17

Sensorality and Consciousness

It has often been said that the historical masters of Kashmiri Shaivism were closer to the Sufis than to the Buddhists. It is true that in the Kashmiri texts there are little hints of humor aimed at the Buddhists, but there was also a fascination for certain Buddhists schools to which the Kashmiris felt very close. The Yogacara school, founded by Asanga and Vasubandhu, two brothers who lived in the fourth century, profoundly influenced the tantrikas. Ch’an, influenced by this same school and by the Lankavatara Sutra, most likely written toward the fifth century, is also very close.

Abhinavagupta, the tenth-century Tantric philosopher, a grammarian, poet, musician, and man of encyclopedic knowledge, pays homage in his works to twenty of his masters. He did not limit himself to Shivaism, but equally followed the Jain masters or Buddhists of the Yogacara school. The Tantric tradition, well rooted in Kashmir, of searching for knowledge wherever it appears is fairly exceptional. In traditional India people would more likely be inclined to follow just one school and one master. Perhaps because of its geographical location, Kashmir, a place of communication and passage, was as open to Islam as to China, Tibet, and India. The merchants of the silk trade route liked to go to Kashmir to rest or holiday; the original Tibetan masters went there to seek the teachings and to be near the Siddhas (perfected or realized beings) and the Tantric yoginis. Chinese monks and pilgrims made Kashmir one of their prime access routes to India, and in all the written travel accounts, this region has always been likened to a sort of paradise. In this atmosphere of intense communication, Shivaism profoundly influenced Buddhism and in return drank from the Yogacara source, especially in the conception of the eight consciousnesses.

In order to understand truly the place of the senses, desire, and passion in Tantrism, it is indispensable to grasp how Asanga saw consciousness. His vision, of unequaled depth and refinement, permits us to grasp in all its complex subtlety the senses’ spherical unfolding out of consciousness and the return of this flow into the spatial Self, as he describes it. Upon this concept of consciousness hinges the whole process of knowing.

Yogacara and tantrika recognize eight consciousnesses:

THE FIVE SENSORY CONSCIOUSNESSES

1. Visual consciousness

2. Olfactory consciousness

3. Feeling or tactile consciousness

4. Gustative consciousness

5. Auditory consciousness

THE TWO MENTAL CONSCIOUSNESSES

6. Consciousness tied to the ego, and therefore to duality (manas)

7. Nondual consciousness, which directly centralizes the sensations (manovijñâna)

INNERMOST CONSCIOUSNESS OR UNCONSCIOUS (DIVIDED INTO TWO)

8a. Unconscious polluted by its ties to the ego (âlayavijñâna)

8b. Immaculate consciousness, core of being (amalavijñâna)

This division has the advantage of making all mental and sensory activity absolutely clear. It shows how yoginis and yogis—Buddhists, tantrikas, or Tantric Buddhists—perceive reality and how the whole of reality always comes back toward immaculate consciousness in an uninterrupted cycle. This division brings to light the manner in which consciousness becomes troubled, how it accumulates slag in the unconscious, and the way in which consciousness can liberate itself from these absorbed marks of the past that permeate it. This division shows how the I and the ego are formed and how they oppose the absolute clarity of the I Am freed from all ties to the narrow views of the I. How, finally, the game of perception either feeds the unconscious, adding to our confusion or trouble and annihilating our chances of perceiving reality in its essence, or on the other hand shrouds each sensation in the enjoyment of original spontaneous freedom.

For Asanga, the sixth, mental consciousness (manas) is the site of all our troubles and anxieties. It is through its identification with the I that it creates the ego, sustains it, and reinforces it with each sensation. This is where duality is born, where the world splits into subject and object. This is where observer and observed exist; where differentiating discourse, which will incessantly come along and obscure our understanding of reality, is raised. Linked to memory, this consciousness also allows us to function remarkably, but when absolute reality takes it by seige, it is the cause of all our ego-related errors of interpretation of reality. This is why “objective” consciousness, so prized by Western cultures, is for the Kashmiris and the Buddhists much less profound than what they call “pure subjectivity,” which is in fact related to the seventh, mental consciousness. In the yogini and the yogi it is certainly present, but its easeful quality prevents any clashes with the ego’s displays. It functions admirably without leading the universe back toward the I. It allows the liberated person to live in action.

The seventh, mental consciousness (manovijñâna) could be compared with a computer that would centralize all perceptions and assure communication without elevating the ego, which would maintain the illusion of being a separate entity from the world. In the universe of the seventh consciousness the senses communicate to us their continual harvest with absolute freshness, unmarred by any of the absorbed influences or refuse of the past. There is no more duality, no more distance between the world and the yogi or yogini, who as a result marvels at all that surfaces in this consciousness. It is this consciousness that is operating in each instant of total presence to the reality of a sensation, a thought, or an emotion. The play of this centralizing and neutral consciousness does not add anything to a perception; it does not compare it with others, or name, label, devalue, or exaggerate anything that presents itself to us. You can have this experience of naked, unrepeatable sensation by practicing for a few weeks the yoga of presence presented in chapter 16, and thereby come into contact with your own unique reality.