The directions to Mark Dyczkowski’s home in India’s sacred city of Banaras are as unusual as the man. "Look for the big Kali yantra," an acquaintance says simply. Strolling beside the Ganga one evening, I spot the triangular symbol of the fierce Hindu goddess adorning a red house facing the river. Beautiful sitar music floats out of the upper windows as a full moon nudges up over the muddy water. We’ve never met, never spoken, never even e-mailed, but he sets aside his instrument when I knock and invites me in to chat. "I’m not a guru," he warns right off. "I’m as human as anyone, though I do have spiritual aspirations."
Dyczkowski is respected as a distinguished scholar of tantra, one of India’s most intriguing, esoteric, and misunderstood religious traditions in a land brimming with complex spiritual systems. An Oxford don, he writes books illuminating the ancient teachings, lectures twice weekly to a bevy of eager students, and heads a project to rescue ancient texts from decay and destruction. But unlike most of his colleagues, who work from the intellectual confines of Western universities, Dyczkowski has spent four decades living, teaching, and practicing tantra in the heart of the Indian spiritual scene.
Banaras—also known as Kashi, Benares, or Varanasi—is a city that Mark Twain called "older than history, older than tradition, older even than legend, and looks twice as old as all of them put together." Hindus come from all over the world to meditate beside, bathe in, and finally be cremated next to Mother Ganga. Among the throngs of pilgrims are bony and bearded holy men, some with the trident of the powerful deity Shiva emblazoned in white ash on their foreheads. These latter are tantrikas—followers of tantra—who are venerated, feared, and shunned by other Hindus for their intense practices, which are said to develop formidable spiritual powers. Tantric rituals may involve eating meat, drinking alcohol, meditating on corpses, and having sex with people other than their spouses. That may be a typical Saturday night for many Americans—leaving aside the corpses—but such acts are deeply taboo among observant Hindus and Buddhists.
Tantric scriptures, which reach back 1,500 years, propound liberation through rather than in spite of desire. Nothing is impure or debased, since everything comes from God. Bhoga—enjoyment of the senses—is as much a part of the path to liberation as yoga—the yoking of the mind and senses. In tantra, the body and the overall physical world is a place of delight, to be experienced rather than rejected as evil (St. Paul) or dismissed as an illusion (Buddha). And unlike many other traditions, tantra emphasizes and celebrates the creative power of the divine feminine. That force is described as Shakti, the Sanskrit word for power.
These tenets make tantra increasingly popular in the West. That popularity, however, frequently takes the form of books and websites touting enhanced sexual pleasure for its own sake. Shorn of scripture and rigorous discipline, tantra often cloaks lust in New Age jargon and can be used to justify excess in the name of spiritual seeking. "There is a famous play called I Am as You Like Me to Be," says Dyczkowski. "And that is tantra in the West."
He argues that true tantric learning requires a guru, textual understanding, and a willingness to explore the far reaches of consciousness. For him, the many varieties of tantra are an immensely rich collection of subtle techniques, pioneered over millennia, which allow us ultimately to erase the line separating ourselves from the Divine. He scoffs at his Western counterparts who research tantra from afar as a purely academic affair.
There is an edge in the way Dyczkowski describes academia. Combining study and practice is the common path in many religions, but it makes him an outsider in the eyes of his professional colleagues—one describes him as "a wild man." That status clearly rankles, yet Dyczkowski also revels in his independence. He has no office hours. Seekers arrive regularly at his door, and he spends his days immersed in rigorous mental and spiritual activities. He also knows the best places in town to eat, navigates his aging Vespa scooter with admirable dexterity through Varanasi’s crooked and crowded lanes, and enjoys the occasional smoke.
Stocky and bearded, Dyczkowski can turn suddenly from gentle to gruff, from pedantic to curious. When I speak to him a few weeks later by phone, he is in Italy preparing for a major operation to remove a tennis-ball-sized growth near his liver. Despite that looming event, his eagerness to speak about Shiva consciousness is undimmed.
What was your introduction to tantra?
I started studying it in the early 1970s. What was interesting to me was not the mantras or rituals or methods of gaining magical powers but the higher and deeper mystical states in which to experience the infinite aspects of what you might call God. There are many schools of tantra; I chose Kashmir Shaivism, which contains marvelous, refined expressions of the Divine in all levels of existence. In 1976, I met Swami Lakshmanjoo, a living exponent of Kashmir Shaivism, and lived at his ashram, where he initiated me.
What is the purpose of tantric practices?
The goal is to increase our awareness until the separations we experience—the duality of subject and object that is the source of our suffering—vanish in the absolute consciousness, which is Shiva.
A central idea of tantra, you write, is that "matter cannot sully the absolute." What does this mean?
All that exists is divine consciousness. This universal divine consciousness creates all things. It becomes everything. It limits its infinite being through its own free will and withdraws into one of two polarities—subject and object. It does that simply for the joy, the immense creativity. An artist is an artist because he creates, and in India, Lord Shiva is worshipped as the supreme artist. The whole of creation is his marvelous artistic work.
You also say that when Shiva reveals his own nature, the universe is destroyed. Why?
All exists in relation to Shiva as the creation to the creator. When Shiva manifests in himself as he is, then he’s entirely nonrelational. Shiva hides himself in the universe and it is we who fail to realize his presence in all things. The universe is not destroyed literally, but understood to be what it really is—Shiva.
You speak of Shiva as "he." How is gender used in tantra?
Male and female are polarities that represent all polarities—the known and the knower, the subject and the object, all opposites. The union of opposites is the first emanation, the primary radiation of the One, which is neither male nor female. When there is Shiva there is Shakti, where there is female there is male. In Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, there is just one God. In India, there is agreement that there is one ultimate reality—but it can assume an infinite number of forms. So there are many, yet there is just one God and Goddess.
What is Shakti?
A table is a table because it has four legs and you can put objects on it. Those qualities, that power to do what it does as a table, are derived from what you could call its tableness. That is its shakti—the capacity of an object, its shape and form. Shakti is the power that Shiva has to do what he does.
So she’s the creative impulse. But why is she a she?
Shakti means power in Sanskrit, and it is feminine. The feminine is considered the source, the womb. The woman receives the man’s seed and gives birth. Light impregnates awareness. The mingling makes creation both manifest and meaningful. Shakti is the mother and Shiva the father of creation.
Everything we experience takes place in consciousness. That consciousness also contains the power of self-awareness. And that is Shakti. Shiva is consciousness and Shakti is awareness. The union of Shiva and Shakti is the union of consciousness and awareness.
Fundamentally there are no polarities, but in this world we can only understand the one reality as a kind of union of opposites. We analyze our experiences—molecular biologists do this, too—in terms of polarities working together. Indian philosophy is concerned with that analysis as well, not just how things are but how things are in relationship and as part of our experience.
Kashmir Shaivism focuses intensely on this. It doesn’t use gods and goddesses. What’s important is to penetrate into the essence of reality. There is a parallel between the microcosm and the macrocosm. The body is a mini-universe. Applying the same principle, each moment is a mini-reflection of the experience Shiva is having. To understand how Shiva is and how he perceives, we analyze what we see and how. To do that, we have to posit that this reality—the totality of experience—is a union of polarities, which always have to be taken together.
Why is all this important? We’re not just playing clever philosophical games. If we understand the nature of perceiver and perceived, we deepen our understanding of the total reality, our ultimate supreme identity. Failing to do that we relapse into a condition of a limited individual state, in which we suffer all kinds of misery. Shiva and Shakti are the relationship between immanence and transcendence, between the individual and God, between God and the universe.
What is spanda and how does it play into this?
The polarities are not static. They are actually moving in and out of each other, constantly reverting from one to the other. The one consciousness oscillates between the two polarities. Spanda means "vibration, rhythm, pulse." It denotes the activity of consciousness.
Anything you look at involves a relationship between the doer and the doing, the seer and the seeing. That activity is perception. When you are done, you draw back and rest until another urge to perceive arises. If we understand how we perceive, then we can understand how universal consciousness happens. It is a cycling back and forth like a wave, a dynamism of polarities generating one out of the other and then dissolving into the other. When the total consciousness is at infinite rest, then all polarities come to an end.
That sounds remarkably similar to the modern concept in physics of matter acting as either a particle or a wave.
Yes. You can analyze matter moving through space as a particle or a wave, and both are correct. There is both a solid and an intangible quality. Some people say reality is very concrete. At the other extreme are those who say the world is an ineffable dream. Both are correct and true—it just depends how you analyze your experience.
Why the emphasis on activities like meditating on corpses or having ritual sex?
The explanations vary according to different schools. In Kashmir Shaivism it isn’t necessary to go to a cremation ground or to perform any rituals to develop spiritually, but you may do so. Many involve drinking wine, eating meat, and having sex. These activities can be pure because they stimulate consciousness and awareness. But for a person who is not a yogi, such things dull the awareness.
Meditating on a corpse helps you to remember and reflect on death and the transitory nature of life. It also is prescribed to achieve certain goals. It also can be a kind of austerity—not about pain and discomfort but about not succumbing to negative energies. Among Hindus (and Muslims and Jews) there is nothing more polluted and impure than the dead body.
How does a tantric practitioner enter higher levels of consciousness?
The expansion of consciousness is first aroused in the body, then through the mind and intellect, and then into the higher levels of consciousness. It starts from the gross material level and expands up and out. Kundalini is a latent potency of awareness within physical material. It expands and develops, changes and progresses through body, intellect, and mind.
We call this "shakti rising." Kundalini is the energy inherent in the universal consciousness, even in insentient beings. The greater the consciousness, the more powerful the kundalini. There are many forms of this energy. Some work at the physical plane—the atomic or molecular or cellular. Some are mental—there is the power to know, act, desire. Then there are spiritual energies—the power to enlighten.
A rolling boulder is powerful but not conscious.
Yes, exactly. If you are doing something unconsciously, the energies operating belong to a lower level. You are conscious of this magazine, this room, the thought you are having. All those moments put together in the present are the total experience Shiva is having. This is taking place every instant of our lives. This is who we are. Kundalini may be firing up the back of your spine, or you may be sitting for long periods in meditation without food and drink. But that experience is trivial compared to what we’re experiencing every moment. Isn’t it wonderful?
That reminds me of the way Proust beautifully—and at great length—describes the simple act of waking up.
Yes. I woke up this morning—incredible and astonishing! There isn’t more because we are already complete. The whole is much beyond the sum of its parts because the whole is infinite and the parts are not.
Yet we are frustrated, we want more—we want to be blessed by yogis, we want to travel to sit at the feet of an enlightened master. But why, when you are not sitting at his feet or being blessed, do you not see God? You can sit with a great yogi for four or five days and feel fantastic, but when you get home you feel nothing. Why? God is present everywhere in each and every thing—and above all he is present as ourselves. Why do we look for something more?
How does tantra apply to our world today?
What’s most important is to develop and maintain awareness of divine consciousness—to be aware with reverence and joy. There is a joy from God that supersedes all other kinds of joy.
But it is very difficult to do this. We get lost in our day-to-day affairs and lose our awareness of consciousness, so we lose the source of happiness. The masters say that you must do whatever is conducive to developing and maintaining awareness: pray, meditate, do rituals, say mantras, perform spiritual disciplines of all kinds. If you are a Christian, go to church. The point is to develop and maintain awareness. This is the path to find ultimate meaning and fulfillment.
How do you approach total awareness?
The masters say there are individual, empowered, and supreme means. In the individual means, you sit in an asana. Then you visualize the subtle body or meditate on the breath.
The empowered means is purification of thought. You read scripture—the Bhagavad Gita or the Bible or the fine words of someone with insight into divine reality. You read a passage, reflect deeply on the meaning, and gradually clean out those thoughts of daily life that don’t lead to spiritual development. You create a stream of thought focused on God.
When you meditate, you watch how thoughts rise and fall away. You observe. You find the center between one thought and the next. Then thoughts slow down, and in between there is silence. This is how God-consciousness develops. Another approach is repeating a mantra, filling your thoughts with it, dissolving those thoughts, and becoming a stream of mantra that dissolves into silence. Thought gets cleaner and cleaner, and the full thought of God becomes pure and silent. There is pure awareness of God, and thought becomes without-thought.
The highest thought, according to the Kashmiri Shaivist masters, is the thought that I am consciousness, pure infinite being. That I am that. In that thoughtless-thought there is the identification of the supreme Self with the individual self. The supreme Self is consciousness; the individual self is awareness. They are two aspects of the same reality—God reflecting on himself. God knows himself through our awareness. We have a choice. We can be aware of God or choose not to be. This is not as easy as switching a light on or off. If you decide to be aware of God you have to practice very hard and repeatedly.
And the supreme means?
This is for the few—instantaneous insight into pure God-consciousness, the great I AM. When you are fully aware of consciousness, the oneness is pure I AM. It is everything you see in the outside world, from a chair to Mark to Andrew to the tiniest subatomic particle. Consciousness is not like a body or an object. It contains all moments. It is the recognition of one’s true identity. All spiritual practices ultimately lead to that awareness.
Enter that supreme insight and you never lose it. That is how God is himself—never lost and never losing knowledge of his own infinite being. This is why the Kashmiri Shaivist teachers say all practice is based on grace—on Shakti’s power, which sustains and develops awareness.
Can tantra survive intact with its introduction to the West?
These teachings are ancient. Generations and generations have known and practiced this subtle awareness of consciousness, but it has been articulated in different ways. Kashmir Shaivism is perhaps one of the teachings of ancient wisdom which modern educated Westerners can grasp and apply. In India, you talk to the most illiterate sweeper and he already understands this. He’ll smile and close his eyes and apply his awareness to God-consciousness and feel that joy.
How does yoga as it is taught in the West relate to this approach?
Yoga has its roots in the tantric tradition. The routine for a person practicing yoga is to raise their kundalini and unite it in the highest spiritual spheres. But at yoga centers in the West—and even in India—they are talking about the physical body. When I go to give a talk at these places, they want to hear about the body. Sometimes there is talk of balancing the chakras to be healthy in body and mind. But nowhere is there talk of a higher reality.
It is very easy to misunderstand the teachings concerning the subtle body, and to relate them only to the dimensions of the physical body or mind. But the purpose of the teachings is concerned with the path that leads from the lower physical spheres up to the more spiritual ones.
Does tantra have the potential to transform the West?
Of course. Any true religion transforms us into higher spiritual beings. It depends on what we want to achieve.
Watch a video clip of Mark Dyczkowski in conversation with Pandit Rajmani Tigunait at yogaplus.org/tantravideo.
Find outtakes from this interview at yogaplus.org/tantraQA.
Visit Mark Dyczkowski online at markdkashi.com.
Andrew Lawler’s stories have been featured in National Geographic, Smithsonian, and Discover magazines. Visit andrewlawler.com.
Fall 2009