The Thunder and the Flame by Sadhguru

Sadhguru
5 days ago
4 min read

Sadhguru says Desire becomes bondage when unconscious—but becomes liberation when lit by awareness. Pleasure without presence is indulgence; pleasure with awareness is Tantra. This Story Sadhguru stated to a person during his returning from Rajrajeshwari Math Gyangunj Tibet now he was the one of Stateman of the Country and globally popular person. Sadhguru initiated him in the Corbett Jungle and asked him to stay at Himalaya for four years.

Story | Corbett National Park | June 14, 1980

A Tantrik Parable on the Alchemy of Longing

The Whisper of the Body

In the shadowed valley of Kaligiri, where the rivers wound like serpents and the air shimmered with ancient breath, lived a woman named Shivangi. She was neither sage nor sinner, neither ascetic nor householder. She was... curious.

Her days were filled with scent — the aroma of rose and sweat, of sandalwood and earth. Her nights were woven with music, dance, and the rhythmic ecstasy of the drums that echoed from the temples of the Devi. She wore red — not the red of modesty, but of fire. Of hunger.

The villagers called her bewitched. The temple priests warned, She walks the path of Maya, of illusion.

But Shivangi knew something they did not — that her longing was not a curse. It was a current, a pulse, a call from somewhere beyond reason.

Every touch, every taste, every sigh was a signal — and she listened.

The Arrival of the Siddha Tantrik

One full moon night, when the jungle sang louder than the wind and her skin itched with the ache of something unnamed, Shivangi wandered into the sacred grove where no one dared tread.

There she saw him, — seated upon a black stone shaped like a coiled serpent.

A Siddha Tantrik. Naked but for a loincloth, ash smeared across his brow, rudraksha beads coiled around his neck like vines of power. His eyes — closed. His breath — still. His presence — thunder without sound.

“You burn,” he said without opening his eyes.

“I desire,” she replied, stepping forward.

“And what do you seek in that desire?” he asked.

She hesitated. “Pleasure. Freedom. Oneness.”

He smiled. “Then you are already on the path — but unaware of its depth.”

Shivangi did not seek the man—she sought the mystery behind his silence.

3. The Initiation of the Flame

That night, beneath the canopy of stars, the Siddha Tantrik began her Deeksha. Not into abstinence — but into awareness.

He taught her that the body is a yantra, a sacred machine. That sensation is the script of the Goddess, written in heat and touch and pulse. That desire is not a chain, but a pulse of thunder — and when you awaken it consciously, it becomes Kundalini, the fire that rises.

“Close your eyes,” he said. “Feel where your desire lives. Is it in the belly? The heart? The womb? Breathe into it — not to extinguish it, but to honour it.”

And she did. Day by day, breath by breath, Shivangi began to feel the difference between indulgence and immersion.

When she ate, she did not devour — she received. When she touched, she did not possess — she merged. When she wept, she did not suppress — she offered.

The longing that once dragged her into cycles of fleeting pleasure began to shift. It began to ache not for bodies, but for the Beloved without form.

4. The Dance of Longing

One dawn, as the sun poured honey over the hills, the Siddha Tantrik led her to a mirror-like lake.

“Look into the water,” he said. “What do you see?”

“Myself,” she said.

“Look deeper.”

She stared. Her reflection wavered. Her face dissolved into a thousand others — women who had longed, burned, danced, cried, begged the heavens for more. She saw Mirabai dancing in chains, Lal Ded shedding her robes, and Matsyendranath reciting for Parvati.

She saw herself — not one woman, but all women — as the Shakti who longs for Shiva in all forms.

And suddenly, her heart broke open.

Her desire, which had once felt like fire in the loins, now flooded her chest, rose into her throat, and spilt from her eyes as tears.

“I do not long for man,” she whispered. “I long for the One behind all men, all forms, all touch.”

And the Tantrik said, “Then you have arrived. You are no longer Shivangi — you are Ma. You are the longing of the universe itself.”

Longing is not weakness; it is the whisper of the soul yearning to dissolve into the Infinite.

5. The Union Beyond Form

In the nights that followed, Shivangi no longer danced for attention. She danced as an invocation.

She no longer dressed in red for beauty — she wore it as a mark of the Devi, the one who creates through longing and dissolves through love.

Her every breath became a mantra. Her every step became a mudra. Her body — once an instrument of pleasure — became a temple of ecstasy beyond the flesh.

People came to her from far and wide. Not for teaching. Not for blessing. But to remember.

Because in her presence, they felt it — the ache they carried secretly in their chests — now transformed into something radiant.

She did not preach. She did not renounce. She simply burned — with divine longing.

And in that fire, others began to burn too.

Epilogue: The Flame That Remains

They say Shivangi vanished one morning as the mist touched the earth. No ashes were found. Only a faint scent of rose and the echo of drums in the distance.

But the grove still sings.

And sometimes, when the moon is full and your longing is loud, you might feel her — dancing within you. Not to seduce the world, but to call the Beloved home.

For that is the final teaching: