Sistematización del proceso de requerimiento de piezas

Shakti: Is this something new? You've never said anything like this in previ­

ous tantras.

Shiva: No, it's not really new. It was just implicit before. There was no need to say it. . .. Sort of like the discussion of tapas. That is usually taken for granted, too. All our Indic devotees to the tantric path know that tapas is an essential part of the practice. It's woven into their upbring­

ing, their education and their lives . . .

Shakti: As i s the essential role of pleasure.

Shiva: Right.

Shakti: I do find it annoying that you always say "right" and never " left."

Shiva: I mean, really. What kind of objection is that. . . I know: right is the masculine side and left is the feminine, but it's the language.

Shakti: I know that. But don't try to trivialize what I'm saying. And it's not a tangential objection. It's actually related to what you were just talk­

ing about.

Shiva: What do you mean?

Shakti: Well, you were apparently setting out to take issue with some of the cul­

tural biases that have entered the discussion ofT antra from the West.

Shiva: Ri .. .. uh . . . correct. . .

Shakti: And those biases extend into the very language that we are using. Not just English, either. The whole Indo-European branch of the family:

Latin into Italian, for example. The left side is sinestra, whence the English word, sinister - hardly conveying respect and honor to Her ­ She who resides on the "left." I hate to stoop to one of your puns, but that's all she gets: what's left.

Shiva: OK. I do see what you are saying now. I want to say that it seems like a small matter, but I know you'll take issue with that . . ..

Shakti: (her voice rising) I will indeed. I'm trying to broaden the discussion you began. (Catching herself, and dropping to a lighter tone) And if you call me a "broad," I swear I will call down the wrath ofKali on you!

90 PART ^{I .} A K A L I TA :\' T R A - P R I N C I P L E 7

Shiva: (rolls his eyes at the corny pun) That's beneath even me.

Shakti: But, seriously, let's not just pay lip service to ferreting out the biases in the language and culture. Let's be thorough about it: for there are a lot. The misogyny runs through fore to aft and starboard to f'castle - or whatever it is that they say.

Shiva: You are correct. And the subtle condemnation of pleasure is only one of the misogynistic tendencies that permeate the entire world-view of that Euro American/Anglo Indian culture. While it may not overtly connect pleasure to the feminine, it must sense the connection - sure­

ly the physiology of the human body strongly suggests it: The clitoris has more (four times as many) nerve endings to register pleasure than the penis, despite its size . . .

Shakti: She - I - is/am designed to experience pleasure. Gaia, the earth, is a paradise - a pleasure generator! Pleasure is the overflow she pours over the universe to nourish its life. Without pleasure, everything dries up, shrivels.

("Life is but voluptuousness." Kamalakar Mishra)

Shiva: And at the very heart of the tantric world view is pleasure, play, and dance. That is why I am often depicted dancing.

Shakti: I love those dancing statues of you!

Shiva: (smiles) They are nice, aren't they?

But it seems the modern - or is it the modern western? - mind finds it difficult to imagine a spiritual path that is based on play.

Somehow to qualify as spiritual it must be grim, solemn, judgmental, and a bit rigid. Dancing and sexuality are "inappropriate."

Shakti: I can't really understand the attraction that sort of approach holds for humans.

Shiva: Well, it certainly came in on the coattails of the British - and to some extent the Moguls before them. The best the English language could do with the Latin root word ludic, which means "having to do with play," is their word "ludicrous" with its connotation of absurd, ridicu­

lous-certainly not worthy of being the distinguishing qualifier of a path to spiritual attainment.

* * *

Prem Saran, author and anthropologist, who grew up in India, relates his dif ficulty as a youth in grasping the anhedonic attitude of western spirituality:

"! went to a . . . school .. . run by Catholic priests, of whom a fiw were European; I studied there until I matriculated at 16. It was a good school, and the good Fathers made no conscious attempt to indoctrinate their non-Christian wards . . .

Still, I could not help imbibing some core elements of the judaeo-Christian weltanschaung, especially in its Western form . . . .

I learnt about the shame of nudity, linked as it was with the irrevocable Fall of humanity; the iniquity of man's Original Sin; the essential and fotal moral weak­

ness of Eve; the Serpent and the dangers of unsupervised and thus illicit knowledge, sensual and other; the awful goodness of God and the incorrigible wickedness of Satan; the total 'otherness' of deity and of the sacred; the need to con foss one's trans­

gressions and succumbed temptations to authority figures, as per the Lord's Prayer.

I also learned about jesus and his Immaculate conception by an all-good Virgin;

how He suffired the most painful torture to save us for our sins; how He resurrected in the flesh, and has promised us the same on the Day of Last judgment, provided we are good; the need to believe and repent for our sins; the need to open ourselves to God's grace, or foce the torments of the damned in Hell .. . .

I also did learn somewhat later in life about the more attractive portions of this fire-and brimstone religious ideology: Psalm 23, the Sermon on the Mount, the Songs of Solomon, Gregorian chants, and so on. But the overall impression is of a world view that, at least in its unalloyed Western incarnations, inculcates extremely radical social-psychological splits between: man and woman, man and deity, man and animal; man and nature; body and mind; sensual and spiritual experience; good and evil; sacred and profone; conscious and unconscious; Western and non-Western man; and so on . . . ^"

Prem Saran P 6

* * *

Shakti: How did Tamra survive that?

Shiva: One might say that it only survived in its ludic fullness where the Moguls and the British invasions penetrated the least: Kerala in the far south, Bengal and Assam to the extreme East, and Nepal to the north . .

Like the whole left/right language thing, the deprecation of the ludic is the banishment of spanda. Spanda is play - it is the play of the life force. Restrain it and there is no real play. All this is related to the attempt to deny the existence of the yang feminine.

Shakti: Why is she so feared and hated?

92 PART I . A K A L I TA N T R A - P R I N C I P L E 7

Shiva: As we have seen before, it is the need to control. . .. to protect the inter­

ests of the ego and to avoid the unpredictable. Therefore: no sponta­

neity, no play, no pleasure. Only then can you eliminate spanda and her terrifying alter ego, Kali. Of course, the irony'is that the longer you suppress spanda, the more likely you are to rouse Kalil She will not be denied.

Shakti: So pleasure is not just one of the tantric principles, it runs through others.

Shiva: Through all of them. I would think that you would know that.

Shakti: I just wanted to hear you say it.

Shiva: OK. I will: it runs through "everything is an experiment," spanda, and even tapas.

Shakti: How tapas? That's prototypically masculine - testicular, in fact!

Shiva: True. But tapas properly done has an experimental quality to it: I

am going to contain this habit, and see what happens." I really don't know exactly what will happen, because I merely refuse to allow the energy to flow into the habit and wait for spanda to take over. When it does, some creative, delightful surprise arises. In fact, I'm playing ­ playing for the pleasure of seeing what emerges!

Shakti: It's our working together at its best.

Shiva: Delightful.

Shakti: And the other principles?

Shiva: Well, the inner marriage is all about the bliss of union. The pleasure there is almost indescribable.

In fact, the ascent of kundalini, with the successive activation of the chakras, at each step results in a more subtle and exquisite pleasure.

Shakti: It begins to sound suspiciously abstract.

Shiva: How so?

Shakti: I just want to point out that it cannot be disembodied - even though it is going to higher and subtler chakras. Remember your whirl and swirl visual of the movement up and then back down the chakras?

Even though the focus of the activation may be another chakra up, there's the spin off reconfiguration of the ones below it, and this is resonating and vibrating in your whole being, including the lowest chakras, that is, i{the rising ofKundalini - me - is the real thing, and not just a useless head trip or a stoner's mind fuck.

Shiva: Strong language.

Shakti: Important point.

Shiva: Agreed. The lower chakras become re configured, experience fuller pleasure, and are not "transcended."

Shakti: That's it, that's what I was trying to say.

Shiva: So, ultimately, throughout the exploration of these tantric principles, the quest for deeper and subtler pleasure causes you to go to more refined and more spiritual heights to find that pleasure. The search for more exquisite pleasure leads you to spirit.

Shakti: I really hate to object again. I know that we are about to end this dialogue, and that it would be really nice if it could end on a cordial note. But there is something here that I can't quite overlook. I mean, I agree with what you are saying as far as the basic content. But there is something about the way you are putting this that makes it sound a lot like a cave in to the western-style moralism police. Like maybe you are part of the T antra current that wanted to be legitimate, and figured that ifi can get the teaching across by throwing a few crumbs to moralism, then why not?

Shiva: Can you be a little more specific?

Shakti: Well, I don't know. I'm not sure that I can. But I can feel the snag in it. It's like pleasure doesn't have to be justified. It doesn't need a

"higher spiritual purpose" to be OK. It is its own justification. It is at the foundation of the flow of life. We have to able to experience -without apologies - the flow of life as pleasure. Nothing short of that is going to satisfy me.

Shiva: Well, OK, then. Actually, I'm glad you said that. I think it's a perfect note to end on.

[Shakti glows, Shiva dances, and - you know the rest. And if you don't (and want to), do the masculine/feminine meditation (page 97) until you do!]

94 PART I . A K A L I TA :-I T R A ^- E P I L O G U E

T H E E P I L O G U E

Shakti: The what? I thought we were through.

Shiva: This is the evaluation.

Shakti: I never heard of an evaluation in a tantra.

Shiva: It's new.

Shakti: New? But this is a thousand year-old tradition.

Shiva: I know, but it's a necessary update.

Shakti: Why?

Shiva: Because things are changing. I mean, I used to just talk and you pretty much listened.

Shakti: You mean this time it was not just a dialogue in name only.

Shiva: Well. . .. let's just say that in the past there was a fuller separation of the masculine and feminine functions.

Shakti: All right. What do we do?

Shiva: Critique. Do you have any comments to offer?

Shakti: Well .. .. not really. I made them when I needed to. I think it's up to you.

Shiva: I . . .uh . . . well, I really felt. . . .I . . ..

Shakti: What are you trying to say?

Shiva: Do you think that maybe you overstepped your role at times?

Shakti: How do you mean?

Shiva Arrogated some of the masculine principle's functions.

Shakti: (annoyed) Arrogated your arrogance?

Shiva: No . . . but. . .

Shakti: I thought that we had laid this to rest earlier: I am colored by cultural trends - women consciously accessing their masculine capacities . . ..

and then projecting them onto me as the archetype, so that I begin to morph . . ..

Shiva: But I thought that we also agreed that our job is to clean up the dis­

tortions of the pure masculine and pure feminine principles, so that there would be a clearer inner representation of them for the humans to tune in to and call on as they moved toward their inner marriage.

Shakti: True .. ..

Shiva: So don't you have to drop some of that. . . .

Shakti: Drop the vigilance about misogyny and subtle deprecations of Her?

Shiva: Well. . . . yes.

Shakti: My answer is yes, I do have to drop them and will have the luxury of doing so when you take them over.

Shiva: Oh . . ..

Shakti: It is your role isn't it? You know .. . testicular, containment, protection of the space . . .

Shiva: Uh . . . yes.

Shakti: (bows sweetly) Then I am at your service, my master, and bear this burden for you faithfully until you lift it from my shoulders.

Shiva: (looks thoughtful, but remains silent)

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