The approach of tantric science to the project of enlightenment is unique from some other well known enlightenment strategies.
Tantric philosophy & practice begins and ends with your body. It starts and finishes with the SENSATION of your body. Why? Because a primary tantric principle proposes that your body–everyone’s body–is a microcosm of the universe. Furthermore, tantric science believes that in fact, all manifest reality is composed of energy, and the nature of that energy is vibration. This means that everything we experience–all that is possible to experience–is composed of vibration. A dynamic, creative symphony of vibration.
For tantra, dynamic reality is not an illusion or born from some kind of ignorance of a transcendental reality that is somehow more real that what we all experience each and every day of our lives. Rather, manifest reality and transcendental reality are one and the same. As the ocean’s currents are one with the ocean, so are the immanent qualities of our experience of reality one with the perfectly silent and still ground of that reality.
The tantric philosophy and practice that comprises the perspective of The People’s Ashram believes that all the diversity of the universe can in time be traced to, and experienced as, a single Original Vibration. A sort of cosmic big bang in the form of an original Sound uttered by an originating Voice. Tantra names this original voice, Shakti.
Imagine an orchestra with ten thousand instruments. A thousand violins, another thousand cellos. A thousand bassoons and french horns. Imagine this ten thousand instrument orchestra playing a symphony–something grand like Beethoven’s Fifth.
Then imagine that the conductor brings the entire orchestra to a point where each and every instrument is playing one note–the same note. One moment, a seemingly infinite diversity of sound–the next moment, a single, tremendously powerful note.
This is like the goddess, Shakti. Shakti is the Mother of all the universe, of all creation. Shakti is also named, Kundalini.
Shakti is so enraptured by her love-making with her husband, Shiva, that she cannot help but to cry out with one long, ecstatic sound. From this single note uttered from the rapturous joy of Mother Shakti comes all the infinite creative manifestation that is our universe. Shakti is the primal sound from whence comes everything in space and time, for the note itself is not different from Mother Shakti, herself, who is not different from husband Shiva. Shakti is the substance of the cosmos, from the dust of exploded stars to the stardust in lover’s eyes.
Because all of manifest reality comes from a single frequency of vibration, tantric science has developed strategies whereby an individual can begin to recognize that the sensations of his or her own body are in fact, non different from that original Sound uttered by Mother Shakti.
Tantric disciplines, such as yoga asanas, pranayama and especially, meditation, use the sensation of one’s own body as the starting point for developing a fuller and deeper awareness of the nonduality that is our own consciousness. Thus, the tantric path to Enlightenment suggests that one begin by attending to the ‘grossest’ or the most superficial of physical sensations and move toward the subtlest, finest sensations. We may then, by the Grace of the God and Goddess of us all, reach that point where the most exquisite sensation is recognized as the divine substance of silent stillness. This is the event that has of old been described as the ascent of Kundalini through the subtlest channel, the madhya nadi, of the central channel, Sushumna, to pierce the thousand petaled Sahasrara, the blissful throne of Shiva.
THE PEOPLES ASHRAM 