Panel Discussion on Kashmir Shaivism with Sally Kempton, Igor Kufayev, and Menas Kafatos

Summary

The panel explores how Kashmir Shaivism understands the appearance of separate forms within an underlying field of consciousness. It examines Maya, Shakti, vibration, language, and possible connections between nondual insight and quantum physics.

Questions This Interview Explores

• How can a world of separate objects arise if consciousness is the ultimate reality?
• What does Maya mean in Kashmir Shaivism?
• Is the physical world an illusion or a real expression of consciousness?
• How do sound, language, and thought shape human experience?
• What connections exist between Kashmir Shaivism and modern quantum physics?

Key takeaways

• Maya is the divine power that veils unity and allows multiplicity to appear.
• The world is considered a real expression of Shakti, not merely an illusion.
• All forms arise from subtle vibration and remain rooted in universal consciousness.
• Language narrows limitless possibility into distinct names, thoughts, and objects.
• Manifestation is described as a continual movement between unity and particular form.
• Quantum physics offers useful parallels to nonlocality, entanglement, and veiled reality.

Transcript

Rick: Welcome to Buddha at the Gas Pump. My name is Rick Archer, and I’m out at the Science and Non-Duality Conference in San Jose, California, with some friends—a lot of friends. But at the moment I have three: Sally Kempton, Igor Kufayev, and Menas Kafatos.

The reason I assembled this little conversation we’re about to have is that a question always rumbles around in my brain, which I’ll articulate as best as possible: If consciousness is the ultimate reality, and if there is an ultimate reality, then everything must actually be that reality.

If we take this glass and start to go more and more microscopically, we get down to the point at which there is no glass. If we go far enough, we get down to the point at which what we find is what we would find if we did that with anything in creation. So, is there really a glass, or is there only that which we find when we get right down to the real nitty-gritty?

And if that is the case, then how do glasses and tables and palm trees and buildings and people appear? Is it an illusion that we’re seeing all these things?

Anyway, I could elaborate on that, but I got to talking with Igor about this, and he said, “Well, Kashmir Shaivism addresses this very beautifully, and perhaps we could have a little panel discussion when we get out there, in which we’ll discuss this in light of, or with reference to, Kashmir Shaivism.”

These three panelists came to mind. Sally and Menas were both students of Swami Muktananda, and I believe that Kashmir Shaivism was very much the foundation of his tradition. Igor was not, but is somewhat of an expert in that field as well.

I thought it would be very interesting to have this conversation. It’s not something that was being done within the context of the formal conference, so we just set it up on the side.

I’d like to introduce the guests—or, actually, I think I’ll have you guys introduce yourselves briefly, because that’ll be more effective than my introducing you. Why don’t we do that, starting with Sally?

Introducing the panel

Sally: I’m Sally Kempton, and I’m a spiritual teacher and a writer. I’ve written a couple of books on meditation and on Shakti. I was a long-time student of Swami Muktananda, who actually introduced me to Kashmir Shaivism in the very early 1970s.

Before that, I was a journalist. I teach workshops, retreats, and tele-classes in what I call non-dual contemplative devotional tantra, because the tradition that I was trained in and that I relate to combines the understanding of non-duality with the recognition of the gift of devotion, and the understanding that love and devotion are aspects of Shakti, which is an aspect of reality. That’s one of the heart teachings of Kashmir Shaivism.

Igor: I’m Igor Kufayev. I was born in Uzbekistan, and essentially I was an artist as far back as I can remember myself. Quite a few things have happened between realizing that “I Am That,” and “one without the second.”

To give a little bit more of a linear perspective, I’ve been studying art and pursuing it all my life. The drive for art was realized to be very much a powerful energetic movement within that was eager to express itself. As soon as I realized that, I realized that art is actually secondary, but what is primal is that drive for self-actualization.

In the meantime, of course, I did a lot of studies, and at some point I was a student at the St. Petersburg Academy of Fine Arts. In my early twenties, I moved to Warsaw, which was my first formative period as an independent artist. Since 1991, I’ve been a resident of London, pursuing an artistic career in the arts as a painter.

That continued until a powerful transformation took place around my mid-thirties, which essentially made me realize that there is nothing to pursue other than that which I already am as an embodied being. In no time—which took quite a few years—I found myself teaching and essentially sharing this knowledge. So that’s pretty much the story.

Rick: Thanks. Menas?

Menas: Thank you for the invitation. I’m Menas Kafatos. I’m a quantum physicist teaching at Chapman University and other places. In any case, I’ve been a student of Shaivism since 1980, when I met Baba Muktananda in South Fallsburg, New York. I remember Sally from those days.

Certainly, in 1980, a big transformation took place, and since then my life has changed quite a lot. I can see the dramatic and the subtle changes. The subtle changes are actually perhaps even more profound.

I’m also an artist. I started art in Greece, but when I was fourteen years old, I told my dad, “You know, art is so easy for me. I would like to go into science.” So I decided to go into astrophysics first and then eventually into quantum physics.

The exciting part now is that we actually have mathematical ways—mathematical tools—to get us as close as possible to the top five tattvas. I guess we’ll talk a little bit more about that. But realizing that mathematics itself comes from the underlying sea of consciousness, it is the most fundamental way to get as close as possible to universal consciousness.

We can talk a bit more about some of the specifics of these steps of transformation in human lives, and also how the universal Shakti gives rise to the universe.

Veiling unity as multiplicity

Rick: I think you were addressing that in your talk last night at the conference. You were saying something along the lines of what I was talking about with the glass, and you used the word “veiling.” So I got the understanding from listening to you that there’s some sort of veiling process that occurs in order for apparent forms to arise.

Menas: Correct. Again, from quantum physics today, we know that nonlocality is a fundamental property of the universe. In fact, it is perhaps the most fundamental property of the universe. I describe it in the Noloka universe, which, as you know, is one of my books.

If that’s the case, and we’re entangled—which is a theme of this conference here—then how does a glass appear as a glass, and how do you and I suddenly appear as separate beings? Something must happen.

The great texts—all of them, but let’s say the Pratyabhijna Hridayam, which is the text of self-recognition written by Kshemaraja—actually give the steps of how universal consciousness becomes the bound soul, and in that way, the individual self.

Crucial to that is the principle of veiling, which in Sanskrit is called Maya. It’s a term that is sometimes quite misunderstood, because Maya herself is misunderstood. It’s really the great power of the Lord to veil herself, or veil himself. Of course, the Lord does not have a gender, and appears as a multiplicity of universes and objects.

The interesting thing now is that in quantum theory, something that has come up lately—and this is why the mathematics is important—is that we find we have a similar concept that we call veiled nonlocality.

Subhash Kak—you may know him; he’s actually from Kashmir himself, and he knows about Shaivism quite a bit—and I have written a couple of articles. Basically, we look at this principle of veiling purely from the point of view of quantum physics.

It seems that general relativity and quantum theory come together, and consciousness seems to be an important part of that. Without it, veiling does not make any sense.

It’s quite exciting, because now perhaps we have a way to talk about the unification of physics from the point of view of this veiling, which is analogous to what the great Shaivite masters were calling Maya, and what, of course, the Vedantins called Maya.

Rick: Do either of you want to comment on that?

Sally: I would say one of the earmarks, or hallmarks, of Shaivism—of Kashmir Shaivism, of non-dual Shaivism—as opposed to non-dual Vedanta, which is, of course, very similar to it, is the understanding of Maya, the veiling power.

In Vedanta, where the teaching is that ultimate reality is the only real truth and that the world is illusion, Maya is considered this kind of mistake, or the straw in the glass that makes us think that the water is two when actually it’s one.

Whereas in Kashmir Shaivism, Maya is seen as a level of manifestation of Shakti, which is the power aspect of ultimate reality. She manifests as Maya in order to veil unity so as to play as manifestation.

The essential thing about Tantric Shaivism is this understanding that the world is real, even though it dissolves in certain states of consciousness. Because Shakti, the love-bliss energy of the divine, is present in every particle, as you were saying last night, it’s empty and it’s also full. It’s without any form, without ultimate reality, and yet it is totally full of ultimate reality.

Shaivism is really, I think, the only tradition that explains this, that gives you permission, so to speak, to be a serious spiritual seeker and fully in love with the physical world.

Which is why I think it has worked so well with quantum physics.

Menas: As Sally said, precisely. In terms of, of course, I believe that when you start getting deeper into Shankara, Shankaracharya’s Advaita Vedanta, then you begin to see that he was also talking about the same thing.

Sally: He was.

Igor: He was. But then he was misunderstood, and this is a problem with the words. This is a problem with, again, what the great Shaivite masters called the limitation, the limiting power, of words: the Matrika Shakti.

Of course, that is what makes us human beings. We get bound by our minds and by our own words. Ultimately, Vedanta and Shaivism are not really opposites, but Shaivism is much more down to earth in terms of everyday life and science.

That’s why we scientists really tend to gravitate toward it, because it accepts the world as real, rather than accepting what the interpretation of some of the Advaita Vedantic teachings ended up saying—that the world is not real.

Then, of course, the reaction of scientists is, “What do you mean, it’s not real? You’re denying science.” So rather than having to explain all of that—that’s not really what Shankara meant—we just go with science.

Forms, vibration, and perception

Rick: As human beings, we have a certain sensory capacity, or a certain range within which we can perceive. We don’t perceive magnetic fields, we don’t perceive ultraviolet; we perceive within a certain range. Also, in terms of the macroscopic and microscopic, we have a certain capacity to perceive.

Now, if, let’s say, I had superpowers and could perceive more and more microscopically what this glass really is, then at a certain point there wouldn’t be glass. At a certain point there wouldn’t be molecules, and at a certain point there wouldn’t be atoms.

As I go deeper and deeper, those more manifest levels would no longer be found, and at a certain point there wouldn’t be anything that could be called a thing. Are you with me so far? I’m not speaking incorrectly in terms of physics.

Just because I have limited perceptual capacity as a human being, it seems like I see this glass as a glass because I have limited perceptual abilities. If I had superpowered perceptual abilities, I could choose to see it as a glass, but I could also zoom right down and see it as nothing, and not see it at all, because it wouldn’t be there.

So I guess what I’m getting at is that it almost would seem that the world appears because of the restriction in our perceptual and cognitive ability to a very limited band of possibilities.

Menas: Yeah, basically what you’re saying is the veiling of Maya. We take particular forms of existence, even though we are this universal sea of consciousness. We are part of the evolution, but we are also the guiders, the guiding principles of evolution ourselves.

So, in terms of the glass, you said that if you look at it really deep down, it will dissolve. It will dissolve probably into superstrings at some point, and then what’s beyond superstrings? Well, in Shaivism, it’s also a doctrine of Spanda, which means vibration. But the vibration of the Shaivite underlying consciousness is not quite the same thing as field theory. It’s not quite the same as quantum field theory. There, the vibration of the quantum field—you have a field and it vibrates. Even though it’s not material in the usual sense, there’s still something there.

In the case of these great monistic systems, consciousness itself has the Spanda principle, the principle of vibration. But it is a subtle movement, and it is a subtle movement that eventually becomes bigger. When it gets filtered—and, in fact, some great teachings that talk about Maya, or the veiling principle, describe it as essentially like a prism, which takes the white light and makes it into many colors—if you look at the Tattvas, you will see that, at some point, the rays, which are different Tattvas, are really coming from, let’s say, the ego. Most of them come from the ego. The analogy is there, but it’s an analogy. So it will ultimately dissolve into some sort of vibration of universal consciousness.

Igor: Yeah, I was going to say the same thing, but you did much better in terms of scientific implications. Wasn’t it Albert Einstein who was particularly chuffed about the realization—which he considered to be more important than what he is known for—that light exhibits both qualities? Light is both particles and waves.

So, when Rick was giving the example of the glass, I think it’s very important to also understand that the example of zooming in and trying to go to the bottom, or, let’s say, the finest layer of what this reality is made of, is still approaching it a little bit from the old paradigm. Not necessarily that you were coming from that, but that kind of zooming in. Because what quantum science really gives us is an understanding that this glass exists here both as the possibility of consciousness, which has collapsed into a particular object in time, in space-time, and it simultaneously also exists as a possibility on a wavelength. This is where we enter, or where science overlaps with very deep, profound experiences known as yogic experiences, in quotes.

The matrix of sound

Earlier, when you mentioned the science of Matrika, which is very, very unique to Kashmir Shaivism—

Rick: Science of what?

Igor: Matrika.

Rick: Matrika.

Igor: Matrika, which is the science of the matrix. Sometimes it’s called the little mother. Literally, it’s that plethora that contains absolutely everything—absolutely everything in its pure potentiality. It’s a very profound realization when one actually experiences it directly.

But in terms of some of this, some of the listeners perhaps will be able to correlate this, I would like to mention something for which Kashmir Shaivism stands unique in terms of the importance of sound, right? This whole—

Sally: Tantra in general.

Igor: Tantra in general. Exactly. That kind of emission of sound, or the sea, the ocean of sound. The uniqueness also here is in the understanding that Sanskrit, through which the knowledge of Kashmir Shaivism operates, or is conveyed, is based on a very, very precise correlation between sound and form, between essence and form, in other words. This is something that is encapsulated in the term Nama Rupa, but it’s like that field of all potentialities, right? That kind of field—the quantum field, we can say that it’s a continuum.

So, that sound, the first letter of the alphabet, of the Sanskrit alphabet, is A.

Rick:A.

Igor: Yeah, in terms of how it is written. The sound that is produced is an uninterrupted sound: Aaaaaa. Right? So, the letter A actually literally exemplifies that uninterrupted continuum. But as soon as it collapses into the next one, which is Ka, or Ksa, sometimes known as—Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, for instance, elaborated on it very beautifully.

For me personally, there was a beautiful reconciliation and deep understanding of the teaching that existed in Kashmir Shaivism and what Maharishi Mahesh Yogi brought through his science of creative intelligence. That literally comes from that Vedic verse, Richo akshare parame vyoman. Remember that? The one whose vision is open to that field of all potentialities within the gap between the sounds—that person alone knows reality, not the one who repeats the Vedas, so to speak.

So this is literally Richo akshare, from A—an uninterrupted continuum—to Ka, where the sound collapses, collapses from wavelength into something particular. In other words, from that A to Ka, right?

Sally:Ka.

Igor: That literally, literally is the mystery. This is what the mystery points toward. I find it terribly exciting because it gives that visceral, visceral understanding of how the ultimate reality, which is the substratum of all that exists, also simultaneously expresses itself as the infinitude of points of collapse.

Because it collapses at a point in time, but it collapses into an infinitude, an infinitude of waves of possibilities. In other words, there’s no end to that collapse, and there’s no end to that sound, to that open sound. So, the science of Matrika.

Sally: So, Igor was speaking about Matrika, which is usually translated as “little mother” or “un-understood mother.” What Matrika is, is the energy within sound. And, in this theory that the world is created out of vibration, out of a deep, very, very subtle vibration called Spanda that then becomes more and more concretized, where it ends up with us, where we end up with it, is language.

Because Matrika, as we know it, is actually the veiling power within language. I was just thinking of an event that happened to a friend of mine many years ago. She was in a car accident, and, as you know, car accidents are sometimes triggers for profound experiences of expansion.

She was thrown out of the car on 101 and landed in the median strip, and found herself in this utterly vast plane where there were no forms. She was in a state of complete ecstasy. She didn’t know her name or who she was. There was certainly no pain.

Little by little—as she tells it, after an infinity of time—suddenly this trickle of words began to come into her mind, and it went like this: “I hope they don’t think it was my fault.” As soon as those words arose, she was back in her body, in pain, worrying about the outcome of her accident.

Without language, reality is infinite possibility. As soon as we begin to create names and thoughts and definitions, reality is particularized, limited, and defined.

She said—and I’ve experienced this myself—that this was the moment when she understood the veiling power of language.

That’s Matrika Shakti, as it’s called: the power behind language, the power within language. It’s actually the form of the Shakti aspect, the energy aspect of the divine, that constantly cuts things into particles and then constantly allows the unveiling to occur so that we can experience wholeness. It’s really a constant rhythmic movement.

Igor: And it’s very beautiful because, obviously, that accident was a very beautiful example of a direct experience, of that very visceral experience, as I can imagine.

Sally: Yeah.

Igor: Kashmir Shaivism is very, very specific and goes into great depth to explain how language veils reality.

Sally: Yeah.

Igor: Isn’t it? And there is obviously this profound science of the progressive manifestation of sound through its four stages.

Sally: Yeah.

Igor: From Para to Vashyanti to Madhyama to Vaikhari, how it literally comes from that unmanifested level of pure potentiality—whatever you might call it—where Shiva is united with Shakti and indistinguishable, at the level of Para. Then it is gradually manifested through its progressively more contracted states until it is expressed as thought or speech.

And simultaneously as everything, absolutely, because language is here to be understood—not just what we already speak, but language which literally collapses the wave into something particular, into particles.

Sally: Yeah, and one of the teachings of Shaivism that I find really difficult to understand in my normal state of consciousness is that reality is constantly being recreated, you know, in fractional seconds, so that in between any thought, in between any breath, in between any perception, the whole universe collapses back into its non-dual state, into its non-dual form.

We are sort of watching a 24-frame-per-second movie that is actually a series of stills, with stillness in between. This is a realization that I actually have to be in what we normally call an altered state to really grasp, because it’s so intuitively ungraspable in our ordinary reality.

I think that’s the thing about physics that people like Rick are so fascinated by, because there is actually a physical-world explanation of these subtle realities that, almost to a modern materialist mind like all of us have, explains it in a way that allows us to say, “Okay, this is a physical thing as well as being this infinitely subtle reality that’s only graspable in high states of meditation and realization.” Somebody can do the math.

Rick: I have two questions.

Igor: This kind of challenges that accepted view of creation as well.

Sally: Yes, it does.

Igor: Creation, from that perspective, never took place. And that’s really the true depth of understanding of the true permanence of pure awareness, of Shiva.

So, that kind of manifestation and withdrawal doesn’t happen only in terms of Pralaya, not only in terms of that Vedic-Tantric concept of time, but it is a continuum that literally has no beginning and no end. It’s like a stream of consciousness—what I personally like to refer to as the stream of consciousness—which simply streams within itself for its own sake.

Sally: Right, right. Yeah, yeah, and infinitely self-recursive. I’m wondering if it would be useful if we did a textbook explanation of how Kashmir Shaivism sees the world.

Rick: Sure.

I have a couple of questions based on what you guys were just saying. Should I ask those now, or do you want to do your textbook explanation?

Sally: Well, yeah, why don’t you follow up? Just kind of get the term, just so we get the term.

Rick: Well, maybe I can ask my questions and then you can include the answers in your textbook explanation. One is, you were speaking as though, just now, language is responsible for the manifestation of creation. Obviously, people are going to think, “Well, wait a minute, if they think of language in the ordinary human sense, the universe was around for probably billions of years before there were any beings who devised languages, and yet manifestation had already happened.” So that question needs to be addressed.

And the second thing, what you were just saying about the collapse of the universe in micro-moments in between: Are you saying that happens for each observer, or are you saying that somehow the entire universe does that in some kind of universal way?

And the third question to throw in is—there’s more, but three for now—there’s obviously a consistency between observers. We all see this table with three glasses on it, and if somebody else comes into the room who hasn’t been here today, they’ll see the table with three glasses on it. So it seems that there’s a kind of a template for reality that goes far beyond any individual’s perspective on it, and that individuals just sort of tune into it to whatever extent they can. Any notion that somehow we each individually, in every moment, create the universe would seem to fly in the face of that point.

One mind, many perceivers

Sally: Well, I’d like to answer that question first, because Shaivism is really interesting in that there is a creator in Shaivism. In other words, reality is personified in a certain sense. The basic teaching is that all of this is a manifestation inside one great mind. And that one great mind has—it seems, I’m not one with that mind, at least not at this moment, so I can only speak from hearsay—

Igor: And yet you are.

Sally: And yet I am, exactly. So all of this is occurring inside one mind, and that’s the mystery that both Hameed and Menas were talking about last night, which is that it’s all inside one mind. And that mind—it’s like if you go in enough, you’ll go out and become one with that mind. But all of our atomic minds are aspects of that one mind, which is why there’s one reality that we all see.

Rick: So we’re like little sense organs of one cosmic being.

Sally: Yes, we’re a prism. If we say the light has gone through a prism, the little dots, the points of light that are on the other side of the prism are our consciousness, our individual consciousness. But actually it’s one light. So there are all these millions of individual perceivers, but the consciousness that’s seeing through them is one and seeing. There’s only one agent.

Rick: “The light that is one, though the lamps be many.” Incredible String Band.

Sally: Yes. I don’t know how to answer your first question.

Igor: You have to reiterate it again.

Sally: You have to reiterate it.

Rick: The first question is: You were talking about language as the method of manifestation, and from a superficial understanding of that, one would assume you’re talking about human language. But humans weren’t around for the first many, many billion years.

Igor: Well, it’s actually not as complicated as it seems—or not as complicated as it seems in the sense that this very perspective, if we delve deeper into the perspective of these four progressively manifesting levels of sound, from Para to Vaikhari, or let’s say Para here stands for the one beyond, beyond the beyond, right, the ultimate, to the level where it is literally manifesting as something—manifesting as sound which literally can be heard.

And sound that can be heard obviously is the form of that sound condensed as matter. Because everything in the universe, all forms, is just that.

Rick: Sound condensed as matter?

Igor: Very, very different sound. Essentially, it is different frequencies. So even in terms of this granite—I hope it is granite, not a fake one—even if this is Indian granite, we can imagine that the molecular and atomic structure is extremely dense. It is still a sound. It is still a sound condensed and having that hard appearance of matter. So if we take that standpoint for a moment—

Rick: And let me just clarify something and let you continue. Ordinarily, we think of sound as fluctuations in air pressure which our eardrums can pick up on, and we interpret that as sound. But you are talking about not air as the medium, obviously, but something much more fundamental.

Igor: I am talking about the fundamental, as scientists would use that term. When Menas comes back, we will ask him to back it up, because this is precisely how scientists use the term sound. Sound is a frequency, and everything is absolutely—everything is a frequency, just like everything is energy.

For instance, the example of the glass that you started this discussion with: We could have also looked at it and said that, yes, it is a conglomerate of molecules and atoms, but at the same time it still exhibits the property of energy. This is why spiritual experiences sometimes melt the so-called—in inverted commas—normal, ordinary perception.

The spiritual breakthroughs are usually that: a reality which we perceive through five apertures, through the five sensory perceptions for which we are equipped with the organs of cognition, which is really the anatomy of the spirit. Yogic, Vedic, and Tantric spirituality—I mean, the spirituality that has evolved and has been transmitted on the Indian subcontinent—is very unapologetic about this.

In other words, we can see everything just as energy as well, but we do not necessarily perceive everything as energy until we do. So it is in relation to our own, let’s say, embodied individuality. This individuality that identifies with the body only perceives this as matter.

This is why we live in time now, this time that we live in, this phase in our evolution. The reason why we run into such a predicament with everything is because of that temporal eclipse and objectification, to a degree where we perceive everything as just that—matter—you see. While at the same time forgetting that there is no such thing as matter. It’s a degree of frequency with which frequency compacts itself into something particular.

In Christian spirituality, for instance, right, in Christianity, this is known as a dragon, like the vortexes—what are they called? We have Francis here; maybe he can help us.

Rick: You know what he’s talking about?

Igor: Not that, like the vortexes.

Rick: Like a whirlpool? What are you saying?

Igor: Where literally the energy itself is in a state of collapse to become something in particular. But I just don’t want to go away too much from the first question that you posed in terms of language, in these four progressive stages of sound. How does it happen that when human beings, let’s say, weren’t even around—

Rick: Yeah.

Igor: There is also an understanding that correlates these four progressive levels of sound with the epochs that we live in.

Rick: Can you hear this?

Igor: Yugas, different yugas. And these are not to be understood from a linear perspective, for those who are not familiar with the Vedic-Tantric concept of time. It is concentric rather than linear. So this concentric understanding of time is much more profound compared to, let’s say, time in terms of yesterday, now, and tomorrow.

It doesn’t operate on or view reality in that way. It rather views reality in terms of manifestation of certain aspects of consciousness, or in terms of the lack of certain manifestations on the manifested plane.

In other words, when there is a loss of information, that’s what we know as different yugas. We know that the Golden Age, for instance, was known for 100 percent manifestation of all laws of nature that were even perceptible on the obvious plane of existence. And when there it was—

Rick: By laws of nature, you mean devas and more refined—

Sally: Different levels of subtle beings were perceptible in the—

Igor: Exactly.

Rick: Yeah, the whole picture was open.

Igor: We can even conclude that in that state, in that time, there was no necessity for language, because what for? You see, there was no separation. Language arises—and this is historical—when you can find the references, like the Tower of Babel, or if you want to go into the depth of Vedic mythology, you can see that the rise of language happens somewhere at the breaking point when, let’s say, it’s 50/50—when 50 percent of the laws are manifesting on the obvious plane and 50 percent are simply lost. The Maya, let’s say, the density of Maya is that much more—

Rick: So are you suggesting that everyone was just telepathic before that or something?

Igor: No, they’re not. No, they’re not. Everything is in that state.

Rick: I’m not saying they weren’t. I’m just saying, is that what you’re saying?

Igor: That’s exactly what I’m saying.

Rick: Okay.

Igor: So essentially, it’s a time when perhaps communication does not necessarily have to happen through this format. But as the diminishing takes place—and by the way, that also links to the Vedic concept of Dharma. Remember that Dharma in the Golden Age stands on all four, and then it starts losing its legs. In Kali Yuga, Dharma stands on one leg. This is why we all need to prop it; we’re all literally holding it together. This is the sort of—you know—

So we live in a time when all this necessitates, you see, we have to have spiritual practice, we have to have religious revelations, we have to have language, because otherwise we will simply constantly miscommunicate. And look what happens with language. Even with language, we can’t sit together and talk. Look what happens around the world in politics and economics.

Rick: Sally?

Sally: Well, I’m agnostic about the yugas. It’s very interesting that traditional systems believe that this world is gradually—that what’s happening is a kind of entropic situation where we started out very subtle and wise, and then we become stupider and stupider as time goes on.

Rick: Cyclically.

Sally: Cyclically, right. Whereas, of course, the Western view is that we are actually in a progressive situation, evolving toward greater consciousness. I have no idea if that is true.

I do know that in looking at traditional systems, it’s very important to take what you can really feel internally is true and not necessarily accept the aspects of it that are hard to swallow.

Igor: It has to be backed up by personal experience.

Sally: It has to be backed up by personal experience.

Igor: Otherwise, it will become very clichéd.

Sally: Yeah, exactly. And in those moments when you are in a state of very subtle experience—and, for example, the insight that you’re talking about may display itself before you as a realization—then that’s true for you. If it’s not true for somebody else, then, in a certain sense, it sounds as though you’re asking. It’s like that line in Alice in Wonderland: “Are you asking me to believe in 24 impossible things before breakfast?”

Igor: “Jump with me.”

The Kashmir Shaiva worldview

Sally: So in terms of what it is about Kashmir Shaivism that is really helpful for us today, I love this understanding and the experience of the subtle worlds, which is, I think, for all of us who have done this kind of practice, delightful and ecstatic. But to me, what’s more important is that you actually can experience the pulsation of divineness, of non-dual sweetness, in your own body and in your emotions and in the table and in the interactions. That will allow you to really understand that God is you, that God is in this, that everything is contained in this atom of our body, because that’s what allows us to evolve to the point that I think all the traditions are asking us to evolve to.

And it does involve the thing about Shaivism, and it really asks us to fully accept this manifest universe and our own thought streams and our own individual manifestation, to take it as seriously as we take the realms of higher thought.

Igor: Maybe this is kind of an invitation to introduce a little bit where Kashmir Shaivism itself comes from, so that we give it a little bit of an even historical platform, so that we can depart from it and perhaps go beyond the historical platform.

Sally: Yeah, I think it would be helpful.

Igor: Because what Sally just said is very important, because it takes us back to the very core of why we sought to discuss this here. And would you like to?

Sally: Well, let me give a little piece of it, and then let’s do it like

Radiolab: one person says something, somebody else does, so you’re not listening to one person sort of droning on.

So the way that I explain the Kashmir Shaiva worldview, the simplest way I know to explain it, is to think of reality as a great, vast, self-recursive I-ness. You know, a consciousness, an agent who is non-dual, has no limits, is totally vast, and who is in this experience of “I am,” you know, and sort of…

Rick: Self-interaction.

Sally: Self-interaction, self-recursive, like constantly turning back on itself. And in Shaivism they say that this self-recursive oneness, this I-am-ness, has the quality of consciousness and bliss, awareness and bliss, and they give it the name Shiva for the awareness part and Shakti for the bliss part.

And they say that inside the Shakti, the bliss of consciousness, are powers of will, knowledge, and action. Menas was talking about it last night. And in the process of manifesting universes within itself, the Shakti aspect of supreme consciousness actually creates all the multiverses within her own body, on her own screen, out of perfect freedom as play.

And that’s the fundamental idea of Kashmir Shaiva Tantra. All of this is constantly being manifested in the great mind of consciousness, which in Sanskrit is given a feminine form. So it’s the feminine aspect, which is why I call my workshops “The Feminine Path.” It’s the so-called feminine, because of course we’re beyond gender here, aspect of consciousness that is making everything within itself.

And the idea in Shaivism is that the ultimate is completely present. It’s a holographic model. The ultimate is completely present in every atom of the universe, just the way the whole holographic picture is present in every fragment of it.

So that understanding, that overall understanding—which I think is the “as above, so below; as here, so elsewhere” recognition—is then a very specific process of this ultimate reality manifesting through stages called tattvas, which means essence. So that very subtle vastness becomes more and more particular, and that vast consciousness becomes an individual consciousness, and then a mind and ego and the physical world. But always with the understanding that the whole is in the atom.

And the idea that the individual consciousness is, as one of my friends calls it, “baby-faced God.” So the whole process, the whole tradition, is really there for showing us—and it does it very specifically—how your consciousness could be the same as the vastness. Of course it is and it isn’t. But ultimately it is.

Rick: Essentially it is.

Sally: Essentially it is. And it’s a tradition that’s really all about helping you get that.

Igor: It’s a practice-based tradition.

Sally: So whether or not the tattvas actually look like that, like they say on the charts, which were obviously seen in meditation by some sages.

Rick: And the tattvas are?

Sally: Tattvas are the stages of the manifestation of that consciousness into this consciousness and into this body. But the thing that Shaivism says that’s so interesting is that creation is from the inside out.

So, in other words, their position is that the individual consciousness comes first and then the world that’s experienced. And that, of course, does not jibe with the Western theory of evolution, or perhaps the truth that this physical universe started with the Big Bang and that human individuated consciousness came much later.

Rick: So you just said the individual consciousness comes first and then the creation. I would have said consciousness comes first and then creation.

Sally: Well, in other words, what I understand Shaivism to say is that the observer, the individual observer, is prior to what is observed. In other words, this physical universe exists to be experienced by the conscious observer.

Igor: There is a very succulent term: “universal egoity.”

Sally: Universal egoity.

Igor: Which is unique, by the way, to Kashmir Shaivism. Unique because many people, when they misunderstand or understand that only to a certain measure, it creates a lot of perplexed, if not confused, ideas.

Because what it really means is that essentially there is nothing but Shiva, and the very expositions—Shiva here is pure awareness. Nothing but the absolute. There is nothing but that totality. And not only that, the notion of universal egoity, which Sally was just very beautifully explaining through individual consciousness, because it is always individual consciousness. It is always with one reference only.

Rick: Even if it is a universal individual.

Sally: Yes.

Igor: Kashmir Shaivism does not accept the notion of nothingness. It actually criticizes it. Every sage that came did their best to actually dismantle and show the weak side of the understanding of nothingness.

So ever since, let’s say, the arising of Kashmir Shaivism on the stage as a unique system, with its very, very concisely formulated doctrines, there was this understanding of universal egoity. And in fact, the term for Shiva is Anuttara. It is also like anu is atom. So Anuttara is like an atom, and it has the same root. Anu stands for?

Sally: The ultimate atom.

Igor: The ultimate atom. The smallest of the small, in other words. This is very important. It is like the very fabric of this consciousness—out of which everything is woven—is Shiva.

And there is another very supportive shloka, which comes through some of the scriptures: even the bhumi—the earth, the earth element—which is considered to be the manifestation of this world, the grossest, isn’t it? It’s the densest element. It’s Shiva. Literally, it states that.

In other words, it’s a completely different perspective of appearance and consciousness from the Vedantic, right? The Advaitic Vedantic concept of this world is an appearance in consciousness. Kashmir Shaivism, instead, views this reality as reality itself, beholding itself through the multitude of forms and phenomena for its own glory.

In other words, it cannot help but admire itself. But in order to do that, it needs to literally break into an infinitude of forms so that it can have as many angles as it can to behold its magnificence. So this is one of the central points in

Kashmir Shaivism: universal egoity.

In other words, there’s no such thing as Rick’s, Sally’s, or Igor’s, or anyone else’s ego. There is no such thing as individual ego to start with. This is a very radical understanding—very radical understanding—on which Kashmir Shaivism operates.

There is only agency; there is only one agent, and that agent is pure awareness, Shiva.

There is only agency; there is only one agent, and that agent is pure awareness, Shiva, who exemplifies here that archetypal quality of masculine spirit, erected spirit. But Shakti is Shiva in its form, in its form as manifestation, as the dynamic powers of Shiva.

So universal egoity is a very important aspect, aimed at showing through very, very concise discourses and expositions that there isn’t even such a thing as considering yourself to be somehow this limited individual. That limited individual doesn’t even belong to the limited individual. That limited individual is Shiva in disguise. That’s the beauty of Kashmir Shaivism.

✨ The tattvas and levels of consciousness

Sally: It’s helpful to understand that there’s a Shaiva paradigm which says that this consciousness—this absolute consciousness—exists at three levels with three different capacities for perception.

At the ultimate level, I-ness is the pure “I am,” Shiva-Shakti, where there is no form. Everything is within itself. Everything is potential. There is absolute freedom of will, knowledge, and action; total bliss; total perfection; total consciousness.

And then, once there has been the refraction through Maya—once there has been the veiling—what remains is consciousness which is pure awareness but has lost its capacities. In other words, it no longer is all-powerful, no longer all-pervasive. It’s a limited consciousness. It’s Rick’s consciousness. It’s the place you get to in self-inquiry.

When you go past the mind, you go through the mind, you go past the body, and you realize that you are pure consciousness. But it’s a limited consciousness at that point because its powers have been taken from it by Maya.

And then the third level is the level of “I am,” ahamkara, the ego level of consciousness where you’re totally identified with your mind, your body, and your personal history.

And it’s interesting to recognize that pure consciousness, as we mostly understand it in spiritual practice today, is not the ultimate consciousness. The ultimate consciousness has been freed from the veiling and is actually able to experience itself or herself or himself as all that is and beyond.

So it’s always an interesting question to ask yourself: “Okay, who is my ‘I’ now? Is this my ego ‘I,’ identified as Sally? Is this the pure awareness that is free from the body and mind? Or am I actually experiencing myself as all that is at this moment?”

And what Shaivism says is that you cannot regard yourself as a true non-dualist if you’re not actually experiencing this entire universe as a part of your own being, as a part of your own body. So it’s a very, very expansive understanding of what the I is.

Igor: And this also takes one back, in the aspect of consciousness, to that necessary separation where the self has to be separated from the non-self. Because it shares a lot with Vedic Vedanta.

Menas: So, yeah, in terms of what the primary I-consciousness is, very practically, we experience it every day, but we don’t pay attention to it. It is the perfect I-awareness, which, at the so-called pure levels of Shaivism—and it’s pure and impure, but that doesn’t really have a connotation of good or bad; we don’t want to go that way—has more to do with unlimited versus limited: unlimited, totally unlimited; partially limited; and then totally limited.

At the unlimited level, basically, you can have five levels of I-ness. And the first two levels, really, I consider one. It’s the Paramashiva, Parashakti, or the Supreme Self that is not separate from the infinite powers that it has. Parashakti, or Chitti, as she is sometimes referred to—they are the same. It’s really like one coin, or a coin that has only one side.

If we think of a coin, we say, well, a coin is part of the coin, both sides. But actually, this magic coin has both sides, or one side. So there’s really no difference between them. The I and That don’t even exist yet in the mind of universal consciousness.

But then there is a slight vibration—a beginning vibration—which happens with the first and maybe the most fundamental power, which is the power of will, universal will. And then following the universal will is the power—and I say then, of course, that again is a linear thing. It’s not linear at all. But let’s say, subsequent to that, in the sense of emerging from it, is the power to know: the Jnana Shakti.

The first one is called Iccha Shakti. And then the third one is the Kriya Shakti, the ability to do.

Rick:

Correction: Kriya Shakti.

Menas: Kriya Shakti. The ability to do whatever universal consciousness wants to do, and eventually becomes bound. And Kriya Shakti becomes karma, or karmic consequences.

But at that pure level, those five levels—you can consider them as four levels, you can consider them as three levels; it doesn’t really matter. That’s so much numerology—but there’s just one I-awareness. And it’s just the steering—this is again the idea of Spanda—the steering of vibration, that the universe begins to manifest as an idea, but not an idea in the human sense, but a concept in the universal mind.

And the first steering of that universal consciousness is the self-awareness. And that’s where, in fact, you’re referring to the two letters a little while ago of the Sanskrit alphabet, which eventually, of course, gets you down to the earth level.

The steering of consciousness happens through these three principles, or universal powers. Of course, the infinite has infinite powers. But for our ways of categorizing, we say it is the power to will something, it’s the power to know something, and then the power to act on that something, or in relationship to that something.

That something, in this particular case, eventually becomes a universe, or maybe it becomes many universes. In fact, it becomes probably infinite universes. But at first, the first theorem is the self-awareness—the pure I-awareness—and then, once you have that, it’s the beginning of the division, but it hasn’t happened yet, of That.

So the I Am That are the same at the beginning. In fact, there’s no “Am.” The “Am” is a verb that we just add there to make sense of the English, or some of the other languages, but it’s really I and That are one. The Aham and the Idam are the same.

And then there’s the steering, and there’s the beginning to separate, and you can do that with circles. So the first level, where the manifestation begins to take place, the I dominates. So really, at that level of the willpower, it’s the will: I can know everything, or I am about to project everything.

And then in the subsequent level, That dominates. And That is, “Oh, okay, I know the universe is about to manifest.” And then at the Kriya level, the two are balanced together. The I and the That are totally balanced.

And then below that—and again, below and above are special ideas that don’t really apply in the strict sense, but it is a way for us to convey what’s going on—the great veiling power materializes, quote unquote, or becomes apparent, and veils with the five cloaks called Kanchukas.

She veils the powers of the Lord, and it is the cosmic prism that then gives rise to time, space, and limits. So time limits eternality; space limits omnipresence. Then you have limiting of the will. So as a human being, as Sally said, then we have a limited ability to do some things, but not everything.

Limited ability to know some things, and that eventually becomes limited knowledge. And then limited ability to do things, which eventually gets us into karma. It gets us into actions and reactions and consequences of our actions.

Rick: I want to emphasize, if my understanding is correct, that you’re not talking about this process of manifestation in some kind of chronological, historical sense of billions of years ago. You’re talking about it happening continuously right now.

Menas: It happens everywhere. It happens in no time. And in fact, they say the blink of an eye, but even the blink of an eye is a fraction of a second. There’s no time; there’s no space.

Rick: It’s just an ongoing bubbling up of creation through all those levels that you just described.

Igor: Are we allowed to speak from direct experience, Rick?

Rick: Why not?

Igor: Because sometimes I think about the Buddha at the Gas Pump.

Rick: Is he allowed to? Any rules here?

Igor: Because this is the time that we have.

Menas: Limited time.

Igor: Just to illustrate what Menas just beautifully elaborated on. And I did mention that in our first interview, toward the very end. That manifestation—let’s say the manifestation of Shakti and its triadic form; Shiva’s triadic form doesn’t make any difference because, as you said, it’s one at that stage—but as it breaks out into that which is known simply as That, will, knowledge, and action are actually directly experientially experienced. And that gives us the understanding that what tradition operates with is not some kind of imagined symbols, some kind of symbols that are simply archetypally introduced to illustrate that doctrine or that philosophy. It is actually experientially available.

It is that triangle, that equilateral, which at first is experienced as a breakthrough, through which you simply perceive in yourself, out of which a tremendous amount of light pours out. So when you said that in order for anything to appear, there has to be a will, the knowledge of how, and the action to follow up with—and I’m really happy because you immediately added that it does not happen in terms of sequence; it’s not first, second—it literally happens all at once.

And that was the direct experience that I was relating in that interview: You actually become that equilateral triangle, and then your consciousness is literally withdrawn into that equilateral. Then the equilateral itself is losing its space, and the universe from there on simply proceeds up from your own being.

This is why the direct realization of one’s Shiva nature is That. The universe is not created, sustained, and dissolved. It literally comes out of my own being. And at some point you even asked me—but you’re not presupposing here that it’s coming out of you as Igor—to which I was not able to reply, because there was no such thing. At that stage, the dissolution takes place fully.

It first became

That: these primordial energies, the energy of That, will, knowledge, and action. And then the withdrawal of these energies into pure consciousness itself, where the universe is literally being poured out in billions of universes per fraction of a second.

Of course, it’s like now it is being dressed into language. But when it was actually an ongoing experience, it was something that was very hard to convey, because it goes beyond language. Language simply becomes a limitation.

But I want to illustrate that so that this philosophy, these doctrines, and these practices are not founded on some kind of rational understanding of reality, but are experienced directly. And then, as with all yogas—as with all yogas—it’s the verification of the knowledge through direct experience, through direct partaking.

Divine intelligence and science

Rick: So we had to move outside. We were taping the first part of this in the hotel bar, and the bar needs to open, so now we’re out on the patio. But we have about 15 minutes in which we’d like to conclude this conversation.

I’d like to start these 15 minutes by asking a question that’s similar to the one I asked in the beginning, but brings in a different element, and that is the element of intelligence.

It would surprise me—it does surprise me—that any scientist could be an atheist, because science is looking at something that is so incredibly awe-inspiring and marvelous. There’s such vast complexity within a single cell, within a single molecule. There are laws of nature that are so brilliantly functioning and coordinated with one another that it seems to me it’s like God is staring them in the face.

And so I’d like to just play a bit with what Kashmir Shaivism, or all of us in general, might have to say about the Divinity that seems to pervade everything and orchestrate everything.

Menas: Well, let me just make a comment about scientists being atheists. Not all scientists are atheists.

Rick: Oh no, I didn’t mean to say all were.

Menas: But there are a minority—well, maybe there are a majority. Who knows? I mean, there’s really no—here we go!

Rick: Put the sign down. Don’t worry about the sign. Keep going. All that was divinely orchestrated.

Menas: So what is the prevailing point of view among scientists? I have no idea, but certainly there are vocal minorities—let’s put it that way—that are the militant atheists who take it upon themselves to correct the wrong thinking among the public, more or less acting like the old Inquisition, except they’re not burning people at the stake. They would like, though, to take away funding and close down the parks. They’re not there to cross the boundaries.

You’re right. I mean, look, the great founders of quantum theory, they all had this profound understanding of the divine, and they talked about it, maybe not in the Western terms of God, although quite often they would use that.

Bohr made the coat of arms for his family the yin-yang sign. And, of course, Planck said that science takes us to the edge of the ego and then leaves us there. And what’s that? So they’re all talking about the divine presence.

I would say that what is going on many times with these atheistic ideas is an attempt to preserve particular positions, funding, and maybe PR, books, writing books, and all of that stuff. But indeed, if you delve into the deep parts of reality, science is not really different from the great traditions, the humanistic traditions.

And when scientists say there’s only one reality, well, after all, that’s what Shaivism says. It’s just, again, different ways of expressing the same thing. So I agree with you, yeah.

Rick: So what do you have to say about the intelligence that seems to be just saturating every iota of creation and orchestrating its function?

Sally: I’d like to say one other thing about the God idea. I do believe that part of the problem is that we tend to associate—modern people tend to associate—God with what sometimes is called the mythic God. In other words, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Joseph, or Shiva with his dreadlocks and snake around his neck.

And it’s really important to understand that God is another name for reality, or God is another name for cosmic intelligence. And in that sense, it seems like there are more scientists who are not militant atheists than you would ordinarily think. But God is a hard word for modern people. It’s a hard word.

Menas: Yeah, it is. I often feel when I’m teaching that I have to get people’s permission to say God. And so often we go, “Okay, so reality, the Tao, absolute consciousness, whatever name you want to give it.” So the thing about a tradition like Shaivism, or Kabbalah, for example, which is so much like Shaivism—the Jewish mystical tradition—is that they exist within a traditional framework where the story, the God story, is accepted by everybody. So people use it as a kind of shorthand.

My guru used to say, “Shiva is not a Hindu deity. Shiva is this crystalline divine intelligence, this consciousness at the heart of everything.” What I think is very beautiful is to realize the both/and. In other words, yes, it’s this divine intelligence. It’s completely impersonal. It’s inside everything. But it’s also as personal as a subtle reality in form at that level of consciousness as it is in you and me, at a physical level of consciousness. And what the traditions let us do is hold those two perspectives.

Menas: Correct.

Sally: Yeah.

Igor: There is no God outside of me.

Sally: There is no God outside of me. Yeah.

Igor: Me and God are united in that realization.

Rick: Speak a little louder.

Igor: There is no God outside of me and there is no me outside of God.

There is no God outside of me and there is no me outside of God.

Sally: Yeah.

Igor: In other words, if someone wants to have that immediate sense of what God is or what God is not—

Rick: Yeah, I guess another way of putting it is God is in everything and everything is in God.

Igor: Well…

Rick: Or is that a different statement?

Igor: There is no God outside of me and there is no me outside of God.

Rick: Right.

Igor: It’s a kind of a double affirmation. It leaves you nowhere but in God and leaves God nowhere but in you. It’s a very, very comforting realization. Very comforting realization, even now. Even if it only takes place on that level of mental realization, it’s still valid. It is still valid. Because what it does, it creates this way—it creates this possibility that God, what is the ultimate, what is indestructible because it simply doesn’t come into existence and doesn’t come out of existence—it’s existence itself. Existence flows out of that and being reemerged back into that which gives birth, which sustains and dissolves it all. And that is nowhere but in me. And that is also, also, that me is nowhere but in God.

Sally: And the thing that’s so subtle about it is to realize that when you say, “I Am That,” or “I Am Shiva,” that you’re not talking about ego on the egoic level.

Rick: Right.

Sally: And yet you are. So that’s the subtlety that has to be realized, right?

Igor: It’s a devastating realization.

Sally: It’s a devastating, yes. In other words, the ego does have to die in order to realize that you are that non-encompassing reality. And so, Shaivism, and Tantra itself, is often seen as… people often take it to sort of inflate the personal ego.

Rick: Right.

Sally: Because if you’re saying, “I Am That,” often at a certain level you’re going, “I Am That.” But it’s not an inflation; it’s not to inflate yourself.

Rick: Yeah.

Sally: And that’s why it’s a matter of realization.

Rick: Christ said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.”

Sally: Exactly.

Rick: And got in trouble for that. And there was a Sufi saint—I forget his name—who said—

Menas: Mansour al-Hallaj.

Rick: He’s the guy who was dismembered in the public square for saying, “I am God.” And he wouldn’t stop saying it even as they were dismembering him.

Menas: I know, I know. I know that part.

Igor: But Sally just said—I want to go back to that because this is very important. It’s tremendously important because it’s so subtle. The realization is that there is no me outside of God, and there is no God outside of me.

The realization actually happens simultaneously on so many levels. And unless it sacrifices immediately the separate existence of myself from the lower case, then it’s not real realization. Because this is really the subtlety of that. It’s when, in other words, when the aperture of that, whatever that focal point suddenly opens up, you realize that as an aperture you do not exist. You do not exist as this aperture outside of that which—who you are.

And that is what Kashmir Shaivism is so really, really succulent about. It’s the realization of the utter, utter magnanimity of your nature. But it’s a devastating realization because it’s always at the cost of the annihilation of that which you consider yourself to be.

And as the Kashmir Shaivist scriptures speak about that, and even that also, followed by the realization that you have never been ignorant, because that only belongs to the play, or belongs to that contraction and expansion within Shiva—within the heart of Shiva, Spanda. So this is also a very humble realization. Very, very humble realization that there is no such thing, neither prior to realization nor post-realization.

Complementarity and sacred individuality

Menas: Shaivism is a complete system, so we can’t really add to it, and that’s not really a purpose here. In terms of making sense, or bringing it to, let’s say, the quantum level—or to everyday life—some ways perhaps can be added to the understanding of some of these principles, generalized principles.

And this principle of complementarity that I’ve been talking about, it’s also highly misunderstood in scientific terms. It was proposed by Niels Bohr. And today, mostly it’s ignored because, well, it’s just philosophy; it doesn’t really matter very much. But actually, it matters a lot, and it is one of the ways that universal consciousness manifests the universe at every level.

From the very, very top—so-called top level—in terms of the opposites, they are not really opposites, but they complement each other. And that’s why Bohr adopted the yin-yang symbol. The yin does not exist without the yang; they are together.

Rick: Intertwined.

Menas: Yeah. So complementarity, recursion, which is here as well as elsewhere, which is also in the Shiva Sutras. And the third one is the creative interactivity, or sentience, which is really the Ananda part. It’s the bliss of the self which gives rise to everything because of this juxtaposition of the I and the That, which comes out of the love, right?

These three principles apply at every level, and they’re very scientific. And one has to contemplate them because complementarity, again, can be dismissed as, “Well, you’re just talking about opposites.” No, it’s not about opposites. It’s about how the opposites merge into each other, but they’re also separate in some ways—from another point of view.

So as you were saying, the individual and cosmic consciousness are the same, but not in the same… you know, they merge together, but not at the same time. They have a separate existence, depending on where you view it from.

So in terms of going back to the word God, I tend generally to also avoid it because it comes with a lot of baggage. And nowadays, I have to tell you, consciousness is becoming a word with too much baggage.

Sally: Yeah, really.

Menas: I thought—and now I’m beginning to say, “Forget that.” I’m now shifting more into awareness. And actually, I prefer to use the Sanskrit terms, where for consciousness, there are so many beautiful terms. Why not use them? You know, Chiti Shakti, Kundalini, and on and on and on.

Igor: They vibrate so much.

Menas: And Spanda. You know, all of these different names of consciousness. Consciousness today has become, in a way, another word like God.

Sally: And nobody knows what it means anyway.

Menas: That’s right.

Sally: Everybody has disagreements.

Menas: Well, most of these disagreements are really about what it means. Scientists and philosophers are arguing, and if you know about consciousness, they’re really talking past each other. They’re not talking about the same thing.

Igor: Can I just add to what Menas very beautifully now expanded upon? The polarities are not opposites; one contains the other, and one cannot exist without the other. Shiva is as good as dead, as the Tantric tradition goes, unless he is accompanied by Shakti as his own manifestation, as everything, as energy, as the world, and so forth.

So in terms of our personal experience, upon the realization and upon the integration phases which are necessarily accompanied in this process, when we necessarily return to that consciousness—which is the mundane, so to speak, consciousness of our reality—to deal and interact, because we cannot be in Shiva’s consciousness all the time. This body will simply not exist, and the Kashmir Shaivite scriptures are quite unapologetic about that.

So we have to go back, because within that is a mercy of Shiva itself upon that form. But we return with a very qualitatively different realization. So, in other words, our individuality then becomes sacred, because it went through that sacred act of realizing who we are in essence.

Our individuality then becomes sacred, because it went through that sacred act of realizing who we are in essence.

And then there’s the second “aha” realization, that even that individuality also is very sacred. That individuality becomes sacred because it’s another form of Shiva. It’s an aspect of Shiva in its contracted state as something that can behold Shiva through that multitude of, let’s say, expressions.

Grace unveils the truth

Sally: Beautiful, beautiful. I actually wanted to add one more piece before we—

Rick: I’d like you to speak last, because these two have just said a bunch of stuff, so why don’t you make some concluding remarks?

Sally: I actually was going to talk about the factor in Kashmir Shaivism that is so incredibly significant as an aspect of our own spiritual capacity, which is the understanding that because Shakti has veiled everything, Shakti has to remove the veil.

So, in other words, it is literally impossible as an individual to realize the truth, no matter how much effort we make, no matter how smart we are, no matter how much practice we do. We can only take ourselves up to a certain point. And beyond that, it is really the will of Shakti—the will of Shiva—that gives us the capacity to see through the veil.

And that’s the ineluctable reality that makes it so difficult for the modern, non-devotional mind to get, because normally the way that unveiling happens is through the arousing of a kind of combination of love and knowledge, and the love is very much a part of it.

So, in other words, the experience of having the veil removed is an experience of kind of opening up to the vulnerable, love-saturated, Shakti-infused quality of grace in the individual’s life. Without that, knowledge is just knowledge. It doesn’t move you through the veil.

Igor: It drives you.

Sally: It drives you, yeah. And even your realization without that aspect doesn’t transform you, ultimately.

Without grace, knowledge is just knowledge. It doesn’t move you through the veil.

And I think that in the understanding of non-duality, which all of us have found such a profound basis for conversation in the community, it’s really very important to understand that non-duality is just a concept without grace, without that gift of connectedness between the individual and the divine, both within and without.

So I just wanted to close with a salutation to Shakti, who veils and reveals through the five powers of the divine, which include concealment—that is, the absolute hiding of the face of the divine—and the revelation of its presence, which hopefully is really the outcome of this conference and this conversation for all of us.

Rick: Beautiful. Thank you. And I’ll make my concluding remarks much shorter than usual. Thank you all for participating, and those who have made it this far through the conversation, please go to www.batgap.com and enjoy.