john dupuche

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En somme, par sa richesse le tantra chrétien ouvre d’innombrables voies à la réflexion théologique.

Vers un tantra chrétien : aventures et découvertes

 Papier présenté à la Conférence d’ACFAS, Montréal, Canada

Introduction :

« ‘Un tantra chrétien’ ? Impossible ! ». Peut-être. Il se peut aussi que la rencontre du christianisme et du tantra soit aujourd’hui ‘un lieu de spiritualité’, riche et même nécessaire.

On trouve quantité de livres qui présentent le Shivaïsme du Cachemire, tel The Triadic Heart of Śiva (Muller-Ortega 1989), et les textes sur le Christianisme sont innombrables. Par contre bien rares sont les textes qui essaient de les confronter. Cet article aborde plusieurs sujets : le non-dualisme, la parole, l’autonomie, spiritualités du plaisir et de l’horreur, l’ascendance du féminin, la prière. Il nous montre à quel point le Shivaïsme de Cachemire peut illuminer l’Evangile et mener à une réflexion théologique plus profonde. Il nous invite à cesser d’être ‘campée traditionnellement à l’ombre’, et à s’aventurer dans l’inconnu et y trouver des richesses insoupçonnées (Dupuche 2004).

Cet article souligne l’importance du rituel Kula qui se situe à l’extrême ‘gauche’ du grand éventail des systèmes tantriques dont la trajectoire s’élance de ‘droit’ à ‘gauche’, c’est-à-dire du licite à l’illicite, du masculin au féminin. Les dieux sont toujours mentionnés mais deviennent de plus en plus passifs (Dupuche 2003, 18-19) : c’est la déesse qui prend le dessus.

Selon la légende, les Śivasūtra, texte fondateur du Shivaïsme du Cachemire, fut révélé par Śiva à Vasagupta (c.875-925) au 9^ième siècle de notre ère. L’école continue avec Alloa, Sadananda, Utpaladeva et atteint son apogée avec Abhinavagupta (c. 975-1025 C.E.), mystique, poète, dramaturge et philosophe. La tradition s’éteint avec son disciple, Kṣemarāja. Deux siècles plus tard Jayaratha compose un commentaire complet du Tantrāloka (Abhinavagupta 1987), après quoi la tradition disparaît alors presque sans trace sauf quelques commentaires, par exemple au 18^ième siècle celui de Śivopādhyāya sur le Vijñāna Bhairava, ou la glose de Anandabhaṭṭa sur le même texte. Au 19^ième siècle, Georg Bühler, engagé par le Raj britannique à faire un recensement des manuscrits du Cachemire, du Rajputana et de l’Inde centrale, découvrit dans les maisons des brahmanes les textes du Shivaïsme du Cachemire écrits en lettres śāradā qui furent publiés par la suite en lettres devanāgarī dans le ‘Kashmir Series of Texts and Studies’, pendant les années 1911 – 1947. Au 20^ième siècle Laxman Joo, les enseigna au grand public venu du monde entier s’assoir à ses pieds. La traduction et la présentation du Paramārthasāra (Abhinavagupta 1958) par Lilian Silburn fut la première étude occidentale. Depuis lors on s’intéresse beaucoup à cette école qui s’avère une des plus grandes de l’Inde.

1. Non-dualisme

Le Shivaïsme du Cachemire est un système non duel (advaita) dont la réalité ultime est la conscience (saṁvit) plénière, dénommée ‘Śiva’ (‘le bienveillant’) qui s’exprime pleinement dans la phrase ‘Je suis’ (aham). Śiva le non duel dit effectivement, ‘Je suis le bien et le mal, la lumière (prakāśa) et l’obscurcissement (tirodhāna), l’être (sat) et le néant (asat) : tout simplement ‘Je suis’.

La théologie chrétienne distingue entre Dieu et homme, ciel et terre, foi et raison, péché et grâce, bien et mal, pur et impur. Le Shivaïsme du Cachemire estime au contraire que ces oppositions sont des ‘constructions mentales’ (vikalpa) qu’il faut abandonner. Il faut plutôt imiter le dieu Bhairava, c’est-à-dire Ïiva sous son aspect farouche injustement condamné à fréquenter le lieu des morts, qui s’assied le regard dirigé à la fois au dehors (bahiḥ) et en dedans (antaḥ) : « Il dirige son regard à l’intérieur, il regard au dehors, il n’ouvre pas les yeux ni ne les ferme […] » (Kṣemarāja 1982, 98, nous traduisons). S’il regarde ce qui est devant lui il se voit lui-même, car le monde (viśva) est l’émanation (sṛṣṭi) de son être. S’il contemple son propre soi (svātmā) il voit le monde qui provient de lui, tout comme l’énorme banyan sort de la semence (bījā). Śiva / Bhairava est tout. Tout lui appartient ; il appartient à tous. Il résume tout en l’unité de son corps. C’est ce qu’on appelle ‘l’attitude de Bhairava’ (bhairava-mudrā) que le pratiquant de la tradition de Cachemire cherche à posséder. A la fin il sait que « Je suis partout (Le Vijñāna Bhairava 1983, verset 104) », que «Je suis omniscient, omnipotent et omniprésent (Le Vijñāna Bhairava 1983, verset 109)» et que «la variété du monde procède de moi (Le Vijñāna Bhairava 1983, verset 110) ».

2. Parole

La Réalité ultime est le ‘Je’ qui s’exprime en disant ‘Je suis’ (aham). Cette parole (vāc) primordiale est le fondement de toutes les paroles, de toutes les révélations, de tous les objets, de sorte que le monde est une hiérarchie de révélations, de mots, d’expressions, de manifestations. Les objets sont des mots ; les mots sont des objets. Tous les objets ne sont que la résonnance divine. Nous voilà non pas devant le panthéisme mais le pan-kérygme. Tout est révélation ; tout est l’expression de Śiva, non pas séparé de lui mais identique. Les mantras sont des dieux, les dieux sont des mantras, car le mantra est la forme phonique de la divinité. Ils sont non duels.

Les mantras sont donc des outils, puissants et effectifs chez celui qui en connaît la force. Ils ne sont pas accordés à n’importe qui mais réservés à ceux qui en feront bon usage, c’est-à-dire au disciple dont le maitre connaît la droiture. En lui confiant le mantra au moment de l’initiation – l’initiation consiste essentiellement en la communication du mantra – le maitre lui donne ses propres pouvoirs, son cœur même, l’essence de la réalité. Autorisé de cette façon par le gourou, le disciple se met à célébrer le rituel et à transformer les instruments du culte. En consacrant la nourriture, l’idole ou quelque objet que ce soit par la puissance du mantra, le célébrant transforme cet objet et l’identifie au mantra et donc au dieu où à la déesse, de sorte que l’objet et le mantra soient non duels. L’objet consacré devient la divinité. Cet enseignement qui se trouve dans tous les cultes indiens n’est pas spécifiquement tantrique mais il se prête facilement à une élaboration tantrique.

On devine bien en quel sens cet enseignement est capable de réinterpréter plusieurs aspects de la foi catholique. Le Prologue de l’Evangile proclame que « Tout fut par [le Logos] et sans lui rien ne fut » (Jn 1.3.). Les paroles du Christ « sont esprit et elles sont vie » (Jn 6.63). Le célébrant de la Messe prononce les paroles « Ceci est mon corps » de sorte que la réalité essentielle du pain soit véridiquement le corps du Christ.

Or, la parole (vāc) suprême se manifeste par plusieurs étapes et les sous-tend toutes. La deuxième étape, première manifestation partielle de la parole universelle, est l’intuition (paśyantī), cette perception d’une vérité particulière qui reste encore inarticulée. Dans une troisième étape, on cherche en vain les mots pour bien exprimer ce qui est perçu. C’est ‘l’intervalle’ (madhyamā). Enfin on réussit à exprimer, d’une façon imparfaite bien sûr, ce qu’on a entrevu. C’est ‘l’expression’ (vaikharī).

Le trajet se fait en sens inverse aussi, car le disciple, ayant compris les paroles du maître, se trouve réabsorbé dans le silence infini d’où tous les mots proviennent. Les mots qui procèdent du silence de la conscience infinie ramènent l’auditeur dans ce silence.

On voit ces mêmes étapes chez le Christ (Dupuche 2005, 243-252). Au moment de sa naissance il s’exprime dans un premier cri qui contient, pour ainsi dire, toutes les paroles qu’il prononcera par la suite. En grandissant il trouvera les mots capables de manifester ce qu’il est, les mots de sa langue maternelle et de sa tradition religieuse, les mots qui laisseront entrevoir sa vérité mais qui sont incapables de le cerner. Jésus, qui est le Verbe fait chair, se comprend depuis le début, mais se perçoit et s’exprime graduellement, en trouvant les mots et en expérimentant sa réalité dans les circonstances variées de sa vie. De même à la fin, sur la croix, il jettera ce grand cri qui résume d’une façon étonnante tout ce qu’il expérimente : son désespoir autant que son triomphe. Après quoi le grand silence.

De cette façon, le Shivaïsme du Cachemire est capable de jeter une lumière nouvelle sur la question théologique du savoir de Jésus.

3. Initiation

Le chapitre 13 du Tantrāloka se situe quasiment au centre du livre. Les chapitres 1-12 étalent le système philosophique du livre ; les chapitres 14 – 36 donnent le rituel qui réalise cette philosophie. Ce treizième chapitre décrit les initiations (dīkṣā) qui autorisent le disciple à pratiquer le rituel. Sans une compréhension du système et sans l’autorisation initiatrice, le pratiquant est incapable de célébrer le rituel effectivement : ses actes sont faux.

Il y a neuf niveaux d’initiation dont les trois premiers intéressent Abhinavagupta : il revoit les six autres en survol rapide. L’initiation la plus puissante, ‘la très intense’ (tīvra-tīvra), effectuée uniquement par la déesse – c’est-à-dire par la conscience – fait que l’initié sort vite de ce monde et s’identifie à Śiva sans jamais renaitre. La seconde initiation, ‘moyennement intense’ (madhya-tīvra), retient l’attention d’Abhinavagupta. Initié par la déesse sans entremise humaine, le récipient se met à enseigner les disciples qui se réunissent autour de lui, voulant par la générosité de son âme les libérer de leur ignorance. Dans le troisième niveau, ‘le peu intense’ (manda-tīvra), le disciple, bien qu’initié par la déesse, a besoin de se faire initier par un gourou s’il veut vraiment arriver à l’illumination.

Peut-on dire que c’est Marie, la mère de Jésus, qui a reçu l’initiation la plus intense (tīvra-tīvra) dès le premier instant de son existence, celle qui fait naitre le Verbe avant son assomption au ciel ? Peut-être cette façon inouïe, les dogmes de l’Immaculée Conception et de l’Assomption, très liés au récit de la chute, se rétablissent-ils sur de nouvelles bases.

Abhinavagupta ne néglige pas pour autant le rituel d’initiation. Si celui qui a reçu les deux formes supérieurs de l’initiation cherche à se faire initier par un gourou, ce n’est pas parce qu’il en ait besoin – il est déjà illuminé – mais c’est pour que l’extérieur et l’intérieur se coïncident.

Une certaine attitude catholique, tout en soulignant l’importance du rituel, s’est mise à l’exagérer. L’enseignement du Cachemire rappelle la primauté de ‘la déesse’, la ‘conscience’ : disons l’Esprit Saint qui inspire au préalable toute connaissance de la foi et tous les sacrements. Si l’Esprit n’agit pas avant le rituel du baptême, il agira par la suite, sinon le baptême restera inefficace. C’est l’Esprit qui rend actif le rituel fait par la main des hommes. Il faut souligner de nouveau la primauté de l’Esprit.

Dans les chapitres 14 à 36 du Tantrāloka, Abhinavagupta décrit les différentes sortes d’initiation : l’initiation ordinaire (samayī-dīkṣā), l‘initiation comme ‘fils’ (putraka), comme adepte (sādhaka), comme maître (ācārya). Mais il en fait peu de cas. C’est le ‘gourou’ qui assume toutes ces fonctions. De fait, Abhinavagupta, le grand gourou, réside tout tranquillement chez sa tante et réunit autour de lui un groupe très restreint de disciples. Il ne cherche pas le grand succès.

Dans selon Christianisme, Jésus est le grand gourou, qui a vécu et vit toujours. Il assume toutes les fonctions : il est la plénitude. En effet, on voit ‘l’attitude de Bhairava’ (bhairava-mudrā), dans le tableau saisissant de Piero della Francesca où Jésus surgit du tombeau, le regard dirigé à la fois vers l’extérieur et vers l’intérieur, lui qui a connu la mort et la vie, le ciel et les enfers, alors que les soldats s’allongent par terre, assoupis, les yeux fermés. Etant mort et ressuscité, Jésus résume tout en lui-même. Le dehors et le dedans sont identiques. Saint Paul l’a dit : « […] en [Jésus] tout a été créé, dans les cieux et sur la terre, […] Tout est créé par lui et pour lui. […] Car il a plu à Dieu […] de tout réconcilier par lui et pour lui […] ayant établi la paix par le sang de sa croix. (Col 1.15-20) »

Les questions se posent. Qui donc est le maitre universel, Jésus ou Ïiva ? Jésus est-il l’unique sauveur ? Le tantra pose les questions autrement : ‘Jésus, jouit-il de la conscience plénière ? Est-ce qu’il facilite l’accès à cette conscience ?’

Pour répondre à ces questions, notons en premier lieu que selon le Christianisme Jésus connaît la souffrance et la joie, la croix et la gloire. Les yeux pleinement ouverts il ne cache rien et ne se cache de rien. D’entre tous les grands maitres spirituels du monde, Jésus seul fut mis à mort, trahi par ses disciples, rejeté par son peuple, apparemment abandonné par son Dieu. Il a connu tous les paradoxes. Il a tout expérimenté. Il sait. Mais, notons le bien : il est capable de tout expérimenter car déjà, étant la parole suprême incarnée, il est la connaissance qui fonde toute connaissance. Mais le chrétien dira encore plus : Jésus sait parce qu’il aime. Jésus s’identifie à tout et prend part à tout. Il s’incarne. Il connaît les choses non pas comme autre que lui-même mais comme son propre soi. Il dit ‘Je sais’ parce qu’il dit au préalable ‘J’aime’. Si le Shivaïsme du Cachemire propose que la parole primordiale est ‘Je suis’, parole qui fait écho au ‘Je suis’ de l’Exode, le chrétien propose que la parole primordiale est ‘J’aime’. Si le premier verset des Śiva Sūtras, texte fondateur de l’école, est ‘La conscience est le Soi’ c’est parce que ‘Dieu est Amour’ (1 Jn 4.16).

Il s’ensuit que Jésus, le paradoxe des paradoxes, envoûte ceux qui l’entendent et les mène au-delà du mental pour les laisser entendre le silence ineffable, le Cœur divin. Ainsi compris, le Christ les met sur la voie de la conscience qui est amour. C’est très tantrique, c’est un tantra chrétien, c’est très moderne.

Aussi celui qui voit Jésus suit il le même chemin. Il devient non duel et paradoxale. Il ne ferme les yeux à rien, ni à l’horreur ni à la beauté. Il prend part à tout. Le chrétien commence à voir les profondeurs de l’Esprit en les autres traditions et leurs adhérents. Il est épris par la splendeur qui les habite, et dans leur cœur il entrevoit le Cœur infini. C’est très beau. Cette aventure est ‘facteur d’unification’ à la fois tantrique et chrétien.

Est-ce que la grande tradition religieuse et philosophique du Christianisme est dépassée ? Il est assurément inconcevable que toutes les expériences des mystiques et les réflexions des grands docteurs de l’Eglise soient dépassées. Toutefois, le christianisme tel qu’on l’a conçu est en profonde mutation. C’est parce que le Christ est toujours à découvrir. On craint la perte de la ‘transmission des traditions spirituelles’. Ce ne pas une perte ; c’est l’épuration de la vigne (Jn 15.2). En s’aventurant sur le chemin du Shivaïsme du Cachemire le chrétien découvre l’Evangile. Les lumières ne se contredisent pas mais s’illuminent.

Les paroles de l’Evangile recèlent les trésors infinis (Mt 13.52) qui ne seront jamais compris si non à la lumière de toutes les religions. Le chrétien ne peut devenir pleinement chrétien qu’en devenant vraiment tantrique et bouddhiste, musulman et hindou, selon les vérités essentielles qui soutiennent leurs rites et leurs enseignements. Il a besoin des textes non-chrétiens pour comprendre le texte chrétien. De même les tantriques cachemiriens, par exemple, ne peuvent pas se passer du Christianisme ; ils se mettront à l’école du Christ.

Jésus de Nazareth est le symbole du Jésus qui vient ; il ne sera pas tel qu’il était. La bonne nouvelle chrétienne consiste en l’annonce du Christ qui est venu, mais surtout en l’annonce du même Christ qui viendra par l’entremise des autres religions. En s’aventurant ainsi dans le Shivaïsme du Cachemire ou toute autre tradition bien articulée et fiable, le chrétien découvre le Jésus advenant, à peine reconnaissable mais le même Jésus. La rencontre du tantra force le chrétien à tourner les yeux vers un avenir inconnu, et il tremble un peu, déconcerté.

Le dualisme foncier de quelques théologies actuelles oppose les religions. Le non dualisme les récuse. Le non dualisme de Cachemire exige non pas une double appartenance mais une appartenance une. Il ne s’agit pas d’opposer et de choisir, mais d’en voir l’identité. Pour ce faire, il faut aller au-delà des expressions théologiques pour voir l’identité foncière. Le Verbe se manifeste en paroles diverses et contradictoires, et de cette façon nous laisse percevoir le fond de lui-même. Autrement, nous resterions au niveau superficiel du mental et du verbal alors qu’il faut plonger et trouver la personne du Verbe infini et du Dieu qui le prononce. (Dupuche 2005)

Par cette double appartenance, le chrétien devient authentique. Etant transfiguré par la rencontre de spiritualités diverses il voit apparaitre en son propre soi la forme de Jésus (cf. Ph 3.21). Il perçoit sa présence, non pas venant de dehors mais sortant des ombres du soi. De même, le pratiquant du Shivaïsme du Cachemire verra le Christ se manifester en lui. Il deviendra le Christ, le Christ reviendra en lui mais il aura l’aspect de Ïiva. C’est la deuxième venue de Jésus, glorieuse.

Bhairava est mythologique – même les Brahmanes le disent. Jésus par contre est réel, historique. Jésus le Christ est Jésus le Śiva (Dupuche 2003). Jésus est le grand tantrique.

4. Autonomie et pouvoir

Les enseignements et les rites du Shivaïsme du Cachemire aboutissent à la reconnaissance (pratyabhijñā) par le tantrika de son identité (tādātmya) avec Śiva, identité non pas ressemblance. On ne dit pas, ‘Je suis semblable à Śiva’ mais ‘Je suis Śiva’. Le moi individuel (ahamkāra) est reconnu n’être qu’une expression partielle du Je essentiel. Les nombreux rites servent uniquement à identifier le pratiquant à Śiva.

Cet enseignement shivaïte jette une lumière nouvelle sur un aspect essentiel de l’annonce évangélique. Le chrétien qui entend les paroles de l’Evangile se reconnaît être un seul corps avec le Christ (Eph 2.16). Le soi individualiste meurt (Mc 8.35) et le Christ ressuscite en lui. Le chrétien se reconnaît être essentiellement l’expression du Soi universel. St Paul l’a déjà dit : « Je vis, mais ce n’est plus moi, c’est le Christ qui vit en moi». (Ga 2.20) Jésus ne révèle pas ce que le chrétien ne sera jamais : il révèle ce qu’il est déjà, sans le savoir. Le chrétien ne met pas sa foi en ce qui est autre que lui-même. Il s’identifie à celui qu’il est déjà. C’est la rédemption.

L’esprit de dévotion qui a si longtemps influencé la pratique chrétienne a perdu de sa force, si on entend par le mot ‘dévotion’ cet élan qui est incapable de franchir l’immensité séparant le ciel et la terre, le Créateur et la créature. La vraie dévotion, la bhakti tant chérie par les hindous, est selon le Shivaïsme du Cachemire une identification. La foi chrétienne aussi est une identification.

Ayant accès à l’attitude non duelle où l’extérieur et l’intérieur coïncident, on sait qu’on est foncièrement libre (svātantrya). Rien ne nous lie parce que rien ne nous oppose. On est affranchi de la Loi, dirait St Paul (cf. Rm 6.15, 7.4, I Co 6.12 etc.). On est autonome. C’est la liberté tant désirée de nos jours. Le tantra est tout à fait moderne.

Mais prenons garde. Cela seul est utile qui mène à l’éclosion (pravikāsa) de la conscience. Cela est à refuser qui mène à la folie (moha), c’est-à-dire, à l’obscurcissement (tiras) du divin savoir (vidyā). On ne suit pas ses propres fantaisies ; on prend le chemin (upāya) efficace. Celui qui reste libre à tout moment, est libre aussi des convoitises (lobha) et de l’ignorance (avidyā), de la haine et des ambitions. La licence est folle ; l’autonomie est pleinement consciente.

Le tantra chrétien propose donc un système de la morale, basé non plus sur les idées mais sur l’expérience de l’épanouissement (ucchalana) de la conscience. C’est la morale délicate et personnelle dont St Paul parle dans son Epitre aux Galates (Ga 5.19-24). Folie ou sagesse, égarement ou floraison, c’est à chacun de faire le choix et d’en accepter les conséquences bienheureuses ou néfastes.

Identifié à Śiva, le tantrique sait que cet univers provient de lui et lui revient. Il en est le maitre (prabhu), et tous les pouvoirs (siddhi) lui sont accordés. Il ne cherche pas ces huit pouvoirs surnaturels appréciés par les tantriques d’antan, dont le pouvoir de devenir minuscule ou immense, ni les pouvoirs tant cherchés par les charlatans tantriques de nos jours en Inde d’assurer le succès aux urnes électorales. Le tantrique cachemirien vise le plus grand des pouvoirs : la béatitude (ānanda).

Selon l’Évangile de S. Matthieu Jésus ressuscité proclame que tout pouvoir au ciel et sur la terre lui est donné (Mt 28.18) et lui-même il accorde à ses disciples le pouvoir de lier et délier (Jn 20.23). Mais ce sentiment de puissance gêne, car on a peur des responsabilités qui en découlent. On n’a confiance ni en soi-même ni en autrui. Le tantra chrétien, par contre, prône l’acquisition des pouvoirs, pour créer une terre nouvelle (Ap 21.1) et faire advenir le royaume des cieux (Ap 21.10). Ce tantra revendique une ecclésiologie renouvelée.

5. Spiritualités du plaisir et de l’horreur

Alors que les partisans du Veda opposent plaisir (bhukti) et libération (muktī), les tantriques les identifient.

Laissons de coté le Tantrāloka, ce chef d’œuvre d’Abhinavagupta, encyclopédie de presque six mille couplets où il passe en revue tous les tantras de son époque et les réinterprète suivant sa tradition non duelle. Parlons plutôt du Vijñānabhairava-Tantra, opuscule de cent soixante-trois couplets dont cent-douze techniques basées sur la respiration (prāņa), le plaisir (bhoga), la récitation (japa) etc.

Les trois premiers hémistiches de chaque couplet donnent la technique, le quatrième en décrit le résultat (phala). Aussi s’agit-il principalement de savoir quoi faire, approche très moderne car on cherche aujourd’hui moins à connaître la doctrine qu’à apprendre la méthode. Les précisions théologiques, si utiles et nécessaires soient-elles, n’attirent pas l’attention. On veut savoir comment appréhender ses propres richesses. On veut expérimenter la conscience divine en soi-même et non pas l’admirer chez un autre, fût-ce même Jésus. On veut réussir par sa propre énergie autonome et ne pas dépendre d’une Eglise ou d’un clergé.

Le changement d’optique est énorme. Il faut que, d’une certaine façon, Dieu et Jésus disparaissent. L’attention humaine est dorénavant portée sur l’immédiat. En fixant l’attention sur l’actuel ou l’avenir et non pas sur le ciel et le passé on voit la personne de Jésus sortir, petit à petit, du fond de l’âme. Ce qui ressemble à l’athéisme prépare l’advenue de Jésus non pas de l’extérieur mais de l’intérieur. Ce genre d’athéisme est donc serviteur. Il facilite une reconstitution étonnante de l’annonce évangélique sous la direction de l’Esprit Saint. Les chrétiens s’ouvrent à cette inspiration novatrice de l’Esprit qui les amène au Christ qui révèle le Père éternel.

Parmi ces cent-douze méthodes, il y en a trois qui ont à faire avec la sexualité. Fait important. D’une part, cela veut dire que la Divinité se manifeste sexuellement et que la sexualité est un chemin vers la divinité. En effet, selon le Shivaïsme du Cachemire, la sexualité et la divinité ne sont pas opposées mais un. D’autre part, le fait qu’il n’y a que trois techniques sexuelles relativise l’importance de la sexualité dans le système tantrique. D’où l’erreur actuelle qui identifie tantra et activité sexuelle (Urban 2003, 203 ff.).

Ces trois techniques – les versets 68-70 – se placent parmi une série de onze couplets – les versets 65-75 – qui parlent des plaisirs  provenant de la nourriture, de la musique, de la réunion familiale etc., en somme les plaisirs de la vie de tous les jours. Le tantra n’oppose pas la vie ordinaire et la vie de l’esprit. C’est dans ce qui est particulier, immédiat, familial, charnel, qu’on peut atteindre l’universel. Le plaisir dégage l’esprit et amène finalement à la source de tout plaisir, c’est-à-dire Dieu qui est plaisir et plaisant. On est loin de ce cet ascétisme qui, à la suite d’une spiritualité cathare, veut opposer l’esprit et la chair.

La sexualité est un espace original, un lieu spirituel trop longtemps négligé, influencé de façon péjorative peut-être par l’arrivée des Hébreux en Canaan et les condamnations lancées par les prophètes contre la prostitution sacrée des temples (Am 2.7 Dt 23.18f.). Certes, le rejet des hiérogamies du monde antique est mitigé par Le Cantique des Cantiques où Dieu est présenté comme l’Amant d’Israël et où, dans les commentaires chrétiens, Jésus est présenté comme l’Epoux de l’Eglise (Eph 5.32). Mais dans la tradition judéo-chrétienne on hésite à attribuer le rapport masculin / féminin à la divinité même. Un tantra chrétien, par contre, perçoit le rapport Epoux – Epouse en Dieu même et non pas seulement entre Dieu et ce qui lui est foncièrement inégal, c’est-à-dire la créature, que cette créature soit le Peuple Choisi ou l’Eglise. Si tout au monde est un reflet de ce qui se trouve en Dieu, ne faut-il pas admettre aussi que la sexualité existe en Dieu lui-même aussi, de façon suréminente bien sûr. Oui, mais comment et en quel sens ? Voila un sujet impératif de réflexion.

Les pratiquants de l’union sexuelle tantrique (maithuna) expérimentent l’éclosion plénière de la conscience de sorte qu’ils s’identifient à Śiva et à la śakti, celle qui est l’énergie personnifiée. C’est de cette union de Śiva et śakti, le couple (yāmala) primordial et non duel, que nait le monde. La vibration (spandana) constante du monde, son émission (sṛṣṭi) et sa réabsorption (saṁhāra), sont la manifestation des étreintes amoureuses divines. Aussi les pratiquants de l’union sexuelle tantrique perçoivent-ils que le monde entier nait de leur union. Ils sont à la fois infini et fini, transcendant (viśva-uttīrņa) et immanent (viśva-maya), non duels.

Les partisans du Veda considèrent que les fluides sexuels (kuṇḍa-golaka) du corps sont immondes (aśuddha), mais pour les pratiquants du rite tantrique Kula ces fluides qui coulent lors de la jouissance sont bénis et moyens de bénédiction car en expérimentant (anubhava) ces expressions bien matérielles de la joie, ils pénètrent jusqu’à leur source, la béatitude divine. Il en est de même pour tout ce qui provient de la divine śakti. Les plaisirs particuliers sont le moyen de parvenir à ce qui est universel ; le fini devient le tremplin de l’infini. On s’immerge donc dans ce monde, on ne s’en esquive pas. Aussi chacun permettra-t-il à l’autre le plaisir particulier – musique, nourriture, spectacles etc. – qui lui est nécessaire pour atteindre la béatitude infinie. C’est un sentiment très moderne.

Le tantrique chrétien suit le même chemin et le développe car, sensibilisé de façon suréminente par l’Esprit Saint, il perçoit que tout est don. Il a un sentiment accru de la grâce et se trouve rapidement transporté en la béatitude divine où il entre en la communion des Personnes divines. Dieu est don. Les Personnes divines se donnent et sont données l’une à l’autre.

Il y a aussi le coté épouvantable auquel les partisans du tantrisme occidental se ferment facilement les yeux. Même les commentateurs savants essaient d’alléger ce côté ‘noir’ (Sanderson 1983). Voyons un peu.

Le tantra, et surtout le rite Kula, le plus extrême des tantras (Sanderson 1995, 23, 79), accorde une importance première au champ crématoire (śmaśāna), lieu d’horreur envahi par les yoginis, ces ogresses démoniaques. Si le tantrique y célèbre les rites (vidhi) nocturnes c’est parce qu’il ne refuse rien. Ce qui est à retenir, ce qui est à repousser, le pur (śuddha) et l’impur (aśuddha), il les accepte tous parce qu’il les transcende. Il s’immerge dans l’immonde comme moyen de se libérer des constructions mentales et de parvenir à la conscience plénière. Il sait consommer les fluides du corps tout aussi bien que les mets les plus délicieux. Il apprécie la musique mais ne refuse pas le hurlement des chacals qui se nourrissent des dépouilles. Il reçoit tout, de même que Jésus accepte le parfum de nard pur et la couronne d’épines.

La Messe, n’est-elle pas un rite tantrique ? Les baptisés, qui sont morts et ensevelis avec le Christ (Rm 6.3-4), s’aventurent là où le crucifix est dressé, et se nourrissent non pas d’un cadavre quelconque mais du corps et du sang de leur maître. Mais on édulcore la Messe car on craint son horreur. On hésite d’être vivant et mort, d’être ni vivant ni mort, de dépasser la vie et la mort pour découvrir la pleine conscience, c’est-à-dire la gloire divine.

Il semblerait qu’aucun rite de n’importe quelle religion n’est aussi paradoxal que la Messe. La vérité se trouve dans le paradoxe.

6. L’ascendance de la femme

Au fur et à mesure que les déesses prédominent sur les dieux, les rites deviennent antinomiens (niṣiddha) et fauves. Parmi ces déesses se trouve Kālī devant qui chaque jour dans le temple à Kālīghat, banlieue de Calcutta, on sacrifie d’innombrables chèvres. Quel rapport peut-il y avoir entre Marie la douce et Kālī la féroce ? Toutefois, la déesse noire nous fait voir la Bienheureuse Vierge d’une toute autre façon, car si Kālī avance sa langue pour boire le sang des animaux et du monde, c’est Marie à Cana en Galilée qui demande, qui exige, que Jésus fournisse non pas tellement le vin mais plutôt son sang. Si Kālī danse sur le corps de Śiva, c’est Marie qui se tient tout près de la croix pour être la première à recevoir l’Esprit qui réjouit le monde. Kālī est un personnage mythique, Marie en est la réalisation historique. Marie est la Kālī et redevient ainsi la puissante Mère de Dieu.

Mais on a peur de Kālī, la śakti, car elle élimine le sentiment du soi individuel, ce sentiment qui est la souillure primordiale (āṇavamala). Elle fait écrouler les idées en révélant la suprême conscience qui dépasse tout. Elle est le vrai gourou qui, par l’intermédiaire d’une femme réelle et particulière, illumine le disciple pleinement. Pourquoi visiter le champ crématoire en dehors de la ville si on peut, chez soi et bien plus intensément, atteindre le même but en s’unissant à la partenaire tantrique (dūtī).

Ce travail de la divine śakti, c’est le travail de l’Esprit aussi. L’Esprit qui travaille à la divinisation du chrétien, le Feu qui consume, fait qu’on cesse d’être un individu et qu’on devienne une personne. Mais, hélas, on préfère son individualité, son atomisme, son petit soi. On refuse de perdre la vie pour la gagner (Mc 8.35).

L’Esprit Saint qui est l’apogée de la Sainte Trinité, cette Troisième Personne dont l’icône principale est la femme, va là où il veut, libre comme le vent (Jn 3.8) que rien, ni même les hommes d’Eglise, ne peut contraindre. Le chrétien se laisse inspirer par l’Esprit et se soumet à cette śakti; il cesse d’être figée et s’incline aux mouvements de l’Esprit tout puissant.

De nos jours les femmes ont à jouer le même rôle, dans la société comme dans l’Eglise. C’est la femme surtout qui sait discerner ce qui est fécond et ce qui est stérile. C’est donc aux femmes de détruire les constructions mentales et les temples construits par la main des hommes (Ac 7.48) qui ne servent plus à rien. C’est aux femmes de démontrer le chemin à prendre et de faire naitre une Eglise nouvelle. Voilà ce qu’enseigne le tantra chrétien. Il est très actuel.

7. La prière

Dans ce système non duel comment peut-on parler de la prière, ce qui semble exiger un dualisme entre celui qui prie et celui à qui on prie. De fait, on ne trouve aucune discussion sur la prière dans le Tantrāloka. Tout au début du livre Abhinavagupta exprime sa reconnaissance envers Śiva dans un poème qu’il cite également au début du Tantrasāra (Abhinavagupta 1982) et du Parātriṁśikāvivaraṇa (Abhinavagupta 1991). On trouve ce même hommage dans le premier verset du poème Mahopadeśaviṁśatikā : « Hommage à Toi, mon propre Soi aux énergies infinies, lumières consciente et félicité éternelles ; (hommage à Toi) sous ta forme concrète d’univers dont l’essence transcende le déploiement des phénomènes. » (Abhinavagupta 1970)  Il y a hommage mais non pas prière. L’adepte (sādhaka) est censé obtenir par la puissance de ses mantras, de ses austérités (tapas), de ses diagrammes (yantra) etc., une sorte de puissance magique, soit noire ou blanche, capable de donner les résultats voulus.

Toutefois, même si ces aspects du tantra du Cachemire ne correspondent pas à l’idée chrétienne de la prière, il peut nous donner sujet de réflexion car Jésus prie, tout en assurant ses auditeurs qu’il obtient tout ce qu’il demande (Jn 11.41-42), que tout pouvoir lui a été donné au ciel et sur la terre (Mt 28.18), il prie, non pas par faiblesse mais parce qu’il est le Fils qui agit en identité de cœur et d’âme avec Celui qui l’envoie. Il ne demande une chose qu’il est incapable d’obtenir par des propres forces, mais il réalise en union avec Celui de qui tout provient, y compris ses propres pouvoirs. Le non dualisme de Cachemire n’empêche pas la prière : il la transforme. La prière chrétienne tantrique est à la fois toute-puissante et obéissante. C’est en acceptant le bien et le mal, le pur et l’impur, c’est en réconciliant en soi-même la diversité du monde qu’on acquiert un esprit d’équilibre (samatā) de sorte qu’on devient présent à tout, n’importe ce qui se passe. Une puissance extraordinaire se manifeste en soi, venant d’au-delà de ce monde. C’est la foi qui déloge les montagnes.

Conclusion

En somme ce tantra chrétien souligne le non dualisme en contraste avec le dualisme d’une certaine théologie chrétienne. Jésus est sauveur car il expérimente tout d’une façon non duelle. Il sait et il laisse savoir, et permet ainsi l’identification avec le silence du simple Cœur paternel. Jésus le grand tantrique, facilite la découverte de l’autonomie et du pouvoir. Il permet à chacun de découvrir la voie qui lui convient pour parvenir à l’amour pleinement conscient. Cela jette une base authentique de la morale. Le tantra chrétien prône une spiritualité sexuelle caractérisée par l’éclosion de la conscience et l’élimination du soi individuel, une spiritualité non duelle aussi du plaisir et de l’horreur dont la Messe est l’expression la plus complète. Finalement un tantra chrétien affirme la primauté de la femme, symbole de l’Esprit qui fait naître un monde nouveau, une Eglise nouvelle.

En somme, par sa richesse le tantra chrétien ouvre d’innombrables voies à la réflexion théologique.

Références bibliographiques

—–     Le Vijñāna Bhairava (1983) / trad. par L. Silburn, Paris, E. de Boccard, (Publications de l’Institut de Civilisation Indienne ; 15).

—–     Śiva Sūtra. The Yoga of Supreme Identity, (1979), / trad. par J. Singh, Delhi, Motilal Banarsidass.

ABHINAVAGUPTA, (1958), Paramārthasāra, / trad. par L. Silburn, Paris, (Publications de l’Institut de Civilisation Indienne ; 5).

ABHINAVAGUPTA, (1970) « Mahopadeśaviṁśatikā » dans Hymnes de Abhinavagupta, / trad. par L. Silburn, Paris, E. de Boccard, (Publications de l’Institut de Civilisation Indienne ; 31).

ABHINAVAGUPTA, (1982) [1918] Tantrasāra Delhi, Bani Prakashan. [Première édition avec notes, dir. Mukund Rām ShāstrÍ. Srinagar, Kashmir Series of Texts and Studies; 17]

ABHINAVAGUPTA, (1987) [1918-1938] Tantrāloka, with the Commentary of Jayaratha. Re-edited by R.C. Dwivedi and Navjivan Rastogi, enlarged with an introduction by Navjivan Rastogi and reprinted in 8 volumes, Delhi, Motilal Banarsidass, [Première edition dir. Mukund Ram Shastri, publiée en 12 volumes, Srinagar, Publications of the Research Department of the Jammu and Kashmir State, Kashmir Series of Texts and Studies; 23, 28, 30, 36, 35, 29, 41, 47, 59, 52, 57 et 58]

ABHINAVAGUPTA, (1991) [1918] Parātriṁśikāvivaraṇa, dir. Mukunda Rāma Shāstrī. New Delhi, Aroma Publishing House. [Première edition, Srinagar, Publications of the Research Department of the Jammu and Kashmir State, Kashmir Series of Texts and Studies ; 18]

DUPUCHE, J. (2003), Abhinavagupta : The Kula Ritual as elaborated in chapter 29 of the Tantrāloka, Delhi, Motilal Banarsidass.

DUPUCHE, J. (2003), “ “ Jesus is the Christ. ” (Acts 9.22) Can Jesus be called Shiva ? ” dans Theology@ McAuley, E-Journal, Australian Catholic University.

DUPUCHE, J. (2004), “ Renewing Christian Anthropology in Terms of Kashmir Shaivism ”, dans Theology@ McAuley, E-Journal, Australian Catholic University.

DUPUCHE, J. (2005), “ The Doctrine of Recognition (pratyabhijñā) and Interreligious Dialogue ”, dans SADANANDA DAS, and E. FÜRLINGER, dir., Sāmarasya, Studies in Indian Arts, Philosophy and Interreligious dialogue – in Honour of Bettina Bäumer, Delhi, D.K. Printworld, p. 431-439.

DUPUCHE, J. (2005), “ The First and Last Cry : an Examination of the First and Last Moments of Jesus of Nazareth in the Light of the Four Levels of the Word (Vāc) in Kashmir Shaivism ”, dans B. BÄUMER et J. DUPUCHE, dir., ‘Void and Fullness in the Buddhist, Hindu and Christian Traditions ; An Interreligious Retreat-Seminar’, Sarnath (India), 11-16 December 1999, Delhi, D.K. Printworld, p. 243-252.

DUPUCHE, J. (2009), Vers un tantra chrétien ; la rencontre du Christianisme et du Shivaïsme du Cachemire, Melbourne, David Lovell Publishing.

KÑEMARÀJA, (1982), Pratyabhijñāhṛdayam, / trad. J. Singh, Delhi, Motilal Banarsidass.

MULLER-ORTEGA, P.-E. (1989), The Triadic Heart of Śiva, Albany, State University of New York Press.

SANDERSON, A. (1983) “ Śivasútra et Vimarśinī de Kṣemarāja : traduction et introduction, by L. Silburn ” [revue] dans Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 46, p. 160-161.

SANDERSON, A. (1995), « Meaning in Tantric Ritual » dans A.M. BLONDEAU et K. SCHIPPER dir., Essais sur le rituel III : colloque du centenaire de la section des sciences religieuses de l’Ecole pratique des hautes études, Louvain-Paris, Peeters, Vol. 3, p. 23, 79.

URBAN, H. (2003), Tantra : sex, secrecy, politics and power in the study of religion, Berkeley, University of California Press.

Résumés :

« ‘Un tantra chrétien’ ? Impossible ! Quel rapport peut-il y avoir entre l’érotisme du tantra et l’amour révélé par le Christ Jésus qui proclame, « Nul n’a d’amour plus grand que celui qui se dessaisit de sa vie pour ceux qu’il aime (Jn 15.13) ». Toutefois …. ».

Jean Dupuche, curé de paroisse et Honorary Fellow du ‘Centre for Interreligious Dialogue’ à l’Australian Catholic University, présente quelques réflexions sur les rapports entre l’Evangile et le Tantra du Cachemire. Non-dualisme, parole, autonomie, spiritualités du plaisir et de l’horreur, l’ascendance du féminin, la prière : tout un monde nouveau, qui répond aux besoins de notre époque, se révèle sous les étincelles du choc de cette rencontre interreligieuse inouïe. Cela aidera à une réflexion inusitée sur les rapports trinitaires, la conscience de Jésus, Jésus comme sauveur unique, les fondements de la morale, les doctrines mariales, etc.

‘A Christian Tantra’? Impossible ! What connection can there be between the eroticism of the tantra and the love revealed by Christ Jesus who proclaims, “ No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends (Jn 15.13) ”. And yet ….

Jean Dupuche, Parish Priest and Honorary Fellow of the ‘Centre of Interreligious Dialogue’ at Australian Catholic University, presents some thoughts on the relationship between the Gospel and the Tantra of Kashmir. Non-dualism, word, autonomy, spiritualties of pleasure and horror, and the ascendancy of the feminine, prayer: a whole world, which relates to the needs of our own times, is revealed in the light of an altogether novel interplay. It gives some pointers for new perspectives on the Trinity, the question of Jesus’ consciousness, on Jesus as unique saviour, the foundations of ethics, the Marian doctrines etc.

“Ageing, spirituality and sexuality – an oxymoron?”

Conclusion:    Age is no barrier to sexuality; on the contrary in virtue of life’s experience, sexuality acquires its most overwhelming intensity. There is no oxymoron in combining age, sexuality and spirituality. On the contrary, these become identical.

 Presentation by John Dupuche at Tantra Conference April 2016 Janssen Spirituality Centre, Boronia

INTRODUCTION:

The dichotomy of ‘old’ and ‘young’

The prospect of growing old can be dreadful. The eyesight fails, the limbs creak; we slow down, excitement ceases, doors begin to close. Language itself views age negatively, with terms such as ‘old-fashioned’, ‘old-hat’, ‘old-people’s home’. ‘out of date’. ‘Ageism’ categorises people as irrelevant, an obstacle, and a burden on society. Retirement is an added issue, for the old live off their earnings or worse, by means of the pension system, use up the income of others. This is resented. Shouldn’t they bow out gracefully?

The Bible itself describes the dread of old age:

“when strong men are bent, and those who look through the windows see dimly; ⁵when one is afraid of heights, and desire fails; when the pitcher is broken at the fountain, ⁷and the dust returns to the earth as it was, ⁸Vanity of vanities, says the Teacher; all is vanity.”[1]

By contrast, youth has all the accolades. It is a time of beauty and energy, empowerment and pleasure, of individuation and self-discovery, of sexual prowess and resilience, full of possibilities and prospects. “Faster, higher, stronger” is the motto of the Olympic Games.

The Bible likewise praises youth.

“Rejoice, young man, while you are young, and let your heart cheer you in the days of your youth. Follow the inclination of your heart and the desire of your eyes …”[2]

What possible value can there be to ageing? Since time immemorial people have sought after the elixir of youth, the ambrosia of the gods? Better food and exercise will prolong youth. Medication will counter the effects of ageing. This is good, but is it all?

Suffering

However, the question can also be asked: is it an illusion to idolize the young and turn away from age? Isn’t this reaction a typical example of suffering, as taught by Buddhism? We desire youth and reject old age, whereas the Buddha proposes neither craving nor aversion.

This suffering is particularly evident in the area of sexuality, where the fires of youth grow cool, the excitement of falling in love loses its charm, the delights of love-making become jaded. What is the place of sexuality in old-age? Is it not embarrassing to see old people falling in love even as their flesh sags and their limbs creak? Is it not ridiculous to see the old trying to be young?

So the title of this talk is seem to be an oxymoron. How can sexuality and spirituality have a place in the ageing process?

I will start by presenting the teaching of tantra, and go on to show how it can resolve this oxymoron. I will then go on to show what the Christian dimension also contributes to the issue and how, ultimately the most intense pleasures of sexuality go beyond the categories of youth and age.

PART 1          THE TEACHING OF TANTRA

1. The essential requirement

Tantra is commonly misunderstood in the West. The images on the internet give an altogether false impression of the richness of the tantric tradition. While this ‘Californian tantra’ does promote the discovery of a deeper experience of sexuality, it does not explore the possibilities provided by the Kula tradition, which is the most extreme form of tantra.

First of all, the Kula tradition rejects the divisive categories of pure and impure, licit and illicit. It also holds that the divisive concepts of youth and age are irrelevant. Such categories only demonstrate a limitation of consciousness.

In the description of the Kaula tantric ritual, the question is asked about the essential character of the sexual partner. What must she be like? The commentator Jayaratha, who is skillful in explaining the text, quotes poems that describe two types of women. He describes the first as follows:

“Let him, then, bring a sexual partner … her eyes reeling with desire; … her eyes like those of a trembling fawn; … her face, with the lovely charm of the full moon, ravishes the heart; … her speech is beautiful like the many stammering cries of the goose … she dances, she sings and makes cries of pleasure (sīt), she plays and pretends to repulse a lover’s caress; … she is the sexual partner, the enchantress, …”[3]

Then he presents an altogether different type of woman, far more demure.

“She virtuous, obedient to her teacher’s command; her speech is agreeable, her form is pleasing, she is placid, free from attachment; … she abhors nothing, she is clearly wise; … her smile is beautiful; very affectionate and modest, she always attends to the well-being of guests; … she is unsullied, without ego; … she is truly content in all circumstances … “[4]

Jayaratha then gives a quote that expostulates

“A sexual partner with [all the qualities] listed in that way is unobtainable.”[5]

and so introduces Abhinavagupta’s teaching:

“The characteristic quality of a Śakti is that she is in no way separated from him who possesses her. Let him, therefore, bring [a śakti] of this sort, but without regard to castes etc.”[6]

The crucial description of the sexual partner is that she is “is no way separated from him”. She is fully united to him. Note that Abhinavagupta, who is writing one thousand years ago sees things from a male perspective. We need to add that the male is also in no way separate from the female.

He adds “without regard to castes etc.” Given the divisive nature of the caste system in his day as in our own, the unity is set at the most sublime level. Jayaratha explains that “the word ‘etc.’ implies all the characteristics such as youth and so on.”[7]

Thus the most extreme of the tantric rituals is properly practiced between a man and a woman without regard to age, beauty, caste etc. as long as they are completely united.

The tantric ritual, therefore, is not concerned with the excitement of youth or the advntages of wealth or social status. It focuses on the innermost quality of soul.

Is this just a case of ‘sour grapes’, claiming that youth is not the goal and purpose of existence? Is it just make-believe, a process of denial? Is it a really just envy and jealousy, desire and frustration, regret and pining for the good old times?

1. The signs

The issue of pleasure is tackled by another set of teachings from Abhinavagupta.

He speaks of the various signs of the śaktipāta, the descent of the energy of the goddess into the practitioner.

Entering – as a result of a descent of energy classified as intense etc. – into the mind, space, subtle-breath, internal and external bodies of the student who is being cleansed by her, the rudraśakti produces the following respective results: bliss, lightness, trembling, sleep and a reeling in the body.[8]

Abhinavagupta teaches that there are various levels of being, listed in descending order as “mind, space, subtle-breath, internal and external bodies”. In this system, the higher levels such as ‘mind’ are the source of the lower levels such as ‘body’. The divine energy produces different effect at these different levels, which Abhinavagupta lists respectively as “bliss, lightness, trembling, sleep and a reeling in the body”. In the external body there is the spectacular effect of “reeling”, while in the mind the effect is “bliss’. In other words, the more eye-catching effects are found in the more external aspects of the person. While the ‘reeling’ is visible, the ‘bliss’ is not, except for those who can see, for the blissful perceive bliss. Therefore for those whose attention is focussed on the external body only, there may seem to be no value in the experience of bliss. The orgy, which is enticing to many, and is transformed in some modern views into sacred ritual, is concerned with spectacular mind-blowing experiences. The most extreme tantra, however, is concerned with bliss.

The word for ‘bliss’ in Sanskrit, ānanda, is supremely significant since it refers to what the god and the goddess experience in their lovemaking. It is pleasure at the divine level. The supreme reality in fact consists of the god and goddess united in an everlasting intercourse whose earthly counterpart is the union of the couple.

Is our modern attitude completely focused on the visible and the physical, and therefore on the spectacular, on film stars and athletes? While this is not to be

rejected, of course, it does not represent the highest form of experience, which is that of ānanda.

The aim of modern tantra is to experience intense physical and emotional and spiritual pleasure and so to open up the consciousness and come to an awareness of one’s identity as god and goddess united in intercourse. However, it presumes that this means starting from the lower and moving to the higher. This paper questions this presumption, which seems to be fixed in the modern mind.

1. The levels of consciousness

What then is consciousness? In the teaching of Kashmir Shaivism there are five levels.

The level is jāgrat, which is the objective level of consciousness, that level which everyone sees. It is the domain of public knowledge, the evidence that can be proven in court and demonstrated in the sciences. It is the level of visibility. In the West this form of knowledge counts as real; the rest is fabulation.

In Kashmir Shaivism and in Hindu thought generally, jāgrat is the least valuable in terms of coming to true self-knowledge. More significant is the level of svapna, ‘dreaming sleep’. Modern psychology would now agree, since it is in dreams that the true psyche of the person becomes evident. The public persona can be a mask that hides the real self.

The third stage is suṣupta, ‘deep sleep’, which has no dreams and which touches on the very nature of the person. It is the mind of the new-born child, indeed of the foetus, before any impressions have come from outside to orient the developing consciousness and so to limit its universal plasticity. ‘Deep sleep’ is used in re-birthing techniques where the patient can go back before any trauma, and start again, so to speak. The suṣupta is at the level of essential human nature.

Lovemaking employs these three levels. The couple ‘sleep together’. This use of language is interesting, for it shows that the couple, by their outer activity eventually come to unite in a place beyond action, beyond sensation, beyond thought, beyond dreams, where they form one mind and heart together. Their love-making moves from the outer levels to the very essence of their being.

According to Kashmir Shaivism, there are two further levels, tūrya and tūryātīta. The level of tūrya, is the level of the divine goddess from whom all reality proceeds. The couple is the result of the goddess’s freedom. In other words their union is ‘made in heaven’ and takes them to heaven itself. In their union they experience the divine intercourse of the god and the goddess.

The final level, tūryātīta, is that of Śiva, the god, supreme consciousness with whom the goddess is in undivided union.

In other words, the most profound experience of sexuality is not in the visible but in the invisible, not in the outer activity but the inner experience, not just at the human level but at the divine level also. If sexual activity does not lead to this point it remains unsatisfying.

1. Three levels of being

There are the three levels of sthūla, sukṣma and para. The term sthūla (‘gross’) refers to the visible objective world, the material, outer level of things. The term sukṣma (subtle) refers to level of the emotions, knowledge, reason and so on. The term para (‘supreme’) refers to heaven itself. The famous psychologist Carl Jung could speak of the first two, but he says “I do not speak of the parā aspect because that is what Professor Hauer calls the metaphysical I must confess that there the mist begins for me – I do not risk myself there.”[9] The parā level was beyond the level of the archetypes which are Jung’s focus. The divine level is experienced; it is not captured by the categories of the mind.

In short, the teaching of the tantric tradition is that Kaula lovers experience the most intense pleasure, the divine bliss, which has nothing to do with social status, age and beauty. By their Kaula ritual they are taken into the divine state and experience the eternal love-making of the divine couple. All other forms of love-making are assessed according to this ultimate stage. All other love-making is a lesser form of this highest loving.

PART II          THE CHRISTIAN CONTRIBUTION

1. The teaching of St Paul

The scene now shifts to the Christian dimension.

St Paul says

^11”When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways.”[10]

This can be expanded to read, ‘when I was a youth I thought like a youth, but now that I am old, I put an end to youthful ways.’ St Paul could say that the point of youth, indeed the point of lovemaking, is to go beyond all limitations to achieve what is most intense, most sublime, most powerful, lasting and total.

In fact, he says:

¹²For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.[11]

The purpose of sex is not just procreation or pleasure but also divinization, where ‘I know as fully as I am known’, where subject and object are one.

TEXT 1           Youth

The couple, therefore, progress through various stages. There is, in adolescence, the wakening to the world of sex, falling in love with the possibility of love. People must have their fill of the sparkle of youth. To refuse it is a mistake, for if they do not enjoy the outer element of things, their progress to the more intense state will not take place. There will be a hidden regret, unfinished business, and a longing for what was not experienced. Youth must be youthful. But youth is also the road to more intense feelings, which are less spectacular but more fulfilling. If sexuality is experienced only in a youthful manner, it will not satisfy since the person has greater capacities that need to be fulfilled as well. Love, which remains only at the physical level, is counterproductive. Love, which penetrates to the soul, is enriching. Those who refuse this experience of penetrating to the soul will in fact find themselves becoming shallow.

A quotation provided by Jayaratha is relevant here:

“When the lower states move to a higher level,          … [there is] an acquisition of knowledge. And the states which are in the higher circle, if they go to a lower level, then there is possession by a Piśāca [demon]…”[12]

The rising is a penetration to the soul, to the inmost being, where the couple can be fully united. This process is not easy. Hinduism, like every other religious system, holds that the spiritual path also involves a time of testing, or tapas. A Sanskrit term, which can be translated as ‘austerity’. It is connected with the word for ‘heat’. The time of austerity increases the fire and the fervour.

1. St John of the Cross

This path of rising to a higher level can be linked with the process of the dark nights mentioned by St John of the Cross. These can be set out as follows:

1. Night of the senses
   1. Active:
      1. purification, mortification of the appetites;
      2. looking at faults and virtues;
   2. Passive:
      1. dryness, distaste, learning to trust;
   3. Night of the soul
      1. Active:
         1. purification through the theological virtues of faith, hope and love;
      2. Passive:
         1. night of intelligence – “faith only”
         2. night of memory     – “hope only”

• night of the will     – “thy will be done”

TEXT 2

At the first stage in the spiritual journey, there is excitement at finding a path that gives so much joy and fulfilment. In terms of the couple this could be related to the time of courtship and honeymoon, where strong bonds are forged and the couple do already experience transcendent bliss, and do become images of the divine. It is a time of the discovery of their wonder, each of the other, of their complementarity and fulfilment. They allow each other to see their inner person; they open the windows of their souls and show their beauty. There is already a taste of the Godhead, but it can be developed.

TEXT 3           Active and Passive Night of the senses

This time of joyful beginning is followed by a time of purification where the lovers learn to live together and to give up any annoying aspects of their personality. It is the ‘active night of the senses’.

There is also the ‘passive night of the senses’ where God is the agent, and things happen by the gift of grace alone. The excitement and pleasure of earlier times lose their novelty. The ‘honeymoon period’ is over. It is a time of testing, which not all survive, especially if they are mindlessly attached to the sensations of lovemaking and do not seek a deeper relationship. It is a difficult time for the couples, especially if they are misled by the images of love that are one-sidedly emphasised in the media.

TEXT 4           Active and Passive Night of the soul

But there is further stage of testing, called ‘the dark night of the soul’. In the ‘active stage’ of dark night of the soul, the lovers are increasingly transformed by the qualities of faith, hope and love. They place their faith in each other, totally, trusting each other, appreciating each other, believing in each other, knowing the quality of each other’s soul, learning to perceive each other with complete clarity, seeing the depths that they have attained, the strength of their commitment. They hope in each other, looking forward to the capacities that are coming to the surface, infinitely patient with each other, knowing that the true self is being revealed. They love the other with the full passion of their soul, with their very substance. They are willing to die for each other. They love each other’s love; they want only their love. As a result every action, every word, and every touch become charged with meaning.

They become faith, hope and love, and give each other the title ‘love’. St Bernard of Clairvaux says:

“Love is self-sufficient; it is pleasing to itself and on its own account. Love is its own payment, its own reward. Love needs no extrinsic cause or result. Love is the result of love, it is intrinsically valuable. I love because I love; I love in order to love.”[13]

There is the ‘passive’ stage where God is the agent, and things happen by grace alone. On this John of the Cross writes:

• “‘Night’ is where the real change in the person occurs.”
• “The soul must enter into the tomb of hidden death if the spiritual resurrection which it awaits is to come about.” (Dark Night II, 6)
• “Nothing is worth a single act of faith made in dryness.”
• “Faith, where we love God without understanding him ….” (Spiritual Canticle)
• The will adheres to God “in emptiness and in the absence of emotions”;

TEXT 5           This affects their whole person,

It is at this final stage, that their love has reached its fullness. Their love has grown and has become firm and reliable, dependable and totally honest. This gives quality and real pleasure. They have no fear; they know they have been tested and have become worthy of each other. They have discovered pools of love they never knew existed. They have discovered that they themselves are each other’s purpose. They know they are each other’s destiny.

They have known the sparkle of youth; they have known the stability of age. They do not reject youth or age; they have been young and now they are old; they are neither young nor old, for they have gone beyond time. They have come to an eternal love, the essence of relationship. They are beautiful, and they know they are truly empowered. As they look at each other, heaven opens its doors, for they manifest heaven to each other. Their every look is conscious, aware, penetrating, attractive, meaningful, a window onto infinity.

The pleasure that is found there is not the same as the pleasure of the beginners’ love, but is more intense, for it touches the deepest level of their being. The couple who have reached this stage look fondly on the joy of a young couple and will be reminded of their own early love, but they also know that the young couple will be tested and hopefully will come to the love that fully satisfies the heart. They are glad they have gone through the testing and have flourished.

These lovers experience the intensity of their relationship. There is a thrill, which is physical, but differently physical from the thrill of youth, for it penetrates to the soul. It touches every fibre of their being, to the very finger tips. It involves their whole history, their memories, the highs and lows of their relationship, the good times and bad, the health and sickness, the troubles and success. The lovers bring heaven and earth together.

CONCLUSION:

Age is no barrier to sexuality; on the contrary in virtue of life’s experience, sexuality acquires its most overwhelming intensity. There is no oxymoron in combining age, sexuality and spirituality. On the contrary, these become identical.

In terms of Kashmir Shaivism the lovers see themselves as Śiva and Śakti. In Christian terms they see themselves as Word and Spirit. In their perfect complementarity they come to know the One from whom all things come. They are complementary to each other, they proceed from the One. They have acquired the divine mind. They come to know the Communion of the Three

[1] Ecclesiastes 12:3, 5-8.

[2] Ecclesiastes 11:9.

[3] Qt.100b.5.

[4] Qt.100b.6.

[5] Jr.100b.7.

[6] TA 29.100b-101a.

[7] Jr.101b.2

[8] TĀ 29.207-208.

[9] C. G. Jung, The Psychology of Kundalini Yoga, Sonu Shamdasani (ed.), Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996. pp. 6-7.

[10] 1 Cor 13.11.

[11] 1 Cor 13:12.

[12] Qt.239b.1.

[13] The Divine Office, Vol.3. Sydney: E.J. Dwyer, 1973. pp.204*-206*.

SHE:    the Virgin Mary and the Goddess Kālī
What has Kālī to do with Mary of Nazareth? How can the beneficent, the fearsome goddess of India lead to an appreciation of Mary the Virgin, the Woman, the Mother of God? How can she give new birth to the Church? In this retreat, we contemplate the śakti, the Spirit, the divine feminine, and ask some questions.

The Devīmāhātmya

The Devī Māhātmya is believed to have crystallized in its present form during the 9th–10th century, and is believed to be originally authored by sage Markandeya.

A rough breakdown of the chapters is as follows:

• Chapter 1:      Like many other texts, the stories are embedded in a conversation where a sage, Medha, is narrating the story to king Surat and a merchant called Samadhi. The sage tells them how worship of the Devi is paramount, and tells them the story of the killing of two demons who had stolen the Vedas. Vishnu goes to fight them, and is almost defeated, at which point he seeks the help of Chandi. Chandi glances at the demons amorously (she is also very beautiful) and the demons are enchanted. Then Vishnu decapitates them with his discus.
• Chapter 2:      The creation of Durga and the defeat of Mahishasura‘s army. Mahishasura is the buffalo-demon who defeats the gods by a boon from Brahma and establishes himself as the ruler of all three worlds. It is to battle him that Devi is incarnated, from the assembled powers of all the gods. Mahishasura sends his soldiers to tackle this upstart goddess, but between Durga and her lion, all his best generals are killed, the ground flowing with their blood.
• Chapter 3:      The killing of Mahishasura himself. Finally Mahishasura comes out. A fierce battle rages in which Mahishasura throws mountains at her, but these are powdered by Durga. Using his magical powers, he becomes an elephant, a lion, a human. He injures Durga’s mount, the lion. But in the end Durga pins him down with her foot and kills him with a spear.
• Chapter 4       The gods led by Indra chant hymns praising the Goddess
• Chapter 5:      Messenger to the Goddess. Here the gods are in trouble again. Shumbha and Nishumbha, two other demons, have again defeated the gods and overtaken heaven. As Durga is approaching their court, they come to know of her ravishing beauty and Shumbha sends a messenger to bring her to him, but she will not go. The famous Devi prayer appears here:

“O goddess of all forms! now you appear as ‘energy’ ”.[(peace), (devotion), etc.]

• Chapter 6:      Dhumrolochana, a general of Shumbha, is dispatched to get this beautiful woman, by force if needed. He tries persuasion and fails. When he attacks, he is killed.
• Chapter 7:      The killing of Chanda and Munda – two demons from Shumbha-Nishumba’s court. These demons are killed by the Devi in her Kālī form, and KÁlÍ is hailed as Chamundi.
• Chapter 8:      The killing of Raktavīja. Raktavīja is a demon who has the power that every drop of blood from him that falls on the ground becomes a new Raktavīja (rakta=blood, vija=seed; each drop of blood is a seed from which a new whole will sprout). Durga is helped now by her Chamundī or KÁlÍ incarnation, who drinks up all the spilling blood by making her tongue into the ground. Finally Durga kills him.
• Chapter 9:      The killing of Nishumbha. When Durga pierces Nishumbha with an arrow, he becomes a giant demon. Durga kills this with her sword, and then finally kills Nishumbha.
• Chapter 10:   The killing of Shumbha. Seeing the death of Nishumbha, Shumbha is in a terrible rage and attacks the goddess, but also he is curious as to who she is. She reveals all her forms to Shumbha and says that she cannot be defeated, because even Shumbha’s soul is inherent in her. In the end Shumbha too is killed and the gods celebrate.
• Chapter 11:   Hymns in praise of Narayanī. Narayanī (wife of Vishnu), is another name for Devi. She is always there to help the gods overcome the forces of evil. She describes many future acts, that she is destined to perform in the future, including the incarnation of Vishnu as Krishna.
• Chapter 12:   The recitation in praise of Durga, outlines certain days in the lunisolar calendar that are more auspicious for the worship of the goddess, particularly navaratri.
• Chapter 13:   Boons of the Goddess: As the sage Medha is telling this narrative, the king Surath (who has been deposed) and the merchant Samadhi (who has lost his possessions) are listening. Now the Devi bestows boons on them because of their piety in performing her worship. Surath gets his kingdom back, but Samasa instead of wanting his wealth, wants only more knowledge.

The Devī Māhātmya‘s seventh chapter describes Kālī springing forth from the furrowed brow of the goddess Durga in order to slay the demons Chanda and Munda. Here, Kālī’s horrific form has black, loosely hanging, emaciated flesh that barely conceals her angular bones. Gleaming white fangs protrude from her gaping, blood-stained mouth, framing her lolling red tongue. Sunken, reddened eyes peer out from her black face. She is clad in a tiger’s skin and carries a khatvanga, a skull-topped staff traditionally associated with tribal shamans and magicians. The khatvanga is a clear reminder of Kālī’s origin among fierce, aboriginal peoples. In the ensuing battle, much attention is placed on her gaping mouth and gnashing teeth, which devour the demon hordes. At one point Munda hurls thousands of discusses at her, but they enter her mouth “as so many solar orbs vanishing into the denseness of a cloud” (Devimahatmya 7.18). With its cosmic allusion, this passage reveals Kālī as the abstraction of primal energy and suggests the underlying connection between the black goddess and Kāla (‘time’), an epithet of Shiva. Kālī is the inherent power of ever-turning time, the relentless devourer that brings all created things to an end. Even the gods are said to have their origin and dissolution in her.

The eighth chapter of the Devimahatmya paints an even more gruesome portrait. Having slain Chanda and Munda, Kālī is now called ‘Chamunda’, and she faces an infinitely more powerful adversary in the demon named Raktabija. Whenever a drop of his blood falls to earth, an identical demon springs up. When utter terror seizes the gods, Durga merely laughs and instructs Kālī to drink in the drops of blood. While Durga assaults Raktabija so that his blood runs copiously, Kālī avidly laps it up. The demons, who spring into being from the flow, perish between her gnashing teeth until Raktabija topples drained and lifeless to the ground.

 I          Kālī’s sword

Mary the Virgin    

Matthew 1:       1:         The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.
2:         Abraham was the father of Isaac, and Isaac the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers,
3:         Judah the father of Perez and Zerah by Tamar, andPerez the father of Hezron, and Hezron the father of Ram,
4:         Ram the father of Amminadab, and Amminadab the father of Nahshon, and Nahshon the father of Salmon,
5:         Salmon the father of Boaz by Rahab, and Boaz the father of Obed by Ruth, and Obed the father of Jesse,
6:         Jesse the father of David the king.

And David was the father of Solomon by the wife of Uriah,                                                        7:         Solomon the father of Rehoboam, and Rehoboam the father of Abijah, and Abijah the father of Asa,                                                                                                                                   8:         Asa the father of Jehoshaphat, and Jehoshaphat the father of Joram, and Joram the father of Uzziah,                                                                                                                             9:         Uzziah the father of Jotham, and Jotham the father of Ahaz, and Ahaz the father of Hezekiah,                                                                                                                                               10:       Hezekiah the father of Manasseh, and Manasseh the father of Amos, and Amos the father of Josiah,                                                                                                                                    11:       Josiah the father of Jechoniah and his brothers, at the time of the deportation to Babylon.
12:       And after the deportation to Babylon: Jechoniah was the father of Shealtiel, and Shealtiel the father of Zerubbabel,
13:       Zerubbabel the father of Abiud, and Abiud the father of Eliakim, and Eliakim the father of Azor,
14:       Azor the father of Zadok, and Zadok the father of Achim, and Achim the father of Eliud,
15:       Eliud the father of Eleazar, and Eleazar the father of Matthan, and Matthan the father of Jacob,
16:       Jacob the father of Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born,  who is called Christ.
17:       So all the generations from Abraham to David were fourteen generations, and from David to the deportation to Babylon fourteen generations, and from the deportation to Babylon to the Christ fourteen generations.

Exegesis:

1. This grand opening to the Gospel of Mathew is a theological statement not a pedigree. It is a statement above all about who Mary and Jesus are, not a statement of historical fact.
2. In the first instance, the list of names – mostly male – are all purely Jewish. The blood line is pure and stretches back through the major events and personages of the history of the Chosen People.
3. After listing forty-two generation – 3 x 14, a symbolic number referring to the time of persecution – we read, “Jacob the father of Joseph” and would have expected the text to continue: ‘Joseph the father of Jesus’. But there is a great shift. The text reads, surprisingly, “Joseph, the husband of Mary of whom Jesus was born, who is called Christ.”
4. This is the great theological statement. The pedigree is not enough; the purity of the blood line is ineffective; there is no value in the list of males. Joseph is listed simply as husband. The focus shifts entirely to Mary. It is she who gives birth to the Christ. She puts an end to the pride of Israel; She breaks with the tradition and starts things off anew, she whose womb is empty – according to the thinking of the day – in which a wholly new creation begins, as new as when the words were said “Let there be light”.
5. Other women are mentioned in the list: Tamar the widow; Rahab the prostitute; Ruth the non-Jew; the wife of Uriah, the adulteress. Mary, the fifth woman to be mentioned, is like none of these. She is married, yet virginal.

Kālī

1. Kālī brandishes the sword. She will do away with the demons who oppress the people. She carries the sword in her raised left hand, the demon’s head in the other left hand. She has slaughtered him and freed the devotees who appealed to her.

Mary and Kālī

1. Mary likewise brandishes the sword. She wields the sword of faith and cuts more surely than Kālī. She does away with the pride of generation, procreation, pedigree, male line, blood, race, culture, the whole patriarchal view. She will do this because she introduces an altogether different dimension. She cuts, she liberates, not out of anger or resentment, for there is no retaliation. She simply acknowledges that these things are inadequate; they cannot save. They may have once been valuable and necessary but now they are a liability.
2. She knows there is another way. She rejects the lineage because she has a deeper knowledge. She has a special relationship with the Spirit, of whom she is the icon. She wields the sword of the knowledge of things unseen, the knowledge, which comes by faith, the knowledge of things undreamed since the foundation of the world. The shift is truly the wielding of a sword. She does away with one system and establishes another.

Questions:

1. All are drawn to take on the attitude of the virgin and her sword. The questions then come. What in your life do you see is ineffective, counterproductive, oppressive to yourself and to others? What do you wish to cut away? What must be cut away in society and in the attitude of people? What must the sword of faith cut away in the life of the Church; what attitudes and institutions, what approaches and prejudices, what presumptions?
2. What do you believe in really, not willfully but in a way that is inspired; peaceful yet at the same time terrible to those who are attached to such things. What brilliant darkness of faith dwells in you, what passion which can give birth to a new world, to the true Christ?
3. What does Mary, the true Kālī, cut away in you? What things does she question and put to an end in your life?

II            Kālī dancing,           Mary – the Spirit

Luke 1:       26: In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth,
27: to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David; and the virgin’s name was Mary.
28: And he came to her and said, “Hail, O favored one, the Lord is with you!”
29: But she was greatly troubled at the saying, and considered in her mind what sort of greeting this might be.
30: And the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God.
31: And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus.
32: He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High; and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David,
33: and he will reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of his kingdom there will be no end.”
34: And Mary said to the angel, “How shall this be, since I have no husband?”
35: And the angel said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God.
36: And behold, your kinswoman Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son; and this is the sixth month with her who was called barren.
37: For with God nothing will be impossible.”
38: And Mary said, “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.” And the angel departed from her.

Exegesis:

1. Gabriel comes to an insignificant young woman, in an insignificant town; she is without children, without education, without connections. The angel comes announces that she will bear the Son of David, but she rejects the offer. Her statement “How can this come about since I am a virgin” is a refusal made in the delicate middle-eastern way, for she is not naïve; she knows exactly how these things come about. She is waiting for more. The angel has not delivered his whole message. So Gabriel goes on to explain that “the Holy Spirit will overshadow” her.
2. With the message now complete, Mary accepts the proposal. She indeed wants the Spirit to come and possess her; nothing else will do. She is inspired by the Spirit to demand the Spirit. She and the Spirit have a relationship which she has known from the start. No man will possess her; only the Spirit will do since she is the icon of the Spirit.
3. The idea of Mary as handmaid has been inadequately understood. Her ‘fiat’, “let it be done to me”, has been interpreted as submission. Rather, her ‘fiat’ is linked to the ‘fiat’ of creation when God says “Let there be light”. Her acceptance is also a command. She is both in command and also in obedience. Only those can command who have learned to be obedient. Those who stay simply in obedience and never move on to command are simply subservient.
4. Mary has the obedience of faith, which the capacity to move mountains, and to bring heaven to earth. Her ‘fiat’ is not so that ordinary light should shine but that the true Light should be seen in the world.
5. Her faith is not propositional in the first place but the interior knowledge of which propositions are the reflection. Her faith is union with the Spirit. It is the perception and production of the future. Mary makes the future come to be.

Kālī

1. Kālī dances. It is the dance of frenzy and possession. She is the energy of Ïiva who is effectively a śava, a corpse beneath her feet. She dances because she is essentially śakti, energy, power, capacity. Śiva can do nothing of himself. He can do all when Kālī is with him.

Mary – Kālī

1. She will manifest the Word in flesh. Her birthing is her dancing. Just as the devadasī of the ancient temples of India dances before the image of the deity, expressing him, so Mary performs her dance. Inspired by the music of the Spirit she will manifest the hidden Word in a way unimagined before. She dances a dance never seen before.
2. Just as the Spirit is in no sense the tool of God nor just the relationship between Father and Son but is truly God in a way that is completely free and initiatory, so too Mary dances in a way never seen before, inimitable. This Spirit/Woman, who is of the Spirit since the first moment of her existence, is completely free, going as she wills, just as the Spirit comes and goes in a manner no one can know. She refused the first invitation to dance, which Gabriel made. She accepts the second invitation to the dance.
3. She will dance at the cross, as she sees her son lifeless as Ïiva. Her dance will be the joy of the Spirit that he breathes into her.
4. Her dance breaks down all the structure humans put into place with such effort. The stones of the temple, made by human hands, fall down at the sound of the dance. We have frozen Mary in her beauty. We have tamed her. We are overwhelmed by her fearsome power. But she invites us to be overshadowed by the Spirit, possessed by the Spirit, and join her to dance according to the Spirit-music, for she and the Spirit are one.

Questions:

1. What is your dance? If you had wings to fly where would you go? How would you move? Are you staid, ‘stuck in the mud’, frightened, dispirited, frozen? Where are you free and not inhibited by others?
2. Observe the dancing that is in you. See the dance of the “Spirit who comes and goes” – in the emotions, in the play of mind and heart. Observe the energies in your own body, the inspirations of the mind, without fear. What music is playing in you and urging you to let go? How drop the frigidity and let the fire possess you? When do the categories of the mind cease; when does the freedom of the Spirit overshadow you? Allow your heart to sing, and your being to fly. Let Mary be in you to lead you in the Spirit of the dance.
3. What is the dance in the Church? What is Mary’s dance in the Church? She leads us, if only we would allow ourselves to be caught up in her excitement.
4. There are false spirits, but these are noticed when the music ceases, the joy goes out, the excitement abates. The music becomes noise.
5. In this dance, we leave aside all knowledge, and enter into rapture, not knowing where we have come from or where we shall go. The Spirit inhabits our spirit, possesses our spirit, and overshadows our spirit. The Spirit brings us to birth so that we are spirit.
9. III       Kālī the goddess,    Mary, Queen of Heaven

Luke 1:           39: In those days Mary arose and went with haste into the hill country, to a city of Judah,
40: and she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth.
41: And when Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, the babe leaped in her womb; and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit
42: and she exclaimed with a loud cry, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb!
43: And why is this granted me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?
44: For behold, when the voice of your greeting came to my ears, the babe in my womb leaped for joy.
45: And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord.”

Exegesis:

1. Mary, the young woman, does not hesitate to go on foot for a journey of several days. How did she look after herself? She is plucky.
2. She goes to the hill country of Judea and greets her cousin Elizabeth, and her joy is infectious. The mere sound of her voice penetrates down into the womb of the old woman so that her foetus leaps, “dances”, with joy. The old and the young meet, the Old and New Testaments meet; the two foetuses meet. It is the visitation: in Mary God has visited his people
3. Elizabeth cries out, acknowledging her as ‘the Mother of my Lord’, giving her the high title of Queen Mother, the woman in the kingdom who, even more than the wife of the king, had access and power. For in those days the king had many queens but only one Queen Mother. Elizabeth acknowledges Mary as the Queen of Heaven and earth.

Kālī

1. Kālī is the deity greatly revered in West Bengal, dangerous and beneficent, all powerful and feared. She is both ferocious and the giver of boons, as befits a goddess who is energy itself.
2. Joy is not a noticeable feature of Kālī. Yet, her more benign representations try to show another aspect of her complex character, for she does bring relief and salvation.

Mary – the Kālī

1. Mary is not like Astarte, the Babylonian Queen of Heaven. She is not a goddess in the way that God is God. She is powerful, precisely because of her vulnerability. Her powerlessness is her power.   Where others place obstacles in the paths of goodness, she does not. As the creature totally accepting to be creature, she has the power of God, for he cannot resist her receptivity. She allows him to be God. She gives God purpose. Therefore grace upon grace is poured into her lap.
2. The Giver gives according to the capacity of the recipient. Mary not only receives the gift but determines what the gift is to be. Mary is capable of receiving infinitely because she is the icon of the infinite Spirit.
3. She has every gift and therefore can bestow every gift. She does so freely since she is the icon of the Sprit who is free.

Questions:

1. What is your deepest joy? Name those moments where your heart leaps. Are there none? What makes you feel really good about yourself?
2. Your joy is your power. The joy you communicate makes you light of the world. Those peaks experiences are the fruitful moments of your life when you are triumphant, effective.
3. Whenever the eternal joy moves in you it is because the Word of God has been heard in you. It is Mary who gives that Word; it is the Spirit who brings you to the Word.

IV           Kālī the beneficent,       Mary, Mother of God

Luke 2:        6: And while they were there, the time came for her to be delivered.
7: And she gave birth to her first-born son and wrapped him in swaddling cloths, and laid him in a manger.

Exegesis:

1. The Emperor Augustus considered himself the great benefactor of the world and had bronze plaques placed in the forum to proclaim the era of peace which he has established. The Jewish messianic imagination looked for a conquering warrior Son of David. But it is really Mary, the insignificant woman from Galilee who has brought the peace this world cannot give.

Kālī

1. In her left hands Kālī holds the sword and the head of the demon. Around her neck is the garland of skulls; severed arms form a belt around her waist.
2. But her right hands are beneficent. With one hand she commands her devotees ‘do not be afraid’ and with the other she grants boons. She is both terrible and beneficent. She takes and she gives. The animals sacrificed to her are cut up and distributed as food. The blood from the severed neck is placed on the forehead as a sign of benediction.

 Mary – Kālī:

1. Mary the virgin has demolished the pride of ancestry and tradition. She emasculates and empowers. She gives the sign. Wise with the wisdom of the Spirit she gives the threefold sign: “the child, wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in the manger”.
2. In presenting the child Mary shows the absurdity of the value of violence and control. She is giving the child who holds every value and hope, infinite promise, every possibility. He will grow and become the saviour of the world. Who is the saviour, he who saves or she who provides the saviour? God gives, and Mary gives: she and God are one. She knows this as she places the child tenderly, for she is aware of her acts.
3. She wraps him in swaddling clothes not only to protect him from injury but also to determine from the start that he will again become still and wrapped in cloth, the long winding band of the shroud. Him, to whom she gives birth, she also sends to death.
4. Then she places him in the manger, the feeding box of the animals, because she destines him as food for the world. She is the housekeeper of the world.

Questions:

1. What is your sign? What is the symbol of your life? What do you give that expresses all that you are. Draw it or write the words down. Allow the mind to be infiltrated with the wisdom of the revealing Spirit. Show what is your gift. Your gift is God’s gift: the one Christ. Be as aware as Mary when she gave the one threefold sign. She treasured all these things in her heart; likewise spend some time treasuring this sign you have given to the world for its redemption.
2. In what way do you die? In what way are your rejected and by whom? This shadow in your life indicates the way in which you can be saving.
3. In what way are you food for the world? We give food in imitation of Mary and by virtue of Mary. Her act enables our act. She who is blessed among women is active among both men and women.

V        Kālī’s tongue,         Mary and the Blood

John 2:          1: On the third day there was a marriage at Cana in Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there;
2: Jesus also was invited to the marriage, with his disciples.
3: When the wine failed, the mother of Jesus said to him, “They have no wine.”
4: And Jesus said to her, “O woman, what have you to do with me? My hour has not yet come.”
5: His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.”
6: Now six stone jars were standing there, for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons.
7: Jesus said to them, “Fill the jars with water.” And they filled them up to the brim.
8: He said to them, “Now draw some out, and take it to the steward of the feast.” So they took it.
9: When the steward of the feast tasted the water now become wine, and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew), the steward of the feast called the bridegroom
10: and said to him, “Every man serves the good wine first; and when men have drunk freely, then the poor wine; but you have kept the good wine until now.”
11: This, the first of his signs, Jesus did at Cana in Galilee, and manifested his glory; and his disciples believed in him.

Exegesis:

1. At the wedding feast in Cana when the wine is running out, Mary turns to Jesus. He realizes she is asking for more than wine, and he seeks a delay, just as in the garden when the cup of the passion is handed to him, he will draw back. He says to Mary, “My hour has not yet come”, just as he will say to the Father, with whom Mary is at one, “Let this chalice pass me by”. But Mary disregards his protest. She will have the blood. She wants the best drink, not wine but blood. She is confident that she will succeed and commands the servants “Do whatever he tells you”. She sends him to his passion.

Kālī

1. Animals are brought to Kālī every day. On the great feasts bullocks or better still animals, which are considered to be impure are felled with a great axe by the officiating priest. Kālī’s great tongue is red with blood. She sucks up the blood of demons but also the life-blood of the world.
2. Kālī drinks the blood, and gives life-giving blood. At Kāmākhyā, her great temple in Assam, the reddish water which pours out of the yoni the cloven rock at the heart of the temple is understood to be the menstruation of the earth and indeed the menstruation of Kālī herself. Kālī is the goddess of blood.

Mary – Kālī

1. Mary too wants the blood. She will save mankind from blood by giving it blood. The great blood lust is satisfied only by the terrible outpouring of the most precious blood, that of the God-man greater than any ox. There is no blood like it. The “best wine” has been kept till now.
2. This is because Mary perceives the possibilities in Jesus. She wants the “finest essences”. She wants the life of the God-man, the eternal covenant in his blood. Just as the Spirit drives Jesus into the desert to do battle with Satan, Mary sends Jesus to the cross.
3. Mary is both fearsome and life-giving. Her thirst will be satisfied as she stands before the cross and sees the life-blood pouring from his hands and feet and side. She will see the finest essences given to her in the first instance as she stands nearest the cross, but also to the whole of humanity. She did not want the seed of David, but the blood of the Son of David. Her ambition is total.
4. This is because Mary is the icon of the Spirit who proceeds from Father and Son, for whom there must first be Father and Son so that the one Spirit may arise from them both, triumphant. The Spirit is the apex of the Trinity.
5. And Mary smiles as she receives the blood, and gives life to the world.

 Questions:

1. What is your thirst? What do you really want?
2. What is the finest aspect of your person waiting to be brought to the surface? In your hour of passion, what will come out of you? What life-giving blood needs the experience of suffering to pour from you?
3. For whom would you shed your blood?
4. What blood exists between you and those around you: bad blood or good? Are you ‘blood brother’ with anyone?
5. Mary wants our blood also. She, who is raised in her totality body and soul in heaven, is fully active in the world. She wants the finest essences and will have them. To you she also says: ‘They have no wine’. What ‘wine’ will you give, what blood? She will smile as she drinks, and her smile is intoxicating. It makes us worthwhile. It justifies us, for Mary is the icon of the Spirit and her smile is the smile of the Spirit. When the Spirit smiles on us, then we know happiness. The smile of the Spirit is the beatific vision.

VI        Kālī and sacrifice,         Mary the Consort     

John 19:      25: But standing by the cross of Jesus were his mother, and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene.                                                                            26: When Jesus saw his mother, and the disciple whom he loved standing near, he said to his mother, “Woman, behold, your son!”                                                                                       27: Then he said to the disciple, “Behold, your mother!” And from that hour the disciple took her to his own home.

Exegesis:

1. At the cross stand the three Mary’s: the unmarried woman, Mary of Magdala, Mary the wife of Clopas and Mary the mother. Jesus, however, never calls her ‘Mary’. His title for her is “Woman”. It is an address of admiration and also a claiming of her and a command for her to be Woman. She is the woman who sums up all womanhood and every stage of womanhood. She is virgin and consort and mother. He is the Man to her the Woman.
2. She is his mother, but now he gives her a son. Through her Christ gives rise to Christ. She will give birth to Christ in every way.

Kālī

1. To Kālīghat, in Calcutta, goats are brought in their thousands, with garlands of red flower around their necks, a portent of what will happen to them. They are slaughtered before the hall in front of the sanctuary where the ‘statue’ of Kālī is found, that black granite pillar on which are carved the three eyes, the two eyes of ordinary sight and the third eye of insight. With her great tongue she ‘drinks’ the blood of the goats while the devotees crowd in the narrow passageway wishing to have sight of her and to receive her blessing. Kālī wants sacrifice and will give blessing.
2. The name ‘Kālī’ can also be understood as ‘black’. She is the dark goddess and her pillar in her main temple in Calcutta is rightly black. She is best worshipped at night. Her consort, Ïiva is worshipped principally on ‘Śivarātrī’, the darkest moment in the year, at the full moon in the darkest month of winter.

Mary – Kālī

1. Mary stands there, not just the mater dolorosa, the mater lacrimosa, although she knows sorrow and desolation. As she sees her son dying she receives a son. It is a scene of dying and birthgiving. It is archetypal. It contains within it every meaning and significance.
2. Mary stands there and wants to see the fullness of love. She wants to hear Jesus’ last great cry, which contains every word and every revelation, where the fullness of sorrow and joy coincide. She has given birth to the Word for this: to hear the paroxysm of the Word. Mary, the icon of the Spirit, wants to hear the message of love. The Spirit who is Love wishes to hear the Word of love from God who is Love. All is love in this moment of agony.
3. The Spirit arises freely from the Two. The Spirit is God. Since the freedom and essence of God are identically the same, the Spirit freely arises as God. Spontaneously and without cause the Spirit arises. How is this possible? It is the mystery of divinity, which we are only beginning to explore.
4. Mary, the woman of faith, wants to lose her son, her dearest work. She wants to go to the utmost depth of faith where there is no light, no word, no knowledge, bleakest desolation and abandonment. Faith, that darksome light, always involves sacrifice; Mary, with her whole being, wants to experience in herself the fullness of faith and therefore the totality of sacrifice. She wants to come to that fullness of life, which is available only in the totality of death. She wants to come to that one moment which is both the dying and the rising.
5. Mary fully assumed into heaven wishes to hear with her glorified ears the cry of love escaping from our lips. She heard it from the crucified one. She wants to hear it from those who follow his path. For his passion is not complete till all his followers have also known how to cry out in faith and experienced the darkest pit of faith. For this cry of love is the best. It reveals God.
6. She is “blessed among women”, the one whom the whole world loves. She wants to be loved by all. Just as the Church will make up for all that has yet to be undergone by Christ in his passion, so too the Church will make the joy of Mary complete. What will be given to her that will make her cry out in joy and transport us to heaven itself? She wants the finest essence, the finest jewels, the universe offered to her. As the icon of the Spirit who requires both the Father and the Son, Mary requires all to be hers.

Questions:

1. What cry of joy or desolation takes you to the heights and reveals to you the fullness of love? What sound takes you into the divine mystery?
2. What limits are there to your hearing; what deafness assails you?
3. What should you have said but did not say? What is it you most wanted to say but perhaps no one has let you say it. What joy rises in your hearts which you want to cry to proclaim to the highest heavens? Many silence the many.
4. What is the word you want to hear? What should have been said and was never said? What silence surrounded you when you needed to hear the word of encouragement, the word of love, the word of forgiveness?
5. What you want to hear is what you need to say. Hearing and saying go together. If you want to hear the word of love you must say the word of love. If you want to hear encouragement you must, by abandoning all desire to hear such words, say them. Sacrifice is found in abandoning the wish to hear what needed to be heard and to say it instead. Not having heard the word of love which we so need, we nevertheless say the words of love. This transition is the sacrifice, the dying which is the blessing. For in the saying of words which you needed to hear and were not said to you, then you will hear the words coming from above.
6. Of what and whom do we say to Mary “here is your son”?
7. In what way can our flesh be transformed into Spirit and be given to her.

VII        Kālī the warrior,           Mary, Lady of Victories, Immaculate Conception

Genesis 3         14: The Lord God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this, cursed are you above all cattle, and above all wild animals; upon your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life.
15: I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.”

Apocalypse 12       1: And a great portent appeared in heaven, a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars;
2: she was with child and she cried out in her pangs of birth, in anguish for delivery.
3: And another portent appeared in heaven; behold, a great red dragon, with seven heads and ten horns, and seven diadems upon his heads.
4: His tail swept down a third of the stars of heaven, and cast them to the earth. And the dragon stood before the woman who was about to bear a child, that he might devour her child when she brought it forth;
5: she brought forth a male child, one who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron, but her child was caught up to God and to his throne,
6: and the woman fled into the wilderness, where she has a place prepared by God, in which to be nourished for one thousand two hundred and sixty days.
7: Now war arose in heaven, Michael and his angels fighting against the dragon; and the dragon and his angels fought,
8: but they were defeated and there was no longer any place for them in heaven.
9: And the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the Devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world — he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him.
10: And I heard a loud voice in heaven, saying, “Now the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Christ have come, for the accuser of our brethren has been thrown down, who accuses them day and night before our God.
…
13: And when the dragon saw that he had been thrown down to the earth, he pursued the woman who had borne the male child.
14: But the woman was given the two wings of the great eagle that she might fly from the serpent into the wilderness, to the place where she is to be nourished for a time, and times, and half a time.
15: The serpent poured water like a river out of his mouth after the woman, to sweep her away with the flood.
16: But the earth came to the help of the woman, and the earth opened its mouth and swallowed the river which the dragon had poured from his mouth.
17: Then the dragon was angry with the woman, and went off to make war on the rest of her offspring, on those who keep the commandments of God and bear testimony to Jesus. And he stood on the sand of the sea.

Kālī

1. Kālī is the warrior goddess. When the gods have become powerless, she arises in her fury at the demons. Every drop of blood from their severed heads gives rise to further demons, but she drinks the blood and continues to wield her sword, finally defeating the demon army. She is fearsome; she is victorious.

Mary – Kālī

1. Mary – meek and mild, soft eyed and passive –has become unbelievable since reality is not like that; God is not like that. She is never portrayed in battle gear and yet she engages in warfare, for there is enmity between her seed and the seed of the serpent. She crushes its head and it strikes her heel. This endless warfare is clearly stated. Where is the look of anger, the fury, the energy of destruction in the portrayals of the Virgin? We need to learn from Kālī who in her fury destroys the demons and drinks their blood.
2. But Kālī is also weak, for she imitates the demons. Kālī may be stronger than they, but she uses the same weapons. Mary, by contrast, does not copy Satan. She is so totally powerful that she is calm. She has no trouble in removing him from contention. From the first moment of her existence Mary is without sin and without weakness. She, the Pure, is the Lady of Victories.
3. If her smile blesses, her frown condemns. If her smile justifies, her frown damns to hell fire. Do the artists ever portray her glaring in disgust? When she turns away her enemies are crushed. She removes herself into the ‘desert’ and the flood of Satan dries up. This act is strong, not weak.
4. Assumed in heaven she still crushes the seed of Satan. Her silence is deafening. As icon of the Spirit her revulsion is the burning fire of the Spirit.

Questions:

1. What does Mary see in the Church, only to turn away in disgust? What does she smile at?
2. Who do you turn from, and rightly so? It is not for us to approve all that happens. On the contrary, with the enlightenment of the Spirit we condemn what is to be condemned. With the confidence that comes from inspiration, we say no. With our feet we make our judgment known, walking away from what is unjust. This will bring even the most powerful to heel. Silence is deafening and debilitating.
3. Do you have the courage to say no and to withhold your approval and so to condemn?

VIII       Kālī and time,        Mary, Mother of the Church, The Assumption

Acts 1:       12: Then they returned to Jerusalem from the mount called Olivet, which is near Jerusalem, a Sabbath day’s journey away;
13: and when they had entered, they went up to the upper room, where they were staying, Peter and John and James and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James the son of Alphaeus and Simon the Zealot and Judas the son of James.
14: All these with one accord devoted themselves to prayer, together with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brothers.

Acts 21: When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place.
2: And suddenly a sound came from heaven like the rush of a mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting.
3: And there appeared to them tongues as of fire, distributed and resting on each one of them.
4: And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.

Kālī

1. The title ‘Kālī’ can also be understood as ‘she who is time’ (kāla). Mistress of life and death she determines the time of birth and the time of death. She brings all things to their end even as she gives boons.

Mary – Kālī

1. Mary is the icon of the Spirit. She gave birth to the Word whom she drew down from heaven. She wishes to bear anew. She who gave birth in Bethlehem will give birth in eternity. She wanted to be assumed body and soul so that she might give birth, body and soul, to those who please her. She can do this because she is not incomplete, or powerless. She is integral.
2. She, the woman who is faith, wants the best of essences: that we should be faith. She desires that we become the Word of love. She will receive all this and give it flesh. She will clothe us with her glorious flesh just as she clothed the Word with her human flesh. She will cherish us as her flesh.
3. At Pentecost heaven begins to come to earth and earth begins to rise into heaven. Her giving birth to the Church in Jerusalem is already the beginning of the birth in heaven.         She is Mother of the Church in time but above all in eternity.

Subtle breath (prāṇa) and Spirit

“Thus by focusing on the breath and its natural recitation, haṁsa, there is an increasing sense of enrichment and empowerment, giving and receiving every fullness in heaven and on earth. This is the divine state, a state of intense joy and value.”

Every living creature breathes. For humans the first inhalation is taken at the moment of birth and continues at the rate of approximately 21,000 times each day until the dying breath. This quite spontaneous cycle of respiration is called ‘a recitation without words (ajapa-japa), the natural (sahaja) recitation proper to all living beings. Breath is thus the natural symbol of life.

Since humans are made in the image of the divine, the meditators by focusing on the inhalation and exhalation find themselves transported into a divine state.

The inward breath is considered to sound like ‘ha’; and the outward breath like ‘sa’ so that breath is said to sound like ‘haṁsa’ which in Sanskrit means ‘the swan’ (literally ‘Siberian goose’) that floats on the tranquil surface of the lake and plunges its head into the water to feed.

In this way the meditator acquires the attributes of “being in the world but not of it” (cf. Jn 17.11, 16), raised to heaven while still living in time (Col 3.3), both externalised and internalised. It is thus a moment of balance (samāna) where the outer and inner attain an equilibrium, like the arms of a beam balance coming to rest. At this point, at the moment of equableness (samāna), both of reserve and involvement, of giving and receiving, of exhalation (prāṇa) and inhalation (apāna): at this point a rush of energy (kuṇḍalinī) takes place in the very centre (madhya) of the body, rising upwards (udāna) and filling not only the person but the whole universe, permeating (vyāna) all things. It is a moment of empowerment and great tranquillity, an effortless exercise of blessing.

The conscious act of inhaling and exhaling air deepens and expands so that the meditator discovers a great pleasure and satisfaction in this life-giving act. Indeed, going further the practitioner acquires the sense of taking in the whole energy of the universe and taking in every good. This act of breathing expands even further so that the meditator feels like the first man lying on the face of the earth and receiving the very breath of God or like the disciples on Easter Day who receive into their lungs the Holy Spirit whom Jesus breathes from out his mouth, giving them every authority to retain or loose from sin. Indeed, the meditator feels that same authority, breathing out blessing on the universe, to confirm it and bring it to fullness.

Thus by focusing on the breath and its natural recitation, haṁsa, there is an increasing sense of enrichment and empowerment, giving and receiving every fullness in heaven and on earth. This is the divine state, a state of intense joy and value.

Masculine and feminine concepts of deity:

the contribution of Kashmir Shaivism 

Paper delivered at the Conference

‘A Biblical Odyssey’

Monash University

2001

Synopsis

”The Hebrew prophets successfully opposed the crude hierogamies of Canaan but in eliminating the image of the feminine from the godhead raised issues which demand a solution. How can the masculine and the feminine effectively be involved in the notion of the godhead? Kashmir Shaivism, an important system of thought which flourished a thousand years ago in Kashmir but was rediscovered only last century, provides some valuable insights into the question. Light and its splendour are imaged forth in the human couple.”

 Paper

When the Hebrews encountered the fertility cults of Canaan they both copied and decried them. The building of Baal’s house, which can be understood as the chamber for the hieros gamos, the ritual marriage of Baal and his consort,[i] may also have provided the model for the construction of Solomon’s temple, while Canaanite fertility magic may stand behind the libation performed during the feast of Tabernacles.[ii] Amos clearly condemns the ritual prostitution, which occurred during this feast. (Amos 2:7) Deuteronomy (23:18) is even more explicit and implies that the practice had become a feature of Hebrew life. Indeed, the frequent condemnation of the ‘’high places’’ is effectively a condemnation of the fertility ritual of Baal-Hadad and the goddess Astarte. Nevertheless Hebrew society was equally concerned with the fruitfulness of the fields so that Yahweh, in place of Baal and the Queen of Heaven, was deemed to give life. He alone by his word blessed the living creatures and made them fruitful. Unaided he planted a garden in Eden.

The Hebrew prophets rejected the hierogamies and dispensed with the goddesses of Canaan but their very success raises issues in our day. In what sense can both male and female be seen as an expression of the godhead?

I           Kashmir Shaivism

Kashmir is best known today as a theatre of conflict between India and Pakistan, but one thousand years ago it experienced a golden age. Buddhism and Vaishnavism and the varieties of Shaivism produced a vast literature. From the valleys of Kashmir Buddhist missionaries journeyed to Tibet and founded Buddhism there a second time in conjunction with missionaries from Bengal. Buddhists were sent in return from Tibet to Kashmir to copy and translate the Sanskrit texts. From Kashmir Shaivasiddhanta works were carried to South India to form the basis of religious practice in Tamil Nadu.

This paper will focus on a branch of Shaivism commonly and inaccurately called “Kashmir Shaivism”. Whereas the Shaivasiddhanta School is dualist and clearly separates the god Shiva from what has become equal to him, Kashmir Shaivism is non-dual and proclaims the identity of Shiva and all things. Every form and event is an expression of his being just as the same dancer expresses himself in his various movements.

Kashmir Shaivism flourished for some two hundred years, beginning with Utpaladeva and reaching through Somananda to Abhinavagupta whose disciple Ksemaraja is the last significant writer. Of these writers Abhinavagupta is by far the most important but only in the nineteen-twenties were his writings transliterated from the sarada script of Kashmir into the better-known devanagari script and published. Only in the sixties and seventies were they translated into a European language, mostly Italian and French, but scholarly interest is growing rapidly.

According to the idealism of Kashmir Shaivism the god Shiva and all reality are none other than consciousness. Just as the banyan tree exists already in its seed, so too all reality is to be found in consciousness, which is personal, aham, ’’I am’. It is pure consciousness, not a consciousness of this or that particular object. It is like a mirror which of itself portrays no image and, therefore, can bear any image on its surface. Consciousness is void and full at the same time.

Consciousness is awareness and it is personal but not individual, for individuality suggests duality and Kashmir Shaivism is non-dual. Neither is it monistic like the Vedanta of Shankaracarya who flourished some two hundred years earlier. On the other hand, consciousness is not ignorant of its own consciousness; light cannot be obscure to itself. The transparency of light to itself is a revelation, which arises spontaneously. Aristotelian concepts of causality do not apply here. This revelation of consciousness to itself is the supreme word, paravac, of which all other words and all other forms of knowledge are a limitation. Consciousness and its supreme word are distinct but not separate.

This revelation is dynamic. The knowledge of the self by the self, the splendour of light is Shakti, which is the Sanskrit term for energy, power, and ability. Thus Shiva and Shakti are to be found at the highest level.

The distinction and identity between Shiva and Shakti is echoed in the teaching of Gregory Palamas, the great fourteenth century Greek theologian, the last of the Greek Fathers, who distinguishes between the essence and the uncreated energies of God[iii] and rejects the jibe ‘ditheist’ made by his opponent Barlaam of Calabria.[iv] The uncreated energy is perceived bodily in the transfiguration of the Christian. To this effect Palamas quotes John Damascene, ‘’the glory of the divinity has become also the glory of the body’’.[v] It is not possible, however, to pursue at this point the parallels between the hesychasm of Gregory Palamas and Kashmir Shaivism.

In contrast to the essentialism of Greek philosophy, Kashmir Shaivism is concerned with revelation. If Greek philosophy and its heirs hold to a doctrine of being, Indian thought holds to a doctrine of revelation. One cannot ask the question: ‘’Does God exist?’’ When asked this question, the Buddha responded with a stunning silence. One may only ask the question: ‘‘What is manifest, what is revealed?’’ to which question each person must answer from their own experience although they can be helped to perceive more fully.

In the Indian legends, Shiva is a male deity while the term shakti is grammatically feminine. In the thinking of Kashmir Shaivism the highest reality is essentially masculine and feminine so that these two elements are deemed essentially to exist at the highest level. Thus, in the rather dramatic and unsettling iconography of India the deity is shown to be half-male, half female, Ardhanarishvara: the half-man half-woman god.

Of these, revelation is the dynamic element while consciousness is passive, so to speak. Shiva is active only by virtue of his Shakti, which is the capacity, freedom, power, activity, and manifestation of Shiva. “Shiva shava” is a well-known expression meaning Shiva is a corpse, “shava”, if Shakti is not present. Thus in another equally striking portrayal, the female deity, Kali, is seen to dance on the prostrate and lifeless form of the god.

At this point one can hear the ancient protest arising from the desert sand of Sinai and repeated almost two thousand years later in Mecca. However, Kashmir Shaivism is not crudely anthropomorphic and proposes that the Unsurpassable reality is consciousness and its revelation, which are the basis of the distinction between male and female.

To complicate matters a little further, consciousness is sometimes understood to be the goddess while the god Shiva is quite simply the void, the totally apophatic of which nothing can be said and which is the ground, so to speak, upon which consciousness rests. The utter darkness of Shiva is the source of unlimited consciousness.

The godhead proceeds to deploy the whole of manifest reality. Just as the Book of Proverbs portrays wisdom at play (Prov. 8:30-31) Kashmir Shaivism speaks of the godhead at play – lila. In one of the most celebrated images from the temple of Cidambaram in Tamil Nadu, Shiva is portrayed as Nataraj, the Lord of the dance. The world is a revelation of Shiva just as the dance reveals the dancer. The world is a manifestation of himself; it is not something other than himself. “The whole world is his shaktis”. Shiva transcends all and yet all consists of him.

The revelation of the self to itself is reflected in the unfurling of the world. The cosmos is a series of manifestations of the primordial revelation, an eddying out, a revelation of revelation. Emanation leads to emanation in a series of births so that the process of manifestation is seen as feminine. It starts from the subject ”I am” and moves through the various means of knowing and ends with the known, the world of objects of which earth is presented as the most inert. Or again, the spontaneous arising of the flower from the stem and of the fruit from the flower is comparable to the spontaneous arising of Shakti from Shiva. Thus the flower and its fruit are visible examples of Shiva and Shakti. Since the whole of reality is a dynamic and changing process, all reality can be understood as the interplay of gods and goddesses.

In the thought of Kashmir Shaivism, the primordial couple, Shiva and Shakti, is found best concretised and realised in the coupling of male and female. If these see themselves as just ordinary man and woman, they will be impure, they will feel confined, inert and powerless and their pleasure will not have the touch of divinity nor will it open their minds to universal consciousness. But if by the grace of Shiva they understand who they really are, then their relationship will be seen as the crystallization, the image, murti, of the supreme couple and their bliss will be boundless.

The world is an emission. It is also a reabsorption. The whole of reality vibrates. Emission and reabsorption succeed each other and indeed co-exist in oscillation. Out of the void, the zero, comes the multiplicity of objects and principles but equally there is a reverse process whereby the multiplicity returns to its source, not so much by a destruction of the universe in the great cosmic cycle of Brahma but by its proper understanding. The process of reabsorption goes in the opposite direction so that the world of objects is subsumed into the means of knowledge and ends in the universal subject, who is all in all. The multiplicity of things is overcome when the yogi understands not only that he is Shiva but also that the whole world is nothing but his Shakti in manifest form. In his meditation the yogi comes to know his essential emptiness and simultaneously perceives the Shakti arising in him and witnesses the panoply of the world springing from her.

The woman occupies an important position in this process. The goddess Kali dancing with her garland of skulls destroys the constructions both material and mental, which are elaborated by the human mind, and so brings her devotee to the transcendent plane. With one hand she cuts down, with the other she blesses. With her great tongue she licks up the lifeblood of this transient world. She both destroys and blesses because she liberates.

The same process of return can be experienced in a more pleasant way. Again the woman is essentially involved because she is considered to be particularly attuned to the nature of things. A woman’s cry of delight, for example, springs spontaneously from her experience of bliss so that the cry is a revelation of the highest state. The man who attuned to the exclamation is swept along by it and carried into the following silence and proceeds to its very source, the bliss that originally caused it, and comes to the transcendent level. In this way the woman reveals the godhead and initiates her partner into it. She brings him to his essential nature. She makes him to be what he really is so that he sees her and all the expressions of reality as a manifestation of his own self. This is the true reabsorption, which is not the elimination of the world, but the elimination of its fragmentation.

The same can be applied to any significant experience in whatever domain. The knowledge that concerns Abhinavagupta is not mere information about facts but the knowledge, which puts a person in contact with their essential nature. Mere data is the sort of knowledge which pertains to what he calls ‘bonded animals’’, to those who do indeed know where to find the chaff bag and walk in circles, who pull the mill stone but get no where. Such knowledge is profoundly absurd. Abhinavagupta seeks the knowledge, which leads to liberation and a universal bliss, jagadananda, a relationship of freedom and intimacy with every being. Such knowledge can be found in any situation, whether in the analysis of the stars or in the work of every day, but it is a knowledge, which so pleases the faculties that a person is taken into the knowledge of what transcends all knowledge. The authentic guru, even if he teaches the rules of grammar or the principles of mathematics, gives the knowledge, which leads to liberation.

II         Texts

It may be helpful to look at two texts, which give illustrate some of these points. The first text will deal with the couple considered either as a human couple or as the divine couple. The second text will present the divine couple as inter-personal.

Text I:

In praise of the couple

At the start of his greatest work, the Tantraloka, and of its summary, the Tantrasara and of another major work, the Paratrimsikhavivarana, Abhinavagupta places a poem of homage which can pointedly be read either as praise of Shiva and Shakti or as praise of his parents, Vimala and Narasimhagupta.[vi]

In praise of his parents:

“[My] mother, Vimala, delighted in giving birth to [her son] Abhinava[gupta]; and my father, a man whole and entire in himself, gloried in the name Narasimhagupta [lit. panca-mukha].May my heart, proceeding from the radiant emotion of their union, shine forth as the embodiment of matchless nectar.”

 In praise of Shiva and Shakti:

“The Mother is great with ever new [abhinava] emanation based on the purest [vimala] creative power; and the Father, plenitude itself, conceals [his] splendour by means of [his] five faces [panca-mukha].May my heart, proceeding from the radiant emotion of their union, shine forth as the embodiment of matchless nectar!”

 Commentary:

The ambiguity of the stanza is intentional. The relationship of Shiva and Shakti is expressed in the union of male and female and above all in the union of his parents, so that the stanza is high in their praise. They were effectively Shiva and Shakti when they conceived him. The union of male and female, when undertaken with the mentality Abhinavagupta proposes in his writings gives rise to the experience of the godhead. Furthermore, from the union of Shiva and Shakti the whole world derives just as from the union of his parents Vimala and Simhagupta, Abhinavagupta is born who sees himself as summing up in himself the whole of reality. No false modesty here!

Text 2:

 Shiva and Shakti as interpersonal

The relationship of Shiva and Shakti is investigated briefly in the work called Paratrimkshikavivarana in terms, which are not repeated elsewhere in his writings. It is a significant passage.

 Sentence 1.

Paramesvari, by being addressed in the second person [O Goddess, Listen!] is clearly said to be Shakti by nature. ….

Sentence 2:

Whatever is confined only to itself has only an insentient form, … as in the phrase: “’the jar is standing”. ….

Sentence 3:

However, that which is appears as ’’this’’ by the fact of being addressed, its separate ‘’it-ness’’ is encompassed by the ‘’I-ness” of the addressor – when designated by the word ‘’you’’, acquires the form of Shakti, as in the phrase: “you are standing’’. …

Sentence 4:

Considering, by means of wonder at his own undivided ‘’I’’, the other person’s wonder and freedom at his undivided ‘’I’’ – … – he addresses him, i.e. he designates him in the ‘’second person’’, with ‘’you’’. ….

Sentence 5:

Again, whenever there is an experience of ‘’I’’ in undivided wonder and absolute freedom – as in the phrase ‘’I am standing ‘’- there is a manifestation of the venerable Para, [the goddess, the shakti].

 Commentary:

The first line reads: ‘’Paramesvari, by being addressed in the second person [O Goddess, Listen!] is clearly said to be shakti by nature.‘’ With striking brevity, Abhinavagupta identifies the Shakti as the second person, you” and by implication identifies the first person, “I”, aham, the self, with Shiva. In other words, Shiva and Shakti are essentially related as ‘’I and Thou’’.

Abhinavagupta stresses the point in sentence 3. He cites the process of addressing some person who is turned away, for example, and of bringing them into a personal relationship. That which appears as ‘’this’’, as some object, is addressed, is designated by the word ‘’you’’ and becomes Shakti. This is a quite ordinary human experience. On the one hand, a person who is ignored experiences embarrassment, and may even feel treated as so much rubbish. By contrast, in the Bible, Yahweh is said to call his people by name so that they enter into covenant with him and move from slavery to freedom. Abhinava adds: ‘’By the mere fact of being addressed, its separate ‘’it-ness’’ is encompassed by the ‘’I-ness’ of the addressor.’’ Freedom calls to freedom, a fact which Jean-Paul Sartre, the great Existentialist philosopher, by contrast, cannot admit. For him there cannot be two subjects but only subject and object. Thus in his novel La Nausée, he describes a scene where the protagonist of the novel spends time observing someone in the park and in so doing relishes his sense of freedom. As the observer he feels free while the object of observation, precisely because it is observed, remains fettered and bound. However, just as he entertains this thought he notices that someone else has been watching him and so robbing him of his freedom. It is a moment of nausea, which Sartre then goes on to analyse. In short, for Sartre only one person can be free, freedom cannot be shared, intimacy is impossible. For him “Hell is other people.” Abhinavagupta, however, sees the relationship of Shiva and Shakti essentially as a participation in freedom. Sentence 4 reads: ‘’Considering, by means of wonder at [his own] undivided ‘’I’’, the other person’s wonder and freedom at his undivided ‘’I’’ … he addresses him, he designates him in the ‘’second person’’, with ‘’you’’. ….

The climax comes when the interlocutor is so incorporated into the speaker that there is only one Self, ‘’I am’’. This identity does not mean that the “Thou” is annihilated but that there is not the slightest separation or duality. The revelation “I am” is the spontaneous arising of the supreme Shakti.

Although the passage from which this these few phrases are taken is very short, it is enough to show that in the mind of its author the relationship of Shiva and Shakti is interpersonal, not solipsistic. The godhead is thus relational, ‘’I and Thou’’, a communion. The implications of this for Trinitarian theology are considerable.

 Conclusion:

Does Kashmir Shaivism successfully present the concepts of masculine and feminine in the godhead? Is this just another example of the Indian tendency to absorb all the gods into one’s chosen divinity, reinterpreting the various realities as just the manifestations of a higher reality which transcends them and makes them irrelevant, in the way that the various great religious figures in human history, the Buddha, the Christ, are interpreted as avatars of Krishna. Again, is the linkage of light with Shiva and the masculine on the one hand and the splendour of light with shakti and the feminine on the other so tenuous as to be useless? Furthermore, does this not seem to make only the feminine a reflection of the masculine? Again, how real is it to see the feminine as active and the masculine as passive? Nevertheless Kashmir Shaivism shows, more convincingly than the hierogamies of Canaan, how the masculine and the feminine can represent the divine heart.

 Epilogue

The account of creation given in Genesis 2 describes how the man made from clay moves on from his work as a gardener tending the trees to the act of knowing and naming all the living creatures. The process of creation is not complete, however, until he falls into a deep sleep. As long as he remains active the process cannot successfully be concluded. Therefore he is made dormant and from his prostrate body the woman springs. Only then does the man cry out ‘’this at last is bone from my bones and flesh from my flesh’’. When the divine breath is poured into the clay model lying on the earth, the man becomes a living being. When the woman arises from the figure, Adam breaks into speech and makes covenant, person to person. The process of creation is brought to perfection and all is subsumed into their union so that there is one body, one self.

[i] Gray, The Legacy of Canaan, Leiden, 1965, p.51 note 3 in A Catholic Commentary on Holy Scripture, revised edition, New York, Thomas Nelson, 1975. [first published, 1953 ]

[ii] Gray, The Legacy of Canaan, p. 53.

[iii] This distinction had been foreshadowed by one of the Cappadocians, Gregory of Nazianzen. Daniélou, ‘Mystique de la ténèbre’, p.1873 It has striking resemblances to the distinction between Shiva and shakti in Kashmir Shaivism, a subject for investigation which far exceeds the bounds of this brief essay.

[iv] Palamas, Triads, p.81.

[v] Homily In Transfigura.12, PG XCVI, 564B quoted in Palamas, Triads, p.78. See also Palamas, Défense III.1.19, Vol.II, p.595.

[vi] Jayaratha, the 13th century commentator, makes this clear.