath. For instance, in the Kechari mudra this breathless breath experience takes place. The breath stops and yet there is an inner sense of breathless respiration. This experience of respiration without breath is described in various traditions of eastern philosophy. In the Dzogchen tradition Longchenpa describes the experience in his great text Words and Meaning. This

“So it is not by democracy, but by entrusting power to the true Tantrics, that equality in the economic and social spheres must be established in this material world.” “The process of transforming latent divinity into the Supreme Divinity is known as Tantra”, according to Prabhat Rainjan Sarkar.  P. R. Sarkar, (1921-1990), was a spiritual teacher (also known as Shrii Shrii Anandamurti) in the tradition of Shiva and Krishna, who propounded PROUT (Progressive Utilization Theory) and who founded the socio-spiritual movement Ananda Marga (“the Path of Bliss”).  –  Richard Gauthier, Department of Chemistry and Physics, Santa Rosa Junior College, Santa Rosa, California, USA, May 2, 2021.

The Hindu goddess takes many forms, but two of the most strikingly different are the kumārī, a beautiful, pre-menarche virgin, and Cāmuṇḍā, a ferocious, bloodthirsty hag. Why did the authors of sixteenth-and seventeenth-century Tantras strategically identify the virgin goddess with the emaciated crone? Comparative textual analysis reveals a unique theological opportunity in the union of these goddesses. In addition to establishing the goddess as Infinite Being, it affirmed a covert Tantric identity within popular annual worship of virgin girls known as kumārī pūjā. In so doing, these authors embraced a ferocious form of female desire which is self-contained, self-fulfilling, and self-controlled, unlike competing popular narratives in which Kālī risks the fate of the universe unless she is tamed by her husband. Inseparably linked in a cosmic cycle of power to Cāmuṇḍā, as well as Durgā and Tripurasundarī, the kumārī fully emerged a potent, subversive symbol of Kaula identity.

In an insightful introduction, the scholar presents an overview of the historical development of the Kashmirian Saiva tradition, especially of the non dualistic system. Trika was made famous by the work of its famous proponent Abhinavagupta. He studies the theme of Saktisparsa in selected texts of non dualistic Trika Saivism of Kashmir.

The  connection  between  the  soul  and  eros  within  Jewish  esotericism  has  been  well established  in  the  academy  by  scholars  such  as  Moshe  Idel,  Elliot  Wolfson  and  more recently  Charles  Mopsik.  However,  although  frequently  compared  with  eastern  tantric schools, the praxis aspect of kabbalistic sexual methods is still shrouded in mystery.  By examining  Talmudic,  Heichalot  texts,  and  zoharic  references,  as  well  as  medieval  and early  modern  kabbalistic  sources  from  the  schools  of  Abraham  Abulafia  (1239-1291), Moses  Cordovero  (1522-1570)  and  Isaac  Luria  (1534-1572),  this  paper  explores  for  the first  time  what  may  be  the  forgotten  sexual  school of  mysticism  within  Jewish esotericism. Moreover, this paper examines not only the role of the soul within the sexual act itself but also the enigmatic intentions behind its operations. Finally, this paper argues that  while  the  original  aim  behind  these  procedures  was  to  produce  theurgic  results, modern  occultist  thinkers  within  western  esotericism  such  as  Paschal  Beverly  Randolph (1825-1875) and Julius Evola (1898-1974) utilized the same theurgic methodologies and reappropriated them into magical applications.

This paper explores the way in which God as the infinite ground of existence is discerned by the imagination and understanding. The representation of the apophatic divine is facilitated by the working of the human mind, which means that the manifold nature of thinking establishes the presence of God. In the metaphysical speculations of kabbalah and tantra the singular light of Ein Sof and Paramashiva intersects with the human imagination, and is refracted into a multiple display of understanding. So the mind acts as a prism through which God is conceptualized and delineated. It constitutes a mediated envisaging of the Absolute, and the corollary of this perception is the engendering of the divine presence, notably as the feminine Shekhinah and Shakti. In short, in these two apparently different traditions—of kabbalistic and tantric thought—there is a detectably common theme of the notions of activity and force in creation as betokening a feminine representation of God’s being.

While I have always intuitively seen Mary as more than Theotokos, my training in orthodoxy came to overshadow my orthopraxis of Mary. But today I hold a different stance because I have come to view my Marian practice as indeed worship of the Divine Godd/ess.

At a surprisingly early age, perhaps ten or eleven years old, I became the author of my own religious narrative, meaning, I took it upon myself to initiate and pursue the deep mysteries of my Catholic faith. Weekly Mass became an event, not an obligation, and something to which I attended independent of my large, Irish-American Catholic family. The singleness of my worship at such a young age drew stares and whispers from those families that arrived intact. And while I was not unaware of their curiosity, I found it easier to lose myself in the absolute wonder of my environment. This environment of the tangible and non-tangible is what Andrew Greeley has since come to identify as “the Catholic Imagination,” where a Catholic sensibility is manifested in cathedrals and high art, but is also awash in the mundane of our daily lives. Additionally, our family’s dependence on Saint Jude, the patron saint of lost causes, was a close second to a strong devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary. By this I mean to suggest that she was our go-to heavenly figure when in need, and I, the appointed family petitioner. Through the years I would take each family crisis directly to Mary through the recitation of the Rosary. The thought never occurred to me that doctrinally Mary functioned as mediator between the Father and Son and not as Godd/ess. While I never identified her as the personification or manifestation of Godd/ess, that is exactly how my practice or devotion to her played itself out, until I left the church in my early twenties, certain my emerging feminism could not include the sexism and androcentrism of an all male priesthood. But twenty years later, when I discovered my husband had been involved in a five-year affair, I immediately ran for my childhood rosary beads, which I had not used or thought about since my youth.

Although it is one of the most important rituals in Hindu worship, the kumārī pūjā—worship of pre-menarche virgin girls as the goddess—has been long overlooked as a subject of study in India. Based on the first comprehensive study of the concept and worship of the kumārī, this paper establishes the textual, theological, and philosophical foundations for kumārī worship in Tantric traditions and explores a community of young girls serving as kumārīs at the Kāmākhyā temple in Assam, a historically important site of both Tantric and kumārī worship. By exploring the economic and social dimensions of the two primary groups of young girls who participate as kumārīs at the temple, which includes migrant children and members of elite families, I argue that the kumārī pūjā has long united orthodox and heterodox traditions by simultaneously transcending and upholding the orthodox social order, particularly in regard to social class or caste. This paper is based on in-depth ethnographic research, including interviews with young girls serving as kumārīs, former kumārīs, priests, practitioners, devotees, and pilgrims, as well as original research in Sanskrit texts spanning a thousand years.

She changes everything She touches and everything She touches changes. The world is Her body. The world is in Her and She is in the world. She surrounds us like the air we breathe. She is as close to us as our own breath. She is energy, movement, life, and change. She is the ground of freedom, creativity, sympathy, understanding, and love. In Her we live, and move, and co-create our being. She is always there for each and every one of us, particles of atoms, cells, animals, and human animals. We are precious in Her sight. She understands and remembers us with unending sympathy. She inspires us to live creatively, joyfully, and in harmony with others in the web of life. Yet choice is ours.

What does it mean to talk of the power of God in relation to the human self? The discourses generated by the Jewish and Christian tradition about the capacity for divinity have been mainly promulgated by men, and have more often than not served to exclude women cognitively, practically, and spiritually. As a result they have been made powerless in the face of God's presence. It is possible to look to ideas developed in Hindu Tantra for comparative notions of power (shakti) which can redeem the place of God for women. The path of divine consciousness is effectively illustrated by an imaginary and somatic awareness, by a devout attention to the play of light in the soul. In this paper I propose to read the assignment of energy and force within conceptions of divinity through the lens of a poststructuralist realization, using the work of Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, and Luce Irigaray.