Tantra Illuminated: The Philosophy, History, and Practice of a Timeless Tradition

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The text itself is extraordinary, but the fact that we’re able to read The Recognition Sūtras today—that it exists at all, in any language, let alone in English—is nothing short of a miracle. What makes a practice indisputably tantric is that it envolves diades and their mantras that are revealed in explicitly tantric scriptures.

Don't listen to me, don't listen to Christopher Wallis. Perhaps even visit these Ashrams and Gurus that he recommends. You may even like it. But DO YOUR RESEARCH. Please. (Invocation verse) Now this teaching is not very popular in the West, partially because we value not telling people what to think or believe, but also because the View teachings are not well understood. The popular opinion, then, is that yoga will do its work regardless of what viewpoint you hold, since yoga transcends the mind. This is true but to a very limited extent. It is also true that yoga can only take you so far if its attainments are being used to reinforce a skewed or misaligned view of reality. This explains why some great yogis in medieval India became sorcerers, drunk on power; and why some prominent yogis today, similarly deluded, have manipulated their students and wielded their power for personal gain. Yoga (and even more so Tantrik Yoga) gives power, and that power can magnify whatever is present: it makes a good person into a saint and a jerk into an even greater and more effective jerk. Realizing this fact, which accounts for so much otherwise disillusioning behavior in the world of yoga, we may begin to take a leaf out of ancient India's book and require students to be well-versed in right View before they are considered intermediate, let alone advanced. Consciousness in Shaiva Theology” at the Consciousness in Religion and Science colloquium, Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies, 2005.

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the nondual Tāntrikas assert that it is possible to experience the supreme Light of the Divine in the midst of any and all worldly activities, and even in the midst of any and all moods or states of mind. To be more accurate, in this state we do not experience the Light in spite of our mood or condition or activity but as the very substance of those. The successful abiding within this state is Turyātīta, the liberation beyond that of the transcendentalists, the liberation that realizes the transcendent in the immanent and therefore embraces total intimacy with reality." Prana: vital energy or life force. We share it with all living beings. Connected to the breath. Interface between physical body and mind and is the key to mind-body connections but is more subtle and fundamental than either. It is the means by which the mind extends itself trough out the body in the for of what is called the subtle body.

I haven't read the print version yet, but something comes alive when Christopher Wallis reads this text. I had to pause it several times or listen again because it was so powerful. The descriptions communicate the meaning and sense of what they signify - it's not just reading of words...Wallis brings life to sacred texts. All scentient beings seen and unseen are simply different forms of one divine coinsciousness, which looks out at the universe that is its own body trough uncountable pairs of eyes.

Tantra Illuminated

Excellent, possibly best spiritual book I've ever read. I have many takeaways, most prominent are that all desire is ultimately a desire for the divine, which explains why attempting to satisfy it with material things is ultimately unsatisfactory. Hareesh is the author of Tantra Illuminated: The Philosophy, History, and Practice of a Timeless Tradition, the first comprehensive and accessible introduction to Classical Tantra in English (also available in Spanish, Portuguese and Romanian), and of The Recognition Sutras, a translation and commentary on a 1000-year-old masterpiece on experiential recognition of oneself as a direct expression of universal divine Consciousness. Freelance Lecturer in Yoga Teacher Trainings on the international circuit (USA, Mexico, Ecuador, Colombia, Brasil, UK, Denmark, etc.), 2008 - 2022 Hareesh teaches classical Tantric philosophy and Tantric practices, meditation, Sanskrit, and mantra-science to an engaged online community of practitioners. He is the Founder of Tantra Illuminated Online, an online learning portal where all his courses and teachings are available. He also offers workshops, retreats and classes in person in Portugal and around the world. Make true seeing your goal, and more bliss than you can imagine will arise as a by-product of that journey; but the moment your sights shift to bliss or pleasure as the goal, delusion begins to reassert itself. This is the key teaching that shortens the duration of the whole spiritual process more than any other single teaching."