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WHO SEEKS NIRVANA?
bliss of Śiva and his Śakti in their eternal realization of identity; only as known in the inferior mode of ego-consciousness. The creature of passion has only to wash away his sense of ego, and then the same act that formerly was an obstruction becomes the tide that bears him to the realization of the absolute as bliss (ānanda). Moreover, this tide of passion itself may become the baptizing water by which the taint of ego-consciousness is washed away. Following the Tāntric method, the hero (vīra) floats beyond himself on the rouscd but canalized current. This is what has discredited the method in the eyes of the community. Its heroic acceptance, without quibble, of the full impact and implication of the nondual celebration of the world as Brahman has seemed far too bold, and too sensational, to those whose view of saintliness embraces the Lord's transcendent repose but omits the detail of His mystery play (līlā) of continuous creation.
A right method cannot exclude the body; for the body is devatā, the visible form of Brahman as jīva. "The Sādhaka (the Tāntric student]," writes Sir John Woodroffe, “is taught not to think that we are one with the Divine in Liberation only, but here and now, in every act we do. For in truth all such is Śakti. It is Śiva who as Sakti is acting in and through the Sadhaka. . . . When this is realized in every natural function, then, each exercise thereof ceases to be a mere animal act and becomes a religious rite-a Yajña. Every function is a part of the Divine Action (sakti) in Nature. Thus, when taking drink in the form of wine the Vīra knows it to be Tärā Dravamayı, that is, 'the Saviour Herself in liquid form.' How (it is said) can he who truly sees in it the Saviour Mother receive from it harm? ... When the Vira eats, drinks or has sexual intercourse, he does so not with the thought of himself as a separate individual satisfying his own peculiar limited wants, an animal filching as it were from nature the enjoyment he has, but thinking of him
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