Self-building

[Editorial]

The human mind turned downwards takes cognizance of the world reported to it by the senses; turned upwards it receives intuitional knowledge and directions from pure intelligence, which is its source and essence. The light it receives from above guides it in its behaviour towards the world spread out below.

That is how it should be, but in fact a supposititious self ties a knot at the level of mind, choking off the flow of light from above and claiming direction of the revealed or manifested world below. The result is that a man resembles an old-fashioned egg-timer with the waist choked: that is an upper and a lower cylinder with the passage between the two constricted and almost blocked.

Therefore the mind finds itself not merely cognizing and arranging the world reported by the senses but striving to rule it and in fact ruled by it. This is the cruel paradox, for by desiring one thing and fearing another the pseudo-self or ego subordinates itself to the senses and the world they report, Thus it comes to be torn between conflicting passions and subject to the tyranny of events.

The resultant state is best summed up in the Buddhist Four Noble Truths. There is suffering - not in the sense that life is all pain and no pleasure but that a man is vulnerable to events and will eventually be vanquished by them in the form of sickness, old age and death. There is a cause for suffering - the rise of this supposititious self. There is a cure for suffering - the demolition of this self.

And, the fourth truth - there are a number of ways to this cure. On the whole they fall into three categories. The first is through knowledge, by discovering that this pseudo-self really is pseudo and has no real being; but real integral discovery, not merely theoretical acquiescence. The second is through devotion or submission: provisional acceptance of the pseudo-self as an entity but insistence on its complete submission to the true Self above it and uncomplaining acceptance of the sense revealed world outside it.

The third is a technique of re-establishing contact between the upper (inverted) and lower (upright) cones, thereby restoring man's true nature and rectifying his stunted perceptions and faculties, while leaving to a later stage the final demolition of the pseudo-self that warped or stunted them by cutting them off from their source. This is the underlying principle of Tantrism. It brings about the wedding of the mind with the Spirit.

Who is it that, aspires? Pure being can't
Nor can that true function of the mind -
To accept, cognize, respond. Between them - what?
However well disguised, the evil ghost.
Yet effort must be made. But without, desire.
Till there shall come the union of the two -
Pure Being and intelligence of mind -
Through elimination of what stands between.
Methods are many; this alone the task.

It is seldom that any path falls exclusively into any one of the three categories outlined above; however one or another of them will predominate.

What has always proved fascinating in paths of the tantric, as of the yogic variety is that they develop higher powers and perceptions in the aspirant during the course of his quest instead of leaving them to flow through spontaneously on its completion. They carry on the tasks of demolition and building simultaneously. Every path combines the two processes of contraction and expansion - squeezing the ego until it is small enough to pass through the eye of a needle and expanding the mind to infinite pure intelligence. But on an Advaitic path there is very little expansion until the contraction is completed.

Herein lies the attraction of a tantric path but also the danger; for the ego will attempt to clutch at the new or expanded powers and use them in its own right. To guard against this it is essential to work under an expert and give him implicit obedience. Indeed, it is probable that most magic and occultism has its origin in the misuse of powers by those who have proceeded far enough along this type of path to acquire them but then shrunk back from immolation of the ego. It is the most technical type of path and requires skill in means wedded to inflexible integrity of purpose.

Tantrism is an integral part of Hinduism. It is held by its followers to be coeval with the Vedas. Its extant written texts are if a later date but that is nothing to go by since a religious tradition is normally handed down by oral transmission before being put in writing, and this is naturally much more so in the case of a secret tradition like Tantrism confined to initiates.

Some scholars claim to have found the origins of Tantrism in the non-Aryan Indus Valley civilization or among the Mongol peoples north of India, but really the question is not very important. It is not to be supposed that these peoples were without any technique of spiritual training, and whether this had more affinity with Yoga, Tantrism or Shamanism can have only an academic interest. Certain it is that Tantrism is an intrinsic form of Hinduism and has been so from remote antiquity.

In one sense Tantrism might be held to he more of a popular religion than that of the Vedas, being open to persons of all castes and both sexes, whereas Vedic ritual was to be performed only by those of the upper castes and most of it only by men. In another sense, however, it was and is more restricted, not being a religion for a whole community but (like Yoga in India and Shamanism among other peoples) a path of spiritual development available only to those who are initiated into it. It can best be described as a science of spiritual development having both its theory and practice, like any other science, and verifiable by the results of its practice.

Its scriptures, therefore, the Agamas or Tantras as they are called, are on the whole less concerned with theoretical exposition than the Upanishads and more with practical directions for sadhana. For this reason they are apt to be cryptic and abstruse so as to guard their secrets from unauthorised students. However one cannot generalise about this: for instance two Agamas which express pure Advaitic doctrine were translated from Sanskrit into Tamil by Bhagavan and are contained in English among his Collected Works.¹

One might say that Tantrism is pre-eminently a polytheistic form of Hinduism, consisting largely of the invocation and worship of various gods and goddesses; and yet, paradoxical as it may appear, it is at the same time pre-eminently self-reliant, being a science of development of the potentialities latent in man. What resolves the paradox is the understanding that the same formless Spirit which manifests as the universe with all its forms and powers manifests simultaneously as and in the individual. Therefore the same forces which appear to manifest outwardly as gods and goddesses are to be developed as latent potentialities of the sadhaka himself.

Those who are accustomed to think of religion, as a combination of belief and devotion may query whether technical and what seem even to be mechanical disciplines really can lead man to recover his potentially divine state as is claimed in Tantra and Yoga. What they forget, and what almost all Western dabblers in Yoga overlook in practice, is that the first, two steps of Yoga are Yama and Niyama, both implying control of character and behaviour, the former more in a negative sense and the latter in a positive. Yama involves rejection not only of egoistic and immoral actions but even desires and Niyama contentment and aspiration. The ethical basis of Tantrism may not be formulated in such detail but it is no less obligatory. In Hermetism also, the nearest Western parallel to Tantrism, it, was constantly stressed that the secrets of the true alchemy would reveal themselves only to the pure in heart. This, like everything else in the divine science, is quite logical and practical, since a man whose desires are turned downwards or outwards to worldly things cannot at the same time be aspiring upwards, or at any rate not with sufficient force and persistence to achieve anything. Even a physical machine will not generate enough power to accomplish its work if the steam leaks out through unauthorised apertures. Neither spasmodic effort nor a general vague desire for achievement can so vivify the technique of sadhana as to make it effective. A steadily burning upward turned flame of rightly guided aspiration is necessary for that. In fact the more elevated a man's consciousness becomes and the more his higher potentialities are activated the more dangerous to him is a divided state of mind with desires pulling him both ways.

Basic to Tantrism is the worship of Siva and Shakti, God and Goddess. Siva is God as pure Being and Consciousness, that is to say viewed statically; the Shakti or Mother is the Divine Energy. This is equivalent to the Christian conception of the Logos; and it may be that in Mediaeval Hermetism this conception was also developed into a divine science. "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him, and without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life and the life was the light of men."² Word for word this would apply to the Shakti. It is often stressed that she is not only with Siva but is Siva, that she is with Him from the beginning, from all eternity, that she is the Mother and Creator of all that is. Therefore prayer is directed mainly to the Mother. God as the Father, as pure Being, pure Consciousness, does not take cognizance of the individual; it is the Mother, the creative and redemptive energy, the Logos, who creates the seeming universe of the individual and draws him back out of it to realized Oneness with the Father.
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1- Published by Sri Ramanasramam, Tiruvannamalai, and Rider & Co., London.
2 - St. John, 1, 1-4.

There are various Tantric techniques but central to them is Kundalini marga. Kundalini could best be described as the spiritual vitality of a man or as his shakti. In ordinary man she is a serpent sleeping coiled up (kundali) at the base of his spine. She has to be awakened and directed up the sushumna, the central column along the spine. Along this there are seven chakras or wheels which she has to pierce on her route. Each of them has its colour, form, symbolism, and opens the way to a new mode of consciousness with its attendant powers. Highest of them is the sahasrara or thousand-petalled lotus in the crown of the head. This is the seat of Siva, and its activation (which may also come spontaneously to aspirants who do not follow the path of Kundalini) is the union of Siva and Shakti. It is like the blazing of a thousand suns with indescribable lightness and bliss.

The awakening of Kundalini and her direction to one after another of the stages of ascent is achieved by a sadhana which employs breath-control, incantation and concentration on the centre to be activated and its symbolism. It is, needless to say, a highly technical path.

This is the barest and briefest description of the path of Kundalini, omitting all the subtleties and technicalities. What has to be stressed is that, on the one hand, the sushumna and chakras are not physical organs nor Kundalini a physical force (although its rising has powerful physical repercussions); nor, on the other hand are they imaginary or metaphorical. They are very real and potent: not a part of the purely physical state of man (if there is such a thing) but a means by which to transcend it.