Spider in the Center

There are two paths: one leads to servitude, the other to liberation. It’s principles are: “I am this” and “I am not this”. Man is bonded by the former and liberated by the latter.

- Kularnava Tantra (translated from Sanskrit to Italian, then to English)

The way to liberation has as its principle: “I am not this”. What matters is to abolish, not in one’s thought but in the deepest roots of existence, the evidence expressed in this thought: “I am this being, determined in such and such a way: that which this being is, I am also”. The first and necessary operation of the Royal Art (alchemy) consists in the disidentification, or in the extraction, of “gold” from the “stone”.

- EA

No longer identify yourself with your feelings, but rather receive them and observe them as you would external things. Only then will feelings be able to speak to you – when you cease to be lost in them and concerned only with enjoying and suffering.
At the center of yourself, like a spider that keeps under control all the strings of its web and their vibrations, let there be a calm self-control and a scrutinizing lucidity, purified and fearless, open to every voice.


- Abraxas