The Shiva Tantra

A Ngakpa. Listening to the reverberation of primordial sound.

Hear this! Hear this!
From the pure lucidity of Void --
inconceivable, wide & deep, profound in extent,
smaller than an electron, vaster than all universes --
there arose a formless mass of pure energy.
[This never happened. Not even once.]

Energy in Voidness,
Voidness as Energy!
Sea of clouds, wind in the pines.

Contemplating itself from all sides,
interpenetrating & wonderfully alert,
lustrous & fresh, dazzlingly colorful,
ecstatically pulsating with deep sound,
it suddenly entertains a bizarre notion
of "subject" and "objects."
[I heard a Fly buzz.]

Swept away by its own majesty,
dazzled by such unforeseen thinking,
the Primal Energy births the 10,000 [numberless] things!
It imagines in a flash the Six Paths of existence,
the Triple World of Samsara,
& all the sentient beings who ever lived,
or will ever live at any time, in any place.

So dramatic! Like a painting hanging in air,
a moving image without a projector or a screen.

Amazing! To touch, taste, smell, hear, see!
And to think, to plan,
to move around in space,
& to change with "the passing of Time"!

To hunt, to fish, to build a house.
To form a jar out of clay,
to sing, to bear children,
to wander forest paths,
to see blazing suns in the desert,
to drink cold water under a vast sky.

Then, without losing any of itself,
it suddenly forgot itself!
It turned upside down.
It took what it had created as the Master.
It took mental forms for Energy,
it covered the Inconceivable Void in thoughts.
It tore its own clothes,
it smeared itself with ashes,
it bewailed its fate.
It began to fear time as a monster,
& the infinite as annihilation.
It plunged into the abyss of sorrow & misery!

One day, quite unexpectedly,
the fixed position of its consciousness moved.
Nobody knows how this happened!
It dropped from the head down to the Hara,
& with the quiet rhythm of breathing
expanded to all ten directions --
a soundless thunderclap in the blue of empty space.

And, like a bolt of lightning,
the blissful Void-Energy moved too.
It stirred itself, uncoiling like a snake,
& shot from the lower chakra all the way up the spine,
heating the spot between the brows like molten gold.

Then it leaped out through the crown of the head --
[free at last, free at last,
thank God Almighty I'm free at last!]
Ah! A Thousand Petaled Lotus!
The wonder of all wonders!

But the yogin went on sitting calmly on his mat,
listening to a cool wind rush in the big pines.