Tantra

According to the Tantra, the Ultimate Reality is Chit, or Consciousness. It is identical with:

• Sat, or Being, and
• Ānanda, or Bliss.

This Ultimate Reality, Satchidānanda, Existence-Knowledge-Bliss Absolute, is identical with the Reality preached in the Vedas.

Man is identical with this Reality. But under the influence of Māyā, or illusion, he has forgotten his true nature.

He takes to be real a merely apparent world of subject and object, and this error is the cause of his bondage and suffering.

The goal of spiritual discipline is the rediscovery of his true identity with the divine Reality.

For the achievement of this goal the Vedānta prescribes an austere negative method of discrimination and renunciation, which can be followed by only a few individuals endowed with sharp intelligence and unshakeable will-power.

But Tantra takes into consideration the natural weakness of human beings, their lower appetites, and their love for the concrete.

It combines philosophy with rituals, meditation with ceremonies, renunciation with enjoyment. The underlying purpose is gradually to train the aspirant to meditate on his identity with the Ultimate.

The average man wishes to enjoy the material objects of the world. Tantra bids him enjoy these, but at the same time, discover in them the presence of God.

Mystical rites are prescribed by which, slowly, the sense objects become spiritualized and sense attraction is transformed into a love of God. So the very “bonds” of man are turned into “releasers”.

The very poison that kills is transmuted into the elixir of life. Outward renunciation is not necessary.

Thus, the aim of Tantra is to sublimate Bhoga, or enjoyment, into Yoga, or union with Consciousness.

According to Tantra, the world with all its manifestations is but the sport of Śiva and Śakti, the Absolute and Its inscrutable Power.

The disciplines of Tantra are graded to suit aspirants of all degrees.

Exercises are prescribed for people with “animal”, “heroic”, and “divine” outlooks. Certain of the rites require the presence of members of the opposite sex.

Here, the aspirant learns to look on woman as the embodiment of the Goddess Kāli, the Mother of the Universe.

The very basis of Tantra is the Motherhood of God and the glorification of woman.

Every part of a woman’s body is to be regarded as incarnate Divinity. But the rites are extremely dangerous. The help of a qualified guru is absolutely necessary. An unwary devotee may lose his foothold and fall into a pit of depravity.

According to the Tantra, Śakti is the active creative force in the universe. Śiva, the Absolute, is a more or less passive principle.

Further, Śakti is as inseparable from Śiva as fire’s power to burn is from fire itself. Śakti, the Creative Power, contains in Its womb the universe, and therefore is the Divine Mother.

All women are Her symbols. Kāli is one of Her several forms.

The meditation on Kāli, the Creative Power, is the central discipline of the Tantra.

While meditating, the aspirant at first regards himself as one with the Absolute and then thinks that out of that Impersonal Consciousness emerge 2 entities:

• his own self and
• the living form of the Goddess.

He then projects the Goddess into the tangible image before him and worships it as the Divine Mother.

Sri Ramakrishna set himself to the task of practising the disciplines of Tantra. At the bidding of the Divine Mother Herself he accepted the Brāhmani as his guru.

He performed profound and delicate ceremonies in the Panchavati and under the bel-tree at the northern extremity of the temple compound.

He practised all the disciplines of the 64 principal Tantra books. It took him just 3 days to achieve the result promised in any one of them.

After the observance of a few preliminary rites, he would be overwhelmed with a strange divine fervour and would go into Samādhi, where his mind would dwell in exaltation. Evil ceased to exist for him.

The word “carnal” lost its meaning.

The whole world and everything in it appeared as the Lila, the sport, of Śiva and Śakti. He beheld everywhere manifest the power and beauty of the Mother, the whole world, animate and inanimate, appeared to him as pervaded with Chit, Consciousness, and with Ānanda, Bliss.

He saw in a vision the Ultimate Cause of the universe as a huge luminous triangle giving birth every moment to an infinite number of worlds.

He heard the Anāhata Śabda, the great sound Om, of which the innumerable sounds of the universe are only so many echoes.

He acquired the 8 supernatural powers of Yoga, which make a man almost omnipotent, and these he spurned as of no value whatsoever to the Spirit.

He had a vision of the divine Māyā, the inscrutable Power of God, by which the universe is created and sustained, and into which it is finally absorbed.

In this vision he saw a woman of exquisite beauty, about to become a mother, emerging from the Ganges and slowly approaching the Panchavati.

Presently she gave birth to a child and began to nurse it tenderly. A moment later she assumed a terrible aspect, seized the child with her grim jaws and crushed it.

Swallowing it, she re-entered the waters of the Ganges.

But the most remarkable experience during this period was the awakening of the Kundalini Śakti, the “Serpent Power”.

He actually saw the Power, at first lying asleep at the bottom of the spinal column, then waking up and ascending along the mystic Sushumna canal and through its 6 centres, or lotuses, to the Sahasrāra, the thousand-petalled lotus in the top of the head.

He further saw that as the Kundalini went upward the different lotuses bloomed.

This phenomenon was accompanied by visions and trances. Later on he described to his disciples and devotees the various movements of the Kundalini: the fishlike, birdlike, monkey like, and so on.

The awakening of the Kundalini is the beginning of spiritual consciousness, and its union with Śiva in the Sahasrāra, ending in Samādhi, is the consummation of the Tāntrik disciplines.