Indecent Practices and Erotic Trance:
                           Making Sense of Tantra

                            by John Ryan Haule
                             Copyright © 1999
                            All Rights Reserved
                     http://www.jrhaule.net/ipet.html


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                                  Thirteen

                           Mutual Participation



                         * Mutual Hypnosis
                         * Yeshe Initiates Her Rapists
                         * Shaktipat
                         * The Recipient Of Shaktipat
                         * The End Of The Ladder
                         * Irina Tweedie
                         * The Feminine Principle
                         * Female Gurus



     The metaphor of a ladder of ascent, as ubiquitous as it may be,
     leaves much to be desired in articulating the nature of mysticism.
     Every ladder inevitably describes the author's own predilections
     and is valuable only insofar as it provides a useful set of
     distinctions between the various challenges and achievements
     required by the mystical path. The best masters, however, will be
     flexible with their disciples and reorder the rungs of their
     teaching so as to complement the natural talents and personal
     difficulties of each disciple.

     The ladder outlined in the preceding chapters has this advantage
     and failing, and it may also come dangerously close to giving the
     impression that mystical achievement is entirely a matter of
     "internal work" which the individual practitioner can undertake
     more or less in isolation. It might be true enough, for example,
     that if Trighantika would only renounce his fanatical disciples,
     stop his exalting, and humbly take up the work of acquainting
     himself with kundalini through an exercise like the tubular palace
     meditation, he might achieve Spontaneous Great Bliss and open the
     way to emptiness. But would a madman like Trighantika be able to
     relate to a partner? The ladder metaphor will certainly have
     misled us if we have come to think that "internal work" is all
     that is required and that one's partner in maithuna is merely a
     necessary tool for one's own personal advancement and is never
     appreciated as an individual with a path of her own. Such a view
     appears to be supported by the male-authored texts emphasized by
     Eliade in which the ideal partner is described as an
     "untouchable," a polluted woman who gratifies the need for what is
     forbidden and serves only as an impersonal figure to make the
     divine relationship possible. Although she must be worshipped as a
     goddess, we may well wonder what this does to the woman herself.
     It appears from such texts that relationship and mutuality -- to
     say nothing of ordinary human respect -- play no role at all. The
     Sahajiya who bathes his dancing girls and Gandhi's "chastely"
     sleeping with female followers to test his own conquest of sexual
     attachment surely lead us to suspect that the female partner may
     have been abusively treated as an object. The same suspicion
     applies to the Sufi who practices the "witness game" with naked,
     "beardless" youths.

     Recently a woman told me the story of her relationship with an
     avid American Sufi who practiced an unbending form of carezza. In
     the beginning he seemed to her a wonderful partner insofar as his
     refusal to ejaculate and detumesce revealed her own capacity for
     multiple orgasms. Sex had never been so good. She said she had had
     "no idea my body could do these things." But eventually a
     resentment began to grow as she became convinced that he could not
     be budged from his own private accomplishments. He was unyielding
     and in a deep sense untouchable. She felt she was always required
     to submit orgasmically to his self-satisfied superiority. He never
     met her half-way, never joined her in the oceanic transpersonal
     moment of mutual orgasm. She began to feel that she was nothing
     but an object to him. The whole relationship began to feel
     "creepy," and she found it was not difficult to break off.

     A story like this reveals the shadowy dimension of the ladder of
     sexual ascent when it is pursued as a personal indulgence. If such
     a private pursuit of excellence reminds us of the self-righteous
     attitude of fundamentalists who appear to have lost all sense of
     the human dignity of those whose ways of life they reject, our
     suspicions may not be ill placed. It brings to our attention an
     issue which has been mentioned from time to time in previous
     chapters but never given a ladder rung of its own -- namely that
     of mutuality, reciprocity, or interpersonal relationship. In fact,
     mutuality does not deserve a special place because it plays an
     integral role at every step. We did speak at some length, for
     example, of Vimalananda's eternal and spiritual love for his
     Bhairavi whom he left only because he had been "ordered" to begin
     a life of teaching. But if we down-played the role of mutuality at
     the rungs of scandal and the subtle body, we did so primarily in
     order to emphasize the great changes that have to be effected in
     the individual. It is, at bottom, our own awareness that needs to
     be changed. Whatever practices we undertake, their goal is not
     feats of prowess but the expansion of consciousness, freeing it
     from the limitations imposed by our neurotic fears and the
     narrowness of social conformity. Indeed, the ultimate reality in
     this work that takes us from the empirical world to the subtle
     plane and then to emptiness is consciousness itself.

     But consciousness is not something locked away and isolated in our
     citadel self. Even if we live our entire lives without
     encountering the "crack in the self" and never cease to be
     Cartesian tourists on planet Earth, we fall under the influence of
     other people's consciousness every day. We may walk into a room,
     for example, and find the atmosphere thick with strife. If not a
     single contentious word is uttered, we find ourselves cautious,
     defensive, and on the look-out for an explanation. Perhaps we feel
     unwelcome as an intruder or that our sympathies are being silently
     demanded from all sides, even though we are unaware of the issues
     at stake. Similarly we can feel another person's anxious or erotic
     energy, sometimes without being able to pinpoint what it is about
     that person which stirs up anxiety or lust in ourselves. The story
     of the sexual therapist, Juliet Carr, who is able in a few hours
     to stir up enough eros in her client, Bill, that he can keep
     himself and his wife satisfied for weeks has given us a dramatic
     instance of interpersonal influence. The mystical path, whether it
     embraces sexual practices or not, is always founded upon the
     mutual influence of master and disciple or partner and partner.

     The power of maithuna, indeed, is not to be sought merely in the
     complexity of the detachments and "shepherding" described in the
     previous chapter, but in the mutual inductive effect of each
     partner's eros upon the other. We do not need to be mystics to
     know that our partner's state of arousal -- or disinterest -- has
     a direct effect upon our own erotic state of consciousness.
     Although we may suppose that in profane consciousness many couples
     remain ignorant of one another's real feelings during intercourse,
     physiological, emotional, and imaginal influences invariably play
     at least an unconscious role.

     In maithuna, however, each party must be clearly aware not only of
     her own kundalini's arousal but also of that of her partner.
     Maithuna always aims for samarasa, "a `unity of emotion,' or more
     precisely, the paradoxical, inexpressible experience of the
     discovery of Unity" (Eliade, 1969: 260). Samarasa, however, is
     obtained not merely through the conscious effort of "shepherding"
     by which our arousal is guided into a tandem relation with that of
     our partner. It is obtained above all through the "letting go" of
     a condition of mutual influence that takes place autonomously.
     Such an "alignment" of two beings in maithuna resembles the way
     that our internal monologues are "arranged" by the semi-conscious
     forces of the persona field, but at a much deeper and more
     unconscious level. We may well describe this phenomenon in terms
     of a "field of atman" that arranges our emotions, imaginal
     experiences, and even the raising of kundalini, as though it is
     the atman of each partner which mutually influences the other. The
     atman field[1] may even be said to operate as a kind of third
     agent which brings the two partners into alignment with one
     another at the level of atman or "self."[2] Mutual influence
     takes place autonomously, much as the atoms of a piece of iron are
     "aligned" by the influence of a magnetic field. "If one of the
     partners fails to enjoy a permanent awakening, he or she may
     receive it from the other" (Silburn, 1987: 160). In this way
     samarasa simply comes to be in its "suchness" when intercourse
     takes place on the field of emptiness.


                              Mutual Hypnosis

     A dramatic example of this deep sort of influence is described in
     a series of experiments designed by Charles Tart to explore what
     he calls "mutual hypnosis" (Tart, 1972: 297-315). Tart started
     with the question of how to "deepen" the hypnotic trance and
     theorized that the rapport between hypnotist and hypnotized
     subject may be the deciding factor. Believing that the rapport is
     more powerfully felt by the subject than by the hypnotist, he
     expected that if the hypnotist were also in a state of hypnotic
     trance, both the rapport and the depth of trance would increase.
     To test this hypothesis, he selected two of his students who had
     already demonstrated moderate talent both for hypnotizing and for
     being hypnotized. Both were in their twenties. Tart refers to them
     as Bill and Anne. He had one hypnotize the other and then had them
     switch roles without leaving the trance state. The procedure
     worked. Bill hypnotized Anne and instructed her to hypnotize him.
     With urging from Tart, each then worked to deepen the other's
     state of trance, wherein they reached subjective assessments of
     trance depth that went beyond the agreed-upon scale. In the
     hypnotic state, they both learned to be far more dramatic,
     forceful, and imaginative practitioners of the hypnotic art.

     But an unexpected development occurred when they employed hypnotic
     "dreams" as a means for imaginatively deepening their respective
     states. Bill took them both into a sloping tunnel whose depth was
     to parallel their mutual state of trance. In that dream it was
     discovered that they were in full communication, even when their
     eyes were closed and they were not speaking to one another. Back
     in ordinary consciousness, their separate reports of the adventure
     in the tunnel not only agreed in all respects but "possessed
     complete experiential reality," although it was "unworldly" and
     was possibly "God's house," the "heaven of the Greeks, . . . a
     heaven without finality" (Ibid., 309). They felt they had heads
     and faces but often no bodies and occasionally "walked through
     each other" (Ibid.,, 310).

          It also came out in conversations some weeks later that
          this passing through each other was accompanied by a
          sense of merging identities, of a partial blending of
          themselves quite beyond the degree of contact human
          beings expect to share with others (Ibid., 310).

          This seemed like a partial fusion of identities, a
          partial loss of the distinction between I and Thou. This
          was felt to be good at first, but later the Ss perceived
          this as a threat to their individual autonomy (Ibid.,
          312).

          Because of the sudden and unexpected intensity of these
          feelings the couples [Bill and Anne, as well as several
          similar cases of couples who took LSD-25 together] had a
          great deal of difficulty in their emotional
          relationships to each other for several months
          afterwards, all centered around feelings that they had
          seen too much of each other's real selves, more than
          their previous relationship had prepared them to handle
          comfortably (Ibid., 314).

     There were two other results of interest. The first was that in
     one of the sessions a third student, Carol, had entered the room
     unexpectedly while the mutual hypnosis experiment was in progress.
     Although she sat in the corner and was subjected to no induction
     procedure, she, too, entered into trance and found herself in the
     tunnel with Bill and Anne, a fact that the two principals
     perceived immediately. Bill ordered her out, but she tagged along
     guiltily and seemed to have experienced precisely the same tunnel
     as that traversed by Bill and Anne. Furthermore, all agreed that
     this was "Bill's tunnel," and had the sense that they were
     encountering a private dimension of Bill's psyche. Bill was
     extremely uncomfortable about this self-exposure and subsequently
     lost all interest in hypnosis, while Anne went on to explore
     hypnosis avidly on her own.

     Although Tart's hypothesis of mutual hypnosis bears faint relation
     to Eastern meditation practices, and indeed Tantrism, it certainly
     seems that the subjects stumbled upon a degree of mutuality they
     found "holy" and completely outside their expectations or prior
     understanding of what might possibly occur between human
     individuals. They appear to have entered the field of atman in
     which the boundaries of the citadel self were completely lacking.
     For both of them -- especially Bill -- the experience seemed to
     come very close to discovering the "crack in the self," and
     provides a highly suggestive hint regarding the state of samarasa
     or "emotional unity" defined by Eliade.

     If a similar loss of I and Thou is regularly experienced when a
     couple practices maithuna, the mutual effect is likely to be
     greatly heightened when ritual intercourse is performed by a
     circle of couples, as in the story told by Promode Chatterjee. In
     his account of an Aghora chakra ceremony, Chatterjee noted two
     facts which belong to the realm of mutual influence. One was that
     he himself -- like Carol in the mutual hypnosis experiment -- was
     brought into a profound state of erotic trance so that when the
     scene was illumined by a flash of lightning the imaginal eye of
     his brow chakra was opened and he saw "light figures of naked gods
     and goddesses in the midst of their divine play, surrounding a
     large statue of Hara and Gauri, as still and profound as the
     Himalayas." If the participants had this effect upon Chatterjee,
     an unprepared observer, how much stronger must have been the
     effect they had upon one another, sexual mystics who had trained
     their sensitivities toward the "emotional unity" of samarasa? The
     other piece of evidence lies in the contrast Chatterjee observes
     between the "play" of the couples making up the circumference of
     the circle and the stillness of the central couple. He even says
     that those on the outside acted "intoxicated and lustful," while
     the Bhairava and Bhairavi in the center remained "absorbed in
     trance." The couples on the periphery were arousing themselves to
     the utmost so as to effect by mutual influence a powerful
     energetic boost to the couple in the center, whose wedding of
     Spontaneous Great Bliss with emptiness might be shared by all.

     This "division of labor" based upon mutual influence represents a
     universal principle, equally applicable to the cosmos at large, to
     the participating couples in the maithuna circle, and to the
     individual human body. For here, again, we observe the homology of
     macrocosm and microcosm through the enactment of a mesocosm in the
     form of a mandala or yantra. In a hymn by Ksemaraja, one of
     Abhinavagupta's disciples, this whole process is described as
     taking place in the heart chakra, the locus of sublime influence
     between individuals. Dcyzkowski summarizes it as follows:

          [Ksemaraja] portrays the goddesses of the senses as
          seated on the petals of the lotus of the Heart [i.e.,
          the traditional mandalic representation of the heart
          chakra] arrayed around the Divine Couple, Anandabhairava
          and Anandabhairavi, Who are in the calix. The goddesses
          move restlessly hither and thither in search of the most
          pleasing sensations to offer in worship to the Couple in
          the Center (Dcyzkowski, 1987: 145).

     Abhinavagupta, himself, salutes each in turn, beginning with the
     Bhairava and Bhairavi of bliss (ananda) in the center, and then
     the goddesses on each of the petals, naming what they contribute
     to the experience of unity. Finally, he concludes with these
     words:

          I venerate in this way the circle of deities eternally
          active (satadodita) in my own body, ever present in all
          beings and the essence of the radiant pulsation of
          experience (sphuradanubhava) (Ibid., 146).

     We are familiar from "mob psychology" with the fact that the
     larger the group that is moved by a common emotion, the baser its
     actions will be, as though each mob is reduced to its "least
     common denominator." Less ominous examples of mutual influence can
     be given by anyone who has participated in a group meditation or a
     training workshop to develop our innate ability for intuition or
     entering imaginal scenes. In all such cases, our habitual
     ego-defenses are weakened when five, ten, or a hundred individuals
     participate in some exercise in non-ordinary consciousness. I have
     observed the same tendency when leading dream-interpretation
     groups or conducting group supervision sessions for
     psychotherapists. It seems clear that the group very readily
     enters a participatory space where the dream or case material
     gathers us together almost as though we become the several pairs
     of eyes and mouths of a single reflecting psyche. We are often
     surprised by our capacity for cooperation and by the unexpected
     insights that we voice.


                        Yeshe Initiates Her Rapists

     When these sorts of experience are applied to the practice of
     ritual intercourse by groups of Tantrikas, it is easy to imagine
     that the group very quickly and powerfully reaches a state of
     mystical participation, where the energy of each couple has an
     effect upon the whole. If less trained and disciplined individuals
     were involved, we might expect that the whole procedure would
     degenerate by way of "mob psychology" into a chaotic orgy. The
     fact that it does not is based upon the Tantric principle of
     "involution." Ordinary mob interaction devolves toward the basest
     of gratifications; but by reversing this natural tendency and
     drawing all sensory phenomena toward the center point (bindu),
     disciplined Tantrikas make everything coalesce into the One at
     both the microcosmic and macrocosmic levels. Mutual influence
     draws energy from the most ordinary and even dangerous sensory
     activities and uses them for Spontaneous Great Bliss and
     emptiness.

     A powerful example of this is provided in Yeshe Tsogyel's
     "autobiography" -- which, it will be remembered, was discovered on
     the subtle plane some centuries after the alleged events had
     occurred. In the incident I refer to, Yeshe is traveling alone
     under orders from her guru when she is set upon by seven bandits
     who rob her of her possessions and then rape her. As soon as they
     are finished having their way with her, Yeshe sings a song to
     introduce them to "the four joys" of the mystical path. That song
     includes the following lines:

          Apprehend the very essence of lust,
          Identify it as your creative visualization of the deity,
          And that is nothing but the Yidam[3] deity himself.
          Meditate upon lustful mind as Divine Being
                                          (Dowman, 1984: 118-9).

     No sooner does she finish her song than the "seven thieves gained
     simultaneous spiritual maturity and release." In the end, she has
     gained seven new disciples. Dowman comments on this episode:

          Tsogyel's method of making a rape a positive experience
          was to accept the situation and then control it. Through
          visualization identifying herself with Tara, the Goddess
          of Service, who is willing to do whatever is necessary
          to serve the Guru who is all sentient beings, the victim
          was transformed into the Saviouress (Ibid., 264).

     The most conservative reading of this story would take the
     encounter between Yeshe and the rapists as a dramatization of what
     may take place within the psyche of any accomplished Tantrika --
     namely that one's lust may become "the Yidam deity," that is the
     god corresponding to one's own psychology, the divine dimension of
     the individual's own being. A holy possibility, the unification of
     Spontaneous Great Bliss with emptiness, lurks in the shadow of our
     lust. A somewhat more daring interpretation -- but one that is
     also integral to Tantra -- would begin from the everyday fact that
     we externalize our psyche in projection by way of our internal
     monologue. In this case, a woman beset by rapists in profane
     consciousness encounters her impotence before the demon of her own
     lust when brutish men embody that lust in attacking her. The
     profane and "natural" course of action is to take the brutality of
     that lust as an incontrovertible fact and either to fight a losing
     battle with it or to reluctantly submit in a realistic admission
     that the seven men have overwhelming physical force on their side.
     The woman, then, is violated, humiliated, even destroyed.

     Yeshe, however, takes a realistic stand on the subtle plane.
     Looking inward to the surging reality of kundalini, she knows
     without doubt that the brutality of lust is a human fact that
     harbors the sublime reality of the Yidam deity of
     lust-consciousness whose higher meaning is Spontaneous Great
     Bliss. By accepting both the lower form of lust and its higher
     divine meaning, she "accepts the situation and controls it." She
     turns her attention to the rising kundalini which begins in the
     lust and impotence of the navel chakra but finds its transcendent
     meaning in the opening of the crown chakra. In submitting to the
     rape, she transforms it; and in transforming it, she transmutes
     profane violation into mystical victory. Thus, while the woman in
     profane consciousness is dragged down through mutual "mob"
     participation to the brutal realm of her rapists' lust, Yeshe
     elevates them all through sublime mutual participation into the
     sphere of the Yidam deity. The story tells us that every human
     encounter is based in mutual participation. If we know the nature
     of lust and that it harbors a Yidam deity, we have a choice.
     Either we can succumb as victims, or we can "take control,"
     accepting the situation as a mystical opportunity. If we do so, we
     transform the entire episode.

     Seen in this light, the story of Yeshe and the seven bandits
     provides an illuminating commentary on our contemporary society's
     obsession with victimhood. Identifying ourselves as victims lends
     us a certain perverse righteousness and opens the door to
     litigation whereby the horizontal rights of our human dignity can
     be defended in an entirely profane manner. The mystical
     realization of Tantra turns this litigious struggle upside-down
     and asserts that the whole notion of "victims' rights" misses the
     involutional opportunity whereby an unacknowledged vertical
     reality, the Yidam deity, remains silent and denied by the persona
     field. Furthermore, when the potential victim has her wits about
     her and has realized the transformative potential of kundalini in
     her own life, she turns the brutal challenge into mystical
     opportunity and thereby becomes the "saviouress" of brutes whose
     consciousness has hitherto known only the base realities of
     "perpetrators."


                                 Shaktipat

     To be a savior and win disciples rather than perpetrators is
     founded upon the reality of mutual participation. Sanskrit has a
     word for the mutual influence which elevates: shaktipat.
     Shakti-pata means "descent of power" and refers to the
     "transmission of psychospiritual energy (shakti) from the adept to
     the disciple" (Feuerstein, 1990). Shaktipat may be conferred by a
     touch, the bestowal of an article of clothing, a word, a glance,
     or even a thought. Often it is used in the phrase shaktipat
     diksha, "initiation (diksha) by the descent of power." Yeshe
     initiated the seven rapists through the act of intercourse they
     believed they were forcing upon her when the energy of her raised
     kundalini elevated their lust and opened their higher chakras
     through the inductive force of shaktipat.

          [In shaktipat diksha] the master directly transmits his
          energy to the student to remove the final obstacle,
          awakening the sleeping serpent and leading her upward.
          One who is functioning on a higher level may sometimes
          unconsciously influence those around him in the same way
          that a magnet influences metal objects in its proximity.
          . . . As a magnet influences a particular metal, such a
          teacher influences those who are prepared. . . . In
          shaktipat the influence is conscious and extremely
          intense. Through a look, touch, or thought the master
          transmits his own power to the aspirant, who is suddenly
          transported into a realm of blissful divine
          consciousness (Rama, 1990: 39).

     Generally the transmission of shaktipat is understood to take
     place through the heart chakra of master and disciple, for the
     anahata is above all the locus of sublime unity between
     individuals. The transmission inspires expansion, love, and the
     sense that one stands above "the surface of the earth." It is a
     "spiritual" transferal, but it takes place "from body to body"
     (Silburn, 1987: 87). It "enhallows" (Feuerstein, 1989: 27) the
     disciple along the three dimensions of mystical experience we have
     emphasized: physiology, emotion, and imagination. Sometimes the
     recipient enters directly into dhyana or samadhi and remains there
     for an extended period of time. "After shaktipat, meditation
     becomes natural, and takes place without strain or striving"
     (Desai, 1990: 75). It is often described as a "divine"
     transmission, for it is based in the guru's capacity for becoming
     one with the cosmos, "the infinite realm of illumination"
     (Silburn, 1987: 87). The disciple experiences the master "as a
     spiritual reality rather than as a human personality" (Feuerstein,
     1989: 26).

     As might be expected, Vimalananda has a number of provocative
     things to say about shaktipat, and many of them suggest a
     reciprocity between master and disciple not emphasized elsewhere.
     Indeed, he implies that shaktipat is but a spiritual and elevating
     form of the mutual influence which obtains between all
     individuals, even in profane consciousness. True shaktipat
     requires genuine connection with and solid experience of
     impersonal, divine realities. Because the guru will be an expert
     in this field, the burden of converting mutual influence into an
     elevating transmutation of the disciple lies with the master. For
     example: "A guru always wants to make his disciple into his own
     guru. The Self, the Absolute Reality, is the true guru" (Svoboda,
     1994: 279). This implies not only that the guru has to be able to
     see beyond appearances and is not fooled by the disciple's
     personal and neurotic limitations. The disciple, too, is an
     embodiment of the divine -- analogous, perhaps, to the saying of
     Jesus, "As you did it to the least of my brethren, you did it to
     me" (Mt 25:40). Elsewhere Vimalananda suggests that the mutual
     influence which elevates the disciple can also diminish the
     saint's spiritual power. This claim, too, is reminiscent of words
     ascribed to Jesus when a woman afflicted with a hemorrhage was
     healed upon touching the hem of his garment: "And Jesus,
     perceiving in himself that power had gone forth from him,
     immediately turned about in the crowd, and said, `Who touched my
     garments?'" (Mk 5: 30). Vimalananda's statement is more sobering:

          A true saint is the embodiment of his deity and the
          energy emanating from him is the energy of that deity.
          By touching a saint's feet you collect a little of that
          energy, which purifies your own consciousness and makes
          it more subtle. The saint loses some of his own peace of
          mind by this which is uncomfortable for the saint; this
          is how many saints go bad (Svoboda, 1997: 262).

     Because mutual influence works both ways, the one who is elevated
     may diminish the more spiritually advanced. On a more ordinary
     level, I have encountered this phenomenon in some of my patients
     who are "energy healers" and massage therapists. They often find
     themselves depleted or made ill by patients who seem to leave
     their offices in an improved state of bodily and mental health. I
     have also found that the level of my own consciousness can be
     lowered and my habitual sense of having a coherent self
     temporarily fragmented by an interaction with a poorly integrated
     patient who clearly seems to have benefited from our exchange.

     Finally, Vimalananda suggests that if we pay attention to how the
     presence of another person subtly changes our consciousness, we
     can arrive at an assessment of the other person's spiritual state.
     This is particularly helpful when we find ourselves before a naked
     Sadhu who has all the trappings of spirituality but may be a
     charlatan:

          Sit quietly and don't say much; listen, and try to keep
          your mind blank. If when you sit near him you find
          yourself forgetting the things of the world and becoming
          more peaceful, then he is a good saint; his halo is
          quieting your mind. If not, run away! (Svoboda, 1994:
          267).

     Muktananda emphasizes the sexual foundation of shaktipat when it
     dawns on him that the reason he had to struggle with a bewildering
     and humiliating manifestation of overwhelming sexual desire was to
     turn him into an urdhvareta,[4] one in whom the "sexual fluid"
     rises and becomes "the source of the power to give Shaktipat"
     (Muktananda, 1978: 32, 99). Sexual arousal, transmuted on the
     subtle plane to kundalini, makes one an initiate by transforming
     his own being and giving him the power to transform "other beings,
     indeed, the entire universe, through his limitless powers" (D. G.
     White, 1996: 272). D. G. White summarizes the Tantric doctrine of
     shaktipat as it appears in scriptures written between the tenth
     and fourteenth centuries. Here we encounter a magical flavor, even
     a literal physicality, which many later sources eschew.

          The guru, having entered the body of his disciple (whose
          kundalini has been awakened) unites with that kundalini
          within the disciple's body and subsequently raises it
          from the disciple's lower abdomen up to his cranial
          vault. The form the guru takes as he courses through his
          disciple's body may be that of a drop (bindu) of seed or
          speech. In many descriptions of this operation, the guru
          is said to exit the disciple's body through the mouth
          and thus return back into his own body through his own
          mouth (Ibid., 312).

     White makes it clear that this is fundamentally a sexual process,
     albeit with gender "polarities reversed": "given that it is a
     feminine kundalini which awakens, stiffens, rises, even rushes
     upwards towards the cranial vault, the cavity that is the place of
     the passive male Siva" (Ibid., 320).

     Although the Hindu doctrine of shaktipat is distinguished by the
     fullness of its descriptions, the reality of mutual influence is
     also well known in Sufism, where elevating influence is often
     described as "perfecting" an "imperfection" in the disciple.
     Probably the most common practice is that the shaikh who
     recognizes such an opportunity for elevating a disciple invests
     himself with a special article of clothing, the mantel (khirqa),
     and by meditation places himself in the mystical state of
     consciousness he wishes to induce in his disciple. Then he
     ceremoniously removes the khirqa from his own body and places it
     on the body of the disciple, transferring the desired state at the
     same time (Wilson, 1993: 144). In her biography of Ibn al-`Arabi,
     Claude Addas cites several references from "The Greatest Shaikh"
     attesting to the "immediate transformation" that is produced in
     the disciple by means of the khirqa (Addas, 1993: 145). A passage
     from Ibn al-`Arabi's Revelations at Mecca[5] is very explicit:

          So it is when the masters of spiritual states perceive
          some imperfection in one of their companions and wish to
          perfect that person's state, they resort to the custom
          of meeting with the person alone. The master then takes
          the piece of clothing he is wearing in the spiritual
          state he is in at that particular moment, removes it and
          puts it on the man whom he wishes to guide to
          perfection. He then holds the man closely to him -- and
          the master's state spreads to his disciple, who thereby
          attains to the desired perfection (Addas, 1993: 146).

     Jalaluddin Rumi's practice of baring his breast when in an
     ecstatic state of divine love and pressing it against the chest of
     a disciple (Schimmel, 1978: 217) not only dispenses with the
     article of clothing as a necessary element but also seems
     implicitly to acknowledge the Hindu doctrine that mutual influence
     is in some sense a bodily transfer with sexual implications and
     that the bodily locus of mutual influence is associated with the
     heart chakra. Rumi speaks of the saint who knows with the heart
     and leads the disciple with his heart:

          [The gnosis of the heart[6]], is one of the
          distinguishing features of the mystical leader. He is a
          lion, and the thoughts of others are like a forest which
          he can easily enter. . . . [H]e discovers in the
          unpolished stone the wonderful figures which people see
          in the polished mirror. That is why he can show the
          novice the path which leads him best towards
          self-realization and approximation to God, calling the
          figures out of the stone "heart" (Ibid., 315-6).

     Sufism also speaks of the intense concentration of master and
     disciple upon one another [tawajjuh] that brings about "spiritual
     unity, faith healing, and many other phenomena" (Schimmel, 1975:
     366). By tawajjuh, the master "enters the door of the disciple's
     heart"; and through his "knowledge of things that exist
     potentially in God's eternal knowledge, he is able to realize
     certain of these possibilities on the worldly plane" (Ibid., 237).
     From the side of the disciple, it is said that he "passes away" or
     that his ego-personality has been "annihilated" in the master
     (fana' fi'sh-shaikh), who, in his turn has already been
     annihilated in the Prophet Muhammad. By this means, the shaikh
     "becomes the Perfect Man and thus leads his disciples with a
     guidance granted directly by God" (Ibid., 237). This doctrine of
     the passing away (fana') of one's ego so as to discover one's
     greater self (baqa') through the relationship with one's shaikh,
     directly parallels the Hindu notion of shaktipat, whereby ego
     gives way to atman through the transforming influence of the
     guru.[7]


                         The Recipient Of Shaktipat

     Ibn al-`Arabi gives us a hint as to how such an elevating
     influence feels to the disciple when he is transformed. In the
     following passage, he describes what happened to him early in his
     mystical career while he sat face-to-face in tawajjuh with Abu
     Ya`qub al-Kumi. He reports two effects, a conscious experience of
     trembling and a revelation from his dream that the shaikh's power
     emanated from the brightness of his heart chakra:

          I saw him in a dream on one occasion and his breast
          seemed to be cleft asunder and a light like that of the
          sun shone out from it. . . . When I would sit before him
          or before others of my Shaikhs, I would tremble like a
          leaf in the wind, my voice would become weak and my
          limbs would shake (Ibn al-`Arabi, 1971: 70).

     The American initiate of Tibetan Buddhism, Tsultrim Allione,
     describes even more vividly the effect upon herself when, in her
     first interview with Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, they sat
     face-to-face in silence for forty-five minutes. At first she
     waited in puzzlement for him to speak. Then it began to dawn on
     her that something of quite a different order was occurring. It
     was only much later that she grasped what it was:

          Now I realize that what happened was some kind of
          mind-to-mind transmission, but at the time I only knew
          that I had experienced something that was completely
          beyond words and form. . . . It was an experience of
          space[8] that extended outward without any reference
          back. This space was luminous and bliss-provoking, a
          release, similar to, but beyond, sexual orgasm (Allione:
          1986: xvii-xviii).

     The German initiate of Tibetan Buddhism, Lama Govinda Anagarika,
     describes his own experience of receiving shaktipat through a
     light touch from the hand of his guru. Govinda perceived "a stream
     of bliss" traversing his whole being which he felt vividly in his
     body, "so that all that one had intended to say or ask, vanished
     from one's mind like smoke into blue air" (Govinda, 1988: 33).
     Some years later he experienced an analogous elevating influence
     from the Great Hermit at Gomchen, who had refused to meet him. He
     was told to wait overnight at some distance from the hermitage in
     a "horribly cold and draughty wooden rest-house":

          But before I could fall asleep a strange thing happened.
          I had the sensation that somebody took possession of my
          consciousness, my will-power, and my body -- that I no
          more had control over my thoughts, but that somebody
          else was thinking them -- and that slowly, but surely, I
          was losing my own identity. And then I realized that it
          could be none other than the hermit . . . due to the
          power of his concentration and my own lack of resistance
          in the moment when I was hovering between the waking and
          the sleeping state (Ibid., 101).

     The eighteen-year-old Narendra, who became Ramakrishna's favorite
     disciple, was frightened and repelled at his first meeting with
     the forty-five year-old saint. Ramakrishna raved and wept in
     "anxious desire" and claimed that Narendra was the reincarnation
     of the ancient sage Narayana. Narendra concluded that Ramakrishna
     was a "monomaniac." In his second meeting, however, Narendra
     received shaktipat:

          As I was thinking [Ramakrishna was about to create
          another embarrassing scene], he quickly approached me
          and placed his own right foot on my body, and
          immediately I had an unprecedented experience at his
          touch. As I looked, I began to see that all the things
          in the room, with the walls themselves, were spinning
          wildly and dissolving into somewhere. . . .terrible fear
          . . .this itself was at the threshold of death. . . .
          [Finally Ramakrishna relented] and said, "Then enough
          now, the work doesn't have to be done all at once. It
          will come about in good time" (Kripal, 1995: 211).

     An American student of yoga, D. R. Butler, describes his own first
     experience of shaktipat, which took place in Upstate New York in
     1973 when Butler was in his mid-twenties and had already been
     studying yoga for five years. At a week-long yoga retreat, Yogi
     Amrit Desai, who until that moment had been completely unknown to
     the group, led them in a meditation.

          The first thing I noticed was a wave of euphoria softly
          permeating my being. I felt intensely happy. I didn't
          know the reason for the wonderful feeling but I
          determined to relax and enjoy it.

          Suddenly surges of energy -- like electrical charges --
          streaked up my spine. These gradually evolved into a
          steady current of hot energy flowing from the tip of my
          spine to the top of my head. . . .

          Brilliant colors swirled inside my head; I thought I
          would burst with happiness. Nothing had ever felt so
          good! Suddenly a scream burst from the back of the room,
          then another. In a few moments the place was a madhouse
          (Butler, 1990: 185).

     Only after an extended outbreak of pandemonium did Desai halt the
     demonstration and explain to the uninitiated students that what
     they had felt was shaktipat. Those who wished could leave the
     room. About half did so. Then Desai resumed his transmission with
     even greater intensity.

          My body was filled with a brilliant white light and I
          allowed myself to be absorbed in it. I felt that my life
          as I previously had known it literally came to an end.
          My ego identity became meaningless; there was no time;
          past and future did not exist. All that existed was pure
          light and pure bliss. I was content to remain in this
          state forever.

          When I opened my eyes again I noticed that my body had
          bent forward; my forehead was touching the floor (Ibid.,
          187).

     Muktananda's reception of shaktipat from his guru, Nityananda, is
     described in too much detail to be summarized (Muktananda, 1978:
     64-71). Suffice it to say that it included all the elements we
     have seen, including the transferal of a cloak and pair of sandals
     from the guru's own body. Muktananda describes with greater
     economy several instances in which he conferred shaktipat on
     someone else. There is an intriguingly inadvertent element in each
     of them. In one case an airline officer begs to be allowed to
     clean Muktananda's bathroom. His request having been granted, the
     officer had hardly begun when he fell into a stillness and sat in
     meditation for four hours. Subsequently, the officer reported,
     people who entered his own meditation room would enter immediately
     into unexpectedly deep states of meditation (Ibid., 144).

     Nityananda intended to initiate Muktananda; Amrit Desai
     deliberately created chaos among unprepared students; and
     Ramakrishna, despite his tendency to spend extended periods of
     time completely out of his mind in divyonmada, knew exactly what
     he was doing in conferring shaktipat on the ambivalent young
     Narendra. Nevertheless, it is clear that not a few instances of
     elevating influence occur autonomously, quite to the surprise and
     amazement of the individual through whom the conferral takes
     place. In the following example Swami Rama makes it clear that, in
     his experience, a genuine shaktipat initiation originates from an
     impersonal source over which he himself has no control.

          One day [my master] told me that a swami would come the
          next morning and that I was to touch him on the
          forehead, thereby initiating him in shaktipat diksha. I
          protested, saying that I had no such power to arouse the
          kundalini in another person. But he said to me, "Don't
          you know, it is not you acting. You are just the
          instrument of a higher power. Let the power work through
          you."

          . . . Suddenly I found my arm being raised. It was not
          at all under my control. I touched the swami and he
          remained in samadhi for several hours. . . . There may
          be someone to whom I wish to impart this experience, but
          nevertheless I cannot. Yet with a few rare individuals I
          feel such a strong impulse that I cannot resist (Rama,
          1990: 41).

     Guy Claxton, an English disciple of Irina Tweedie (whose spiritual
     autobiography will be discussed shortly), inadvertently conferred
     shaktipat on a neighbor who had been hounding him for instruction
     in the techniques of meditation. Claxton refused him six times
     before deciding the man was serious. However, he got no further
     than the initial instructions for relaxing the body when:

          I felt a rush of psychophysical energy seemingly enter
          my body from beneath and explode out toward him. My
          speech became slurred and my eyelids got heavy, but I
          kept my eyes focused on him. As the wave of energy hit
          him, he visibly jerked back, looking at me fearfully.
          Then a second wave passed through me, and again he
          startled. By the time a third rush of energy reached
          him, he was in deep meditation. I felt a force field
          connecting our bodies, and while I stayed in meditation,
          he too remained meditating (Feuerstein, 1991: 133).[9]


                           The End Of The Ladder

     The ladder of mystical ascent, which the novice sees as a set of
     exercises and objective steps, one lesson after another -- like
     arithmetic, algebra, and trigonometry as the precursors of
     calculus -- and which later becomes an internal ladder identical
     with the subtle body, finally collapses with the experience of
     emptiness. For emptiness reveals that all the exercises and
     metaphysical explanations belong to the intermediate phase, when
     the world no longer appears as mountains, trees, and rivers. They
     constitute a necessary withdrawal from the socially sanctioned
     world of the citadel self in order to pave the way back, where
     trees, mountains, and rivers can be encountered as primary facts.

     Shaktipat, the reality of mutual influence, which we largely
     ignored while defining the steps of the ladder, may now be seen to
     play a crucial role in mystical ascent. On the one hand, it seems
     to confirm the discrete steps of the ladder insofar as it is
     employed to lift us from the ignorance of the ladder rung of our
     most recent accomplishment to the insight of the next stage
     through a kind of borrowed illumination. For example, one who has
     guessed that there is more to sex than the physiological release
     of profane orgasm, may be transported to erotic trance through an
     encounter with an American Bhairavi like Juliet Carr. A certain
     shaktipat, inadequate but useful, has lifted her client Bill into
     a more satisfying relationship with his wife. Those whom
     overwhelming eros has led to an unconscious state of divyonmada
     might be lifted to the realization that the soul has its own
     dragon which will bring them beyond the socially sanctioned
     dichotomy of good and evil. At that stage, the disciple has been
     guided through the turmoil of the navel chakra to the solid
     realization of "essential being" in the manipura of the solar
     plexus. Further conferrals of shaktipat may open the sublimity of
     the heart chakra or even induce the samadhi which is
     characteristic of the crown chakra.

     In this manner, shaktipat confirms the structure of the ladder. It
     may even be the ultimate "secret" of mystical ascent that may not
     be spoken. Mentioning it, however, or even describing it in a
     general way as we have done, accomplishes little for the disciple.
     One has either been initiated by shaktipat or one has not. We have
     either been lucky enough to have encountered a master with the
     ability to transport us past our personal obstacles, or we
     continue to struggle with our exercises. It is often said that for
     the soul that is prepared, anything can occasion enlightenment.
     Swami Rama says he cannot confer shaktipat to whomever he wishes,
     but only when ordained by a power that transcends his own personal
     consciousness. Imponderable considerations -- above all "grace" in
     the sense of a fortuitous transcendental factor -- are involved.

     We hardly dare say there is no progress without shaktipat or some
     form of "divine intervention," yet the alternative seems unlikely.
     Mystics may spend years in isolation, but we know of none for whom
     interpersonal influence has not played a crucial role. Since this
     is the case, it appears that the ladder of ascent is a useful
     conceit, a teaching device that establishes valuable distinctions
     only after the fact. Only those who have gnosis are in a position
     to describe the obstacles they have overcome. Our future course
     remains shrouded in "secrets" which no one is "keeping." It is
     never a matter of information being withheld but of an experience
     that has not yet been had. Possibly for each of us a master
     resides somewhere in the world who is uniquely suited to advance
     us through mutual influence. Possibly that individual has never
     even heard of a ladder of ascent, despite possessing the key to
     our own personal lock. Surely those who have conferred shaktipat
     without ever having heard of it -- Muktananda's airline officer,
     for example -- are unwitting masters. But whether we will have the
     good luck to meet this unknown master resides in the imponderable
     secret of our "fate."


                               Irina Tweedie

     Notions of fate, destiny, and grace -- mysterious words,
     impossible to specify -- seem to play so crucial a role on the
     mystical path that a well-developed understanding of the ladder of
     ascent may serve more as a distraction than a help. Such appears
     to be the theme of Irina Tweedie's 800-page mystical diary,
     Daughter of Fire (1986). Tweedie was born in Russia a decade
     before the Bolshevik Revolution, was educated in Vienna and Paris,
     and married a British military officer after the second World War.
     Widowed in 1954, Tweedie began a search for religious meaning and
     was working for the Theosophical Society in London in 1959 when a
     friend insisted that she had to meet a certain guru in India. She
     was fifty-five years old and considered herself an old woman when
     she met the man she calls Bhai Sahib ("Elder Brother"). He was
     some thirteen years older than she and an initiated master in the
     Naqshbandiyya Order of Sufis.

     Founded in the fourteenth century by Baha'uddin Naqshband, who
     traced his own initiatory tradition back another two centuries,
     the Naqshbandiyya has many adherents in Central Asia, including
     Pakistan and India. Judging from the form it takes in Bhai Sahib's
     teaching, it may incorporate a large number of Hindu words,
     concepts, and practices. Bhai Sahib says Sufism is not a religion
     but a way of life that is compatible with any religion.[10] The
     Naqshbandiyya pursues a sober path based upon the silent
     repetition of the divine Name (dhikr in Arabic; japa in Sanskrit)
     in the heart, intimate spiritual conversation between master and
     disciple (suhbat) and the shaktipat-like concentration in
     spiritual unity (tawajjuh) which aims for the experiential
     "certitude" of divine/human unity. Its main teaching is the
     "education of the heart" by which the disciple is "spiritually
     purified" (Schimmel, 1975: 363-73).

     Bhai Sahib informed Tweedie that there are two paths: the slower
     and less painful way of dhyana (meditation),[11] and the faster
     "Path of Fire" which requires no effort but great suffering. One
     does not choose the Path of Fire; one finds oneself chosen and can
     either accept the path or refuse. There appears never to have been
     any doubt in either disciple or master that Tweedie had been
     destined for the Path of Fire and that she would not refuse.[12]
     It is evident from her diary that the Path of Fire is based in
     shaktipat, mutual influence from heart chakra to heart chakra, and
     that the suffering has to do with learning to accommodate oneself
     to powerful unanticipated changes in physiology, emotion, and
     imagination. "I was broken down in every sense till I had to come
     to terms with that in me which I kept rejecting all my life"
     (Tweedie, 1986: x).

     Tweedie's journal begins with her first meeting with Bhai Sahib on
     October 2, 1961, and ends March 9, 1967, about six and a half
     months after her master's death. Regarding that first meeting,
     when she was exhausted and rumpled from her long journey, she
     describes a powerful experience of mutual influence: "I caught my
     breath. . . . wild cartwheels were turning inside my brain and
     then my mind went completely blank. And then it was -- it was as
     if something in me stood to attention and saluted . . . I was in
     the presence of a Great Man" (Ibid., 6). Thereafter, every time
     she meets with him, and even if she only enters his room, she
     finds herself in dhyana, her thoughts slowed down, "Thoughts come
     and go, lazily, slowly, just a few, and far in between" (Ibid.,
     12). When he talks, she fails to understand at the conscious level
     but gives answers that amaze her. Evidently he is speaking to her
     unconscious mind which answers without the participation of her
     ego. This is why she needs a guru, she says, "Because by yourself
     alone you can never go beyond the Mind" (Ibid., 20).

     Bhai Sahib explains that it all has to do with the awakening of
     kundalini, a power that includes sex but is more comprehensive. It
     is the way things are done in the Naqsbandiyya: "We awaken the
     King, the Heart Chakra, and leave it to the King to activate all
     the other Chakras" (Ibid., 36). She has visions of his face as
     "sheer energy" and is "plagued by constant vibrations in her whole
     body" (Ibid., 37-8). "It is just like the beginning of falling in
     love. Falling in love with what??" (Ibid., 93). On December 1,
     1961, the last day of her second month's association with her
     guru, she marvels at her ability to pray, "My mind is still,
     transparent, as though paralyzed, and my heart flies away like
     trembling bird" (Ibid., 75). He is in every one of her dreams at
     night (Ibid., 77). A month later he begins pointedly to ignore
     her, and she is hurt and angry (Ibid., 92-4). Still, she finds
     that when she prays, she prays to him and sees his face clearly
     before her (Ibid., 102). By the middle of the fourth month, she is
     plagued with sexual vibrations in the muladhara (base of the
     spine) which hisses, tickles, flutters, and spins. She is flooded
     with sexual desire and "an uncontrollable fear -- primitive,
     animal fear" that goes on for hours (Ibid., 108-9). "Hideous
     beings, leering, obscene, all coupled in sexual intercourse,
     elemental creatures, animal-like, performing wild sexual orgies"
     create "cold terror" in her and fill her with shame (Ibid.,
     110-1). Her whole being is filled with uncontrollable energy. She
     can remember everything he says and does but absolutely nothing
     else that happens from day to day (Ibid., 123).

     By February 8, 1962, four months after meeting him, the grotesque
     horrors of the svadhisthana chakra in the lower abdomen begin to
     give way to symptoms associated with the anahata: "I can actually
     HEAR the Heart Chakra spin round and round at a terrific speed;
     the physical heart responds by beating madly, missing out beats,
     and behaving as if trying to jump out of the thorax" (Ibid., 125).
     She has visions of "luminous blood" coursing through her subtle
     body and sees that it extends outside her physical body and
     belongs to the "Web of the Universe" (Ibid., 127). More and more
     she is plagued by his neglect of her and his solicitude for his
     other followers who "ask the most irrelevant questions"(Ibid.,
     135). He explains that keeping her constantly between emotional
     ups and downs is essential to his method, "to cause suffering
     which will defeat the Mind" (Ibid., 187). A voice in a dream tells
     her, "Only the one who is loved is tortured" (Ibid., 194). By May
     of 1962 she is withdrawing all of her money from her extensive
     world-wide investments and giving him huge sums which he
     immediately turns over to needy charities. She is "fascinated" by
     the process (Ibid., 200).

     She is told she has to give up all her beliefs, especially those
     she has learned from Theosophy. "Everything in me cried out in
     despair." Then suddenly, "It felt like a click, a snap, and then
     stillness. . . . A bell-like thought floated into my mind: a
     belief which is taken up can be given up" (Ibid., 279). Later,
     this sort of "click" brings about "a ceaseless streaming . . .
     absolute glory," which she finds she can just "sink into." It is
     "a tremendous pull, a wave of love" (Ibid., 283). But now, eleven
     months after her first meeting, she begins to provoke huge fights
     with him, based on her morose feelings of neglect; and he fights
     back. They read like lovers' quarrels (Ibid., 288-93). Two months
     later, he tells her he is speeding up the process so that her
     training will be complete by the time of his death. She is going
     to have to leave him for a while, because those who remain with
     him all the time do not make progress. (Ibid., 325). At the end of
     fifteen months, she asks if he effects these changes in her
     deliberately with his eyes. He answers that the process is not
     deliberate, but admits that sometimes the disciple does see
     "streams of light flashing from the eyes" of the guru (Ibid.,
     430). Her kundalini vibrations are now never felt below the
     waistline (Ibid., 432). She concludes that this relationship is so
     difficult because: "It is not a human relationship at all. It
     belongs to `the other part of me'" (Ibid., 445).

     On April 30, 1963, she reluctantly follows orders and returns to
     England, where she remains for two and a half years, meditating,
     teaching, and writing him letters two or three times a week, often
     filled with bitter recriminations for rejecting her. He never
     replies. When she returns in January of 1966, his first lessons
     concern the disciple's "passing away" (fana') into the guru who
     has "passed away" into God. Eventually she, too, will have to
     learn to "pass away" into God -- "the most difficult" stage of all
     (Ibid., 515-7). More outbursts of anger. He does not condemn her:
     "It is beyond the power of the human being to control anger. But
     after the anger, look at it: from where it came, why and how it
     came, and what it did to you. You will learn many things" (Ibid.,
     637-8). She finds that his method of teaching is to fall silent so
     as to let her "intuition speak" (Ibid., 664). She walks the
     streets "as though drunk" and wearing blinders -- something that
     happens all the time in India but never in London (Ibid., 719-20).

     On July 25, 1966, the eve of his death, which she does not
     consciously suspect, she is worried but inwardly still and at
     peace. He gives her the look "of a divine lover." "My heart stood
     still as though pierced by a sword. . . . I was so profoundly
     disturbed that I literally ran away" (Ibid., 744). She remains in
     his town for two weeks after his death and then goes to a retreat
     in the Himalayas, repeating the Divine Name "all the time." Her
     consciousness is changing, but she does not understand it (Ibid.,
     774-5). Six weeks later it dawns on her that his whole work was to
     make her "pregnant with God" and that her mistake was to think
     that she had to "get God" from him (Ibid., 793). "Something
     intangible very slowly became a permanent reality. . . . My heart
     is incessantly humming its song to Him [God]" (Ibid., 797). After
     four months, this realization has become well established: "Deep,
     deep within there is this love and that is the ONLY REALITY --
     this love that digs deep into the heart, its blazing abyss, this
     love that enwraps and exalts my whole being and the whole of
     creation as one" (Ibid., 804). "All I know is that the goal will
     be always receding, `For the Beloved can never be known'" (Ibid.,
     814).

     From Tweedie's extensive diary -- written and published only
     because Bhai Sahib insisted -- we can detect the entire process of
     the diamond ladder, but undertaken without any of the
     corresponding concepts and without any "left-hand" practices.
     Kundalini is aroused and feels disturbingly sexual. Tweedie is
     amazed at such bodily sexual sensations and fantasies in an "old
     woman" like herself. She enters an erotic relationship that has
     all the characteristic jealousies and attachments we know from our
     own experiences of romantic love. We can appreciate the effects of
     kundalini's arousal in the physiological, emotional, and imaginal
     experiences Tweedie reports. It begins in the muladhara, leads to
     torment and terror in the svadhisthana, and the sublime sensations
     of the anahata. At times her ajna's third eye is opened. The
     central problem and source of suffering takes the form of her
     longing for union, intimacy, and exclusivity with her guru and his
     resolute insistence on frustrating this literal-minded and limited
     desire. She can come to know God only through personal love
     directed toward a specific friend and then has to lose that
     personal friend in order to find the Absolute Friend who hides
     within each personal attachment.

     Her guru relentlessly spurns her attachment to his own person by
     ignoring her and sending her back to England, where she has to
     rely upon her own experience exclusively. But only when his death
     removes him finally from the scene does she realize that his role
     was not to "give" her God, but to make her "pregnant" with God.
     Shaktipat brings about substantial changes, by-passes the ego,
     introduces her to erotic trance and meditative states. But in the
     end she has to realize that those changes belong naturally to her
     own body and consciousness. Shaktipat begins in dependency, like
     divyonmada, but ends only when a "self" has been created and she
     comes to realize that God dwells there naturally and not merely in
     the guru to whom she was attached. Shaktipat takes her through the
     rungs of longing, scandal, and the subtle body and succeeds when
     she realizes the primary fact that life is a love affair with a
     divinity who is not different from the cosmos -- or, indeed, her
     own heart.

     The theme of Tweedie's diary -- that shaktipat is the ultimate
     secret in mystical ascent -- parallels certain more ordinary
     interpersonal relations. For example, psychotherapy patients whose
     ego has proven inadequate to their daily lives often display the
     slowness of thought Tweedie had every time she entered her guru's
     vicinity. A powerful erotic bond establishes itself between
     analyst and analysand. Sometimes it enters consciousness
     disturbingly, but often it works silently below the surface of
     their exchanges. When this happens, the patient may find himself
     filled with a new power. It comes and goes. Perhaps he carries the
     analyst around with him through the week, discussing his life with
     that imaginal partner. His focus narrows while his horizons
     expand. He gets a clearer sense of what is real. One patient
     claimed she was successful in her daily activities only when my
     soul had entered her and she found that it did the work instead of
     she.

     This describes the sort of shaktipat connection that Heinz Kohut
     (1977, 1984) calls a "self-object" relationship. The patient
     experiences the analyst functioning within her, taking the place
     of her missing "self," and supplying the coherence and resolution
     she is incapable of mustering on her own. A patient so
     strengthened by a "self" borrowed from the analyst may begin to
     master some of her daily tasks and family relationships. Her
     internal monologue begins to change, and she shows more
     self-confidence. But she has not finished her transformation until
     she can separate from the analyst -- convinced that she, too, has
     a self. Such patients enter analysis in a far more "obstructed"
     state than Tweedie was when she met her guru. And they are not apt
     to visit the upper rungs of the diamond ladder. But they are
     elevated to a higher order of functioning, and the mechanism for
     this change is shaktipat conferred and overcome.


                           The Feminine Principle

     It has often been observed by historians of religion -- and this
     is particularly true of the mystical traditions -- that the
     preponderance of texts have been written by men and have a
     masculine bias giving our constructions of mystical ascent a
     regrettably patriarchal tone. Certainly Evola's dogmatic
     assertions of masculine superiority render aspects of his account
     of mysticism questionable. Eliade's emphasis on the "polluted"
     nature of the ideal female partner appears to contribute to this
     bias until we reflect that overturning the caste system of purity
     and pollution belongs to an essentially antinomian stance. The
     taken-for-granted dictates of the persona field must be overcome
     before we can explore the realities of the field of atman. Once we
     recall this context, we are not surprised to learn that most of
     the women mystics whose stories are told by Johnsen (1994) and
     Allione (1986) have taken consorts from a social stratum lower
     than their own, have left the husbands forced upon them by their
     families, or have transformed those husbands by initiating them.

     Our overwhelming patriarchal bias is based in the historical fact
     that all of the major religious traditions in the world today
     arose during a long period of male dominance which includes the
     patriarchs and prophets of Judaism as well as the Aryan
     superimposition of male sky-gods over the prehistoric goddess
     religions of India. It seems that somewhere around 1500, b.c.e., a
     major shift occurred in the Middle East and in the Indian sphere
     of civilization. Thus, the rise of Tantra in the early centuries
     of the common era can be seen as a fortunate recovery. The
     predominance of the goddess suggests that the feminine principle
     has reappeared as a sort of "unconscious compensation" along the
     lines of Jung's thought.

     Jung argues that because men have consciously identified with
     their masculinity and its logos-orientation (the predominance of
     word and logical connection), their unconscious psyche bears a
     feminine face, the "anima" which represents everything that is not
     conscious, including the man's unconscious femininity. The anima
     operates according to the feminine principle of eros where the
     issue of relationship and the realm of feeling-connection
     predominate. If Jung is right about this, it is not surprising
     that male mystics have emphasized and idealized the role of the
     goddess, for she would be the unknown, fascinating, and disturbing
     aspect of divinity which is missing from their masculine
     consciousness. The psychological compensation theory, however,
     would expect that a women's mystical path would be more
     logos-oriented -- based on her need to come into contact with her
     unconscious "animus," which contains the masculine principle
     lacking to her conscious identity.[13] That women, too, are drawn
     to the goddess may well have to do with their need to revalue
     their own conscious selves within a patriarchal culture which
     gives all the power to men.

     Such a perspective may well account for Yeshe Tsogyel's vision of
     a red, naked woman who presses her vagina against Yeshe's mouth
     and from which she drinks a copious flow of menstrual blood,
     filling her "entire being with health and well-being." Allione
     interprets this scene as making the statement that "primal lust
     binds the universe together" (Allione, 1986: 34). "Primal lust"
     would be the eros-principle experienced in its most passionate
     form, a reality that is also presented in the Tantric image of the
     goddess as naked and frenzied, with flying, unbound hair, and
     brandishing weapons and skulls. She is the enemy of the citadel
     self with all its isolating defenses, ordering the universe as an
     assemblage of "objects" linked by concepts and ultimately dead.
     Yeshe is nourished with the most "polluting" and feminine of
     substances, affirming the superiority of her woman's nature and
     giving her a thoroughly antinomian position vis-a-vis the exoteric
     patriarchal tradition. Eros binds and gives life. Logos separates
     and kills.

     This makes a good deal of psychological sense -- particularly for
     us Westerners, whose embarrassingly simplistic characterization of
     gender differences gives all the power and prestige to men. Shaw's
     summary of this Western attitude is surely not wrong: we
     understand men to be active agents and women passive victims; men
     are praised for their sexual prowess and exploitative power in
     business, while women are condemned for sexual promiscuity and
     seen to be powerless and easily exploited; men are taken to be
     intellectual and spiritual, while women are said to be
     unconscious, emotional, and biological (Shaw, 1994: 9).

     The Tantric tradition, however, does not place the superiority of
     the feminine principle only in the transcendental realm of
     theology and divine iconography. Universally, it claims that women
     are by their very nature more apt for mysticism in all respects:
     physiologically, emotionally, and imaginally. What takes a male
     practitioner a year to accomplish, can be obtained by a woman in a
     single day (Silburn, 1988: 190). Wile's historical overview of the
     Chinese literature on sexuality and mysticism comes to the same
     conclusion, "Woman is superior to man in the same way that water
     is superior to fire" (Wile, 1992: 11). Wile notes that the Chinese
     texts agree that "the energetic essence pursued by men in their
     female partners" may be obtained by women in solo meditation.
     Women have the raw material of mystical transformation in
     abundance and by their very nature, whereas men require
     involvement with female partners in order to get it. D. G. White
     finds a very similar argument in the Rasarnava, "the greatest work
     of Tantric alchemy":

          The lineage nectar of the alchemical lineage
          (sampradaya) is, like that of other Tantric sects,
          transmitted through female sexual emissions. [The author
          of the Rasarnava] also prescribes sexual intercourse and
          erotico-mystical worship as means to alchemical
          transformation. . . . Elsewhere a female "laboratory
          assistant" (and, especially, her sexual and menstrual
          fluids) is crucial to the alchemist's practice (D. G.
          White, 1996: 172-3).

     There is no way forward without the feminine principle -- here
     understood very literally to reside in female sexual fluids.
     Women, like men, produce sexual fluids when aroused. The text
     seems to imply that the woman's fluids are essential, whereas
     those of the man are not. For a woman's arousal is sufficient in
     itself, while a man's arousal must be joined with that of a woman
     to have mystical effect. This same perspective is implied in the
     depiction of kundalini as a goddess.

     Irina Tweedie's guru also claims that the difference between men
     and woman resides in a "substance," but for him that substance is
     a metaphysical principle, prakriti, the feminine principle,
     sometimes translated as "nature" or "matter," and used to describe
     the phenomenal world.[14] In the philosophy of yoga (sankhya) the
     ultimate is realized when the ever-moving, ever-manifesting
     prakriti is joined with the stillness of the spiritual, male
     principle, purusha. Bhai Sahib says:

          Men have a substance in them and women have not. It
          makes men absorb the very essence of the Master. But men
          have to learn to control prakriti in themselves, and for
          this purpose practices are given to them. Women, because
          they are nearer to prakriti, are fertilized by the
          Divine Energy which they retain in their Chakras and
          because of this, very few practices are needed. Women
          are taken up through the path of love, for love is a
          feminine mystery. Woman is the cup waiting to be filled,
          offering herself up in her longing, which is her very
          being (Tweedie, 1986: 400).

     No doubt this principle goes a long way to explaining why the vast
     majority of our texts have been written by men. Men are into words
     and concepts. These are the things that make up texts. Women are
     into eros. The eros that can be named is not eros. Eros is the
     secret that cannot be named. Sometimes men have named it
     shaktipat.

     Two pages later, Bhai Sahib implicitly links this perspective with
     shaktipat -- the erotic connection with the master which elevates
     the disciple by devotion and longing and then has to be overcome.

          For ladies, perseverance is difficult for them. It is
          difficult for men too; very few achieve it. Ladies have
          Bhakti (devotion) and if they get it, they get it in an
          instant. Otherwise it takes time. . . . In our System we
          make no difference -- hearts are hearts. But in our
          System no lady was sufficiently interested to go on to
          the highest level. . . . One has to leave the love
          behind . . . nothing remains (Ibid., 402-3).

     This passage makes the interesting argument that beginning and
     progressing on the path are easier for women because of their
     naturally erotic nature but that this same advantage becomes a
     disadvantage when the woman arrives at the final stage and has to
     relinquish love. Presumably Bhai Sahib means that the woman
     progresses easily through her attached love for the guru but can
     only reach the "highest level" when she has overcome this
     attachment in shaktipat and realizes that the guru will not "give"
     her God but -- much more wonderfully -- has already "impregnated"
     her with God. Tweedie made this last step on her mystical journey
     only after her guru was finally removed through death.


                                Female Gurus

     Because of their high aptitude for shaktipat and bhakti, women are
     essential to the Tantric tradition. Indeed, as Shaw points out,
     Tantra's insistence upon the feminine principle can be documented
     by the fact that there were no female Buddhas in the iconography
     of Buddhism before the arrival of Tantra (Shaw, 1994: 27). She
     tells the story of the female Buddha, Laksminkara, who became the
     Severed Head Vajrayogini. The legend is clearly modeled on that of
     the Buddha himself, Shakyamuni. Laksminkara ran away from the
     palace of her origins, naked, with unbound hair, her body smeared
     with ashes, and talking incoherently, pretending to be mad. Like
     Shakyamuni, she gave up her riches and social status so as to live
     (relatively) naked in the wilderness. But unlike her male
     counterpart, she had to feign madness in order to be left alone.
     More than this, however, every female Buddha, every Vajrayogini,
     has inspired a legendary life-story that has much in common with
     the wrathful-goddess myths of India. For example, the foremost
     Vajrayogini is depicted blood red, her black hair flowing and
     loose, and carrying a cup made from a human skull that brims with
     ambrosia. She is beautiful, passionate, and untamed (Ibid., 28).

     Dzogchen, the school of "great perfection" that was brought to
     Tibet by Padmasambhava in the fourteenth century, teaches that we
     are all fundamentally enlightened but need to have our luminous
     vision reawakened through contact with an empowered teacher. On
     the subtle plane, however, all the teachings are held, protected,
     and transmitted by naked dakinis. The master is but the vehicle
     though which these sky-traversing female beings work. The founder
     of Dzogchen, Garab Dorje (first century, c.e.) predicted that the
     majority of those who reach the ultimate level of enlightenment
     would be women, for women have a natural affinity for working with
     energy and vision (Allione, 1986: 13-4).

     Because this feminine superiority is everywhere asserted in
     Tantra, we can hardly be surprised that women are urged to accept
     and identify with the goddess within themselves -- an immediate
     and one-step process -- whereas men are advised to approach
     divinity slowly and to begin by worshipping the woman's
     goddesshood (Shaw, 1994: 42). This is also the reason why it is
     widely claimed that every master requires initiation through a
     woman. Lilian Silburn finds this tradition in Kashmiri Shaivism:

          Appeased in man, the susumnanadi [central channel of the
          subtle body] is full-blown in woman. A great master,
          therefore, is in possession of this function through an
          initiated woman. Shivanandanath, the founder of the
          Krama school, did not impart this doctrine to a disciple
          but to three yogini who, in their turn, initiated some
          men (Silburn, 1988: 190).

     Miranda Shaw makes a very similar point regarding the Tantrism of
     Tibet, citing the Cakrasamvara-tantra:

          My female messengers are everywhere;
          They bestow all the spiritual attainments
          By gazing, touching, kissing and embracing.
          The most excellent place for the yogis is
          Wherever all the magical powers will be attained
          By all those blissful ones
                                         (Shaw, 1994: 38).

     Edward Dimock's research in Vaishnavite Bengal reveals the same
     valuation of women. His texts reveal that the guru who gives the
     initiatory mantra is said to embody Krishna. But: "The guru who
     conducts the worshipper in his search for realization is Radha.
     All women participate in the qualities of Radha, therefore, all
     women are in some sense gurus" (Dimock, 1989: 101). David Kinsley
     was unable to find Hindu texts that describe Tantra from a female
     point of view (Kinsley, 1997: 150). Nevertheless, he did find
     three schools in which women function as gurus. One of them, the
     Pashcimamnaya, claims that Shiva revealed his teachings to yoginis
     who have passed them down from generation to generation (Ibid.,
     149). Shaw says that the eighty-four mahasiddhas or "great adepts"
     described in the major sources are all male, "but if we examine
     the biographies and iconography, about sixty of them had female
     companions" (Shaw, 1994: 38). Furthermore, many legendary
     biographies, like that of Yeshe Tsogyel, show male disciples
     assigned to female gurus and female disciples to male gurus.

     That the importance of women as initiators and gurus is not
     limited to India and Tibet, may be gathered from the life of Ibn
     al-`Arabi. According to Wilson (1988: 175) Ibn al-`Arabi was
     initiated into Sufism by a woman and called sexuality the perfect
     form of contemplation. Claude Addas identifies that woman as the
     ninety-year-old Nunah Fatimah bint Ibn al-Muthana, who was also
     "assiduously frequented by Ibn al-`Arabi's mother" (Addas, 1993:
     25). The Greatest Shaikh himself quotes this ancient Fatimah in
     language that suggests the sort of devotion that obtains between
     master and shaktipat-initiated disciple:

          . . . Ibn al-`Arabi is a consolation to me, for he comes
          to me with all of himself. When he rises up it is with
          all of himself, and when he sits it is with his whole
          self, leaving nothing of himself elsewhere. That is how
          it should be on the Way (Ibn al-`Arabi, 1971: 143).

     Furthermore, Ibn al-`Arabi names fifteen disciples whom he has
     initiated by investing them with the khirqa. Fourteen of them are
     women, including one of his wives, and eight of these
     shaktipat-transmissions took place in dreams (Addas, 1993: 146;
     Wilson, 1993: 145).

     Dreams were extremely significant for Ibn al-`Arabi. We have
     already seen the importance he placed on the dream image of his
     shaikh Abu Ya`qub al-Kumi, with his breast "cleft asunder and a
     light like that of the sun [shining] out from it." Dreams give us
     direct information from the subtle plane and reveal realities
     unavailable to our sensory eyes. Ibn al-`Arabi argues that the
     Sufi should be so lucid in his dreams that he can "interpret" them
     even while they are occurring. To interpret in this sense (ta'wil)
     means to discover their higher meaning. When seen with the eyes of
     ta'wil, every physical object reveals a reality belonging to soul;
     every soul reality (including dreams) reveals an angelic reality;
     and every angel reveals its "lord," which is one of the Names of
     Allah, who exists beyond all concept and image (Corbin, 1969:
     239-44). Thus, for a transmission of the khirqa to have taken
     place in a dream means that it has been effected on the subtle
     plane and by-passed the ego even of the shaikh. In dreams Ibn
     al-`Arabi's soul invests the soul of his disciple under the
     direction of their respective angels. A shaktipat transmission
     that occurs in a dream reveals the higher significance of the
     teaching and guidance the shaikh gives his disciple through words
     and gestures in the empirical world. Psychologically, it refers to
     the realm of the atman field, where all lasting and transcendental
     influence takes place.

     The persona field of the West insists that the only indisputable
     realities are those empirical facts which can be demonstrated by
     laboratory experiments that quantify the results and prove
     mathematically that our eyes and intuition have not deceived us.
     From this highly patriarchal and logos-inspired perspective, eros
     (and its further explication as kundalini) is a highly dubious
     factor. Undoubtedly it expresses itself in physiological changes
     which can be quantified. But the emotions and images eros
     generates are seen as too idiosyncratic to merit attention. Truth
     for the West is above all a collection of statistical proofs from
     which the consciousness of the individual has been "factored out."
     Mysticism takes precisely the opposite route. Consciousness is the
     indisputable fact and not the object of which we are conscious. To
     get to the underlying reality of consciousness itself, mysticism
     attends exclusively to eros and attributes its physiological,
     emotional, and imaginal products to the higher reality of the
     subtle plane. Sometimes mystics indulge in the conceptual
     structures of metaphysics to describe the reality of the subtle
     plane. But metaphysics is always secondary to erotic
     consciousness. Gnosis precedes description and explanation, and
     the roots of gnosis are sunk deep into eros.

     Eros, despite its being the name of a male god in ancient Greece,
     is a mode of human knowing and functioning that expresses itself
     more naturally and abundantly in women than in men. Ultimately
     this is the reason Tantra places such strong emphasis on the
     feminine principle. On the subtle plane the divine reality -- from
     dakinis to Kali-like goddesses all the way up to the cosmos as the
     light of chiti, like thread in the cloth and cloth in the threads
     -- is predominantly feminine. On the empirical plane very much the
     same is true. Dependable advancement in mysticism depends upon
     shaktipat, and women have better access to this erotic potential
     for transformation. The great secrets that must remain unknown
     because they are fundamentally unspeakable have a feminine
     character. Although women are more familiar with these secrets,
     they are no better than men in articulating them. The diamond
     ladder -- a masculine construction par excellence -- makes some
     useful distinctions revealing why some erotic achievements are
     superior to others; but its rungs are shaped of eros. Its secrets
     are hidden in eros, and eros is a feminine mystery. This is why in
     Tantra Bhairavis play a more important role than Bhairavas,
     yoginis than yogins.

     Nevertheless, the literature of Tantra remains primarily the work
     of men; and despite the importance of women, the texts generally
     assume male masters and male disciples. Allione regrets this
     emphasis in that guidance for women mystics has been neglected.
     She argues that to make the Tibetan Tantric path more available
     for women, there ought to be specific directions for women to
     follow -- methods of practice and guidelines for finding and
     working with male consorts. She believes that a masculine "daka"
     principle ought to be as well developed as that of the dakini
     (Allione, 1986: 17). The fact that eros is more natural and
     well-developed in women is no excuse for neglecting the equally
     obvious fact that the erotic principle has to be awakened and
     integrated -- even in women. If Tantra is the foremost tradition
     to have recognized and developed the universally human fact that
     mystical union occurs through the erotic interpenetration of male
     and female, it would seem that a woman's progress on the path
     would have some differences from a man's. These differences ought
     to be explored and made explicit. In the end a new picture of the
     diamond ladder might result -- perhaps a pair of ladders with
     different numbers of rungs and specific cross-over points based in
     shaktipat.



     ----------------------

       1. Elsewhere I have referred to this phenomenon as the "self
          field." In this context, however, in which we have been
          talking about the citadel self, the term "atman field" may be
          less confusing.

       2. I have argued this point at some length in terms of the
          self-self relationship that obtains in psychotherapy (Haule,
          1996; 1999a), in romantic love (Haule, 1990), and in
          shamanism (Haule, 1997).

       3. Yidam: "Tibetan, literally `firm mind.' In Vajrayana
          Buddhism, a term for a personal deity, whose nature
          corresponds to the individual psychological make-up of the
          practitioner" (Fischer-Schreiber, et. al., 1989).

       4. Urdhva-retas: "the physiological process by which the semen
          (retas) flows upward (urdhva), and . . . the yogin in whom
          this process is alive" (Feuerstein, 1990).

       5. Citing Futuhat, I: 187.

       6. The technical term employed, ferasat, is rendered as
          cardiognosy by Schimmel, evidently derived from kardia
          (heart) and gnosis.

       7. I have explicated the doctrine of fana' as it applies to
          romantic love at some length in Divine Madness (Haule, 1990).

       8. "Space (dbymgs) is not the interval between objects and it is
          not spatiality; it is better conceived as an all-pervasive,
          all-penetrating, sub-atomic plenum" (Dowman, 1984: 241).

       9. Citing Guy Claxton, Wholly Human: Western and Eastern Visions
          of the Self and Its Perfection. London: Routledge & Kegan
          Paul, 1981.

      10. In this regard, Bhai Sahib's understanding of the
          Naqshbandiyya differs quite radically from what the tradition
          has become in this century, as presented in Buehler's
          historical overview (Buehler, 1998). According to Buehler the
          tradition has become a rather superficial means of declaring
          one's identity as a Muslim. Evidently Bhai Sahib's practice
          represents an earlier form of the Naqshbandiyya in which the
          shaikh is an instructor in esoteric disciplines.

      11. "To put somebody in Dhayna -- it can be done -- but it would
          only show that my will is stronger than yours" (Tweedie,
          1986: 21). "If I give the order, anybody can put anyone in
          Dhyana" (Ibid., 500).

      12. The Shishya [disciple] has every right to test the Guide; but
          once he is satisfied and accepts the Guide . . . then the
          Guide can take over, and the disciple has no free will for a
          while (Ibid., 21).

      13. Jung's theory has won both praise and vituperation from
          feminists. The fact that it seems to be supported by the
          mystical traditions lends it weight, but one never forgets
          that Jung was born in 1875 in the most conservative country
          in Europe, where universal feminine suffrage can today be
          counted in years rather than decades. In Jung's writings, the
          anima is presented much more positively than the animus.

      14. In this regard it plays a role parallel to hylŽ ("nature,"
          "physical matter') in neoplatonism and the various hermetic
          philosophies of the West, including alchemy. The central myth
          of alchemy is the engulfment of spirit in hylŽ, which
          corresponds to the Indian doctrine whereby prakriti plays the
          role of Maya and deludes us into thinking that what is
          physical is ultimate. The wise, in both Western alchemy and
          in India, are not deceived by appearances and see that spirit
          resides in matter and longs to be freed.