Tantric Hedonism

by Gerald Yorke

Religions can be classified under two heads, the cathartic and the hedonistic. Buddhism and Christianity are cathartic since while the one preaches that the world is a bad place, the other preaches original sin and they both advocate celibacy and the suppression of the senses. On the other hand Hinduism is hedonistic. It seeks the spiritual through the senses whilst denying validity to them. Every single thing in the universe is an aspect of God and in that respect sacred. It is a religion of light, life and love, in which the sting is taken out of death by the rosary of skulls round the neck of the Goddess Kali, and in which sex, regarded as sacred, is freely portrayed in temple sculpture. Music, dancing and the drama are still tied to religion and have not been secularised as in the West. Danger lies not in the suppression but in the riot of the emotions. Yoga techniques supplies the required correction.

In the Macrocosm that is the Universe of the Hindu, the Sun symbolizes the creative aspect of God, and is daily hailed as such in the Gayatri Mantra, the oldest prayer still in use in the world. The Moon is the receptive principle. In the microcosm that is man and woman these two planets are replaced by Lingam and Yoni, which carved in stone or cast in metal are worshipped in temples dedicated to them.

God (Brahman) is without attributes, being neither male nor female nor neuter, neither Unity nor Trinity. From That came an Egg, which divided in two, Male and Female. These uniting created the Universe. Vedantic, Vaishnava, and Shivite sects worship the male, Shakti sects the female, half of these twin creators. All four schools agree that to return to Brahman, to realise "That art thou", it is necessary to remarry the opposites and merge the resulting unity That. Some Tantrics still do in the flesh what others have sublimated in symbol.

In developed religions the Sacrament is the supreme ritual of regeneration. In origin it is a fertility rite to celebrate the death and rebirth of the god concerned. In the myth the god is slain to be reborn. In the ritual a substitute is killed and regeneration takes place when the sacrifice is consumed. As man develops he refines. Instead of identifying an animal with a god and slaying it, he substitutes a talisman (yantra). The essence of the god is then invoked into the talisman which is consumed. A sexual variant of this sacrifice can be traced back into the remote past and survives among Tantrics as the Mass of the Five M's, the last M being maithuna, the sexual act. In theory this should never degenerate into an orgy, as no one is allowed to take part until he or she has passed tests in a yoga technique designed to disassociate the mind from the senses.

In Hindu theory—as in Hermetic tradition—the Macrocosm that is the Universe is reflected exactly in the microcosm that is man. Yogis, regardless of sect, teach that man must reenact in his body, or rather bodies, the actual stages by which the universe evolved only in reverse order (nivritti marga) before he can become free (mukti) and be reabsorbed into Braham. The first stage of the return journey is realised in the Muladhara chakra at the base of the spine. There sleeps Kundalini, the coiled serpent of sex, representing the creative principle at rest. She has to be reused and sent up the spinal cord (sushumna) to the sahasrara in the top of the skull. There she meets Shiva. There the Sun and Moon mingle in Immaculate Conception, and the subtle body is flooded with Amrita, the Elixir of Life.

Tantrics who follow this path sat that the imagination is not enough. They insist that bodily processes are involved. For them bindhu (semen) is a physical product of which amrita is the essence. This essence is essential for the sublimation of the subtle body, for which it is not available if it has been spent in bindhu. Hathayogins therefore secure retention by means of vajreli mudra. There is however more to it than this. Man has to become whole by uniting with woman before he can transcend that whole. This transcendence depends on amrita, which is not available when in the form of bindhu. Physical union is therefore useless without vajreli which is a treasured secret of Hathayogins. The Bhairavi Diksha overcomes the difficulty without recourse to physical contact, but the details are not suited for publication.

Ascetics are in danger of turning sour through repression, while hedonists can fail by becoming slaves to the senses. Both are in equal danger of taking the means for the end. No one in his right mind practices bestiality for its own sake. If he does, he suffers accordingly in this life or the next: but his retribution is as nothing to the fate of the man who desecrates the temple once he has recognized it as such.

There are few teachers of extreme Tantric rites in India to-day. Knowing the dangers they are most careful whom they guide along this left-hand path (vama Marga). Some use one some other system of training before initiating a disciple. In yoga terminology pratyahara is the technical term for withdrawing the mind from the senses. It is reasonably easy to acquire since it is a natural concomitant of abstract thought. The next stage is dharana, which is the concentration of the mind thus withdrawn. This merges with practice into dhyana and finally Samadhi on the object chosen. It can only be acquired after much hard work which is in itself so dry and tedious that the casual investigator never completes the course. In the same way the vajreli technique of the Hathayogins are the culmination of increasingly complicated physical exercises which take years to master. In the Bhairavi Diksha the candidate has to complete a seven year period of probation during which strict continence in thought and deed is the least of the trials he has to endure before he is admitted to the Kaula circle in which the Suvasini dances naked.

Enough has been said and more than enough hinted about those Tantrics who make physical use of sex. Their privilege is indigenous, originating in the primitive rites of pre-history. On to it theories and techniques have been grafted. Those concerned with the alchemical use of certain salts and fluids seem to have been imported about the 5th century A.D. The followers of to-day are few, secret and chosen, which does not mean that their method is necessarily the best. They should not however be condemned out of hand by anyone who has not been admitted to their circle.

To-day as in the historical past few Tantrics make a specialized use of sex. They employ erotic imagery with the freedom of the unrepressed, but that does not imply the actual use of sex in the ritual. They marry and are taught to honour their partner as a living symbol of the Divine Mother. They worship in one of two ways, externally with the idol of their choice, or internally by installing the chosen deity in a secret temple in their heart.

The external ritual is elaborate and colourful, whether done in private at home or publicly in a temple. In the morning the image is woken with a hymn, bathed, clothed and fed, honoured with flowers, incense and light, and worshipped as if it was the god or goddess in the flesh. The educated do not believe that the deity in question is there unless someone with sufficient spirituality and experience of yoga techniques has previously performed the ceremony without which a wooden image is no more than a piece of carved wood.

To give life to an idol you must identify yourself with the living essence of the deity concerned, which you then transfer to the image. Identification is made by touching the specific parts of your body to which the various attributes of the god or goddess concerned are traditionally assigned, while repeating the correct bija mantras. These are short sentences made up for the most part of monosyllables like aum, hrim, hum, etc., which it is useless to repeat unless you know the secret meanings which they conceal, and are so developed technically that you can merge with a deity without losing consciousness. The theory behind these words of power and how to vibrate them in known in the West and used in the 'barbarous words of evocation' of certain magical ceremonies, though the words themselves are not the same. There are two main methods of transferring the living essence of a deity from yourself to the image, one by touch, the other by breath. Some sects maintain that the power (siddhi) of the yogi or priest concerned is responsible.

Success in the external worship of an image is achieved when it becomes for the worshipper the deity which it represents. The shape, colour, ornaments and other accessories of the idol represent in a visible or tangible form the attributes of that particular aspect of the attributeless One that you are seeking. They assist through the senses in getting your mind and imagination to work along the right lines. At first there is an idol, if properly consecrated a particular deity indwells it, but that does not mean that you are consciously aware of the fact. It is easier to become so if you work with a consecrated image, that is all. Finally you have the deity and not the image, as a rule only for a moment and only for yourself in your mind's eye. It is however claimed that on very rare occasions the god or goddess as well as the image has been present to the normal sight and touch of more than one person at the same time.

The external worship of an idol is comparatively simple and requires no knowledge or experience of yoga, but to set up that image in the heart needs specialized training and long practice. It is not enough vaguely to imagine that something is there. The actual image with all its accessories has to be seen in the mind's eye, placed in the region of the heart (anahata chakra) and held still with all parts in proportion. It cannot be worshipped before it has been set up, otherwise all that you are doing is to localize in your body a vague urge towards god in general, instead of the precise worship of a particular aspect in a given place. Vague mystical wool-gathering is a dangerous practice leading to self-hypnosis and the myriad simulcra of the genuine experience. This danger is so great that Tantrics insist on the necessity of learning the technique from a qualified teacher and then working under his direct guidance. Success leads not to the external appearance of a god or goddess in vision but to the internal merging of yourself with the deity concerned. The complete process entails setting up and worshipping in this way different deities in the various centres of your body. You start in Muladhara and finish in Saharara, the number of chakras and their internal disposition differing with the various sects and systems. In Tantric theory transcendence cannot take place without the cooperation of the Kundalini, who represents in you the creative aspect of the Demiurge at rest. She has to be sent up the sushhana dwelling in each chakra in turn, where you and she unite with the presiding deity, repeating in reverse order the process of creation until in the highest centre you realize and become Brahman.

In Tantric theory the universe evolved gradually from Brahman through various spiritual stages to the physical world now manifest. After a certain period not yet reached the reverse process will begin, and the cosmos return an orderly regression back whence it came. This completes a cycle (manvantara). After a pause (pralaya) the whole process is repeated and the series is infinite. Man can and should escape from his own minor cycle of incarnations by consciously completing the cosmic process himself. This evolution and involution of the universe as in man obeys the laws of sound and follows a certain canon of proportion.

A theory of creation destruction and rebirth through sound (shabda Brahma) as manifested in speech lies behind the Tantric use of mantra, but is too complex for inclusion here.

The idea of God as Architect of the Universe is not confined to masonry. The Demiurge made use of Measure and Proportion, of which the Canon is known, so that each temple is a pattern of the Macrocosm in stone. The ground plan and vertical cross sections correspond with those parts of the human body in which a yogi works when following Tantric rituals of internal worship.

Patterns drawn in accordance with this Canon and called mandala play an important part in Tantric ritual. During the second world war the Hindu community held a Maha Yajna (great sacrifice) to restore peace in the world, and the Dalai Lama cooperated in Tibet on behalf of Mahayana Buddhism, of which many of the rituals are Tantric. Certain gods and goddesses in both systems represent the ideas of peace rather than of war, and they must partake of the sacrifice if it is to succeed. To ensure their presence a temple specifically suited to them is required. This is provided by means of a mandala traced on the ground, the spaces between the lines of the diagram being filled in with colour. The pattern and colours vary with the deities concerned in accordance with traditional correspondences. This ensures the presence of the right spiritual beings at the symbolic sacrifice which is the main feature of the ceremony.

The pattern in most general use for daily work is the Sri Chakra of the Mother Goddess. The overall design gives the measure of Her qualities, while Her various aspects correspond with the different angles and segments of the figure. The attributeless Brahman is represented by an imaginary point in the centre. In external worship this mandala or yantra is engraved on gold or drawn in sand dust, the goddess is invoked therein and worshipped. In the Bhairavi Diksha the pattern forms the basis of a ritual dance. In internal worship the figure is correlated with various parts of the yogi's body, so that when identification is complete he merges with Her.

Many Tantrics follow the path of love (Bhakti marga) with the deity of their choice. But love is a vague term and needs defining before it can be used in specialised forms of worship. There is the love of a child for its parent, a disciple for his master, a man for his mistress, the human for the divine and vise-versa—there are other forms as well. Each must be experienced in turn in an orderly progression before Love itself can be mastered. One way to do this is to take suitable stories from Hindu scripture and live them in your imagination. A devotee wishing to learn the love of a parent for its child without himself raising a family turns to the charming tales of the childhood of Sri Krishna. If made that way, or trained in the visualizing technique of Yoga, he soon experiences what till then he had merely imagined as in a glass darkly. For him, but only for him this Child of his imagination is real and they play together. Now children are tyrants and the young Krishna is no exception. He soon takes charge. It is a development of what takes place in the mind of a novelist when his hero takes control of the story and finishes it otherwise than he had planned. In the East danger lies not in the lunatic asylum but in taking one aspect of love for the whole. In mysticism as in life the one crime is to stand still. Instead of scaling the heights and becoming a source of inspiration for the world you wander about playing with a child of your imagination, or you turn practical and found a home for waifs and strays.

For a man the male half of Love is easy to achieve, but it is not enough. He must learn to surrender as well as to win. It is told of one Hindu saint how in despair at his failure to develop the feminine in him, he put on a sari and lived for some weeks as a woman in the harem of a friend. On resuming his spiritual exercises he quickly achieved love from the feminine standpoint. In this way a Tantric yogi following bhakti marga works through a planned series of exercises in each of which he experiences love from a different angle until he becomes one with Love itself.

The principle is the same whatever path you follow. To achieve the Unitive Vision you have to deny everything you meet on the way. Since the Tantric regards everything as an aspect of God, the higher his aim the broader must be his base. Every achievement won must be sacrificed else he become a fanatic for whatever he happens to have reached. He must for ever refine, for ever seek new paths and scale fresh heights before he can experience the Whole. Finally he finds Brahman, That which cannot even be thought of since it is "not this, not this" (neti, neti) nor even that. Before so doing he must however decide whether or not to return to this world afterwards. To return he must deny the only vision which is no vision in order to devote the rest of his life to helping others along the path. He cannot describe the goal, since That is beyond thought, but he has found freedom while on earth (jivan mukti) and so is at last qualified to guide others each along his path whether or no that path be Tantric.

[380] [19. "Tantric Theory"]