Christopher Wallis Exclusive Interview about the magic of Kashmir Shaivism

[Music] [Music] I was a little bit aware of tantric philosophy under the name Kashmir shiism from quite a young age maybe around 8 or so and I didn't understand it or anything like that and some years later at University uh is when I first delved into the teachings and tradition of uh tantric Chism with one of my first teachers Paul Mueller Orga and he taught a course called Hindu tantric yoga uh and this was back in the year 2000 and that was revelatory that was a revelatory experience because I'd been studying Indian religion and spirituality for a number of years by that point and and also practicing [Music] um and this tradition of Tantra Chism was uh astonishing in terms of its depth you know with uh the other Traditions that I was really interested in uh in the history of Indian spirituality like the poet Saints the bakti movement vanta and so on they all um were very profound but also um I could see sort of the The Horizon with each of these Traditions what what how much of it could uh be studied and and uh with tantric shiism also known as shat Tantra it was like discovering um a bottomless Rabbit Hole you know just a incredibly Rich incredibly complex tradition and I was attracted to it initially because I thought well this is something I could study for a lifetime and not run out of interesting things to look at and little by little I also became aware of the profound practices of the tradition and um that it really offered a more comprehensive view uh combined with practice of the whole dimension of human experience that we call Spiritual Awakening so I suppose it's its comprehensive nature and it's and its depth is what What attracted me to it um and yeah here I am you know whatever almost three decades later and I indeed haven't run out of things to study in this uh in this beautiful tradition and also there's the temptation to study it because it's one of the world's great lost Treasures you know like uh people are very much aware of some of the other great spiritual traditions of the world and this one not so much even though in its own time it was um just as influential and popular and significant as anything else on the planet but through the vagaries of History it's almost forgotten today compared to um other world famous spiritual tradition so there's that um pull to help it I suppose support uh the tradition itself to become known once again um and it's cool to you know learn about a treasure that that most people don't know about there's a thrill to that for some people I suppose when someone asks me to describe the nature of reality uh from my vantage point right away I just um try to explain that my vantage point I don't really have a personal vantage point and that's because I've been studying this tradition for so long now and its view has become my view and uh I don't I don't really have a view on the nature of reality I mean I I think it's presumptuous in a way to have a view on on the nature of reality that's a personal opinion that you stand by I think it makes much more sense to survey the various views that are out there and this is something I I did back in the day um and then you know you find one that uh resonates the most most and you go deep into that um so in other words I'm saying that um I think it's the wrong question if somebody asks my opinion about the nature of reality and for me the right question is uh what view of the nature of reality um seems to someone who studied this subject their whole life the most compelling view um and so yeah for me that is the view of nondu sha Tantra which I'll I'll try to sum up now a complex spiritual tradition doesn't just have one view it has uh a bunch of interrelated views of the nature of reality but um when we speak of nondu shantra we're primarily speaking of the lineage um of UT padva and Ben Gupta and chaja and this is sometimes called a triaa lineage because there's these two primary streams that that feed into it the Tria and the kma but anyway uh those are just sort of the historical details what is the view of the nature of reality that was championed by these great Masters on the basis of uh scripture on the basis of logical reasoning and on the basis of their own direct experience and philosophically you could call it a kind of um monistic idealism but for most people who aren't very well-versed in philosophy it's better to just try to explain what that view is and this is difficult to do because most people in the world today are so deeply indoctrinated with the materialist view or the physicalist view right the the uh supposedly scientific view that matter is what's fundamental uh to the nature of reality and Consciousness is um an accidental emergent property um of the complexity of matter and so that uh supposition is just a supposition and when we look at a view that is radically different from that um it's very hard to try to explain it because we it requires us to undo all of our assumptions about the nature of reality to even understand what's being said and most people don't do that readily so nonetheless I'll try to give a nutshell uh to this which is there's no good reason to presume that the nature of reality is fundamentally different from what you directly experience and what you directly experience and I directly experience is consciousness we don't actually directly experience matter the concept of matter is in fact a concept what we experience all the time moment to moment in every moment throughout our entire lives are various permutations of Consciousness appearances sounds textures flavors thoughts feelings and so on endless permutations of Consciousness so therefore um the view of the nature of reality that assumes the least unprovable things is the view that Consciousness alone exists and that this whole world is a manifestation of Consciousness that is to say there is no world apart from Consciousness apart from we could say the sum total of all conscious experiences had by all conscious beings right so what we mean by the world in this view is simply the sum total of all experiences had by all conscious beings and there is no other world there's no objective reality that uh beings are experiencing but would be here without their experience expence that supposition is both unprovable and not necessary so if everything is consciousness uh how does that change our experience of reality well that's the part we can't explain logically that's the part that's not um sort of philosophically justifiable right it cannot be um arrived at through reason alone that is to say it's through it's through the direct experience of everything as Consciousness that we realize the lifechanging implications that can scarcely be explained so let me try to give a Time window into this I would have uh stopped studying this some years ago if it hadn't become my direct experience if everything is consciousness then what is are the relationship of conscious beings to each other well the relationship must be one of unity that is to say there's one Consciousness that is experiencing through all these different body Minds one Consciousness that is looking through this pair of eyes and the pair of eyes watching this video and all pairs of eyes that exist so now this can be this proposition can be philosophically defended but um it's the direct experience of it that is truly what's convincing and lifechanging so there's a sense of connection that is only possible when the unity of Consciousness is realized that there is indeed one Consciousness gazing out through the eyes of all conscious beings and so the direct realization of that in one's own experience um means the end the permanent end of isolation alienation loneliness and the forms of existential angst that precede from those experiences and since that's really the primary form of suffering for for for most human beings assuming their very basic needs are met the most common form of suffering is this isolation alienation and so to have that completely obliterated is um an astonishing paradigm shift and again it comes not only through contemplation of a philosophy but through practices um that organically evolved with that philosophy so I've you know not really succeeded in covering this because it takes a while to try to explain it but to sum it all up in in a little nutshell we could say metaphorically speaking that everything that exists is a dream in the mind of God but what do we mean by God we mean the power of consciousness through which all beings are conscious to whatever extent that they are so in this tradition of tantric shiism the word God or Shiva in Sanskrit doesn't mean a superum supernatural person it means The Power Of Consciousness by virtue of which all conscious beings are conscious to whatever degree that they are so to shift experience from the default one in which we live in a vast uncaring empty and meaningless Universe in which we are just a tiny accidental Speck of life that will soon be obliterated and uh there's no point to it ever having existed from that view to shift to this view is quite profound because in fact the universe exists precisely for us and because of us that is to say the universe only exists as uh an expression of Consciousness and it only exists because there are beings to be conscious of it uh since it's a product of Consciousness so again there's no way to prove this in words but the direct experience that absolutely everything that you see touch taste hear smell feel or think about is an expression of what you fundamentally are and that uh this whole world is a play of that Universal Consciousness which is your own true nature this is a a revelatory powerful beautiful way to experience reality why would a spiritual tradition conceived over a thousand years ago be in any way relevant to humans in the 21st century some people do have this question and I would answer it in two ways um first of all humans have not changed in any uh fundamental way for at least several thousand years maybe longer meaning to say um though we're using our brains in different ways uh the the fundamental range of human values and feelings and needs is the same the fundamental human aspirations are the same um so something that worked a thousand years ago to speak to the deepest needs and questions that human beings have is indeed still going to be relevant today uh but there is another and perhaps more important reason so about 1,500 years ago in the year 500 or a little before that of our Western calendar is when uh Tantra arose as a spiritual movement when it entered the historical record anyway and it's no coincidence that that time period was just after the fall of the Gupta Empire which was comparable in many ways to the Roman Empire so as the Roman Empire was to Europe the Gupta Empire was to India uh a couple of centuries later and so when the empire fell India um fragmented into many many many small principalities and Waring States and life became very uncertain for people so uncertain as in you know you never knew what was going to happen like you know soldiers from a nearby Kingdom might March through and burn your whole village to the ground tomorrow you know uh or or your the local King might be Victorious and um suddenly riches flow into your area of uh of India and the list goes on and on life was very very uncertain um one didn't know how long one would live if one would die violently um all this sort of thing so Tantra arose in that context as um a system of spiritual practice that not only sought to give people uh a a broader context for their experience you know um help people experience the bigger picture view which renders life meaningful in spite of all the the the vagaries of of history and Karma and so on um but also Tantra developed Technologies to help people uh become radically flexible and strong in an emotional and psychological way uh so Tantra offered practices that help people become more resilient strong and flexible um in in their body and mind and psychology and thereby respond more um readily and effectively to the challenges of a very uncertain world so probably you can see what I'm what I'm angling towards here which is that the 21st century is also a very uncertain time for human beings um and you know depending on where you live in the world it might be almost as uncertain or equally uncertain to that time when Tantra came about as a spiritual movement so this is merely a hypothesis on my part let me be clear this is merely a hypothesis say that that that people are drawn to this tradition for um that reason among others because they feel its potential to empower them other spiritual Traditions are exclusively about you know truth or realization and Tantra is as well but it's also about empowerment and people want ways to be empowered they want to be able to respond uh flexibly and with resilience to an everchanging cultural social and Environmental Landscape and so uh Tantra Rose in in just such a context and therefore serves us in a similar context but even with this hypothesis to be honest I am hard pressed to explain the degree of resonance that I see because I teach tant philosophy and practice all over the world and whether it's um you know Asia Europe South America uh Brazil for example like all like all these countries all over the world and people have this incredible resonance with these teachings and they you know after the workshop in whatever country I'm in there's all these people coming up to me oh my gosh this is what speaks to me this feels like real spirituality so uh I don't know exactly why it's so resonant Beyond some of the hypothesis I've already um offered uh but it might also have to do with the fact that um it enshrines some great spiritual truths in a non-dogmatic non-religious way you you know we we should definitely add that into the mix of our explanations um but still even add up all the explanations I can think of and there's something magical happening it would seem uh in terms of the degree to which um this tradition is appealing to people in all different cultures all over the world but how can this tradition of classical Tantra serve as a remedy for some of the problems of modern life well in that regard as well it is uniquely well equipped um because in Modern Life people are constantly distracted they're constantly assaulted by stimuli coming at them from all directions way too much stimuli and uh they are un ungrounded in various ways and they're sometimes a drift they're not sure what to do or why what their purpose is um and the tradition of classical Tantra answers these and and does provide a remedy perhaps not uniquely Pro there's other Traditions that do a good job as well but um it's a tradition of meditation and mindfulness of course and help helps us become undistracted helps us process uh stimuli better helps us reduce the amount of stimulation we're experiencing helps us become more grounded um through these various spiritual practices not only meditation and mindfulness but also what we call um energy body practices that connect us to um our energy and our aliveness in various ways and our connection with the energetic Matrix of the planet so that can be very uh grounding and to feel your intimate connection with all life and to live in such a way that you are um in service to life instead of parasitic on life uh brings greater sense of meaning uh so there's more that could be said about all of that but that's just a a brief explanation for how um um Tantra is serves as a remedy for some of the ills uh of Modern Life both the academic field of tantric studies and interest in the tradition amongst practitioners has been growing for some decades now um and the reasons for this are are complex and historically interesting um though we don't have time here to to go over them in too much detail um but uh even though Kashmir is predominantly Muslim now and has been for uh a few hundred years um there were Hindu rulers of Kashmir a 100 years ago and they decided to publish these ancient manuscripts that contained much of the wisdom of classical Tantra in fact um these manuscripts are found not only in Kashmir and hence Kashmir shiism is a misnomer if you're familiar with that term because many key manuscripts have also been found in Nepal in Kerala uh and in other parts of India as well so it's really uh the tradition of tantric shiism that we're talking about that happened to flourish in Kashmir a little bit more than it than it flourished anywhere else but anyway it's these Hindu rulers of Kashmir 100 years ago decided to publish these manuscripts um you know print them and distribute them to universities so in that way people discovered wow these are some fascinating texts that all the scholars already knew about vant and Buddhist philosophy but not many people knew about this tradition which had fallen Into Obscurity mainly because of the Muslim conquest of Northern India which was uh always the the stronghold of of of Tantra and it's hday so uh people discovered these texts and were like fascinated and so very very slowly uh the awareness um percolated but then also what happened it's not just an academic story thankfully um is in the late 20th century there were some great um and influential gurus uh spiritual Masters like Swami lakshman jeu of Kashmir who had many Western disciples and Swami muktananda uh of Maharashtra uh who popularized the teachings of tantri shiism and whose influence also helped to get translations some of the earliest translations published in English both in India and the West so uh a whole Confluence of circumstances um made it possible and then starting in the 1980s there was a a really a huge um reignition of tantric studies of course there had been T tantric studies happening more than hundred years ago with Sir John Woodruff if you've heard of him also known as Arthur Avalon but then a reignition in the 80s um among students of Swami lakshman jeu who became academics uh such as Alexa Sanderson and Betina Boer and Mark DH kovski and Lillian silburn to name a few and we're lucky that these were quite brilliant people and and are a couple of them still alive are quite brilliant people and so um and and and interested in the tradition as practitioners as well as scholars in most cases not all cases um so they helped to Foster this sort of revolution in tantric studies and the younger generation that I'm a part of not that young but still the younger generation compared to those guys um we got into the tradition as practitioners encouraged by our spiritual teachers and then became academics later so there's many examples of of this as well um people like hamsa stainton and Ben Williams and uh and Jeff litkey and uh Shaman Hatley these are all great um relatively young scholar practitioners some more serious about the practice than others but all really genuine folks who are taking the field of that step further and many of them are are often in conversation as well with popular spiritual teachers not popular in the sense of famous but in the sense of non-academic spiritual teachers um who are also sharing these teachings with Seekers uh uh spiritual Seekers and meditation practitioners so it's actually quite an exciting time for those who are interested in classical Tantra uh this is a very exciting time uh even though the vast majority of materials um for the study and practice of the tradition have not been published uh so the the great majority is still in Sanskrit not in English or any other uh Western language and not even in in good hindi translations either for that matter so most people in India do not have good access to these teachings either but more and more and more translations are coming out all the time more and more studies um and we can look forward to uh you know a time perhaps another five or six decades from now when the bulk of the most important uh teachings this tradition has to offer are translated so um it's uh it's exciting to be part of that uh uh wave moving forward because yes there are some teachings and practices in this tradition that might play a part in helping save Humanity uh save Humanity from itself of course I mean um by bringing us closer and closer to uh what one spiritual Teacher Calls basic sanity which is still all too rare in this world people who know that um this tradition of uh classical Tantra or Shiva Tantra or tantric Chism was almost lost uh Wonder Could it still be lost and the answer thankfully is no as long as people are interested in it it's not going to be lost um because almost all the manuscripts that exist uh have been photographed have been micro filmed now it's a huge amount of material that has not yet been read uh well there's you know one or two people on Earth who've read almost all of it but um a lot more work needs to be done but the good news is that the great great great majority of the manuscripts that document this uh incredible tradition are preserved uh in one way or another uh digitally um micr microfish Etc and most of them are cataloged um but most of them are not translated so uh the tradition is now well preserved um in the sense of uh it's not going to be further lost but not well preserved in the sense that there are uh still not many translations compared to the amount of material that there is total so that's why um more and more Scholars getting involved um is a great thing and we'll see uh more and more development of understanding of of this tradition going [Music] forward [Music] boom

Channel: Revive Tantra

Views: 3,517

Keywords: Christopher wallis, christopher wallis tantra, christopher wallis meditation, christopher wallis tantra illuminated, christopher wallis yoga, christopher wallis hareesh, Tantra, Shivaisme du cachemire, Kashmir Shaivism, non duality, non dualité, shiva, shakti, kundalini, Abhinavagupta, saiva tantra, swami lakshmanjoo

Id: NPMPVlQw7x0

Length: 34min 42sec (2082 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 21 2023