TI{8, TANTRA AND TI{E,

SPIRIT OF THE, -W.E,ST

What need is there for the Tantra whenwe have the Veda? In reply to this enquirythe commentator of the Tantra will tell youthat they meet the needs of the men of ourtimes, the need of the soul of that modern manwho seems to have cut himself off from tradi-tions and revelations and feels himself to be a

selfreliant inclividuality, a free being: we

Westernr:rs would express it as << self-con-sciousness r>.

We have indeed the impre,ssion that theTantra books speak above all to rhe Faustian,anti-mystical type of the new man, as Goetheconceived him; who wishes to base his innerexperiences cn the granitic foundations ofreality, courage, {reedom from prejudices.Even the love of the child {or the Mothermeans nuthing if it be not an act of will, thedonation of something organic one reallypossesses. Such devotion is, indeed, an aspect

of power. How can one give something one

has not got?These considerations lvere aroused in us on

seeing the beautiful new edition of the TantraTattua of Shriyukta Shiva Chandra VidyirnavaBhattachAryya Mahodaya, published under thetitle of Principles ,f Tarutra (Publishers:Ganesh & Co, Madras, L952, pp. 1200). As isknown, the Tantra-tattua, the systematicpresentation of the Tantra-sdsfro, was pub'lished forty years ago, edited by ArthurAvalon (Sir John

'Woodroffe) who had as

collaborators Shri Jnanendralal Maiumdir andShri BaradA KAnta Majumdir. This second

edition contains in one volume the two thenpuhlished and is still the basic text requiredfor an understanding of lhe 7'antra-shastra,thanks partly to the clear summary contained

in Arthur Avalon's introdur:tion. To him isdue the credit nf having, bv his subsequentessays and by the publication of the texts,enalrled the Western 'World to hecomeacquainted with the Tantra doctrines.

The central theme of the work is that of theSakti, that is to say, the theme of the pri-rnordial cosmic power. What is Saftri? Theusual idea man {orms of power is of somethingrelated to his mode of being and o{ knowing;but this mode, in so far as it is not possessed

in its full value, cannot be the measure ofpolver per se. It is evident that the Tantricsystem in which all the metaphysical con'ceptions of India converge and interpenetrate,frorn the antique Yedic ritualism to the recentVisnuite mysticism, brings a new element intothe world of tradition: the awareness of thechanges that have occurred in the inner mindof nran, in his Kali-yuga, and the intuitiono.[ a new type of spiritual actiyity.

It would seern that the Tantras possessed

that knowledge (which in the West lies at thefoundation oI -od".., philosophy) of the fallof the ancient metaphysical conceptions accord-irrg to which man is guided by the gods, hyrevelations, inspirations. The Gods now leaveman alone; he must stand by himself I he mustfulfil in himself and by his own unaidedefforts, the nature with which he has beenendowed from the beginning. Those who wishto turn back, follow << the path of the dead n,for they only unbury in themselves formerstates of rronsciousness, beyond which malf:

rnust now pass if he is to be himself ; it is theway of liberation. The Gods expect man totravel along that path: he is not to return toa state of dependence and passive remissive-

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ness? jrrstilierl only in anoient tirnes whenrnan was not yet really born as a personality(Siua), but lay immersed in the hosom of theMother (Sakti).

Gradually, as time passed hy, accompaniedhy r:orresponding revelations (the tratlitionalYoga), man acrluired an indepentlent perso-

nality; hut he paid for this individuality bythe ]o,ss of the ancient states of transcendentconsciousness. Man's experient,e hecotnes

rnore and more of this earth; it is rhe Kaliyur:a, the darh night that precedes dawn. Theancient Mother now leaves man alone in thesolitude of sensorial experience, for he rnustnow face the responsibilities of freedom. Antlit is just for this that the Mother must nowbe fountl again in the material world, theworld of sensation, in the physical body. Norr:an this rediscovery be made any longer as agift from the gods I it must be a free action, a

personal initiative taken hy man, somethinghe may decide to do, hut that he mav alsrrrefuse. This is the path of freedom; hut itis also the way for the rediscovery of theMother in conformity with a new Yoga, whichremains an impenetrable mystery for thosewho are immersetl in that traditionalism inwhich Tradition no longer flows. If it does

not flow it is because tradition may not lteconfined once and for all in rhis or lhat systemIit does not allow itself to be fixed in ritualisticforms, in human hahits and custom,s, for itsperennial and unchangeable character lies inits perpetual transmutations.

To find once more the Mother, the primaevalpower towards which human consciencetoday is immersed in a dreamless sleep: thisis the taslr to which the sat-cakra-sddhanapoints: the principle of consciousness itself , ofSiuc, rrrust be reached in its abode, thesahasrdracakra, whenee it will draw strengthto tlescend to the mitlildhdra-caltra, and joinwith the principle of creative power, theShakti,, slurnbering there in the form of theserpent, Kundalini.

The means for performing such a task isthat which, in Western terminology, would bedescribed as <<ah,solute immanence>. All formsof transcendency are now ahstractions for manlvho has no longer the direct perception ofthe Divine. That awareness from which thestart is made can not be replaced by intellectualpostulates which make no substantial changein the far:tual condition of human nature. Theawareness man already has, his physical

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constitution, his lrody, are the positive pointsfronr which the start is made. It is a questionof reconquering those modes of being in theiressence. If the foundations of the world arereally in the Divine, then the Divine will he

found there as a positive essence. Such is thepremise to the methotl taught lry rhe Tantra.

Their theory develops in conformity with a

doctrine of knowledge which does not seek

confirmation in itself hut in the method it im'plies. It is not, therefore, a tluestion of turn'ing back, of seeking for the corpse in oneself

- which is what is being done tinawaredly bythe West with psychoanalysis, analyticalpsyrholngy, of which such outstandingpersonalities as Shri Aurobindo and RamanaMaharshi have spoken with justified severity-- it is a cluestion of going forward, not ofinstilling fictitious life into that which is

deacl by recourse to means which are themsel-ves connected with dead things, but of re-suscitating it, taking possession of the essence

of one's own being, transmuting oneself .

According to the Tarutra << being > - in so

far as it is an exterior physical or superphysi-t:al reality - opposes thought in so far as

thought itself is opposed to being, that is tosay in so far as thought, una\Mare of the veryact by which it consecrates life, lives as anabstract function, detached from the centralfocus of the individual.

The Tantra thus conceive the reality ofbeing, not as proceeding from a principle re'ferahle to that reality, but as arising from therelations by which the Ego can appropriateit. What distinguishes the several formsof experience to which this gives rise, is thedegree of union existing betwen Siua andSdkti, that is to say the degree in which thedivine force becomes action.

Thus the purely intellectual or tlevotionalmethods of the previous schools are elimi-nated, making room for the conquest of themost deep seated centre of personality,which is the starting point along rhe pathleading to the possibility of dominating li{eand physical reality. The exterior order ofthings is in itself power, and the polver vestedin a thing does not depend on intellectualrecognition, i. e. reflected thought. flere,therefore, MAyA is not a value in itself but oneof the ways in which Sa/cri presents itself ; it is,therefore, Mdyd-Sakti. The jiaa may evenallow himself to conceive the world as

a play of illusions, a dream, a phantom;but this phantom will always be able to force

itself on hirn as llrute necessity, whatever hisnrental position may be. The 'Inntra, on theother hand, seek to acquire sure knowletlgeof principles from their corresponding results.The prnof of power is in its action. TheDivine Power itself , the Mother, becomesaction in all its forrns of manifestation, downto what may appear to be Maya I hut at eachdegree, as knowledge and action are one - ir

position of absolute immanence which in someway rerninds one by analogy of the 1)erum et

facutm cont)erturutur of Giovan Battista Vico

- it may be aroused again by the sddhaka.This arousing is neither the intellectualmovement of the Jff,6na-yoga, nor the idealistir:stand taken by the Veddnta; it is the reali-sation, the identification with the very powerof the Mother, the radical transmutation ofoneself , the resolving capacity of natura ruatu-rata, i.e. of that lower Prakrti which is con-stantly asserting itself as a necessity in ordinarypersons, even if in its nobler form, which isthe sattvica one.

The spectacle the world offers us is notsomething final and inexplicable in itself ,

except in so far as we see it take place lreforeus while we are unable to link it up withour inner decision: but what we have to re-alise is that we are not only the spectators llutalso and above all the actors responsible forthis spectacle. We must realize that thisspectacle is before us hecause it is the everr:hanging sum total nf our sensorial per-ceptions, and that to view this spectacle syste-matically, not as a r:onfu,sion of exterior nntesbut as a harmonious whole made up of manyelements - mineral, vegetable or animal -culminating in man. is in itself an act of themind. From the perception and the controlof this ,first immediate action of the spirit thepossihility of liherty arises; man begins toaequire freedom in the inner source of hisbeing, at the point in which his realisation ofhimself as a conscience and the at'.tual fact ofhis being, ooincide in a unity which is thepower process of the world. Here begins theunification of his soul with the very soul ofthe world, alluded to in the Tantra when theyspeak of the union of the deua (Siua) w\ththe deui (Sakti\: a union which realised in allits degrees by virtue of the Kunclalini-Sakti,is the final consummation of the sddhuna.

We do not secure liberation by ohedienee ttra law; for such a law, notwithstanding itsrnetaphysical nature, would still he a necessity,a l-rond, a condition - a chain o{ gold binds

no less than a chain of irorrl - we secure it hyidentifying ourselves with the principle {ronrwhich the laws arise. Those laws are needetlonly by the jiaa, the uninitiated, the non-free.who cannot stand by themselves, who c.annotfind in themselves the principle of their beingwhich is the principle of the world itself . TheTantra path is therefore an ati-dhdrmi,lt.

One cannot but perceive in this doctrine a

position surprisingly similar to that of Vesternphilosophic idealism, there where it tends tocast off not only all traditional metaphvsics,and all myths relating to a reality that stantlsapart? whether,sensorial or supersensorial, butto free itself even from the limits placed onknowledge by Emmanuel Kant, who, after allcontinued those myths, giving them a modernform. The path towards absolute immanencealong which Hegel started, thus getting lreyondall residual << realism >, all r:onceptions whiohsee in the world a realitv, whether physical orsuper-physical, independent of the individualwho contemplate,s it, unaware of this funda-mental ar:tion of his which is contemplation,this path which was pursued to its logicaloonse,quences hy Giovanni Gentile, is, even ifin reflected form and in the terminology ofWestern philosophy. sul:rstantially the same as

that which in the Tantra is looked on as themethodological premise.

Vestern itlealism, carried to its logical con-clusions, rnay be considered as introductory tothe metaphysics of the Tantra. Thought isseized at the moment when it becornes power,whep-.it arises continuously in the r:onsciencewithout preliminaries, a reason to itself alone;with no need of a logical reason or of a

previous thought to account for its being. Itis evident that when the spiritual seeher triesto translate into action this intuition ofidealism, carrying it beyond the mere plane ofphilosophical cognition, he will have to setaside argumentation anrl reasoning. Henr:e-forth the only path he can follow will be thatof concentration, rneditation, contemplation.Let us consitler the ultimate meaning of< thinking thought >: it can only hecomepractical experience through the possession ofthe act of thinking; ancl this can only be theresult of mental concentration. This is thediscovery that must be made. The spirit ofthe Vest seeks that of the East through thepositive cnnclusions to which it is led by itsown philosophic concept, hy the lucid visionof << tlrinking thought >>. Tlris postulate,s

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rneditation. [t is all a rnatter of peroeivingthis.

In the realisation of thinking thought, theWestern nlan rnay Legin to artluire the expe-rience of pure utill, in as much as he heginsto wish for something that is not required ofhim either by the laws of his physical naturenor by those of the abstract mental sphere. Inthis thought, desired for itself, antl in thiswill, set in motion by thought which is notsubject to the physico-psychic << nature >. it isevident that man begins to realise his shiuaicessence, that is to say his liherty which placeshirn beyond. all dharma. The final argumentof sound Western rhought - not of rhat r,r hichhas fallen into the blind alley of problema-tioism - entails for those of clear understand-ing and who are still in touch with the innermeaning of rhe phi,losophia perennis theurgent need of meditation, dhdrana, dhydna.

It is not easy to understand the value ofthis meditation; as the culminating point ofthe philosophical experience it does not implythe elimination of thought but its acquisitionon a higher level at which thought has not yettaken the form of logic (dialectics) nor has yetshut itsel{ in a conceptual form. Obviously,such an acquisition is only possible if that con-ceptual form, that dialectical logic, have beenpossessed and then solved. Otherwise, whilebelieving that one is meditating and contem-plating, one falls into a state of psychic illu-sionism, that is to say in mental states stilllinked to the dynamism of the nervous system.A mind still tied to the cerebral process, ri.e.conditioned by sensorial experiences, cannotgo, forward towards supersensorial experienceif it has not fi.rst realised in what way and inwhat shape it is tied to the corporeal world.

Any form of metaphysics, whether Easternor Western, that believes it can elude thecognitive function of thought, is foredoomeclto failure. Unfortunately, today it is usualamong those pursuing esoteric doctrines toturn to the Spiritual 'World, or to Tradition,or to the Yoga, in a frame of mind that takesno account of the changes that have occurredin the inner constitution of the modern manas compared to that of the man of antiquity towhom, when certain special conditions werepresent. Tradition spohe without need of anymediation.

A well cleflned < Spiritual object >, focussedin conformity with the rules of a subtleesoteric criticism, is the starting point, and as

it has been so clearly fixed one believes that

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one is advancing towards it; but one has notrealised that in order to enter into real com'munion with the super-sensorial, it is not theobject of knowledge that counts but the inneract aroused by that object. The object is onlya rneans, a pretext; it inay be a tree, the sun,Tradition, concept, any thing.

The Spiritual 'World is not to he soughtoutside of the meditative activity that seeks forit, for it is in, that activity that the SpiritualWorld ready, expresses itself . To think of itas an r< object )) that is somewhere waiting tobe known. and. that can therefore be knownor not, is an attitude of mind not dissimilarto that of the ingenuous realist who believeshe has before him as reality per se a ( ma-terial )), a (( nature )).

Tradition therefore cannot exist apart fromthe act of the mind that resuscitates; it in itself ;

it lives there alone. To believe that a

tradition exists which stands, before uslike a n thing >>, possessing a rnysterious aspectof its own which may even he identified, andthat therefore one can approach it or not, bewithin or outside of its << orthodoxy )), mean,s

that one has ingenuously mistaken an ohjector a motive of spiritual activity for that a. tivityitself ; this would be a sort of metaphysicalnaturalism. We have in mind more especiallythe position taken up by Ren6 Gu6non, anadmirable critic and exponent of doctrines,but certainly not one who points out the pathfor attaining the essential values that are sha-

dowed forth in those doctrines. The errorconsists in seeking for the spirit or the realityoutside of that inner activity in which thespirit begins to express itself.

Sakti, Siuo, primordial power, the transcen-d,ent Ego, the o priori essential principle ofheing, all that of which the mere conception,in terms familiar to the Western intellect,enabled Kant to conceive a new, even ifrestricted, vision of the world, in primis etante omnio, cannot be other than action,function, pure thought, inner activity, the Egoin the moment of meditation.

Kant began to falsify his initial intuitionwhen he tried to analyse the several forms ofopinions so as to derive categories from them.The'se categories, deduced from the analysis ofopinions so as to deduce from them categoriesThese categories, derived from the analysis ofopinions per se, considered as products ofthe mind, crystalised effects of the activity nfthought, could not but be and indeed turnedout to be nothing but abstract modalities

without the life of thought, yet ohliged to actthe part of spiritual functions. Categoriesindeedare not ways olthirukingbut expressionsof things thought, which themselves havethought as their premise. Kant did not realisethis, and therefore he oould not solve theproblem of gnosiology, but made it more com-plicated. He had to fix limits to oognition,thus preparing, in the field of philosophy, thesubjection of man to modern rcate,rialinm withall the catastrophic consequen:es tr.r hich ithas given and is still giving rise. .

The Tantra are certainly a highly rmodern

way of the Yoga; provided one really possesses

the key to them. That key will always remainlost for tho'se who see in the Tantra a systemthat will l.er realised as a result of the merefact of .lrnowing it; the lack of that knowledgebeing air obstacle to its realisation. TheTantra a.s. living metaphysics cannot be anobject of kno-'rledge, a mere philosophic effort,or a chance encounter. He who withoutknowing them, himself knows how to live theact of meditation should be held to be in touchwith their eternal e,ssence; provided ihe medi-tation is not studied and ahstract, determinedwithout the possession of the problem of value,carried on as the result of r< spiritual develrrp-ment )) through which egotism, decked out inascetic virtues, comes again to the fore. Themeditation required must be a process ofwhich one is master; it must be meditationper se, the living and unmistakable sign of thespirit in which the spirit itself is found.

Is it possible for thought that is unawareof its limits, of its deeply-rooted conformitywith sensorial experience to arrive at such a

meditation? It is not possible to evade the taskof a conversion cf force-thought which is a

elear prohlem of cognition and therefore, inthe first place, a problem of value, of aware-ness of what one really wants, and not theacceptance and practice of Tantra merelybecause one sympathises with their doctrinc.

It must be living meditation, not the abstractor intellectual or sentirnental cultivation of a

theme set for study, which always inevitablylinhs up mental activity to its instrument, thebrain. If the act of being is not itself an idealworld hut a mere category, and if - as theTanlra teach - a category is an inner ar:tion,how is it possible for the act of meditation tobe achieved otherwise than as the identity ofbeing and non-being, i,e. as oreation, i.e. as

power? This action that wells up within one,which presupposes nothing prior to itself, is

pure thought. It exists in so far as it is self-created, drawing on a universality that is com-plete in itself. It cannot exist until it is self-created. As soon as'it defines itself as <<being>>,

(catego,ry or concept)) it cease,s to be, it dies as

an abstraction or as knowledge. According toPlato, the essence of a rhing or of an ideaexists I but according to the new metaphysicsthe existence of a cogitatum in so far as it iscogitatio is always nascent; it creates itselffrom that nothing which is all; the measureof its existence is its infinite capacitv lo realiseitself . A truth, this, that leads us back to thecentral thought of the Tantra.

The opening out to the Sakti - accordingto Shri Aurohindo's modern interpretation ofthe Tantra - in which the bhaltti and, thesamarpana are nothing }ut mediating atti-tudes, leads up to identification with theMother, that is to the unutterable activity ofthe sddhana. In irs essence it must be recog-nised as a purely inner act; the recovery ofthe original spiritual life; it is an inner deepen-ing and strengthening that tends to the bhdaa,an expression that cannot be defined whichexpresses that state of perfect lucidity thanhsto which rhought surges up as being, beingper se, being expressed in things, in suchabsolute identity with them that the Ego antlthe world are one.

Through the process of Vestern philosophythe requirement of the bhava is postulated as

the ultimate term, represented as the achieve-ment of ( pure thought > or creative thoughtwhich will remain as a pure and motionlessmental intuition, unless the evolution ofphilosophy, which rakes place through theactivities of such great figures as Fichte,Schelling, Hegel, Gentile, conceives a thoughtwhose purpose is to accorr-rpany by its owndevelopment this spiritual aspect of worldhistory.

The positive response of the Orient to thisneed is given by the Tantra which point to thedhdrana and the dhydna as the paths leadingto the bhdaa.

Faithful to the principle that the spirit is a

reality, let us add that, thus understood, thepoint of contact between East and West, soonerthan in the sphere of politics or sociology orculture, can be found in the ,soul of man, whowill be fit for it in so for as he finds in himselfthe sacred source of meditation.

Massimo Scaligero