The Tantric Revolution

The Meaning of Tantra

As we’ve suggested already, within the Postclassical Period, a revolution in thought began some time around
the 6th century A.D. that fully blossomed in the period between the 9th and 13th century, transforming Indian
yogic thought and practice. Those who gave birth to this new innovation called it Tantra, “the warp (of
reality).” The root of the word, tan, means “to stretch” – as one would stretch threads on a loom in the warp
of the fabric. ‘Tan’ is also the syllable meaning ‘stretch’ in the names of asanas, such as ‘Ut-tan-asana.’
Thus Tantra came to mean “that by which knowledge/understanding is extended, spread out.” The in-
tention in Tantric philosophy is to extend our understanding beyond the usual duality of Subject/Object,
Self/World — a stubborn dualism that had persisted even with the Vedantins.
Indian tantrism emerged in many varieties – Hindu, Buddhist and Jain – and was influenced on the one
hand by cultural interactions with China, Tibet, central Asia, Persia and Europe, and on the other by the
uniquely Indian philosophical foundation that we have been exploring here. Those who follow the way of
Tantra were called tantrikas; within that vast family there were groups of teachers known as Siddhas whose
work and teachings were specifically relevant to hatha yoga.
As we saw, those who were innovators in the practice of hatha yoga belonged to a mainly north Indian group
known as the Nath Siddhas that included as the founders of hatha yoga Gorakhnath and Matsyendranath,
as well as the greatest of them, Jnaneshwar. Other great Siddhas such as Abhinavagupta took and refined the
philosophical system of Tantra to produce its highest expression in the Trika System of Kashmir Shaivism,
which we will be exploring in some detail.
Tantra also simply means “book” or “text” – and so it can be interpreted as a text that broadens understand-
ing to the point where real wisdom arises. An even more suggestive meaning is the one given in Buddhist
texts as “continuity” – where the Tantrikas envision the ‘continuity’ between finite and infinite, between
the path of life in the world and the path of liberation or enlightenment.
In keeping with this idea of ‘continuity,’ one more meaning sometimes given to tantra is ‘the fulfillment of
touch,’ which is equally interesting and subtle. It suggests the spiritual fulfillment that comes from contact
with Divine Consciousness through ‘touch’ — literally the ‘touch’ of grace. Touch or ‘sparsa’ is a commonly
used metaphor for grace; through touch, we are two yet one in the experience of touching and of being
touched. This clearly symbolizes the relationship with the Divine that Tantra is most concerned to describe,
which had not been done satisfactorily until now. The dualism of Classical Yoga did not address the Unity
of the Many with the One Absolute; nor did the pure monism of Vedanta allow for an experience of Unity
with the Absolute that does not obliterate the reality of our Many-ness. For Tantra, liberation is not an
ending, nor a separation; it is fulfillment.

What Makes Tantra Different?

Reverence for Nature
The first distinguishing mark, which amounted to a key revision of the yogic tradition, lay in Tantra’s
attitude toward Nature or Prakrti, which until now had been thought of as the troublesome materiality
and changeability of the world.
With the advent of tantric thought, ‘Nature’ is no longer treated as a problem to be solved, overcome or
explained away. Prakrti became known as Shakti – another more ‘personified’ name for the divine principle
of creative energy or Citi. Since Shakti is the playful and loving wife of Shiva (the name signifying the pure

128 THE HEART OF THE YOGI DOUG KELLER 2007

Self, Purusha), the tantrics by this very renaming turned the dualistic opposition between Purusha and
Prakrti on its head. ‘Shakti’ is to be fully celebrated as the divine creative principle of manifestation, the
playful feminine principle of prosperity, wisdom and plenitude that is to be welcomed into and honored
in the spiritual life. She is not the obstacle to spiritual life, but rather its very fulfillment.
The practical significance of this for us as seekers is the all-important recognition that our own individual
universe – our body and the world we experience as ‘ours’ – is the indispensable instrument or means for
our yoga. It not something to be negated or denied, but rather fully integrated into the spiritual experience.
The role we play in this life is part and parcel of our journey toward enlightenment, which includes the
physical and mental challenges we face at every stage of life.
In this light, yoga is a process of transformation, but not as a matter of becoming perfect by any external
standard or by ‘transforming’ ourselves into something other than what or who we are. Rather, yoga is a
process of coming to recognize and fulfill our ever-present perfection as we are, in the course of transform-
ing our understanding and experience of who we are.
Moreover, perhaps for the first time there is the recognition that we have help. The very force of Nature
— the Shakti — who chose to become individual and assume a state of ignorance for the sake of this play,
is also the power of Grace in the form of the ‘Kundalini.’ By the power of Her freedom She can cut the
knots of ignorance that She created, bringing about this full transformation. Without Her grace, the bonds
of Maya are well-nigh impossible to overcome.

The Primacy of Freedom

The first The second key revision was its emphasis upon the absolute freedom – swātantrya – of Citi as
the most essential attribute of Consciousness. Swatantrā means ‘free, independent, self-reliant.’ While the
prefix swa means ‘one’s own,’ tantra in this case means ‘depending on.’ So in being swatantrā, Citi depends
only on Herself, having the pure freedom to assume any form or not to assume any form at all. Since there
is nothing outside of Her, nothing hinders or limits Her irrepressible freedom.

This distinctive emphasis on defining and even equating Reality with this power of freedom or swātantrya-
shakti in Kashmir Shaivism is also the key to sadhana or spiritual practice. Realization is more than simply
knowledge: it is the fulfillment of one’s innate freedom. Self-realization is to become fully swatantrā,
fully free, and true freedom is the most essential characteristic of the realized being.

The practical significance of this for us in our spiritual practice is a simple yet challenging message; just as
the Divine is free and unhampered in the expression of creative freedom, so we too are free from depen-
dence on outer circumstances in the expression of our innate freedom of consciousness.

This kind of claim can and engender some skepticism right from the outset. Are we speaking only meta-
phorically? Are we meant to take the tantric philosophers quite literally? How can we have anything like
the divine freedom by which the universe was created when we are in this limited state?

It would be all too easy — and fruitless — to revert to well-worn arguments about freedom, destiny and so
on at this point, and lose sight of the very large picture that Tantra paints. As individuals, Kashmir Shaivism
would say, we are subject to what it calls the ‘malas’ or impurities/limitations inherent in being individual.
These include the sense of limitation, imperfection and subjection to karma or the consequences of our
actions. It would be silly to speak of freedom or swātantrya in the context of being an individual. In fact,
it was the original expression of swātantrya that Consciousness chose to assume the condition of not being

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entirely free. The question of freedom is whether the ‘I’ of the liberated being is the same as the sense of ‘I’
experienced by the individual — especially in connection with action.

The being who is swatantrā can only be described as having awakened to his or her own very real freedom,
which is very different from what we think it is. The bound individual is lost in dreaming of the possibility
of freedom — a dream which contains a grain of truth. Shaivism recognizes that grain of truth, and reveals
its full expression.

Kashmir Shaivism
Among the many forms and schools of tantra, Kashmir Shaivism best embodies the culmination of the
philosophical trends and themes that we’ve been following through this book — particularly the move-
ment from commitment to community— and it is coming to be recognized as the créme-de-la-créme of
yogic philosophy.

Kashmir Shaivism gives one of the most highly refined and comprehensive statements of the overall world-
view of Tantra, and thus I take it as a profound expression of tantric thinking. In the end, Kashmir Shaivism
is all about the Swatantryā of the divine creative Shakti, and the swātantrya-shakti of the individual. The
joining of the descent of grace from the Divine with the effort and devotion of the individual (the expres-
sion of his or her own swātantrya-shakti) bring about the realization of true freedom.

The Principle Works of Kashmir Shaivism

Kashmir Shaivism as a philosophical system took form from the works of the Siddhas who are associated with
the region of Kashmir in northern India (though not all of the sages were actually from that region).30

The central text of Kashmir Shaivism, the Shiva Sutras or ‘Aphorisms of Shiva’ were revealed to the sage
Vasugupta in the middle of the 9th century in Kashmir. This work represented the first of a series of works
composed in Kashmir by monistic Kashmiri Shaivites stretching from the 9th to the 13th century. ‘Shaivism’
had an ancient presence in Kashmir, and these sages from Vasugupta forward were inspired by the earlier
Shaiva Tantras and the earlier dualistic philosophy of the Shaivasiddhānta. But Kashmir Shaivism was
something new — brilliantly new.

The greatest among them was Abhinavagupta, who lived from the middle of the 11th century into the first
quarter of the 12th. He systematized the whole of the philosophy, and made great original contributions to
its monistic philosophy, to the Pratyabhijñā philosophy that we will explore more closely, to the exegesis of
the many Tantras that were prevalent in the Kashmir of his day, and to Indian poetics and aesthetics. His
greatest disciple was Ksemarāja, who wrote a number of important works, including commentaries on the
Shiva Sutras and on the Spandakarikā or ‘Stanzas on Vibration.’

The actual founder of the monistic Shaiva philosophy — known as the ‘Pratyabhijñā, which drew its
name from his principle work, the Īśvarapratyabhijñakārikā — was Utpaladeva (along with his teacher,
30 The point here is that, although the name ‘Kashmir Shaivism’ has stuck, the philosophical school is neither strictly
composed of sages from Kashmir, nor is it strictly ‘Shaivism’ in the sense of the more deistic cult that preceded it in the region
of Kashmir. Kashmir Shaivism is a philosophical system quite different and distinct from the religious and deistic cult of Shiva.
Kashmir Shaivism has developed a very strong following in Western academia and is being intensely studied, after having been
introduced to the West through the work of Swami Muktananda and Swami Laksmanjoo in the 1970’s and 80’s. Kashmir
Shaivism is currently being intensively explored in Universities through the work of scholars such as Mark Dyczkowski and Paul
Muller-Ortega, .

130 THE HEART OF THE YOGI DOUG KELLER 2007

Somananda). He was Abhinavagupta’s grand-teacher and was a major source of Abhinavagupta’s inspira-
tion. A ‘digested’ version of his work called the Pratyabhijñāhrdayam was later written by Ksemarāja, who
acknowledges Abhinavagupta as his teacher, and in this work he distills the philosophy into 20 sutras, laying
out the main points of the philosophy. He did this for the sake of those who did not have the training to
delve into Utpaladeva’s massive and imposing work.

In all, there were three types of literature in the Shaiva or ‘Trika’ system. The first is the Āgama Śāstra
or ‘revealed’ literature, of which the Shiva Sutras are the prime example. The second is the Spanda Śāstra,
which lay down the important doctrines of the system. The main work of this kind was the Spanda Kārikās
or ‘Stanzas on Vibration,’ which set forth the doctrine of Spanda as a key idea to understanding Shaivism.
The third is the Pratyabhijñā Śāstra, which interprets the main doctrines of the system according to logical
reasoning, often offering arguments, counter-arguments and discussions. The Pratyabhijñāhrdayam oc-
cupies a central place among this literature, and manages to avoid all polemics while giving very succinct
statements of the main tenets of the Pratyabhijñā system of Kashmir Shaivism.

Consciousness as One
Kashmir philosophy is a form of monism which teaches that there is only one reality. That reality is one
universal divine Consciousness. It is also an idealism in the sense that it teaches that things exist as objects
in the external world because they appear within the field of awareness of that divine Consciousness. They
are because they are perceived to be by this one divine Consciousness; they are the appearing-forth of Con-
sciousness Itself. (esse est percipii — to be is to be perceived) This, as we’ve seen, is a view shared by other
schools of yogic philosophy, notably Advaita Vedānta.

Yet this monistic idealism is not what is truly distinctive of Kashmir Shaivism, for it shares this conception
with Advaita (nondualistic) Vedanta. Its uniqueness lies in its clearly expressed and deeply explored teaching
the essence of yoga is contained within the simple experience of ‘I.’

Absolute Reality is pure ‘I’ consciousness , which we can and do directly experience simply by being aware
that ‘I am.’ Kashmir Shaivism uniquely describes the nature of this ‘I’ awareness in a way that goes beyond
anything described in previous philosophies.

‘I Am That I Am’
Kashmir Shaivism does, like the previous philosophies, distinguish between the pure ‘I’ of Spirit and the
ego, where the ego is based on identification with the body and limited personal attributes that in fact
change over time. And in Shaivism, just as in the other philosophies, the ego, with its pride and selfishness
is indeed the root of all ills.

But Kashmir Shaivism goes beyond the previous philosophies in terms of how deeply it goes into the nature
of the pure ‘I,’ finding qualities inherent in its nature that go far beyond the qualities of Purusha described in
Classical philosophy, or even the Ātma/Brahma of Vedanta. Mark Dyczkowski in his book The Aphorisms
of Śiva gives a nice description of the spiritual significance of this understanding:

The authentic ego, this pure sense of ‘I am’, does not cling to self and personal ambitions. It
has no fear of being less than anyone or of anything else. It makes room for others and does

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 not deny their place and value in the economy of life. It is not a victim nor does it victimize.
It is not foolish, selfish, proud, full of desire, ambitious or fearful, but is the very opposite
of all these things. Moreover, it is infinite, eternal, all-powerful and omniscient. It is, in
other words, not only free of everything which limits us and cuts us off from one another
and God, Who is Himself this pure ‘I am’, but actively creates, sustains and withdraws
all things in and through it perception of them and itself.31

This description is in many ways very close to the famous and powerful description of Love given by Paul
in the Bible, and indeed the Shaivites would happily allow that the essential nature of this pure divine Con-
sciousness, the ‘I am That I am’ awareness of God, is unconditional Love. Realization in Kashmir Shaivism
is the realization of this experience of the ‘I,’ the realization of the true inner nature of Love.

The Light of Consciousness as Citi

This understanding of the divine ‘I’ was first expounded by the sage Utpaladeva, and was quickly assimilated
by later Kashmiri Shaivites as well as others, and it was quickly (within decades) applied by Abhinavagupta
in his extensive interpretation of the Tantras called Light of the Tantras — the Tantrāloka.

The term ‘Light’ appears quite often in the Tantras, and for good reason. The tantric understanding of
consciousness reaches a new level, based largely on the metaphor of light. This metaphor eventually became
a whole mysticism of Light in the writings of the sage Bhāskara. He described the Divine as Light, which
expands and unfolds as all things, allowing us to understand both the ‘illumination’ that takes place within
our own mind on the one hand, and the appearance of the outer world on the other as two instances of
the same Truth. To realize this vision of Being and the ‘I’ as Light is to acquire ‘Pure Knowledge’; to miss
it is to be caught in the appearances of consciousness, to be stuck in the awareness of thought constructs,
concepts and ideas that only mask the true nature of Reality, rather than reveal it. The practice of yoga is
meant to help us to see beyond this mask through the experience of consciousness as light.

With this understanding of consciousness, Shaivism is also able to transform our conception of the Self as
well. In their vision, the Self is not just the Purusha, the detached witness of Prakrti, nor is it the changeless,
actionless Brahman of Vedanta.

The highest Reality according to Shaivism is Citi (pronounced ‘chit’-ee’). This term is most often translated
as ‘consciousness’ – but this divine consciousness is far more than the changeless and impassive ‘witness-
consciousness’ of the previous philosophies.

Citi is a feminine form of the root cit, which implies ‘to perceive, to observe, to appear, to understand’ and
‘to know.’ Citi is consciousness empowered to know and to perceive, and it is also that which makes things
appear or manifest.

On the one hand, consciousness makes all things appear — just as Vedānta described Brahman as the
‘sun’ that illumines the world of Māyā. But in Shaivism, Citi is more. Everything that appears is not only
illumined by consciousness, but is also made of nothing but consciousness. All things are but contracted
forms of consciousness, appearing in the field of consciousness. Just as crystals form in a liquid, the Tantrikas
emphasized that objects can only ‘appear’ when held in the field of awareness or consciousness. There can
be no objects or ‘appearances’ of objects apart from a consciousness in whom and to whom they appear.
31 Mark Dyczkowski, The Aphorisms of Śiva, SUNY Press 1992, p. 3

132 THE HEART OF THE YOGI DOUG KELLER 2007

And they are knowable to consciousness because they are not different from consciousness — objects are
‘made of ’ that very energy of awareness.

Thus consciousness is in every sense the support or ground for all manifestation. The Tantrikas in general
described this Absolute Consciousness using feminine attributes because of the support and nurturing that
citi provides. Citi is the Goddess, the Mother of creation in whom the universe appears and has its being, and
the whole movement of Tantra is a celebration of the feminine aspects or qualities of Absolute Reality.

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