Journeys in the Kali Yuga by Aki Cederberg

Author:Aki Cederberg
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Spirituality/Memoir
Publisher: Inner Traditions/Bear & Company
Published: 2017-10-29T04:00:00+00:00

Truly, it is by the grace of God

That the knowledge of Unity arises within.

Then a man is released at last

from the great fear of life and death.

AVADHUT GITA, CHAPTER 1, VERSE 1

Back in Paris, we sat around the altar with Surendra Puri for sat-sang. We talked about many things, and one area was the ever-alluring Tantra. Tantra, the union of Shiva and Shakti, is viewed with much suspicion and fear in modern India. Equally dubious in the West, it has manifested as a series of silly New Age “sensual and spiritual” erotic exercises. Someone exemplified this recently by asking me about my story: “Is there tantric sex stuff in there?”

In response to the recent upheavals in the Juna Akhara involving some Naga Babas leaving the sadhu life to become householders and marry, Surendra Puri had a curious comment: “The love is the same, but the thought is different.” His words rang in my head long after that, and I pondered what he meant.

There might not be a word more frivolously used than love. The word love has become banal and devaluated, a marketplace manipulative commodity used as an easy emotional trigger. An entire culture exists around this mushy, adolescent, and juvenile kind of love. Rather than something ever expansive and connecting, this love is often rooted in fear, in a strange kind of desperation. And yet, despite all of these things, love is still one of the quintessential human qualities that marks us as beings reaching for something beyond ourselves.

I reread my story about India and thought about how much love played a part in it. I, too, have experienced love gained and love lost. I, too, have witnessed the joy of love coming into being and the agony of love dying. But is there another kind of love, a deeper kind of love, a love that remains?

Union is the essence of life and is the creative force of the universe. This union is manifested in human terms as love. Possibly the highest kind of love is that between two souls that see each other as reflections of one another, as part of the same spirit. In this light, one’s object of love becomes one’s teacher, the highest embodiment of the divine. Worship takes form as seva (service). In the case of lovers, sex becomes a sacrament in emulation of Shiva and Shakti. But it is not an easy path. One must become as Rama, fighting great wars and traveling to the world’s end for his wife and lover, pure devotion as the focus of life.

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