Chapter Three: The Madhura Disposition in India's Inner (Esoteric) Religious Disciplines

—Kundalini is the power of the living being. The Kaula practitioner's duty is to awaken the sleeping Kundalini through practice and raise her along the suṣumṇā, the channel within the spinal column, to Supreme Shiva in the sahasrāra. There Shiva and Shakti unite. Their perfect harmony is supreme bliss.¹ Once this bliss is attained, nothing remains for the practitioner to do.²

The animal, heroic, and divine dispositions

Not everyone is equally developed for this discipline. Some practitioners possess strong worldly attachment. Living beings tied by the fetters of delusion are called “animals,” and the scriptures prescribe a separate mode of practice for them.

Other practitioners receive a shallow glimpse of nondual knowledge, become inspired upon the path, and deliberately cut the fetters of delusion. They are called “heroes.” Such a practitioner proceeds gradually toward nondual knowledge and finally recognises his identity with the deity he worships.

The highest practitioner, able to adopt nondual knowledge naturally, is called “divine.” Practitioners are thus animal, heroic, or divine, each successively superior to the one before. Practice in the divine disposition is called sahaja. In the Tantras, the divine practitioner's discipline is itself called Kaula conduct.

The seven modes of conduct

Tantric treatises describe seven modes: Vedic, Vaishnava, Shaiva, right-hand, left-hand, doctrinal, and Kaula.

1. Vedic conduct prescribes Vedic rites such as sacrifice. In Tantra's view, this is the lowest category of worship.
2. Vaishnava conduct prescribes vegetarian food, vows and fasts undertaken in purity, celibacy, and absorption in worship.
3. Shaiva conduct prescribes the disciplines of sacrifice, meditation, concentration, absorption, and worship of Shiva and Shakti.
4. Right-hand conduct follows the rules of the preceding three, while prescribing the consumption of bhāṅg and similar substances at night together with recitation of its mantra.

All four are intended for practitioners in the animal disposition. The succeeding modes are for heroic practitioners.

5. Left-hand conduct prescribes practice in which the self is conceived as Vama, Shakti.
6. Doctrinal conduct progressively purifies the mind and teaches the understanding that purification makes every object in the world pure. From Brahman down to a clod of earth, nothing differs from Supreme Shiva.
7. Kaula conduct, highest of all, has no rules whatever. Its practitioners—