The Role of the Texts in Sādhana
Sādhana is more than a spiritual path
This article is an excerpt taken from the Sādhika Sourcebook, a resource written and compiled by Embodied Philosophy Founder and Teacher, Jacob Kyle, for Sādhaka School - Embodied Philosophy’s most in-depth, university-level programme into the non-dual Śākta–Śaiva traditions. Winter Term starts on January 28th 2026. Find out more here.
In Sādhana School, we work with sacred texts not as passive repositories of knowledge, but as living companions on the path of transformation. These are not books to be mastered, conquered, or skimmed for insight. They are mirrors and portals — devices of revelation that speak differently to us depending on our state of being, our ripeness, and our readiness to listen.
To engage a text as sādhana is to approach it not merely for information, but for encounter. In this mode, we read slowly. We linger. We return. We let phrases echo within us. Sometimes the meaning is clear; other times it is obscure. But the obscurity itself can become a site of contemplation. We ask not only, “What does this mean?” but “What in me is reacting to this?” or “What is this passage pointing to that I have not yet seen?”
This is especially true when working with the primary sources of the non-dual Tantrik traditions. These texts often encode subtle metaphysics, poetic allusion, and esoteric instruction in compressed and paradoxical language. To read them as one would read a modern treatise is to miss their power. Their meaning is not exhausted by translation or commentary. Much of their transmission unfolds between the lines, in the silences, in the rhythm of repetition, and in the contemplative state they begin to evoke when held with care.
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To approach a text as a sādhanic companion means also to understand that we change in relation to it. What once felt obscure may, months later, feel luminous. What once seemed overly abstract may suddenly strike with the intimacy of personal revelation. In this sense, the text is not static. It responds to our development. It grows with us.
“To approach a text as a sādhanic companion means also to understand that we change in relation to it. What once felt obscure may, months later, feel luminous.”
This approach requires humility. It asks us to recognize that the text is not simply something we interpret, but something that interprets us. It shapes our questions. It reframes our assumptions. It may challenge the frameworks we’ve used to organize our spiritual lives.
In the pedagogical structure of Sādhana School, we encourage students to maintain a relationship with the texts that is not extractive but devotional — one rooted in curiosity, patience, and respect. Recitation (pathi) and reflection (cintā) are offered not as separate activities, but as two poles of a single practice: one vibrational and somatic, the other philosophical and analytic. Together, they generate a layered resonance in the body-mind that is the hallmark of deep learning.
“The goal, in the end, is not simply to “understand” a text, but to become a person who can stand under it — to allow its weight, its precision, and its view to slowly realign how we perceive the world, how we live, and what we take to be real.”
The goal, in the end, is not simply to “understand” a text, but to become a person who can stand under it — to allow its weight, its precision, and its view to slowly realign how we perceive the world, how we live, and what we take to be real. This is the role of the texts in sādhana: not to provide final answers, but to initiate the kind of questions that can only be answered through the long intimacy of embodied life.