On Giving Reality a Personality
with Nataraj Chaitanya
A devoted Shaiva Yogi, Nataraj Chaitanya is a Faculty member for Embodied Philosophy’s Wisdom School 2026: The Pilgrimage Project and Sādhana School; a year-long university-level course into the non-dual Tantric traditions. This conversation is taken from a recent Chitheads Podcast episode, which you can listen to the rest of here.
Jacob: Over the years, one of the auspicious things about our friendship is that we’ve both gone much more deeply in our own ways, but in the same direction in some sense; the same kind of group of traditions in Śaiva Śākta / Śākta Śaiva, non-dual Tantra.
And so you have this non-dualistic perspective, as far as I understand it, but you’re still very much a bhakta in the way that you relate to the deities. How do you talk about the dieties when people ask you now? How do you talk about the relationship between the forms and the formless?
Nataraj: In the devotional, non-dual tradition that I’m practicing inside of, our love is always a movement towards oneness.
When you are feeling lack, limitation, separateness, or suffering, you can use your love as a vehicle. The supreme power inside of these traditions is Cit Śakti, the power of our own consciousness, and essentially whatever we turn our awareness to, we’re worshipping.
That was a watershed moment for me. Around our old apartment, there were lots of little altars everywhere and lots of photos of saints and gurus. It was a way of invoking what mattered most for me. I don’t want to worship at the altar of my problems or my fears. I want to remember what’s truly important. Lots of times, people are unconsciously worshipping at the wrong altar.
“Whatever we turn our awareness to, we’re worshipping... I don’t want to worship at the altar of my problems or my fears. I want to remember what’s truly important. Lots of times, people are unconsciously worshipping at the wrong altar.”
When we use things that are charming to the mind and enlivening to our hearts, and start to connect with them in a deep, honest way, it speaks to our relational nature as human beings. The suffering really happens in monologue, but healing happens in dialogue.
So, to put myself into those relationships, with forces of nature, with archetypes, with energy, with deities - to give reality a personality - it was very deeply healing for me.
It meant that I could work on improving the relationship of all things. Of engaging in those relationships in appropriate ways so that they uplifted me rather than impoverished me in some way.
The devotional tradition holds that there are all sorts of bhāva, or classical, relational models that you can have towards divinity: the Lord and servant; the parent and child, where you could be the parent or the child, and the divine could be the child or the parent.
There is also the bhāva of friendship, of equality; of the lover and Beloved; the guru bhāva of the student and teacher.
All of this touches on the way in which reality is fundamentally creative, particularly in non-dual philosophy. We are cosmic actors, cosmic performers and artists, and we are the divinity.
One could say choosing to give it a personality is just a fantasy. You’re doing that. But really, by giving it personality, you’re invoking it, calling it out.
Because it exists in subtle form, when you do this kind of work, you’re calling it forward and bringing it into being.
Thank you for reading.
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