10

The Source of Consciousness

All these teachings begin with this very simple observation: There is only consciousness. The various yogas are not means to reach this consciousness. Abhinavagupta, the tenth-century Tantric philosopher and one of India’s greatest thinkers, says in his monumental work Tantraloka (“light on the Tantras”): “All that is proscribed, all that is upheld, the yogas based on such limbs as the control of breath or other things, all that is false.”¹²

In thus freeing themselves from the different types of yoga, the Tantric masters wanted to point toward this solely existing consciousness and, for them, attention to reality is the simplest and most direct way for consciousness to manifest itself continuously. Only reason is retained because it allows “a larger, all-encompassing, consciousness of great acuteness which goes on continually interiorising itself more and more,” says Abhinavagupta in the same text.¹³

As can be seen, this constant recourse to the source of existence exonerates the tantrika from all adherence to any moral or ethical precepts. The tantrika rejects all interdictions, all exterior and progressive quests that involve the intervention of ritualistic forms or beliefs or dogmas and even metaphysics, which has no effect on the practical level. This is also one of the fundamental teachings of the Buddha, who never responded to these types of questions.

There is neither transcendence nor purification. The masters define purity as “all that is lived with consciousness,” and impurity as “all that is lived with automatism and nonpresence.” Consciousness replaces everything, and without it there is no spirituality.

In order to arrive at this profound consciousness, it is indispensable that our instrument, the body, be perfectly in tune, and this is where the whole issue of our sensorality comes in. What would be the worth of a body whose marvelous functionings were not operating? How would consciousness spherically unfold itself within a frozen form not tending toward natural fluidity?

The first step is therefore to restore these functions, to regain our taste for life, our capacity to perceive the world with the continual wonder of a child. It will be easily understood that this can happen only within a larger, all-encompassing acceptance of what we really are. Such a task becomes impossible if we imagine ourselves otherwise, if we idealize ourselves, if we erase a part of our personality whenever we discover within ourselves territories unworthy of the path.

This self-acceptance is a very delicate process because it implies deep contact with our shadow side, all our opacity, and all the secret sources buried in the deepest part of us. Entering wholly onto this path is the only way to avoid later crashing into what we would have chopped off of ourselves—which would have grown considerably in the darkness. Everything that we abandon in the false dream of conforming to a system is precisely what will subsequently come along and block our path.

This approach restores free will, since submission to a religious authority or to one of its messengers thus no longer exists. There is no one who could bring us revelation or serve as intermediator between the divine realms and our thirst for plenitude; if there were, these would not be present within us. Everything tremors interiorly, and we possess the whole of the means to gain access to this world. We are the divine, we are the temple, we are the worshiper. Total and immaculate consciousness has always been within us; nothing and no one can give it to us or alter its scintillating quality.

Thus it is no longer a question of cutting off the senses, desires, and passions; on the contrary, it is a question of mounting these high-spirited, steedlike messengers in full consciousness so that they may carry us rapidly to a continuous presence to the world. This all-encompassing, larger conception of the profound dignity of the human being is often misunderstood. Certain people imagine that it refers to permissiveness, and in allowing themselves to follow their egoist inclinations they bind themselves increasingly in suffering and absence. This is the battle of impulsiveness against spontaneity. Impulsiveness is brutal and destructive, because it is unconscious of the other and of the world. Spontaneity is full of grace, for it is granted immediately through consciousness to the reality of the environment.

Our desires are powerless if they do not dip into the vibrating Reality. It is true that one can realise nothing without desire; thus must one plunge desire into the efficiency of Spanda [divine, inner tremoring vibration]. If one puts all his energy into a single desire, if one goes all the way with his impulse-force, then one will join again the divine energy of desire.¹⁴

“The body immediately confers perfection, that is, certainty with regard to the true nature of things . . . thanks to the contact with the power of the Self,” says Abhinavagupta.¹⁵

But how to desire without suffering? How to surrender to passion without experiencing destruction? Why do almost all the spiritual paths prohibit sensorality, desire, and passion? Why cut off a part of human potential in order to find plenitude? What kind of plenitude would it be if it did not include the totality of the human?

Here again, the Tantric masters have fully and completely rejected all prejudices. They have considered with both awareness and full consciousness all the jolts that pass through a human being and, rather than deny these lively and intense forces, they have forgotten what humans claim to know about their passions and instead examined them directly, with naked attention.

In this way, over the course of the thousands of years during which the transmission of Tantrism has taken place, they have come to some surprising and totally innovative conclusions on sensorality, desires, and passions.