Tantra, Veda and Yoga

The single most distinguishing characteristic of Tantra is the spirit of fight.

Baba writes:

The main characteristic of Tantra is that it represents human vigor.

It represents a pactless fight. Where there is no fight there is no sa’dhana’ [spiritual effort or meditation]. Under such circumstances, Tantra cannot be present. It is impossible to conquer a crude idea and replace it by a subtle idea without a fight. It is not at all possible without sa ‘dhana’. Hence, Tantra is not only a fight, it is an all-round fight."

Tantra finds or creates circumstances designed expressly to bring out, rather than to bury one’s problematic mental tendencies. Baba said:

“A practitioner of Tantra becomes elevated and attains mastery over a hostile environment. Tantra does not accept the teaching of the Vedas that human beings should move internally and carefully avoid any as¬ sociation with their environment.” So only if a spiritual path, at least at some stage, deliberately seeks out fearful, demoralizing or tempting circumstances in order to tight and overcome them by Cosmic ideation and by trust in the guru, does it deserve to be called Tantric. Baba writes:

“It is not only an external or internal fight, it is simultaneously both.

The internal fight is a practice of the subtler portion of Tantra. The external fight is a fight of the cruder portion of Tantra. And the fight, both external and internal, is a fight in both ways at once.

So practice in each and every stratum of life receives due recognition in Tantra….

The practice for raising the kulakun’d’alinii [psycho-spiritual energy force] is the internal sa’dhana 1 of Tantra, while shattering the bondages of hatred, suspicion, fear, shyness, etc., by direct action is the external sa’dhana’.”

Both the “internal fight” and the “external fight” refer to the fight against internal enemies—but the latter uses external means to intensify the fight. He writes:

“The very first night that a Tantric goes to the burial ground, he is stricken with fear…. But when he returns home after finishing sa’dhana’, the mind is much lighter than before. When he goes out for sa’dhana’ the next night, he is much less fearful. And thus the Tantric steadily and slowly overcomes fear. This is the applied process of Tantra which will help the practitioner overcome all instincts.”

Though practices such as that of sa’dhana’ in a burial ground may be the clearest instances of techniques designed to bring to the surface one’s mental propensities, such practices are not required of all Tantrics.

But all Tantrics are brought face to face with their weaknesses in one way or other. A Tantric guru assigns to his disciples tremendous responsibilities for social change.

The disciples’ participation in an activist movements aimed at a just and spiritually-based society forces them to confront sometimes physical fear, but more routinely the fear of social censure and the fear of the overwhelming task before them.

The inferiority complex is the most debilitating fear which most of us must learn to overcome in our lives. Baba writes:

Tantra advises: Jump into your environment without the least hesitation. Don’t be afraid. Fear will leave you step by step. Tomorrow you will not be as fearful as you are today, the day after you will be even less fearful, and ten days from now you’ll notice that you are completely fearless."

Tantra, though a singular science, eventually developed into 5 branches:

1. Shaeva Tantra

This guides the aspirant to direct all expressions of one’s life towards the inner world and finally merge into the Supreme Knowledge.

2. Vaeshnaviiya Tantra

This is a practice of divine love, wherein the aspirant feels that each and every entity of this universe is pervaded by God.

3. Shakta Tantra

This lays great stress on the attainment of power and its judicious application.

4. Ganapatya Tantra

This is derived from the custom in ancient times of deifying the leader of the tribe. When this practice was converted through spiritual outlook it resulted in the cult of viewing the group leader as the leader of this universe.

5. Saora Tantra

This is derived from worship of the sun as a symbol of the nucleus of existence. God is the Supreme Nucleus of the entire creation, and all unit beings revolve around Him.

Salvation is possible only when the unit consciousness merges in the Cosmic Consciousness.

Shri Shri Anandamurti synthesized these 5 Tantras (Paincha Tantra) into a singular system by including the central features of all of them.

Ananda Marga is a spiritual path where the goal is the attainment of Supreme Knowledge (i.e., Shaeva Tantra). To attain this spiritual rank we need psychic and spiritual strength (i.e., Shakti) for which proper sa’dhana’ is required. Our individual meditation, however, is not enough to unite our being with the Cosmic Entity.

For that we require love for everyone; we need to live in joy and peace with the entire creation (i.e., we must be Vaeshnavas). When involved with the external world it becomes necessary to learn the secrets for introverting the extroverted energies so that every experience becomes spiritual and, thus, leads towards the Supreme Nucleus (i.e., Saora Tantra).

Finally, collective life must be systematized, regulated and directed toward God.

To realize this objective the Ganapati system is used.

Baba often spoke of having modified Tantra “to suit the needs of the modern era.” He further elaborated the philosophy of Tantra along lines which had previously been little developed.

In ancient times, Aryan (white-skinned) peoples lived to the north of India. The Aryan culture was Vedic. East and south of those Aryans, the people were non-Aryan, i.e. Mongolian, Dravidian and Austrie. The non-Aryan culture was Tantric. In a long article titled Tantra and Indo-Aryan Civilization, Baba explains much about Tantra, as well as its relation to Veda. He also slightly refers to yoga. Extracts of that article follow:

Usually the non-Aryans were content with little. What was developed in them was their introspective nature, which not only made them devotees of God, but infused in them a surging love for spiritual philosophy. The religious practices of the Aryans, however, entailed performing certain sacrifices in order to attain certain materialistic gains. That is, their religious observances were mainly ritualistic.

On the whole, the non-Aryans were followers of Tantra, or subjective [i.e., introspective] sa’dhana’.

The non-Aryans, depending on their different degrees of intellectual development, ranged all the way from ani-mists to Brahma sa’dhakas [intuitional practitioners whose goal is the Absolute]; but in general, individual sa’dhana’ ranked very high.

The religion of the Vedic Aryans was, as a rule, one of prayer. It did not include even the subtlest hint of any intuitional meditation.

Here lies the difference between the Brahmavada [theory of the Infinite Entity] of the Vedas and the Upanishads on the one hand, and that of Tantra on the other.

As previously mentioned, by “non-Aryans” no particular ethnic group was meant.

When the Aryans first migrated to India, the non-Aryans were, on the whole, divided into three populations. Of these, the Negro-Austric Dravidians were the most developed intellectually and spiritually.

Their Tantra sa’dhana’ bore a predominance of jina’na [knowledge] and bhakti [devotion]. The next groups deserving mention are those of the Mongolian population. In their Tantra sa’dhana’, karma [service] and bhakti [devotion] were predominant.

The groups which constituted the Austrie population were almost equal to the Aryans intellectually, but in the practical and spiritual spheres they gradually lagged behind due to the comparative lack of dynamism of their society.

This Austrie society was content to practice the extrover-sial aspects of Tantra (witchcraft, invultuation, magic, magical incantation for evil purposes, hypnotism, etc.).

Tantra flourished in Bengal due to the pervasive intermixture of Dravidian and Mongolian blood….

In the life of Bengal, Tantra has surrendered to Veda only with respect to language.

In fact there was no alternative but to acknowledge this defeat: The Bengalis of those days were followers of Tantra who spoke many different languages. When they decided to formulate a new language of their own, they were bound to accept the language of the foreign Aryans due to its highly expressive power.

The Dravidian and Mongolian languages [although also a related to Sanskrit] were not so expressive as the Sanskrit language of the Vedas….

Due to the Vedic influence, particularly due to the influence of the eastern Vedic dialect, Ma’gadhii Prakrta, there emerged a Sanskrit-based Aryan language in Bengal.

Later on, the Tantrics of this area composed Tantric literature using Sanskrit and the new Sanskrit-based Bengali..

Spiritual practice was common in the Tantric society.

There is no spiritual vigor whatsoever in the lives of those who support pompous, so-called religious ceremonies, as there is in the lives of introspective spiritual practitioners.

After the Aryans came into India, two types of practice used to take place side by side: on the one side the sacrificial fires of the rs’is [religious leaders], characterized by the smell of burning ghee [purified butter] and the sonorous refrains of those paying homage to the manes while offering oblations into the fire; and on the other side, the non-Aryans’ Tantra sa’dhana’, the practice of self-control and attainment of divine power. Spiritual depth and power of sa’dhana’ brought fearlessness into the spiritual lives of the non-Aryans, as befitting staunch Tantrics..

Tantra is not a religion, but a way of life, a system of sa’dhana.

The fundamental goal of this sa’dhana’is to awaken the dormant jiivashakti [unit force], known as kulakun’d’alinii, and, after elevating it stage by stage, to merge it in Brahmabha’va [Cosmic Consciousness].

Tantra is a science of spiritual meditation or sa’dhana’ which is equally applicable to anyone no matter what their religious affiliation might be.

Tantra is older than the Vedas.

Just as the shlokas or mantras of the Vedas were handed down from guru to disciple in a genealogical tradition, the Tantra sa’dhana’ of the Mongolo-Dravidian society was handed down from guru to disciple hereditarily.

The Vedas are theoretical—full of ritualistic ceremonies and formalisms.

Tantra is not a more recent version of those Vedic rituals.

Tantra’s esoteric practices had long been known in the society of sa’dhakas [spiritual aspirants]. Its theoretical portion was not as elaborate as that of the Vedas, which took years and years to memorize.