13

The Supreme Reality

The worlds are not split in two. The absolute is at the very heart of reality. Everything is vibrating, everything is real. We do not believe that phenomena are illusory, and we come very close to Ch’an Buddhism in this vision of the reality of the world as consciousness void of a separate reality. Everything is interconnected; everything is at the same time image and reflection.

That we talk about the Self brings us close to certain Buddhist schools like the Yogacara of Asanga, who speaks of the Great Self. The tantrikas furthermore say that one of the names of Shiva is the Great Void or the Great Spatiality, which contains the whole world, all forms, all thoughts, and all emotions like the Void of certain historic masters of Buddhism. Notes the Sixth Patriarch of Ch’an:

Maha means “great.” The capacity of the mind is vast and great like empty space, and has no boundaries. . . .

Good Knowing Advisors, do not listen to my explanation of emptiness and then become attached to emptiness. If you sit still with an empty mind you will become attached to undifferentiated emptiness. . . .

Good Knowing Advisors, the emptiness of the universe is able to contain the forms and shapes of the ten thousand things: the sun, the moon, and stars; the mountains, rivers, and the great earth; the fountains, springs, streams, torrents, grasses, trees, thickets and forests; good and bad people, good and bad dharmas, the heavens and the hells, all the great seas, Sumeru^*3 and all mountains—all are contained within emptiness.¹⁹

What is it that comes to block us in this spherical unfolding of the senses, in the fire of desire, and causes our experience of reality to be unceasingly torn between pleasure and suffering? What keeps us from having a taste of continual presence of desire?

Here again the Kashmiri masters return to the source, consciousness. We are capable of living the reality of the world directly, without the mental faculties incessantly deferring this enjoyment by coming in to comment on it, judge it, ensconce it in differentiation.

The naked awareness that allows sensations, emotions, and thoughts not to become fixed or frozen within us is what we can contact during contemplation or meditation. Everything starts by the examination of what is—that is, our trouble, our difficulty, in perceiving all things in the moment. Presence to agitation is the opening toward peacefulness. We never try to change, to adopt a new way of behaving; instead, we try only to allow our awareness to descend toward what is really happening within us. We will notice that this presence is sufficient for putting an end to whatever is blocking the fluidity of life.

Thus, in this peace and silence we see clearly our troubled and confused reality. We grasp the fact that this trouble is linked to the dynamic of our agitated mind, which incessantly judges, classifies, accepts, rejects, flees, or attempts to grab hold of events. A calm awareness will cause us to come into contact with a different reality: that the body has an unlimited capacity for being in tune with the world with extraordinary precision, grace, and spontaneity—if we stop blocking it by our thought, which always defers to doubt, to others’ views, to guilt, to the fundamental fear of being nothing.

In the Hevajra Tantra, we read:

In the absence of the body where is there bliss, for without the body it is not possible to speak about bliss. The world is pervaded by bliss, the world and bliss being mutually dependent.

Just as smell in the flower does not exist in the absence of the flower, similarly bliss is not experienced in the absence of form and other qualities.

I am existence as well as not existence. I am the Enlightened One for I am enlightened regarding the true nature of things. But those fools who are affected by dullness do not know me.²⁰

When we lose the whole idea of the impurity of the body, then this bliss finds its home in us. Shiva proclaims:

Oh Devi, some people claim, “The body is made up of impurities such as germs, worms, faeces, urine, phlegm, blood, flesh, skin, and so on. How can we offer such a body to the Guru?” With thoughts like these, they don’t make an offering.

This is not right. The body in which the Guru and the Self dwell can only be considered pure. There should never be any feeling of impurity about offering the body.

Seventy-two thousand channels
threading through five sheaths,
here the Self ever makes its home.
Muktananda, the wise ones see it
as the temple of the Lord.²¹