5

image

We Are What We Seek

Kashmiri thought is articulated in a series of simple affirmations:

From this, it flows naturally that there is no stain, no purification, no divinity outside the Self; no practice, no ritual, and nothing separate from ourselves to attain. Consciousness is totality; totality is consciousness. The whole quest becomes oriented toward the interior in order to allow the emergence of this unfragmented, perfect, and unalterable consciousness, which is recognized in each one of us. Suddenly there is no longer intercessor, distance, or separation. It thus becomes a matter of freeing consciousness from the opacities that lead us to believe we are separate, solitary, unworthy entities.

Even if we are not obsessed by the divine—which ultimately is but an image of our absolute Self—we find through this quest that the unity we long for is already present within us. What follows is a total easing of the body and mind, a harmony, a profound joy that every human being dreams of experiencing, because everyone knows that happiness is not dependent upon the accumulation of powers or possessions. “You are what you seek,” the Tantric masters say.

The quest for this simple bliss, free from dogmas and religious beliefs, from submission to a priesthood, and from the hope of being sanctified by others, is the object of each person’s search. This is a secular path par excellence. We simply want independence, harmony, a continual and deep enjoyment of the world that no fear or anxiety can tarnish.

The objective is simple. It can be shared by all people, be they materialist or be they attracted to it by spirituality, because this longing for happiness is everyone’s. Attaining it is difficult because it will be not submitted to the least romanticism. This longing for happiness is founded on the acceptance of our solitude, thanks to which we will realize that we are connected to everything.

Belonging to groups often generates a kind of narcosis that gives us the illusion of sharing something missing from all the members of the group as individuals: completeness. Our main fear—fear of dissolution, of being nothing—keeps us from realizing that when we think we are one particular thing, and therefore isolated, we indeed become only that thing and lose the rest. In accepting that we are nothing, we gain the world. This logical progression is the key to the Tantric vision and to the creative role of desires and passions, which through our sensorality are seen as the fastest steedlike messengers for leading us to the Self. We must, however, agree on the way in which the tantrikas view desires and passions, and how they live them in an absolute manner.

The first question that bears asking is this: Is it possible to lead our whole lives with passion, and thus avoid feeling the earthquakes of passion’s emergence into a life that has previously negated it? Many reasonable people would answer that passion inevitably leads to suffering. Indeed, the word passion comes from the Latin passio, which means “suffering.”

This is a warped view that we are subjected to from a very early age. Adding to it is the fact that in general, those who attempt the experience of continual passion get burned, suffer, and fade away. We lack therefore any convincing examples and decide that it is more prudent to enter the passionate spheres only in those brief, inevitable moments when they overwhelm us, at which point we will draw from these life reservoirs in a despairing, hopeless way.

These violently abrupt changes exhaust us. The Tantric vision, on the other hand, is made of continuity in experience.

We have all experienced the profound inner tremoring of existence for a few seconds or a few hours. If we examine our past, we will remember having been, during our childhood or adolescence, completely connected to the world. Remembering this ecstatic communion with a person or an object will prepare us to go farther in accepting the passion of existence.

The more I immerse myself in Tantrism, the more I feel it is possible to find, in our culture as well, traces of this freedom, of this return to the source of existence, to simplicity, to the fundamental experience of the I Am that all people can share. There is no doubt for me that this manner of gliding toward freedom and original ecstasy through the senses, desire, and passion can find echoes of itself in all the traditions when they are deeply understood.

If I have chosen to plunge into the Kashmiri tradition, it is simply because this seemed to me the most direct path. To a degree I have also followed it because it was incarnated by a woman, the yogini Lalita Devi. I saw in this tradition a tribute to our most anciently held memory, the divinity of woman, and likewise an homage to today’s woman, who carries this divinity within her and is able to transmit the deep feeling of this divinity to the sensitive and wonder-filled men whom she welcomes into her body.

Thus, in presenting the principles of the Kashmiri path in relation to the senses, desires, and passions, my hope is that I might revive this memory in those belonging to other traditions so that they may meet in their own sources this remarkable life force and integrate it into their daily lives with total presence to reality.