Tantra Illuminated: The Philosophy, History, and Practice of a Timeless Tradition

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We sing the praises of the Heart of the Supreme Divinity, that vibrating & scintillating Consciousness in the form of the Three Powers ( Parādi-śakti), manifesting as everything and yet transcending everything.

Access-restricted-item true Addeddate 2023-05-25 00:44:15 Autocrop_version 0.0.14_books-20220331-0.2 Bookplateleaf 0002 Boxid IA40945611 Camera USB PTP Class Camera Collection_set printdisabled External-identifier One thousand years ago in the valley of Kashmīr,a great tāntrika, Rājānaka Kṣhemarāja, wrote his masterpiece: the Pratyabhijñā-hṛdayam, which means “the essence of the Recognition philosophy” or “the heart of the teachings on Recognition”—recognition, that is, of oneself as an expression of the universal divine Consciousness. Again, this is just a brief and simplified summary of the attitude NST takes to the world and to practice. It is also a definition in the sense that it helps us to know what we're looking at and to differentiate it from other paths. Though NST shares many similarities with other nondual mystical paths, we honor the tradition by reserving the word Tantra for the lineage teachings that were based on the revealed scriptures called tantras.

As an initiate, the Kashmiri king funded festivals and temples, but also supported philosophical study and spiritual practice, even paying stipends to those philosophers and contemplatives who explored the inner landscape and wrote about their insights (some of these, like our author, were given the title rājānaka to indicate the king’s favor). Given today’s political world, we may find the idea of government funding for spiritual research and writing astonishing, but what is even more impressive, I think, is the manner in which this spiritual literature survived to the present day—though only just. the real goal of the Tantra: to experience the Divine not just in rarefied 'spiritual' environments but in every aspect of mundane life." The benevolent one. Shiva. Not the name of a god, rather the peaceful quiescent ground of all reality. The infinite silence of transcendent divinity. While shakti is extroversive,manifest, omniform and dynamic, shiva is introversive, transcendent, unmanifest, formless and still.

It’s not a bad thing though. Very accessible but it demands your attention. I’ve found myself needing to take breaks to process things and it can also be tiring as it fills your mind and embodied reality with novel information and philosophy. Tantra practitioners were not ascetics but people like you and I. A whole community that rejected the idea of cast, class and gender divisions.

This very Power of Reflective Awareness ( vimarśa-śakti) is the Agency of this world, and it is not [and cannot be] unconscious or inert! Even the world’s condition of being an effect ( kāryatva) is manifest only because of it. And the world, having such a nature, is undivided & non-different from the Great Lord, the sole Agent, whose nature is [nothing but] the Light of Consciousness. let go of the conditionality of regard and allow yourself to experience Divinity in another human being.'"