Note: For the complete lessons, with additions, see the AYP Easy Lessons for Ecstatic Living Books.

Lesson 25 - Sri Vidya – The fruition of tantra

From: Yogani
Date: Sun Apr 18, 2004 2:16pm

New Members: It is recommended you read from the beginning of this tantra yoga archive, as previous lessons are prerequisite to this one. The first lesson is, "What is tantra yoga?"


As was mentioned in the first lesson here, tantra has often been condemned as degenerate in the East and misunderstood (with great enthusiasm) as a sexual cult in the West. What we find as we travel our serious path of yoga is that tantra includes everything we are doing, and probably a lot we are not doing. Tantra is the most all-encompassing approach to yoga, leaving no stones unturned.

But where does it all lead? What is the end of tantra? What is its fruition? In the main lessons, and here in the tantra group also, we have discussed the union of our inner polarities as being the end of all our yoga practice. There are many ways to describe this process – as many ways as there are spiritual traditions in the world. No matter how described, it is the same process of human spiritual transformation.

On the level of our personal experience in the body it is the union of our blissful inner silence, cultivated mainly in deep meditation, with our whole body ecstasy, cultivated in spinal breathing and other pranayamas, mudras, bandhas and tantric sexual methods.

On the level of tantric mythological metaphors it is the union of Shiva and Shakti, which correspond to the direct experiences of silence and ecstasy just mentioned.

The rise of Shiva, Shakti and their final union everywhere within us make up the three stages of enlightenment – First, 24/7 inner silence. Second, 24/7 whole body ecstasy. And third, 24/7 ecstatic bliss, the joining of the divine polarities of silence and ecstasy, yielding an endless outpouring of divine love, which is unity.

If you imagine the rise of a conscious ecstatic resonance vibrating in every atom of your body, occurring between every nucleus and its surrounding electrons, you will have an idea of the depth of the transformation. It is an unending cosmic orgasm within cell and atom in us.

This fruition of divine transformation is recognized in a scriptural and experiential branch of tantra known as, "Sri Vidya," which means "glorious knowledge." It is the knowledge of ecstatic bliss, expressed with mathematical precision. If this seems like a paradox then it is surely divine, for divine truth is a paradox. If truth is experienced as wildly ecstatic, it will be heading toward spiritual precision. If it is conceived to be mathematically exact, then it will soon to be undoing us in ecstatic reverie. Nowhere is this better expressed than in Sri Vidya’s sacred diagram called "Sri Yantra," sometimes called "Sri Chakra." You can view it at the following links, which can also be found in the links section of this group:

http://www.geocities.com/advancedyogapractices/sriyantra

http://www.isibrno.cz/~gott/mandalas.htm

If you do a web search on "Sri Yantra" you can find many versions of Sri Yantra, and endless discussions about it. Perhaps you are familiar with it already.

A version of interest for this discussion is the blue Sri Yantra in the link (and maybe below) showing a white dot in every blue triangle in the yantra. This depicts the ongoing sexual union of Shiva (masculine white lingam bindu dots) and Shakti (feminine blue yoni triangles) in every atom of the cosmos. Sri Yantra in its entirety also represents the sushumna/spinal nerve/tunnel, the nervous system, and the divine union occurring everywhere up and down inside us.

Mathematically, Sri Yantra recreates the wave pattern formed by the vibration of "OM," the sacred sound that is found humming naturally within the human nervous system as purification and opening occurs. OM emanates up through the medulla oblongata, the brain stem, forward through the center of the head, and out the third eye. OM is no small, quaint thing that happens inside us. It is "roaring devastating ecstasy" breaking loose inside us, and is synonymous with the highest stages of tantric sexual cultivation. OM is kundalini is full ecstatic swing. So here you have the sexual connection between Sri Vidya, Sri Yantra and tantric sexual practices.

How is one to use the Sri Yantra, if at all? Some traditions use it as an object of meditation. In these lessons we will not. When OM comes, Sri Yantra will be there in us. We become Sri Yantra when we manifest the ecstatic vibration of OM, which is the sound of kundalini/Shakti ravishing her Shiva within us. As this occurs throughout our whole body, we become the Sri Yantra itself. The Sri Yantra is a representation of our nervous system in its highest mode of spiritual reverie.

When you look at the Sri Yantra from time to time, just be aware that this is a representation of your rising inner spiritual dynamic, as well as the ecstatic nature of the cosmos. It is both the microcosm and the macrocosm, and so are we. It is a confirmation and a reminder of what we are consciously becoming through our advanced yoga practices, including those we talk about here in the tantra group. Whole body union of ecstatic bliss is what we are cultivating ourselves toward, and this is what Sri Yantra is.

Let there be no condemnation or misunderstanding about it. No apology is necessary for cultivating human spiritual transformation to its highest level. So cultivate away!

The guru is in you.

Note:  For detailed instructions on the methods of tantra in relation to the broad scope of yoga practices and the enlightenment process, see the AYP Tantra book.

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