To attempt to discourse on such paradoxical conditions would lead to nothing but reducing the paradox to a meaningless jumble. And indeed this is exactly what the yoga say: one must not concern oneself with this; attempting to control with reason—precisely with the I that is given as the exemplar of mental self-limitation—that which is affirmed to be beyond the limits of the ordinary mind is, it goes without saying, a senselessness. But above all, it bears repeating: the yoga establish that even thinking about these things is non-yoga, because it is analysis; the aim of being the ātman is precisely the “being it”, not the thinking it, because obviously thinking it would be falling back into representation; that is, it is clear that one oscillates, being in a body, between the ātman and the I’s (that is, that one is simultaneously the ātman and an I); yet one must always remain aware that the I’s are reflections of the ātman—this is light-years away, as the yogīn have always affirmed, from the dichotomy between being and non-being that has stupefied Western thought for two millennia, because these are different worlds: the natural state on the one hand and representation on the other. The natural state (assuming it can occur) is such as to know itself and to know representation; representation is such as to be unable to see itself, just as a man cannot see his own eyes except through reflected reproduction, and thus cannot see the natural state which lies outside it.
It is the very word and concept of representation that impose these limits: if one re-presents, one substitutes one thing for another; and indeed, for neuroscience, mind is representation insofar as it substitutes electro-chemical impulses with thoughts—it does not know directly but only mediately. To say that mind is representation is equivalent to saying that mind is a bubble, that one lives “in a bubble”, as in fact all those who have pondered it for millennia in every field know and think. Then it is taken for granted that it cannot be otherwise, and one says precisely that representation is the proper and intrinsic cognitive and noetic mode of the human mind; no one can deny this, and indeed the adepts do not deny it but affirm it—they merely add that this “bubble” is not human nature but human “ordinary” nature.
There is no causal link, of course, between knowing that one is in a bubble and being able to exit it, and this plunges thought into crisis: knowing that what one thinks is in itself deceptive and yet being unable to resolve the enigma. Descartes and Kant—two among the greatest original thinkers of the Western tradition—begin precisely here, saying that one cannot know whether what one thinks is true and existent; then both yield to the terror of the void, that is, to the incapacity to remain within this pre-evidence: the former by saying that God guarantees one is not dreaming, the latter by saying that one must nonetheless rely on reason—the crude Hegel alone will say, exactly as Aristotle but from another angle, that what one thinks must be reality, with all the consequences that ensued. Nietzsche instead, in his first text, On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense, simply notes that reality is not as it appears and that every escape route is tautologically senseless; the rest of his oeuvre will be variations on this theme. Heidegger will then show theoretically how to approach reality on this side of representation.
Esoteric doctrines begin from the obviousness that apparent reality is the convention which men are led to believe because they believe themselves to be the mind, the I; for this reason it is precisely called “conventional reality” by the Tibetans. In the higher Tibetan yoga-tantra (the “completion stage” articulated both by Padmasambhava and by Naropa), the yoga of the illusory body (sgyu-lus) is precisely the practice that leads to realizing that all things, although phenomenally existent, are as such illusory—this yoga may be practiced by anyone at any moment, but its realization presupposes the realization of the preliminary yoga, which is gtum-mo, that is, the kuṇḍalinī-yoga.
The yogī applies, in any case, the viveka, which may also be defined as a form of reason, on condition that the term “reason” be freed from the self-referentiality that constitutes the essence of ordinary reason. The essence of viveka clarifies the nature of the yogī and the “substratum” of Tantric practices: all are buddhas as long as one realizes it, and at the same time only very few are the Victorious. This means precisely that representation is only a veil—its weave more or less dense, tearable or compact, depending on how one is born and lives, and on what happens or does not happen. Well then, one who is born seeing reality in an a-conventional manner, in a more or less intense or conscious degree—whether he be an avatāra or a tulku—lives, unknowingly, with varying intensity or awareness, thinking according to a certain degree of viveka, and, at a certain point or from always or never, the inner light of the mind may come to be installed; and from this moment, thoughts having been suspended, viveka unfolds—viveka, that is, is always the same; what varies is how incisively it constitutes the mode of seeing and thinking in itself. And this means that one is born a yogī, although this does not imply that one actually becomes one; but one does not know this except when one is so—this being the meaning of “awakening” when understood separately from “illumination”, which is equivalent to recognizing that all are potentially so if they are so.
Thus viveka is understood in two senses depending on whether it refers to before or after the appearance of the ātman: at first it is directed toward bringing about the recognition of the self-referentiality of reason—here a discrimination is required, which is already decisive, as just said: viveka in this manner still appears rational, as a method, but if one applies it as a method, then it is purely reason and is not viveka; viveka is inspired seeing, with respect to which the attempt to exacerbate reason is a separate and calculating moment—that is, viveka, in any case, is something for one who is called to yoga; otherwise viveka cannot arise. When, then, the ātman is installed, viveka is precisely pre-theoretical discrimination. Viveka is always the same thing—it is “the thinking of the ātman”; it varies in intensity according to the varying of the givenness of the ātman.
The yoga, the yajña of the Ṛgveda, cannot be taught, because they are knowledge “not communicable like other kinds of knowledge”; at most one can be directed toward them: if the ātman of the learner understands what is said pre-theoretically on this side of the discursive words employed, then that person is in yoga; if his mind does not actually understand, then by necessity he rationalizes what he reads, and he is at most a sādhaka (aspirant), or else he ends up mocking.
Thus, since all are the ātman, because the ātman is the nature of mind, everyone would be in viveka (artists and the inspired, in sciences or in reflection, are such because they enjoy flashes—extemporaneous and uncomprehended—of viveka); what precludes it is representation, which supervenes upon Consciousness because Consciousness in the individual coexists with matter. This obviously does not mean saying that matter and phenomena do not exist, but means admitting that mind is ‘naturalistically’ reduced to that which feeds it, that is, to the deliverances of the bodily senses, upon which the I can only come to be installed by an internally binding necessity. The ordinary mind is precisely thoughts reduced to ordinary experience; but the Tantra do nothing other than say that there is something more to be experienced—namely the energetic dimensions that the ordinary mind ignores insofar as it ignores them.
Tantra, Qabbalah, Alchemy—as well as, supremely, the Ṛgveda—are the opposite of being spiritual or metaphysical; on the contrary, metaphysics, as Heidegger has definitively clarified, is representation, insofar as it makes one believe that to be true and physical which representation itself, as such, constitutes as cerebral substitute for what is phenomenon. If neuroscience says that what is physical is that which, at the same time, it says to be the elaboration into encephalic thoughts of chemical particles and electrical impulses, the Tantra affirm that these elaborations are in themselves illusory. Both sciences say the same thing in essence: namely, the mediated dimension of the sensory apperception of reality; neuroscience judges it in a manner contradictory to its premises, for evident reasons of nescience and of anxiety for consolation; Tantra assumes this essence coherently.
Yet indeed, many philosophies and many enthusiasts say that reality is not as it appears, but they merely think it—they “wish to believe” it. Esoteric doctrines, instead, are founded on an experiencing which is the connection of the portion of Consciousness that is the ātman with the Consciousness that is the Brahman: Knowledge is no longer mediated by matter, nor by what is perceived and believed to be phenomenon, nor by the consequent biological physical-chemical mechanisms.
Operative esotericism is, it bears repeating, experiencing, not believing; and this experiencing is in turn also neuro-biological, but it is also immaterial: yet precisely the dichotomy between mind and matter, between immaterial and physical, is itself only the product of representation, which believes in matter and in mind as separate entities because they appear thus to consciousness (it is not a matter of having to explain what it means and implies that the separation between mind and matter is illusory, because it is not possible to give proof of a non-existence). The ātman gives itself by concealing itself, just as it is said of Śiva in the Kashmiri esoteric currents and just as Heidegger says of the pre-metaphysical Being (Seyn)—that is, it is dulled by representation while being self-consciousness. Man, as a rational animal, is self-conscious of being mind and body because this is how it appears to him and nothing else appears; if instead the ātman is unveiled, to a more or less intense degree, then it is self-conscious of itself as ātman. Said thus it is simple and schematic, but rarely is it so; indeed, the opus nigrum of the destruction of the I is an eternal non-understanding—made of not-resigning oneself to evidences one deems erroneous and of not-being-able-to-understand anything else (as said, one cannot even think of not being the I; this presupposes the stopping of thoughts). Then it may occur that the ātman unveils itself, or it may not—the Path of Tantra is precisely the short path that allows one to test, at the cost of immense risks and labors, whether one is predisposed to experience something other than conventional reality, but at the same time in the Tantra one must, as it is said, be sucked in.
In light of all this, viveka must therefore be said, at the essential level, to be the condition of a mind that tends by nature to be pervaded by the ātman, whereas the common condition is that mind is the I—that is, is dominated by base and foolish reason. The ātman may impose itself suddenly, or give indications, or be unhindered from birth, but certainly this concerns a “disposition”; for this reason it is repeated that the yoga guarantee nothing—that is, it is not enough to devote oneself to the yogas to obtain realizations (the figures covered in ashes with long beards and amulets are, generally speaking, aspirants to whom Kuṇḍalī has given no response; otherwise they would not have to attempt to awaken her). The yogas are not results—it is written in every text—but are the means toward an end that is not even rationalizable, and are as such destined for those who are called to them—which is to say that one is born a yogī, even if that may not suffice to actually become one.
The ātman is the principal, if not the sole, object of the ancient Upaniṣad, which constitute Vedānta—that is, the crowning of the Veda, which are in turn essentially nothing other than the Ṛgveda alone; they are understood by Western scholars as pleasant, if defective, philosophical systems with respect to the demands of empirio-critical rationalistic truth.
A few propositions drawn from the Kaṭha Upaniṣad are given here: “O Naciketas, knowing well the fire that leads to heaven, I shall explain it to you clearly. — This conviction [which concerns the ātman] cannot be acquired by reasoning. — The resolute man, meditating upon that Deva who is difficult to realize, who has entered a secret recess, who is fixed in the cave [of the intellect], who is immersed in the abyss and is ancient, by attaining union with the Supreme ātman, lays aside [the notions concerning] pleasure and pain. — This [Puruṣa] is profoundly hidden in all beings: it does not appear manifestly as ātman, but is realized through a concentrated and extremely acute intuition by those who perceive the [most] subtle things. — The Self-Existent made the external senses incapable [of grasping Him]: therefore the [individual being] sees only external things and not the inner ātman. Some sage, aspiring to immortality, having become one, turning inward the outward vision, saw the inner ātman. — That which drives the prāṇa upward and draws the apāna in the opposite direction, That which dwells in the center and is worthy of veneration—all the devas adore Him. — A hundred and one are the nāḍī that branch out from the heart. Of these, one alone goes outward through the [summit of the] head. Ascending along it, one attains immortality. The others, which go in all directions, lead back to death”.
The yogī, as well as still residually the I’s, is the ātman, and the ātman is the Brahman. The dimension of the yogī is, rather, the spontaneous finding-oneself—while remaining individual—in the Whole, the Whole understood as non-temporal and co-existent, spatially “present” planes consisting also of “past” and of “future,” in a natural superimposition which gives itself as a poised luminosity of possibility.
“Luminosity” is an abstract word if one does not attend to the particular inner light that constitutes the appearing of the ātman, which light of Ājñā-cakra—if it is true, as the texts say, that it is a “mechanical” precondition for access to effective yoga—is likewise said to remain as irradiation; the term “vortex” would imply a vortical movement which, however impersonal and motionless, is not there; the term “ring” a circularity which is not there; the term “sphere” a dimensional completeness which is not there, and so on.
The word “possibility” does not mean uncertainty, eventuality or chance, nor predictability or potentiality; it is neither Plato’s “acting and suffering” nor Aristotle’s dynamis; rather, like luminosity, possibility is in the nature of the ātman, which gives itself as a source of inexhaustible possibility only if one ignores that all is in the Brahman—it is a matter of making it appear if the Brahman gives itself in such a way as to allow it to appear. The luminosity of possibility is one way of saying Kunje Gyalpo, the Supreme Source, the name and substance of one of the root tantra of Dzogchen, which in turn is one way of saying, in its highest implications, Tat Tvam Asi.
From here derives spontaneity rather than calculation.
Continue in Part V