Insight Editions · No. 349
Introduction to Tantra Sastra
The Key to the Sakta Tantras
Sir John Woodroffe (Arthur Avalon)
Woodroffe's classic map of the Sakta Tantra, first written as the Introduction to his 1913 Mahanirvana Tantra: Siva and Sakti, the gunas, worlds and ages, the five sheaths, nadis and cakras, the three temperaments, guru and initiation, mantra, yantra, nyasa, the pancatattva, yoga and Kundalini, karma and the four aims. Every section and list in full, with critical notes.
A study guide to Introduction to Tantra Sastra by Sir John Woodroffe (Arthur Avalon), first published as the Introduction to the Mahanirvana Tantra (1913) and issued separately by Ganesh and Co., Madras. Shared free for personal reading; not for sale and not endorsed by the publishers. Please read and buy the original.
CORE CLAIM
The Tantra is the scripture for the Kali age: a practical sastra resting on the Veda, teaching that reality is Siva-Sakti, that the body is a copy of the cosmos, and that practice must fit the person. Desire, body and imagination are used, under a guru, as the road to liberation in life.
SCOPE
All twenty-five sections of the book in Woodroffe's order, from Mount Kailasa to Siddhi, with every list in full (sheaths, vayus, cakras and their letters, bonds, acaras, abhisekas, upacaras, satkarma, kumbhakas, samadhis), a glossary and a master synthesis: about 33,000 words.
KEY FIGURES
Sir John Woodroffe (Arthur Avalon), his collaborator Atal Behari Ghose, the commentators Jaganmohana Tarkalamkara and Bhaskararaya; texts cited include the Mahanirvana, Kularnava, Gheranda Samhita, Sat-cakra-nirupana and Tantrasara.
BEST FOR
Readers who want one map of the whole Sakta-Tantric system before reading The Serpent Power or Shakti and Shakta, with clear notes on where Woodroffe writes as advocate and where modern scholarship differs.
How to Use This Edition
Introduction to Tantra Sastra is not a separate book in origin. It is the long Introduction that Sir John Woodroffe (writing as Arthur Avalon) placed in front of his 1913 translation of the Mahanirvana Tantra, the "Tantra of the Great Liberation". Ganesh and Co. of Madras first issued it on its own in 1952, and it has stayed in print ever since because it does something no other short text of its time did: it explains, in plain English and from inside the tradition, what a Tantric practitioner believes about God, the world, the body and practice, and why the rites look the way they do.
Read this way, the book is a map of the whole Sakta-Tantric system in twenty-five stations. It begins on Mount Kailasa, where Siva teaches Parvati, and moves down through metaphysics (Siva and Sakti, the gunas), cosmology (the worlds, their inhabitants, the ages), social order (caste and the stages of life), subtle anatomy (sheaths, nadis, cakras), the three temperaments, the guru, initiation, every major branch of worship (mantra, yantra, mudra, nyasa, the five elements of the Kaula rite), yoga, karma, the four aims of life and finally siddhi, success.
This edition follows Woodroffe's order exactly. For each section it gives:
- The core argument: what Woodroffe is establishing and how.
- Every list in full: when he names seven acaras, ten mahavidyas, six cakras or eight limbs, all of them are here with what each means.
- Insight boxes: the point that is subtle, easily missed, or that links one section to another.
- Critical lens boxes: where Woodroffe writes as an apologist, where his dating or history is out of date, or where modern scholarship reads the material differently.
- Key terms and short reflection prompts.
Why This Book Matters
Before Woodroffe, the English-reading world knew Tantra mainly through missionaries and orientalists who called it the degenerate underside of Hinduism: sorcery, sex and wine. Woodroffe, a judge of the Calcutta High Court (1904 to 1922) and later Reader in Indian Law at Oxford, set out to show that the Tantras contain a coherent philosophy of power and consciousness and a disciplined method. He did this with the help of Indian scholars, above all Atal Behari Ghose, and of his own Bengali guru Sivacandra Vidyarnava. This short book is where that case is first made in full.
The Shape of the Book in One Page
| Block | Sections | What it establishes |
|---|---|---|
| Setting | Mount Kailasa | The text is a dialogue of Siva and Parvati; the true Kailasa is the crown lotus in every body |
| Metaphysics | Siva and Sakti; Guna | One Brahman with and without power; the Goddess as that power; the three gunas as the substance of nature |
| Cosmos | Worlds; Inhabitants; Varna; Asrama; Macrocosm and Microcosm; The Ages; Scriptures of the Ages | Fourteen worlds mapped onto the spine; beings graded by how far spirit is veiled; social order relaxed for Tantra; the Kali age and its scripture, the Tantra |
| The body | The Human Body (sheaths, nadis, cakras); The Three Temperaments | Five sheaths, three main channels, six cakras and the crown; pasu, vira and divya natures |
| Entry | Guru and Sisya; Diksa; Abhiseka; Sadhana | Who may teach, who may learn, how power is transmitted |
| Practice | Worship (seven acaras, mantra, Gayatri, yantra, mudra, samdhya, puja, yajna, vrata, tapas, japa, samskara, purascarana, bhuta-suddhi, nyasa, pancatattva, cakrapuja) | The full ritual toolkit |
| Yoga | Yoga (the seven means, the forms of samadhi, satcakra-bheda) | How Kundalini is raised and union achieved |
| Ethics and aims | Sin and Virtue; Karma; Four Aims of Being; Siddhi | Morality, rebirth, dharma, artha, kama, moksa; what "success" means |
Who wrote what. "Arthur Avalon" was for decades taken to be Woodroffe alone. Kathleen Taylor's study Sir John Woodroffe, Tantra and Bengal: "An Indian Soul in a European Body?" (2001) showed that much of the Sanskrit work behind the Avalon books came from Atal Behari Ghose and other Bengali collaborators, and that "Avalon" functioned partly as a joint name. Woodroffe himself later wrote that the pseudonym covered work done with others. When this edition says "Woodroffe", read it as "Woodroffe and his circle".
Mount Kailasa: The Setting of the Revelation
The Mahanirvana Tantra opens on Kailasa, Siva's mountain in the Himalaya, where Parvati asks and Siva answers. Woodroffe uses the setting to make his first and most characteristic move: the outer geography is real and holy, but its true location is inside the body.
The Sacred Himalaya
Woodroffe gives the outer picture with care, because pilgrims still walk it:
- The Himalaya ("Abode of Snow") is the land of the Sapta-Kula-Parvata, the seven great mountain chains, and the setting of early Aryan legend.
- He names sites associated with epic heroes: caves at Bhimudiyar where the Pandavas and Draupadi rested, and the grove of Asoka trees where Rama and Sita stayed, at the meeting of the Kosi and the Sita.
- It is the field (ksetra) of Siva Mahadeva, the birthplace of Parvati, "daughter of the Mountain King", and the source of Mother Ganges.
- The three great shrines are Gangotri (source of the Ganges), Kedarnath (a Saiva temple kept by the Jangama ascetics, one of the five Panchkedar with Tungnath, Rudranath, Madhmahesvar and Kalpesvar) and Badrinath (sacred to Visnu, who descended there in his tortoise form, Kurma).
- At Kangri, pilgrims circle Mount Kailasa (Tibetan Kang Rinpoche), north-west of the sacred lake Manasarowar (Mapham Yum-tso).
Kailasa is described as a summerland of sunshine and shade, birdsong, undying flowers and the music of celestial singers. It is Gana-parvata, crowded with spirits (devayoni), as the first chapter of the Tantra says. Beyond it rises Mount Meru, the centre of the world-lotus. Woodroffe quotes the Skanda Purana: whoever merely thinks of the Himalaya is greater than one who performs all worship in Kasi (Benares), and the sins of mankind dry up at its sight "as the dew is dried up by the morning sun".
The Inner Kailasa
Then the turn. It is not necessary to go to the Himalayan Kailasa to find Siva. Following the Kularnava Tantra, Siva lives wherever his worshippers who know Kula-tattva live. His mystic mountain is the thousand-petalled lotus (sahasrara-padma) at the crown of every human body, which is therefore called Siva-sthana, "the place of Siva". The Yogini Tantra says it outright: "the place of the Guru is Kailasa".
This is the hermeneutic key to the whole book. Every outer object in Tantra, a mountain, a river, a goddess, a sexual rite, has an inner counterpart in the body and in consciousness, and the practice consists in moving from the outer to the inner without throwing the outer away. Kailasa in Tibet and Kailasa at the crown are not rivals. The first is a support for reaching the second.
How the Teaching Is Transmitted
- Siva publishes his teaching in works called Yamala, Damara, the Siva-Sutra (on which the Siva-Sutra-Vimarsini comments) and the Tantras.
- The Tantras take the form of dialogues between the Deva and his Sakti, the Devi as Parvati.
- According to the Gayatri Tantra, Ganesa first preached the Tantras to the spirits on Kailasa after receiving them from Siva's mouth.
- In the Mahanirvana, the Devi is the disciple and Siva the teacher. A Tantra in this form is called an Agama. (When the roles are reversed and the Devi teaches, the text is a Nigama.)
| Key term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Kailasa | Siva's mountain; inwardly the crown lotus |
| Sahasrara-padma | The thousand-petalled lotus at the crown |
| Siva-sthana | "Place of Siva", a name for the crown |
| Kula-tattva | The doctrine of the Kula, the Kaula path |
| Agama | A Tantra in which Siva teaches the Devi |
| Devayoni | Classes of celestial spirits |
Reflection. Name one "outer" sacred place or practice in your own life. What would its inner counterpart be, in Woodroffe's sense?
Siva and Sakti: The One and Its Power
This is the doctrinal centre of the book. Woodroffe sets out how a single, actionless Absolute can also be the active source of an endless world, and he answers with the Sakta formula: Brahman and its power (Sakti) are one, and the Goddess is that power.
Brahman Without and With Prakrti
The Para-brahman is the eternal, unchanging existence that transcends even the fourth state (turiya). It is:
- niskala: without kala, that is, without Prakrti (nature);
- nirguna: without the gunas, Prakrti's qualities;
- the inner Self and knowing subject, which therefore can never be an object of knowledge. It is grasped only through yoga, by atma-jnana, the realisation of the Self, which it is. "Spirit alone can know Spirit."
Because it is beyond mind and speech, it was named simply Tat, "That", and Tat Sat, "That which is". The sun, moon and stars are only "a glimpse of light caught from That".
Brahman is both niskala and sakala. When thought of without Prakrti it is niskala and nirguna; when thought of with Prakrti it is sakala and saguna, since the substance of Prakrti is the three gunas. Woodroffe's sources are the Sarada-tilaka and the Saktananda-tarangini.
Even in the niskala state, Sakti exists in it potentially, along with the whole universe it will produce. But Woodroffe immediately warns that "Sakti exists in Brahman" is only a manner of speaking. Brahman and Sakti are in fact one, and Sakti is beginningless (anadi-rupa). She is:
- Brahma-rupa, of the nature of Brahman;
- both viguna (nirguna) and saguna;
- the Caitanya-rupini Devi, Goddess whose form is consciousness, who manifests all beings;
- the Anandarupini Devi, Goddess whose form is bliss, by whom Brahman manifests itself;
- the power that, in the Sarada's image, pervades the universe as oil pervades the sesame seed.
"May I Be Many"
In the beginning the niskala Brahman alone existed. "It willed and became many": Aham bahu syam, "May I be many". Sruti says Sa aiksata, "He saw" or "He thought". Woodroffe insists that this first thought was itself a manifestation of Sakti, the Paramapurva-nirvana-sakti.
In its manifestation, Brahman is the lower (apara) or manifested Brahman: the object of worship, meditated on with attributes. To the mind and senses of the embodied soul (jiva), Brahman really does have body and form. It is embodied in all gods and goddesses, in the worshipper himself, and in the universe and everything in it.
The Sequence of Emergence: Sakti, Nada, Bindu
Woodroffe then gives the standard Tantric account of the first stirrings, drawn from the Sarada-tilaka and from Kalicarana's commentary on the Sat-cakra-nirupana (which he later translated in The Serpent Power). The Sarada's verse runs: "From the Paramesvara vested with the wealth of Saccidananda and with Prakrti issued Sakti; from Sakti came Nada; from Nada Bindu was born."
| Stage | What it is |
|---|---|
| Paramesvara (sakala) | The Supreme Lord with Prakrti, being-consciousness-bliss |
| Sakti | Power turned towards manifestation |
| Nada | Siva-Sakti as the "Word" or primal sound |
| Bindu (Para-bindu) | The concentrated point from which the universe will burst |
The Para-bindu
- Kalicarana says Siva and Nirvana-Sakti, bound in a covering of maya, should be thought of as existing as Param Bindu, the supreme point.
- The subtle body called Kama-kala is the root of mantra. When the Devi is called mula-mantratmika, "whose self is the root mantra", the reference is to this Kama-kala body (Bhaskararaya on the Lalita-sahasranama, verse 36).
- The Tantra speaks of three Bindus: Siva-maya, Sakti-maya and Siva-Sakti-maya.
- The Para-bindu is drawn as a circle. Its centre is the brahma-pada, the place of Brahman, where Prakrti and Purusa are; its circumference is encircling maya.
Its Location in the Crown
Woodroffe gives the exact inner address, which reappears in The Serpent Power:
- In the pericarp of the thousand-petalled lotus are the Guru and the Hamsah, and the Sun-circle (Surya-mandala).
- Above the Sun-circle is the Moon-circle (Candra-mandala).
- Within it is Ama-kala, the sixteenth digit of the moon, which neither waxes nor wanes.
- Within Ama-kala is Nirvana-kala, the seventeenth.
- On Nirvana-kala rests the Bindu. Next to it is the fiery Bodhini or Nibodhika.
- Bindu, Nirvana-kala, Nibodhika and Ama-kala lie inside a lightning-like inverted triangle called "A-Ka-Tha".
The A-Ka-Tha Triangle
The triangle is named from the letters at its corners: A at the apex, Ka at the right base, Tha at the left. Its three sides are made of 48 letters (matrka): the 16 vowels from A to Ka; 16 consonants from Ka to Tha; the remaining 16 from Tha back to A. Inside are the last three letters, ha, la and ksa. Because the Devi's substance is the letters (matrkamayi), the triangle represents the "Word" of all that exists. It is itself encircled by the Moon-circle. The Devi Purana adds that Kundalini is so named because she has the triangular srngataka form, its three angles being will, knowledge and action (icchha, jnana, kriya).
The Grain of Gram
The Bindu is compared to a grain of gram (canaka): a single seed under one husk that, opened, is two halves. This Para-bindu is Prakrti-Purusa, Siva-Sakti. It is the Sabda-brahman, "Sound Brahman", or Apara-brahman. Then:
- A polarisation of the Siva and Sakti principles takes place.
- The Devi becomes Unmukhi: her face turns towards Siva.
- An unfolding bursts the shell of Maya, and creation follows by the division of Siva and Sakti, of "Ham" and "Sah".
- The Sarada says the Para-sakti-maya divides again into Bindu, Bija and Nada: Bindu is of the nature of Siva, Bija of Sakti, and Nada is the relation between the two.
- Before the shell burst there arose an indistinct sound (avyaktatma ravo'bhavat). This avyakta-nada is both the first and the last state of Nada, depending on whether one looks from evolution or involution.
Nada in Three States
Following Raghava-bhatta, Nada contains the three gunas, and its state depends on which predominates:
| Predominant guna | Form of Nada | Character |
|---|---|---|
| Tamas | Nibodhika (Bodhini) | A merely indistinct, unmanifest sound, dhvani |
| Rajas | Nada | A sound with something like an arrangement of letters |
| Sattva | Bindu | Fully formed |
Rajas acting on tamas veils; rajas acting on its own arranges; the arrangement is perfected when sattva, the manifesting guna, emerges.
The Triads: Fire, Moon, Sun
Nada, Bindu and Nibodhika, and the Saktis they express, are said to be Sun, Moon and Fire. Woodroffe explains each pairing:
- Jnana (spiritual wisdom) is Fire, because it burns up all action. When the cause and effect of action are truly known, action ceases. Tamas is associated with it. (He notes that jnana is the knowledge that liberates; all other knowledge is vijnana.)
- Iccha (will) is the Moon, because the moon holds the sixteenth digit, Ama-kala, with its nectar that neither waxes nor wanes, and will is the eternal forerunner of creation.
- Kriya (action) is the Sun: as the sun makes everything visible, without action and striving there is no realisation or manifestation. "As one Sun makes manifest all the lokas" (Gita).
The Sabda-brahman therefore shows itself as three energies: knowledge, will and action, linked to tamas, sattva and rajas. From the Para-bindu issue three divine pairs:
| Sakti | Deity | Form | Activity |
|---|---|---|---|
| Raudri | Rudra | Fire (vahni) | Knowledge (jnana) |
| Vama | Visnu | Sun | Action (kriya) |
| Jyestha | Brahma | Moon | Desire, will (iccha) |
The Vamakesvara Tantra says Tripura is threefold as Brahma, Visnu and Isa, and as the energies of desire, wisdom and action: will when Brahman would create; wisdom when she reminds him, "Let this be thus"; action when, knowing, he acts. Hence the Devi is Iccha-sakti-jnana-sakti-kriya-sakti-svarupini (Lalita, verse 130).
The Septenary of Para-Siva and the Five Corpses
Para-Siva exists as a sevenfold series:
- Sambhu, "associate of time" (Kala-bandhu);
- Sada-Siva, who pervades and manifests all;
- Isana;
- Rudra,
- Visnu and
- Brahma, each with his Sakti, linked to tamas, sattva and rajas;
(Woodroffe counts Para-Siva as the head of the septenary.) Without their Saktis these gods "avail nothing". The Kubjika Tantra says bluntly: "Not Brahma, Visnu, Rudra create, maintain or destroy; but Brahmi, Vaisnavi, Rudrani. Their husbands are as but dead bodies."
The last triad with Isana and Sada-Siva make the five Sivas, called collectively the Maha-preta ("great corpse"), whose seed-syllable is Hsauh. In the famous image, four of them form the legs and the fifth the seat of the bed on which the Devi is united with Parama-Siva, in a room of cintamani (wish-fulfilling) stone, on a jewelled island of kadamba trees in the Ocean of Ambrosia (Anandalahari of Sankaracarya, verse 8; Rudrayamala). Other texts make the bed Siva, the pillow Mahesana, the mat Sadasiva and the four legs Brahma, Hari, Rudra and Isana. The Devi is therefore called Pancha-preta-mancadhisayini, "she who lies on the couch of five corpses" (Lalita, verse 174).
The "five corpses" image is the Sakta doctrine in a single picture. The male gods are inert without power. Siva without the "i" (Sakti) is sava, a corpse. Everything that acts, creates, preserves or destroys is the Goddess. This is why, in Sakta worship, the Devi stands or sits on a supine Siva, and why Woodroffe can say the Tantra is the scripture of the Mother.
Sakti as Maya and Mula-prakrti
Siva has many names in the text (Sambhu, Sada-Siva, Samkara, Mahesvara), each naming a particular state or quality of the One in its descent; Sada-Siva, for example, marks the predominance of sattva. The Siva Purana (ch. 69) and the Anusasana Parvan of the Mahabharata (ch. 17) each list 1,008 names.
Sakti is two things at once:
- Maya: the power by which Brahman, creating, appears to be other than it really is. The Devi Purana defines it as what gives "unthought-of fruit, which in this world seems like magic or a dream".
- Mula-prakrti: the unmanifest (avyakta) root of everything that, when manifest, is the world of name and form. It is the so-called "material cause", the equilibrium of the three gunas: sattva (what manifests), rajas (what acts), tamas (what veils and produces inertia).
The gunas represent nature as the revelation of spirit (sattva), nature as the passage between spirit and matter (rajas), and nature as the dense veil of spirit (tamas). The Devi is guna-nidhi, "treasure-house of the gunas".
How Creation Proceeds
Mula-prakrti is the womb into which Brahman casts the seed (Gita, ch. 14). The womb thrills to the movement of rajas; the equilibrium breaks; the gunas in varied combinations evolve the universe under the illumination of Siva (cit), ruled by Mahesvara and Mahesvari.
The polarity of Siva and Sakti pervades everything and is present in every human body as the Svayambhu-linga of the muladhara with the Devi Kundalini coiled around it.
Kundalini First Introduced
- The Sabda-brahman takes the form of Kundalini in the human body and is present in all pranis (breathing creatures). In the form of letters it appears in prose and verse.
- Kundala means "coiled"; Kundalini is "she who is coiled", like a serpent.
- She is the luminous vital energy (jiva-sakti) that manifests as prana.
- She sleeps in the muladhara in three and a half coils, matching the three and a half bindus of the Kubjika Tantra.
- A striking folk-yogic sign: when, with the ears closed, her hissing is no longer heard, death is near.
The Sankhya-Style Evolution of the Tattvas
Woodroffe then runs through the creations in the Sankhya-Puranic manner:
- Avyakta, the unmanifest;
- Mahat, with the three gunas distinct;
- Ahamkara (selfhood), threefold: vaikarika (sattvika), taijasa (rajasika), bhutadika (tamasika);
- to 6. The three ahamkaras count as the fourth, fifth and sixth creations, called prakrta.
From bhutadika ahamkara come the subtle essences (tanmatra) of ether, air, fire, water, earth, linked to sound, touch, sight, taste, smell, and to the colours transparency, syama (dark), red, white, yellow. From the threefold ahamkara also come the senses (indriyas) and their presiding deities: Dik, Vata, Arka, Pracetas, Vahni, Indra, Upendra, Mitra and the Asvins. The schools differ on which form produces what.
Their products form the vaikrta creation: plants with an upward life current, animals with a horizontal one, and bhutas, pretas and the like with a downward one. The prakrta and vaikrta together are the kaumara creation.
The Goddess and Her Forms
The Devi is the great Sakti:
- Maya, because the maya that produces samsara is hers; as Lord of maya she is Mahamaya. Without maya she is nirguna, with maya saguna.
- Avidya because she binds, Vidya because she liberates.
- Prakrti, and, as existing before creation, Adya, the primordial Sakti.
- Vacaka-sakti, the manifestation of Cit in Prakrti, and Vacya-sakti, Cit itself.
- Sri-mata, Brahman in its mother aspect, creatrix and nourisher of the worlds.
The Atma should be contemplated as Devi (Devi-bhagavata). Kali says in the Yogini Tantra: "I am of the form of Saccidananda; I am Brahman, of shining light."
She is called Ambika, the Great Mother, "sprung from the sacrificial hearth of the fire of the grand consciousness", decked with sun and moon; and Lalita, "she who plays", whose play is world-play, whose eyes, playing like fish in the waters of her face, open and shut with the appearance and disappearance of countless worlds.
Three Forms of the Mother
| Form | Description |
|---|---|
| Para (supreme) | Beyond all form; "of which none knows" (Visnu-yamala) |
| Suksma (subtle) | Consisting of mantra |
| Sthula (gross) | With hands, feet and so on, as in the hymns; given because "the mind cannot easily settle on the formless" |
She has both male and female forms, and the Saktananda-tarangini insists there is no eunuch form of God. But she is chiefly contemplated in female forms, because, as the Candi says, "all women in all the worlds are thy forms". Woodroffe notes that the Tantrika, "more than all men, recognises the divinity of woman", an observation already made centuries earlier by the author of the Dabistan, and that the Linga Purana declares "all things indicated by words in the feminine gender are manifestations of Devi".
He then quotes the hymns' description of her body without embarrassment: the "Sapphire Devi" with slender waist, full breasts and heavy hips. He explains that these features are emblems of her great motherhood, for she is Sri-mata.
The Many Goddesses
As Mahadevi she exists as Sarasvati, Laksmi, Gayatri, Durga, Tripura-sundari, Annapurna and every Devi who is an avatara of Brahman. As Sati, Uma, Parvati and Gauri she is Siva's spouse.
The Ten Mahavidyas
Before Daksa's sacrifice, Sati showed herself to Siva in ten forms, the dasa-mahavidya, to show her power when he refused her permission to attend her father's rite:
- Kali
- Bagala
- Chinnamasta
- Bhuvanesvari
- Matangini
- Sodasi
- Dhumavati
- Tripurasundari
- Tara
- Bhairavi
(Woodroffe lists Sodasi and Tripurasundari separately here; many lists treat them as one goddess and add Kamala. He points readers to Prasanna Kumara Sastri's Dasa-mahavidya-upasana-rahasya for their yantras and mantras.)
The Pithas
At Daksa's sacrifice Sati gave up her life in shame at her father's insult to her husband. Siva took her body and wandered distraught with grief. To save the world from the evil that grew while his divine control was withdrawn, Visnu cut the body with his discus into fifty-one pieces. Where they fell are the fifty-one maha-pitha-sthana, where the Devi is worshipped with her Bhairava under various names. (The number is variously 50, 51 or 52.)
Besides her forms in the cosmos (brahmanda), she has her subtle form Kundalini in the body (pindanda). She is one and many, "as one moon reflected in countless waters" (Brahma-bindu Upanisad). She is in animals and inorganic things; the universe is only a part of her.
Worship Leads to the Self
All gods and all life are worshipful only as her manifestations. Whoever worships them otherwise is, in the Devi-bhagavata's image, "like a man who, with a clear lamp in his hands, yet falls into some waterless and terrible well". The Saktananda-tarangini warns: whoever thinks Para-brahman, Devi, Siva and the gods different from one another "goes to hell".
Worship has three grades:
- External worship;
- Sadhara (internal worship "with support"), in which the Devi is worshipped in a form made of sacred syllables as the guru instructs;
- Niradhara (worship "without support"), for which one qualifies only after the first two. Here pure intelligence is the Supreme Sakti worshipped as the very Self, the Witness freed from the glamour of the manifold. By direct experience of Mahesvari as the Self she is made the object of the worship that leads to liberation.
Woodroffe's metaphysics in five steps. (1) There is one Reality, Brahman. (2) Considered without its power it is niskala, nirguna, beyond thought. (3) Its power, Sakti, is not a second thing but Brahman as active; she is the Goddess. (4) Sakti unfolds as Nada, Bindu, the three energies, the gunas and the tattvas, and lives in the body as Kundalini. (5) Worship moves from the gross form, through the mantra form, to the recognition that the worshipped Sakti is the worshipper's own Self.
Woodroffe presents this as "the" Tantric doctrine. It is in fact a Bengali Sakta synthesis, heavily shaped by Advaita Vedanta and by late texts such as the Sarada-tilaka (c. 11th century), the Sat-cakra-nirupana (16th century) and Bhaskararaya (18th century). Earlier Saiva Tantras, and the Kashmiri non-dual schools, frame the same material differently: they usually treat the world as real power (sakti) rather than as maya in the Vedantic sense. Woodroffe's later books (Shakti and Shakta, The World as Power) argue precisely that Sakta doctrine is not Sankara's illusionism; here, in 1913, he still uses Vedantic language freely.
| Key term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Niskala / sakala | Without / with Prakrti |
| Nirguna / saguna | Without / with qualities |
| Sabda-brahman | Brahman as sound, the source of mantra |
| Nada, Bindu, Bija | Primal sound, concentrated point, seed |
| Kama-kala | The subtle body of the Devi, root of mantra |
| Matrka | The "little mothers", the letters of the alphabet |
| Mula-prakrti | Unmanifest root nature, equilibrium of the gunas |
| Maha-preta | The five Sivas as the "great corpse" couch |
| Dasa-mahavidya | The ten Wisdom Goddesses |
| Pitha | A seat of the Devi where part of Sati's body fell |
| Niradhara | Worship without external support |
Reflection. Woodroffe says the Absolute "can never be the object of cognition" because it is the knower. Try for one minute to make your own awareness into an object. What happens?
Guna: The Three Strands of Nature
Woodroffe opens bluntly: current explanations of the gunas do not give a clear understanding, yet the subject is one of the chief keys both to Indian philosophy and to the principles of sadhana. His section is an attempt to fix that.
Gunas Are Substance, Not "Qualities"
Guna is usually translated "quality", for lack of a better word. But the three gunas are Prakrti's very substance. Everything that issues from her is trigunatmaka, made of the same three gunas in different relations.
| Guna | Function | Static or dynamic |
|---|---|---|
| Sattva | To reveal | Static |
| Rajas | To make active | Dynamic |
| Tamas | To suppress | Static |
Sattva and tamas can neither reveal nor suppress until rajas activates them. The gunas work by mutual suppression.
Equilibrium and the Scale of Beings
Avyakta-prakrti, the unmanifest Devi, is the stable equilibrium of the gunas. When it is disturbed the manifest universe appears, and in every object one guna is uppermost. Woodroffe then grades all beings:
| Class | Sattva | Rajas | Tamas |
|---|---|---|---|
| Devas and those near the divya state | Predominant | Much reduced (in independent action) | Much reduced |
| Human beings | Considerably active | Great independent activity | Less reduced than in Devas, much more than in animals |
| Animals | Considerably less active | Less independent than in man, more than in plants | Much less than in plants |
| Plants | Less | Less | More preponderant |
| Inorganic matter | Suppressed | Activates tamas to suppress sattva and itself | Dominant |
The upward movement from tamas to sattva is the spiritual progress of the jivatma. Even within one class, individuals differ: one man is sattvik (Tantric divya-bhava), another rajasik (vira-bhava), a third tamasik (a pasu). The mineral world is more tamasik than the vegetable, and even minerals may differ among themselves.
What Each Guna Really Means
Sattva
Sattva comes from sat, "that which eternally exists", which is also Cit (pure intelligence) and Ananda (bliss). In a secondary sense sat means "good", and sattva is commonly rendered "good quality". That rendering obscures the root meaning: sattva is good because it produces good and happiness, but primarily sat is that which reveals. Nature is a revelation of spirit; where it reveals, it manifests as sattva. Woodroffe's example: a pregnant woman is called antahsattva, "with sattva inside", because a jiva whose characteristic guna is sattva is living hidden within her.
Tamas
Nature also veils spirit, sometimes so densely that the ignorant cannot see the spirit at all. Where nature veils, it is tamas. It is called inertia because that is the effect of veiling; in the moral sphere it becomes ignorance and sloth.
Rajas
Nature is also a bridge: of descent from spirit to matter and of ascent from matter to spirit. Where it is a bridge, it is rajas, generally called activity, and in feeling, passion.
Woodroffe's image: sattva is the light of nature, tamas its shade, and rajas a blended tint oscillating between them. Every object contains a mirror of spirit (sattva), a veil over spirit (tamas), and a vehicle of movement (rajas). Read this way, the gunas are not moral labels but degrees of transparency.
The Aim of Tantric Sadhana
The object of Tantric sadhana is to make sattva preponderant by the aid of rajas. This is the one-line definition of the whole method: Tantra does not try to suppress activity (rajas) but uses it to lift sattva.
How the Gunas Shape Rebirth
- The subtle body (linga-sarira) contains buddhi, ahamkara, manas and the ten senses. It creates gross bodies suited to the soul's spiritual state.
- Under prarabdha karma (karma already ripening), buddhi becomes tamasik, rajasik or sattvik. In the first case the soul takes inanimate bodies; in the second active, passionate ones; in the third sattvik bodies from man up to Deva.
- The gross body is also of the three gunas and conveys impressions through the subtle body, especially buddhi. Sattva active gives happiness; rajas or tamas active give sorrow and delusion.
- Where happiness (sattva) dominates, sorrow and delusion are suppressed; where sorrow (rajas) dominates, happiness and delusion are suppressed; where delusion (tamas) dominates, as in the inorganic world, both happiness and sorrow are suppressed.
Happiness Is Not the Goal
There is always an admixture of sorrow with happiness in the soul, because of rajas. Happiness gained by righteous acts done for the sake of happiness is still a vikara, a modification. The soul's natural state is ananda, the bliss of pure Self-knowledge, in which happiness and sorrow are equally objects of indifference. All worldly enjoyment involves pain to oneself or others.
As spiritual progress is made, the gross body itself becomes more refined. In inanimate bodies karma produces pure delusion; when that karma is exhausted, the soul takes animate bodies with mixed sorrow, happiness and delusion. Discrimination is the effect of sattva in buddhi, and from it come the recognition of pleasure and pain, right and wrong, transient and lasting. Plants have little; animals not enough; in man sattva in buddhi is considerably active, which is why a human birth is so important for spiritual purposes.
Why Sadhana Must Be Fitted to the Person
The degree of activity in an individual's buddhi depends on prarabdha karma. However bad that karma, everyone has enough discrimination which, properly roused and helped, can improve his condition by getting rajas to give more activity to sattva. Woodroffe compares this to the Christian doctrine of "sufficiency of grace".
From this follow three practical rules:
- Proper guidance is necessary. A good guru, by his nature, attainment and disinterested wisdom, marks out the right path for the disciple and infuses his own tejas (spiritual energy) to help him follow it.
- One form of sadhana does not suit everyone. It must be adapted to the disciple's condition, or it will cause injury instead of good.
- Competence (adhikara) matters. Practices taken up by the incompetent may be fruitless or may produce the very evils sadhana is meant to prevent. Hence the Gita's rule: better one's own dharma, however humble, than another's, however exalted.
The guna scale ranks minerals, plants, animals, humans and gods, and within humans ranks temperaments. Woodroffe later uses it (in "The Three Temperaments") to justify restricting certain rites to certain people. The principle that practice should match capacity is sound pedagogy. In traditional Hindu society it was also used to rank castes and to keep teachings from women and low-caste people, which the Tantras themselves often reject. Read "adhikara" as a claim about readiness, not about birth.
| Key term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Trigunatmaka | Made of the three gunas |
| Sattva / rajas / tamas | Revealing / activating / veiling |
| Divya / vira / pasu | The three Tantric temperaments matching the gunas |
| Prarabdha karma | Karma already ripening in this life |
| Linga-sarira | Subtle body |
| Adhikara / adhikari | Competence / one who is competent |
| Tejas | Spiritual fire or energy, transmissible by the guru |
Reflection. Watch one ordinary activity today (work, a conversation, a meal) and notice when it reveals (clarity), drives (restlessness) and dulls (heaviness). Which guna does rajas end up serving?
The Worlds (Lokas)
This earth is only one of fourteen worlds, seven "above" and seven "below". Woodroffe's key point, again, is that knowledge of them is gained inwardly: by meditation on the solar channel susumna in the spinal column (merudanda), as Patanjali's Yoga Sutra says (III.26: "by samyama on the sun, knowledge of the worlds").
The Seven Upper Worlds
Six of the upper worlds are threaded on the susumna; the seventh and highest overhangs it in the thousand-petalled lotus.
| No. | World | Region | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Bhurloka | The earth, with its continents, mountains, rivers and oceans | The lowest upper world |
| 2 | Bhuvarloka | The atmosphere (antariksa), "from the earth to the sun" | Home of the Siddhas and celestial beings of the upper air |
| 3 | Svarloka | "From the sun to the pole star (dhruva)" | Heaven (svarga), abode of the Devas and the blest |
| 4 | Maharloka | Above Svarloka | Of mixed character |
| 5 | Janaloka | Higher celestial intelligences | |
| 6 | Tapoloka | Still higher | |
| 7 | Satyaloka | Overhanging the susumna in the sahasrara | The highest |
Heaven (svarga) is what delights the mind; hell (naraka) is what pains it (Visnu Purana). The first three worlds are regions of the consequences of work and are transitory: when the soul has had its reward it is reborn on earth, because it is not good action but knowledge of the Atma that brings liberation (moksa).
The Hells and the Nether Worlds
- Below the earth and above the nether worlds are the hells, beginning with Avici. Popular theology counts thirty-four, though the Visnu Purana says there are as many as there are offences; six are called the great hells.
- Hinduism, even popular Hinduism, knows nothing of eternal hell. Nothing is eternal but Brahman. The soul leaves hell and is reborn to make its future.
- Below the hells are the seven nether worlds: Sutala, Vitala, Talatala, Mahatala, Rasatala, Atala, Patala. There live the Naga serpent deities, brilliant with jewels, and the Danavas wander, "fascinating even the most austere".
- Below Patala is the form of Visnu proceeding from tamas, the serpent Sesa or Ananta, who bears the whole world like a diadem, attended by his Sakti Varuni, his own embodied radiance. (Woodroffe corrects H. H. Wilson, who translated Varuni here as "the Goddess of Wine".)
Woodroffe's statement that no hell is eternal is one of the sharpest contrasts he draws with Christianity, and it follows directly from the metaphysics: if only Brahman is eternal, every state, heavenly or hellish, is a passing configuration of the gunas. Heaven and hell are states of mind with a location, not final verdicts.
Inhabitants of the Worlds
The worlds are filled with countless grades of beings, from the highest Devas to the lowest animal life. The scale runs from shining manifestations of spirit to beings in which spirit is so veiled it seems almost to have disappeared in its material covering.
One Light, Many Veils
Woodroffe's image: a flame in clear glass loses little brilliance; behind paper or some more opaque material it is dimmer; inside metal it may be hidden completely, though it burns as brightly as ever. All the veils are maya. They are no less real for those who live in, and are part of, the maya-made world.
Devas and Devis
- Deva, "heavenly and shining one", applies to the high manifestations of Brahman such as the seven Sivas, including the Trimurti (Brahma, Visnu, Rudra).
- Devi is the title of the Supreme Mother and of the forms of the one Maya: Kali, Sarasvati, Laksmi, Gauri, Gayatri, Samdhya and others.
- In the sense of the Brhadaranyaka ("In the beginning was Brahman; it created the Devas"), Deva also covers lofty created intelligences between Isvara and man. The Brahmana is called bhudeva, "earth-god". (Woodroffe compares Malachi 2:7, where the priest is called "angel", and Pseudo-Dionysius on the purifying, illuminating and perfecting office of the priest.)
- There are no breaks in creation, which is an apparent descent of Brahman in gradually lowered forms. Through all of them play the two divine currents of pravrtti (outgoing) and nivrtti (return), the second drawing back what the first sends out.
All Worship Reaches Brahman
Deva, jiva and jada (inorganic matter) are, in reality, the one Brahman, appearing as other through the upadhi (limiting conditions) that avidya imposes. So all beings worshipped are Brahman seen through the veil of avidya. Hence the Mahanirvana (2.50): "As all streams flow to the ocean, so the worship given to any Deva is received by Brahman." Those who know this worship the Devas as Brahman's manifestations; those who do not, still worship Brahman mediately. The sun, the most glorious physical symbol, is the vesture of Her "clothed with the sun".
Classes of Beings
| Class | Who they are |
|---|---|
| Devayonis | Lower ranks of the celestial hierarchy, named in the opening of the Tantra |
| Ajata Devas | "Unborn" gods, never human |
| Sadhya Devas | Gods evolved from humanity, such as King Nahusa, who became Indra |
| Asuras, Danavas, Daityas, Raksasas | The tamasik, demonic element in creation |
| Pitrs ("Fathers") | Either a separate creation, or the lunar ancestry addressed with the Devas; 31 classes in the Markandeya Purana, including the Agnisvattah, Saumsaya, Havismantah, Usmapah; daily tarpana (water-offering) is made to them; the term also covers one's human ancestors to the seventh generation, who receive pinda and water with the mantra svadha at sraddha |
| Rsis | Seers who "see" all mantras and make the Sastras |
| Munis | Sages marked by independent thought |
| Jiva | The human being, the embodied Atma |
All Devas, even the highest, are subject to time and karma. "Salutation to Karma, over which not even Vidhi (Brahma) prevails." Another verse says even the gods who create, maintain and destroy the world disappear in time, because time is stronger than they.
Woodroffe warns that translating Deva as "God" has caused misunderstanding of Hindu thought, and that "angel" also misleads, since Christian angelology excludes much of what Deva means (gods who were once human; gods subject to karma). He compares the Devas to the celestial hierarchy of Pseudo-Dionysius, which he suggests was written "under the influence of Eastern thought" (Stephen Bar Sudaili and others). That influence claim was fashionable in his time and is now considered speculative; Dionysius is usually read as a Christian Neoplatonist drawing on Proclus.
The Rsis
The word rsi is derived from the root rs: the rsi "reaches" all mantras and "sees" by knowledge, or reaches the far shore of samsara.
- The seven great Rsis (saptarsi) of the first manvantara: Marici, Atri, Angiras, Pulaha, Kratu, Pulastya, Vasistha.
- The seven of the present manvantara: Kasyapa, Atri, Vasistha, Visvamitra, Gautama, Jamadagni, Bharadvaja.
- To the Rsis the Vedas were revealed. Vyasa taught the Rgveda to Paila, the Yajurveda to Vaisampayana, the Samaveda to Jaimini, the Atharvaveda to Sumantu, and Itihasa and Purana to Suta.
| Class of Rsi | Meaning | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Brahmarsi | Born from Brahma's mind | |
| Devarsi | Of lower rank | |
| Rajarsi | Kings who became Rsis by knowledge and austerity | Janaka, Rtaparna |
| Srutarsi | Makers of Sastras | Susruta |
| Kandarsi | Of the karma-kanda (ritual) | Jaimini |
The Muni and Independent Thought
A muni (who may also be a rsi) is a sage, so called from mananam. Woodroffe sets out the classic three-stage method of learning:
- Sravana: listening to the teaching.
- Manana: thinking, investigating, discussing and testing what is heard, "as opposed to the mere acceptance on trust of the lower intelligence".
- Nididhyasana: profound meditation on the conclusions (siddhanta) reached.
He quotes the Mahabharata: "The Vedas differ, and so do the Smrtis. No one is a muni who has no independent opinion of his own."
This line is easy to pass over, and it matters. A book that goes on to insist on the guru's authority and the need for initiation also holds that the sage is defined by independent judgment. Woodroffe's Tantra is not blind obedience: trust in the teacher (sravana) must be tested by reasoning (manana) before it becomes realisation (nididhyasana).
The Jiva and the Puryastaka
The human being is the jiva, the embodied Atma possessed by egoism and by the notion that it directs the puryastaka, "the eightfold city":
- The five organs of action (karmendriya);
- The five organs of perception (jnanendriya);
- The fourfold inner instrument (antahkarana: manas, buddhi, ahamkara, citta);
- The five vital airs (prana);
- The five elements;
- Kama (desire);
- Karma (action and its results);
- Avidya (illusion).
When these false notions are destroyed, the embodiment is destroyed and the wearer of the maya-garment attains nirvana. When the jiva is absorbed in Brahman, no jiva remains as such.
Varna: Caste
Woodroffe's section on caste is short and makes one point that the rest of the book depends on: Tantric worship is largely free of Vedic exclusiveness.
The Four Varnas
| Varna | Function | Sprung from Brahma's |
|---|---|---|
| Brahmana | Priesthood, teaching | Mouth |
| Ksattriya | Warrior | Arm |
| Vaisya | Merchant | Thigh |
| Sudra | Servile | Foot |
Men of the first three classes become twice-born (dvija) at the upanayana, the investiture with the sacred thread. A well-known verse adds a spiritual gloss: by birth one is a sudra; by samskara (upanayana) one is twice-born; by study of the Vedas one becomes a vipra; whoever knows Brahman is a Brahmana.
The Fifth Class and Tantric Openness
The Mahanirvana Tantra speaks of a fifth, mixed class (samanya), born of intermixture. And Tantric worship is largely free of exclusiveness based on caste, sex or otherwise. The Gautamiya Tantra: "The Tantra is for all men, of whatever caste, and for all women."
Woodroffe is right that many Tantras open initiation to sudras and women, and the Mahanirvana is among the most explicit. In practice, Tantric lineages varied widely; many kept caste rules in daily life while suspending them inside the ritual circle (the cakra), as the Mahanirvana's own rules on the cakra show later. "Open in principle, restricted in practice" is the more accurate summary.
Asrama: The Stages of Life
## The Classical Four
| Asrama | Stage | Who may enter |
|---|---|---|
| Brahmacarya | Chaste student | Brahmana, Ksattriya, Vaisya |
| Grhastha | Married householder | All four varnas |
| Vanaprastha | Forest recluse, retiring from the world | Brahmana, Ksattriya |
| Bhiksu (sannyasa) | Mendicant who begs one daily meal and meditates on the Supreme | Brahmana |
(Following the Yoga Yajnavalkya: the Ksattriya has the first three, the Vaisya the first two, the Sudra only the householder stage.)
Only Two in the Kali Age
The Mahanirvana (8.8) states that in the Kali age there are only two asramas: the householder (grhastha) and the renunciate (bhiksuka or avadhuta). The conditions, character, capacity and powers of people in this age do not allow the first and third. And both are open to all castes without distinction (8.12).
The Six Avadhutas
Woodroffe gives the two main lines of avadhuta ("one who has shaken off" the world), each with three grades, following the Mahanirvana (14.142 onwards); the Bhairava-damara has a parallel fourfold scheme (Kula, Saiva, Brahma and Hamsa avadhutas).
| Line | Grade | Rules |
|---|---|---|
| Saiva | 1. Saivavadhuta (apurna, imperfect) | Ascetic but still a householder, "like Siva" |
| 2. Saiva parivrajaka (wanderer) | Has left the world; does puja and japa, visits tirthas and pithas; still imperfect; competent for ordinary sadhana with a sakti (female partner) | |
| 3. Perfect Saiva | Wears only the kaupina (loincloth); renounces all things and rites; may practise some yoga within limits; may meet the request of a woman who asks it of him | |
| Brahma | 1. Brahmavadhuta (apurna) | Householder; may not have a Saiva sakti, only sviya-sakti, his own wife |
| 2. Brahma parivrajaka | Ordinarily nothing to do with any woman, but may practise yoga with a Sakti under his guru's guidance | |
| 3. Hamsavadhuta | Highest; must never touch a woman or metal, practise no rites and keep no observances |
Woodroffe adds a defensive note on the perfect Saiva's permission: it is not peculiarly Tantric. Sruti itself says "talpagatam na pariharet", "she who comes to your bed is not to be refused", because the rule of chastity yields to a woman's advance; Sankaracarya glosses talpagatam as "one who desires union" and attributes the doctrine to the Rsi Vamadeva. He also cites Sankara's Kaupina-pancakam, which praises the loincloth-wearer who lives on begged rice, ponders Vedanta and enjoys Brahman in the thought aham brahmasmi.
The two Kali-age stages tell you what the Mahanirvana is for: it is a householder's Tantra. Its ritual, ethics and law are written for people with families and jobs, with the renunciate path as the second option. This is one reason Woodroffe chose it to present Tantra to Western readers: it is the most socially respectable of the Tantras.
Macrocosm and Microcosm
## As Above, So Below
The universe consists of a Mahabrahmanda (grand cosmos) and many Brhat-brahmandas (macrocosms) evolved from it. As the Nirvana Tantra says, all that is in the first is in the second; the heavenly bodies and beings within each are microcosms reflecting the greater worlds. Woodroffe quotes the Western maxim "As above, so below" and its Tantric equivalent in the Visvasara Tantra: "What is here is elsewhere; what is not here is nowhere" (yad ihasti tad anyatra yan nehasti na tat kvacit).
The Map of Correspondences
The macrocosm has its meru (axis); the body's meru is the spinal column, and within it are the cakras where the worlds dwell (Saktananda-tarangini: "pinda-madhye-sthita", situated in the body).
| World | Body location |
|---|---|
| Satya | Sahasrara |
| Tapah | Ajna |
| Janah | Visuddhi |
| Mahah | Anahata |
| Svah | Manipura |
| Bhuvah | Svadhisthana |
| Bhuh | Muladhara |
| Nether worlds | Below the muladhara, in the joints, sides, anus and genitals |
| Cosmic element | Bodily counterpart |
|---|---|
| Mountains (kulaparvata) | The bones near the spine (the seven chains of Bharata) |
| Rivers | The nadis |
| Seven islands (dvipa) | The seven dhatus: skin, blood, muscle, tendon, bone, fat, semen |
| Oceans | Sweat, tears and other fluids |
| Fire | Kamagni in the muladhara; badala in the bones; lightning fire in the susumna; earthly fire in the navel |
| Winds (vayus) | The ten vayus, prana and the rest |
| Ether (akasa) | The same akasa in both |
| Cosmic soul (Hiranyagarbha) | The witness within, the personal soul |
The correspondence is not decorative. It is the working premise of Tantric ritual: because the body contains the cosmos, operations on the body (breath, sound, visualisation, touch in nyasa) are operations on the cosmos, and the yogi who raises Kundalini through the cakras is said to travel through the worlds.
The Ages (Yugas)
Time within a maha-yuga makes man and the world worse. The decline is marked by four ages.
The Numbers
- A kalpa, one day of Brahma, is 4,320,000,000 years.
- It is divided into 14 manvantaras, subdivided into 71 maha-yugas.
- Each maha-yuga is 4,320,000 human years and contains the four yugas.
- One divine year equals 360 human years.
| Yuga | Divine years | Human years | Dharma | Life depends on | Lifespan | Stature | Avataras of Visnu | Chief pilgrimage |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Satya (Krta) | 4,800 | 1,728,000 | Whole; no sin | Marrow | A lakh (100,000) years; men die when they will | 21 cubits | Matsya, Kurma, Varaha, Nrsimha, Vamana | |
| Treta | 3,600 | 1,296,000 | Three-quarters | Bone | 10,000 years | 14 cubits | Parasurama, Rama | Naimisaranya |
| Dvapara | 2,400 | 864,000 | Half | Blood | 1,000 years | 7 cubits | Balarama (or Krsna) | Kuruksetra |
| Kali | 1,200 | 432,000 | One quarter | Food | 100 or 120 years at most | 3.5 cubits | Buddha; Kalki to come | The Ganges |
The Ages Described
- Satya is the Golden Age of righteousness, free of sin, with longevity, strength, beauty and stature. "There were giants in those days", whose strength allowed long brahmacarya and tapas.
- In Treta men were still devoted to pious and charitable acts, penances, sacrifice and pilgrimage.
- In Dvapara weakness and disease increased; sin and virtue were equal; men were restless and, though eager for knowledge, deceitful.
- In the samdhya (the 1,000-year twilight) between Dvapara and Kali, the Tantra was revealed, and it will be revealed again at the dawn of every Kali-yuga.
- Kali, "the alleged present age", began, according to some, in 3120 BC, when Visnu returned to heaven after his eighth incarnation. It is marked by viciousness, weakness, disease and the decline of all good.
- Kalki, the destroyer of sin, is yet to come: blue as a rain cloud, sword in hand, riding a white horse swift as the wind, like the rider of the Apocalypse. Woodroffe quotes Jayadeva's ode: "For the destruction of all the impure thou drawest thy scimitar like a blazing comet." After him a new Satya age begins, and the ages revolve until the end of the kalpa, followed by a night of dissolution (pralaya) of equal length, while the Lord sleeps in yoga-nidra on the serpent Sesa.
The Fall of Man
Woodroffe sets the Hindu scheme against "official science", which teaches that man appeared in an imperfect state and has been rising ever since. That teaching, he says, conflicts with the traditions of all peoples (Jew, Babylonian, Egyptian, Hindu, Greek, Roman and Christian), which speak of an age when man was innocent and happy, from which he fell until great Avataras, Christ and others, came to save the race. Eden is the emblem of man's paradisiacal body, when man was one with nature. (He distinguishes Paradise, the garden, from Eden, the region in which it lay.)
Two cautions. First, the 3102 BC epoch is the standard date for the start of the Kali-yuga (Aryabhata); Woodroffe's 3120 BC is a variant. Second, his appeal to universal "fall" traditions against evolutionary science is apologetics, not evidence. The yuga numbers are a cosmological scheme, not a chronology, and the stature and lifespan figures are mythic. Their real use in the book is to explain why a new, simplified scripture (the Tantra) is needed now.
The Scriptures of the Ages
Each age has its own Sastra, designed for the people who live in it. This section is the theological justification for Tantra's authority.
The Four Classes of Scripture
- Sruti: the four Vedas (Rg, Yajur, Sama, Atharva) and the Upanisads, whose doctrine is philosophically set out in the Vedanta Darsana.
- Smrti: the Dharma Sastra of Manu and other works on family and social duty, prescribing for pravrtti-dharma (the outgoing life).
- Puranas: originally four lakhs (400,000) according to the Brahma-vaivarta Purana, of which eighteen are now principal. (The broader term samhita also covers Dharma Sastra, Smrti, Itihasa and the books of Vasistha, Valmiki and others.)
- Tantra.
The Tantra as Fifth Veda
- The Veda is the root of all Sastras (mula-sastra). All others are based on it.
- The Tantra is called a fifth Veda.
- Kulluka-Bhatta, the great commentator on Manu, says Sruti is of two kinds, Vaidik and Tantrik.
- The Sastras are different presentations of Sruti suited to each age. The Tantra is the presentation of Sruti whose ritual is modelled on the characteristics and infirmities of the Kali age. People no longer have the capacity, longevity and moral strength for the Vedic ritual (karma-kanda), so the Tantra prescribes its own sadhana to reach the same end.
Which Scripture for Which Age
The Kularnava Tantra gives the rule:
| Age | Scripture |
|---|---|
| Satya (Krta) | Sruti (in the sense of the Upanisads) |
| Treta | Smrti (Dharma Sastra, Srutijivika and so on) |
| Dvapara | Purana |
| Kali | Agama (Tantra) alone |
"Krte srutyukta acaras, Tretayam smrti-sambhavah, Dvapare tu puranoktam, Kalau agama kevalam." The Mahanirvana (1.23 onwards) and the Tara-pradipa say the same: in the Kali age, Tantric and not Vedic dharma is to be followed by all orthodox Hindus.
Core and Sheaths
The Tantra is said to contain the very core of the Veda, standing to it as Paramatma to jivatma. In the same way Kulacara (the Kaula way) is the inner life of the "gross body" called Vedacara, and each acara between them is a subtler sheath. (The seven acaras are set out in full in the Worship section.)
The claim that the Tantra is "the" scripture for the Kali age is the Tantras' own claim about themselves, and Woodroffe reports it sympathetically. Orthodox Smarta Brahmins historically rejected it, and many Tantras (especially left-hand ones) were regarded as outside the Veda. Modern scholars see the Tantras as a separate revelation that grew up from roughly the 5th to 6th centuries CE and later presented itself as the Veda's fulfilment. Woodroffe's harmonising view is that of his Bengali Sakta teachers.
| Key term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Sruti / Smrti | "What is heard" (revelation) / "what is remembered" (tradition) |
| Agama / Nigama | Tantra taught by Siva / by the Devi |
| Mula-sastra | The root scripture, the Veda |
| Karma-kanda | The ritual portion of the Veda |
| Kulacara / Vedacara | The Kaula way / the Vedic way |
| Pravrtti-dharma | The religion of worldly, outgoing life |
Reflection. Woodroffe's theory makes a scripture's authority depend on the capacities of its readers. What practices in your own tradition were designed for a different kind of person than you are?
The Human Body: Sheaths, Channels and Centres
The human body is Brahma-pura, the city of Brahman. Isvara himself enters the universe as jiva. Hence the great saying (mahavakya) "That thou art" means that the ego, which counts as jiva only from the standpoint of an upadhi (an apparent limiting condition of the Absolute), is Brahman. This section is the anatomical core of the book and the seed of The Serpent Power.
The Five Sheaths (Kosa)
| Sheath | Meaning | Presiding elements and centres | What the Lord experiences in it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Annamaya | "Made of food", the physical body | Earth, water, fire; muladhara, svadhisthana, manipura | "I am dark or fair, short or tall, old or young" |
| Pranamaya | "Made of breath", the vital body | Air and ether; anahata, visuddha | "I am alive, hungry, thirsty" |
| Manomaya | The lower mental body | Ajna and the region above | "I think" |
| Vijnanamaya | The higher mental body (understanding) | Ajna and the region above | "I understand" |
| Anandamaya | The body of bliss | Below the sahasrara | "I reside in happiness" |
"Thus garmented with the five garments, the Lord, though all-pervading, appears as though limited by them" (Suresvaracarya's Manasollasa on the Daksinamurti-stotra).
The Physical Sheath
- Earth and water produce food and drink; the fire of digestion assimilates them into the body of food.
- The gross body has six outer sheaths: hair, blood and flesh from the mother; bone, muscle and marrow from the father. (The Prapanca-sara gives semen in place of flesh.)
- Indriyas are both faculties and organs. The jnanendriyas (organs of knowing) are ear, skin, eyes, tongue, nose; the karmendriyas (organs of action) are mouth, arms, legs, anus, penis, whose functions are speech, holding, walking, excretion and procreation.
The Vital Sheath and the Ten Vayus
The ten vayus are inner vital forces, all aspects of the one Prana-devata. Kundalini is the mother of prana, which she, as Mula-prakrti illumined by the Atma, generates. Prana is the universal force of activity, divided into five functions on entering each individual.
| Vayu | Colour | Function |
|---|---|---|
| Prana | Sapphire | Inspiration; with expiration, to and from distances of eight and twelve inches |
| Apana | Evening cloud | Downward; expels wind, excrement, urine, semen |
| Vyana | Silver | "Separate" vayu; division and diffusion through the body (circulation) |
| Udana | Fire | Ascending |
| Samana | Milky | "Collective" vayu; kindles the bodily fire and carries food evenly through the body (digestion) |
The five minor vayus: naga (hiccup), kurma (closing and opening the eyes), krkara (aiding digestion), devadatta (yawning) and dhanamjaya (distension, "which leaves not even the corpse").
The Mental Sheaths: The Inner Instrument
The manomaya and vijnanamaya sheaths make up the antahkarana, which is fourfold:
| Faculty | Function |
|---|---|
| Manas | Doubt (samkalpa-vikalpa); automatically registers what the senses perceive |
| Buddhi | Determination; attends to the registration, discriminates and cognises the object |
| Ahamkara | Egoity; sets the object over against the subjective self |
| Citta | Contemplation (cinta); raises the subject of thought and dwells on it |
Two details matter for practice. First, buddhi lives only three moments (born, exists, dies) but citta endures. Second, citta is the most important faculty for worship, because worship works by remembering mantra and deity (mantra-smarana, devata-smarana). (Sankhya includes citta in buddhi; this fourfold scheme is Vedantic.)
Gross, Subtle and Causal Bodies
- Sthula-sarira: the gross body.
- Suksma-sarira (also linga-sarira): the ten indriyas, manas, ahamkara, buddhi and the five pranas. It carries the cause of rebirth into a new gross body.
- Karana-sarira: the causal body of deep sleep; beyond it the maha-karana, the great causal body of the fourth state.
Woodroffe adds a footnote mapping the sheaths onto Theosophical bodies (etheric, astral, causal, atmic). This was common among his readers in 1913 but it is not traditional, and Theosophy's "astral body" in particular has no exact Tantric equivalent. Woodroffe himself later grew more cautious about Theosophical parallels.
The Five States of Consciousness
| State | Name of the jiva | Body | Collective form | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jagrat (waking) | Visva (jagari) | Gross | Vaisvanara (Virat) | Objects perceived through the senses by manas and buddhi; "the source of external action" (Isvara-pratyabhijna) |
| Svapna (dream) | Taijasa | Subtle | Hiranyagarbha | Senses withdrawn; mind works on images from waking; "the objectification of visions perceived in the mind" |
| Susupti (deep sleep) | Prajna | Causal (karana) | Isvara (Avyakta) | Manas withdrawn; buddhi under tamas keeps only "Happily I slept; I knew nothing" |
| Turiya (the fourth) | Great causal (maha-karana) | Reached by samadhi-yoga; requires suddha-vidya; the only state "realistic" for the yogi | ||
| The fifth (nameless) | Arises from firmness in the fourth; one "tends to a close equality" with Siva |
Three points need noting:
- In deep sleep, three modifications of avidya remain: ignorance, egoism and happiness. The Siva Sutra describes sleep as incapacity of discrimination.
- Since in deep sleep the prajna "becomes Brahman", it is no longer jiva as before, but not yet Paramatma, because avidya is present.
- Even the fourth and fifth states lack the full perfection of the Supreme. Only beyond them "the spotless one attains the highest equality", which is unity. Bhaskararaya notes that the Upanisads list only three states and the Tantra adds the fourth and fifth.
The Nadis
- There are 3.5 crores (35 million) nadis in the body (Nadi-vijnana); the Sat-cakra-nirupana quotes 72,000, and the Siva Samhita 350,000.
- Nadi means a nerve or artery in ordinary speech, but the nadis of yoga are not physical: they are subtle channels of energy.
- Fourteen are principal; of these, ida, pingala and susumna are chief; and susumna is the greatest, to which all others are subordinate.
Susumna and Its Inner Channels
| Channel | Form | Position |
|---|---|---|
| Susumna | Fire (vahni-svarupa) | In the hollow of the meru (cerebro-spinal axis), from the muladhara to the brain |
| Vajrini | Sun (surya-svarupa) | Inside susumna |
| Citrini (Citra), also Brahma-nadi | Moon (candra-svarupa); pale and nectar-dropping | Inside vajrini; as thin as a thousandth part of a hair |
Susumna is therefore triguna. All the cakras hang from the citrini; they are described as knots in the nadi. (Woodroffe corrects a reading of the Tantra-cuda-mani that put susumna outside the meru: the author of the Sat-cakra-nirupana makes clear it is inside, and ida and pingala outside.)
Ida and Pingala
| Ida | Pingala | |
|---|---|---|
| Side | Left | Right |
| Colour | Pale | Red |
| Nature | Moon-like, contains nectar | Sun-like, contains "venom", the fluid of mortality |
| Exit | Left nostril | Right nostril |
| River | Ganga | Yamuna |
Ida and pingala coil around susumna and pass round the ajna cakra, forming a picture of the caduceus of Mercury. The three "rivers" (susumna is Sarasvati) meet at the muladhara, which is therefore called yukta-triveni ("united confluence"), and part at the ajna, called mukta-triveni ("freed confluence"). The opening of susumna in the muladhara is the brahma-dvara, "door of Brahman", closed by the coils of the sleeping Kundalini.
Woodroffe is careful here, more careful than many later popularisers: the "elements" of the cakras are not the chemical or popular elements, and the lotuses and letters are not physically present. "These and other terms are employed to represent realities of yoga experience." A lotus is a plexus of nadis, and the number of petals reflects how the nadis are arranged at that centre. Attempts (by Woodroffe's contemporaries and later writers) to identify each cakra with a nerve plexus or an endocrine gland go beyond what the texts say.
The Six Cakras and the Thousand-Petalled Lotus
| Muladhara | Svadhisthana | Manipura | Anahata | Visuddha | Ajna | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Place | Between genitals and anus | Base of the genitals | Navel | Heart | Base of the throat | Between the eyebrows |
| Petals | 4, red | 6, lightning-coloured, red pericarp | 10, cloud-coloured, golden lotus | 12, deep red | 16, smoky | 2 |
| Letters | vam, sam, sam, sam (golden) | bam, bham, mam, yam, ram, lam | dam, dham, nam, tam, tham, dam, dham, nam, pam, pham (blue) | kam to tham (vermilion) | the 16 vowels (red) | ham, ksam (red) |
| Tattva | Earth (from water) | Water (from fire) | Fire (from air) | Air (from ether) | Ether | Mind (no gross tattva) |
| Mandala | Yellow square, with eight thunderbolts | White half-moon (Varuna's region) | Red triangle with three svastikas on each side | Six-cornered smoke-coloured figure | Round, transparent | Triangle |
| Bija | Lam | Vam | Ram | Yam | Ham | Om (concealed) |
| Vehicle of the element | Elephant (Prthivi) | White alligator, makara (Varuna) | Ram (Agni) | Black antelope (Vayu) | White elephant (Akasa) | |
| Deity | Brahma with Savitri | Mahavisnu, Mahalaksmi, Sarasvati | Rudra (old, vermilion, ash-smeared) with Bhadrakali | Isvara (golden, lord of the first three cakras) with Bhuvanesvari | Ardhanarisvara, the androgyne Siva (white, five faces, ten arms, tiger skin) | Para-Siva as Hamsa with Siddha-Kali; Brahma, Visnu, Mahesvara at the corners |
| Sakti | Dakini (red, four arms; doorkeeper) | Rakini (blue, four arms) | Lakini (molten gold, "maddened with passion") | Kakini (lightning, three eyes, noose, cup, bone garland, "softened with wine") | Sakini (white, bow, arrow, noose, hook) | Hakini (white, six heads; jnana-mudra, skull, drum, rosary) |
| Linga | Svayambhu, ruddy brown, round which Kundalini coils | Bana-linga (Narayana or Hiranyagarbha) in the Trikona Sakti | Itara linga, in the form of pranava |
Details by Centre
Muladhara (mula, root; adhara, support). A triangular space "in the midmost portion of the body", apex down, "like a young girl's yoni". The four petals face the four directions and carry the four blisses: yogananda, paramananda, sahajananda, virananda. At the centre the Svayambhu-linga, colour of a young leaf; at its base the brahma-dvara, the opening of citrini. Kundalini, subtler than a lotus fibre and bright as lightning, sleeps coiled around the linga and closes the door of Brahman with her body. In the head of the yogi she is "the Glittering Dancer" (Sarada-tilaka); when awake, she gives birth to the world made of mantra. Around the linga is a red fiery triangle containing the red Kandarpa-vayu, the air of Kama, a form of apana, "for here is the seat of creative desire". The lotus, linga and brahma-dvara hang downwards.
Svadhisthana. The six petals carry six vrttis (inclinations): prasraya (credulity), avisvasa (suspicion), avajna (disdain), murccha (delusion or disinclination), sarvanasa (false knowledge, literally "destruction of everything") and krurata (pitilessness).
Manipura ("city of gems", either because the Devi is filled with gems in samaya worship, or because fire makes it gem-like). Ten vrttis: lajja (shame), pisunata (fickleness), irsa (jealousy), trsna (desire), susupti (laziness), visada (sadness), kasaya (dullness), moha (ignorance), ghrna (disgust), bhaya (fear). Rudra makes the gestures that grant boons and dispel fear. Above the lotus is the region of the Sun, which drinks the nectar dropping from the Moon.
Anahata. To be distinguished from the eight-petalled heart lotus facing upward, where the chosen deity (Ista-devata) is meditated on. Twelve vrttis: asa (hope), cinta (anxiety), cesta (endeavour), mamata (sense of mineness), dambha (arrogance or hypocrisy), vikalata (languor), ahamkara (conceit), viveka (discrimination), lolata (covetousness), kapatata (duplicity), vitarka (indecision), anutapa (regret). Here too Kalaratri and other Saktis, and the jivatma, like the tapering flame of a lamp.
Visuddha ("pure"), also Bharati-sthana, abode of the goddess of speech. Besides the sixteen vowels, the petals carry the seven musical notes (nisada, rsabha, gandhara, sadja, madhyama, dhaivata, pancama), venom in the eighth petal, the ritual syllables hum, phat, vausat, vasat, svadha, svaha, namah, and nectar (amrta) in the sixteenth. Also the regions of the full moon and of ether. Akasa sits on a white elephant with noose and goad. (On the noose and goad, the Vamakesvara Tantra says they are desire and anger; the Yogini-hrdaya says the noose is iccha-sakti, the goad jnana-sakti, and bow and arrows kriya-sakti.)
Ajna ("command"), also parama-kula and mukta-triveni, since there the three nadis go their separate ways. Also here: half the letter Ha (hakarardha); the three gunas in the two petals and pericarp.
The Secret Cakras
Woodroffe lists three minor centres that most popular accounts omit:
- Lalana (or Kala-cakra), at the root of the palate, above visuddha: a red lotus of twelve petals carrying sraddha (faith), santosa (contentment), aparadha (sense of error), dama (self-command), mana (anger, especially between lovers or spouses), sneha (affection towards those younger), soka (grief), kheda (dejection), suddhata (purity), arati (detachment), sambhrama (agitation through respect), urmi (appetite).
- Manas-cakra, above ajna: six petals carrying the faculties of hearing, touch, sight, smell, taste and sleep (or their absence).
- Soma-cakra, above that: sixteen petals, also called the sixteen kalas: krpa (mercy), mrduta (gentleness), dhairya (patience), vairagya (dispassion), dhrti (constancy), sampat (spiritual prosperity), hasya (cheerfulness), romanca (rapture), vinaya (humility), dhyana (meditation), susthirata (restfulness), gambhirya (gravity), udyama (effort), aksobha (being undisturbed by emotion), audarya (magnanimity), ekagrata (concentration).
Look at the vrttis as a sequence. The lower lotuses carry credulity, suspicion, disdain, jealousy, fear; the heart carries the mixed traits of the striving person (hope and anxiety, discrimination and duplicity); the throat-palate carries faith, contentment, self-command alongside grief; the soma-cakra is pure virtue: mercy, gentleness, dispassion, concentration. The ascent of Kundalini is also a map of moral psychology, from reactive emotion to settled character.
Above the Ajna: The Ascent to the Guru
Above the soma-cakra, Woodroffe gives the ordered sequence the yogi passes:
- Niralamba-puri, "the house without support", where yogis see the radiant Isvara;
- the pranava, shining like a flame;
- the white crescent Nada;
- the point Bindu;
- a white twelve-petalled lotus facing upward;
- over it the ocean of nectar (sudha-sagara), the island of gems (manidvipa), the altar of gems (manipitha);
- the lightning lines A-Ka-Tha, and within them Nada and Bindu;
- on Nada-Bindu as an altar, the Paramahamsa; on the Paramahamsa, the feet of the Guru. "There the Guru of all should be meditated."
The Hamsa on which the Guru's feet rest has a body of jnana, wings of Agama and Nigama, feet of Siva and Sakti, beak of pranava, and eyes and throat of Kama-kala.
Close to the thousand-petalled lotus are, from outer to inner:
- Ama-kala, the sixteenth digit of the moon: pure red, lightning-bright, fine as a lotus fibre, hanging downward, receptacle of the lunar nectar;
- within it Nirvana-kala, a crescent bright as the sun and finer than a thousandth of a hair, "the Ista-devata of all";
- near it Parama-nirvana-Sakti, infinitely subtle, creatrix of tattva-jnana;
- above it Bindu and Visarga-Sakti, "root and abode of all bliss".
The Sahasrara
The thousand-petalled lotus of all colours hangs head downward from the brahma-randhra, above all the cakras. It is:
- the region of the First Cause (Brahma-loka), cause of the six preceding;
- the Great Sun, cosmically and individually, in whose light Parama-Siva and Adya-Sakti reside. The Sakti here is vacaka-sakti, saguna Brahman holding all gunas, powers and planes in potential. Parama-Siva is the Great Ether (paramakasa), the Sun of the darkness of ignorance.
- Every petal carries all the letters of the alphabet, and everything in the lower cakras and the universe exists here in unmanifest form (avyakta-bhava).
Every school names it differently, and all mean the same: Siva-sthana (Saivas), Parama-purusa (Vaisnavas), Devi-sthana (Saktas), Prakrti-purusa-sthana (Sankhya), and also Hari-hara-sthana, Sakti-sthana, Parama-Brahma, Parama-hamsa, Parama-jyotih, Kula-sthana and Parama-Siva-Akula.
The vertical map in one line. Earth (square, Lam, elephant) at the base; water (crescent, Vam, makara); fire (triangle, Ram, ram); air (hexagram, Yam, antelope); ether (circle, Ham, elephant); mind (Om) between the brows; then Nada, Bindu and the Guru's feet; then the thousand petals where Siva and Sakti are one. Each element arises from the one above it: earth from water, water from fire, and so on. Kundalini's ascent dissolves each into its source.
The Three Temperaments (Bhava)
The Tantras divide people into three bhavas (dispositions): pasu (animal), vira (heroic) and divya (divine). They rest on the guna analysis. Woodroffe notes the Gnostic parallel of hylic, psychic and pneumatic (material, soul-bound, spiritual) men, already pointed out by Richard Garbe and before him F. C. Baur.
The Pasu
In the pasu, rajas acts chiefly on tamas, producing error (bhranti), drowsiness (tandra) and sloth (alasya).
The pasu is not, as such, a bad man. A pasu may prove superior to a vira: the first is bound by matter and lacks light, but the second may abuse the greater freedom he has won. There are many kinds of pasu, from those just above the higher animals to those merging into the vira class.
The Eight Bonds
Pasu comes from the root pas, "to bind". The pasu is bound by pasas. The Kularnava lists eight:
- Daya: pity
- Moha: ignorance and delusion
- Bhaya: fear
- Lajja: shame
- Ghrna: disgust
- Kula: family
- Sila: custom
- Varna: caste
Other lists run to sixty-two, but they are elaborations of the short list.
The Three Malas
Pasus are also divided by the three impurities (mala), a doctrine shared with Saiva Siddhanta and Kashmir Saivism:
| Class | Bound by |
|---|---|
| Sakala | All three: anava-mala (the "atomic" impurity, ignorance or wrong knowledge of the Self), mayiya-mala (maya's division of the one Self into many), karma-mala (action and its fruit) |
| Pralayakala | Anava and karma |
| Vijnanakala | Anava only |
Whoever frees himself of the last impurity, anava, becomes Siva himself. The Devi holds the noose and causes the bonds, but she is also pasu-pasa-vimocini, "she who frees the pasu from his bonds" (Lalita, verse 78).
Outer Marks of the Pasu
The Kubjika Tantra describes the pasu by behaviour:
- does not touch a yantra, nor do japa at night;
- doubts sacrifice and Tantra; thinks a mantra is merely letters (instead of a deity);
- lacks faith in the guru; thinks the image only stone;
- distinguishes one god from another (not seeing all as one);
- worships without flesh or fish;
- is "always bathing, owing to his ignorance", thinking only of outer purity;
- talks ill of others' worship (Woodroffe: "a common fault of the pasu the world over").
The Nitya Tantra adds: the pasu does not worship at night, in the evening or late in the day; avoids intercourse except on the fifth day after menstruation; does not eat meat even on the five auspicious days. In short, pasus are those bound by the Vedic rules of Vedacara, Vaisnavacara and Saivacara.
The Vira
In the vira, rajas works more on sattva, but also, in decreasing degrees, works independently, producing acts that carry sorrow. There are several grades. The Picchila Tantra says the only difference between vira and divya is that the vira is uddhata, probably "excitable", because rajas acts more independently in him.
The Divya
In the divya, rajas works on sattva to its confirmed predominance. There are degrees, from just above the highest vira to complete realisation of the deva-nature. The Nitya Tantra: divya is best, vira next, pasu lowest, and the divine state must be awakened through the heroic.
Marks of the Divya
The Kubjika Tantra's portrait of the divya:
- bathes and performs samdhya daily; wears clean cloth, the tripundra mark in ash or red sandal, and rudraksa beads; does japa and worship;
- gives charity daily; has strong faith in Veda, Sastra, Guru and Deva; worships the Pitrs and Devas;
- has great knowledge of mantra; eats only what his guru offers; avoids cruelty; regards friend and foe as the same; speaks the truth;
- worships three times daily and meditates on the guru daily; worships Paramesvari as a Bhairava;
- regards all Devas as beneficial (Woodroffe contrasts the orthodox Rama-worshipper who "cannot even bear to hear the name of Krsna", though both are Visnu);
- bows at the feet of women, regarding them as his guru;
- worships the Devi at night (Vedic worship is by day) and does japa with his mouth full of pan (that is, after eating);
- bows to the kula-vrksa (an esoteric term; the Nitya Tantra extends it to the kula-stri, a woman versed in Tantra and mantra, whatever her social standing);
- regards the universe as pervaded by stri (Sakti) and as divine; Siva is in all men; the whole cosmos is Siva-Sakti.
Woodroffe stresses that these portraits are general pictures, not legal definitions. This one partly describes the ritual divya; the avadhuta, who is above ritual, would not do some of these things, though he would hold the same beliefs more intensely.
Which Bhava for the Kali Age?
According to the temperament of the sadhaka, so is the form of worship. The worship proper to the higher bhavas is strictly forbidden to the pasu.
The Mahanirvana (1.24) says that in the Kali age divya and pasu natures can scarcely be found. Woodroffe works through the puzzle:
- "Pasu" here is used in a good sense: the person who, though tamasik, performs his functions with the obedience to nature seen in animals, free from the disturbing influence of rajas. (He adds that in some cases a pasu may reach siddhi through Tantra faster than a vira.)
- The commentator explains: Kali-age conditions do not produce this pure pasu or allow his Vedic acara. No one now fully performs Vedic, Vaisnava and Saiva rites, without which Vedic and Puranic mantras and sacrifice are fruitless; no one goes through brahmacarya or takes vanaprastha after fifty. "Men have taken to drink, associate with the low, and are fallen." "Siva for the liberation of men of the Kali age has proclaimed the Agama. Now there is no other way."
- So: the pure pasu for whom Vedacara was designed no longer exists; for the rest, the Tantra is the governing scripture. This does not mean everyone is now competent for viracara.
Woodroffe then notes, honestly, that the Prana-tosini quotes a verse attributed to the Mahanirvana saying the opposite: "In the Kali age there is no divya or vira bhava. Only by pasu-bhava may men obtain mantra-siddhi." He admits the question has been much debated and that he gives his account "with considerable diffidence".
Woodroffe's honesty here is a model: he reports the contradiction instead of hiding it. The two verses reflect a real split in the tradition. Reformist and "right-hand" Tantrics read them to mean that the left-hand (vira) rites are not for this age; Kaula practitioners read them the other way. The Mahanirvana, a text many scholars date to the late 18th century and associate with a reforming Bengali milieu, leans towards restriction, as later sections show.
| Key term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Pasu / vira / divya | Animal / heroic / divine disposition |
| Pasa | Bond (eight in the Kularnava) |
| Anava, mayiya, karma mala | The three impurities |
| Uddhata | Excitable; the vira's mark |
| Pasu-pasa-vimocini | The Devi as liberator from bonds |
Reflection. Of the eight bonds (pity, delusion, fear, shame, disgust, family, custom, caste), which surprises you? Woodroffe lists pity as a bond. What could it mean for compassion to bind?
Guru and Sisya: Teacher and Disciple
## There Is One Guru
The guru is the teacher and spiritual guide to whom orthodox Hindus of all schools submit. In reality there is only one Guru. The human guru is the manifestation of Adinatha Mahakala, the Supreme Guru on Kailasa, who enters and speaks through the earthly guru at the moment of giving mantra (Yogini Tantra: "at the time of giving mantra, Mahakala is present in the man; therefore the man is guru").
The Chain of Roots
Guru is the root of diksa (initiation). Diksa is the root of mantra. Mantra is the root of Devata. Devata is the root of siddhi. The Mundamala Tantra adds that mantra is born of the guru and the deity of the mantra, so the guru is grandfather to the chosen deity. Manu: of the one who gives natural birth and the one who gives Vedic knowledge, the giver of sacred knowledge is the more venerable father.
- There is no difference between guru, mantra and deity. The guru is father, mother and Brahman.
- "The guru can save from the wrath of Siva, but none can save from the wrath of the guru."
- With this greatness comes responsibility: the disciple's sins recoil on the guru.
Lines and Grades of Gurus
| Lineage | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Divyaugha | Heavenly |
| Siddhaugha | Perfected beings |
| Manavaugha | Human |
The four Kula-gurus, each the guru of the one before: Guru, Parama-guru, Parapara-guru, Paramesti-guru.
A woman with the necessary qualifications may be a guru and give initiation.
The Disciple
- The Sara-samgraha says a guru should examine and test an intending disciple for a year.
- Qualifications: good birth, purity of soul (suddhatma), and capacity for enjoyment combined with desire for liberation (purusartha-parayana).
- To be rejected: the lewd, adulterous, constantly sinful, ignorant, slothful and irreligious (Maharudra-yamala).
- The perfect sadhaka, entitled to knowledge of all Sastras, is pure-minded, senses controlled (jitendriya), always doing good to all beings, free of dualistic notions, and devoted to speaking of, sheltering in and living in the unity of Brahman (Gandharva Tantra).
When the Relation Ends
The guru-disciple relation lasts as long as Sakti has not been fully communicated from the guru's body to the disciple's. A man is sisya only so long as he is sadhaka. When siddhi is attained, both are above this dualism; with pure monism, this relation, like every other, disappears.
Note the qualification "capacity for enjoyment combined with desire for liberation". Classical Vedanta asks for dispassion; the Tantra asks for a disciple who can enjoy and wants freedom. This is the Tantric wager in miniature: bhoga (enjoyment) and mukti (liberation) are pursued together, not traded off.
Diksa: Initiation
Initiation is the giving of mantra by the guru.
The Procedure
- Before initiating, the guru must establish the life of the Supreme Guru in his own body, that is, the prana-sakti of the Guru whose seat is the thousand-petalled lotus. As an image is the yantra in which divinity inheres, so is the guru's body.
- The day before, the guru seats the candidate on a mat of kusa grass, does japa of a "sleep mantra" (supta-mantra) in his ear, and ties his crown lock.
- The disciple, who has fasted and kept sexual continence, repeats the mantra three times, prostrates at the guru's feet and retires to sleep.
- The initiation follows. It gives spiritual knowledge and destroys sin.
"As one lamp is lit at the flame of another, so the divine sakti, consisting of mantra, is communicated from the guru's body to that of the sisya." Without diksa, japa, puja and other rites are useless.
Who May Receive Which Mantra
- Certain mantras are said to be forbidden to sudras and women.
- But Woodroffe cites a note in the first Chalaksara-sutra to the Lalita (an index to the Sahasranama), and the Kalika Purana on accent (svara): the three Vedic accents (udatta, anudatta, pracaya) suit the twice-born, but the tone called aukara, with anusvara and nada, suits the sudra, who may use the pranava (Om) at the beginning or the end of a mantra, though not at both as the dvija may. So even sudras are not barred from Om, contrary to the usual claim.
- The mantra chosen must be suitable (anukula). Whether it is sva-kula (friendly) or a-kula is found by the kula-cakra, the zodiacal rasi-cakra and other diagrams described in the Tantrasara.
Initiation by a woman is efficacious; by one's mother, eightfold so.
Abhiseka: The Eight Consecrations
Abhiseka means sprinkling, anointing, inaugurating or consecrating, as of a king or disciple. There are eight kinds, and each later one marks a deeper degree of initiation. Woodroffe follows the Tantra-rahasya of Saccidananda Svami.
| No. | Abhiseka | When given | What happens |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Saktabhiseka | On entering the path of sadhana | The guru reveals the preliminary mysteries of sakti-tattva; the disciple is cleansed of evil proclivities and gains "a wonderful new sakti" (two forms: raja and yogi) |
| 2 | Purnabhiseka | Beyond daksinacara, after purascarana and other practices | "Here the real work of sadhana begins." Asana, yama and the like strengthen the disciple's resolve (pratijna) |
| 3 | Krama-diksabhiseka | A difficult stage | Vasistha is said to have become entangled here; Visvamitra gained brahma-jnana here and so became a Brahmana. The sacred thread is now worn round the neck like a garland |
| 4 | Samrajyabhiseka | After ordeals (pariksa) | "Imperial" consecration |
| 5 | Mahasamrajyabhiseka | "Great imperial" consecration | |
| 6 | Yoga-diksabhiseka | "The most difficult of all stages" | Having done the panchanga-purascarana, the disciple, living constantly with his guru and taking instruction directly, does the panchanga-yoga, the last five limbs of the eight-limbed yoga |
| 7 | Purna-diksabhiseka (also viraja-grahanabhiseka) | On perfection in yoga | The sadhaka performs his own funeral rites (sraddha) and makes the final offering (purnahuti) of his sacred thread and crown lock |
| 8 | (The ascent alone) | The guru-disciple relation now ends. He ascends alone until he realises So'ham, "I am He": jivanmukta, liberated while living, called paramahamsa |
The sequence has a striking shape: it begins with the guru tying the disciple's crown lock and ends with the disciple burning it, together with the sacred thread, in his own funeral rite. Initiation in this scheme is not admission to a group but a series of deaths to social identity, the same eight bonds the pasu section listed, until no one remains to be a disciple.
Sadhana: The Means
Sadhana is what produces siddhi. It is the practice by which the end is reached, and consists in training the body and the psychic faculties. Siddhi follows their gradual perfection, and its kind and degree depend on progress toward realisation of the Atma, whose veiling garment the body is.
Means and Ends
The means are many: puja (outer or mental), study of the Sastras, tapas, the pancatattva, mantra and more. Sadhana takes its character from its goal. Sadhana for brahma-jnana consists of:
- sama: inner control over buddhi, manas and ahamkara;
- dama: outer control over the ten indriyas;
- discrimination between the transient and the eternal;
- renunciation of both the world and heaven (svarga).
That is obviously different from sadhana "for the purposes of the lower magic".
Grades of Practitioner
The sadhaka (man) and sadhika (woman) are graded by physical, mental and moral qualities:
| Grade | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Mrdu | Mild, weak |
| Madhya | Middling |
| Adhimatraka | Strong |
| Adhimatrama | Strongest; qualified for all forms of yoga |
The Kaula worshippers are graded likewise:
| Grade | Practice |
|---|---|
| Prakrta Kaula (common) | Follows viracara; given to ritual and to sadhana with the pancatattva |
| Madhyama Kaulika (middling) | Same sadhana, but with the mind turned more to meditation, knowledge and samadhi |
| Kaulikottama (highest) | Has surpassed all ritual and meditates on the Universal Self |
Worship: Its Grades and Kinds
This is the longest part of the book. It opens with a general theory of worship, then works through the seven acaras, mantra, the Gayatri, yantra, mudra, the daily and occasional rites, nyasa, the pancatattva and the cakrapuja. This section covers the theory, the acaras and mantra.
Four States of Worship
| Bhava | Practice | Rank |
|---|---|---|
| Brahma-bhava | Realisation that jivatma and Paramatma are one; all is Brahman | Highest |
| Dhyana-bhava | Constant yogic meditation on the deity in the heart | Middle |
| Japa and stava | Mantra repetition, hymns, prayer | Lower |
| Puja-bhava | External worship | Lowest |
Puja-bhava arises from the dualism of worshipper and worshipped, servant and Lord. That dualism exists, more or less, in every state except the highest. For one who has realised advaita, there is neither worshipper nor worshipped, neither yoga nor puja, dharana, dhyana, stava, japa, vrata nor any other rite.
Bringing the Image to Life
In external worship, one worships either an image (pratima) or a yantra in its place.
- The sadhaka first worships inwardly the mental image of the Devi's form.
- Then by the prana-pratistha (life-giving) rite he infuses the image with her life, communicating the tejas of Brahman within him to the image outside, "from which there bursts the lustre of Her whose substance is consciousness itself".
- The Devi exists as Sakti in stone or metal already, but veiled and seemingly inert. Consciousness (caitanya) is aroused by the prana-pratistha mantra.
Two Kinds of Rite
| Kind | Character | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| Nitya | Daily and obligatory, "done because so ordained" | Samdhya (Tantric form for sudras); daily puja of the Ista-devata and Kula-devata; for Brahmanas the five great sacrifices (panca-maha-yajna) |
| Naimittika | Occasional and voluntary; called kamya when done for a particular end | Yajna for a purpose; tapas for an end; vrata |
Caste and Gender in Worship
- Under Vedic rules, the sudra cannot perform Vedic rites, read the Vedas or recite Vedic mantras; his worship is practically limited to the Ista-devata and Bana-linga puja, with Tantric and Puranic mantras.
- The Tantra makes no caste distinctions in worship. All may read the Tantras, perform Tantric samdhya and recite Tantric mantras such as the Tantric Gayatri.
- All castes, even the lowest candala, may be members of a cakra. In the cakra all eat and drink together and are deemed greater than Brahmanas; when the cakra breaks up, ordinary caste relations return.
- Women, excluded under the present Vedic system (though the Dharma-sastra writer Sankha allows a wife, with her husband's consent, to fast, take vows and perform homa), may under the Tantra receive mantra, act as guru, initiate, and be worshipped as guru and as the guru's wife. The Devi is guru of all Sastras, and all women are in a special sense her earthly representatives.
The Seven Acaras
The Kularnava Tantra lists seven acaras (ways of practice), in rising order; some add two more, giving nine:
- Vedacara
- Vaisnavacara
- Saivacara
- Daksinacara
- Vamacara
- Siddhantacara
- (Aghoracara, Yogacara: the two extra in some lists)
- Kaulacara, the highest.
The acaras are not separate sects but stages through which the worshipper passes, in this or other births, before reaching the Kaula. Woodroffe follows the Sanatana-sadhana-tattva (Tantra-rahasya) of Saccidananda Svami.
| Acara | Character | Path | Aim |
|---|---|---|---|
| Vedacara | Daily Vedic rites; the gross body containing all the others as subtler bodies; largely external | Kriya-marga (action) | To strengthen dharma; faith |
| Vaisnavacara | From blind faith to understanding of Brahman's protecting energy, with devotion | Bhakti-marga | Union of devotion and faith |
| Saivacara | The warrior (ksatriya) stage: to love and mercy are added strenuous striving and the cultivation of power, to protect dharma and destroy adharma | Entry into jnana-marga | Faith, devotion and inner determination (antar-laksa) |
| Daksinacara | Not "right-hand" but "favourable" to higher sadhana; the Devi is Daksina-Kalika; begins when one can do dhyana and dharana of the threefold sakti (kriya, iccha, jnana) and understands the interplay of the gunas; ends with purnabhiseka; the sadhaka is now Sakta, fully initiated in the Gayatri | "Individualistic Brahmanatva" | Faith, devotion and determination joined with knowledge of the three energies |
| Vamacara | Not "left-hand" but worship in which woman (vama) enters: lata-sadhana; also worship of the Vama-Devi; "vama" is adverse, because it reverses pravrtti | Entry into nivrtti, the path of return | To destroy pravrtti directly and cut the eight bonds |
| Siddhantacara (and Aghora, Yoga) | Freed from family, caste and society; attached to nothing, hating nothing, ashamed of nothing; a dweller in the cremation ground like Siva; learns the vayus and the truths of micro- and macrocosm; the guru teaches the inner core of Vedacara; yoga-diksa qualifies for yogacara | Yoga | Perfection in astanga-yoga |
| Kaulacara | Brahma-jnana, the perfect gnosis; after maha-purna-diksa he performs his own funeral rites; sits alone in nirvikalpa samadhi; the Mother dwells in his heart, "now the cremation ground wherein all passions have been burnt away" | Paramahamsa, jivanmukta |
Some therefore divide the acaras into two broad groups: Daksinacara (the first four) and Vamacara (the last three). Men are born into daksinacara but received by initiation into vamacara.
The Turn to Nivrtti
Up to the fourth stage the sadhaka follows pravrtti-marga, the outgoing path of worldly enjoyment curbed by dharma. Sadhana tried, unconsciously and then consciously, to induce nivrtti, which can only fully appear once the outward current is exhausted. In vamacara the sadhaka begins to destroy pravrtti directly, and he cannot do this without the guru. ("It is comparatively easy to lay down rules for the pravrtti-marga, but nothing can be achieved in vamacara without the guru's help.")
The method is to use the forces of pravrtti so that they become self-destructive. The passions that bind may be used as forces to raise the particular life to the universal. Passion, which has run downward and outward to waste, is turned inward and upward and transformed into power. But not only eating, drinking and sex must be mastered: all eight bonds of the pasu must be cut.
Krsna and the Gopis' Clothes
Woodroffe gives the Tantric reading of a famous Vaisnava story. When Sri Krsna stole the clothes of the bathing Gopis and made them come to him naked, he removed the artificial coverings imposed on man in samsara. The Gopis were eight, as are the bonds, and the errors that mislead the jiva are the clothes he took. Freed of them, the jiva is freed of all bonds of desire, family and society, and reaches sivatva, the state of Siva.
The aim of vamacara is to qualify the sadhaka for the higher sadhana where sattva predominates. "To the truly sattvik there is neither attachment nor fear nor disgust."
The Kaula Is the Heart of All Sects
The often-quoted verse used to accuse Kaulas of hypocrisy is, Woodroffe says, misunderstood:
"Inwardly Saktas, outwardly Saivas, in gatherings Vaisnavas: in various forms the Kaulas wander the earth."
Kaula-dharma is not sectarian; it is the heart of all sects. The Kaula has passed through the other stages, whose inmost doctrine (whether their followers know it or not) is Kaulacara. His outward sect is indifferent. "The form is nothing and everything": nothing, because it cannot narrow his inner life; everything, because knowledge can fill its limitations with universal meaning. So understood, form is never a bond.
The Visvasara Tantra (ch. 24): for the Kaula "there is neither rule of time nor place"; moon phases and stars do not affect his acts; at times he keeps social rules (sista), at times he seems fallen (bhrasta), at times as unearthly as a ghost (bhuta, pisaca). "To him no difference is there between mud and sandal paste, his son and an enemy, home and the cremation ground."
Stages Across Lifetimes
The stages are ordinarily traversed over many births. "The weaving of the spiritual garment is recommenced where, in a previous birth, it was dropped." One may begin this life at any stage; whoever is born a Kaula has earned it before. The Niruttara Tantra: knowledge of Sakti comes after many births; the Mahanirvana: by merit from previous births the mind inclines to Kaulacara.
Woodroffe's acara ladder is a reformist construction. It comes from a late Bengali manual (Saccidananda Svami's), and it does two apologetic jobs at once: it turns "vama" (left) into "woman" and "daksina" (right) into "favourable", and it reframes rival practices as stages of one path. Most scholars accept that vama in Tantric usage does mean "left", and that "left-hand" practice (involving transgressive substances and sexual rites) was a distinct current, not just a later stage of devotion. Woodroffe's reading is a sincere inside view, but it is one inside view among several.
Strip away the debate and a precise psychological claim remains: you cannot renounce what you have not owned. The first four acaras build up dharma, devotion, power and knowledge; only then does the practitioner use desire against itself. This is why Woodroffe insists the left-hand stage without a guru is dangerous: the same forces that liberate also bind more tightly.
Mantra
Sound as Brahman
Sabda (sound), being of Brahman and the cause of the cosmos, is the manifestation of Cit-sakti itself. The Visvasara Tantra: Para-brahman as Sabda-brahman, whose substance is all mantra, exists in the body of the jivatma.
- Sabda is either unlettered (dhvani) or lettered (varna). Dhvani, which produces varna, is the subtle aspect of the jiva's vital sakti. The Prapanca-sara: the cosmos is pervaded by sakti consisting of dhvani, also called nada, prana and so on. The gross form of sound cannot appear unless it already exists in subtle form.
- All mantras are aspects of Brahman and manifestations of Kula-kundalini.
- Philosophically, sabda is the guna of akasa (the quality of ether), but it is not produced by akasa; it manifests in it. Sabda is itself Brahman. As in outer space waves of sound are made by movements of air, in the body's inner space sound waves arise with the movement of prana in breathing.
The Four Levels of Speech
Sound first appears at the muladhara: the Sakti who gives life to the jiva makes there "the sweet, indistinct and murmuring dhvani, which sounds like the humming of a black bee".
| Level | Location | Character |
|---|---|---|
| Para | Muladhara | Extremely subtle |
| Pasyanti | Reaching the heart | Less subtle ("seeing") |
| Madhyama | Connected with buddhi | More gross ("middle") |
| Vaikhari | Issuing from the mouth | Fully gross, audible speech |
Mantra and Devata
- The substance of every mantra is cit, whatever its outer form as sound, letters or words. The letters, called aksara, are only the yantra of the Aksara, the imperishable Brahman. This is realised only when the sadhaka's own sakti, generated by sadhana, is united with the mantra-sakti.
- The gross form of Kula-kundalini, appearing as different Devatas, presides (adhisthatri) over all mantras, but all sadhakas aim at her subtle form.
- When mantra-sakti is awakened, the presiding deity appears; when perfect mantra-siddhi is reached, the Devata, who is saccidananda, is revealed.
- The relations of varna, nada, bindu, vowel and consonant in a mantra show the appearance of the deity in different forms. Certain aspects (vibhuti) of a deity inhere in certain letters, but perfect Sakti appears only in a whole mantra. No word or letter of a mantra is itself a mantra.
- A mantra is letters in a fixed sequence of sounds; to work it must be intoned rightly in svara (rhythm, accent) and varna (sound). "A mantra, when translated, ceases to be such, and becomes a mere sentence."
The Embodied Sastra
Mantras come from Veda, Purana and Tantra, but the Tantra is essentially the mantra-sastra. Of the "embodied sastra":
| Scripture | Part of the body |
|---|---|
| Tantra (mantra) | Paramatma |
| Vedas | Jivatma |
| Darsanas (philosophies) | Senses |
| Puranas | Body |
| Smrtis | Limbs |
Mantra Is Not Prayer
A mantra is not prayer or self-dedication (atma-nivedana). Prayer uses whatever words the worshipper chooses and carries its meaning on its face. If mantra were only a name for what one says to God, one could choose one's own language. A mantra may or may not carry its meaning on its face. Bija mantras such as Aim, Klim, Hrim have no meaning in ordinary language; the initiate knows their meaning is the own-form (svarupa) of the deity, and that they are the dhvani that makes all letters sound. "They go to hell who think the guru a man, the image a stone, and the mantra mere letters."
Etymology: man- from manana (thinking), from which comes real understanding that Brahman and cosmos are one; -tra from trana (liberation) from samsara. What "calls forth" (amantrana) the four aims of life (caturvarga) is mantra. Prayer often ends in physical sound; mantra is a compelling force, a word of power. By mantra the sought deity is attained and compelled; siddhi in mantra opens the vision of the three worlds.
Why the Initiation Mantra Is Strongest
Worship, reading, hymn, homa, dhyana, dharana and samadhi share a purpose with the diksa-mantra, but the latter is far more powerful, because the sadhaka's own sadhana-sakti works together with mantra-sakti, "which has the revelation and force of fire".
Woodroffe's image: the initiation mantra is the bija sown in the field of the heart. Tantric samdhya, nyasa and puja are the stem and branches; hymns (stuti) and homage (vandana) are the leaves and flowers; the kavaca (protective mantra-armour) is the fruit.
Classes of Mantra
| By | Classes |
|---|---|
| Nature | Solar (saura) = masculine; lunar (saumya) = feminine |
| Gender | Masculine and neuter are called mantra; feminine is vidya. Neuter (Puranic mantras ending in namah) lack the force of the others. Masculine endings: hum, phat; feminine: tham, svaha |
| Length (Nitya Tantra) | 1 syllable: pinda; 3: kartari; 4 to 9: bija; 10 to 20: mantra; over 20: mala |
(Why should formless things of mind have sex? "For the sake of the requirements of the worshipper.") Bija usually means a one-syllable mantra: short, non-etymological sounds like Hrim, Srim, Krim, Aim, Phat, so called because they are the seed of the fruit, siddhi, and the quintessence of mantra. Each deity has a bija: Krim (Kali), Hrim (Maya), Ram (Agni), Em (Yoni). The primary mantra of a deity is its mula-mantra; "mula" also denotes the deity's subtle body, Kama-kala.
Waking the Mantra
A mantra uttered without knowledge of its meaning or method is "a mere movement of the lips". The mantra sleeps. The preliminary processes, themselves mantras, are:
| Process | What it does |
|---|---|
| Mukha-sodhana | Purifying the mouth (japa of pranava or a mantra suited to the deity, e.g. Om Hsau for Bhairava) |
| Jihva-sodhana | Purifying the tongue (seven japas of the bija tripled, pranava tripled, then the bija tripled) |
| Asauca-bhanga | Removing the "birth" and "death" impurities of the mantra (japa of the mula-mantra preceded and followed by pranava) |
| Kulluka | Done over the head (for Kalika, the Maya-bija) |
| Nirvana | Japa of mula and matrka bijas in the manipura |
| Setu ("bridge") | Usually Om or Hrim; for Kali her own bija Krim |
| Nidra-bhanga | Awakening the mantra (japa preceded and followed by Im seven times) |
| Mantra-caitanya | Giving life to the mantra (japa of the mula-mantra in the manipura with matrka-bija; meditating on it in sahasrara, anahata and muladhara with Hum) |
| Mantrartha-bhavana | Forming the mental image of the deity: thinking of the letters that make up the Devata from foot to head |
| Dipani | Seven japas of the bija preceded and followed by Om (with Hrim instead it is prana-yoga) |
| Yoni-mudra | Meditation on the Guru in the head and the Ista-devata in the heart, then on the Yoni-rupa Bhagavati from head to muladhara and back, with ten japas of Em |
There are also ten samskaras of the mantra (Tantrasara).
The Mantra Is the Deity
The mantra itself is Devata. The worshipper awakens it by cit-sakti, "putting away all thought of the letter, piercing the six cakras, and contemplating the spotless One" (Kubjika Tantra).
- The mantra's sakti is vacaka-sakti, the means by which vacya-sakti, the object, is reached. The mantra lives by the first.
- So the Mother in saguna form presides over the Gayatri; as the nirguna One she is its vacya-sakti. Both are one, but the jiva must meditate on the gross form first before realising the subtle one that liberates.
- Woodroffe insists these forms are not mere creations of the worshipper's imagination, "as some modernist Hindus suppose", but forms in which the Deity in fact appears.
- The rhythmic vibrations of a mantra regulate the unsteady vibrations of the worshipper's sheaths and so transform him; and from the mantra arises the form of the deity that it is. (Brhad-gandharva Tantra: "by the mere utterance of the mantra the form of the deity is born.")
Mantra-siddhi is the ability to make a mantra effective and gather its fruit. Mantras are classed for each person by cakra calculations as siddha (friend), sadhya (server), susiddha (supporter) and ari (destroyer).
Woodroffe's mantra theory makes strong claims: that sound is Brahman, that a translated mantra loses its power, that a mantra compels a deity. These are claims of the tradition, not results Woodroffe argues for; his fuller defence is in The Garland of Letters (1922), which links them to the Mimamsa doctrine of the eternity of sound and to the sphota theory of the grammarians. Readers who doubt the metaphysics can still take the psychological point seriously: a fixed, untranslated, rhythmically repeated sound, received from a teacher and practised under rules, works differently from free-form prayer.
| Key term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Sabda-brahman | Brahman as sound |
| Dhvani / varna | Unlettered / lettered sound |
| Para, pasyanti, madhyama, vaikhari | The four levels of speech |
| Bija | Seed-syllable |
| Mula-mantra | A deity's root mantra |
| Vidya | A feminine mantra |
| Vacaka / vacya sakti | The power that denotes / the power denoted |
| Mantra-caitanya | The awakened life of a mantra |
| Mantra-siddhi | Mastery of a mantra |
Gayatri, Yantra and Mudra
These three are the instruments of worship: a sound, a diagram and a gesture. Each is treated by Woodroffe as a body of the deity, not a symbol pointing to it.
The Gayatri
The Gayatri is the most sacred of all Vedic mantras; in it the Veda lies as in its seed. The mantra: Om bhur bhuvah svah, tat savitur varenyam bhargo devasya dhimahi, dhiyo yo nah pracodayat. Om. Woodroffe's translation: "Let us contemplate the wondrous spirit of the Divine Creator (Savitr) of the earthly, atmospheric and celestial spheres. May He direct our minds" toward dharma, artha, kama and moksa.
He then follows the Gayatri-vyakarana of Yogi Yajnavalkya word by word:
| Word | Meaning | Gloss |
|---|---|---|
| Tat | That | "Which" (yat) is understood (or taken as part of a genitive compound with the vyahrtis) |
| Savituh | Of Savitr | From su, "to bring forth": the Bringer-forth of all. The Bhavisya Purana: the Sun is "the visible Devata", Eye of the world, Maker of day; the universe comes from and returns to him; time is in him; planets, Vasus, Rudras, Vayu and Agni are parts of him |
| Bhargah | Radiance | The Aditya-devata in the solar sphere, who is to the Sun what our atma is to our body. In outer ether he is Surya; in the ether of the heart he is the Smokeless Fire. "The Being the sadhaka realises in his heart is the Aditya in the sky. The two are one." Two derivations: (1) from bhrj, "ripen, destroy, reveal, shine": he matures all, reveals all and at pralaya destroys all as kalagni; (2) bha (dividing things into classes) + ra (colour) + ga (going and returning) |
| Devasya | Of the Deva | The radiant and playful (lilamaya) one, ever playing at creation, preservation and dissolution. (Lila, applied to Brahman, equals maya.) |
| Varenyam | Adorable | To be adored by those who fear rebirth and seek freedom from the three pains: adhyatmika (from oneself), adhidaivika (from divine or natural forces), adhibhautika (from other beings) |
| Dhimahi | Let us meditate | From dhyai |
| Pracodayat | May he direct | Implicitly along the caturvarga; the Bhargah ever directs our buddhi-vrtti along these paths |
The Brahmana-sarvasva: "The Bhargah is the Atma of all that exists, moving or motionless, in the three worlds. Nothing exists apart from it."
The Tantric Gayatri
Under the Vedic system only the twice-born may utter the Vedic Gayatri; it is forbidden to sudras of both sexes and to women of every caste. The Tantra has its own Gayatri and shows no such exclusiveness. The Mahanirvana (3.109 to 111) gives the Brahma-gayatri: Paramesvaraya vidmahe, para-tattvaya dhimahi, tan no Brahma pracodayat, "May we know the Supreme Lord; let us contemplate the Supreme Essence; may that Brahman direct us."
Woodroffe's reading of the Gayatri shows the Tantric method in small. The outer Sun and the inner light in the heart are declared identical. The same move appears in the cakras (cosmic elements inside the spine), in the Sri Cakra and in bhuta-suddhi. Tantric practice runs on correspondence: whatever is out there is also in here, and work on the inner one reaches the outer.
Yantra
Yantra in general means an instrument, "that by which anything is accomplished". In worship it is that by which the mind is fixed on its object. The Yogini Tantra: the Devi is worshipped in an image (pratima), a mandala, or a yantra (or, failing those, in water or certain flowers: aparajita, jaba, karavira, drona, according to the Kaulavaliya Tantra).
- Mandala vs yantra: a mandala, often drawn in colours, may be used for any deity; a yantra belongs to one specific deity.
- At a certain stage the sadhaka becomes qualified to worship yantra. The siddha-yogi begins inner worship (antar-puja) with the yantra, which is the sign (samketa) of brahma-vijnana, as mantra is the sign of the deity.
- Another etymology: yantra subdues (niyantrana) lust, anger and the other faults of the jiva and the suffering they cause.
- It is engraved or drawn on metal, paper or other material (magical treatises even speak of leopard and donkey skin and human bone), and worshipped exactly as an image. Different worships need different yantras; many are figured in the Tantrasara.
Woodroffe's Own Gayatri Yantra
The book reproduces a Gayatri yantra belonging to the author. Its parts, from centre outward:
- Central triangle: the words Sri Sri Gayatri sva-prasada siddhim kuru ("Sri Sri Gayatri Devi, grant me success"); in each inner corner the bijas Hrim and Hrah.
- Intersections of the outer ovoid circles: the bija Hrim.
- Circular band: the bija Tha, which stands for svaha, the ending of feminine mantras (vidya).
- Eight lotus petals springing from the band: Hrim, Im, Hrah.
- Outermost band: all the matrkas, the letters from a to ksa.
- Bhupura: the enclosure common to all yantras, which shuts the yantra off from the outer world. (In painted yantras, serpents are often shown crawling outside it.)
No figure of the deity appears on metal yantras; paper yantras sometimes show them (for example the eight Bhairava-Saktis).
Installing the Deity
The yantra inscribed with mantra is a mnemonic chart of that mantra. The procedure follows that for an image:
- The worshipper meditates on the deity;
- arouses him or her in himself;
- communicates the aroused presence to the yantra;
- invokes the deity into the yantra by mantra;
- infuses the deity's prana by prana-pratistha, with mantra and mudra.
The yantra is then "no longer mere gross matter veiling the spirit which has always been there", but alive with its aroused presence, which the sadhaka first welcomes, then worships. "Mantra is Devata, and yantra is mantra in that it is the body of the Devata who is mantra"; as body and self differ, so do yantra and deity (Kaulavaliya Tantra).
Mudra
Mudra is derived from mud, "to please": it gives pleasure to the Devas. There are said to be 108, of which 55 are in common use. The word covers both ritual hand gestures and bodily positions in yoga.
Two examples:
- Matsya-mudra (fish): in offering arghya, the right hand is placed on the back of the left and the two thumbs extended fish-like on either side, so the conch of water may be regarded as an ocean with its creatures.
- Yoni-mudra: thumbs, first fingers and little fingers form a triangle, invoking the Devi to take her place before the worshipper, the yoni being her pitha or yantra.
The ritual mudra is the outer expression of an inner resolve, which at the same time it intensifies. Mudras are used in:
- Arcana (worship)
- Japa
- Dhyana
- Kamya-karma (rites for particular ends)
- Pratistha (installation)
- Snana (bathing)
- Avahana (welcoming)
- Naivedya (offering food)
- Visarjana (dismissing the deity)
The Gheranda Samhita says that knowledge of the yoga mudras grants all siddhis, and their practice gives stability, firmness and cure of disease. (In the pancatattva, "mudra" has another meaning: parched grain.)
Mantra, yantra, mudra as three bodies of one deity. Mantra is the deity as sound; yantra is the deity as form; mudra is the deity's presence as gesture of the worshipper's own body. Worship sets all three going at once, so that voice, eye and hand converge on one object. This is how the Tantra makes concentration a whole-body act.
The Daily and Occasional Rites
This section covers the remaining entries of Woodroffe's ritual glossary: samdhya, puja, yajna, vrata, tapas, japa, samskara, purascarana.
Samdhya
The Vedic samdhya is performed by the twice-born three times a day: morning, midday and evening.
Before the Morning Samdhya
- On waking: a mantra invoking the Trimurti, the sun, moon and planets; salutation to the Guru.
- The mantra: "I am a Deva. I am indeed the sorrowless Brahman. By nature I am eternally free, and in the form of existence, intelligence and bliss."
- He offers the day's actions to the Deity, confesses his inherent frailty ("I know dharma and yet would not do it; I know adharma and yet would not renounce it", the Hindu form of Ovid's "I see the better and approve it; I follow the worse") and prays to do right.
- Rising, touching the earth with the right foot: "Om, O Earth, salutation to Thee, the Guru of all that is good."
- After natural calls: acamana (sipping water) with mantra, cleaning the teeth, the early bath with mantra (the householder bathes twice a day, the ascetic at each samdhya).
- The caste-mark (tilaka) and tarpana, oblation of water to Devas, Rsis and Pitrs.
The Samdhya Itself (Sama Veda Outline)
- Acamana: sipping water.
- Marjana-snana: sprinkling the body with water by hand or kusa grass.
- Pranayama.
- Aghamarsana: expelling the "person of sin" from the body.
- Prayer to the Sun.
- The canon of the samdhya: silent japa of the Gayatri, consisting of:
- avahana, invocation of Gayatri-Devi;
- rsi-nyasa and sadanga-nyasa;
- meditation on the Devi as Brahmani in the morning, Vaisnavi at midday, Rudrani in the evening;
- japa of the Gayatri a set number of times;
- visarjana, dismissal;
- Other mantras.
Details differ by sect and Veda (Woodroffe cites the Kriyakanda-varidhi, the Purohita-darpana, Srisa Chandra Vasu's Daily Practice of the Hindus, and Mrs S. C. Belnos's illustrated Samdhya of 1831). Besides the Vedic samdhya, barred to sudras, there is the Tantric samdhya, open to all: similar outline, simpler rite, different mantras, and Tantric bijas.
Puja
Puja is the common word for worship, with many synonyms (arcana, vandana, saparya, arhana, namasya, arca, bhajana). It is done daily to the Ista-devata: the Devi for a Sakta, Visnu for a Vaisnava. Yet every puja worships the Panca-devata, the five deities:
- Aditya (the Sun)
- Ganesa
- The Devi
- Siva
- Visnu (Narayana)
Then the Kula-devata, the family deity, usually the same as the Ista-devata.
Kamya puja (for a particular end), like vrata, begins with samkalpa, a formal statement of resolve: "I, of such a gotra, am about to perform this puja with the object of...".
The Sixteen Upacaras
| No. | Upacara | What is offered |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Asana | Seat of the image |
| 2 | Svagata | Welcome |
| 3 | Padya | Water to wash the feet |
| 4 | Arghya | Unboiled rice, flowers, sandal paste, durva grass and so on, in the kusi vessel (general or special) |
| 5, 6 | Acamana | Water for sipping, offered twice |
| 7 | Madhuparka | Honey, ghee, milk and curd in a silver or brass vessel |
| 8 | Snana | Water for bathing |
| 9 | Vasana | Cloth |
| 10 | Abharana | Jewels |
| 11 | Gandha | Scent and sandal paste |
| 12 | Puspa | Flowers |
| 13 | Dhupa | Incense |
| 14 | Dipa | Light |
| 15 | Naivedya | Food |
| 16 | Vandana / namaskara | Prayer, obeisance |
Articles vary with the deity: tulasi for Visnu, bilva for Siva. (Kusa grass is used only in rites for the ancestors and in homa.)
Order of Puja
- The worshipper's seat is purified.
- Salutation to adhara-sakti, the sustaining force; water, flowers and other items purified.
- Bhutapasarpana: obstructive spirits driven off; the ten quarters fenced by striking the earth three times with the left foot, saying the weapon-bija phat, and snapping the fingers twice round the head.
- Pranayama.
- Bhuta-suddhi (purification of the elements).
- Nyasa.
- Dhyana.
- Offering of the upacaras.
- Japa.
- Prayer and pranama.
In the asta-murti puja of Siva he is worshipped in eight forms: Sarva (earth), Bhava (water), Rudra (fire), Ugra (air), Bhima (ether), Pasupati (the sacrificer), Isana (sun), Mahadeva (moon) (Todala Tantra, ch. 5).
Yajna
From yaj, "to worship"; usually rendered "sacrifice", but Woodroffe keeps the Sanskrit because it covers more. The five great yajnas (panca-maha-yajna), daily for a Brahmana:
| Yajna | Offering to | Content |
|---|---|---|
| Deva-yajna (homa) | The gods | Offerings in fire, including the vaisvadeva offering in the domestic fire |
| Bhuta-yajna (bali) | Devas, spirits and animals | Food offerings |
| Pitr-yajna (tarpana) | Ancestors | Water oblations |
| Brahma-yajna | The sages | Study of the Vedas |
| Manusya-yajna (nr-yajna) | Humans | Hospitality to guests (atithi-saparya) |
By these five the worshipper puts himself in right relation with all beings: gods, ancestors, spirits, humans, animals and himself.
Homa
- A fire-pit (kunda) is prepared; fire brought from a Brahmana's house is consecrated with mantra.
- The fire is made conscious with Vam vahni-caitanyaya namah, then saluted and named.
- Meditation on ida, pingala and susumna and on Agni.
- Offerings to the Ista-devata in the fire.
- After fire-puja, salutation as in sadanga-nyasa; ghee poured with a wooden spoon, with mantras beginning with Om and ending with Svaha.
Homa may be daily (nitya-vaisvadeva) or for occasions (thread ceremony, marriage, vrata), and Vedic, Puranic or Tantric. Named kinds include prayascitta-homa, srstikrt-homa, janu-homa, dhara-homa.
Other yajnas: Manu's four (deva, bhauta, nr, pitr); also japa-yajna and dhyana-yajna. All may be sattvika, rajasika or tamasika according to the worshipper's disposition and intent.
Vrata
Vrata is part of naimittika (voluntary) karma: what causes merit (punya), done to gain its fruit.
| Kind | Examples |
|---|---|
| Fixed dates | Janmastami (Krsna's birthday); Sivaratri; Satpancami, Durvastami, Talanavami, Anantacaturdasi (for Laksmi, Narayana, Ananta) |
| Any time | Savitri-vrata, by women only (for good wifehood and the husband's long life, here and hereafter); Kartikeya-puja, by men only (for children) |
| The great vrata | Durga-puja, the maha-vrata, "which will continue as long as sun and moon endure", and once begun must always be continued |
| Without sastric authority | Many Bengali vratas, e.g. Madhu-samkranti-vrata, Jala-samkranti-vrata |
Common features: samyama (restraint) in preparation and performance, such as sexual continence, special food (havisyanna), fasting, bathing; no flesh or fish; the mind fixed on the purpose; the vow (niyama) taken. Beforehand the Sun, planets and Kula-devata are worshipped, and all Devas and beings invoked with the "suryah somo yamah kalah" mantra. In the Vedic vrata the samkalpa is made in the morning and the vrata done before noon.
Havisyanna, as Woodroffe describes it: green bananas, dal, sweet potato and unboiled rice cooked together in one pot with just enough water to boil dry; ghee and salt added after.
Tapas
Tapas is usually rendered "penance" or "austerity", and includes the four-month fasts (caturmasya) and sitting between five fires (pancagni-tapas). In its wider sense it is threefold:
| Kind | Content |
|---|---|
| Sarira (bodily) | External worship; reverence and support to the Guru, Brahmanas and the wise; cleanliness, continence, simplicity, and ahimsa |
| Vacika (speech) | Truth; good, gentle and affectionate speech; Vedic study |
| Manasa (mental) | Self-restraint, purity of disposition, silence, tranquillity |
Each is sattvika (with faith, without regard to fruit), rajasika (for its fruit, or from pride and for honour) or tamasika (done ignorantly or to harm others, such as the six magical acts when used for abhicara, malevolent purpose).
The six acts (sat-karma) of Tantric magic: santi (pacifying), vasikarana (subjugating), stambhana (immobilising), vidvesana (causing enmity), uccatana (driving away), marana (killing). Woodroffe lists the texts that teach them (Indrajala-vidya, Nagabhatta's Kamaratna, the Sat-karma-dipika and others) without endorsing them.
Woodroffe was writing partly to defend the Tantra against charges of black magic, and here he places the sat-karma squarely in the tamasika category. That is a fair statement of the dharmic view. It is also an admission: these rites are part of the Tantric corpus, and the texts that teach them are real. A balanced reader keeps both facts in view.
Japa
Japa is "vidhanena mantroccaranam": repeated recitation of mantra according to rule. The Tantrasara gives three kinds:
| Kind | Method | Rank |
|---|---|---|
| Vacika | Audible; the fifty matrkas sounded nasally with bindu | Lowest |
| Upamsu | Lips and tongue move, no sound or a slight whisper | Middle |
| Manasa | Mental: no sound, no movement; repetition in the mind fixed on the mantra's meaning | Highest |
Why the ranking: with audible speech the mind attends to words and correct pronunciation, and is distracted (much in vacika, less in upamsu) from the meaning. The kinds also carry the relative value of thought and of its materialisation in sound.
- Rules cover physical cleanliness, hair, silk garments, the seat (asana), avoiding certain moods and acts, and the manner of recitation.
- Japa is useless unless done a set number of times; 108 is excellent.
- Counting is by rosary (mala-japa) or with the right thumb on the finger joints (kara-japa), whose pattern varies by mantra.
- The Sat-karma-dipika: "Siddhi does not come even in hundreds of crores of kalpas to one who does japa of a vidya written in a book." Book knowledge is useless without the guru.
Samskara
There are ten (for sudras nine) purificatory "sacraments", done to aid and purify the jiva at life's key events. They are described in Chapter 9 of the Mahanirvana.
| No. | Samskara | When | Purpose |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Jiva-seka (garbhadhana, with rtu-samskara) | Rtu-samskara on the first day after menstruation; garbhadhana by day on the fifth day, qualifying for the act at night | To ensure and sanctify conception |
| 2 | Pumsavana | When the wife sees signs of conception | Prenatal |
| 3 | Simantonnayana | 4th, 6th or 8th month of pregnancy | Prenatal |
| 4 | Jata-karma | At birth | For the newborn's continued life |
| 5 | Nama-karana | Naming | |
| 6 | Niskramana | 4th month | The child is first taken outdoors and shown the sun, material embodiment of the divine Savitr |
| 7 | Annaprasana | 5th to 8th month | First rice |
| 8 | Cudakarana | Tonsure; a lock, sikha, is left on the crown ("as when a king visits a place the royal banner is set up, so on the head in whose thousand-petalled lotus Brahman resides, sikha is left") | |
| 9 | Upanayana | For the three twice-born classes | Investiture with the sacred thread; rebirth into spiritual life |
| 10 | Udvaha | Marriage, by which the unperfected jiva secures, through offspring, the continued human life that is the condition of its progress and return to its source |
The Embryological Reading
Woodroffe draws on Dr Louise Appel's appendix to Bhagavan Das's Pranava-vada to read the three prenatal rites as marking three stages:
- From fertilisation to the "critical period": structural changes until the embryo is fit for the entry of the jivatma, whose connection with the pronuclei began the formative activity.
- From the critical period to viability: fixing the connection between jiva and body.
- From viability to full term.
He then claims that the samskaras seek the same results as modern medicine, but by "superphysical (psychic, occult, metaphysical and subjective) methods of ancient Eastern science", and compares them to the Catholic sacraments and to the (now disused) blessing of the marriage bed.
This is the weakest passage in the book. The "embryology" comes from a Theosophical-medical appendix of 1910, and the idea that the jiva "enters" at a definable biological moment is a metaphysical claim dressed in scientific vocabulary. The comparison with Catholic sacraments is apt; the comparison with medicine is not. Read the samskaras as rites of passage, which is what they demonstrably are, and leave the medical framing aside.
Purascarana
Purascarana is the repetition of a mantra a very large number of times, after preparation and under conditions. (Woodroffe cites Hara-kumara Tagore's Purascarana-bodhini, 1895.)
The Rules
- The ritual fixes time and place, the measurements and decoration of the mandapa (pavilion) and altar.
- Food: havisyanna, or boiled milk, fruit, Indian vegetables, or anything obtained by begging; avoid food that stirs the passions.
- For destruction of sin: continence, bathing, japa of the Savitri-mantra 5008, 3008 or 1008 times, feeding Brahmanas.
The Sequence
- Three days before: worship of Ganesa and Ksetrapala (lord of the place).
- Pancagavya: the five products of the cow (milk, curd, ghee, urine and dung, the last two in smaller quantity) are eaten.
- Sun, Moon and Devas invoked.
- Samkalpa.
- The ghata or kalasa (jar) into which the Devi is invoked is set on a mandala drawn on the ground; five or nine gems placed on it; it is painted red and covered with leaves.
- Tying the sikha; posture; japa; nyasa; mantra procedure.
- Meditation as directed.
- Kulluka recited; the mantra awakened (mantra-caitanya).
- The mantra recited the number of times vowed.
Bhuta-suddhi and Nyasa: Remaking the Body
These two rites are where the doctrine of the earlier sections becomes practice. The cosmology of tattvas and the anatomy of cakras turn out to be instructions.
Bhuta-suddhi: Purifying the Elements
The rite is described in Mahanirvana 5.93 ff. Its object is purification of the elements of which the body is made. (Woodroffe corrects Monier-Williams's dictionary, which glossed it as "removal of evil demons".) The Mantra-mahodadhi calls it preliminary to all worship of a Deva: "To become fit for worship, perform bhuta-suddhi."
The principle: the process of evolution from Para-brahman has been described; by this rite a mental process of involution takes place, by which the body is in thought resolved back into its source.
The Steps
- Recall the pairs: earth: smell; water: taste; fire: sight; air: touch; ether: sound.
- Kundalini is roused and led to the svadhisthana.
- Earth is dissolved by water; water by fire; fire by air; air by ether.
- Each gross element (mahabhuta), with its subtle element (tanmatra) and its sense organ, is dissolved into the next.
- Ether, with the tanmatra of sound, is absorbed into ahamkara; ahamkara into mahat; mahat into Prakrti, "thus retracing the steps of evolution".
- Following the monism of the Vedanta, Prakrti herself is thought of as Brahman, of which she is the energy and with which she is already one.
- The sadhaka thinks of the black Purusa, the image of all sin, and purifies the body by mantra with kumbhaka (breath retention) and recaka (exhalation).
- He meditates on the new celestial (deva) body thus made, and strengthens it with a "celestial gaze".
Nyasa: Placing the Deity
Nyasa (from the root "to place") is placing the fingertips and palm of the right hand on various parts of the body with particular mantras.
Jiva-nyasa
Jiva-nyasa follows bhuta-suddhi. The old body purified and the celestial body formed, the sadhaka infuses it with the life of the Devi (Mahanirvana 5.105):
- Hand on heart, he says so'ham, "I am He", identifying himself with the Devi.
- He places the eight Kula-kundalinis with the mantra Aim Krim Klim Yam Ram Lam Vam Sam Sam Sam Hom Haum Hamsah, followed in turn by:
- "The vital airs of the blessed Primordial Kalika are here";
- "The embodied spirit of Kalika is placed here";
- "All the senses of Kalika are here";
- "May the speech, mind, sight, hearing, smell and vital airs of Kalika, coming here, abide here always in peace and happiness. Svaha."
The sadhaka becomes devata-maya, made of the deity. "Having dissolved the sinful body, made a new deva body, and infused it with the life of the Devi", he proceeds to matrka-nyasa.
Matrka-nyasa
Matrka are the fifty letters of the Sanskrit alphabet: "for as from a mother comes birth, so from matrka, or sound, the world proceeds." Sabda-brahman, the "Logos" or "Word", creates the worlds of name and form. The bodies of the deities are made of the fifty matrkas. So the sadhaka builds the deity's body in himself, first mentally, then physically.
Inner (antar) matrka-nyasa, letters set in the cakras, each followed by namah:
| Cakra | Letters |
|---|---|
| Ajna | Ham, Ksam |
| Visuddha | Am, Am and the rest of the vowels |
| Anahata | Kam, kham to tham |
| Manipura | Dam, dham to pham |
| Svadhisthana | Bam, bham to lam |
| Muladhara | Vam, sam, sam, sam |
Outer (bahya) matrka-nyasa, placing the hand while saying each letter (each preceded by Om and followed by namah):
- Vowels, with anusvara and visarga: forehead, face, right and left eye, ear, nostril, cheek, upper and lower lip, upper and lower teeth, head, hollow of the mouth.
- Consonants ka to va: base of right arm, elbow, wrist, base and tips of fingers; then left arm; right and left leg; right and left side; back, navel, belly, heart, right and left shoulder, the space between the shoulders (kakuda).
- Then from the heart to the right palm sa; to the left palm sa (the second); to the right foot sa; to the left foot ha; from heart to belly and heart to mouth, ksa.
The Tantrasara gives four kinds of matrka-nyasa by aim: kevala (without bindu), bindu-samyuta (with bindu), samsarga (with visarga), sobhya (with both).
Rsi-nyasa
For the caturvarga. The common form:
| Place | Salutation to |
|---|---|
| Head | The Rsi (seer) Brahma |
| Mouth | The metre Gayatri |
| Heart | The Devi Mother Sarasvati (the matrka) |
| Hidden part (anus) | The bija: the consonants |
| Feet | The sakti: the vowels |
| Whole body | Visarga, the kilaka ("bolt", what closes) |
The Adya form (Mahanirvana 5.123): head, Brahma and the Brahmarsis; mouth, Gayatri and the other metres; heart, the primordial Kali; hidden part, the bija Krim; feet, the sakti Hrim; whole body, Kalika Srim.
Sadanga-nyasa: The Six Limbs
Done on the body (hrdayadi) or on the fingers and palms (angusthadi, i.e. kara-nyasa):
| Limb | Letters | Formula |
|---|---|---|
| Heart | a, the ka-group, a | hrdayaya namah |
| Head | i, the ca-group, i | sirase svaha |
| Crown lock | u, the ta-group (cerebral), u | sikhayai vasat |
| Armour (arms crossed on chest) | e, the ta-group (dental), ai | kavacaya hum |
| Three eyes (including the eye of wisdom) | o, the pa-group, au | netra-trayaya vausat |
| Weapon (front and back of palm) | between bindu and visarga, ya to ksa | karatala-kara-prsthabhyam astraya phat |
In kara-nyasa these go to thumbs, index ("threatening") fingers, middle, ring and little fingers, and the front and back of the palms. Woodroffe adds that these actions stimulate the nerve centres.
Pitha-nyasa: the pithas, sacred sites such as Kamarupa (listed in the Yogini-hrdaya; 50 or 51), are set in place of the matrkas.
Why Nyasa Works
- Nyasa is a great help toward the state in which the sadhaka feels the bhava of the deity come upon him. It is "the wearing of jewels on different parts of the body": the bijas are the jewels.
- By nyasa he places his chosen deity in each part; by vyapaka-nyasa he spreads its presence through his whole self, "losing himself in the divine Self".
- It distributes the saktis of the body in their right places, avoiding discord and distraction in worship.
- Nyasa, like asana, produces the needed state of mind and citta-suddhi.
Woodroffe states the rationale in a sentence: "Transformation of thought is transformation of being. This is the essential principle and rational basis of all this and similar Tantrik sadhanas." (He quotes the German "Das Denken ist der Mass der Dinge", "Thought is the measure of things", attributed to Prantl.)
Read bhuta-suddhi and nyasa together and the logic is clear. First the body is dissolved back up the ladder of tattvas into Brahman; then it is rebuilt from the alphabet, letter by letter, as the deity's body. The Tantra's metaphysics (the cosmos evolves from sound through the tattvas) is enacted as a daily rite. Whatever one thinks of the metaphysics, it is a coherent and powerful technique of imaginative self-transformation.
The Pancatattva: The Five Elements of Worship
This is the section that made the Tantra notorious, and Woodroffe handles it at length and with care. He states the practice, the rules, the substitutes, the reasons given for it, the restrictions of the Mahanirvana itself, and the symbolic meanings.
What They Are
The three bhavas affect, on the gross plane, the three chief physical functions: eating and drinking, which keep the food-body alive, and sexual union, which reproduces it. These functions are the subject of the pancatattva, vulgarly called pancamakara, "the five Ms":
- Madya: wine
- Mamsa: meat
- Matsya: fish
- Mudra: parched grain (not the gesture; Yogini Tantra ch. 6 defines it)
- Maithuna: sexual union
Other names: kula-dravya, kula-tattva; wine is esoterically karana-vari or tirtha-vari; the fifth is usually lata-sadhana, "sadhana with the creeper", woman likened to a creeper clinging to the male tree.
The five have different meanings in tamasika (pasvacara), rajasika (viracara) and divya (sattvika) sadhana. All elements or substitutes are purified and consecrated; the first four are consumed with ritual, followed by lata-sadhana or its symbolic equivalent.
The Rules
- Indiscriminate use is prohibited. The elements may be used only after purification (sodhana) and during worship, according to Tantric ritual.
- All excess is forbidden. The Syama-rahasya: intemperance leads to hell; the Mahanirvana condemns it in Chapter 5.
- Several Tantras confine maithuna with another's wife to worship alone: "Outside the time of worship, do not touch another man even in mind" (Uttara Tantra).
The famous definition of the true hero (vira): not the strong man, the great eater and drinker, the man of sexual power, but he who has controlled his senses, speaks truth, is ever engaged in worship, and has sacrificed lust and the other passions ("jitendriyah satyavadi nityanusthana-tatparah kamadi-balidanasca sa vira iti giyate").
The Vedic Rule for the Pasu
The literal elements are not for everyone. The pasu must follow the Vedic rule even in worship.
| Element | Vedic rule |
|---|---|
| Wine | "Wine must not be drunk, given or taken" (madyam apeyam adeyam agrahyam). Wine carries three curses, of Brahma, Kaca and Krsna. Drinking for sensual satisfaction is a sin requiring prayascitta, and the Visnu Purana sends the drinker to the same hell as the killer of a Brahmana |
| Meat and fish | Higher castes outside Bengal under Smarta discipline eat neither; nor do strict Brahmanas in Bengal. But most Bengalis eat fish, and men eat the flesh of male goats first offered to the deity |
| Maithuna | Only with the householder's own wife; and the eightfold maithuna is also forbidden |
The eightfold maithuna (astanga), all forbidden outside marriage:
- Smarana: thinking of it
- Kirtana: talking of it
- Keli: play with women
- Preksana: looking at women
- Guhya-bhasana: talking privately with a woman
- Samkalpa: wishing for it
- Adhyavasaya: resolving on it
- Kriya-nispatti: the act itself
The Sakta-kramiya: avoid maithuna, talk of it, and gatherings of women. Even with one's wife, continence is enjoined: brahmacarya governs the householder too, and Vedic rule allows union once a month, on the fifth day after menses. This is why the Nitya Tantra defines the pasu as one who avoids intercourse except then: he follows the Vedic rule for all purposes, ritual included.
Woman as Goddess in the Veda Too
Woodroffe insists the divinity of woman is not a Tantric novelty:
- Woman is not an object of enjoyment but a house-goddess (grha-devata).
- In the Brhadaranyaka Upanisad (Homa-prakarana), the union of husband and wife is a homa, "wherein she is both hearth and flame", and whoever knows this as homa attains liberation.
- The Tantric mantra for Siva-Sakti yoga: "This is the internal homa in which, by the path of susumna, the functions of the senses are sacrificed to the spirit as fire, kindled with the ghee of merit and demerit taken from the mind as the ghee-pot. Svaha."
- Vedic dharma (now neglected) requires the householder to worship with his wife.
The Exception and Its Defence
The only exception the Tantra makes is for sadhana, by those competent (adhikari) for viracara. And it is argued that this is not really an exception to Vedic teaching: the Veda forbids wine in ordinary life and for sensual satisfaction, but prescribes religious yajna with wine (Woodroffe has in mind the soma and sautramani rites). The Tantra allows the same ritual use for those competent, and enforces the Vedic rule on those governed by vaidikacara.
The Nitya Tantra: pasus should never worship the Devi in the latter part of the day, in the evening or at night, because all such worship connotes maithuna.
The Substitutes
| Element | Substitute for the pasu |
|---|---|
| Maithuna | Offering flowers with the hands in kacchapa-mudra (tortoise gesture), or union with one's own wife |
| Wine | Milk (Brahmana), ghee (Ksatriya), honey (Vaisya), rice liquor (Sudra) |
| Meat | Salt, ginger, sesamum, wheat, mash-kalai beans, garlic |
| Fish | White brinjal, red radish, masur lentil, red sesamum, paniphala (water chestnut) |
| Mudra | Paddy, rice, wheat, gram generally |
The Vira's Use: Poison as Antidote
The one qualified for viracara (the true vira is its finished product) starts with the rajasika pancatattva, used to destroy the sensual tendencies they connote. For Sakti-worship the pancatattva are declared essential; the Mahanirvana says Sakti-worship without them is "but the practice of evil magic".
The commentator Jaganmohana Tarkalamkara's gloss, which Woodroffe gives at length, runs:
- What most causes a man's fall, making him forget duty, sink into sin and die early? Wine and women, fish, meat and mudra. "By these things men have lost their manhood."
- Siva desires to use these very poisons to eradicate the poison in the human system. "Poison is the antidote for poison."
- The physician must be experienced. A mistake in application, and the patient may die. Siva says kulacara is as hard as walking on a sword's edge or holding a wild tiger.
- There is a secret argument for the pancatattva, grasped only by the initiate; Siva forbade revealing it to all and sundry.
- An initiate, seeing a woman, will worship her as his mother or his chosen goddess and bow before her.
- The Visnu Purana says feeding desire never satisfies it; "it is like pouring ghee on fire". True; yet an experienced guru knows how, by this poisonous medicine, to kill the poison of samsara.
Woodroffe's interpretation:
- The aim of Tantric worship is brahma-sayujya, union with Brahman. If that is not reached, nothing is.
- With human propensities as they are, it can only be reached by the Tantra's special treatment.
- Without it, sensual tendencies are not eradicated, and practice becomes "as useless as magic which, worked by such a man, leads only to the injury of others".
- The secret argument: the particular life can be raised to the universal by the very passions that, flowing outward and downward, bind it most strongly.
- Abuses are due to the lack of a guru. "When the patient and the disease are working together, there is poor hope; but when patient, disease and physician are all on the wrong side, nothing can save him."
The Mahanirvana's Own Restrictions
Because of abuses, especially of madya and maithuna, the current version of the Mahanirvana restricts them:
| Verse | Restriction |
|---|---|
| 8.171 | When Kali is in full strength, and for householders engrossed in worldly affairs, the "three sweets" (madhura-traya) replace wine. The virtuous, whose minds turn to Brahman, may take five cups |
| 8.173 | Men of Kali are by nature weak and disturbed by lust, and do not recognise woman (sakti) as the image of the deity |
| 6.14 | The fifth tattva only with one's own wife (sviya-sakti); union with a woman not married to the sadhaka in Brahma or Saiva form is forbidden |
| 8.174 | With other saktis (parakiya, another's wife, and sadharani, a common woman), instead of maithuna, meditation on the Devi's lotus feet with japa of the ista-mantra |
The commentator says this is not of universal application: the prohibition is for men of ordinary, weak intellect ruled by lust; for those who have conquered their passions and become true viras or siddhas, there is no prohibition on the mode of lata-sadhana.
Woodroffe's conclusion: this Tantra appears to be a protest against misuse that followed relaxation of the original rules (he adds that he has not yet compared the Bengali text with the Nepalese one).
What the Five Signify
Without the pancatattva in some form, Sakti-puja cannot be performed. By them the universe itself is used as the offering:
| Element | Signifies |
|---|---|
| Wine | The sakti that produces all fiery elements |
| Meat and fish | All terrestrial and aquatic animals |
| Mudra | All vegetable life |
| Maithuna | The iccha, kriya and jnana sakti of the Supreme Prakrti, producing the great pleasure that accompanies creation |
"To the Mother is thus offered the restless life of Her universe." (The Kailasa Tantra also identifies the five with the five pranas and the five mahapretas.)
The Sattvika Meanings
The object of all sadhana is to stimulate sattva. When sattva predominates, the sattvika sadhana of the high divya is adopted, and the names of the pancatattva are used for purely mental and spiritual operations. The Kaivalya (quoted from Nilamani Mukhopadhyaya's Pancatattva-vicara):
| Element | Sattvika meaning |
|---|---|
| Wine | The intoxicating knowledge of Para-brahman gained by yoga, which makes the worshipper senseless to the external world |
| Meat (mamsa) | The act of consigning all one's acts to Me (mam) |
| Fish (matsya) | Sattvika knowledge by which, through the sense of "mineness" (a pun on matsya), the worshipper shares the pleasure and pain of all beings |
| Mudra | Relinquishing all association with evil, which causes bondage |
| Maithuna | The union of Kundalini Sakti with Siva in the worshipper's body: "the best of all unions for those who have controlled their passions" (Yogini Tantra: the meeting of Kundalini with Siva in the bindu above the sahasrara is "the supreme maithuna of the yatis") |
The Agamasara's Yogic Meanings
The Agamasara gives a second, yogic reading:
| Element | Yogic meaning |
|---|---|
| Wine | Somadhara, the lunar ambrosia that drops from the brahmarandhra |
| Meat (mamsa) | The tongue (ma), of which speech is a part (amsa): in "eating" it, the sadhaka controls his speech |
| Fish (matsya) | The two fish ever moving in the two rivers, ida and pingala: the one who controls his breath by pranayama "eats" them by kumbhaka |
| Mudra | The awakening of knowledge in the pericarp of the sahasrara, where the Atma, "like mercury, resplendent as ten million suns and cool as ten million moons", is united with Kundalini |
| Maithuna | The ruddy letter Ra is in the kunda (the manipura); the letter Ma, as bindu, is in the mahayoni (the lightning triangle of the sahasrara). When Ma, seated on the Hamsa in the form of A, unites with Ra, the sadhaka gains brahma-jnana and is called atmarama, "one who delights in the Self" |
(Hence the name Rama, which also means sexual delight, is equal to the liberating Brahman: Ra-a-ma.) This sattvika union corresponds, on the rajasika plane, to the union of Siva and Sakti in the persons of their worshippers. The Tantrasara: "The union of Siva and Sakti is yoga; of this there is no doubt"; the Yamala: from it arises "that joy known as the Supreme Bliss".
One practice, three levels. For the pasu: Vedic restraint and substitutes (milk for wine, ginger for meat, flowers for union). For the vira: the literal elements, purified, inside ritual, under a guru, as "poison against poison". For the divya: the same five words name inner yogic acts: nectar, silence, breath control, illumination, the union of Kundalini with Siva. Woodroffe's whole defence rests on this ladder: the literal rite is neither the lowest nor the highest use of the five, but a middle stage for a particular temperament.
The Celephais editor (2008) makes the sharpest point against this section: Woodroffe, a trained barrister, "appointed himself counsel for the defence" of the Saktas, arguing their orthodoxy while "minimising, glossing over, or when all else failed relegating to 'abuses' of a minority" what his English readers would find distasteful. "Where Sellon sensationalised and other Victorians vilified, Woodroffe whitewashed." That is too harsh as a summary of a book that prints the rules, the exceptions and the commentator's refusal to universalise restrictions; but it is a fair warning that the "symbolic" and "medicinal" readings are apologetic emphases, and that historically the literal Kaula rites were central, not marginal, in many lineages.
Cakrapuja: The Circle of Worship
Worship with the pancatattva generally takes place in an assembly called a cakra ("circle"), of men (sadhaka) and women (sakti), or Bhairava and Bhairavi.
- Arrangement: worshippers sit in a circle, men and women alternately, the sakti on the left of the sadhaka. The Lord of the cakra (cakra-svamin or cakresvara) sits with his Sakti in the centre, where the wine-jar and other articles are kept.
- During the cakra all eat, drink and worship together, without caste distinction. No pasu may be introduced.
- Kinds (Rudra-yamala), with their fruits:
| Cakra | Fruit |
|---|---|
| Raja-cakra | Kingship |
| Maha-cakra | Prosperity |
| Deva-cakra | Good fortune |
| Vira-cakra | Liberation |
The Mahanirvana deals with the pancatattva in Chapter 6 and describes the Bhairavi-cakra and the Tattva (Divya) cakra in Chapter 8; the latter is for worshippers of the Brahma-mantra.
| Key term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Pancatattva / pancamakara | The five elements; "the five Ms" |
| Lata-sadhana | Sadhana with a woman (the creeper) |
| Sodhana | Purification of the elements before use |
| Sviya / parakiya / sadharani | One's own wife / another's wife / a common woman |
| Madhura-traya | The "three sweets" substituted for wine |
| Cakresvara | Lord of the circle |
| Atmarama | One who delights in the Self |
Reflection. Woodroffe says the vira is not the great drinker or lover but the one who has "sacrificed lust and the other passions". Is a practice that uses desire to end desire coherent, or does it depend entirely on who is doing it?
Yoga
## Meanings of the Word
Yoga, from yuj "to join", means in grammar samdhi (joining of sounds), in logic avayava-sakti (the power of parts taken together), and in its best-known sense the union of the jiva with the Paramatma, and the practices that bring it about. The Sarada-tilaka: "Those skilled in yoga call the union of jiva and atma yoga."
Natural and Realised Yoga
There is a natural yoga in which all beings already are: they exist only by virtue of this identity. Woodroffe quotes a Latin Summa Theologiae Mysticae: God is in all things "by essence, presence and power", but this union is "general, common to all, and of the natural order"; the mystical union is "of the supernatural order, actual and fruitful". Woodroffe's comment: the second is not in reality more "supernatural" than the first.
Yoga in the technical sense is the realisation of this identity, which exists but is not known, by destroying the false appearance of separation. The Gheranda Samhita:
- "There is no bond equal in strength to maya, and no force greater to destroy that bond than yoga."
- "There is no better friend than knowledge, nor worse enemy than egoism."
- "As to learn the Sastra one must learn the alphabet, so yoga is necessary for tattva-jnana."
The body is the result of action, and from the body flows action, like the see-saw of a ghati-yantra, the bullock-driven water-lifter that endlessly lowers and raises its pot into the waters of samsara. The full fruit of yoga is lasting, unchanging life in the Absolute.
Hatha and Raja
Yoga has many names by method, but the two main divisions are hatha-yoga (also ghatastha-yoga, "yoga in the body-pot") and samadhi-yoga, of which raja-yoga is one form.
- Hatha-yoga is commonly misunderstood, often identified with exaggerated self-mortification. The Gheranda Samhita defines it as "the means whereby the excellent raja-yoga is attained".
- Union does not result from hatha alone. It deals with physical processes preparatory or auxiliary to control of the mind, by which alone union is directly attained.
- Not all hatha processes are needed. What is necessary "must be determined according to the circumstances of each particular case".
A peculiar feature of Tantric viracara is the union of sadhaka and sakti in lata-sadhana, "expressly forbidden to pasus by the same Tantras which prescribe it for the vira". In the higher sadhana the union of Siva and Sakti takes another form: the union of Kundalini in the muladhara with the Bindu above the sahasrara, that is, sat-cakra-bheda.
The Eight Limbs
Some hatha processes are generally necessary. The astanga-yoga (eight-limbed), whose end is samadhi, prescribes:
Five Outer Limbs (bahiranga), for the Body
- Yama: forbearance: sexual continence, ahimsa, kindness, forgiveness, doing good without desire for reward, absence of covetousness, temperance, purity of body and mind. (Yogi Yajnavalkya on food: 32 mouthfuls for a householder, 16 for a forest recluse, 8 for a muni.)
- Niyama: religious observances: charity, austerity, study of the Sastra, and Isvara-pranidhana (persevering devotion to the Lord).
- Asana: postures.
- Pranayama: regulation of breath. "A yogi renders the vital airs equable, and consciously produces the state of respiration which is favourable for concentration, as others do it occasionally and unconsciously."
- Pratyahara: restraint of the senses.
Three Inner Limbs (yoganga), for the Mind
- Dharana: steadying, fixing the citta.
- Dhyana: uniform, continuous contemplation of the object.
- Samadhi: first savikalpa samadhi, deeper contemplation of the Self to the exclusion of all else, "trance or ecstasy"; perfected as nirvikalpa samadhi, where even the slightest trace of subject-object distinction is removed.
By dispassion (vairagya) and keeping the mind unmodified, yoga is attained. And: "This knowledge, Aham Brahmasmi, does not produce liberation; it is liberation itself."
One End, Many Descriptions
Whether yoga is described as:
- the union of Kula-kundalini with Parama-Siva,
- the union of jivatma with Paramatma,
- the state in which all outward thought is suppressed,
- the suppression of citta-vrtti (Patanjali),
- the union of moon and sun (ida and pingala),
- of prana and apana,
- or of nada and bindu,
"the meaning and the end are in each case the same".
The Seven Qualities
Yoga uses four physical processes (satkarma, asana, mudra, pranayama) and three mental acts (pratyahara, dhyana, samadhi) to gain seven qualities (Gheranda Samhita, 1st Upadesa). Woodroffe organises the rest of the chapter around them:
| No. | Quality | Meaning | Gained by |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Sodhana | Cleansing | Satkarma (six acts) |
| 2 | Drdhata | Strength, firmness | Asana |
| 3 | Sthirata | Fortitude, stability | Mudra |
| 4 | Dhairya | Steadiness | Pratyahara |
| 5 | Laghava | Lightness | Pranayama |
| 6 | Pratyaksa | Direct realisation | Dhyana |
| 7 | Nirliptatva | Detachment, then mukti | Samadhi |
Sodhana: The Six Cleansing Acts
1. Dhauti (washing), fourfold
| Kind | Sub-kinds and method |
|---|---|
| Antar-dhauti (inner) | Vatasara: air drawn into the belly and expelled. Varisara: the body filled with water and evacuated by the anus. Vahnisara: the navel knot (nabhi-granthi) made to touch the spine (meru). Bahiskrta: the belly filled with air by kakini-mudra, held half a yama (about 90 minutes; a yama is three hours) and sent downward |
| Danta-dhauti (teeth) | Cleansing the roots of the teeth, the tongue, the ears and the "hollow of the forehead" (kapala-randhra) |
| Hrd-dhauti ("heart", i.e. upper tract) | Removes phlegm and bile: by a stick (danda-dhauti), a cloth swallowed (vaso-dhauti) or vomiting (vamana-dhauti) |
| Mula-dhauti (rectum) | Cleansing the exit of apana with the middle finger and water, or a turmeric stalk |
2. Vasti, twofold
Dry (suska) or watery (jala). In the watery form, the yogi squats in utkatasana (on the toes, heels raised, buttocks on heels) in water to the navel, and contracts and expands the anus by asvini-mudra; or does the same in pascimottanasana, gently moving the abdomen below the navel.
3. Neti
Cleansing the nostrils with a string.
4. Lauliki
Whirling the belly from side to side.
5. Trataka
Gazing without blinking at a minute object until tears flow. By it the "celestial vision" (divya-drsti) often mentioned in Tantric worship is acquired.
6. Kapalabhati
Removal of phlegm, threefold: vata-krama (by inhalation and exhalation), vyut-krama (water drawn through the nostrils and expelled by the mouth), sit-krama (the reverse).
Drdhata: Asana
Asanas are postures, generally described as ways of sitting, though some are done on the belly, back or hands.
- The asanas are said to be as numerous as living beings: 8,400,000; 1,600 are excellent, and of these 32 are auspicious for men and described in detail (Gheranda Samhita).
- The Siva Samhita names 84, recommending four: siddhasana, ugrasana, svastikasana, padmasana.
- Two commonest: mukta-padmasana, the "loosened lotus", the ordinary seat for worship (right foot on left thigh, left on right, hands on thighs, chin on breast, gaze on the nose-tip); and baddha-padmasana, the "bound lotus" (the same with arms crossed behind the back, each hand holding the toe of the same side, pressing the muladhara and bracing the nerves).
- Patanjali only names good conditions and leaves each person to settle details.
The Tantric Asanas of Fear
Some asanas are peculiar to the Tantras: mundasana (seat of skulls), citasana (the funeral pyre) and savasana (a corpse). Whatever their ritual purposes, they belong to the discipline for conquering fear and reaching indifference, the quality of the yogi. So the Tantras prescribe as their scene the solitary mountain-top, the empty house, the riverside and the cremation ground. "The interior cremation ground is there where the kamik body and its passions are consumed in the fire of knowledge."
Note: Woodroffe's savasana is the Tantric rite of sitting on a corpse (sava-sadhana), not the modern yoga "corpse pose" of lying flat. Modern yoga borrowed the name for something entirely different. Readers familiar with studio yoga should not merge the two.
Sthirata: Mudra
Hatha-yoga mudras are bodily positions: "gymnastic, health-giving, and destructive of disease and of death", such as jalandhara. They also protect against injury by fire, water and air. Bodily action and the health it gives react on the mind; by a perfect mind and body together, siddhi is attained.
Three important mudras from the Gheranda Samhita:
- Yoni-mudra. In siddhasana, the yogi closes ears, eyes, nostrils and mouth with his fingers; draws in prana by kakini-mudra and unites it with apana; meditating on the six cakras in order, arouses Kundalini with the mantra "Hum Hamsa" and raises her to the sahasrara; then, pervaded by Sakti and in blissful union with Siva, meditates on himself as Bliss itself and Brahman.
- Asvini-mudra. Repeated contraction and expansion of the anus, for cleansing, or contraction to restrain apana in sat-cakra-bheda.
- Sakti-calana. Uses asvini-mudra, repeated until vayu manifests in the susumna, with inhalation and the union of prana and apana, in siddhasana.
Dhairya: Pratyahara
Pratyahara is restraint of the senses, freeing the mind from distraction and keeping it under the control of the Atma. Wherever the mind tends, the dominant Self withdraws it. It destroys the six sins. The Sarada-tilaka: "the forcible withdrawal of the senses wandering among their objects".
Laghava: Pranayama
The Ajapa-Gayatri
All beings recite the ajapa-gayatri, the "unrecited" mantra: exhalation with the sound "ham" and inhalation with "sah", 21,600 times a day.
The Length of the Breath
| Activity | Distance the breath goes (finger-breadths) |
|---|---|
| Ordinary | 12 |
| Singing | 16 |
| Eating | 20 |
| Walking | 24 |
| Sleeping | 30 |
| Coition | 36 |
| Violent exercise | up to 96 |
When breath is below the normal distance, life is prolonged; above it, life is shortened.
Terms
- Puraka: inhalation. Recaka: exhalation. Kumbhaka: retention between them.
- Eight kumbhakas (Gheranda Samhita): sahita, suryabheda, ujjayi, sitali, bhastrika, bhramari, murccha, kevali.
Pranayama awakens sakti, frees from disease, produces detachment from the world, and bliss. Its grades:
| Grade | Measure | Sign |
|---|---|---|
| Uttama (best) | 20 | (Levitation in other texts; Woodroffe gives no sign) |
| Madhyama (middling) | 16 | Spinal tremor |
| Adhama (inferior) | 12 | Perspiration |
Nadi-suddhi: Cleansing the Channels
Air does not enter impure nadis, so they must first be cleansed, samanu (with bija) or nirmanu (without). The samanu method:
- In padmasana, guru-nyasa as the guru directs.
- Meditating on "yam" (air): inhale through ida with 16 japas; kumbhaka with 64; exhale through the solar nadi with 32.
- Raise fire from the manipura and unite it with earth. Inhale through the solar nadi with the fire bija (ram) 16 times; kumbhaka 64; exhale through the lunar nadi 32.
- Meditate on lunar brilliance, gazing at the nose-tip; inhale through ida with "tham" 16 times; kumbhaka with "vam" 64 times; think of yourself as flooded with nectar and the nadis as washed.
- Exhale through pingala with 32 japas of "lam", and consider yourself strengthened.
The 16 : 64 : 32 pattern (inhale : hold : exhale, or 1 : 4 : 2) recurs throughout.
Conditions
- Seat: a mat of kusa grass or deerskin; facing east or north.
- Place: not so far as to cause anxiety; not unprotected (forest); not a city or crowded place.
- Food: pure and vegetarian; not too hot or cold, pungent, sour, salty or bitter; light and strengthening.
- Fasting and one meal a day are prohibited; never go without food more than three hours.
- Avoid long walks and violent exercise, and (certainly for beginners) sexual intercourse.
- Fill the stomach only half.
- Begin in spring or autumn.
Sahita Pranayama with Bija (Sagarbha)
- Meditate on Vidhi (Brahma): rajasik, red, the image of A. Inhale through ida in six matras.
- Before kumbhaka, uddiyana-bandha.
- Meditate on Hari (Visnu): sattvik, the black bija U; kumbhaka with 64 japas.
- Meditate on Siva: tamasik, his white bija M; exhale through pingala with 32.
- Inhale through pingala, kumbhaka, exhale through ida with the same bija.
- Repeat in normal and reversed order.
(So the three letters of A-U-M are mapped onto the three gunas, three deities and three phases of breath.)
Pratyaksa: Dhyana
Dhyana gives pratyaksa, direct realisation. It is of three kinds (Gheranda Samhita, 6th Upadesa):
1. Sthula (Gross) Dhyana
The deity's form is brought before the mind. Woodroffe gives a full example:
- Think of a great ocean of nectar in the heart.
- In its middle, the island of gems, its shores of powdered gems.
- The island is clothed with a kadamba forest in yellow blossom, ringed by malati, campaka, parijata and other fragrant trees.
- In the midst rises the kalpa tree (wish-fulfilling tree), laden with blossom and fruit; black bees hum and koels make love among its leaves; its four branches are the four Vedas.
- Under it, a great mandapa of precious stones, and within it a beautiful bed.
- On the bed, picture the Ista-devata. The guru will direct the form, dress, vahana and name.
(Bhaskararaya, on the Lalita: the Devi has three forms, each with both prakasa and vimarsa: physical (sthula) with hands and feet; subtle (suksma), made of mantra; and supreme (para), the vasana, her "real or own" form.)
2. Jyotir Dhyana
The infusion of fire and life (tejas) into the imagined form. In the muladhara lies the snake-like Kundalini, and there dwells the jivatma like the tapering flame of a candle. The sadhaka meditates on Brahman as light (tejomaya), or between the eyebrows on the pranava as a flame emitting lustre.
3. Suksma (Subtle) Dhyana
Meditation on Kundalini, after she has been roused, with sambhavi-mudra. By it the Atma is revealed (atma-saksatkara).
Nirliptatva: Samadhi
Through samadhi comes detachment (nirliptatva) and then liberation. As a process, samadhi is intense concentration, free of all samkalpa, of attachment to the world, and of all "mineness" (mamata). As a result, it is the union of jiva and Paramatma.
The Six Forms of Samadhi-yoga
The Gheranda Samhita (7th Upadesa) gives six:
| No. | Form | Means | What happens |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Dhyana-yoga samadhi | Sambhavi-mudra | After meditation on Bindu-Brahman and realisation of the Atma, the Atma is resolved into the Great Ether (mahakasa) |
| 2 | Nada-yoga | Khecari-mudra | The fraenum of the tongue is cut and the tongue lengthened until it reaches between the eyebrows, then turned back into the mouth |
| 3 | Rasananda-yoga | Kumbhaka | In a silent place, ears closed, with puraka and kumbhaka, one hears nada, in sounds from a cricket's chirp to a great kettle-drum; by daily practice the anahata sound is heard, and the light (jyoti) with the mind in it is seen, finally dissolved in the supreme Visnu |
| 4 | Laya-siddhi-yoga | Yoni-mudra | Thinking of himself as Sakti and Paramatma as Purusa, he feels union with Siva and enjoys with him the bliss of srngara-rasa, and becomes Bliss itself, Brahman |
| 5 | Bhakti-yoga | Devotion | Meditation on the Ista-devata with love until, with tears flowing from excess of bliss, ecstasy comes |
| 6 | Raja-yoga | Manomurccha kumbhaka | The mind, detached from all objects, is fixed between the eyebrows in the ajna, with kumbhaka; by the union of manas with Atma, in which the jnani sees all things, raja-yoga samadhi is attained |
Srngara is the love-sentiment, the first of the eight or nine rasas of Indian aesthetics: srngara (love), vira (heroism), karuna (compassion), adbhuta (wonder), hasya (humour), bhayanaka (fear), bibhatsa (disgust), raudra (wrath), to which the author of the Kavyaprakasa adds santi (peace). The Lalita (v. 142) names the Devi Layakari, cause of laya.
Woodroffe reports khecari-mudra's cutting of the tongue fraenum and the more extreme dhauti methods (swallowing cloth, water evacuation) as the texts give them. These are real medical risks, and modern hatha teachers who preserve them insist on gradual training under supervision. Nothing in this edition is an instruction to try them.
Sat-cakra-bheda: Piercing the Six Centres
The piercing of the six cakras is one of the most important subjects in the Tantra. "Details of practice can only be learnt from a Guru." Woodroffe gives the outline, and refers readers to his translation of Purnananda Svami's Sat-cakra-nirupana, published as The Serpent Power.
The Ascent
- The jivatma in the subtle body, the container of the five pranas, of mind in its three aspects (manas, ahamkara, buddhi) and the five organs of perception, is united with Kula-kundalini.
- The Kandarpa (Kama) vayu in the muladhara, a form of apana, is given a leftward revolution, and the fire around Kundalini is kindled.
- By the bija "Hum" and the heat of that fire, Kundalini is awakened. She who lay asleep round the Svayambhu-linga, her three and a half coils closing the brahma-dvara, enters the door and moves upward, united with the jivatma.
At each centre, everything in it is dissolved into her body, and each element dissolves into the next subtler one:
| Centre | What dissolves into Kundalini | Element conversion | Knot |
|---|---|---|---|
| Muladhara | Brahma, Savitri, Dakini, the Devas, bija and vrttis | Earth (Prthivi) becomes the bija Lam, merged in her | |
| Svadhisthana | Mahavisnu, Mahalaksmi, Sarasvati, Rakini, matras, vrttis, Vaikuntha, Goloka and their deities | Lam dissolves in water; water becomes Vam | |
| Manipura | All in the cakra | Vam dissolves in fire; fire becomes Ram | Brahma-granthi |
| Anahata | All in the cakra | Ram disappears in air; air becomes Yam | Visnu-granthi |
| Visuddha | Ardhanarisvara, Sakini, the sixteen vowels, mantras | Yam dissolves in ether; ether becomes Ham | |
| Lalana, then Ajna | Parama-Siva, Siddha-Kali, the Devas, the gunas, all else | Ham merges in the manas-cakra; mind merges in her | Rudra-granthi |
| Above ajna | Niralamba-puri, pranava, nada and the rest |
- When Kundalini leaves the muladhara, that lotus, which had opened and turned upward at her awakening, closes and hangs down again; as she reaches each next lotus, it opens and lifts its flower upward.
- The piercing of the manipura (Brahma-granthi) "may involve considerable pain, physical disorder, and even disease." That is why an experienced guru is needed, and why other modes of yoga are recommended for those suited to them, "for in such modes activity is provoked directly in the higher centre, and the lower cakra need not be pierced".
- After the ajna, Kundalini of her own motion unites with Parama-Siva.
The Union
Kundalini has now absorbed into herself the twenty-four tattvas, from the gross elements upward, and becomes one with Parama-Siva. "This is the maithuna of the sattvika pancatattva." The nectar from the union floods the ksudra-brahmanda, the little cosmos of the body, and the sadhaka, forgetting all in this world, is immersed in ineffable bliss. (The Cintamani-stava attributed to Sankara: "This family woman (Kundalini), entering the royal road (susumna), resting at intervals in the secret places (the cakras), embraces the Supreme Spouse and makes the nectar flow.")
Burning the Man of Sin and Making the New Body
Then follows a breath rite with the same 16 : 64 : 32 count:
| Step | Bija | Breath | Visualisation |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Yam (air), in the left nostril | Inhale ida 16; hold 64; exhale pingala 32 | The black "man of sin" (papa-purusa) in the left side of the abdomen is dried up by air |
| 2 | Ram (fire), red, in the manipura | Inhale 16; hold 64; exhale right 32 | His body is burnt to ashes |
| 3 | Ham (white moon bija) | Inhale ida 16; hold 64; exhale pingala 32 | A new celestial body is formed by the nectar dropping from the moon, made of all the letters of the alphabet |
| 4 | Vam | Same | Formation continued |
| 5 | Lam | Same | Formation completed and strengthened |
| 6 | So'ham | The jivatma is led into the heart |
(See Mahanirvana 5.98 to 99 on the papa-purusa.)
The Return
Kundalini, having enjoyed her union with Parama-Siva, sets out on the return journey the way she came. As she passes each cakra, everything she absorbed comes out of her and takes its place again, until she reaches the muladhara and all is as it was before her awakening.
The guru's instructions take the sadhaka up to the ajna, but give no special directions beyond it, because once the ajna is pierced the sadhaka can reach the brahma-sthana unaided. Below the "seventh mouth of Siva" the relation of guru and sisya ceases. The teaching of the seventh amnaya is unexpressed (aprakasita).
Compare this rite with bhuta-suddhi (Section 20). They have the same structure: dissolve the body's elements up the ladder into their source, burn the papa-purusa, rebuild a new body from the letters. Bhuta-suddhi is sat-cakra-bheda performed in imagination; sat-cakra-bheda is bhuta-suddhi made real by awakened Kundalini. The everyday rite rehearses the summit of yoga every morning.
Kundalini's ascent as cosmology run in reverse. The tattvas emerged from Siva-Sakti in the order ether, air, fire, water, earth (Section 2). Kundalini gathers them back in the opposite order, earth to ether to mind, until only Siva-Sakti remains. Then she lets them out again. Each ascent and descent is a small pralaya and creation inside one body: the meaning of "the body is Brahma-pura".
| Key term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Hatha / raja yoga | Physical / mental yoga |
| Satkarma | The six cleansing acts |
| Kumbhaka | Breath retention |
| Ajapa-gayatri | The natural breath-mantra Ham-sah, 21,600 a day |
| Nadi-suddhi | Cleansing of the channels |
| Savikalpa / nirvikalpa | Samadhi with / without distinction |
| Granthi | Knot (Brahma, Visnu, Rudra) |
| Papa-purusa | The "man of sin" visualised and burned |
| Amnaya | Tradition, "mouth" of Siva |
Sin, Virtue and Karma
## Against the Christian Model
Woodroffe begins by contrasting Christian ideas. There, sin is a violation of the personal will of God and apostasy from him; the flesh is the source of lusts opposed to God's commands. For Aquinas, original sin is formally a "defect of original righteousness" and materially concupiscence; for Paul (Romans 7), the spiritual law meets the opposition of "the law in the members". All of this assumes a moral judgment found in humanity alone.
Papa and Punya
Hindu ideas of papa (wrong) and punya (the pure, holy and right) have a wider content.
- Punya is accordance with the will of Isvara (of whom the jiva is an embodiment) as shown at a given time in the general direction of the cosmic process; papa is the contrary.
- Both are relative to the jiva's stage of evolution and circumstances. The impulse toward individuality, necessary and right on pravrtti-marga, is wrong on nivrtti-marga, where it obstructs unity. "What makes for progress on the one path is a hindrance on the other."
- Rightly understood, the matter is not juristic (a lawgiver, his commands, his subjects) but the moral law as the true expression of the jiva's own evolution. "Morality is the true nature of a being; wrong is its destruction."
- Papa and punya extend below humanity. In the Yoga-vasistha a creeping plant gained merit by growing on the dwelling of a holy muni.
Definitions
- Sin: duhkha-janakam papam, "sin is what causes pain", mental or physical, in past, present or future births. The pain need not be immediate, but the consequence is not something separate from the act: it is the part of the act that belongs to the future.
- Virtue: sukha-janakam punyam, "what causes happiness", in this or future births, or in svarga. Virtue is what leads toward the unity whose substance is bliss.
The Six Sins
- Kama: lust
- Krodha: anger
- Lobha: covetousness
- Moha: delusion
- Mada: pride
- Matsarya: envy
(Woodroffe compares the Christian seven deadly sins: pride, covetousness, lust, anger, envy, gluttony, sloth.) "All wrong is at base self-seeking, in ignorance or disregard of the unity of the Self in all creatures."
Even Virtue Is Not Enough
Good karma bears pleasant fruit, but like all fruits of karma it is transitory. The Sruti (Taittiriya): "Not by acts, nor by offspring, nor by wealth, but by renunciation have some attained immortality." Only by escape through knowledge does the jiva, one with the unchanging Absolute, attain lasting rest. For those so released, neither vice nor virtue exists, since both are categories of phenomenal being.
Karma
Karma is action, its cause and its effect. There is no uncaused action and no action without effect; past, present and future form one whole. The iccha, jnana and kriya saktis appear in the worldly jiva as desire, knowledge and action.
The Brhadaranyaka (4.4.5): "Man is verily formed of desire. As is his desire, so is his thought. As is his thought, so is his action. As is his action, so is his attainment." And the Chandogya: "As he thinks, so he becomes."
It is a matter not of punishment and reward but of consequence, and the consequence is part of the act, which continues and is transformed into the result.
Three Kinds of Karma
| Kind | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Samcita | The whole accumulated mass of unexhausted past karma, good and bad; it shapes the character of later births and is therefore called samskara or vasana |
| Prarabdha | The part of samcita that is ripe and bears fruit in this birth; unavoidable: "nothing can be done but to work it out" |
| Vartamana / agami | New karma now being made by present and future acts |
- Even the Devas are subject to time and karma; by karma a jiva may become an Indra (Devi Bhagavata).
- Karma is adrsta, the invisible product of ordained or forbidden acts, capable of producing bodies. Good and bad together are the karma-mala.
- Even good action done for its fruit cannot secure liberation. "Those who think of the reward will receive benefit in the shape of that reward."
- Liberation is the work of Siva-Sakti, gained only by brahma-jnana: the destruction of the will to separate life, and realisation of unity. All accompanying action must be without thought of self. With the cessation of desire, the tie to samsara is broken.
Karma and the Fit of Practice
According to the Tantra, the sadhana and acara suited to a person depend on his karma. Tendencies, character and temperament are shaped by samcita karma. Some systems prescribe the same method for people of diverse tendencies; the Tantra recognises the force of karma and moulds its methods to the temperament it has produced. So worship permitted to the vira is forbidden to the pasu, and the guru must decide for what the sadhaka is qualified (adhikari).
This is the strongest thread through the whole book: adhikara, fitness. The bhavas, the acaras, the abhisekas, the pancatattva substitutes, the "other modes of yoga" for those who should not pierce the lower cakras: all are one principle. The Tantra is a pharmacy, not a single prescription, and the guru is the physician who reads the patient's karma before choosing the medicine.
The Four Aims of Life
## One Thing All Seek
All seek one thing: happiness, of differing kinds and by different ways. All forms of it, sensual, intellectual or spiritual, come from Brahman, which is itself bliss ("raso vai sah", "He is rasa", Taittiriya). Pleasure differs in being higher or lower, transitory, durable or permanent.
- On pravrtti-marga people seek it in this world's enjoyments (bhukti) or in the more durable but still impermanent delights of svarga.
- On nivrtti-marga they seek it in union with the source (mukti). "Having attained rasa, one becomes blissful."
The Divine Breath
"The eternal rhythm of the Divine Breath is outwards from spirit to matter and inwards from matter to spirit." Devi as Maya evolves the world; as Mahamaya she recalls it. Each movement is divine. Bhukti and mukti are each her gifts. The Saktananda-tarangini: from Visnu and Siva only mukti can be had, but from the Devi both bhukti and mukti, because she is the source of the material things from which enjoyment arises.
All jivas on their way to humanity, and most of humanity itself (Woodroffe quotes "a caustic observer" on the many who are better described as "candidates for humanity"), are on the forward path and rightly seek the enjoyment proper to their stage. The thirst for life continues until the point of return is reached and the outgoing energy is spent.
- In the Devi's hands is the noose of desire. She is both desire and the light of knowledge that, in the wise who have known enjoyment, lays bare its futility.
- "One cannot renounce until one has enjoyed." The Taittiriya Aranyaka's unborn she-goat (red, white and black, the three gunas, bearing many offspring like herself): one unborn male lies with her in delight; another leaves her, her enjoyment enjoyed.
- So the Tantrika has both bhukti and mukti (Mahanirvana 4.39; 1.51).
But Enjoyment Has Its Law
"Desire is not to be let loose without bridle." The mental self is the charioteer, the senses the horses. Contrary to mistaken notions, the Tantras take no exception to the ordinary rule that the horses must not run away. To avoid being swept away in "the mighty force which is the descent into matter", thought and action must be controlled by dharma. Hence the first three aims (trivarga) on pravrtti-marga: dharma, artha, kama.
The Four Aims
| Aim | Meaning | Woodroffe's account |
|---|---|---|
| Dharma | What is "held fast": law, usage, custom, religion, piety, right, equity, duty, good works, morality | "The eternal and immutable principles which hold together the universe in its parts and as a whole, organic or inorganic." Mahabharata: "That which supports and holds together the peoples is dharma." Not an artificial rule but the principle of right living, its application, and the merit it yields. Its mark is acara (good conduct), "the root of all tapas" (Manu). Based on Sruti as presented in Smrti, Purana and Tantra; the Devi Bhagavata says Visnu as Vyasa divided the one Veda for short-lived Kali-age men |
| Kama | Desire | For wealth, success, family, position, or happiness for self or others; includes great and noble aims, "for such possession is the characteristic of greatness of soul". Must be lawful, regulated by dharma |
| Artha | Wealth, means | Lower: food, drink, money, house, land, property. Higher: means to give effect to higher desires, such as worship or helping others. Means too must be lawful |
| Moksa (mukti) | Liberation, "loosening" | The truly ultimate end, because the other three are "ever haunted by the fear of Death, the Ender" |
On pravrtti-marga, "the trivarga should be equally cultivated, for he who is addicted to one only is despicable." Woodroffe's example: a householder who spends all his time in worship, neglecting family and estate. The Sastra: "Either one thing or the other: when in the world, be rightly of it; when adopting the religious life, leave it", a statement of the maxim "be thorough".
Moksa
Not Salvation
Woodroffe advises avoiding the word "salvation" and other Christian terms. In Christian soteriology, faith in Christ and his Church brings forgiveness of sins, mediated by Christ's redemption, saving from judgment and admitting to the Kingdom. Mukti is loosening from the bonds of samsara, resulting in union (of various degrees) of jivatma with Paramatma.
Knowledge, Not Conduct
Liberation comes by spiritual knowledge (atma-jnana) alone, though that knowledge must be preceded and accompanied by freedom from sin and right action under dharma. Hindu idealism, holding reality to be of the nature of mind, insists on the intellectual (cognitive) over the ethical. Not that it ignores ethics: it holds ethics subsidiary and powerless by itself to extinguish the modifications of consciousness that constitute Kaivalya, because conduct, good or bad, produces karma, which is the source of those very modifications.
Degrees of Mukti
Mukti is not one state. There are four future states of bliss (pada):
| State | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Salokya | Living in the same world as the deity worshipped |
| Samipya | Being near the deity |
| Sarupya | Receiving the same form, or the same divine qualities (aisvarya) |
| Sayujya | Becoming one with the deity |
Which one reaches depends on the worshipper and his worship (with or without images; the deity as distinct, with attributes, and so on). These four are results of action: transitory and conditioned. Mahanirvana or Kaivalya, the real moksa, is the result of jnana: unconditioned and permanent. Knowers of Brahman, seeing that worlds won by action are imperfect, reject them. Kaivalya is "oneness without attributes", the state in which, as the Yoga-sutra says, the modification of consciousness is extinct and it rests in its own nature.
Jivanmukti
Liberation is attainable while the body lives: jivanmukti, celebrated in Dattatreya's Jivanmukti-gita.
- The soul is not really fettered; the appearance of bondage is illusory. Moksa is already possessed, but because of the illusion that it is not, means must be taken to remove the illusion. The jiva who succeeds is jivanmukta, free of future embodiment.
- The enlightened Kaula (Nityanita) "sees no difference between mud and sandal, friend and foe, a dwelling-house and the cremation ground". He knows Brahman is all, that Paramatma and jivatma are one; free of attachment, he is liberated while living.
- The means is yoga.
(A footnote distinguishes jnana, knowledge that gives moksa, from vijnana, knowledge of arts and sciences.)
Siddhi
Siddhi is produced by sadhana. Literally "success", it covers accomplishment, achievement and fruition of all kinds: siddhi in speech, siddhi in mantra and so on. One who has perfected his spiritual development is also called siddha.
The Eight Siddhis
| Siddhi | Power |
|---|---|
| Anima | Becoming minutely small |
| Mahima | Becoming great |
| Laghima | Becoming light |
| Garima | Becoming heavy |
| Prapti | Reaching anything |
| Prakamya | Fulfilment of will |
| Isitva | Lordship |
| Vasitva | Control over all |
(Woodroffe's text is garbled here, listing "anima, ahima, garima"; the standard list is given above.) The Brahmavaivarta Purana (ch. 39) names eighteen, and there are many others, down to such minor feats as nakha-darpana-siddhi, "nail-gazing" (divination by gazing at a polished thumbnail).
The Great Siddhi
The great siddhi is spiritual perfection. "Even the mighty powers of the eight siddhis are known as the lesser siddhi, since the greatest of all siddhis is full liberation (mahanirvana) from the bonds of phenomenal life and union with the Paramatma, which is the supreme object (paramartha) to be attained through human birth."
The book ends where it began. The opening sections asked why there are many scriptures and many paths; the last section answers that all of them, sorcery included, are siddhis, and all but one are lesser. The title of the Tantra Woodroffe was introducing, Mahanirvana, "the Great Liberation", is the name of that one.
Glossary of Key Terms
A compact glossary of the terms this edition uses most. Diacritics are omitted.
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Abhiseka | Consecration; eight grades of initiation |
| Acara | Way of practice; seven (or nine) stages from Veda to Kaula |
| Adhikara / adhikari | Fitness / one who is fit for a practice |
| Agama | Revealed Tantric scripture, especially Siva's teaching to the Devi |
| Ahamkara | Egoity, the "I-maker" |
| Ajapa-gayatri | The natural mantra of the breath, Ham-sah |
| Akasa | Ether, the first gross element |
| Antahkarana | The inner instrument: manas, buddhi, ahamkara, citta |
| Asana | Posture; also the seat |
| Avidya | Ignorance |
| Bhava | Disposition (pasu, vira, divya); also state of worship |
| Bhuta-suddhi | Purification of the elements by mental involution |
| Bija | Seed-syllable |
| Bindu | Point; the concentrated power before manifestation |
| Brahman | The Absolute |
| Buddhi | Determining intellect |
| Cakra | Centre in the subtle body; also circle of worship |
| Caturvarga | The four aims: dharma, artha, kama, moksa |
| Cit | Pure consciousness |
| Devata | Deity |
| Dharma | What upholds; law, duty, right |
| Dhyana | Meditation (gross, luminous, subtle) |
| Diksa | Initiation, giving of mantra |
| Divya | Divine disposition |
| Granthi | Knot in the susumna (Brahma, Visnu, Rudra) |
| Guna | Quality of Prakrti: sattva, rajas, tamas |
| Guru | Teacher; ultimately Siva |
| Ista-devata | Chosen deity |
| Japa | Rule-governed repetition of mantra |
| Jivanmukta | Liberated while living |
| Jivatma | The embodied self |
| Kaivalya | Isolation, supreme liberation |
| Kali-yuga | The present, darkest age |
| Karma | Action, cause and effect; samcita, prarabdha, agami |
| Kaula | Highest acara; follower of the kula path |
| Kosa | Sheath (five) |
| Kundalini | The coiled power at the base of the spine |
| Lata-sadhana | Ritual practice with a female partner |
| Mahamaya | Maya as the power that recalls the world |
| Mala | Impurity (anava, mayiya, karma); also rosary |
| Mantra | Sound-form of a deity |
| Matrka | The fifty letters as "mothers" of the world |
| Maya | The power of apparent limitation |
| Moksa / mukti | Liberation |
| Mudra | Gesture or bodily seal; also parched grain |
| Nada | Primal sound |
| Nadi | Subtle channel |
| Nirguna / saguna | Without / with attributes |
| Nivrtti / pravrtti | Path of return / path of going forth |
| Nyasa | Ritual placing of mantra on the body |
| Pancatattva | The five ritual elements |
| Para-Siva / Parabrahman | The Supreme |
| Pasa | Bond (eight) |
| Pasu | One who is bound; animal disposition |
| Prakrti | Nature, the material principle |
| Prana | Vital force; the first of ten vayus |
| Pranayama | Regulation of breath |
| Puja | Worship |
| Purascarana | Large-scale repetition of a mantra |
| Purusa | Spirit, the conscious principle |
| Sadhaka / sadhika | Male / female practitioner |
| Sadhana | Practice, the means to siddhi |
| Sahasrara | The thousand-petalled lotus at the crown |
| Sakti | Power, the Goddess |
| Samadhi | Absorption (savikalpa, nirvikalpa) |
| Samdhya | Rite at the junctions of the day |
| Samkalpa | Formal resolve before a rite |
| Samskara | Sacrament; also latent impression |
| Sastra | Authoritative scripture |
| Siddhi | Accomplishment; power; perfection |
| Sruti / Smrti | Revealed / remembered scripture |
| Susumna | The central channel |
| Tantra | Scripture that "spreads" knowledge, especially Sakta Agama |
| Tanmatra | Subtle element |
| Tapas | Austerity |
| Tattva | Principle of reality |
| Turiya | The fourth state |
| Vama / daksina | Left (woman, adverse) / right (favourable) |
| Vayu | Vital air |
| Vira | Heroic disposition |
| Vrata | Vow, observance |
| Vrtti | Modification, mental tendency |
| Yajna | Sacrifice, worship |
| Yantra | Diagram, body of a deity |
| Yoga | Union; its practices |
Master Synthesis
Woodroffe set out to do something no English writer had done in 1913: describe the Sakta Tantra from inside its own premises, systematically, with sources cited. A century later the book is still the map most English readers use, even when they do not know its author. This synthesis gathers the argument and the cautions.
The Book's Argument in Twelve Steps
- The Tantra is a scripture of its age. Each yuga has its sastra; for the Kali age it is the Agama (Sections 1, 9 and 10).
- It is not a deviation from the Veda but a practical sastra resting on the same ground; its acaras form a ladder that contains Vedic practice (Sections 6, 10, 17).
- Reality is Siva-Sakti: consciousness and its power, one in essence, two in aspect (Section 2).
- The universe evolves from Sakti through nada and bindu, the tattvas and the elements, and returns to her (Sections 3 to 5 and 8).
- The body is a copy of the cosmos. Its sheaths, nadis and cakras are the tattvas in miniature (Section 11).
- Persons differ in temperament (bhava), shaped by guna and karma (Sections 12, 23).
- Practice must fit the person. This is adhikara, the master principle (Sections 12, 16, 23).
- The guru transmits power, not just information; the relation dissolves at realisation (Sections 13 to 15).
- Worship is a technology of transformation: mantra, yantra and mudra as the deity's bodies; bhuta-suddhi and nyasa as unmaking and remaking the self (Sections 17 to 20).
- Desire can be turned against itself by the qualified, under guidance; this is the pancatattva's rationale (Section 21).
- Yoga, culminating in Kundalini's ascent, enacts the return of the cosmos to its source within one body (Section 22).
- The end is jivanmukti: liberation in life, in which bhukti and mukti are both the Mother's gifts (Sections 24 to 25).
Twelve Takeaways
- Tantra is a body of scripture and practice, not a sexual technique. Sexual rites occupy one part of one stage for one temperament.
- "Vama" and "daksina" are contested words. Woodroffe's "woman" and "favourable" are one tradition's readings, not settled facts.
- Correspondence is the engine: outer Sun and inner light, cosmic tattvas and spinal lotuses, alphabet and deity's body.
- A mantra is not a prayer. Its power is held to lie in fixed sound received in initiation, not in meaning.
- The cakras are maps of yogic experience, not organs or glands; Woodroffe himself says so.
- Each cakra also carries a moral profile (its vrttis), so the ascent is also a purification of character.
- Bhuta-suddhi is the daily rehearsal of Kundalini's ascent.
- Pity, shame and family are listed as bonds. Tantric freedom is freedom from social as well as sensual conditioning.
- The Tantra opens worship to all castes and to women, at least within the rite, and allows women to be gurus.
- Even virtue binds, because it produces karma; only knowledge frees.
- Siddhis are real to the tradition but secondary; the great siddhi is liberation.
- Woodroffe is an advocate, a sympathetic insider-by-choice; read him for the system, and read the critics for the history.
Where Woodroffe Needs Correction or Context
| Issue | Woodroffe's position | Modern view |
|---|---|---|
| Date of the Mahanirvana | Treats it as an authoritative Tantra | Many scholars date it to the late 18th century, possibly composed in a Bengali reforming circle |
| Vama means "woman" | Yes, and "adverse" to pravrtti | Vama in Tantric usage generally means left; "left-hand" was a distinct, often transgressive current |
| The acara ladder | Seven stages of one path | A late Bengali systematisation; historically the acaras were often rival lineages |
| Abuses of the pancatattva | Due to a minority without a guru | The literal rites were central in many Kaula lineages; "abuse" is partly an apologetic category |
| Sheaths and Theosophy | Draws parallels | Theosophical bodies are not Tantric categories |
| Samskaras and embryology | Psychic science paralleling medicine | Rites of passage; the medical framing does not hold |
| "Arthur Avalon" | Pseudonym | Woodroffe later said it was a collective name for himself and a collaborator; the Celephais editor notes this, and scholarship (Kathleen Taylor) credits Atal Behari Ghose with much of the Sanskrit work |
A Reader's Path Through Woodroffe
If this book is your entry, the natural order through Woodroffe's other works, all of which have or will have Insight Editions in this series:
- Introduction to Tantra Sastra (this edition): the map.
- Shakti and Shakta: the essays that defend and expand the doctrine.
- The Garland of Letters: the theory of mantra and sound in depth.
- The Serpent Power: the full Sat-cakra-nirupana and Paduka-pancaka, with commentary.
- Mahanirvana Tantra: the scripture this book introduced.
- Hymns to the Goddess and Hymn to Kali: the devotional voice.
- The World as Power and Mahamaya: the later philosophical studies.
A Practice Path, With a Caution
Woodroffe repeats one thing more than any other: details of practice can only be learnt from a guru. Nothing in this edition is a substitute. What a reader can safely take into daily life is the outer frame that the book itself treats as preliminary and open to all:
- Samkalpa: begin any practice by stating clearly what you are doing and why.
- Morning remembrance: on waking, the recollection that one's nature is free, offering the day, admitting one's frailty (Section 19).
- Breath awareness: noticing the ajapa-gayatri, the natural rhythm of the breath, without forcing retention.
- Japa of a mantra already received, mentally rather than aloud, with attention on its meaning.
- Inner worship: the visualisation of the island of gems (Section 22) as a training of steady imagination.
- Reflection on the vrttis of each cakra as a map of one's own moods.
- Work on the eight bonds, beginning with the easiest to see: custom and shame.
What the book places firmly beyond self-instruction: advanced pranayama with long retention, the hatha cleansing acts, khecari-mudra, any form of Kundalini arousal, and all left-hand ritual. Woodroffe's own words on the manipura are the right note to end on: its piercing "may involve considerable pain, physical disorder, and even disease", and that is why "the directions of an experienced guru are necessary".
Final Reflection
Woodroffe called the Tantra a scripture for an age in which people "are short-lived and of small intelligence". He meant it kindly: a sastra that meets people where they are, with desire, body and imagination, rather than demanding a renunciation they cannot yet make. Whether or not one accepts its metaphysics, that is the book's lasting claim: the way out runs through the world, not around it.