Bliss in Kaula Ritual

I may be off a bit in my interpretation and may even be understanding this in the wrong context, but I was thoroughly intrigued by the idea of liberation through bliss in Kaula ritual while reading Sanderson’s “Meaning in Tantric Ritual”. Sanderson elaborates on page 87 of the text explaining the use of bliss in ritual and how the senses are nothing but the ‘instruments of the state of bondage’  and how the senses are divine avenues of the blissful. Interestingly he added how the egoless, unconstrained consciousness, that which is the ‘underlying identity of all awareness’ (87) can be achieved through a state of bliss. Bliss in a way is a tool to liberate consciousness into the realization of its all encompassing radiance and transparency. It’s really one thing to excite the senses with the underlying motivation of desire, but its another to think that possibly once can overexcite the senses to such a state where the objectivity alters and the bonds of desire are even almost free, connecting one to this sort of egoless consciousness. Sort of like running a marathon, the physical sense is so attuned and so overstimulated in a way, that once you get to mile 18 (or at least how I felt the first time I ran a marathon) that sense just disintegrates into this physically exhaustive state and instead of being submitted to this extreme pain I was overcome with an overwhelming sense of physical energy and became so attuned to my ‘inner self’ that I actually reversed lost time and accelerated faster than any point in the race. Or maybe with eating a really delicious piece of chocolate- boy I forget all world drama every. single. time. I may be off totally here with my example but I kind of understood this correlation with the bliss in ritual when Sanderson talked about bliss in Kaula ritual as a kind of uninhibited, unconstrained exercise in which one can reach liberation and position oneself in a nondualistic state. “The greater the intensity of this bliss the greater the self-realization in one who experiences it.” (88)