![]() This led me to reflect and understand that the purpose of life is to develop this capacity to receive unauthored and impersonal wisdom and hold it. Tagore famously scripted “All that belongs to you, you will receive if you develop the capacity to hold it”. The knowledge systems of Agama and Nigama have no beginning and no end and have always existed since ’anadi’ i.e eternity, and are eternally existent, ‘nitya’ they have always been there and they will always be there! I learned this eternally existent knowledge is also ‘apaurusheya’ meaning it is unauthored and impersonal in nature and beyond subjective interpretation and is revealed as spiritual wisdom to those that have developed the capacity to receive it. Agama is considered to be spoken by Shiva and listened to by Shakti and Nigama is believed to have been spoken by Shakti and listened to by Shiva. Agama refers in literal terms to ‘that which has come down from eternity’. Nigama corresponds to the Vedic literature that goes hand in hand with Agama. Agama corresponds to the extensive literature of Tantric procedures, rituals, temple construction, energy work and maintenance etc. The vast body of knowledge has mainly been passed down as ‘Agama’ and ‘Nigama’. Ancient traditions have been passed down through various schools of lived experiences. What I understood is that Tantra is a vast body of methods that are employed to expand human consciousness into the universal consciousness. ![]() In fact, majority of rituals used in the Vedic traditions in contemporary times are Tantric in nature. One has to come face to face with their shadows, and engage with inner darkness through meditation, japa, kriya, mudra, nyasa, yajna and other appropriate rituals. Generally, Tantra is considered the most difficult path of spiritual progress as the sadhaka has to engage with life in entirety. Tantra is an ancient thread of human evolution that embraces physicality, sexuality, emotional upheaval, turmoil, trauma and confusion commonly known as ‘paapa’ and creates space for human consciousness to break through and emerge out of darkness. The practice of duality to ultimately reach equanimity in non-duality is characteristic of tantra. The plethora of experiences a human goes through are considered all valid and real allowing for several highs and lows to occur so ultimately the highs and lows of human experience fade away paving way for equanimity to set in and to understand that there are no highs and lows! A natural progression from duality and physicality towards phenomenological understanding of perception and co-creation is fundamental to tantra. The human condition is accepted as is in all its flaws and fatalities and movement towards divinity is made possible through physicality. There is nothing that is polluted or out of bound in Tantra essentially, Tantra is laid on the foundation that what binds you is what releases you! Hence, desire, fear, anger, guilt, shame, overcompensation, attachment and grief are all embraced with equal fervour. On the outset, tantra does not shun the physicality and nature of existence. There is no one way of spiritual righteousness in the Indian traditions and it creates immense heterogeneity and acceptance of a wide variety of belief systems and practices. Every human being has the right to choose his or her spiritual path there are as many paths as there are people…to each his or her own! ![]() I have travelled to over 500 temples across India understanding what is it that a temple does? Why it exists and what happens there? Who and what is a deity, Is the deity a god…and what does this all mean? Some questions crop up in general: Why are there so many spiritual disciplines if all of them lead to the same goal? Which was propounded first: Vedanta or Tantra? Among them, which is better? While there seems to be very little criticism of Vedanta, why is Tantra widely criticized? In answer to the first set of questions we may say that this is distinctive of the Indian spiritual tradition. So, then what is Tantra? I started my journey understanding Tantra from the South of India in Kerala in 2016 and ended up learning about it all the way to the Himalayas and then in Eastern India by end of 2019. The same subjective layering of fear and confusion have warped the story of tantra. As a result, stories that are misconceptions and sometimes, a total misrepresentation of the concept and entity become popular. ![]() These are some of the many comments that motivated me to write about Tantra! I realized people just listen to what others are expounding and add their layers of fear and confusion in relation to things they do not understand. ![]() “ Tantra is bad” … “ Isn’t tantra harmful?”…. ![]()
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