Dakinis on the Roof

Misconceptions about Planetary Tantra

Since launching the new dimension of this site, I have been reflecting on misconceptions that might arise about Planetary Tantra, or, even worse, expectations I may be inviting, which are inappropriate to my intentions and will not be met. To anticipate these issues, and make the approach to Planetary Tantra as user-friendly as possible, I offer this essay for orientation and clarification.

With the material online so far, readers may wonder what they would see upon arriving at my house: Dakinis on the roof, agarbatti incense drifting through the doorway, sitar music droning in the salon, an altar to Kali glotted with chicken blood and feathers, Hindu kitsch in the kitchen. Well, no, this is not my scene. There is an altar to Kali in my house, but otherwise there is no Indian decor. I do listen now and then to Carnatic music (South Indian vocals, "shakti chanting"), but I don't drown myself in it. I sacrifice no chickens or goats. As for dakinis in the roof, I did once behold such a sight—and thereby hangs a tale.

Here in Andalucia, I enjoy frequent visitations of circling vultures, but no sky-dancers on the roof or under the bed. Are these gals invisible? Most of the time, yes... but more below on what to expect about encountering dakinis of the Shakti Cluster.

Black Magic?

The first possible misconception I would address is this:

By invoking a bevy of Indian goddesses, the Mahavidyas, Planetary Tantra puts out a call to go Hindu, rather as the Beatles did with Maharishi Mahesh in the Sixties.

This is definitely not the case. At its introduction, Planetary Tantra presents an array of goddess figures from Indian religion, no question about that. But I do not propose that anyone worship these admittedly anthropomorphic icons of the Divine Feminine. They are rather like receptionists who ceremonially greet participants coming to an event. They are hostesses. They are not the main event, but they set the atmosphere for that event. They bring a style to the initiation of Planetary Tantra, but the event they are hosting is not ultimately bound to that style. As the event unfolds, it will take on a look and a dynamic that does remain bound to the dress code and decorum of the reception team.

So, don't be put off by the Hindu monikers and manners. The event these goddesses are hosting is going to take on a character all its own.

Ritual head of the Dhumavati

Barely known outside the group, this menacing Mahavidya is known as "the widow." The ritual head is a rather glamorous representation in "Black Madonna" style. Traditionally, Dhumavati is pictured as a frightening hag, ugly and angry, dressed in dirty clothes. Her skin is black but she has Aryan features. She chews corpses and drinks blood in her wine. She is associated with the crow, the witch's familiar, and Yama the buffalo god, hence with the thunderous silence of sudden death. Dhumavati presides over all that is forbidden, and induces strife. She confers detachment and indifference to the human condition, and prepares her devotes for pralaya, the transition from this time into the next age after the total disappearance of the world.

At the outset, you may not care at all for the gruesome style of the Mahavidyas or the punk-gothic spectacle of blood-drinking dakinis such as Vajravarahi. It's largely a matter of taste, esthetic and imaginative preferences. Some people will find these Hindu goddesses enthralling, others will be put off, others will merely be indifferent. The Gaian Dakinis of the Shakti Cluster are not angelic, be assured of that. They ought never be equated with angelic figures in Western religious tradition.

Second possible misconception to address:Planetary Tantra is a program of goddess worship that conceals an agenda of Satanism or Black Magic.

Looking at the ritual head of Dhumavati, you might be tempted to think that Lash is proposing voodoo or some new brand of black magic under the dubious title of Planetary Tantra. Certainly not, and anyone who accuses me of that program can go take an ass-chilling dip in the Styx.

The Mahavidyas and Gaian Dakinis are not a chorus line of Black Magic Babes. Definitely not. But I would be misleading you if I did not assert, straight up and out front, that there is plenty of supernatural magic in their presence. You encounter the Gaian Dakinis in the merge of love and the supernatural. I repeat, in the merge. On that rare and precious seam, magic will be generated and propagated across the entire planet. But we have yet to see what kind of magic that might actually be.

Divine Wrath

My mission is to announce Kala Tantra, to signal its immanent arrival. I know precisely the timing of its arrival, Delivery Day, January 26, 2009, but I do not know the timing of its reception. I am the first (self-)identified teacher of Kala Tantra, born in the first year of the first generation (1945 - 1975) of nine generations extending to 2215. Kala Tantra is a permanent stain, like the blue stain forensic biologists use to identify the DNA of a specific person, but it will take some time for the stain to fix.

Magic comes in various colors, including black. One of the Vajrayana Dakinis, Kurukulla, is known for sexual magic and powers of enchantment. The article on Kurukulla on vajranatha.com describes four kinds of magic: white, yellow, red and black. Far from being the tactic of the Illuminati, deranged power-freaks, and Satanists, black magic in Tibetan Buddhism "has the function of destroying evil and obstructions to the spiritual path. This is the specific function of many wrathful manifestations," including Dangerous Protectors such as Durtro Lhamo, and Female Buddhas such as the Wrathful Green Tara, one of the Mahavidyas.

Consider, if you will, the idea that the "black magic" of Planetary Tantra dispels deceit and manipulation and dissolves control because it undermines the ego-fixations that drive control, and much more as well. Magic is widely regarded as a way to wield power over others, and to influence or control them for selfish purposes. Okay, but that is only its inferior, degraded aspect. It is wrong and dangerously naive to understand magic by that singular definition. Magic is also the way to defeat tactics of self-seeking control; even to disarm, disable, and eliminate those who practice such tactics. This is a serious and responsible view of magic. It sets the standard to which I will hold anyone who comes into Planetary Tantra on my watch.

What, you may wonder, is the relationship of black magic to the wrathful, menacing aspect of the Mahavidyas and Vajrayana dakinis?

"Wrathfulness is a way of depicting the formidable energy of compassion that cannot bear the suffering of beings. There is no trace of hatred or anger in it."

This pithy statement by Matthieu Ricard appears in the foreword to Demonic Divine, a catalogue of tangkas at the Rubin Museum of Art, New York. The Rubin collection highlights wrathful dieties in Himalayan art, including Dangerous Protectors, Wrathful Buddhas and Bon Deities and some Hindu Deities. I cite Matthieu to exemplify a pallid, soft-core view that might be applied to the wrathful aspect of the Mahavidyas and Gaian Dakinis borrowed from Vajrayana. In all due respect, I have to say that his view is pitifully inadequate to the subject. In the first place, the notion that compassion cannot bear the suffering of others is absurd. What is compassion but witnessing and bearing the fact of suffering, be it your own or another's? I would rephrase Ricard's statement like this: "Wrathfulness is a display of the heroic passion that engages the suffering of others but does not tolerate the infliction of suffering." Suffering is inflicted and, indeed, propagated, through deceit and manipulation. So, wrathfulness is the mark of heroic opposition to such tactics. It signals zero tolerance for behaviors of deceit, abuse, and domination.

Now, as to the second phrase, I would agree that "there is no trace of hatred or anger in it," that is, in the wrath of these divine demonic figures. However, I would qualify that statement by adding, no trace of personal hatred or anger. In the supernatural magic of Kala Tantra, the deities in the Shakti Cluster are reeking with anger and hatred. They are pissing mad, count on that. Why so? Well, when we get a look at the plot of Gaia's lucid dream, it will become evident that her dream persona, comprised of these 18 entities, comes up looking like one hellaciously angry woman. As far as our participation in her dream-story goes, the anger and hatred that we feel transpersonally toward what is being done to the planet plays a huge role in how we field the impact of Gaia's awakening. In the approach to that impact, anger and hatred are currents of empathy with the Goddess. (Cham-dance mask, used for exorcism and repelling evil spirits. Bardan monestary, Zangskar, India. Divine Demonic, fig. 139)

I have suggested in Rite Action on this site, that transpersonal rage is a key to planetary ethics and an effective tool for countering and defeating the three-D evil that runs the planet: deceit, division, domination.

So, I would rephrase the second statement like this: "There is no personal onus or grudge in wrath, but transpersonal rage charged with anger and hatred can be turned to the aim of defeating evil." Wrathful dieties mirror to us this capacity for transpersonal rage. In Tantra, you turn everything around. To turn around your anger and hatred from personal concern and radiate them as forces of liberation is a supreme act of the Tantric warrior. That is Tantric counter-magic, rite action.

While we're on this explosive subject of magic, consider this: Now that it is widely recognized that global society is controlled by the magic of deceit, division, and manipulation—whoever may be at the source of it is another issue—why don't those who want the best outcome for humanity come up with some counter-magic to defeat that sinister game, instead of tediously exposing how the baddies mess with us, and endlessly whining about it?

Planetary Tantra comes with the Great Dare: find the counter-magic to the spell of deceit-driven behavioral programming that rules global society. But it also provides the means to meet that challenge. Can you imagine what might happen if you knew how to compel the powers of Dhumavati against, say, the Council for Foreign Relations? The terrible beauty of that face displays the true impact of Kali's revenge. It is compellingly beautiful, not because it charms with its ability to do harm—silly Satanic pretence—but because it can defeat and decimate behaviors and attitudes that harm.

Retro-Advance

Whether the Mahavidyas are pleasing to your taste or not, they are potent images from the religious imagination of the human species. As I will explain, they are relatively recent images—hence their relevance to Kala Tantra, which is a path of liberation for this moment, right now. I have chosen the "hostesses" of Planetary Tantra from the culture of Southern India after deep and careful consideration, based on my long-term connection with them. The goddesses of Dravidian India are uniquely qualified to be indicators of deep resources of indigenous wisdom and psychic potential reflecting intimate experience of the Divine Feminine.

Planetary Tantra looks back to that ancient experience but it does not go back there. It makes a retro orientation in order to advance toward something ahead, something coming from the future, immanent, urgent, and totally unprecedented.

The word "indicator" is cool and technical, perhaps off-putting. Actually, it's a term from structural anthropology, a product of male-mind cogitation, hence its lifeless timbre. But the Mahavidyas are just indicators. In their received form, they introduce a panorama of themes that reflect the hidden resources of the human psyche, powers and skills we have yet to claim and actualize. These goddess figures are mirrors of human potential. Magic mirrors, I might add. They are magic in the sense that what you see in them, when you find yourself there, become real in your experience.

Consider this tactic of retro-advance for a moment: we look back to an ancient time so that we can see what's coming at us in the immediate future. This is a hermeneutic rule of Planetary Tantra. (Hermeneutics: the art or method of interpretation, framing or guiding how something is viewed, evaluated, and understood.) Let's apply this rule to goddess studies for a moment and see where it gets us.

There is a general trend in goddess studies, an accepted approach that runs like this: If we go back to the most ancient times, all the way to the Paleolithic, we find that the people living then were deeply attuned to the Great Mother. With the advance into history, we lost that connection, patriarchy prevailed, the cults of the goddess were represssed, we lost touch with nature and its supernatural aspects, etc. Today we can restore the lost connection by recovering the goddess lore of the past. Merlin Stone,who pioneered the field, named this process goddess reclamation. Going hand in hand with this process is revalorization. Joseph Campbell used this term often, especially in his four-volume work, The Masks of God. Campbell worked along the same lines as the leading woman scholars of goddess reclamation: Merlin Stone, Riane Eisler, Barbara Walker, Marija Gimbutas, Monica Sjoo, Anne Baring and Jules Cashford, and others.

Venus of Laussel. 1.5 foot high limestone bas-relief, nude female figure, painted with red ochre. Gravettian Upper Paleolithic culture, approximately 25,000 years old. Typical image of the "largesse" of the Great Goddess, widely thought to portray fecundity, procreative power, fertility. Stay on the line for a major correction of this view.

I, also, have operated on this same track. In my recovery of the Sophianic vision of the Mysteries, for example. I have argued that Sophia is a name for the earth goddess whose presence is the living bounty of nature, the organic world, and whose luminous, animating intelligence pervades that world. A pretty good argument, perhaps, but Planetary Tantra escalates recognition of Gaia-Sophia by quite a few notches. The material you are now reading is no longer a scholarly argument based on the recovery of Mystery wisdom and Gnostic teachings, it is an autobiographical revelation of an imminent, immanent, totally unparalleled event. The power of this revelation inheres in its beauty, not in any previous authority or tradition, and the proof of the revelation is testable to anyone who responds to that beauty and dares to enter the lucid dream of the planet.

Of course, I still write as a scholar of comparative mythology, to some extent. But with Planetary Tantra I make a sharp departure from the dual method of reclamation and revalorization. My aim as the first identified teacher of Planetary Tantra is not to go back and restore a lost connection to the goddess, Gaia-Sophia or whatever you want to call her, but to point ahead to an event now in progress, a connection in the making that we as a species never experienced before now.

The connection to be made with Gaia Awakening is new and incomparable, because in ancient times humanity reached the goddess in her dreaming state, deeply asleep, but today we reach her in the course of lucid dream, the moment she awakens.

Consider having a conversation with a sleepwalker. People who walk in their sleep can talk and interact normally in many ways, yet they remain sound asleep. In the past, in ancient times when humanity lived closer to nature, people connected to the goddess in vivid and intimate ways, yes, but they related to her as if to a woman talking and acting in her sleep, unaware of her true physical state. They entered the dreaming of the goddess to commune with her and learn her ways. What is different now is that we wake into her dream with her, in co-emergent lucidity. The past connection was passive and empathetic. Even the Gnostics, communing with the Aeon Sophia through the Organic Light, were only able to monitor her thought processes in the dream-state, as a research team might monitor the dream activity of sleeping subjects. Though deeply sourced and rich in effects, ancient communion with Gaia was nothing like what's coming our way now.

The new connection with Gaia is conative, co-emergent, magical, and totally dynamic, interactive in ways that activate the deepest creative and imaginative resources of our species, even our supernatural gifts. Especially our supernatural gifts.

Study Notes

So, I do not expect anyone who reads these pages to become deeply immersed in the historical and religious studies of the Hindu goddess scene. Nor do I expect those of you who are attracted to Planetary Tantra to plunge into the goddess mythology, learn names and attributes, mantras and magical powers, and do everything but fall down on you knees and crawl to Mother Kali. I good many of you are already doing that, I would guess. Attraction to Planetary Tantra will be strongest among tribal communities, bhakti revival movements, kundalini yoga groups, trance dance scenes, Vajrayana circles and the like, because so many participants in these genres have already deeply engaged the Divine Feminine, Shaki, Devi, Kali, Female Buddhas and the Wisdom Dakinis.

As for studies, I would advise reading just one article on the Internet: Wisdom Goddesses : Mahavidyas and the Assertion of Femininity in Indian Thought. This single article offers all you need to know about the Mahavidyas. It is illustrated with images linked to a website where you can buy posters, paintings, and thangkas, if you are so inclined. Everything else you need to know about the Mahavidyas will be presented on this site, metahistory.org, and not found elsewhere. If anyone else out there is talking about co-emergence in Gaia's lucid dream, I would be keen to know who it is. Other self-identified messangers of Kala Tantra are welcome to check in with me.

With Planetary Tantra comes a totally different, shocking way to perceive and encounter the Divine Feminine—truly novel, different from anything in the past. We enter the dream of the sleeping goddess, but we do so at the moment she awakens, not from the dream, but within it. This is a precise analogy, and not merely an analogy. It is a cogent description of a global supernatural event. It may not be easy to settle into this description at first sight, but there is nothing occult or forbidding about it. Participation in Gaia's lucid dream is self-selective: if you can't get going with this analogy, sense it intuitively and slip into it, you are probably not ready, imaginatively speaking, to take the dare.

Diety Yoga

The next misconception I want to address is this:

In Planetary Tantra, we practice a way to see the luminous, living forms of the Gaian Dakinis of the Shakti Cluster.

Well, you might but I don't. I have seen Devi My Dakini twice in my life so far. First, in a lucid dream ("dakini on the roof") when I was four years old, and a second time at a bus stand on Mount Road in Madras, India, May 1965. On that occasion she was as real as any flesh-and-blood person. I also see DMD here in Andalucia in what the Buddhists call Nirmanakaya; otherwise said, in the physical epiphany of her nagual, her animal double. Avian double, to be precise.

In my practice I do not routinely see the Gaian Dakinis, I hear them. I do not practice elaborate visualizations in order to see them, and I do not expect anyone else to do so, either, unless it is their pleasure and disposition. There is no obligation to practice visualizations in Planetary Tantra. In this respect, it departs sharply from Tibetan Tantra, which requires elaborate visualizations of dakinis such as Vajravarahi, or yab-yum mandalas with deities in consort, or complex mandalas. The diety so visualized, presenting a holographic phantom, is called a yidam; in Hindu religion and Shakta rites, istadevata. Sometimes translated "tutelary deity."

Vivid and intricate visualization is the requisite of diety yoga, the basic method of Tibetan Tantra. In instruction for heat yoga on the method of Naropa, Lama Yeshe says of "evolutionary stage yoga" (generation stage), to be performed before completion stage practice:

In evolutionary stage yoga, practitioners should have stable concentration on themselves as the diety. Accomplishment of evolutionary stage yoga is a high realization, with both gross and subtle levels. With the gross level of attainment, you are able to build up a clear mental image of the entire mandala with its various dieties, celestial mansions, and surrounding environment. With the subtle stage of attainment, you have indestructible samadhi and can vividly imagine your entire mandala, in miniature, for several hours. (The Bliss of Inner Fire. Italics mine.)

This exercise reminds me of the hobby of building models such as a miniature house, a model airplane, or four-masted schooner. But instead of constructing a physical object, the model is totally imagined, pictured in minute detail. Lama Yeshe's instruction makes it clear that successful visualization in the generation stage is vivid and precise and stands by itself, like a holographic image. So you can sit there for hours and just look at the image, once you have generated it correctly. Diety yoga is the combo of visualization (generation stage) and internalized ritual that dissolves the visualization into bodily sensations (completion stage). This is the highest method of attainment at the paramount level of Vajrayana, the ninth vehicle, Atiyoga.

Who has ever done this visualization? I don't know anyone. I presume lamas and rinpoches have done so. That is their claim. Quite an exercise. I, personally, am not up for strenuous visualization like that. I don't easily picture things in a vivid, three-dimensional format. Some people will have a talent for it, and possibly even a taste for it, but even so, elaborately detailed visualizations such as the kind prescribed in generation stage Vajrayana practice cannot be easy to achieve.

I would like to correct the possible expectation that Planetary Tantra, by inviting interactivity with the Dakini and Mahavidyas of the Shakti Cluster, requires any such feat of visualization. It doesn't. You can picture the gals of the Cluster if it pleases you to do so, as you might picture the face and gestures of a beloved friend. But exertions of the kind described by Lama Yeshe are out of the question. They play no role in the practices of Kala Tantra. Yet equivalents to generation and completion are central to the practice. What are these equivalents like, and how do they work? This is where it gets really wild, folks. I get extremely excited when it comes to describing generation and completion in the Kalika style, that is, practiced by Kali devotees. You will not believe your ears when I get around to that subject. I can hardly believe myself, but I know it's true because I do it and it works.

I will have quite a lot to say about diety yoga in forthcoming writings on Kala Tantra, not all of it flattering. The origins of diety yoga and its preservation in the paternal cult of lamaism are rarely discussed in a critical manner, but some women scholars, including accomplished practitioners of Vajrayana, are beginning to do just that, and I will paddle a little way in their wake...

Diety yoga is a spiritual control system, a technique of sympathetic magic jealously preserved by the male hierarchy of Tibetan Tantra, but Kala Tantra is an open game. I do not expect anyone to practice diety yoga with the Shakti Cluster. In particular, identification with the diety you visualize, a ritual loosely associated with Tantric sex and rigorously prescribed in Atiyoga, is totally inacceptable in Kalika practice. No self-deification allowed! Get off the bus at the next stop if this is your disposition. Sign up for a Tantra workshop and sign off the Shakti Cluster tour.

Same goes for the notion of "vajra pride." This concept is associated with the deification rite of generation stage practice. It is said to create an emotive bond of commitment (samaya) with the root guru and lineage of practitioners. Kalikas totally reject vajra pride. This ploy of pseudo-filial bonding for a spiritual aim has no place in Kala Tantra. However, there are equivalents to generation and completion practices, lineage samaya and vajra pride. The Kalika equivalent to vajra pride is compassion for yourself. In some respects, Kala Tantra is a mirror of Vajrayana theory and practice. Call it a rip-off if you like. Remember that I said it here first. Lash himself says KT can be considered a rip-off of Vajrayana, if that gives you a rush or a tingle. The operative word is considered.

Elephant Exercise

So, if not by visualization, how does interactivity with the Gaian Dakinis work? By taking instruction and guidance from Gaia through the channels of the Shakti Cluster. And how is that done? It is best done clairaudiently, by inner listening, channeling through the mindstream, the ordinary flow of thought and internal talk.

Clairaudience is a time-tried method in Tibetan Tantra and many other schools of cognitive illumination. Long Chen Pa or Longchen Rabjampa (1308–1364/9) was a high siddha of the Nyingma Pa, the school of Tibetan Tantra to which Kala Tantra is most intimately related. The method he practiced and taught at an exceptional level of mastery is called in Tibetan, sems dpa' rdo rje (Sanskrit sattvavajra). This is a form of interactive transmission between the Wisdom Sphere of the Dakinis and human mentation, self-conscious thinking. In this transmission, the pure ground dimension of the non-originated mind (rigpa) converses spontaneously with itself. Scholars translate sems dpa' rdo rje as "cognitive responsiveness" (Lipman and Peterson, You Are the Eyes of the World). I call it transception; verb, to transceive.

A radio is a transceiver: it receives signals and immediately broadcasts them. Your mind is such a transceiving device. In Ch'an Buddhism, they teach that each thought has a tail and a head. The tail is where it comes from, its receiving end, the head is where it goes, its broadcasting end. Observing the head and tail of thoughts as they arise and dissolve is a Ch'an practice highly conducive to clairaudience.

I transceive signals from the Gaian Dakinis by clairaudience, hypertonicity, or heightened hearing. My training in clauraudience began in Pokhara, Nepal in March, 1966. So I have 42 years of clairaudient practice behind me. On that occasion, I had taken refuge in a small, unfinished building near lake Pewa Tal. (This building later became the tourist reception office, so I understand.) One day I walked into the nearby village and bought a schoolchild's notebook, laid out in blurry blue lines, made of the cheapest paper: The Elephant Exercise Book. And a pencil. Just one pencil. Sharpened for me by a Tibetan refugee who sold it to me. There was a squalid refugee camp near the lake. I had the notion, who knows from where, to write something in this book, to record a kind of persistent intonation that kept running in my mind like a succession of notes played on a keyboard. It was not a melody, but a cadence I heard, that seemed to gather words around it as a magnetic current might gather filings of iron. I decided to write down the words, even though I did not have a clear or coherent view of what they were.

That evening, just before the spring equinox, I huddled by candlelight in my hideaway beside the lake and began writing on the first line of the first page of The Elephant Exercise Book. What I wrote was a story called "Prost." I had no idea where that name came from. It was an odd little story about someone named Prost, "supposed to be a Pole," and a chance discovery he made while wandering one evening down by the port. The discovery of a mandala. The story emerged in the style and manner of Hermann Hesse, in the genre of fabulism. I did not stop to think or ponder or erase any word. I wrote as if from dictation, continuously, until I finished the story on the last page of the notebook, a few lines from the bottom. It was as if the entire story had pre-existed my writing it, and it was pre-determined to fill and fit the exercise book down to the last page.

You could say that I channelled this story. I did so, however, by listening to the inner cadence that played in my mind. Transception is not channeling, though it closely resembles it.

Planetary Pipe Organ

Transception is like an elephant exercise: the elephant is the mind strolling to the rhythm of its own operations. The thought-producing mind is ponderous, but its footsteps are weightless and silent. How can you hear your own thoughts when they make no sound? You hear the elephant of thought lumbering through your mind, even though its footsteps are weightless and soundless.

Trained clairaudience—I emphasize the word trained—is heightened listening to soundless thought. It is an application of the realization that the cosmic mind, source of all mentation, is just the mind you have in the first place, the one you make breakfast with. There is only one mind. The difference is, what you get out of it. But that in turn depends on how closely you can listen to it.

On my first trip to Europe, I was shown a massive pipe organ in a church in Bamberg, Germany. You know what these contraptions look like: mounting tiers of pipes with a keyboard and paddles. At Bamberg, the console of pipes is mounted high on a wall. It is terribly imposing in its massiveness and angular Baroque majesty. The faithful can imagine Archangels hovering around this device, if not emanating from it.

The Shakti Cluster is like the Bamberg organ. It is a massive console of pipes or channels formed by the nadis or subtle wind vectors in the atmosphere of the earth. It is non-local, hence, everywhere at once in the atmosphere, all around the planet, but it can also localize itself at some moments in some places.

Communication with the Dakinis comes first and foremost by inner listening on the frequences of the 18 channels of the planetary pipe organ, the Shakti Cluster. Whatever expectations or assumptions I may invite by my claims regarding interactivity with the Gaian Dakinis, be clear on this:

Clairaudience, not visualization, is the entry into interactivity. Not that you ought not visualize the Dakinis. Do it as you will. Enjoy the received images, or conjure up your own. This exercise might lead to some engaging moments, but essentially you have to hear them to be brought into instruction and aligned with the lucid dream of Gaia.

And what if you are not clairaudient? Lash has 42 years of training, which might give him a slight lead! Sure, but if you can hear your own thoughts, you are inceptively cclairaudient. We all have this faculty and now and in the near future it is going to mutate rapidly. One way to describe this mutation is to say that the entire human species is now plunged into a schizophrenic breakdown. Philip K. Dick led the way, along with Antonin Artaud, Velimir Khlebnikov, and any number of other gifted artists, musicians, and painters, you can name. Name them, make a list of twenty accomplished artists who are said to have been schizophrenic. It will be an impressive list.

Clairaudience is the butt of many jokes. Schizophrenics hear voices. ETs are transmitting to them through the fillings in their teeth, etc. This is no joke, it's the reality of the human condition at the close of Kali Yuga. It is the result of the fragmentation of the psyche by Archontic media, beginning with written scripts, and the consequence of desacralization—that is, distancing from nature to such an extent that we can no longer source the inner mentation that nature produces in our minds, in its true source outside us. One of the great lessons of Gnostic noetics, if not the greatest, is this:

Not all that happens in the individual human mind originates there.

Mind is a radio, with many channels broadcasting at once. The 18 channels of the Shakti Cluster present a unique broadcast spectrum. Kala Tantra offers a technique for learning how to tune and transceive these channels. The full course in this technique will be given on this site, one lesson at a time, after January 26, 2009.

Initialization

So, to conclude with some remarks to anticipate misconceptions about Planetary Tantra, I'll say this:

The biggest misconception may be about how the announcement of Planetary Tantra will be received. What expectations are being invited, or excited, by this announcement?

Well, since I am the one making the announcement, I can tell you frankly what my expectation is: I don't have one, either way. I don't expect there to be no response to Delivery Day, and I don't expect there to be a sudden explosion of cultic fascination with Planetary Tantra, either. I don't know what to expect. I am rigorously engaged in delivery on an exact timetable. I know the timing of delivery, when the five ritual components for interactivity with Gaia go on line simultaneously. I don't know the timing of reception, how and when these components will be discovered and applied, or even if they will be. And it doesn't matter to me in the least. One condition that qualifies me for the mission of announcing Planetary Tantra is total detachment from the result. I'm just having a great time doing it.

In closing, I will add this comment on the future prospects of Planetary Tantra. Hear my litany again: I am the first identified teacher of the first generation of the nine generations of the closing phase of Kali Yuga, and I was born in the first year of the first generation, 1945. Those born in the first year of the second generation, 1975-2005, will be 34 years old in 2009. The first-born of the third generation, 2005 - 2035, are now just three years old. Kala Tantra is for the nine generations, the whole nine yards. The mere announcement of it comes from first-generation Kalikas like myself.

Once the announcement gets out to the world, we'll see who's receptive in the second generation, the third, and so forth. There may be no widespread acceptance and application of Planetary Tantra until the heyday of the third generation, around 2030. I am pretty certain that the role of first-generation diehards like myself is merely to initialize Planetary Tantra for generations to come. What it will become in the experience of those generations is something wild, outrageous, and almost totally unimaginable at this moment in time.

The operations of Kala Tantra are so outrageous, and can be so overpowering, that they are better managed by two people in tandem than by one alone. Hence consort yoga, rather than diety yoga, is the advised norm for this practice. (The Indian mahasiddha Ghantapada and his consort. 19th Century painted tangka. Demonic Divine, p 211)

The Mahanirvana Tantra repeatedly and emphatically states that the rites of the devotees of Adya Kali are the only rites that will work in the last phase of Kali Yuga. Repeat, the only rites that will be effective in that specific timeframe. So, Kala Tantra is not the ultimate truth of the ages, or the only true path of spiritual practice for all time, but it is the only way that will work at this time, right now, in this moment of history. All other practices will become absurd, obsolete, and ineffective. If they are not so already.

This view of the exclusive and exceptional nature of Kala Tantra does not originate from me, John Lash, but it is the view I hold. I share the view stated in The Mahanirvana Tantra that only Kalika practices will lead to liberation now and in the near future. Therefore I am convinced that I announce a paramount opportunity in this agenda of Planetary Tantra, not because it is superior to all other paths, but because it is the most timely message of liberation for the world today. Kalika practice suits the current state of human insanity to a T.

You might ask, What is it about Kala Tantra that makes it effective when all other spiritual practices and teachings are no longer so? I am delighted to say that the answer is obliteratingly simple. One line in The Mahanirvana Tantra is all it takes to reveal the glorious open secret of Planetary Tantra. One single line, VII, 89:

The religious practices of the devotees of Adya Kali are a pleasure to perform.

Kalika practice works depending on the pleasure that goes into performing it. I emphasize, the pleasure that goes into it, not the pleasure you take from it. In normal forms of worship and religious practice, people exert themselves by attending church or doing strenuous yoga exercises, long sessions of meditation, and so forth—things they may not necessarily like to do, so that they come away with a resultant feeling. To worship means to "make worthy." People who worship in church come away feeling worthy, imbued with value. They take pleasure from their religious practices, but this is not the way of Kala Tantra.

In the closing days of Kali Yuga, pleasure becomes the supreme magical and moral catalyst of experience. Pleasure is the very taste of liberation, but in this case it is the taste that produces the meal. Planetary Tantra is mystical hedonism raised to the 9th degree of spontaneity, the unity of desire and emptiness, the sweet simmering merge of love and the supernatural, blissful wisdom on tap 7/24, Diamond Sky Dakinis on the roof of your mind. You can expect that Kala Tantra feels fantastically good to learn and practice. That expectation is not inappropriate, and it will not be disappointed.

jll: 5 December 2008 Andalucia