The Reality Sutras

by Shambhavi Sarasvati

  I walked up the stairs, admiring the panoramic view of the river. Reaching the top of the stairs, I discovered a spacious balcony and further on, the hall that bounded the ashram’s living quarters.

  When I took my first step onto the balcony, the sky seemed to open and from it poured a river of grace directly into the top of my head. I remember looking up and seeing nothing but an infinite expanse of dancing, golden-blue light.

  I felt a force and a shock of understanding and surrender moving through me. I stumbled a few more steps onto the balcony and fell to my knees weeping. I experienced the entire sky entering me as a river made of endlessly flowing compassion.

  For the next hour, an utterly palpable intelligence and compassion poured into me. I wept without restraint. I understood it was my Guru. I understood directly, incontrovertibly, that compassion is not something we “have” or “cultivate,” but that it is woven into the fabric of reality itself. I understood that reality, Guru, and God are not different from that wisdom. I also understood that there is only benevolence.

  When we are relatively ignorant of our real nature, our experience is more monodimensionally physical. Beings and things appear to our senses to be composed only of gross materials. When we are a little more awake, we can experience subtle energy. Later, if our perceptions become even more subtle, we can sense living presence: a pervasive awareness or consciousness and its vitality. But the ultimate insight into the nature of reality is that it is composed of wisdom.

  Through this direct perception, we learn that God is primordial intelligence, compassion, mercy, generosity, creativity, curiosity, precision, patience, playfulness, and clarity. Consciousness and energy are one way of talking about this living awareness. But in the end, we discover that wisdom is the real name of God. We learn that the ocean of consciousness and energy is an ocean of awake, alive, creative, responsive wisdom: the Supreme Self.

  5

  Desire is required

  The unstoppable desire to find out who you really are is the voice of the supreme wisdom speaking to you from within you.

  You often hear that being spiritual requires getting rid of desire. Nothing could be further from the truth. We absolutely need desire in order to wake up. Desire is not only necessary, it is at the heart of reality, inciting the creation to unfurl from the unconditioned.

  In the tradition of Trika Shaivism, Shiva is the personification of awareness. Shakti is the personification of creative potency or power. Impelling the creation is Shakti. She excites Shiva to endlessly overflow with the play of linear time, space, beings, and worlds. This objectless, self-expressive desire is the cosmic-sized version of our more limited desires.

  Our desires are conditioned. We want this and not that. Shiva’s desire is pure self-expression, pure self-enjoyment. God is not journeying toward wisdom; the Lord is wisdom. But we ourselves are that enacting the play of a return from ignorance to wisdom purely for fun. Desire directs our participation in the game of self-realization. But first, our desire must recalibrate. It must redirect from desperately desiring limited objects such as a donut, a car, a lover, a vacation, or spiritual powers, to desperately desiring to wake up.

  Luckily for us, there is only one desire. The desire for a donut is not different from the desire for self-realization. Our simple cravings are “stepped down” expressions of the desire to wake up. There is only one Shakti (energy) of desire. She just expresses herself differently depending on conditioning. The myriad limited desires that drive you every moment of the day eventually merge into one great desire: the desire to discover who you really are. This is a natural, unavoidable process.

  Desires for objects of desire, even self-realization, are based on a feeling of lack, or incompletion. When we discover the desire to self-realize, we begin to move toward embodying objectless desire and unconditioned, joyful self-expression.

  The Sanskrit phrase for the Shakti or energy of desire is iccha shakti. This is often crudely translated as “will.” In fact, translating iccha shakti as will creates misunderstanding. We can hardly fathom the objectless desire that is iccha shakti. We tend to interpret it in an ordinary way as the will of an individual to accomplish specific goals, or intentions.

  A better translation of iccha shakti is “desire” or “inclination” or “impulse.” A natural and objectless impulse for self-expression engenders endless effulgence: the mad overflowing we call manifest life. Iccha shakti is not separate from reality’s pure enjoyment of its own plenitude.

  You may be able to relate this to the experience of generosity. When you are feeling self-protective, fragile, or lacking, you will likely take some time making decisions about giving. You may worry about boundaries, about not having enough, or about some future possible calamity. You may deploy a semblance of generosity in order to gain admiration and feel more secure. You will be cautious about generosity or perhaps behave in a generous-looking way instead of just being generous.

  If you are not worried about yourself, if you feel nourished by life, when the urge to be generous arises, you will be more likely to simply follow it. Feeling nourished and content are great forms of wealth. They cause you to overflow spontaneously with generous thoughts, feelings, and actions. When you feel replete, there is no resistance to generosity. It is a natural and joyful self-expression.

  From the absolute perspective, all action is impelled by iccha shakti. All activity is generosity. On one level, all is generosity because something exists rather than nothing. On another level, all is generosity because there is nothing but beneficence. All activity is happening spontaneously and is nothing but self-expression: a celebration of the nature of existence.

  Anandamayi Ma had her own way of talking about iccha shakti. She called it kheyal. Kheyal is a type of Indian improvisational vocal music. Ma said innumerable times that she never did anything unless moved to do so by kheyal. She meant that in her activities, she directly embodied the spontaneity, playfulness, and natural generosity of the creator. We are not quite “there” yet, but our effortful pursuit of self-realization will eventually lead to effortless, beneficent overflow.

  6

  Freedom is the unlimited capacity for self-expression

  Svatantrya means the independent freedom to manifest unlimited and unconditioned experiences of form and circumstance.

  When we consider freedom from our limited perspective, we may think of being able to do whatever we like or of being free from obstruction. The inherent freedom of reality includes the possibility of these freedoms, but it is more expansive. This alive, aware reality possesses total freedom of self-expression. This freedom is not dependent on any other entity, situation, or cause. In the Trika tradition, the primordial, independent freedom of reality to express itself is called svatantrya.

  You and I share an experience of dependency. We are dependent on many circumstances and fundamentally on the natural, unconditioned state just as a wave is dependent on the ocean. Every choice we make—to eat, to sleep, to breathe, to travel, to take a particular job, to do or not do absolutely anything—is dependent on many other beings and circumstances. For starters, we are dependent on others for getting born!

  Shiva Nature, on the other hand, is unborn and uncaused. It is the ground of existence. There is nothing prior to it or behind it.

  We can better understand svatantrya if we consider the living symbol of a mirror. A mirror can reflect anything put in front of it. It has infinite potential for creating reflections. A mirror will also provide reflections regardless of the nature of the objects place in front of it. It is unconditioned by likes and dislikes or by any concept whatsoever.

  Likewise, this ever-fresh, awake, and creative reality has infinite potential to spontaneously cause reflections, or appearings, of infinite forms and circumstances to arise within itself. But the mirror-like quality of reality is different from an ordinary mirror. There is no outside of the mirror of reality. Just as waves arise from ocean and are made of ocean, the reflec
tions that arise in the mirror of consciousness are made of consciousness and its energy. They are reflections that arise in the mirror of consciousness without an object outside of the mirror to cause the reflection. The mirror is the cause of the reflection. The mirror is another living symbol, like the ocean, that is useful for direct realization practitioners.

  Svatantrya, unlimited freedom of self-expression, also includes the capacity to create the appearance of limitation for the purpose of giving rise to different kinds of experiences. For instance, if you want to have metal utensils for eating, you must limit the potential of metal. Molten metal has the potential to be formed into many, many different objects. By specifically fashioning a fork or a spoon, you are limiting that potential. You have taken away, at least temporarily, the potential of the metal to be an earring or a nail. You would have to melt the fork down again into its molten, less conditioned state in order to again reveal its less conditioned capacity.

  Svatantrya and the capacity for self-limiting are also mirrored in our own capacity for acting in a drama. In a play or a movie, you may act the part of a person with only one leg. You really have two legs, but it’s fun and challenging to try to embody a one-legged person’s experience.

  Similarly, a single subjectivity plays all of the roles in all of existence. Limitation is how the vast display of diversity is manifested out of the unlimited and unconditioned. However, there is not really any limitation. There is a play of limitation. Just as in the example of a two-legged person playing the part of a one-legged person, this alive, aware reality is always present in full measure and full capacity.

  7

  Shakti is the power of self-reflection

  The primordial clear light of awareness and its power to self-reflect are the origin of dualistic experience.

  Consciousness, or Shiva, appears to us as prakasha, the light of primordial awareness. Shakti, or vimarsha, is the primordial capacity to self-reflect. Pure awareness by itself would be totally passive. The power of self-reflection is the origin of all experience and of the totality of diverse appearings from the most limited to the most universal.

  When we self-reflect in an ordinary way, we initiate an experience of the three poles of duality. I am the observer, a.k.a. the observing subject or the active subjectivity. That is one pole. Then there is the second pole: the act of observing. Finally, even when engaging in internal self-reflection, we are establishing an “object” of contemplation: ourselves. This is the third pole. These three poles of subject, act, and object constitute the architecture of all dualistic experiences of people, objects, and worlds.

  When we self-reflect, we are enacting an experience of one reflecting on itself as if there were two. For instance, when I self-reflect and observe that I am writing a book, there is an upsurge of something like an appearance of duality. In truth, the person observing, the act of observing, and the person writing are one and the same. Just because I can reflect on myself, I am not fooled into thinking I am multiple people! Yet, within myself, I am enacting a play of duality.

  As we self-reflect, so does the ultimate. Beginning with the primordial capacity for self-reflection, Shakti wields the power to generate experiences of more than two. Beginning with self-awareness, the appearance of an external other is projected, seemingly outward, but actually still within the one subjectivity of the Supreme.

  Together, awareness and its Shakti generate the infinite experiences we call duality or impermanence. But as we do, they never experience any separation even while they continuously express and contemplate the nature of Self through all experiences of people, beings, worlds, and circumstances.

  8

  All self-reflections are enjoyed

  by the Lord

  Everything that appears is a reflection of the nature of one uncaused and continuous subjectivity in a state of self-contemplation and self-enjoyment.

  In Trika Shaivism, the word “reflection” refers to any appearing of any form or circumstance. This alive, aware, naturally effulgent reality spontaneously gives rise to infinite self-expressions. These self-expressions constitute all manifest life. This pervasive living presence enjoys experiencing reflections of its own nature in the same way that we enjoy anything we have made as a reflection of who and what we are.

  When we paint, or sculpt, or dance, or write, or compose music, we enjoy stepping back and contemplating what we have made. We have externalized a self-expression, but that object or experience continues to have an uncannily intimate relationship with its creator. The alchemy and magnetism of self-expression resides, in part, in the pleasurable confusion of outside and inside.

  Likewise, all of reality ceaselessly emits the conditioned experiences of form we call individuals, worlds, and circumstances. These are its own creations and reflections of its own nature. While there is no outside to that supreme subjectivity, the Supreme has the power to produce experiences of the diversity of worlds and experience them as if they were objective or external. It does this in order to contemplate and enjoy them, just as we do.

  The nature of reality is to give rise to appearings which, on a relative level, do not enjoy the full awareness and potency of the whole. Although seemingly limited, all reflections announce in their arising the essence of their origin. Returning to the example of art created by human beings, in these productions, we can discover a lot about human nature. Just so, in the reflections, the appearings, of the creation, we can discover the nature of reality itself. Discovering that is the aim of sadhana.

  Whether Shiva-Shakti is making a planet, a race of sentient beings, a tool, a tree, or a rock, through this process of self-limitation, there is enjoyment and the opportunity to reflect on its own nature. This divine enjoyment, or contemplation, is aesthetic self-appreciation on an unimaginable scale.

  9

  Diversity is a real experience

  Existence encompasses both continuity and the experience of diversity. Neither is to be rejected.

  Right now, you are likely experiencing the world as a collection of beings and objects with empty space separating them. This is duality, or bheda: the experience of separation, the experience of more than one.

  When our day-to-day experience is that of being a separate individual, we are under the influence of anavamala. Anavamala is the root ignorance: the conviction that we are separate bodies, each with our own, separate consciousness. One way of talking about the goal of spiritual practice in Trika Shaivism is that it relieves you of anavamala.

  Dualistic perception has three poles, or three reference points: the perceiver, the act of perceiving, and the perceived. Experiencing life from the vantage point of a separate perceiver engaged in an act of perception of other objects and beings is a habit. It is an engrained habit, but a habit nonetheless. This habit can be unlearned. The fact that it can be unlearned, or simply abandoned, strongly indicates that it may not be the bottom line for reality. Nonetheless, dualistic experience arises naturally as an aspect of the expressiveness of living presence.

  Nondual experience, or abheda, arises when perceiver, the act of perception, and the seen are experienced as one continuous, undivided circumstance with no actual separation between the three poles. When you have the embodied, consistent perception that the ground is continuity, not separation, you are still enjoying the experience of the diversity of people and objects. In fact, you enjoy diversity more because you move from the earnestness of dualistic karmic vision to appreciating diversity as a playful display that does not in any way depart from continuity.

  Some traditions, particularly orthodox Hindu and Buddhist traditions, teach that manifest life is unreal or illusory. The Views of these traditions range from extreme negations of the reality of manifest life, to positioning dualistic experience as a trick or a veil, to assertions that transitory phenomena are unreal simply because they are transitory.

  Trika Shaivism teaches that, while there are not actually separate objects and beings, the experience of separation is
real and natural. So is unlearning it. Once having unlearned the habit of separatist experience, of separatist awareness, we can enjoy the multiplicity as the ornament and creative glamour of God. This condition of enjoying manifest life while not experiencing separation is called jivanmukti, or liberated in life.

  Continuity and the enjoyment of diversity co-exist and are both of the real nature of existence. This experience of wildly proliferating diversity, and particularly the experience of communicating, is the delight to be found in embodied life. When we relax and realize that separation is an experience emerging from within continuity, then suffering ends, and we can enjoy the carnival of diversity. An experience of tremendous intimacy arises that is a hallmark of self-realization.

  In traditions that denigrate dualistic experience, or deny its validity, practices of withdrawal of the senses are more common. But in direct realization traditions, we are generally doing practices to release our senses from limitation, not cut them off. We are trying to reunite our senses with the more expansive sense capacities of reality as a whole and thus become more like Shiva.

  [It] is Siva Himself, of un-impeded Will and pellucid consciousness, who is ever sparkling in my heart. It is His highest Sakti Herself that is ever playing on the edge of my senses.

  — Abhinavagupta3

  God is not focusing on one person’s breath or withdrawing from sense experiences. God’s “one-pointedness” is everywhere, all at once. Direct realization View leads one more in the direction of practices that are based on opening the gates of the senses, although there is no prescription against doing practices of limited one-pointedness if that would be helpful. We don’t reject anything.

  At some point, distinctions such as dual and nondual stop being important. There is only aware livingness forever accomplishing its own nature. One becomes immersed in the immediacy of that, and discussions of withdrawing or participating, of eyes closed or eyes open, of duality and nonduality become utterly irrelevant in the face of the unbroken fullness and majesty of life.