Desire: The Tantric Path to Awakening

by Daniel Odier

The maithuna ritual has made a lot of ink flow, and rare are the Westerners who have received initiation into it by an authentic master. As I received it, this initiation—you may come to understand it by reading Abhinavagupta’s texts—is one of the tremoring vibration of all the senses, which return through it to their home, consciousness. For us, there is no difference between a sexual, genital relationship and the sensory relationship that we enter into with the reality that is all around us. What the masters call the Great Union sometimes refers to the sexual union, as is the case in stanzas 69, 70, and 71 of the Vijnanabhairava Tantra, but often the Great Union refers to the union of the sensory mass with the world, as is stated in the Vatulanatha Sutra: “The Great Union proceeds from the unification of the senses with their objects.”47 For the tantrika, activity does not lead to consciousness but proceeds from it and returns to it after having united itself with the object. Nothing comes from the outside.