What is Tantra?, Articles Options

Source

Part 1: The Basic of Tantrism

Tantra has been one of the most neglected branches of Indian spiritual studies despite the considerable number of texts devoted to this practice, which dates back to the 5th-9th century AD.

Many people still consider tantra to be full of obscenities and unfit for people of good taste. It is also often accused of being a kind of black magic. However, in reality, tantra is one of the most important Indian traditions, representing the practical aspect of the Vedic tradition.

The religious attitude of the tantriks is fundamentally the same as that of the Vedic followers. It is believed that the tantra tradition is a part of the main Vedic tree. The more vigorous aspects of Vedic religion were continued and developed in the tantras. Generally tantriks worship either Goddess Shakti or Lord Shiva.

The Meaning of "Tantra"
The word "tantra" is derived from the combination of two words "tattva" and "mantra". "Tattva" means the science of cosmic principles, while "mantra" refers to the science of mystic sound and vibrations. Tantra therefore is the application of cosmic sciences with a view to attain spiritual ascendancy. In another sense, tantra also means the scripture by which the light of knowledge is spread: Tanyate vistaryate jnanam anemna iti tantram.

There are essentially two schools of Indian scriptures — "Agama" and "Nigama". Agamas are those which are revelations while Nigama are the traditions. Tantra is an Agama and hence it is called "srutishakhavisesah", which means it is a branch of the Vedas.

Tantric Scriptures
The main deities worshipped are Shiva and Shakti. In tantra there is a great significance of "bali" or animal sacrifices. The most vigorous aspects of Vedic traditions evolved as an esoteric system of knowledge in the Tantras. The Atharva Veda is considered to be one of the prime tantrik scriptures.

Types & Terminology
There are 18 "Agamas", which are also referred to as Shiva tantras, and they are ritualistic in character. There are three distinct tantrik traditions — Dakshina, Vama and Madhyama. They represent the three "shaktis" or powers of Shiva and are characterised by the three "gunas" or qualities - "sattva", "rajas" and "tamas". The Dakshina tradition, characterised by the "sattva" branch of tantra is essentially for good purpose. The Madhyama, characterised by "rajas" is of mixed nature, while the Vama, characterised by "tamas" is the most impure form of tantra.

Rustic Tantriks
In Indian villages, tantriks are still not quite hard to find. Many of them help the villagers solve their problems. Every person who has lived in the villages or has spent his childhood there, has a story to tell. What is so easily believed in the villages might appear illogical and unscientific to the rational urban mind, but these phenomena are realities of life.

Desire for Worldly Pleasures
Tantra is different from other traditions because it takes the whole person, and his/her worldly desires into account. Other spiritual traditions ordinarily teach that desire for material pleasures and spiritual aspirations are mutually exclusive, setting the stage for an endless internal struggle. Although most people are drawn into spiritual beliefs and practices, they have a natural urge to fulfill their desires. With no way to reconcile these two impulses, they fall prey to guilt and self-condemnation or become hypocritical. Tantra offers an alternative path.

The Tantrik Approach To Life
The tantrik approach to life avoids this pitfall. Tantra itself means "to weave, to expand, and to spread", and according to tantrik masters, the fabric of life can provide true and ever-lasting fulfillment only when all the threads are woven according to the pattern designated by nature. When we are born, life naturally forms itself around that pattern. But as we grow, our ignorance, desire, attachment, fear, and false images of others and ourselves tangle and tear the threads, disfiguring the fabric. Tantra "sadhana" or practice reweaves the fabric, and restores the original pattern. This path is systematic and comprehensive. The profound science and practices pertaining to hatha yoga, pranayama, mudras, rituals, kundalini yoga, nada yoga, mantra, mandala, visualization of dieties, alchemy, ayurveda, astrology, and hundreds of esoteric practices for generating worldly and spiritual prosperity blend perfectly in the tantrik disciplines.


Part 2: Uses & Abuses of Tantrism

Proper recitation of mantras help invoke the natural forces to produce the desired effect. "Tantrasadhana" or tantrik meditation and worship helps one attain many supernatural powers. These powers may be used for good or for bad purposes.

Shiva & Shakti
Tantrik practices mainly aim at the illumination through the unification of polarities inherent in the world and one's self. These opposites are symbolically subsumed as "Shiva" and "Shakti" or consciousness and energy, personified as male and female forces of nature. Shiva, the Destroyer, represents universal consciousness diffused throughout the galaxies, while Shakti, the Divine Mother, is the power swinging in a celestial dance, between energy and matter, giving birth to all creation, both tangible and transcendent.

Awakening the Latent 'Shakti' in Us
Long ago, tantrik masters discovered that to be successful externally or internally we must first awaken our latent power, for only those who are strong and blessed with great stamina reach the final destination. The key to success is the Shakti — the power of the soul, the power of divine force within. Although every individual possesses an infinite and indomitable Shakti (power), most of it remains dormant. Within this Shakti, we can neither find spiritual illumination nor enjoy worldly life.

The Misuse of Tantrik Powers
Unfortunately, a large number of tantrik enthusiasts, in both the West and the East, mistakenly identify tantra as the yoga of sex, black magic, witchcraft, seduction, and an amalgam of techniques for influencing the minds of others.

This is due, at least in part, to the fact that tantra is both a spiritual path and a science. As a spiritual path, it emphasizes on the purification of mind and heart, cultivating a spiritually illuminating philosophy of life. As a science, it experiments with techniques whose efficacy depends on the precise application of "mantra" and "yantra", ritual use of specific materials, and the performance of tantrik mudras and accompanying mental exercises.

In the layman's language, such practices can be thought of as tantrik formulae. They will yield a result if properly applied, regardless of the character, spiritual understanding or intention of the practitioner. When this scientific aspect of tantra falls into the hands of charlatans, it is inevitably misused giving tantra a bad name. Fortunately, however, there are still tantrik masters, authentic scriptures to undercut such false and distorted notions and make it possible for us to gain a better understanding of this sublime path.

Tantra Sadhana
By Sri Swami Krishnananda

The system called Tantra has been always regarded as an esoteric and a secret way of spiritual practice, not accessible to the untrained one and to the common folk. The secrecy about the practice seems to consist in the novel outlook of life which the Tantra requires the seeker to entertain, a way of looking at things different from the one in which people are generally accustomed to see, interpret and evaluate things. The teachers of the Tantra hold that a seeker on this path has to outgrow the social and even the human outlook and develop a superhuman and divine outlook in respect of things. Since this would be to expect too much from the common man in the world, Tantra is supposed to be a closed secret whose gates can be opened only with the key provided by a competent Guru.

The philosophy of the Tantra is based on the concept of a dual nature of everything. Nothing is single, but everything is bi-polar. The so-called unity of things is only a form taken by a particular manner of the coming together of two forces, Siva and Sakti, we may say, the positive and the negative poles. In order to understand this mystical conception of the universe, we may refer to the traditional doctrine of the Puranas, the Manusmriti and the Mahabharata, that in the beginning there was a universal Uni-Cell, as it were, known as the Brahmanda, which split into two, one part of which was the Cosmic Man and another part the Cosmic Woman. We may call these parts Siva and Sakti, if we so wish. Even our modem science seems to be corroborating this view when it holds that in the beginning the universe was a single Atom, which split into two and then into the multiplicity of the present form of the universe. Since the two parts and their subsequent sub-divisions actually belong to a whole, there is a natural pull exerted by each on the other, there is a mutual attraction between the positive and the negative poles, both at the cosmic level and its lower multiple forms of descent, even down to the atom, which today we learn is constituted of a bi-polar structure with a nucleus in the centre and electrons revolving round it in a most mysterious way. The behaviour of the two parts of any single organism seems to be a double attitude of the consciousness of duality and unity at the same time. There cannot be attraction between the positive and the negative unless they form two poles, and not a single something, and yet, at the same time, there cannot be this attraction if they are absolutely two different things without a basic unity operating in and between them. This is the mystery and the difficulty in understanding the phenomenon known as attraction, usually called love or affection in common language.

While the concept of Siva and Sakti, in its highest essence, represents the Supreme Cosmic Duality, and one can imagine only attraction and love operating there, so that Siva and Sakti are considered as inseparable facets of a unitary reality sometimes known as Ardhanareesvara, the Cosmic Androgyne, the principle of repulsion, viz., dislike going with like, hatred going with love, will be seen at the lower levels where the bi-polar unity assumes a multiplicity of forms, so that one bi-polar unit cannot tolerate the interference or sometimes even the presence of another such bi-polar unit, for fear of losing its isolated self-conscious bi-polar unity. This subtle operation can be seen manifest in its grosser forms when one family group finds it difficult to appreciate another family group and bestow equal love upon it, one organisation, one social group, and even one bi-polar individual, cannot look upon another such without some suspicion and reservation.

According to the doctrine or the Tantra, the sorrow of life is caused by a bi-polar existence, a split of the one into two, because the truth of things is oneness and not the dual existence in any of its forms. The dual form of life being, in a sense, an unnatural way of life, there is always an ambivalent attitude of like and dislike at the same time between one pole and another, love getting suppressed when hate supervenes, and hate being suppressed when love gains the upper hand, while the fact is that both these attitudes are present in an individual hiddenly and only one of the aspects comes to the surface as and when the occasion demands. To get back from duality to unity is the process of Tantra Sadhana. While this is the objective of every Sadhana, what is the speciality of the Tantra as distinct from other Sadhana in the achievement of this objective?

The distinction is very subtle, not easily noticed. In all forms of religious practice, mostly, there is an ascetic injunction towards a rejection of the outer for the sake of the inner, the material for the sake of the spiritual, a cutting off of every desire as a baneful obstacle to Sadhana, and a considering of every joy in life as an evil to be eradicated at the earliest opportunity. To the Tantra, the things of the world, the material forms of perception, are not really obstacles, and a desire for them cannot be overcome by rejecting the desire itself. Everything in the world, the whole world itself, is a passage to perfection. The visible is a way to the invisible and not an obstacle to it. Human desires arise on account of the unintelligent attitude man develops towards desire, and he has a fear of desire since he is being told that all desire is bad and all objects are bondages. The Tantra holds that the object is not a bondage, because of the fact that the object is inseparably related to the subject, the object is the other pole of which the subject is the complementary pole. Every experience is a subject-object relation, and, therefore, no one can even think of overcoming the consciousness of the object, except by a relationship already established with the object. Thus, the attempt at overcoming the object involves one in a vicious circle. No effort in the direction of a getting rid of the object is possible, inasmuch as there is already a consciousness of the presence of the object. Thus, comes in the great dictum of the Tantra, that desire can be overcome only by desire, even as the object can be overcome only by the object. The other aspect of this principle held by the Tantra is that "that by which one falls is also that by which one rises." (Yaireva patanam dravyaih siddhih taireva).

Here is the crux of the whole matter regarding the Tantra, which marks it off from other religious practices and forms of Sadhana. Why this practice is difficult and even dangerous, will be obvious from the nature of the doctrine, while conceding that the doctrine is perhaps highly rational and based on a deep psychology of human nature.

The teachers of the Tantra know that there is a great difficulty in inculcating this doctrine and practising it. Hence, the art of Sadhana along this path is considered to be a graduated movement through different ascending stages of understanding and a disentanglement of the subject from involvement of the object, by a rising to a condition transcending the very relation between the subject and the object. The stages prescribed are, the Vedachara, the Vaishnavachara, Saivachara, Dakshinachara, Vamachara, Siddhantachara and, lastly, Kaulachara. Of these seven stages mentioned, the first three are intended for the lower category of Sadhakas, known as Pasujiva (persons in whom the animal nature is predominant), the next two for the Virajiva (persons in whom the normal human instinct is predominant), and the last two for the Divyajiva (persons in whom the divine element is predominant). It is believed that the first three Acharas stand, respectively, for Karma (work), Bhakti (devotion) and Jnana (knowledge), the Veda standing for ritual, Vaishnava for devotion and Saiva standing for knowledge. The fourth Achara, which is called Dakshina, attempts to conserve the results achieved through the practice of the first three stages. Up to this level, the movement is almost linear and a straight one, practically. But at the next stage of Vamachara, there is a strange difference in outlook, for this term implies the commencement of the return current of the soul's movement towards reality. 'Vama' does not mean 'left', as most people seem to think, but the 'reverse' process, Nivritti or returning, as distinguished from Pravritti or flowing onward along the natural current of the senses. Here is the beginning of the most secret practice or the esoteric aspect of the Tantra Sadhana, where objects of attraction, whatever be their nature, are regarded as instruments, not to be rejected, but assimilated into and made part and parcel of one's own being, but with the intention of overcoming the consciousness that they are outside oneself as a sort of opposing object or an external something. This particular phase is not supposed to be explained, but learnt directly from a Master. The greatest obstacles to spiritual perfection are generally considered to be wealth, power and sex, and it is these that the Tantra intends to harness and overcome by the means by which an untrained mind may head towards a fall. The Pasu, Vira and Divya Bhavas, corresponding to the animal, human and divine natures, take into consideration the gross, the subtle and the divine aspects of the things which are to be confronted as oppositions in one's spiritual life. This is the forbidden area of Tantra Sadhana, which no true seeker will disclose, as the common man is not expected to know it, understand it, or be benefited by it. Every object has a gross form, a subtle form, and a divine form, and every Sadhaka has to pass through all these stages. The Tantra insists that no stage can be rejected as an obstacle but has to be traversed personally. An unknown thing, an object of fear, cannot come under one's control.

The Tantra holds that the impure, the ugly and the unholy things of life are things which have been wrongly seen out of their context, and, from their own particular positions, or from the point of view of the things themselves, they are neither good nor bad, neither beautiful nor ugly, neither holy nor unholy. These are all suggestions given by the mind from the standpoint of the particular interest which refuses to take into consideration that there can be other interests than one's own. The universe is a multi-point of view, and not a single point of view; from the former one has to rise to the latter, by a systematic and progressive movement of the whole of one's being through the gross, the subtle and the divine compositions of things. In the beginning, one contacts the object. Next, one merely thinks it in the mind. Lastly, one visualises it as a point of stress in the Universal Reality. The Siddhantachara and the Kaulachara mentioned above complete the process of Sadhana, whereby one gets established in the true nature of things and becomes veritably superhuman. The renunciation involved in religious practice is not a rejection of the object or the thing as such, but the idea or the notion that it is outside oneself. It is this wrong idea that generates desire, not the object or the thing. The prescription is indeed very subtle.

Tantra Sadhana includes the recitation of Mantras, performance of ritual through Yantras and an adjustment of oneself to the particular degree of reality, which is the specific meaning of Tantra. In this process one has to learn many minor details directly from the Guru. The purification of the body, the mind and one's social relations, are all important preparations of the Sadhana. The usual Shodasopachara-Puja or the sixteen-limbed worship addressed to a Deity, is also the procedure applicable to anything and everything that one adores, regards or loves. By worship, one seeks union with the Deity through an abolition of the separation of oneself from the Deity. The mysterious processes called Nyasa (Anga-nyasa and Kara-nyasa) are, again, inward techniques of feeling the object in oneself, the Deity in one's own being. All this would make it abundantly clear that the Tantra Sadhana is as highly scientific and precise, as it is difficult and dangerous. This is its speciality.

Source

The Real Benefits of Tantra

Tantra is basically the source of energy and if you master this science, you can easily conquer your materialistic obstacles, other persons can be influenced by you and their activities can be channelised according to your own will. The harmful effects of planets, influences of an evil eye and evil spirits can be removed. It is also helpful as a remedy of mental tension, unbearable pain and other physical and psychological ailments. The scope of Tantra is very wide including Vashikaran, Maran, Ucchattan, Hypnotism, Divine Vision etc., which in many ways are beneficial in modern life.

In fact, Tantra leads to the path of self surrender and it pertains to all the aspects of physical and parapsychological life. Life, a divine gift bestowed upon by the Almighty can be fully purposeful by regenerating one's inner creative faculties and giving 'Karma', a predominant role in our lives and this is the genesis of life's purposefulness and success.

An unchallenged master of Tantra himself, Gurudev's Sadhana discourses often pivoted on this science and he once said :

"One who fears Tantra cannot be a human ; and a Sadhak he never can be. In the times of Guru Gorakhnath Tantra was a much respected science popular in all stratas of society for it has in it solutions to all problems of life.

Actually Mantra is a prayer, it is a request put to the concerned deity to help one. But it is not necessary that the deity shall be moved by one's plea. On the other hand if one uses Tantra one could compel the divine power to help. Tantra in fact is a guarantee that the concerned deity shall without fail have to shower its blessings.

A prayer may fail to touch the heart of the deity but Tantra forces it to grant the desired boon. The Sadhanas in Tantra and Mantra methods might appear similar yet Tantra is a thousand fold more powerful and unfailing.

Tantra gains all the more significance in the present times when every person has no spare time on hands. One cannot be expected to devote several hours each day to long Sadhana procedures. Today every one wishes for instant success and Tantra sure can bring it ; for Tantra means performing a Sadhana by a special meticulous procedure. Nothing is left to chance and all aspects are taken care of, so that success is sure and instant.

Still if due to human weakness some imperfection creeps into the Sadhana or Mantra chanting there are no negative results as is often (wrongly) believed by most people. Only result shall be that the desired wish shall not be fulfilled, but then one could try again.

Tantra is a jewel of the Sadhana world that can solve quickly and effectively all problems of human life like poverty, misery, unhappy married life, being childless, jobless, failure in business or health and so on. To resort to Tantra means adopting a sure way to success."

I tend to consider tantra as the dynamic of yoga - where yoga is union, and tantra is interaction that unifies.

More specifically: tantra is the dynamic of yoga involving two complementary (but not necessarily antithetical) primordials.

An example of such primordials would be The God and The Goddess. Their tantra - their cosmic conjugation - orgistically progenerates the yoga that is The Multiverse.

"The God and The Goddess ... Their tantra - their cosmic conjugation - orgistically progenerates the yoga that is The Multiverse."
These are very poignant and fulfilling words. However, I am not too sure that yoga and tantra should be so descrobed as being possibly opposites.

Parallel lines do meet beyond an event horizon, and all creeds, beliefs or religions are One -- even the three great monotheistics are the same as Hemetics/Enochian/Goetic and are ultimately Gnostic in eventualities.

IMO if there was a little less analysis and hot air, and a bit more action, things would be a lot less complicated.

(IMG:style_emoticons/default/angel.gif)

These are very poignant and fulfilling words. However, I am not too sure that yoga and tantra should be so descrobed as being possibly opposites.

Well, the way I explained tantra and yoga in that post in no way meant that they are opposites.

I have just re-read these articles in conjunction with this link Mantra Tantra Yantra Vigyan and subsequent leads. It is all good.