The intent in this essay is not so much historiographical as it is patently hermeneutic. To understand the roots of the Hindu Tantra, we must uncover the radical and crucial interpretive shifts that contribute to its successful ideological consolidation. Thus it is useful to examine the symbolism of the Tantric deity, Bhairava, a figure who straddles two domains in early Hindu Tantra. On one hand, the symbolism of Bhairava is connected to aveśa-sādhana, that is, the cremation-ground culture of possession by hordes of demonic female deities led by the frightful, fanged deity known as Rudra-Bhairava. On the other hand, and especially in the hands of the brilliant early expositor of Hindu Tantra, the Kashmiri Saiva teacher Abhinavagupta (tenth century C.E.), Bhairava is reinterpreted in terms of what could be called the samavesa-sadhana, the Tantric-yogic exploration of the nondual consciousness. Here, Bhairava comes to mean the unencompassable and exquisitely blissful light of consciousness that is to be discovered as the practitioner’s true inner identity.
These two aspects of Bhairava may be examined using as a locus text in which the boundary between these two domains is clearly discernible. This is the short Agamic work usually termed the Paratrimsika or PT that connects itself somewhat problematically to the Rudra-yamala-tantra. The PT verses were deemed sufficiently important by Abhinavagupta that he commented on them twice, once in his Parātrīśikā-laghuvrtti (PTlv) and once in his PTv. In fact, it is in these commentaries that we find important evidence for the process by which what we are calling the āveśa-sādhana mutates into what may be termed the samāveśa-sādhanā. In this process, the demonic figure of Bhairava mutates and expands to include the apparently benign philosophical concept of a Tantric Absolute Reality. The attempt here will be to exploit selectively the thematic richness of a passage drawn from this work to explore several important symbolic themes related to this absolutizing transformation. Moreover, the exploration of this passage and the sequence of development within the early Hindu Tantra that it typifies illustrate aspects of the complex and problematic interplay between the domain of ritual techniques and the realm of meditative practices.
A standard scholarly gambit attempts to drive useful interpretive wedges in the gap between a text and its commentaries. It is, however, quite difficult to exploit these interstices when the only context we have for a text is its commentary. An example of this in the study of dārsānā (viewing) is the attempt to read the Yogā-sutrās outside of Vyasa’s Yogā-bhāsyā and other subcommentaries. If these attempts have shown us anything, it is that it is difficult to do so in anything more than a speculative fashion. In the case of the PT verses, we have even less to go on than the Yoga-sutras.
It is even more difficult to explore this gap when such a commentary establishes a new and subsuming paradigm that encompasses the original text in a plausible way. Such is the case with Abhinavaguptas commentary entitled The Short Gloss on the PT (Pārā-trīśikā-lāghuvrtti ). Here, the seamless continuity of Abhinavagupta’s encompassing commentary on the PT verses tends to obscure the original ritual and experiential context of these verses. With ingenuity, Abhinavagupta overlays a doctrine of non-dual consciousness on the original and much less clearly doctrinal Agamic text. In his synthetic Trika-Kaula elaboration of the doctrine of Recognition (that Abhinavagupta inherited from his predecessor, Utpaladeva), he doubles back to the PT verses to weave them into a sophisticated system. Thus, he embeds them in the complex ideology of the Heart with its related notions of the kulā or Embodied Cosmos, the visārgā-śākti or Emissional Power of the continuous cosmogony, and the esoteric language philosophy of the mātrkā (sound).
The PT verses relay the secret teaching of a particular māntrā (verse or slokā 9), the so-called Heart-māntrā (Hrdāyābīja), SAUH. They then describe in the next seven verses, the visionary engulfing of the consciousness of the practitioner by the sāktis (powers) that the sādhākā courts. Having received the impelling and initiatory descent of energy (sāktipātā) from the Guru, the sādhākā who diligently remembers the māntrā, S-AU-H, progressively penetrates into a condition of meditative absorption (sāmāveśa) in which he comes face to face with a host of divinized beings: the Mothers (Mātrs), the Mistresses of Yoga (Yogeśvāris), the Heroes perfected by the practice of the secret ritual (Virās), the Lords of the Heroes (Vireśvaras), the powerful Siddhas, and the Sākinīs, such as the Khecarīs. These beings are experienced as inhabiting the sādhaka’s body and appearing before him ready to do his bidding, to foretell the future, reveal the past, or grant any desire.
In his commentary on the verses, Abhinavagupta states that when meditative absorption is sufficiently strong, the meditator achieves a vision of the deity he desires by placing the mantra connected with this deity in his Heart consciousness. Thus, for Abhinavagupta, meditative vision constitutes a process of drawing near (ā-kr) or attracting the divine beings already resident in the body of the sādhaka by coalescing their form or shape (ākrti) out of consciousness through the use of a mantra. Attracted in this way, the deity will appear before the sādhaka, drawn there by the Powers of Rudra, and will become identical with the practitioner’s own body.
Abhinavagupta clarifies that the divine beings reveal themselves because the sādhaka has become Bhairava, the Lord of the Wheel of Powers (śakticakreśvara), the kulesvara, the Lord of the Embodied Cosmos. The sādhaka becomes identical to Bhairava who is at once the supreme consciousness and the naked beggar. This dual identity of Bhairava as both anthropomorphic and non-anthropomorphic or as both sakala (the composite form of the personified deity) and niskala (the transcendent form of nondual consciousness) circumscribes the complex and ambiguous nature of the meaning of deification for this Tantric environment.
In Abhinavaguptas formulation which emphasized the niskala but does not exclude the sakala, this intense form of meditative sādhana represents an interiorized ritual of worship that centers on the production of the blissful nectar (ekarasa) of nonduality, and combines a method for liberation with the achievement of supernatural powers. At the core of this method is the notion of remembering (smR): the recognitional process of anamnesis by which the sādhaka recuperates the essential and preexistent identity with Siva-Bhairava.
A key term that underscores the apparent exegetical divergence of the commentary from the text is the notion of avesa (verse 11), which in the original text seems to mean something like demonic possession. In Abhinavagupta’s commentary, avesa appears to be reinterpreted to mean a state of yogic and meditative absorption, that is, samavesa. Thus, in the shift from text to commentary, two levels seem to be discernible—in the original PTverses, the sādhana of possession emphasizing the encounter with external anthropomorphic deities separate from the sādhaka and, in terms of Abhinavaguptas gloss, the sādhana of Recognition, centering on the phenomenology of non-dual consciousness. Let us examine these notions in further detail.
In the PT, it is Bhairava who instructs the Goddess in the secret of the Heart and its all-powerful mantra, SAUH. Bhairava is the form of Siva encountered in the PT and in many of the other revealed texts in nondual Kashmiri Saivism. The term Bhairava derives from the root bhā (to be afraid) and the related adjective bhāru (fearful, timid). By a curious process of inversion, Bhairava comes to mean that which is terrifying and frightful. Depictions of him show a sinister, fanged face often surmounted by writhing and venomous serpents that convey the fury of the god of death who is also, paradoxically, the god of transformation and release.
The myth tells us that Siva punishes the creator god, Brahma, for his sin of arrogance by cutting off one of his heads with the nail of his left thumb. Now guilty of the sin of Brahminicide, Siva as Bhairava Bhiksātana is condemned to wander, begging for alms and carrying Brahma’s skull, which remains attached to his hand. The naked skull bearer of Kapalika, carrying the trident, draped in sinuous serpents, and accompanied by dogs, serves as the expiatory of Siva’s sin. The skull finally drops off when Bhairava atones for his sin by entering the precincts of the holy city of Benares.
Many powerful Tantric themes are packed into the figure of Bhairava. This skull-bearing transgressor who is fearful and terrible resonates with the ascetic cremation-ground culture of heterodox and transgressive groups who sought power through control of and possession by hordes of frightening goddesses. The figure of Rudra-Bhairava, especially when he is connected with the Yoginls, Sākinās, or Mātrikas, alerts us to the deeply transgressive tradition that the PT verses inherit. With roots that go at least as far back as the early Pāsupatas and Kāpalikas, this cremation-ground culture then flourishes in the cult of the Yoginis, powerful saktis (energies) who came to inhabit actual women through a state of possession and with whom the male initiates ritually copulated in order to produce the commingled sexual fluids of the sacrificial liquid (argha or kundagolaka), offered back to these deities. Moreover, children born from the rituals were said to be “born from the yoginī” (the phrase occurs in sloka 10). Abhinavagupta himself was said to be “born of the yogini that is, conceived during his parents’ practice of a later form of this very same sexual ritual.
The examination of these eroto-mystical or sexo-yogic elements takes us beyond our current scope. It is important to note that in the move from text to commentary—in the shift from avesa sadhana to samavesa sadhana—these powerful ritual themes are in no way eradicated by the superimposition on them of the ideology of nondual consciousness. This is clearly evident from the coded descriptions of the kula-yaga or secret ritual given by Abhinagagupta in the chapter 29 of the Tantraloka (TA). Here, elaborating on his own left-handed ritual, one encounters the same theme of imbibing of the fluids that emerge from the mouth of the yoginī, a multivalent sexual reference with important alchemical components.
Thus, as a result of the interpretive strategies of Abhinavagupta, the term Bhairava (or bhairavata, or bhairavasvarupa) expands beyond its mythic and personified identity and comes to stand for the Ultimate itself, the huge abyss of the unbounded and uncontainable light of consciousness. To attain Bhairava in this yogic sense is to enter into the experience of the all-encompassing and nondual reality of Ultimate Consciousness. In the hands of this authoritative expositor of the Tantra, the older ritually embedded conceptions become the synthetic Trika-Becoming Bhairava.
Kaula which, permeated with nondualism, transforms these older cults of possession into a yogic of left-handed Tantra. Dominated by an overarching inquiry into the power of Ultimate consciousness —of Bhairava conjoined with the Goddess— Abhinavaguptas commentaries transmute the external goddesses into the frenzied energies that emanate from the absolute reality and the secret ritual into an occasion for the sādhakas recognition of Bhairava as constituting the true inner identity.
Here I would like to explore two themes in which unfold the meaning of Abhinavaguptas formulation of what we are calling the samāveśa sadhana. Essentially, the samāveśa sādhana may be said to occur in two phases. In the first, the practitioner progresses in the absorption into Bhairava. By pronunciating the mantra, the sādhaka experiences progressive interiorization that finally reveals the reality of the nondual consciousness in the state of turīyā (highest state) or the inwardly enclosed samadhi (profound meditation). As this state is continuously pursued and assiduously consolidated, there is a second phase of the samaveśa sādhana. In an apparent directional reversal, Bhairava—as the ultimate unbounded consciousness—begins to be absorbed into the finite levels of the mind, senses, and body of the practitioner. In the first phase, the nondual consciousness is located within the deepest layer of being as the transcendent principle, the supreme Bhairava beyond the sequence of the thirty-six tattvas (principles of matter)—beyond the vibratory matrix, beyond the emergent kula (body)- explicate of relative reality. In the second phase, the entire display of thirty-six principles, the whole vibratory field, the kula-explicate, is invaded by the nondual consciousness to such a degree that it comes to be experienced as floating nondifferently within the ocean of nondual consciousness. Let us look at these two aspects.
In śloka 11 of the PT, the centrality of pronuncing of the mantra is announced. It says, “When the mantra has been ‘pronounced,’ the entire great multitudes of mantras and mudras appear immediately before him, characterized by absorption in his own body.” Crucial to understanding the process of samāveśa through pronunciation (uccara) of the mantra are ideas surrounding the Saivite notion of spanda (pulsating life) that view reality as composed of an infinitely complex vibratory web. Tantric Saivism insists that the vibratory energies that compose physical reality are themselves condensed manifestations of ultimate consciousness. Saivite tradition also suggests a unifying continuity between the realms of physical reality, the activities of sense perception, and all forms of interior awareness. All are seen as phenomenal manifestations of the ultimate consciousness that exists enmeshed in a complex vibratory matrix.
Within the anuttara (supreme), there occurs continuously a subtle pulsation that does not alter the stillness of the absolute. This is the spanda that animates the ultimate consciousness. Employing a variety of metaphors, the tradition glosses spanda by the term sphuratta, the scintillating pulse of the supreme light that continuously trembles with its own innate incandescence. In sonic terms, the spanda is glossed as the nāda (tone vibration), the subtle but powerful resonance echoing through the supreme. In an important metaphoric shift, supreme consciousness is likened to the ocean of Soma (amrta), the nectar of immortality flowing in liquid streams or waves.
In cosmogonic terms, it is the primordial spanda that continuously manifests the emergence of space and time and all visible universes. The supreme spanda releases a vibrating spectrum of energies that originate within the supreme (anuttara). As the infinitely fast vibration of the anuttara systematically coalesces and condenses into progressively slower and thicker vibrations, tangible, perceptible forms emerge from the void and formlessness of the ultimate consciousness. These apparently solid appearances are called cognitions (paramarśa) and they are understood as complex interference patterns that arise in the intermerging crosswhirl of energies created by the interaction of vibratory consciousness within itself. Indeed, in the first part of the PTlv, Abhinavagupta takes up the explication of the sonic vibratory matrix in terms of the phonemic structure of Sanskrit. It is precisely within this ideology of vibratory matrices that Abhinavagupta interprets the original sāktis—the mātrkās—as “the mighty troop of the Sākints” (sloka 15, PT). Thus spanda, which is the very life to the supreme light of the unitary consciousness, animates and discloses the unfolding multiplicity of phenomena that are contained within the infinite potentiality of that light.
At the same time, spanda unifies and encompasses all that has emerged within its primordial embrace and reenfolds endlessly the manifested totality back into the supreme light of consciousness. The unfolding/enfolding reality is the hrdaya, the expanding and contracting Heart of consciousness from which all things ebb and flow. In describing the Heart, Abhinavagupta makes the fundamental equation of his exegetical transformation of the concept of Bhairava; he says [Paratrimshika Laghuvritti 9] :
viśrānta-paramānanda-maya-dhāma-śakti-traya-gatānavarata-saṅkoca-vikāsa-rūpa-triko. naparispandanarūpametad hṛdayaṃ bhairavātmano bhairavasya ātmabhūtāyāstadavibhāgavatyāḥ śrīparādevyāḥ tattvaṃ bhavati |
The Heart is the subtle vibration of the triangle which consists of the incessant expansion and contraction of the three powers, and it is the place of repose, the place of supreme bliss. This very Heart is the Self of Bhairava, of that which is the essence of Bhairava, and of the Blessed Supreme Goddess who is inseparable and non-different from Him.
Far removed from the original fanged deity of the earlier ritual conceptions, Bhairava thus emerges as the all-encompassing reality, the absolute thateffortlessly contains all manifestational realities.
Implicit within Tantric Saivism there are a variety of spatial metaphors indicating the relative positioning attention within this vibratory matrix: above and within indicate the subtler forms of vibration that correspond to inwardly absorbed awareness; below and outside point to the cruder and more condensed forms of the physical world. From the innermost subtle above, the outer forms are nourished and sustained, rooted to the primordial source-vibration. Connecting the outer forms to the formless, ultimate consciousness, there stands the branching vibratory matrix, the web of pulsating light, or resonant sound, or liquidly flowing energies, and it is these that make up the extended body of the sūdhakas consciousness. Thus, from the relatively superficial activities of sense perception to the progressively subtler forms of inner awareness, there spans a unified spectrum of levels of the spanda that lead inward until the most delicate and powerful tendrils of individuality merge with the infinitely fast vibration of the ultimate consciousness.
All of these ideas inform the notion of the pronunciation of the mantra, which leads to the great vision of the śaktis and the recognition of Bhairava. To pronounce the mantra, then, is to begin the great inward traverse of this spectrum of vibratory frequencies that will lead the sūdhaka deeper into the absorption that reveals the interior presence of the multitude of powers, and that finally disclosed Bhairava—the supreme, undifferentiated consciousness—as the deepest and most authentic identity of the practitioner.
In this way, in the traditional progression of sadhana, Bhairava first becomes accessible in the enstatic state of tūriya, which the advanced yogin stabilizes by gaining proficiency in the nimīlana or closed-eyed samūdhi. However, contrary to earlier yogic notions, for the Tantrin the journey of consciousness does not terminate in this introvertive condition; indeed, the practitioner attempts to entice the absolute consciousness from its self-enclosed state. The sadhaka wishes to activate a dancing blissfulness within the initial, flat voidness of pure, contentless consciousness. It is clear that Abhinabagupta’s commentary on the PT verses is informed by, for example, the teachings of the Vijñana-bhairava-tantra (VBh), which prescribes the secret and subtle gestures of awareness that will unfold and magically expand the experience of this enclosed samadhi.
The VBh urges the yogin to be alert during everyday situations—listening to the notes of a song, observing the flow of the breath or powerful emotions (e.g., fear, anger, or great happiness) or when waking yields to sleep; there may occur a sudden, flashing expansion, a surging efflorescence of consciousness that is the manifestation of Bhairava. As the Siva Sūtras state (1.5), udyamo bhairavah (Bhairava is the surging expansion). Thus, in his commentary Abhinavagupta addresses the advanced yogin who has cultivated an inward and enclosed samaadhi and urges him to a more daring stance of openness to the hidden presence of Bhairava flashing forth from the most unexpected of places. The openness will initiate the second phase of the samavesa sadhana. Here the practitioner cultivates the open-eyed samadhi that will mature into the bhairavimudra in which the yogin bathes in all moments in the perception of unbounded consciousness.
Thus, the samavesa sūdhana advises an alternation of introvertive states—in which Bhairava is discovered as concealed in the innermost depths—with extrovertive conditions that reveal the discovery of the omnipresence of Bhairava. In this way, the sādhaka is said to emulate the essential pulsation of the rudrayamala, of the expansion and contraction of the Rudra-dyad as they embrace in the Heart of reality.
The body becomes the abode of all divinities, the text tells us. All the mantras and mudras come to dwell within the body of the one who pronounces the Heart mantra. Thus, in this usage the notion of the body embraces much more than the physical body; it expands to contain the array of the subtle energies of speech, mind, and vital breath that connect the physical body to the absolute consciousness.
In the first two verses of the PT, the Goddess implores Bhairava to reveal the great secret of the power that abides in the Heart. His statement of the secret reveals the famous khecarīmuda or bhairavīmudrā, the condition of moving in the void of pure consciousness, the undifferentiated consciousness that is Bhairava. While the term mudra ordinarily refers to certain symbolic hand gestures, it is clear that in this context it is more properly translated as a “state of consciousness:” a mudra in this sense is an inner gesture expressive of a state of consciousness. Thus, the practitioner attains the highest and most unimpeded state of consciousness in which all movement occurs solely within the field of the absolute.
In his commentary on this section, Abhinavagupta employs an important alchemical metaphor to explain a second meaning of the term samavesa. Says Abhinavagupta:
"It has been said that if the principle of consciousness obtains the state of being the Heart, then the condition of being free while still alive ensues. Whenever a flowing form is produced by the condition of practice, due to the heating up of the vessel of awareness whose nature is the Heart, that flowing by a regular absorption (samavesa) the levels of body breath and mind, just like quicksilver (siddharasa) penetrating into metal, negates the insentiency of breath and mind".
There are interesting links here to traditions of Indian alchemy (rasayana), but what is clearly at stake is an inner alchemy connected to the flow of the transformative power of consciousness liberated by the practice of samavesa. This passage illuminates the invasive absorption of nondual consciousness into the apparently separate individuality of the practitioner. Just as the activated quicksilver transforms base metal into precious substance, so too the outward flowing form of consciousness overtakes the relative body-mind apparatus and works magical transformation upon it. This new status reflects itself not only in terms of a transformed vision of the Self and of the phenomenal universe, but also in the attainment of a divinized condition of physical embodiment. Here, the flowing form of Bhairava increasingly overwhelms the finite self with its limitless power and brings about a progressively and increasingly effortless immersion (nimaj- jana), or reposing (visranti) in the abyss of the Heart of Bhairava.
Abhinavagupta tells us that the “great entanglement of the sport of existence” arises as part of the astonishment experienced in the supreme consciousness, an astonishment, in this case, that there should be anything at all different from the infinite Self. This great entanglement is filled up with Bhairava, with the directly experienced perception of the Self as the all-pervasive reality both internally and externally. One of the terms that is often encountered in this regard is the notion of appropriation (svīkartavya). Abhinavagupta explains, “This cognition of the Heart must be appropriated, made one’s own, as a reality that is empty of differences, whose nature is that it appears all at once, devoid of time.” By means of this transformative appropriation of all things to Bhairava, the practitioner is said to directly transform the field of experience from night into day. Describing the culmination of this process, Abhinavagupta says:
When the absorption into the Heart is maintained for four periods of forty- eight minutes, then the totality, whose nature is essentially light, attains the condition of day, and the contraction of the night of māyā is destroyed. Then the practitioner with this very body becomes omniscient like Bhairava.
The night of māyā (illusion) is the contraction that has given rise to the great entanglement of existence. This night is to be dispelled by the clarifying and expansive absorption into the reality of the Heart of Bhairava that is essentially light. Activated by practice of the mantra, the gleaming light of the Heart severs the knots of limitation and contraction to reveal the illuminating vision. Once released, however, this light can in no way be held back: it is unconcealable and unbounded. As it continues to emanate from the inner reality of the Heart, it invades the entire structure of finiteness, transforming its inertness and insentience into the vibrancy and liveliness of the absolute:
This is the tetrad, the moon and its three parts, the Heart, which, being present and being reposed in one’s own Heart whose form is a consciousness of the self, must be projected within oneself in order to obtain an absorption (samāveśa) whose nature is that it appropriates the levels of mind, breath, and body. One should place the entire group (kula), consisting of the mind, breath, body and senses, so that its one essence is resting on that tetrad, with its inert character having been dissolved, whose principal part is the cognition of the form of that tetrad. Because of the expansion of its light, one will arrive at a state where the kula becomes light. In this way the absorption of the tetrad of the emissional power in the levels of body, breath, and so on has been shown.
The “moon and its three parts,” the tetrad, refer here to the knower, process of knowing, and the known object all encompassed within the moon, the wholeness of consciousness. The kula becomes light, says Abhinavagupta. The opaque and limiting structure of body, breath, and senses is invaded by the expanding light of the Heart. Animated and transformed by the quickening essence of consciousness (the new meaning of the sacrificial liquid offered to the Goddesses), the liberated one becomes Bhairava incarnate in whom even the activities of the senses and the body are radically awakened and divinized.
Thus, in Abhinavagupta’s interpretation, samavesa refers to the inner grasping of the sakti which opens the sadhaka to a state of identity with Bhairava. By uniting with the Goddess, the sadhaka is said to be “born of the Yoginis Heart,” that is, to be reborn as Bhairava. Caught up in a series of macranthropic experiences, the sadhaka truly comes to embody the cosmos. In such a state, the capacity to experience finite objects is not lost; instead, objects are now correctly perceived as “luminous with the play that bestows the fragrance of the Self.” The astonishment of this experience involves discovery of Bhairava as the true inner identity and the bewildering perception that this nondifferentiated consciousness is simultaneously at play as a luminosity inherent within all external objects. In this way, the jīvanmukta (liberated one) “moves in the Heart,” “moves in the void,” and experiences all things as having their being within the omnipresent reality of the Heart of Bhairava. The awakened one is surrounded by Bhairava on all sides. What were formerly perceived and improperly evaluated as separate, finite objects (including the body, senses, and mind) have now revealed their true status as Bhairava itself. Fulfilling the meaning of both bhukti (enjoyment) and mukti (liberation), the siddha (one with supranormal powers) dwells in this blissful state of the englobing and all encompassing nondual consciousness.
In the movement from the avesa sadhana to the samavesa sadhana, there occurs an important revalorization of the place of ritual. The direct, meditative absorption in the Heart is said to fulfill the purpose of any ritual. Indeed, the entrance into the Heart constitutes initiation, even if the actual ritual of initiation has not been performed. Moreover, as a result of the direct knowledge of the ultimate reality of the Heart, the practitioner gains essential knowledge about all rituals, even if he does not know their specific rules. The practitioner who has been born of the yoginī becomes automatically an expert in the rituals of all schools, not necessarily because he has come to know the ritual regulations of each of the schools in detail, but rather because he comes to know the so-called Method of the Ultimate (anuttara-vidhi). Says Abhinavagupta, “with respect to the Ultimate, which is only consciousness, all other things are extraneous.”
These are curious statements that seem to indicate a movement in the direction of the transcendence of the need for elaborate ritual. In this particular context, at least, the need for exacting and the complex ritual of the Hindu Tantra seems to be obviated. Nevertheless, in the PTlv itself an entire section of the commentary is devoted to a description of ritual procedures (vidhi), including sacrifice (yaga, yajana), adoration (puja), and oblation (homa). In his comment on this passage, Abhinavagupta concentrates almost exclusively on the notion of appropriation (svīkarana). For him, the significance of the ritual is that it involves a process of reducing the external constituents of the ritual to a state of identity with the ultimate reality of the Heart.
But one may ask: how should he sacrifice properly? With the highest devotion, with reverence and with great faith, all of which grant him absorption. This great devotion consists in effecting the subordination of the finite levels of the body, the vital breath and the subtle body. This subordination consists in accomplishing a state of humble devotion, whose nature is an immersion into the essence of that which results in the removal of those finite levels and the establishment of the superiority of the supreme consciousness, whose nature is the divinity which has been described and is to be sacrificed to.
This passage resonates with the alchemical metaphor explored above. Tantric ritual is here revealed as a mechanism for stimulating the production of the flowing form of consciousness that overtakes the finite levels and transforms them into what they already in essence are — the supreme consciousness. In order to accomplish this esoteric purpose of ritual, the Tantric hero (vīra) must have received already the initiatory śaktipata that decontracts his consciousness. Abhinavagupta affirms that only when the contraction of the finite self (anu) has ceased is the vīra fully qualified to perform, in its truest sense, the ritual. Thus, in a general sense, these rituals serve the vīra as a stage extending his inner vision of the unity of all things within Bhairava-who-is-consciousness. It is precisely by appropriating all things to the Heart that the vision of inner unity is extended outward. In these rituals, the vīra finds an arena for solidifying the unitive vision acquired during meditative absorption and for extending and expanding this inner vision of unity to include all of the external constituents of the ritual. Ritual serves as a context within which the vīra will eventually attain the advanced form of meditative realization known as the extrovertive samadhi (unmīlana samadhi).
As a result, in the Tantric sadhana described by Abhinavagupta, the relationship of meditation and ritual seems to be one of symbiotic interdependence. The successful practice of one deepens and enhances the performance of the other. Synergistically feeding one upon the other, the two wings of external and internal Tantric practice advance the vīra along the path of sadhana. In so doing, ritual and meditation converge, to merge one with the other, until the boundary between the two categories fades and the distinction between outer practices and inner attainments blurs.
In the Tantraloka, Abhinavagupta describes a meditation using terms and images drawn from a fire ritual. The two fire-sticks are rubbed together in order to inflame the sacred fire-pit of Bhairava. The meditation essentially consists in visualizing the entire universe reduced to the wheel of pure consciousness, and then rehearsing the process by which the entire universe once again emerges.The
siddha becomes one with Bhairava when he actually experiences the continuous emanation and reabsorbtion of the universe from his own consciousness. Abhinavagupta says:
Now as for the Supreme, as it is called here, there is a meditation on it. The light, the freedom, whose essential nature is consciousness contains within it all principles, realities, things. This light abides in the Heart. It has been described in this way in the Triśiro-mata:
The knower of truth sees that reality within the Heart is like a flower within which are all external and internal things, a flower shaped like a plantain bloom. He should meditate with undistracted mind on the union there in the Heart of the sun, moon, and fire. From this meditation, as from the agitation caused by two firesticks, one comes to experience the oblation fire of the great Bhairava which expands and flames violently in the great firepit known as the Heart. Having arrived at the effulgence of Bhairava, which is the possessor of the powers and full of the powers, one should contemplate its identity with the abode of the knowing subject, the means of knowledge, and the known object.51
To achieve the condition of Bhairava, the siddha employs ritualized meditations and meditative rituals that serve as arenas for manifesting the state of identification with Bhairava. These practices become the context within which the siddha exercises and tests the authenticity of the attainment of the powers of manifestation, maintenance, and reabsorbtion of the universe.
Thus, Abhinavagupta describes the practice of a subtle two-phased absorption that consists of a repeated alternation between a swallowing contraction of the manifested universe into the silent witnessing consciousness and the releasing expansion of the universe once again from this void of consciousness. Describing the essential structure of the Tantric sādhana and the posture of the one who abides in Bhairava, the bhairavāmudra, Abhinavagupta says [Tantraloka 5.27-53]:
In this way, the whole multitude of paths is effortlessly dissolved in the great wheel of Bhairava which is contained in consciousness. Then — even when all this has come to an end and all that is left are latent impressions—one should meditate on the great wheel which revolves and is the overflowing of the true Self. Because of the dissolution of all that could be burned, and because of the destruction of even the remaining latent impressions, the practitioner should meditate on that wheel as becoming calm, then as pacified, then as tranquil quietude itself. By this method of meditation, the entire universe is dissolved in the wheel, in that consciousness. Consciousness then shines alone, free of objects. Then, because of the essential nature of consciousness, manifestation occurs once again. That consciousness is the great Goddess. Continually causing the universe to become absorbed in his own consciousness, and continually emitting it again, the practitioner would become the perpetual Bhairava.
Thus, it is in the dialectical relationship between meditation and ritual, in the repeated alternation between the inner and outer practices, that the samāveśa sīdhana moves toward its unifying goal.
The Hindu Tantra generates and functions within numerous and powerful oppositions: purity and impurity; popular and elite; high and low; inner and outer; form and formlessness; ritual and meditation; possession and yogic absorption; dharma and adharma; covertly transgressive and overtly conformist; the pursuit of bhukti and mukti; the pursuit of kama and moksa; the states of order and disorder; to name just a few. The condition of embodied divinity, the deified state of the bhairavīmudra seeks precisely to overcome these manifold oppositions.
The one who experiences embodied enlightenment is said to dwell in the universal bliss (jagadananda) as she/he abides in the spiritual posture in which consciousness is both completely introverted and completely extroverted. The posture describes the state one who achieves embodied enlightenment, the jīvan-mukta. It describes the tasting of the nectar of the bliss of Bhairava that is discovered by the jīvanmukta at the innermost depths and in the outermost limits of sensory experience. Indeed, the bhairavīmudra is important because it represents the fullest possible stretch of awareness. In this condition, what the jivan-mukta tastes in the innermost depths of consciousness is identical to that which is found as the essence of all the sensory experiences of the so-called objective world. Using the methods of the Tantra, the practitioner finds a way to entice the divine pulsation of consciousness into revealing itself at all times, in all experiences, and under all circumstances. Abhinavagupta ecstatically sings the praises of this state in the PTv [32.b] :
That in which everything shines and which shines everywhere, O awakened ones, is the one brilliant quivering gleam, the Supreme Heart. That which is the abode of the origin of his own world, expanding and contracting at the same time, he rejoices in his own Heart. He should worship the vibrating Heart which appears as cosmic manifestation; thus the Heart should be worshiped in the heart, in the susumnsa passage where one will encounter the great bliss of the pair of Siva and Sākti.
Like the serpent wound around the linga, the spiraling embrace of consciousness with itself, always first implodes centripetally into the dark star, the great void at the Heart of all things. Here nothing that is not infinity itself can gain a foothold. Here all limitations and identifying characteristics of individuality are bewilderingly and fiercely stripped away. Who dares to enter into this abyss—the abode of the deepest embrace of Bhairava and of the Sakti—must truly be a renunciate, must have courageously abandoned all things to a sacrificial yielding into the all-consuming fire of Bhairava.
Yet the Heart is also the illuminating, perpetual supernova always joyfully exploding outward. At the highest level, it does so through the all-encompassing and illuminating vibration of the supreme mantra of consciousness, the great AUM, which is also the great mantra AHAM. In this primordial cry, Bhairava-Siva perpetually announces the realization of recognition “I am Śiva” or a “It is Siva that is the great I AM, the great ‘I’ consciousness of reality” (Sivo’ham). This great mantra then fractures itself in the three successive levels of speech, reducing and congealing the hyperfluidity of the vibrating light as it approaches ever closer to human knowabilty. The interplay of the titanic forces that perpetually dwell at the Heart of things is the true domain of this early Hindu Tantra. The perennial intent of the Tantric practitioner is the fascinated emulation of this great play of Bhairava and the Goddess.
The PT invites the practitioner to discover the continuous occurrence of this play at the intimate core of life. It prescribes the methods by which the sadhaka comes to embody the paradoxical totality of these unimpeded forces within a transformed human life. The text is thought to arise as part of the play, the great dialogue, the blissful intercourse of this divine pair. Bhairava, the horrific, skull-bearing god, sweetly instructs the Great Mother of the Universe in the many and utterly secret (atirahasya) methods of the Hindu Tantra. These methods allow the practitioner to validate experientially the otherwise theoretical teaching of the omnipresence of Bhairava.
It is by these developments that this early Hindu Tantra rejects the dry vistas of traditional philosophical debate that seek only the representation of the Ultimate through conceptual truths. It rejects also the renunciation of traditional Indian monasticism, which protectively seeks to isolate the monk from the stain of worldliness. Transcending the dualities of conventional thought and morality, the Tantra demonstrates an outward gesture of embracing delight in all of reality. The Tantric hero pushes outward into spiritual exploration, into savoring the experience of so many varieties of the blissful ekarasa, the unitary taste of consciousness. In this way, the Tantric hero delights in all, even the suffering of the ordinary world. In this way she/he becomes the great dancer, the one who in all experiences and at all times relishes the nectar, the taste of the sivanandarasa. Says Abhinavagupta, describing the experience of Bhairava [Tantraloka 5.50-51]:
nahyatra saṃsthitiḥ kāpi vibhaktā jaḍarūpiṇaḥ / (50.1)
yatra ko 'pi vyavacchedo nāsti yadviśvataḥ sphurat // (50.2)
yadanāhatasaṃvitti paramāmṛtabṛṃhitam / (51.1)
yatrāsti bhāvanādīnāṃ na mukhyā kāpi saṃgatiḥ // (51.2)
That in which there is no division or limitation, for it flashes forth all round; in which the consciousness is intact—in which consciousness alone expresses itself, whether as knower, means of knowledge, or as known; that which increases and expands by the nectar of divine joy, of absolute sovereignty in which there is no need for imagination or meditation. Sambhu told me that is the universal bliss, jagadananda.
No comments:
Post a Comment