Did you ever notice that spelling is both a magical act and the act of correctly ordering letters in written texts?

In our modern context, we have learned to relate to books and language merely as ways to convey information. We have lost our connection to the magical, “spelling” capacity of language.

This experience and concept of language as mere information is far from the Tantrik View of language as creative Shakti or power. As Tantrik practitioners, we relax and open to the force of language, its active, transmission of vidya shakti or wisdom energy.

When we read a teaching text or listen to a teacher, instead of dropping our preconceptions and expectations and allowing the transmission of vidya shakti to naturally infuse us, our orientation is often that of anxiously craving to get or demonstrate knowledge.

But “knowing” misses the point. As the Shiva Sutras tell us: Knowledge is bondage. Knowledge is the limited claim we stake out in the vastness of Reality. Knowledge is the cramped domain of our limited self, struggling and striving to sustain itself.

Vidya shakti is the energy of embodied understandings that manifest cosmic virtues such as the desire for Self-realization and compassion. Vidya shakti is the essence of written and spoken language within Tantrik sadhana.

This is a vast topic, and a fascinating one. What follows is a brief map of the Tantrik cosmos and the word.

Paravac is the Supreme Word, the original throb or vibration of consciousness. Paravac is the source of creation and the infinite potential within all creation.

Paravak is the Supreme Goddess of the word, the Divine Mother or Adi Shakti.

Pashyanti is Shakti manifesting as the desire (iccha shakti) to “see” a differentiated world by first emanating the subtle forms of the letters of the Sanskrit alphabet and the mantras that seed duality.

Madhyama is Shakti manifesting as silent mental articulation.

Vaikhari is Shakti manifesting as audible speech.

The movement from paravak to vaikhari is expressed by the understanding that Ma Sarasvati, the Goddess of speech, dances on the tongue of the Guru or adept. The words of the teacher are none other than Ma Shakti herself. So listen up!

This is also why students are often admonished to avoid unnecessary speech. Wasting speech is literally wasting or misusing the divine Shakti.

Mantras are the direct sound forms of cosmic virtues. When we do sadhana with mantras given to us by our teachers, we come to manifest those virtues. Some mantras have translatable meanings, and some do not. If a mantra is translatable, knowing the translation of the words is helpful, but practicing the mantra with the correct orientation and View is paramount.

One form of mantra practice is the writing of mantras either on paper or on the body. This common sadhana orients us toward greater understanding and acceptance of the continuity of Shakti in all forms of language: silent, spoken, or written.

That vidya shakti transmits at all levels of language, from subtle to gross, is dramatically demonstrated by the practice of sandhyabhasa. Sandhyabhasa is usually translated as “twilight” or “intentional” language. The literal translation of “sandhyabhasa” is “appearing between.”

On one level, sandhyabhasa is a form of secret instruction embedded in texts and the words of the Guru that can only be understood and correctly implemented by an initiated or sensitive student. Often sandhyabhasa consists of leaving something out of a text. In order to “get” these instructions, a student must read what appears between the lines.

On a more esoteric level, sandhyabhasa or “appearing between,” means that the transmission of wisdom is an appearing that emerges from a sandhi or a junction between the manifest and the unmanifest.

Perhaps the greatest demonstration of this fundamental feature of Reality is played out in the terma or treasure texts of the Buddhas Padmasambhava and Yeshe Tsogyal.

The lives of these great practitioners spanned the eighth and ninth centuries. Before they died, they hid teachings within the fabric of Reality, in between the unmanifest world and our everyday world. They hid thousands of teachings in rocks, mountains, and lakes and in the minds of the unborn. Their reason for doing so was greatly compassionate. They felt that in the future, humanity would be in need of fresh teachings to guide us through dark times.

The treasure texts of Padmasambhava and Yeshe Tsogyal are still being discovered by adepts who are able to access Reality at these profound levels. Two of the meanings of the the word “Tantra” are a weaving and a text. These great Buddhas are still showing us that the world, teachings, and
texts are just different modes of appearing of the same interwoven Reality.

A teacher whose tongue or pen is dancing with vidya shakti, who can “spell” correctly, is a vehicle for transmitting the energy of understanding to many students through both oral and written speech. Despite the rantings against the word, we can at times receive authentic teachings directly from the manifestations of Reality we call texts.

However, for the catalyst of vidya shakti to work through our lives, we must listen and read differently from how we are taught in school and by our cultures at large. We must listen and read in an open, relaxed state, resisting the temptation to accumulate knowledge based on limited, prefabricated understandings. We must read with our hearts, the true seats of wisdom, and not so much with our conceptual, judgmental, acquisitive minds. We must read, and listen, in an original way, alive to the fresh spelling of Reality in every moment.

OM Shanti,
Shambhavi

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