Christopher Wallis, also known as Hareesh, is a Sanskritist and scholar-practitioner of Classical Tantra with thirty years of experience. He was initiated by a traditional Indian guru at the age of sixteen, and received education at yoga āshrams, both in India and the West. Subsequently, he engaged in fourteen years of formal education in Sanskrit, South Asian Studies, and classical Indian religions. His degrees include an M.A. in South Asian Studies from U.C. Berkeley, an M.Phil. in Classical Indian Religions from Oxford, and a Ph.D. in Sanskrit from U.C. Berkeley.
Hareesh teaches classical Tantric philosophy and Tantric practices, meditation, Sanskrit, and mantra-science to an engaged online community of practitioners. \u2028He combines his own practice of more than 25 years with a rigorous inquiry into the original Sanskrit sources to accurately translate and bring to modern practitioners this ancient nondual wisdom. He is the Founder of www.tantrailluminated.org/.
Mantras as a form of pray have indeed existed since eons past. These are your rituals and ceremonies. But the use of mantras, as a tool for meditation is a Tantric invention. If you look at scriptures from Lord Krishna, Buddha and Patanjali you will notice an absence in the use of mantras. Why? Because a mantra is absolutely not necessary at all in true Vedic meditation. Krishna and Buddha pretty much disregarded the use of rituals or ceremonies. The Rishi Kapila who taught his mother the one path also makes no mention of the use of mantras.
Why make it so difficult? Everyone is you in a sleep dream. Everything within the dream is you. It’s the same exact thing when we are “awake”. I never understand why there is a need to explain things with all these terms. Vagueness. Ect. You get what you expect in life just like in a dream. Whether good or bad. That is what I’m trying to master and get better at. What we call manifestation of attraction is simply creating experiences we expect. That’s why we marry someone exactly like one of our parents. Because that is all we know and our expectations come to fruition. Our childhood programming is a very very big deal because that is how our expectations are created. It takes work to reprogram and change our expectations. That is why we heal our trauma. That is why we mediate and that’s why we try to stay in the present moment. So we aren’t pulling from the past to create negative present. The idea “anything can happen” is helpful. If you can believe it you can achieve it. True. If you can dream it you can achieve it, true.
@@Mitziroczen what a odd comment! After all, so many things happen in life contrary to all our expectations. And we also get pretty solid evidence that we can believe something and still not be able to achieve it. Also, feel free to criticize the video, but it's certainly not vague. It is precisely describing the four main versions of nonduality.
Excellent! I read a translation once that said "transmigration" rather than wrongdoing and suffering. I never did like that since it impled transmigration is really something bad or flawed. Why would divine Shiva/Reality/Consciousness "transcend" transmigration or at least "see it" as "lesser"? The divine game, Lila... isn't that in itself just perfect the way it is? Why would it be something to overcome? Never did get that part.
Amazing talk but if you are hearing this in 2x, you'll hear lotta banging, tapping noises and creaking that feels a bit jarring. Not something I've come up hear or feel in your other well recorded podcast. Love the work you are doing and these talks are simply profound, complex and utterly simple at the same time. Hungry and thirsty for more of your content. Go Hareesh!
It's like "beginning, 'path' and realization - all in one" (for those who very much identify with the names and terminology). Thx. [Perfect: "Your true nature is unprofitable and furthermore has no problem with the challenges of embodiment. It's all part of the deal you signed up for embodiment comes with suffering and it comes with joy consciousness. There's no 'problem' with either might be hard to realize at first but discover it in your own experience."]
I so appreciated listening to another incredible discussion .. much to absorb and practice ! ! deity yoga as light & compassion, of bija mantras in both hindu and buddhist tantric practices as vibrations into transcendent states , and especially transmuting kleshas, samskaras, vasanas through dedicated tantric practices .. rather than struggling with renunciation of body mind psyche! Each conversation you share is replete with great viveka .. true wisdom … very powerful in a good way ! Thank you Hareesh! 🙏🏼 & Thank you Chandra 🙏🏼
The breath has always been important, much before the sramana movement. The rishis of antiquity dwelt on the breath. Dronacharya had already left his body by manipulating his breath just before he was kílled on the battlefield. Just one example.
This is all becoming way too bizarre. The way Shavism is taught is completely different in different systems within shavism which have all become conflated then conflated with information from different views of vedanda different views of Buddhism. Put simply there cannot be any path at all to liberation because it's already the attained and it's not by attained by individual someone or something. There's nothing in bondage inside-outside only apparently appearing as a someone or something in bondage. Only the illusion of bondage can be pointed out and only when nothingness spontaniously disolves the illusory me-energy when that energy disolves it's impersonally clear that it was never born. Nothingness is the singularity motionless apparently appearing as the separate energies of subjects and objects there is no separate energy inside-outside the body of apparently separate entities. The body is already formless-forming and doesn't need to be transformed into a spiritual energy body. Who would do that? There's plenty around who have fallen off the path or being kicked off that have spontaneously disolved into the fullness of voidness. It's incomphensible not to the body-mind rather to the illusory me energy. Spontaniously Disolving not spontaniously Evolving into a siddha being or an identity with a deity of some kind.
31:04, that's really interesting. nityodita. reminds me of what Metzinger said, "Enlightenment is a mistaken translation of the term Bodhi by a German scholar. Bodhi actually means Awakening. They discuss the experience of what they call "ever-fresh wakefulness," for instance, in their traditional scriptures. This is important as there is a cyclical renewing element, something akin to re-entry. They also talk about timeless wakefulness and a global process of Awakening, not about enlightening. Enlightenment implies metaphors of light, which aligns nicely with many empirical candidates we have today."
Perfect. Especially since: 8:48 and everything that comes after. (17:58 ...it just it doesn't 18:01matter at all ...) - Exactly that - it is of Critical Importance. ThX!
Thank you so very much Christopher ❤, I am so grateful that you have spent so much time exploring and learning about this. Thank you for sharing it with me. Thank you for being exactly who you are ❤
You mention cancer many times in these podcasts. I would like it if you could put that concept into your idealism context. There’s no definitive identification using the scientific methods of an entity that we call cancer. And it isn’t something that attacks people arbitrarily. Rather, as you mention, it is what happens in the body as a response to some sort of interference in the normal maintenance of homeostasis. The symptoms are evidence of the restorative processes that happen just like breathing. The concept of something attacking that we have to kill is detrimental to balance physiologically and psychologically. Since the symptoms are an indicator of interference, it would be far more effective to focus on that than killing some fictitious microbe.
@@gramdeda not sure if you're addressing this comment to myself or to Bernardo, but I'll just mention that science does not at all claim that cancer is a 'microbe' or an 'entity'.
Namaste Hareesh and Arthur 🙏✨✨ I had a thought arise when Hareesh asked Arthur a question at 1:30ish time marker. Could the answer of this question also be answered by sutra 6 in Pratyabhijnahrdayam? Awareness is the One continually unfolding; and since it is the perceiver, the perceived and the mind this is all experienced within… This gives us the harmony… Whatd’ya think?🕉️🙏🌸
Listening to you both, somehow melting in this recognition of the One Awareness speaking ... there is such joy ... and Infinity-Love. ... 'Infinity wants to know itself - it goes into expression and is fascinated by itself as something '💖
sitting on the bench, digesting whatever comes up, living spontaneity, intensity, fighting the mind and winning, and being with what is, unfolding, and blurps of samskaras,, no identity..great podcast..thxs
"None of these things [external circumstances] are the cause". Perhaps. We can hold this as an open possibility. But we can't know that until we can see (live, inhabit, feel, be convinced by) it. And those of use enmeshed by circumstance-driven suffering *can't liberate ourselves from that suffering because our physical insecurity doesn't permit the decades of ongoing practice that seems to be necessary for liberation* (except for the instantly-enlightened, which is just another example of fortune's inequity). We can't know if we'll have anywhere to live in the next few days. We can't afford to travel to see teachers. Most 'teachers' won't even *talk to us online* without handling over wads of cash. A US$30-$50 online monthly subscription is a ludicrous dream. We face constant humiliation (yes, endurable for the awakened, but we're not that yet!). I realise this reads as merely bad-tempered, but after much effort and consideration I truly believe that unless you're extremely (and entirely randomly) lucky, enduring (integrated) awakening is simply not permitted (by physical reality) for the disadvantaged. And the advantaged (including sages and gurus, who are 'advantaged' by native talent), talk from a sample of one so just can't see it. They therefore don't have a true (complete) picture of things (aka 'survivorship bias'). For the most part anyway. There are episodes of lucidity on the point, eg. "... to those who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance; but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away." Etc.
Of *course* the sheer maleficent cruelty of the world isn't felt most by those, like Hareesh, who are beneficiaries of injustice. You know what happens when people like me make efforts to .. (well, anything). We get hungry because 4 days after the dole arrives we run out of money for food. Or we get threatened with homelessness (because someone 'owns' land). Or we're too cold to do anything other than sit in bed under cover. Or we must deal with a government administrator or outsourced small business employee 20 years our junior who treats us with utter contempt. Every time the powerless try to face the world, it slams a door in our faces. Even if we accept that liberation is theoretically possible, it is not in practice for billions of us, because the physical world is laid out in such a way that striving to exist another day saps all of our energy. The world is a horror for us, but not for you. Yes, it's possible that a liberated being could endure far worse without being personally perturbed (read up on Etty HIllesum). But we are not permitted to live the sort of embodied lives that allow for the activities that might lead to liberation (unless we're vouchsafed it instantly, which we're not). If you tell us that the world is just a projection on a screen (OK, an Advaita not Tantric metaphor), the plain fact of it is that we have to endure a shitty movie, minute after minute, day after day, whereas you get to see a pleasing one full of intellectual adventure and love and friendship and curiosity and (the least of it) physical comforts. The ontology of it doesn't matter when the experience is so dire (when what I am forced to endure is all and only struggle, humiliation and despair, it doesn't matter a jot that I "am not" those experiences). The world is physically arranged to create wide-ranging interest and pleasure for you, and mute suffering for us. It's not that we believe that love is not real, it's that it is available to some and not others. Enjoy your good fortune, by all means. Abjure our envy if you must in order to reconcile your advantages. But don't tell us that the world is in any overarching way beneficent. It is not.
I hear you, and I grieve your experience. And also, i think it's important to distinguish between the world as it is given to us and the world we create (nature vs. culture, to simplify it). The inequities of capitalist culture are not beneficent, on this we agree. But let's not imagine that that is simply "the world". It's not the way things are, it's the way 'we' have made them. That aside, is there any way I can help you?
@@christopherwallis751 That's a gracious response to my rather grouchy comment (well, this is the internet ...). I do understand that external circumstances don't solely create the sea we swim in. I know this from others' accounts as well as my own experience. I have felt on occasion, in the midst of objective feelings of utter desolation and turbulence, a kind of coolly interested imperturbability. Entirely unbidden, and more than merely consoling - it truly seemed like anything could be lived with from that stance, with ease and no reluctance. But that stance is not always there (at least for me), and I take it that discovering its ready availability is part of the process of integration/purification (whatever the preferred terminology). Without that, to quote you from TI " you end up with a kind of split personality: a divine you and a messed-up you". The dilemma is that the 'messed up you' isn't, for all of us, sufficiently functional in the world to provide the stable material/emotional stage on which that integration work must take place. I've thought quite a bit about this and have thus far found no solution to the dilemma. I truly suspect some human lives just aren't viable. But of course I don't know everything (or that much, really). As for your kind offer of help - I can't think of anything beyond what you already do in your public work. If though you have any links to your or others' blog posts or other reading that you think might address this particular dilemma (if I've described it adequately), I'd be interested. [PS. I got a 3 month 'scholarship' coupon code for your 'TI Illuminated' site today. Mentioned in case there's anything there you'd recommend. I have a roof for an indeterminate temporary period of weeks to months so am in a position to read/watch/practise ]
so glad you got the scholarship. there's much there to explore. as for your hypothesis, it is disproven by the many homeless mendicants (sādhus) in India who have indeed become liberated -- only a tiny percentage of all sādhus to be sure, but we only need a few to prove that it's possible. as for how else I might help, first tell me, where are you based, physically?
@@christopherwallis751 I'm in Australia - Northern NSW, in a converted shed on a rural property (up for sale, hence the temporary nature of my housing). It's a beautiful spot, so I am not without good fortune. In fact being here has much to do with my interest in matters spiritual, which is a recent occurrence (the past year) and was unlikely (I had previously been very sceptical about such matters).
@@nonplussed0000 I have an awake friend in Queensland who I thought could maybe meet you but perhaps it's too far. Btw, have you read my blog post called the liberating power of your sadness?
Dr. Wallis, I had an important question. It may not be entirely relevant to the topic of your most recent episode, but I wasn’t sure where else to post it. I have addressed this in my own way in the past, but I haven’t revisited this Christian objection to non-duality in some time, so I’m a bit fuzzy now on the best way to counter the objection that God is fundamentally undergoing change when He manifests, but this isn’t possible because God must be immutable to truly be the Source of all things.
@@christopherwallis751 Well, I’m sure it is unfounded but I wanted to have a ready reply in the interest of promoting the correct philosophy. I did end up replying after all. I essentially said that, just as the Logos takes on flesh in Christianity without the diving essence losing anything or being diminished in any way, God can add other modes or dimensions of experience to Himself (including finitude) without being diminished. I went on to note that the difference between the two views is that, in Christianity, there is an absolute, binary separation between God and the humanity of Jesus (or creation at large), such that there is something outside God that isn’t divine. Ergo, if there is anything that isn’t God, how can God be infinite?
How do you know it does not, though? Isn't that statement kind of the same as claiming with certainty that there is no teapot orbiting Jupiter? I've often heard people dismiss synchronicities and then talk about some little details that can be explained away by whatever that cognitive bias was called where people connect things that aren't connected (in the context of a very specific conceptual framework that people somehow mistake for objectivity, but let's not go there now), but to me it sounds simply like those people have not personally experienced those huge, amazing synchronicities that completely upend one's view of reality. Or is your point here not about the existence of synchronicities themselves but about the conceptual frameworks used to explain them?
my third time rewatching this, i sought the origin of this beautiful sufi quote 1:42:21 - *apparently, it is not sufi?* here's what i found: “Nobody has seen the trekking birds take their way towards such warmer spheres as do not exist, or rivers break their course through rocks and plains to run into an ocean which is not to be found. For God does not create a longing or a hope without having a fulfilling reality ready for them. But our longing is our pledge, and blessed are the homesick, for they shall come home.” ― Isak Dinesen
The only issue with Christopher's translation of meditation is that his meticulous excellence in precise translation from Sanskrit to English. Some words I don't understand at all. So, it's like you follow the script and then he asks to imagine a thing that unimaginable and I'm like what a frag :)
HI Christopher, here is a list of concepts that i was staggling to comprehend as the first time listener of this podcast: 9:08 a cycle of cognition (and later how come an act of cognition is broken into emission, stasis, and resorption) 9:49 vassana of the object 20:53 a ground of pure potentiality. 22:11 a subtle impression of the object
@@Rzevy oh I see. As a first time listener this is not really the place to start. You could try starting with the essence of tantra chapter 1, or just listen to the podcast from the beginning... Or, best option of all, read or listen to my book tantra illuminated that explains all the fundamental concepts carefully.
