Quotes from Daniel Odier

Lalla, exuberant, convinced her guru, the Siddha Shrikantha, to give her the teachings by defecating on an image of Shiva that was in the guru's house. When Shrikantha asked her the reason for this act, Lalla replied: "If Shiva is everywhere, he is also in the dirt of the dumping grounds where I usually go. If every place is sacred, why bother choosing?

the adept must seize things in their very first tremorings, before differentiating thought intervenes. It is at this instant that the difference is made between a hedonist, whose worldly search is tied to the ego, and the tantrika, who is in search of the most profound spontaneity

Nothing is fixed; she gets hooked by, hooks onto, nothing.

We cannot do a greater good to another human being than to accord him our naked awareness, devoid of all plan.

compassion, because it implies a slightly condescending duality, whereas love is a non-differentiated state.

The Bodhisattva does not differentiate between nirvana and samsara. For him, full consciousness of reality is nirvana. He therefore has no place to go to and even less to wait for, because there is no duality between worldly experience and nirvana.

like a duck going to water without its feathers getting wet.

integrating the whole of the desires and the passions with the quest is also a difficult path, because this path demands total clarity about what you really are, with no reference to what you would like to be.

life energy is said to be "ojas" (vital luster)

Since everything is an epitome of all things for all people, even memory or idea of a thing can surely bring about agitation because of the excitement of innumerable kinds of experiences like sound etc. lying subconsciously in the omnifarious mind.

Even a (beautiful) figure brought into prominence by the meeting of two eyes affords delight only by the device of its union

If there is complete absence of delight, it only spells insentiency.

by the slow and gentle emergence of objectless love, which calmly waits for us to stop pursuing the unattainable.

The absence of causes of contraction such as jealousy, hate, etc., allows consciousness in such moments fully to expand without obstacles in a fullness of bliss, but if even one of those present is not concentrated and absorbed, then consciousness remains offended as at the touch of a surface full of depressions and protuberances because he stands out there as a heterogeneous element.

It is possible that we do not so much long to experience the ecstasy, peace, or joy of the mystics as, more simply, we desire to reach a state of plenitude and depth in our relationships with the world and people.

The West is well armed for success. It knows well the devastation caused by everything about which the Orient can only dream.

When little islands of presence cut into our moments of absence, we start to taste the difference in pleasure that presence brings us. When practice mixes with pleasure, we are not far from being definitively lost to the cause of automatism.

As is written in stanza 74 of the Vijnanabhairava Tantra: "Wherever you find satisfaction, the very essence of bliss will be revealed to you if you remain in this place without mental wavering.

The Spandakarika, "the chant of tremoring sacred vibration," one of the most beautiful and most profound Shaivist texts, says: "Tremoring Sacred Vibration, the very site of creation and return, is devoid of all limitation because its nature is devoid of form.

Everything is told at the start. There is no progressive quest.

What a practitioner of the Tantric path quickly feels, and sometimes the very first day, is that the benefit or reward—the state of joy, space, and freedom—is not subsequent to the practice of awareness. It is, on the contrary, an integral part of it.

The senses come out of their torpor; they stop waiting for exceptional circumstances to come along and wake them up. They find childhood again, adolescence, where the world unendingly sustains their capacity to vibrate. It is this deep and palpitating life that all those on the path of spontaneity know.

What we are fundamentally is not a perception, and it is therefore impossible to find through drugs, sexuality, or any sect or religion.

One of the causes of our suffering comes from the presence, in the deepest part of ourselves, of a kind of nostalgia for unity that sometimes surfaces with great force not only during infancy and adolescence but also in adulthood.