Tantric Quest Quotes

“And the intelligence, or the mind, loses its uniqueness and becomes absorbed in social games, which diminish it even as the opposite illusion is created. It's this raw material that's truly divine because it's in harmony with the universe. No one cuts the stars. No one designs the forms of the rivers; they flow by themselves. The tantrika is like a river that never stops flowing in the divine because the divine never stops flowing in it."In making these offerings, in receiving this initiation, you gain access to the knowledge of your own divine substance, and you open yourself to the Tantric experience of time no longer passing. Your meditation will be easier. The illusion of believing that time can be parceled out will appear to you in all its absurdity, and you will taste the nectar of undivided time."Initiation also involves a rupture with the myths of the specific society in which you live, establishing a profound and unconditional tie with all human beings and with all that has previously seemed inanimate to you. Initiation releases you from taboos and social, dietary, and sexual prohibitions, and more importantly, the prohibitions linked to ideas and thought. I”
― Daniel Odier, Tantric Quest: An Encounter with Absolute Love

“One day, I asked her what distinction she made between the Tantric Shivaic teaching, which sees consciousness as the receptacle of the universe, and Tantric Buddhism, which rejects consciousness as an illusory form. It was the debate between the Self and the Selfless that had mobilized great energies and had been the subject of polemics and councils, and grounds for mutual condemnation and rivalry”
― Daniel Odier, Tantric Quest: An Encounter with Absolute Love

“Mystical ecstasy is just this sudden explosion of the small me, which recognizes the divine Self. Everything gathered up in the consciousness is then projected into the infinite, and one can cry out in joy because in this moment all the beauty of the world becomes part of the Self.”
― Daniel Odier, Tantric Quest: An Encounter with Absolute Love

“Popular teachings sometimes speak of reincarnation. The highest Tantric teachings say that fundamentally there is no birth and no death, only the illusion of being enclosed in a pot, creating the desire to be rejoined with another pot. The debate over annihilation or eternal life is something adepts transcend as soon as they recognize the nature of their own minds.”
― Daniel Odier, Tantric Quest: An Encounter with Absolute Love

“Slowness is a divine thing. We have lost the habit of it. With slow, regular, harmonious movement, the consciousness immediately finds its place. The body begins to enjoy the smallest thing. Attention is heightened. We take in the world's full freshness. We communicate. We open our senses to the plenitude. Consciousness of the thirty-six tattvas is an apprenticeship in completely restoring our ties to the universe, beginning with the basic elements and arriving at the divine. It's essential to feel the reality of the world in its entirety. Without that, any spiritual quest is illusory. To be entirely present to each thing that crosses our consciousness, to our most banal and repetitive experiences, is the door to awakening. Tantrism rejects nothing. All mental and bodily processes are wood, which we add to the great fire that consumes the ego and leads us straight into the absolute. This forest we're walking in—it's the absolute. There's no border between the phenomenal and the absolute. They interpenetrate each other completely. Those who don't know that look for the absolute at a great distance from the phenomenal. They impose all sorts of austerities upon themselves. They fear reality and stop playing[…]”
― Daniel Odier, Tantric Quest: An Encounter with Absolute Love

“Listen to the mantra. . . . Only when you've heard it without a pause for three days and three nights will you be able to say it. To chant a mantra before having heard it is to arrive at death before being born”
― Daniel Odier, Tantric Quest: An Encounter with Absolute Love

“Your thinking mind touched the fire and you burned yourself. I wanted this day to be an experience of total contact with the tattvas for both the body and the consciousness. There is only one way to receive the transmission. When I tell you to do something, do it immediately, without the least wavering of thought. That's it. Learn. Open your heart and act. Thought stops action. It perverts it into a calculated gesture stripped of all its grace, all its efficiency. To come back to an action that went wrong makes it worse. That's only to sink deeper into the mental. Remorse paralyzes, hesitation eliminates beauty from action, thought shrinks from the world."Devi seized my hand and, with lightening speed, flattened it against the coals. I let out a cry and instantly withdrew it. There wasn't a single mark on it or any sensation of burning. The coals, nevertheless, had been crushed under my palm. Devi looked at me with a sort of serene and mysterious half-smile that gave her face a full, radiant expression."Now you have touched the tattva of fire.”
― Daniel Odier, Tantric Quest: An Encounter with Absolute Love

“To become a tantrika is only to realize the fundamentally pure and heavenly nature of consciousness and to let it take over your life. When that happens, no social game, no drug, no limited ideal can become inscribed in the consciousness, but above all, no activity in the world is capable of taking away this radiance. The tantrika can then live within society and remain an unalterable diamond.”
― Daniel Odier, Tantric Quest: An Encounter with Absolute Love