I. VAMA MARGA Foundations Of The Left-Hand Path - staticfly.net

of the Vama Marga that we take exception to.
According to the most commonly taught theory of moksha, the last
liberation from the proposed cycle of suffering, illusion and repeated
reincarnation can only be achieved by attaining Oneness with the Absolute
Mind, or godhead. In other words, the majority of Eastern left-hand path
initiates seek to reach that state of non-being known as nirvana, which
literally means "the candle is blown out" – the cessation of existence as a
self, the willed dissolution of mind in the blinding white light of Brahman,
the ultimate, impersonal principle said to exist beyond the screen of this
world of appearances. A commonly used metaphor for this goal is the idea of
the individual psyche as a drop of water being absorbed into the greater
ocean from which it originally emerged.
Some Westerners have oversimplified this concept, and confused this
absolute suprasensual state with Nature and/or God, familiar concepts in the
West. In fact, Brahman is neither – it transcends any such categorizable
frame of reference, and the entirety of the natural cosmos and any form of
deity that humans might imagine are considered to be merely transitory
mirages in comparison to this far greater reality of realities. Theoretically, the
left-hand path or right-hand path initiate who has accomplished this form of
liberation in a lifetime, no longer exists, although the physical body through
which this goal was accomplished still breathes, walks, eats, excretes, and
carries out the functions of animal existence. The state of the Tantrika who
has achieved union with Brahman has often been compared to an empty
cocoon from which the butterfly has flown, a vacant shell.
Although many left-hand path teachers will tell you that the above
described selfless goal is the highest summit of initiation that can be reached
through the sinister current, we reject this conclusion. Thus far, we have
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attempted to carefully present the authentic Vama Marga as it actually exists
as a traditional teaching. At this point, however, we deviate from the most
widely accepted form. The search for nirvana, from our point of view, is a
kind of spiritualized nihilism, a suicide of core consciousness grounded in an
unfortunate Eastern tendency towards world hatred thats antidote, in our
opinion, can be found in the joyful magic of the left-hand path.
The goal we seek to reach through the left-hand path is not dissolution of the
self into a Oneness greater than ourselves. Rather, we aim to strengthen the
most essential part of the self – alternately referred to as the psyche, the
daemon, or the soul – into a god-like intelligence that remains deliberately
separate from that impersonal Oneness.
It seems absurd to us to perform the rites of sexual individuation and
self-deification inherent in the left-hand path, freeing one's self from illusion
thereby, only to dissolve the now separated and self-deified consciousness at
the end of one's journey. Therefore, we walk the left-hand path towards the
infinite perpetuation of the psyche. At first, this model of initiation may come
as a relief to some, who might imagine that this means that they are now can
comfortably continue forever as they currently exist, intact and unchanged.
However, a sharp differentiation must be made here between the daemonic
psyche we seek to sustain into an enduring divinized force, and the human
personality, that temporary mask of identity formed by largely social factors,
with its likes and dislikes, its habits and its neuroses.
That relatively shallow temporal persona does increasingly dissolve
as left-hand path initiation proceeds to work its solve et coagula upon the
adept. In fact, the personality is often the most fatal enemy of the initiate who
seeks to liberate consciousness, as it rather desperately clings to familiar
boundaries. Perhaps the most perilous danger of left-hand path initiation is
the frequently observed grasping to maintain the personality, even as
consciousness expands beyond all known limits.
So the sinister liberation we are speaking of can never be a