Thoughts On Kalachakra Tantra

In the book of instructions we speak of the 14 songs as movements of one symphony, and the pillars that hold up the “Dome of Wisdom” that rest upon them.  One of the unique aspects of Kalachakra that makes it such a dynamic form of prayer is the visualization of, and inside the Temple.  When looking at the ‘traditional mandalas’ on the CD’s, realize that what you are looking at is the top of a Temple, as if you were out in space looking down at it.  In advanced practice, the practitioner spends a great deal of time visualizing and memorizing the interiors of the temple, the colors, forms, gods and goddesses that frequent the different rooms and levels.  Though there are those that insist that all this must be ‘just so’ and never changed, the same as many people feel about their particular scriptures in their different religions. However, my own temple looks suspiciously like a cross between a floating Kalachakra Temple and the Starship Enterprise, and I assure you my visualizations are just as ‘just so’ as any practitioner; for that is really the purpose of these exercises…to strengthen the power of your visualization, the operative word being “your.”


The beginning practice is to first realize that you are in a room with walls (you are contained).  There are directions N, S, E, W…up and down.  So as you make the chants for Peace, you are aware of all that is around you, your sound is echoing off all the walls, and you are the Center.  This feeling of being “contained” is the first fledging awareness of your “aura.”  Once you become aware of walls and directions, then you can ‘morph’ the room into any shape you wish…I use the Sphere. 

This aura is crucial for proper prayer and visualization.  We live in a sea of thought forms.  Everything you see around you was once a thought, someone saw it in their head, and decided to make it, grow it, or say it.  We live in a society the is constantly trying to grasp your “attention” so it can put it’s thought forms in your head…so you will think what it wants you to think.  People go to Universities, spend thousands of dollars, spend years of time on how to grab your attention (called marketing) (called sorcery in older days).  And then there are emotions attached to these thoughts.  This is all around us all the time, 24/7, these clouds of energy…pushing pulling, trying to convince, trying to reason, trying to scare…whatever works…


YOU MUST HAVE A WAY TO SHUT ALL THIS OUT

Your aura (sphere) is what shuts out all the psychic noise, and allows you a space of silence within it.  In the silence…new wisdoms can be downloaded… creation can take place…YOUR creations.
(Please note…we are not creating a dualistic philosophy here…us against them…us on the inside…them on the outside.  This is a necessary first step to create silence.  It is like saying “ok, this is me and that is you outside my aura.  You worry about market collapse and nuclear bombs and all kinds of calamities.  But this is me here…separate from that.  No matter what goes on in the World…I have a right to sanity and peace of mind.”

 So to build your Aura is to claim your right…and carve out your own Space in the world…all the sea of thoughts of society bounce off it, and move around it…they just pass you by.  The idea and experience of “separation”…and the “us against them” philosophy disappears in the latter stages when you begin to “expand” your aura out.  In other words, society no longer pushes you into a corner…now you begin to push back to influence and change it, and this is when boundaries dissolve.  So for now, this is just a temporary mental construct to get us started.)


The 14 Rooms and the Dome of Wisdom

In the Western religions we have the “good against the bad”, our spiritual sides fighting off the devil.  Many westerners who became interested in the eastern practices unfortunately carried this subconscious story into their eastern practices.  So now we have the “ego” as devil, and go through all kinds of heroic battles to subdue the ego.  This is all unnecessary and very unskillful.  Tantra is a more thorough and gentler way.  You don’t have to bang up against the ego, an endless battle; rather the ego gladly dissolves itself by wisdom.  The ego’s job is to be on top of everything, in control of everything, mostly for protection.  It is a very young creation and had its birth when there were some very nasty big animals hunting us.  In other words, its very roots came out of FEAR.

The wisdom that dissolves the Ego is the realization that it can’t be on top of everything…it can’t be in charge of everything…it’s impossible.  So it sees that its function is useless, and if we can be in a safe place and feel no threats for a while, it dissolves itself.  It sees that Space, in which all phenomena happens, has its own perfect intelligence and justice, so there is no need for the ego, and it retires from an unbelievably hard job.  But the wisdom is hard won.  It cannot just be passed down by words.  Words have to be compared to ones own experience and feelings and pondered upon.  The pressure or heat that this generates in our psyche opens up new realizations and new wisdoms…unique to OURSELVES.  We gain new powers and precognizant knowledge to deal with the new scary monsters still hunting us down.  Our natural human abilities come to fruition; I’m speaking of higher skills, beyond those learned in our evolution just for purposes of survival.   

The best way to get the most from this ritual is to listen to the songs and become familiar with the words…then your own personal experiences of what has been said will kick in.  Once you are familiar with the words, sit down and listen to it as if it were a meditation class.  Prepare yourself, and then visualize walking around this huge temple with these 14 rooms.  Enter each room and listen to the song, then go to the next room until you have circumnavigated the whole Temple.  Fill the rooms with your own artifacts, your own colors and decorations, symbols of your own realizations. 

When you have done this a few times, you will notice how the wisdoms from one scripture move into the next, each song building upon the previous.  Then allow time for Silence at the end.  In this silence, your own unique wisdoms will come alive and form the Dome that covers and surrounds all.  Eventually this will become a very real space that you can come to anytime to gather more and more information. 


Is it Real?

It seems the world has always had problems with some powerful outside authority giving its thumbs up or down on what is to be believed to be real and valuable, and what is not.  In previous generations that authority was the Church.  Today it is “science.”  Many people who wish to understand the power of “faith” are shouted down by today’s Inquisitionist of “ideas.”  The idea that creative visualization and “faith” have any real world “scientific” worth is a hotly debated subject today.  So to clear the decks before we start the ritual I will include this excerpt from a conversation between Albert Einstein and Werner Heisenberg quoted from The Technology Review 42:229, 1940……………
     “The relationship of scientific observation and world view was the subject of an interchange between two of the century’s eminent scientist, Albert Einstein and Werner Heisenberg.  Heisenberg relates how he as a young scientist initially met Einstein.  While discussing how scientific endeavor proceeds and how scientists go about their work, Einstein discounted Heisenberg’s view, which expressed the traditional belief that scientist observe, measure, and then form conclusions dispassionately from the data thus collected.  Einstein contended that the reverse is true, that the scientist begins with a belief or model, and that this preconceived view determines to a major extent what is observed.”

In other words, the whole World is about Faith, even science.  One merely need apply it in a steady consistent way.