The word Tantrism
assuredly is a western creation. India traditionally knows only texts called
tantras. Also as André Padoux has ponted
out twenty years ago, the category "Tantrism"-as a singular, coherent
entity-is itself a relatively recent invention, in large part the product of
nineteenth-century scholarship, with a tangled and labyrinthine history. When
it was first discovered by Orientalist scholars and missionaries in the eighteenth
century, Tantra was quickly singled out as the most horrifying and degenerate
aspect of the Indian mind. Identified as the extreme example of all the
polytheism and licentiousness believed to have corrupted Hinduism, Tantra was
something "too abominable to enter the ears of man and impossible to
reveal to a Christian public," or simply "an array of magic rites
drawn from the most ignorant and stupid classes." Yet in our own
generation, Tantra has been praised as "a cult of ecstasy, focused on a
vision of cosmic sexuality," and as a much needed celebration of the body,
sexuality, and material existence. (André Padoux,
"A Survey of Tantric Hinduism for the Historian of Religions," review
of Hindu Tantrism, by Sanjukta Gupta, Teun Goudriaan,
and Dirk Jan Hoens, History of Religions 20, no. 4
[11981]: 3 50). See also Padoux, Vdc: The Concept of
the Word in Selected Hindu Tantras,1990, pp. 31 ff.)
This ambivalence has
grown even more intense in our own day. On the one hand, the scholarly
literature often laments that Tantra has been woefully neglected in the study
of Asian religions as ‘the unwanted stepchild of Hindu studies.’ On the other,
as we see in endless publications, bearing titles like Tantric Secrets o f Sex and Spirit or Ecstatica: Hypno Trance Love Dance, Tantra has become among the most
marketable aspects of the ‘exotic Orient.’ And like sex itself, Tantra has
become the subject of an endless proliferation of discourse and exploited as a
“secret."
Various authors use
the terms Tantra, Tantrism, and Tantracism more or
less interchangeably to refer to this category of Asian religions. Thus when I
mention ‘Tantrismit’ or ‘Tantra,’it is
to refer to the category as it has been constructed as a particular
"ism", and more particular I will go on by detailing at least one
aspect today; the four, ‘Chakra’s’.
Kathleen Taylor has
argued persuasively that Arthur Avalon is not simply a pseudonym assumed by
Woodroffe for his Tantric publications; rather, Avalon is actually the joint
persona of Woodroffe (who knew little Sanskrit) and the Bengali translator with
whom he collaborated ("Arthur Avalon: The Creation of a Legendary
Orientalist," in Myth and Mythmaking, ed. Julia Leslie [Richmond, Eng.:
Curzon Press, 1996], pp. 151-61); see also her paper "Arthur Avalon among
the Orientalists: Sir John Woodroffe and Tantra" (paper presented at
Oxford University, zoos); and her book, Sir John Woodro
f fe, Tantra, and Bengal: An Indian Soul in a
European Body"? (Richmond, Eng.: Curzon Press, 2oo1).
As Kathleen Taylor
summarizes Woodroffe's remarkable, somewhat schizoid persona, he seems to have
maintained two separate identities: "One identity is public, British and
official: the judge, the scholarly Orientalist.... The other is secret, Indian
and Tantric."
As Taylor argued, it
seems fairly clear Woodroffe was involved with a circle of disciples who had
gathered around a popular Tantric teacher named Siva Candra Vidyârnarva
Bhattâcârya. Originally from East Bengal, Siva Candra
attracted a number of educated bhadraloks in
Calcutta, along with a few interested Westerners, one of whom was John
Woodroffe. Although Woodroffe never acknowledged any direct participation in
Tantra, many believe that he was initiated by Siva Candra; in fact, an account
of this initiation was published in the 1960’s.( Vasanta
Kumar Pal, "Tantracarya Sivacandra,"
Himadri ,Agrahayan 1372
Bengali era, Paus 1373 Bengali era ,1965-66.)
And as Taylor has
argued Arthur Avalon rather than Woodroffe alone, could more likely see to be
comprised of both Woodroffe and his Bengali friend Atal Behari Ghose,. In fact,
some Indian linguists have asserted that Woodroffe could not even read the
script accurately.
But when Tantra had
begun to emerge in the early twentieth century as something scandalous, shocking,
and yet also terribly interesting, it didn't burst into popular culture as a
full-blown "cult of ecstasy" or "yoga of sex" until the
sexual revolution of the 1960’s. Now mingled with the erotica of the Kâma Sûtra, Pierre Bernard's sex
scandals, and the magick of Aleister
Crowley, the Great Beast 666, Tantra fit in nicely.
Thus, in 1964, we see
the publication of Omar Garrison's widely read Tantra: The Yoga o f Sex, which advocates Tantric techniques as the surest
means to achieve extended orgasm and optimal sexual pleasure:
"Through the principles of Tantra Yoga, man can achieve the sexual
potency which enables him to extend the ecstasy crowning sexual union for an
hour or more, rather than the brief seconds he now knows." Fighting against
the repressive prudery of Christianity, which has for centuries "equated
sex with sin," Garrison sees in Tantra a much needed cure for the Western
world, bearing with it "the discovery that sexual union can open the way
to a new dimension in life" (Garrison, Tantra, 1964, pp. xxviii, xxvi).
Adding the
Human Potential Movement, Shirley MacLaine, Bhagwan
Shree Rajneesh, and a wide array of gurus promoting the union of spirituality
and even financial success through books and videos,it
is not surprising to see Nik'Douglas's revival of
Pierre Bernard's(the ‘Omnipotent Oom’) Tantrik Order promoted as ; the "New Tantric Order in
America." Offering online initiations, Douglas has drafted an
"Updated New Tantric Order Document" (1996), which brings Bernard's
own 1906 document more in line with contemporary American concerns (see also
Douglas, Spiritual Sex, pp. 219).
Not surprising today
in areas heavily frequented by Western tourists, such as Rishikesh and Târâpith in India, every third sâdhu
(holy man) or so invites a young Westerner over to smoke hashish and learn
about Tantra.
Thus in one of the
better books on the subject David Gordon White writes:” Standing near the top
of the stairs leading down to the churning brown waters of the Ganges, I spied
a latemiddle-aged man with a longish graying beard
and a loincloth, seated in what appeared to be a meditative pose. I approached
him and, summoning up my best Hindi, asked him if he was a renouncer (sannyâsin), and if he was, what could he tell me about
Tantra? His reply was in English: he was a businessman from Bengal who, having
had all his belongings stolen from him on a train a month before, had alighted
at Benares to take a break from his work. He had family in the neighborhood and
enjoyed spending his afternoons on Kedar Ghat. As for
Tantra, he didn't practice it, and in any case, all that was worth knowing on
the topic could be found in the books of Arthur Avalon” (White, Kiss of
the Yogini, 2003,p. xi).
When the Disney
Corporation makes an animated film about Pocahontas p. 1 and 2, it does not
make any claim to historical accuracy; it is simply selling a product for its
"feel-good" entertainment value. This is what the "Tantric
sex" business is doing, with the important difference that it does in fact
make the implicit and bogus claim -by its abusive appropriation of the
adjective "Tantric"- that it is reproducing a body of practice with
an Indian historical pedigree which does not exist.
A crucial strategy in
transforming the unfamiliar and exotic into yet another building block of a New
Age worldview is source amnesia: the propensity to gloss over or be unaware of
the fact that processes of reinterpretation have taken place. A reduction of
complex doctrines to a few building blocks, the extensive search for more or less
spurious parallels or the application of various speculative hermeneutics to
myths would hardly work if one were acutely aware of the Procrustean tactics
used in each of these cases.
This was also
recognizable in the writings of who before Arthur Avalon/ Woodroffe even,
was foremost is responsible for the popularization the
“Chakra’s” in the Western world, Charles Leadbeater(in The Inner Life, 1910)
where he literally re-constructed such ideas and proposed in line with
Theosophical teaching stemming back to Madame Blavatsky a specific number
of seven, Chakra’s. In his 1910 book section 5, Leadbeater thus makes
reference to a correspondence between seven chakras, seven colors and seven
notes of the musical scale.
But Leadbeater went
further and in his ambition to start his own ‘Christian’ Church when on
the front cover of his 1928 book now directly titled “The Chakra’s” he attempts
to demonstrate the analogies between his own theory of the chakras and the
Christian theosophy propounded by Johann Georg Gichtel,
editor of Jakob Böhme's writings.
On the cover of
Leadbeater's book The Chakras, one finds one of Gichtel's
illustrations, originally published in 1696, in which circles and astrological
signs have been placed on a male figure. In the navel, Gichtel
has placed the moon. The left and right sides of the abdomen are the seats of
Mercury and Venus, respectively. The heart is the organ of the sun, while the
chest houses Mars. The sign for Jupiter is placed on the forehead, while Saturn
adorns the crown.
Analogical reasoning
presents problems once one recognizes that there are considerable divergences
as well as similarities. Gichtel's astrological
worldview is hardly the reflex of a universal insight into the human chakra
system. An interpretation of Gichtel's illustration
based on etic history rather than emic pattern recognition will more likely
show the influence of an idea developed by Gichtel's
main source of inspiration, Jakob Böhme. Böhme tried to construct a traditional, hermetic system of correspondences
between man, the microcosm, and the planetary system, the macrocosm, and did so
from within a heliocentric picture of the world. Whereas the chakra system of
the Tantric yogi consists of a vertical hierarchy, Böhme's
and Gichtel's systems are built on a near-symmetrical
schema, of which man's heart constitutes the center, and within which the sun
is lodged as a symbol of vital force and spiritual light:
The “seven rays” also
popularized by groups like the “I Am” movement plus one of the most influential
author of New Age religiosity in the 1930’s Alice Bailey, whose intricate
system looked as follows:
Yet original Indian
Tantric texts from the eight century where these concepts first appeared knew
only of “four” cakras, wheels or ‘centers’, that are identified with four
geographical sites (pithas). These in fact correspond
to points of contact between the Indian subcontinent and inner Asia: these are Kâmakhyâ (Gauhati, Assam), Uddiyâna (Swat Valley?), Purnagiri
(Punjab?), and Jâlandhara (upper Punjab). This
tradition is repeated in numerous sources, including those of the Nâth Siddhas, founded Goraksanâtha
in the twelfth-century.
Their locations in
the yogic body appear to correspond as well to the mystic locations of the mind
in its four states as described in a number of late Upanishadic traditions,
which declare that while one is in a waking state, the mind dwells in the
navel; during dreamless sleep, it dwells in the heart; during dream sleep, it
resides in the throat; and when in the "fourth state" only attainable
by the yogin, it resides in the head.
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