“While being caressed, sweet princess, enter the caressing as everlasting life” ~ Shiva Sutra, Verse 10
Vijñāna Bhairava Tantra (sometimes spelt Vigyan Bhairav Tantra) is a centuries old Sanskrit text, considered one of the most important in yoga. In it, Shiva gives us 112 ways to enter into the being of union or yoga, or enlightenment.
The text begins with Devi asking Shiva,
Devi Parvati, Lord Shiva’s beloved asks:
O Shiva, what is your reality?
What is the wonder-filled universe?
What constitutes seed?
Who centres the universal wheel?
What is the life beyond form pervading forms?
How may we enter it fully, above space and time, names and descriptions?
Let my doubts be cleared!
Shiva then replies by ways of 112 sutras or verses, each one describing a particular meditation techniques to find the ultimate reality. There are ways connected to entering a sound and becoming it, working with breath and breath awareness, concentration on various centres in the body, non-dual awareness, imagination and visualization, and contemplation through each of the senses.
Ways such as,
“Intone a sound audibly, then less and less audibly as feeling deepens into this silent harmony.”
“Just when you have the impulse to do something, stop.”
“Stop the doors of the senses when feeling the creeping of an ant. Then.”
“When in worldly activity, keep attentive between the two breaths, and so practising, in a few days be born anew.”
“Look lovingly on some object. Do not go on to another object. Here, in this middle object the blessing.”
“Devotion frees.”
“While being caressed, sweet princess, enter the caressing as everlasting life.”
Today we’ll dive into the wisdoms of the beautiful verse about the entering of the caress.
Yoga means union; it is that which happens when the boundaries dissolve and we realize that perfect moment of the present. It’s no longer about separating ebbs and flows, we realize we are the ocean. Yoga isn’t merely a set of physical exercises that people post on social media, it is beyond that, because there are many yoga paths and for each person theirs is unique. A person may realize yoga sometimes even by just sitting on a chair, until realizing the table is him, as the fingers no longer have the boundary of being a finger – he has taken the table, the wood, as part of him, and has felt beyond that senses that which is more subtle. Yoga is that which moves us beyond our own sensations and beyond our own limitations to feel something beyond us and realize the interconnection of all of life. For some it may happen through the intellect and expansion of mind, for others it may be through the physical body, and for others it may be through devotion.
Devotion is the veil through which awareness shows its beautiful face, and this is why devotion is a freedom, a path to God. So for some people devotional pathways are their spiritual pathways, which in yoga would be the Bhakti yoga path. It is in our tending to, caring and nurturing of another that we come into our inner temple of God where there is no longer selfishness or judgment or separations.
In this devotion and vow for union, whether to our creations, a beloved, our family, our gardens, we essentially allow the love to become us; because love is an embodied thing, a moving thing. The lover becomes the love itself; and through each of their movements, through their words and gestures and hands, love awakens in its life and movement through us for others also. Because love is a movement and a verb, so we become the loving.
This is why in the Song of Songs in Christian mysticism we have the beautiful phrase, “I am my beloved, and my beloved’s mine”. We realize we are one already, despite skins, time or distance; and there is a vow here made not just with lips but with souls also, to take another as our own, protect their heart as ours, because theirs is ours and ours is theirs. This is a sacred union that goes beyond skins, and in truth, love is and always was the path to God. This is why in Christianity marriage is called a sacrament, and why in Vedic astrology we look to the 9th house of spiritual path and dharma when we seek to understand someone’s marriage or future spouse.
To understand union more deeply, we need to understand time. Union is where the past kisses the future into our present moment, and we become the present moment, where there is no longer time. This world is one of time; our skins too are time, and the tree shows its time through our circles and ages, and our natal charts too shows us how time consumes us as the stars, constellations and planets are all only great indicators of time.
This life, as a life of contrasts, allows us an opportunity for a deepening. And yet there are moments in which we become almost consumed in the timelessness of the present moment; an entering of the temple of God where there is no longer time, nor skin, as all is now a kiss. The dancer becomes the dance itself, the poet the poem, and the one being kissed or kissing is now the kiss itself. We’ve all had at least one moment in which all past and future collapsed and time stopped and became non-existent; when we may have been so deeply present in the moment of a hug by a loved one, or in their eyes, or in the joy, or while dancing, or love making, when we felt weightless, time stopped. In such moments, all boundaries dissolve and we are in all with everything around us; there is no longer me versus you, there is now us.
In these moments we are able to go beyond our senses, expand beyond them, and our ego centerness and all “knowing” has disappeared. The path of yoga is essentially a path towards expansion of perceptions.
Spirituality itself essentially means expansion of perceptions. In other words, the more spiritually you evolve, the more clarity of mind and inner purification happens for you, the more you are now able to perceive higher knowledge and truth. Articles no longer are a string of words, and words no longer are a string of letters, because as you crystalize your inner world, new worlds now open themselves to you and within you, and more wisdom reveals itself. Higher knowledge can only enter you if you are able to perceive it and have the capacity within you and energetic alignment to it to take it in.
Love is an entering of everlasting life. It’s a heaven we may live in. Love is one of the first things Shiva mentions in this text through the caress, because in true love our bodies are relaxed; and when we are relaxed we can feel. We don’t love with our minds, we love with our being. We enter a moment so deeply and fully through our sensitivity and vulnerability that we enter it and it transforms us. In true love boundaries dissolve and we merge with something greater than ourselves. There is trust here. There is softness here.
Love is not a commodity, it is not a transaction. It is not for selfishness. Love is the end in itself, because when we truly enter it, we enter eternity.
Love is to see and be seen, to know and be known, not of flesh but through the flesh.
Love is a meditation of a present moment, it is a being meditation, a walking mediation; it is a beingness, a movement, an embodiment, a caring and tending to and paying attention to the other.
The everlasting life is the present. This is the eternity, the heaven. When Jesus was asked about heaven, he replied in one sentence, “There shall be time no longer.”
Because time is a horizontal thing – of tomorrow and yesterday, but the heaven within our hearts is a present thing, a vertical thing, from our heart and heartbeat to God.
To enter the timelessness, you need to move away from time. Love is a door to such entering of the right now – because love allows us to move away from time. There is no time when we love, no past and no future. It’s a beyond the skins thing.
Love is something that deepens us in a way we lose what we are not. It’s an ego-less movement, because in deep love the selfishness dissolves. We deepen into the act and the being of it. The actor becomes the act itself. The kisser is the kiss. The lover is the love is the loving.
It’s a movement that begins with surrender because of full trust, and then this moves us into a union. We enter a moment as an always. We enter a love as wholebodily and wholeheartedly. Love is a pathway to God. Because when someone truly knows how to love another, they come into the wisdom that all is.
Love is a sacred thing. The beloved is a gift of God, it is a seed of God. There is sacredness between you and the one you choose. You enter a temple and spiritual vow together, and within this temple and union you need to nourish your lands, protect each other’s hearts and nurture each other’s inner flames and true selves. When love enters you, you will disappear, because now it’s no longer you versus me, there is only us.
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Cover art is “The Lovers” by Margarete Petersen, showing the merging of the feminine and masculine, their sacred union, and the rising of the kundalini. Petersen’s description of this art, translated from German, is, “Two bared souls looking at each other as mirrors; discarding identities, peeling off an old skin; a blossom offers itself; the inner powers become flowing, soft, flexible; fresh vibrating energy rises up the spine; you and I become one.”
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