Chapter Two: The Nature and Scope of Madhura-rasa
—grows strong and fruitful. The remarkable thing, however, is that worship in the madhura disposition is also present in one form or another within the most secret, “esoteric” disciplines. We shall discuss the appearance of the madhura disposition in Christian and Sufi practice at the appropriate places and in some detail. Here we wish only to see what form the madhura disposition takes within India's secret sahaja disciplines, and by what sequence it reaches complete fulfilment. In Buddhism too, the union of Prajnaparamita and the Adi-Buddha yields the attainment of “great bliss.” The Tantras explain it in particular detail. The worship also receives special treatment among the Naths, Siddhas, and saints. The Vaishnava Sahajiya tradition gives a full account of it in all its parts. Viewed in this historical sequence, there can be no doubt that the discipline of madhura-rasa is among the most ancient forms of practice in our country.
The common ground of the sahaja disciplines
All India's secret or esoteric religious disciplines share one background and one goal. Their aim is not the exclusion or contemptuous rejection of desire, but its purification and elevation, through which the divine bliss sleeping within the human mind is awakened and brought to joyous expression. For this, bodily firmness, purity of mind, sharpness of intellect, and the soul's ardour for victory are indispensable. All sahaja disciplines consider it necessary to establish natural control over speech, mind, breath, generative power, and vital energy, and to elevate them in an upward direction. Their goal is entry into the state of samarasa, perfect sameness and harmony. Whether this state is attained through yoga or through love—whatever the difference of method or path—there is no difference in the goal.
The state of samarasa
Samarasa is the condition of divine bliss in which two become one. The Sahajiyas hold that, even after enduring struggle throughout life, a human being cannot wholly uproot or annihilate desire. By sublimating it, however, one can make that very desire into a pure and unfailing means to divine love and divine bliss—that is, to great bliss and great experience. They believe that the living being is bound through passion and is also liberated through passion: Rāgeṇa badhyate jīvo rāgeṇaiva pramucyate.
Another shared belief of all esoteric disciplines is that one became two, and two became many; hence singular, dual, and then plural. This is the purport of “Being alone, it did not delight” and “I am one; may I become many and be born.” The many arise from that One, but at the heart of the many is an intense desire to return again to the same One from which they emerged. The ultimate and supreme goal of these inward, esoteric disciplines is therefore the complete abolition of duality and the attainment of the nondual state. In that state the two are unified, or both are absorbed in the One. In their vocabulary it is named nondual, paired, joined in union, double, couple, samarasa, sahaja, and so forth.
The Hindu Tantras accepted the dyadic form of the Supreme Principle as Shiva and Shakti, or Spirit and Nature—