There's not much I love more than getting nerdy with yoga. Moving my body in asana is great, but digging into the richness of ancient texts excites me to no end. Chris Tompkins, who is a Tantrik Scholar in the Bay Area, is someone I have heard give numerous talks and they never disappoint. This morning, at a lecture, he gave a brief history of the Tantrik tradition, comparing it to other schools of yoga, specifically Patanjali's (the classical yoga path based on the Yoga Sutras).

The way Tompkins breaks it down is that Tantra, which came after classical yoga, had two new revolutionary offerings: 1 - it offered the possibility of liberation in this lifetime (as opposed to having to wait many lifetimes to become enlightened) and 2 - it offered practices that were life and body affirming (meaning that the Tantra practitioners saw things of daily life - eating, dancing, reading, etc.- as paths to liberation as opposed to obstacles).

Tompkins also gave some sanskrit lessons, and showed some pictures of Tantrik art images. I have been studying this path for the last two years or so and I love the messages it conveys - that we can move toward a higher state of consciousness and unity with the universe, while still living in the world as householders and human beings.

Here's a quote Tompkins provided about the Tantrik vision of samadhi, which is speculated to be taken from around the 12th Century:

"The sages say that samadhi is the perpetual realization of the sameness of the individual soul and the supreme soul."

In other words, we are not only in the universe, but the universe exists in each and every one of us. Yes!