The Philosophy That Keeps Its Eyes Open
By Christine Marie Mason — nondual philosopher, Tantra teacher, and author on women’s sexuality. This essay distills ten classical Tantra principles for modern life: embodied nonduality, relational awakening, and the sacred ordinary. It’s a field guide for keeping our eyes open in a time of collapse and possibility.
“I see the world as Spirit sees it: every object an object of Beauty, every thing and event a gesture of the Great Perfection, every process a ripple in the pond of my own eternal Being, so much so that I do not stand apart as a separate witness, but find the witness is one taste with all that arises within it.”
The ancient sages of Kashmir were scientists of awareness, experimenting with resonance, vibration, breath, mantra, concentration. Playing the deepest games with mind, body, energy, time, and space. They mapped their own nervous systems and those of the larger relational field in a time before neurobiology or quantum physics or cosmic instrumentation… and amazingly, the body of practices and wisdom are in profound accord with such modern understandings.
Classical tantric philosophy was uncannily prescient about the invisible world.
It is also a worldview profoundly and uniquely suited for this particular time on earth.
Tantra unwinds body denial, and restores vitality and connection at all scales.
It provides an internal and collective map for living into a new future, at once timeless and urgent.
It’s a worldview and a way of being that makes daily life more enjoyable, precise and effective.
It embraces paradox in a world that needs the capacity to hold that: the sacred and mundane, transcendent and embodied, individual and cosmic. Tantra encourages integral thinking, comfort with complexity and a willingness to be transformed by mystery rather than to master it.
It prepares us to meet the crises and possibilities of our era: ecological awakening, gender reconciliation, mutuality and respect for the diversity evident in globalization, transhumanism and technological transformation- as well as the healing of the split between matter and spirit.
The polycrisis also requires that we work together, and Tantra is not solitary. It is relational. Awakening unfolds between teacher and student, lover and beloved, sangha and practitioner. Transmission flows through kinship. Tantra insists that transformation is communal, that wisdom is born between us, that the medicine we seek must be lived in relationship, not just downloaded.
Tantra isn’t an exotic relic. It’s a highly relevant and practical field of engagement to come awake in ordinary life, and to build a world from that reverence. It can hold collapse and emergence. It is reverent enough to re-enchant existence. It has a wisdom of kinship vast enough for this planetary moment, a map precise enough for scientists, poetic enough for lovers, and a winking humor that says don’t take it all so seriously.
Today, I’m making an attempt to distill 10 principles of this worldview, so that you might have a look: what resonates, and if this were true for you, what would change in how you experience the world?
As a note, I have included quotes for those living inside of existing religious frameworks, to point out that with only a slight lane realignment (not an abandonment or rejection), the principles of tantra are also embedded in the dominant religions of the planet. The mystics across all time and space point to the same truths, which we, right now, can live into to create a more beautiful world right now. We just have to look a little more closely, and strip away the overlays of culture, division and separation that have grown over the core light at the center of all traditions. These examples are from the Abrahamic lineages, but I could do this from everything from Buddhism to the Tao to Animism.
10 Principles of Classical Tantra for Better Living Now
Principle 1: Everything is Consciousness
“The Kingdom of Heaven is within you and all around you. Split a piece of wood, and I am there. Lift up the stone, and you will find me there.” - Gospel of Thomas
Everything is consciousness. Your thoughts, your body, the room around you—all consciousness appearing as different forms. One light shining through colored glass: refracted differently, but always the same light.
You are consciousness appearing as a person, but you never stop being consciousness itself. Consciousness is not produced by matter—it is the ground of being.
Because this ground is shared, we are fundamentally related. Our base code is identical to all reality. The river is not a resource but a relative. The stranger carries the same essence. What you do to another, you do to yourself.
When this kinship becomes felt knowledge, reverence follows naturally. This is medicine for a world fractured by alienation and exploitation.
“The eye through which I see God is the same eye through which God sees me; my eye and God’s eye are one eye, one seeing, one knowing, one love.” - Meister Eckhart
Principle 2: The Manifest World is Vibration
Creative vibration brings all things into being. It is the transition between consciousness and material reality, pulsating with creative power even in apparent stillness.
All movement arises from the unmoving center of consciousness—waves rising from a calm ocean. This cosmic pulsation generates form itself: every color, sound, feeling, and thought you experience.
You feel it most clearly in the quiet spaces between thoughts, between breaths, in stillness. When you recognize this vibration in everything, you recognize your true nature.
Your emotions aren’t personal problems but waves of intelligence moving through you. This vibration lives strongest in your heart center—not the physical heart, but the feeling center of your being.
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” - John 1:1
“Be still and know that I am God.” - Psalm 46:10
“God’s first outburst was a word … and he speaks it always in everlasting silence, and in silence must it be heard by the soul.” - St. John of the Cross
Principle 3: Consciousness and Form are Inseparable
Consciousness and its creative power are one thing appearing as two—like the sun and its light, or fire and its heat. This power creates everything as play: the universe is divine energy delighting in itself.
Reality unfolds in layers, each a different expression of this power. Everything you see—trees, buildings, people—is the goddess in countless costumes.
“I am she who is the first and the last. I am she who is the honored one and the scorned one. I am the whore and the holy one. I am the wife and the virgin... I am the silence that is incomprehensible.” — Thunder, Perfect Mind
Shiva and Shakti. Stillness and movement. Consciousness and energy. Inseparable.
Masculine and feminine are not enemies or cages, but dynamic forces endlessly fluid in expression, dancing through every being. Strength and receptivity in perfect balance.
Tantra teaches reconciliation: difference without division, complementarity over opposition.
Principle 4: We Are Not Getting Anywhere, We Are Recognizing
You are already what you’re looking for. You don’t need to become enlightened—you need to remember you already are.
This remembering can happen in a flash, like suddenly recognizing a friend you thought was a stranger. Deep down, you never actually forgot. It’s like waking up and realizing you were always awake.
“What we are looking for is what is looking.”— St. Francis of Assisi
Your everyday self, even with all its problems and worries, is divine consciousness pretending to be limited—an actor so lost in role they forget they’re acting. When you recognize this, the feeling of being trapped dissolves.
Any moment can trigger recognition: washing dishes, watching a sunset, even feeling sad. This isn’t something you figure out with your mind—it’s a direct knowing that hits immediately.
A teacher can help by pointing out what’s already there, like someone saying “look, there’s the moon” when you’ve been staring right at it. Once you see it, the world looks the same but everything has changed—radiant, divinized.
“Thou wouldst not seek Me if thou hadst not already found Me.”— Pascal
No amount of thinking can give you this recognition. You either see it or you don’t. We forget our divine nature by design, to fully experience individuation. But grace reveals itself spontaneously, suddenly lifting the veil so you remember what you’ve always been.
Principle 5: Focus Your Attention, and Everything Reveals Itself as the One
Put your attention in the center of any feeling—pain, pleasure, whatever—and you’ll find consciousness there. Watch your natural breathing without changing it and you’ll recognize yourself. In the pause between breaths, eternity waits.
Stop whatever you’re doing suddenly and completely. This can shock you into seeing the awareness that’s always watching.
When you feel something strongly, don’t run—dive into the center and find what’s really there. The inward turn reveals divine presence within. Even sexual energy, fully inhabited, reveals itself as divine power.
Listen to any sound and follow it back to its source—it expands into the one. Stare at something without blinking until the difference between you and it disappears.
Don’t watch your thoughts—watch what watches thoughts. Walk in nature while aware of the awareness walking. Turn washing dishes into meditation by staying present.
Try to observe the observer. You can’t. That’s the point.
Feel your body without judging—pure attention to sensation. When angry or sad, don’t fix it—look for the consciousness that anger and sadness are made of.
Stay aware while dreaming and you’ll see waking life is just another dream.
“When you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen.”— Matthew 6:6
Principle 6: Everything is Included
The ultimate recognition: individual and divine consciousness are not separate. Everything you see, touch, hear, and think is divine consciousness. No exceptions.
Nothing needs fixing—reality is already perfect. You need only recognize it.
Unlike traditions that exile “dark” emotions, Tantra welcomes intensity. We work directly with whatever arises: fear becomes a doorway to stillness, rage reveals itself as pure energy, grief opens into compassion.
Every emotion is consciousness tasting itself in different flavors. Anger tastes different from love, but both are the same awareness experiencing itself.
Trauma is not something to “release” or be rid of. Tantra offers rasa sadhana: tasting experience fully without being consumed. Poison becomes nectar not through elimination but through conscious metabolization—inclusion, feeling, facing, being with what arises.
In our age of collective trauma—climate grief, war, systemic inequities pressing on our nervous systems—Tantra offers more than coping strategies. It gives us a way to stay present with intensity, to find the sacred in suffering, to recognize that our capacity to feel deeply is wisdom.
These practices keep our eyes open, awareness both inward and outward. This cultivates what we need most: to witness collective pain without dissociating, to stay available without being overwhelmed.
Principle 7: The Body is Wholly Holy
Your body is divine consciousness, not something separate from it. Your eyes, ears, and skin are doorways leading back to the awareness that sees, hears, and feels.
All the sacred places people travel to visit are inside your own body. You contain the whole universe.
The energy centers in your body are spots where you can directly touch consciousness—like finding electrical outlets in the walls. You don’t need to leave your body to be enlightened. You can be fully awake while living in physical form.
When you recognize your true nature, your body transforms. It becomes a temple instead of a prison.
When something feels good, that pleasure reveals the natural bliss of consciousness itself. When you’re in pain and face it completely without running, it can wake you to what can never be hurt.
When you know who you really are, the fear of death disappears. You realize what you are can never die.
“Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you?” - 1 Corinthians 6:19
Principle 8: You Are Already Free
“In my annihilation, I remain You.”— Mansur Al-Hallaj
Liberation is realizing you were never actually trapped—like waking from a dream where you thought you were in prison.
When you’re free, actions happen naturally without the feeling of “I’m doing this.” Life flows through you like water through a riverbed.
Real freedom is so complete you can choose to feel limited sometimes without getting lost in it—an actor playing a sad character without forgetting they’re acting.
All the guilt about your past loses its power when you know who you really are.
The whole world becomes God playing with itself—divine creativity having fun. What you’ve always sought through wanting things is actually wanting to remember your own true nature.
All your fears disappear when you realize you’re the awareness that can never be damaged or destroyed. Your body will die, but what you really are was never born and can never die.
Freedom isn’t something you’ll get later if you’re good enough. It’s available right now, in this moment.
A truly free person lives in constant amazement, seeing everything as divine, in touch with wonder and magic.
Principle 9: Beauty is the Poetry of God
“Every creature is a word of God and a book about God.”— Meister Eckhart
Beauty is the revelation of divine presence in the ordinary.
Music, sunsets, art—these can suddenly wake you to your divine nature. When something is truly beautiful, the separation between you and it disappears. You become the beauty you’re seeing.
When artists create something amazing, divine power flows through them.
Your heart knows truth and beauty immediately, without thought. That’s often how recognition happens.
“Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.”— Matthew 6:28-29
Principle 10: The Ordinary is Sacred
“Whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord.”— Colossians 3:17
“When you look at the world around you, whatever you are looking at is Allah speaking to you... His Face is the moment that is in front of you, that you are looking at.”— Zawja Ebrahim
You don’t need to become a monk or live in a cave. Raising kids and paying bills can be as spiritual as meditation.
Everyone you meet is your own divine nature wearing a different costume.
Whether washing dishes or running a meeting, if you stay aware, it becomes worship. There’s no difference between spiritual moments and ordinary moments—it’s all sacred when you see clearly.
You can remember who you really are all day long, not just during meditation.
These ten principles aren’t meant to be believed but lived. When even one of them becomes direct experience rather than concept, everything shifts. The world doesn’t change, but the way you meet it does. Reverence becomes natural. Separation dissolves. The extraordinary reveals itself as always having been hidden in plain sight.
For something so relevant, we might ask why Tantra has remained at the margins, or subsumed into teachings that take the teeth out of it. There are many reasons for this: colonial disruption and suppression, as well as a Western misappropriation that reduced it to sexual technique.
Now, its time has come. The split between material and spiritual is healing. Immanent, wondrous reality—right here, right now—awaits recognition.
Psst…. want more of this in person, in the beauty of the tropics…. along with the wild playful embodied practices for living awake? Join me and Adam Bauer for a Week of Devotion on Hawai’i, November 9-16, 2025. » Learn More