The Three Effective Methods

Tantra Illuminated with Dr. Christopher Wallace is a journey through the depths of the human experience, as viewed through the lens of the tradition called non-dual Shaiva Tantra. This multi-format podcast delves into the fascinating world of classical tantra and its intersections with philosophy, neuroscience, psychology, human development, and the broader world of spirituality.

is an extemporaneous exploration of the teaching on the three effective methods found in non-dual Shaiva Tantra. This is a central teaching in the tradition. Here, the phrase effective method translates the Sanskrit term upaya, which is also rendered as skillful means. And the doctrine of Upaya, which might be summarized as do what works, is found in all branches of Tantra. But in non-dual Shaiva Tantra,

the teaching becomes more specific. Abhinava Gupta, the great master of this tradition, originated this teaching on the three effective methods, the three upayas. And he named these three the divine method, or shambhava upaya, the empowered method, or shakta upaya, and the embodied method, also known as the individual method, anava upaya. So I'm going to explore these three upayas.

And the reason this teaching is so important is because this is a way of outlining how spiritual practice works, and that it can work in these three different ways. So, interestingly, the teaching is meant to be exhaustive, meaning to say all forms of spiritual practice that work fall into one of these three categories. And even though the three categories are specific to Shaiva Tantra, they can be applied to any form of spiritual practice in the world. And you'll see why as we...

progress through these methods. First off, I'll clarify that Abhinava Gupta does acknowledge that realization of one's true nature or the true nature of reality, can occur spontaneously without any method at all. So in his great work, The Essence of Tantra, Abhinavagupta writes this, The self is an embodiment of the light of consciousness. It is free and independent divinity made manifest.

as an expression of the vigorous joy of the divine play of its freedom the one conceals its own nature and also certainly reveals its innate fullness once again

That may occur spontaneously or through a process. And if through a process, it occurs in three modes. So this is how he introduces his discussion of the three upayas, the three effective methods. And if we were to greatly oversimplify these three, we could say that they are the methods of body, mind, and spirit. Or rather, the other way around, the methods of spirit.

mind and body for this is the order that abhinava gupta gives them in and again they are called the divine method the empowered method and the embodied So if we're using this simplified classification of spirit, mind, and body, the divine method is that of spirit. The empowered method is that of mind. And the embodied method, well, that's obvious. But let's get into the detail, the nuance here, a little bit more.

Abhinavagupta says that each of these effective methods corresponds to one or more of the predominant shaktis, the predominant potencies of... embodied consciousness where the divine method that of spirit emphasizes the power of will and the power of spontaneous freedom, svatantriya-sakti. Whereas the empowered method, that of mind, emphasizes jnana-sakti, the power of insight. And the embodied method emphasizes the power of action, kriya shakti. And let me try to describe each of these in turn.

Abhinavagupta teaches that some rare individuals may be able to realize their true nature using only the first method, that of spirit. But the great majority of practitioners will need to resort to the second and third methods as well. You'll understand why as I go on. So this... divine method is difficult to explain precisely because it's non-conceptual. Indeed, we could say that any practice which is non-conceptual

is an example of this divine method. And these sorts of practices are much favored in certain kinds of Zen Buddhism. which is famous for its koans. For truly speaking, koans are not supposed to be riddles that you think about. They are meant to stop the mind. They're meant to be so mysterious that the mind simply stops. One such koan is, what was your original face before you were born?

But in the Shaiva Tantric version of the divine method, such questions are not generally utilized. Rather, the practice focuses on... cultivating non-conceptual direct awareness of the nature of experience moment to moment. And this is why its predominant shaktis are the power of will and the power of spontaneous freedom. You never know what consciousness is going to produce next. You don't know what you're going to think next.

or experience, or feel. You can try to predict, but if you keep track of... the ratio between your predictions and what actually happens, you'll see that your predictive power is really no better than chance. So everything arises very spontaneously. as a matter of direct experience. And all arisings are direct expressions of the power of freedom that is inherent within consciousness. sometimes known as the divine play of consciousness. However, this is not a random, meaningless play. In fact,

there's an element of what we could call divine will. That is to say, consciousness wants to experience itself in all the ways that it does. It wants to experience the full range of possibilities available to it. So therefore, we can also say that everything that arises is an expression of will. Now, here the phrase divine will is, of course, problematic if you've grown up in a dualistic or monotheistic culture. This phrase does not in any way imply

that there is some superhuman being on high who wants things to happen on Earth the way that they do. That is not our teaching at all. Rather, the term will is used here in a sense quite similar to that of Schopenhauer in his famous book of philosophy, The World as Will and Representation. consciousness wants to experience itself in all the ways that it does, but this desire, this will, is not a premeditated one. That is to say, consciousness...

doesn't know the outcome of opening the door to this possibly infinite range of possibilities. And this is why the tantric scholar Alexis Sanderson translates icca-sakti as precognitive urge. So, in other words, he's arguing that the term refers to an urge within consciousness. to experience the full range of possibilities available to it, and that that urge is pre-cognitive, meaning to say it's not premeditated, there's no...

mental image of what will be experienced and then a choice to indeed experience it. There are no mental images at all. This urge arises from consciousness in its pure state. And consciousness in its pure state is not a mind. And if you don't really understand that bit of philosophy, never mind. The important thing here is that Consciousness as the fundamental power of reality possesses an innate urge towards self-expression and experience.

It wants to experience itself in every possible form. And every possible form is an expression of it. But those forms are not known. prior to the experiencing of them. So, this unfolding must take place for consciousness to, as it were, know itself in all its...

fullness in all its infinite majesty. Okay, so what this means in practical terms is that everything that arises is, at least in the initial moment of its arising, a completely pure expression of the absolute, of divine consciousness. Every thought, every movement, every feeling... every mood, every sensual experience, all of it. However, the purity of the expression is obscured.

by our mental constructs, by all the interpretations that we project onto experience almost as soon as it's arisen. However, for some people, at least, For meditators, mostly, there is this window of opportunity, a short time delay between the initial arising of a new experience and...

the mind's projection of mental content onto that experience. Now, for non-meditators, that gap can literally be a split second. But with some meditation... practice the gap gets a little bit longer and that forms a golden opportunity to simply be with what is prior to your interpretation of it, opinion about it, preference, and so on. So if we can enter into this window of opportunity, if we can truly...

mind the gap, as it were. Then we begin to see and feel and experience and know that everything that arises is indeed a direct expression of the absolute. Every thought, every feeling, every mood, every phenomenon, every touch, every smell.

And so on. So this practice is sometimes called catching hold of the first moment of perception. Or it may be called paying attention to the arising of each new state. It's a very simple practice, but it's also very subtle. So basically, throughout your day... You are on the lookout for any new arising, a shift in mood or an inspiration coming along or a random thought.

or a feeling. Now, if the feeling that arises seems to you to have been caused by some preceding phenomenon, then that is already the projection of mental content onto that experience. So in this practice, we are learning how to be with experience. in and of itself without any projection of mental content. So the way this beautiful practice is phrased by the meditation teacher Adyashanti is as follows.

And Adya recommends... simply asking that question over and over again, and letting the answer be purely experiential, not mental. So this is a classic example of a practice in the divine method, the Shambhava Upaya, even though the person who gives the practice...

doesn't know this tantric classification. And that is actually part of the point here, that people who successfully penetrate to direct experience of the nature of reality through their spiritual practice, intuitively understand these three methods.

Now this practice that I've outlined, called variously catching hold of the first moment of perception, or paying attention to the arising of each new state, or contemplating what is the quality of this moment before i have a thought about it this is just one of countless possible practices within the divine method the method of spirit, as we're calling it here. And other examples are also about bringing attention to some aspect of experience.

without projection of mental content or indeed any form of conceptualization. And we find many such examples in the great tantric scripture called the Vijnana Bhairava Tantra where for example we have practices such as one in which you are advised to find a beautifully formed vessel such as a bowl, and simply gaze at the space within the bowl, letting your mind become absorbed in that space.

Or another example would be simply gazing at a blank wall, and this is a method much used in Zen as well. Another example is the practice called And another example is contemplating the mysterious nature of one's own body. For even if you've... acquired a lot of mental content, that is, ideas about the body, in direct experience it remains fundamentally mysterious.

And then we have the practice of focusing on the space between the thoughts. That is to say, if you watch the stream of consciousness, as it's called, the mental activity, you'll notice that when one train of thought comes to an end, and before the next train of thought begins, there is a little space. And the more you pay attention to these spaces, the longer they can become and the more beautiful they can become too.

These simple spaces between thought become suffused with quiet presence, contentment, peace, even blissfulness. So that's quite a famous practice of the Vijnana Bhairava Tantra, attending to the space between the thoughts. Then we have practices where you take advantage of being surprised. So, for example, observing a magic trick that you've never seen before that totally surprises you. The mind just stops. There's this

open space suffused with a sense of wonder. And also more pedestrian examples. For example, right after you sneeze, there is a moment or several moments where the mind is absolutely clear. And you can dive into that space and appreciate it, savor it, instead of ignoring it, as most people do. So these are just some of the practices in the VBT that fall into the classification of the divine method.

Because, again, the most salient feature of this method is that it is non-conceptual. You are not utilizing the mind to do something, and you are not utilizing the body. to do something, which is not at all to say that the body is not involved. It's just not being leveraged in some particular way that can be conceptualized. So, for example, in the VBT, there's a practice of contemplating space in each body part, and a related practice of contemplating space in each body.

of the bodily tissues. And so, this is a kind of somatic meditation. The body is very much involved, but it is still a non-conceptual meditation. The body is not being utilized to accomplish some goal. And therefore, this is still an example of the divine method. The method of spirit.

in our threefold classification. However, the nature of this method is such that most of its practices either work immediately for someone or don't work at all. And if the latter is the case, you leave the practice aside and then come back to it later, whether that's a week later, or a month later, or a year later. Because by the nature of non-conceptual practice, it'll either instantly click, or almost instantly, or it's not ready to click yet.

And by the way, that's why many of the practices of the divine method are what I call micro-meditations. However, if this were the only form of practice available to us, It can easily become frustrating when it's not clicking. And also, tantric teaching emphasizes that spiritual practice should involve our whole being. So we need to involve the mind as well. It's just a different form of practice when we're involving the mind. And we need to involve the breath, the imagination.

And so on. And so that's why there are these other methods. So if we turn now to the second method, the Shakta Upaya, or empowered method, that's the one that... primarily involves the mind. So here the relevant potency of consciousness is the power of insight, jnana shakti. So, the way Abhinavagupta explains this second method is quite interesting, because he rightly says that you cannot think your way to enlightenment. You cannot just...

contemplate spiritual teachings over and over until suddenly you're enlightened. That's not the way it works. In fact, this state that people call enlightenment. but is more correctly called abiding awakeness or abiding awake awareness. It cannot be caused by anything. In fact, when you shift into this state, you discover... miraculously, that it's always been here. It's always been your fundamental nature. It was just somehow not recognized. So, therefore, the way this method works...

is a little more subtle. Abhinava Gupta says that you have internalized, we all have internalized thought forms, conceptualizations that are in many different ways. opposed to the nature of reality, misaligned we might say. with the nature of reality. And yet we believe our thoughts, we believe our opinions and our conceptualizations. And so that belief constitutes a barrier on the path, an impediment.

And so Abhinavagupta teaches that contemplating sublime spiritual teachings is simply a way to turn... the mind to our advantage, to turn the power of mentation to our advantage. How? Because the spiritual teachings that we meditate on and contemplate have the power to dislodge and ultimately dissolve those

conceptualizations that were not aligned with the nature of reality. And once that has happened, then you don't need the spiritual teachings. So, the metaphor that's often used in the tantric tradition is this. You need a thorn to pluck out another thorn. And once that's done, you throw both thorns away. So the image here is you've got a thorn stuck in your foot.

And what's the best way to get that thorn out? Well, another thorn. This, of course, is in the days before tweezers. So that is a perfect metaphor in a way, because... The thorns are alike, but one can be used to pluck out the other, and then, of course, you cast both away. You have no need of them. So, in exactly the same way, Abhinava says, The spiritual teachings are there in order to dislodge, dissolve, and utterly remove those

conceptualizations which are not in alignment with the nature of reality. And when enough of them have been so removed, then there is no more impediment to direct realization.

So, I'll read a little bit of his exact words on this matter. Again, from his masterpiece, The Essence of Tantra. which I've already covered extensively on the podcast. Abhinava says, when a person chooses to gradually refine and purify his understanding of reality in order to facilitate an entry into an experiential realization of his true nature. then he employs a process of contemplation that presupposes sound discernment, access to an authentic tradition, and instruction.

by a teacher of reality. To explain due solely to the power of conceptualization human beings imagine themselves bound And this egoic conception is the cause of the repeated bondage that is the cycle of suffering. Thus, when a thought form that opposes... that egoic conception has arisen and become stabilized, it crushes the thought form that is the cause of the cycle of suffering, and thereby indirectly causes liberation.

An example of such a liberating thought form is as follows. The one and only ultimate reality is pure unbounded awareness. that is the ground upon which all things are established that is the life force of the universe by that the universe lives and breathes and that alone am I. Thus, what I am is one with everything, and yet transcends everything. So that's the passage from the Tantrasara. And just to be clear, when we see a phrase like a liberating thought form,

That is a figure of speech, as Abhinavagupta makes perfectly clear in the same chapter of the Tantrasara from which I was just reading. That is to say, the... shuddha vikalpa or liberating thought form is not directly liberating it simply serves to remove and dissolve Those conceptualizations that are preventing you from seeing and being reality as it is. So in summary...

This second method, the empowered method, the method of mind, involves the contemplation of sublime spiritual teachings in a special kind of a way. Not just thinking about them, thinking could indeed be the initial phase of a process of contemplation, but then going beyond thinking and feeling into... That which these sublime teachings are pointing towards, which is also the non-conceptual state from which the teaching arose in the first place. So that's...

very interesting. This is only true in the case of spiritual teachings. That from which they arose is also that to which they point. So if you just think about the spiritual teaching mentally, intellectually, you're not actually looking where it points. Though, again, for most people, thinking about it is a perfectly valid initial stage.

And then you go beyond the thinking to experientially feeling into where that sublime teaching is pointing. And you could do this by posing the question, what non-conceptual state or mode of consciousness would give rise to this teaching? That is to say, what kind of experience of reality would have caused the awakened being who articulated this teaching to articulate it?

In other words, you can apply this empowered method not only to the scriptural teachings of non-dual Shaiva Tantra, but to the words of any awakened being. And notice how different this is. For example, we can take the case of Christianity, right? What almost zero teachers of Christianity preachers and pastors and priests, what almost none of them are saying is, contemplate the state of consciousness which might have caused Jesus to say the things he did.

and then look for that state within yourself, because you have access to the same modes of awareness that Jesus did. So, of course, this is... you know, speculative, at least at first. That is to say, we're speculating on what kind of experience of reality would have caused Jesus or Abhinavagupta or whoever... to speak the way he did. Or, you know, let's take a female example as well, Anandamai Ma, or Saint Teresa of Avila.

or any number of other great women mystics, doesn't matter. The point is, the awakened being, who, by the way, is in fact beyond gender, is expressing They're always expressing their state imperfectly when they're using words, but nonetheless the words arise from their liberated state. And therefore... it could be a very powerful practice and has been for me to simply contemplate and open towards what kind of experience of reality

would have caused them or might have caused them to say this. And again, as you experientially feel into that, rather than just think about it, that's when it becomes a powerful practice. And in the Vijnana Bhairava Tantra, we again have many examples of this method, the empowered method. There are several dozen verses which give

contemplations that we are to work with in this way. We are to experientially look where they're pointing or feel into where they might have arisen from, which again is the same thing. And it can happen, I would even say it inevitably does happen, that sooner or later you go beyond speculation and you actually drop into.

the state of consciousness from which these sublime teachings arose and that may only be for a moment and yet it's a profoundly significant moment And it's also a startling moment, because when you actually experience the state of being from which the teachings arose, it isn't... at all like the mind projected it would be on the basis of having read those teachings. And so that's a wonderful surprise. And there's a paradox here.

Because a well-formed teaching does accurately point towards this inexplicable, non-conceptual state of non-dual awareness, and yet the teaching fails to capture it. So we get to be surprised when we experience it for ourselves. It's a wondrous surprise. Okay, so the empowered method is primarily one of contemplation. as a vehicle to that which cannot be directly known by the mind. And so this method is part of all contemplative...

spiritual traditions. Just a matter of whether a given tradition emphasizes it more or less.

And now we come to the third of the three methods, the anava upaya, or embodied method. And this is what Abhinavagupta has to say about it. Again from his work, The Essence of Tantra. When one's understanding requires another method for the sake of its refinement and perfection, then... relying on those supports that have a specifically defined and limited nature, such as the imagination, the vital energy, or prana shakti, the body.

ritual vessels, and so on. By these aspects of the embodied method, one enters fully into one's individuated expression of divinity, thereby causing realization of one's true nature to manifest. So in that quote, it might seem that there are a number of quite distinct methods mentioned. Those that use the imagination, that use the breath and the vital energy that underlies it.

those that use the body, and those that use ritual implements. But actually, in this tradition, all of those are part of a single method, the method in which the power of action is predominant. So all of the tools just mentioned involve specific actions, and the locus of those actions

is the physical body, or the energy body, or both. So, in fact, the third of the three methods subsumes everything that we mean when we use the term yoga, practices of visualization, of pranayama, of bodily postures, and so on. So in other words, nearly all practices that we might term yogic practices belong to this third method. The only aspect of it which might be confusing for you...

is that this method does also include the use of the imagination. And that might be confusing because You learned previously that the empowered method relates to the mind, and you probably consider the imagination part of the mind, and so what is it doing here? in the embodied method. Well, again, to understand these methods, we need to always keep in mind the specific potencies of consciousness to which they are linked.

Potencies being a translation for Shakti, right? So here in the embodied method, the governing Shakti is Kriya Shakti. And when we're utilizing the imagination... in yogic practice, it's very active. We utilize the imagination, for example, to visualize the light body of the deity and then assimilate it to our physical body. We utilize the imagination to trace the paths of various subtle channels or nadis, and we perform yogic practices.

in which we visualize light traveling along those nadis, vivifying them and purifying them, and these practices can have real-world effects. And that's something that... Westerners don't quite understand very easily, namely that the repeated, focused application of imagination can have a tangible, measurable... real-world effect? Well, some people have become aware in recent years that practices such as visualization

can actually have a measurable effect on, for example, healing. There have been studies where when people repeatedly and in a focused manner visualize their white blood cells being extremely successful in fighting off an infection or in killing cancer cells, that that can actually have a statistically significant effect on their rate of healing and their degree of healing.

But despite knowing this, many people still seem confused about the role of imagination. They say, was that real or did I just imagine it? But this tradition and some other spiritual traditions have long understood that the repeated focused application of imagination, in a way prescribed by awakened masters, can in fact be a path to the real. So there are these yogic practices, especially in this tradition, where you visualize something happening over and over again

until it happens and you feel the palpable effects and results. But this should not be confused with the Western New Age doctrine of manifestation. We're not talking about imagining something happening in your life, like winning the lottery or something. In this tradition, it's understood that imagination has power. within you, within your body and your subtle body. The imagination can be a tool by which you redesign your inner landscape, as it were.

And that just makes sense. Imagination is part of your body-mind, and so it can affect your body-mind. And it's not part of the world of things, stuff. So it doesn't affect that world, at least not to any significant degree. And of course here somebody objects, but we owe so much. to those great visionaries who dreamed and imagined a better world and then took action to make it so. Yes, of course that's true. There's a difference between that use of imagination.

imagining what could be and then acting to make it so, and the magical thinking involved with the manifestation doctrine, where if I just visualize winning the lottery or getting...

the job or whatever over and over again, I can magically make it occur. It's very important that you see the difference between those two things. So imagination in and of itself... can impact in a significant way our embodied experience, including our emotions and our moods, but doesn't magically impact anything in... And even if you're not convinced by my argument in that regard, it doesn't matter, because the most important thing is that...

the empowered method and the embodied method are different in terms of how one engages the practice. In the empowered method, which remember was contemplative, contemplating spiritual teachings or sublime verbal transmissions from great spiritual masters. And in that method, you're in a receptive mode. You are feeling into that to which the teaching points or that from which it arose, which again is the same thing. But you're doing it in a very receptive way.

Whereas in the embodied method, you are very active. You are directing attention. You are disciplining imagination to focus on these archetypal images. that we call deities and you are directing the breath and you are manipulating ritual implements and offerings if you're doing puja for example

So it's a different mode. It's an active mode. And now we can see that the three methods taken together do in fact entail all of our human experience. So in ritual, we are engaging with the world around us and crafting that engagement into a form of devotional offering. And in yogic practices, we're working with all aspects of the body and the breath and the imagination. And in the empowered method,

We're engaging our capacity for contemplation and refinement of understanding that ultimately gives way to direct experience. And in the divine method... which we covered first, we're engaging our intuitive capacity to become more attuned to the nature of experience prior to the projection of conceptualization. However, it's not the case that these three methods are really so distinct. When we are learning them, we learn them in this well distinguished manner.

But then there's a subtler teaching that comes. Abhinava Gupta explains that the embodied method inevitably merges with the empowered method. if it's successful, and the empowered method inevitably merges with the divine method. So for example, he says that for yogic practice to be fully effective, it needs to be imbued with some degree of understanding. It can't be purely mechanical. And as the yogic practices begin to work,

They create a context in which the refinement of our understanding is more and more possible. So in other words, yogic practice, when successful... leads to insight. And well-formed insight points beyond itself to the direct experience of communion with reality as it is. with the suchness of things. So if this is the case, you might wonder, if it's true that the embodied method

leads to the empowered method, which leads to the divine method, inevitably, then why not just start with the divine method and stick with that and not bother with the other two? Well, just because... That doesn't work for the vast majority of people. The vast majority of us need to work in all three methods, even though ultimately they're going to collapse together into a unity.

a unity of direct insight or communion with reality and this is why abhinavagupta says there is absolutely no difference among these methods in terms of their practice having the same ultimate result. To learn more about this, you can listen to the podcast episodes on The Essence of Tantra.

chapters 3, 4, and 5. Or if you read the last third of my book, Tantra Illuminated, you'll find that the upayas are covered there in quite a bit of depth. Finally, If we look at the scripture previously mentioned, the Vijnana Bhairava Tantra, we see here an abundance of techniques or practices that exemplify all three. methods that I've been discussing here, those of spirit, mind, and body. How can this be the case when the VBT was composed

quite some time before Abhinava Gupta came along to formulate this teaching on the three effective methods. Well, because what Abhinava was actually doing... was noticing patterns in the tradition that he inherited and then formulating more precise language about those patterns. And so creating this doctrine of the three upayas was simply a kind of precising and organizing of what was already to some extent evident in the tradition itself.

So the VBT comes a century before Abhinavagupta, but it does exemplify these three methods very well. And you will see in the forthcoming VBT app that we're developing, which is absolutely blowing my mind, by the way, we utilize this threefold. classification of the divine method, the empowered method, and the embodied method. In fact, it's the primary classification that we use in the app, although we have

other labels as well, such as thematic ones. In conclusion, what are the main takeaways from this teaching on the three effective methods?

Well, first we have the very important tantric principle that spiritual practice needs to involve all the aspects of our being to be fully effective. And secondly, the more we practice and work with these methods, the more we see how deeply interrelated they are, because indeed these aspects of our being that we call spirit, mind, and body, are not separable, and the way in which they are manifestations of each other becomes more and more apparent as we work in all three methods.

And that is a very important contribution to world spirituality, we might say, because we can easily find examples of spiritual traditions or religions. that emphasize just one of these methods to the almost total exclusion of the others. For example, there's some versions of Zen which are almost completely... Shambhava Upaya, divine method, and effectively exclude the mind and the body from the practice, except insofar as they are.

disciplined to be totally subservient to non-conceptual insight. And then we have examples of religious traditions that emphasize contemplation. but don't include bodily practices or the cultivation of intuitive non-conceptual insight because they are heavily dependent on belief. such as some forms of Christianity and some forms of Vedanta. And then we have traditions that are very somatic, but really sideline.

the role of the mind in contemplation, and the role of the spirit in intuitive, non-conceptual insight, such as some forms of Hatha Yoga. And if any of the traditions that I named are dear to your heart and you want to defend them and explain how, no, they really are more holistic, I'm basically here talking about... emphasis. In non-dual tantra, there is a heavy emphasis on involving all aspects of ourselves thoroughly. And in these other traditions, at least as they were.

historically practiced, there is a strong de-emphasis on two of the methods and a heavy emphasis on just one. So non-dual tantra, when practiced in this traditional manner, is a truly holistic practice, truly a practice of body, mind, and spirit. And the degree to which this is really true, will become much more evident to you when you begin working with the VBT app that we're currently developing and that we're all very excited about behind the scenes over here.

So you'll be hearing more about that down the line.

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