– Dr. Kamalakara Mishra
A misconception, prevalent even among scholars, is that the Vedic tradition alone forms the basic trend of Indian culture, the Tantric tradition being a side current or even a perversion. This is a colossal misunderstanding. The āgamas and Tantras have had importance equal to the Vedas in shaping Indian culture. The Tantric tradition has something very significant to say and this must be taken into account if we wish to form a complete view of Indian philosophy and religion.
Both the Veda (Nigama) and Tantra (āgama) are taken to be revelatory in character, pertaining to the extra-empirical or esoteric knowledge of reality. If this is so, then what need is there of the Tantra if we already have the Veda? Is the Tantra redundant or does it have some special significance? Side by side with the Veda, the Tantra does have special significance; in fact, it is complementary to the Veda. According to both Veda and Tantra, Ultimate Reality is Consciousness (cit or samvit), which is called Brahman. The nature of this consciousness is both knowledge (jnāna) and activity or dynamism (kriyā), and it is the dynamic aspect of Reality that is responsible for the manifestation of the world. This concept of dynamism though not explicitly explained is implicitly present in the Vedas and Upaniṣads, and the implicit is made explicit in the Tantras. The Upaniṣadic utterances regarding creation clearly suggest the existence of a dynamic principle in Brahman. It is said in the Upaniṣads that the world comes out of or emanates from Brahman and that He willed, ‘let me become many’. These statements tend to suggest kriyā or spanda. The statement that all these things arise out of Bliss itself refers in unequivocal terms to spanda. These statements cannot be explained away by calling them ākhyāyikās as some Advaitins do.
Thus the Upaniṣads do accept the dynamic aspect of Reality, but they do not fully explain that dynamism. This task is fulfilled by the Tantras. In the Tantras, the dynamism of Reality is completely spelled out; the immanent aspect of Brahman is brought to the fore. As a result, in the Tantra, there is an extremely positive attitude towards creation.
There is another important sense in which Tantra is complementary to the Veda. The Veda is called nigama or nigamana, which means deduction, while the Tantra is called āgama or āgamana, which means induction. The Veda is believed to have been revealed from a higher source, the seers did not author the statements of the Veda; they simply received or perceived them. Therefore, the Vedic statements have to be taken as accepted premises from which conclusions are then deduced. Hence Vedic knowledge is a deduction (nigamana) from revealed premises. Agama or Tantra, on the other hand, is based on the evidence of the experience of the seers and yogins. It is really a yogic tradition. Abhinavagupta calls it the anubhava-sampradāya (tradition of experience).
It is not that the Veda does not believe in the verification of revealed knowledge or that the Tantra does not believe in revelation. Both believe in both, but the Vedic knowledge comes mainly through the process of revelation, whereas the Tantric knowledge comes mainly through experience. In the Indian tradition, revelation and experience are considered complementary to each other – what is revealed can also be confirmed in actual experience. The Vedic knowledge is confirmed in experience and this experiential confirmation is the function of the tantra. In this sense, the Tantra is complimentary to the Veda.
The external form of Tantra suggests that it is revealed by Lord Shiva, as it is presented in the form of a dialogue between Shiva and Pārvatī. It is quite possible to conceive the Tantra as revelation, but the special nature of the Tantra is that it is based on experience. The yogins and seers have experienced the truth; the Tantra may be understood as a record of their experience, the dialogue of Shiva and Pārvatī being a literary device meant to make that record attractive.
Abhinavagupta interprets the dialogue between Shiva and Pārvatī as a dialogue within our own consciousness. He says: the Self, which is present in every form and is self-luminous, does both the questioning and answering itself as if by dividing itself into the questioner and the answerer, both being itself at the same time. It is also said that Shiva/Dēvī himself/herself, taking the form of the teacher and the pupil, revealed the Tantra by way of question and answer. This means that the dialogue is between the seeking self and the answering self, the answer being provided from within the Self. The questioning self is the lower self (aṇu) and the answering self is the higher Self (śiva). The same interpretation may be given in the case of the dialogue between Arjuna and Lord Kr̥ṣṇa in the Bhagavadgītā.
Even if the dialogue is understood literally and the Tantra is taken to be a revelation, there is no discrepancy. The twin notions that the Tantra is revealed on the one hand, and is experienced by the yogins and seers, on the other, are quite compatible, for what is revealed can also be confirmed in our own experience. The Tantric tradition accepts both points of view.
Thus we see that the āgamic or Tantric tradition, apart from being highly significant in its own right, is also complementary to the Vedic or Upaniṣadic tradition. The Tantric ideas that are implicitly present and sometimes explicitly expressed in the Vedas and Upaniṣads are explicitly and fully spelled out by the Tantras. Thus, Veda and Tantra form one and the same line of thought. Those who compiled the Tantras in the post-Vedic period were conscious of this continuity and oneness in the Vedic-Tantric tradition; they have explicitly mentioned this continuity. In the Kulārṇava Tantra, it is affirmed by Shiva, “The six systems of the Vedic philosophy are the limbs of my body like feet, stomach, hands, and head; those who differentiate them actually dismember my body. And these are also the six limbs of the kula.”
The Tantra does not merely enjoy the status of being complementary to the Veda. Its complementarity to the Veda is incidental. In fact, the Tantra has an autonomous and independent status. It would be quite reasonable to see the start of the Tantric tradition in the time when the seers, without any allegiance to the Veda, independently raised questions pertaining to life, made practical investigations in the direction of finding answers, and finally got the solutions. That the findings of the Tantric seers complement the Vedic store of knowledge or complement any other tradition for that matter, is just incidental. The significance of the Tantric tradition lies not in its being complimentary to the Veda or to any other tradition but in its potential to give autonomously a complete and perfect philosophy of life.
In a way, the Tantra is even fuller and more important than the Veda. The reason for this claim is simple. The Tantra is Veda plus Tantra, whereas the Veda is Veda plus implicit tantra. That is, the Tantra, besides its own wisdom, fully incorporates the wisdom of the Veda, but the Veda contains the wisdom of Tantra only implicitly and requires the Tantra to make it explicit.
Moreover, the āgama or Tantra is epistemologically more sound than the nigama or Veda. What is obtained through experience is scientific knowledge and is confirmed by itself; it does not require revelation to confirm it. On the contrary, revelation requires experience for its confirmation; revelation without experience remains an object of faith and does not become knowledge. The confirmation comes from experience, not from revelation.
Tantra can be called a science. In calling Tantra a science, I am neither changing the essential meaning of the term science nor am I misusing the term. The reason is a general principle underlying the scientific method; science is the rational study of anything. Reason makes it clear that a study based on speculation or faith cannot be dependable; we can depend only on what we observe or cognize. Therefore, science is not based on speculation or faith, but on actual experience or cognition. Reason makes it further clear that normally we have only one mode of experience, which is the empirical or sensory mode. Experience in the context of science means empirical experience. Therefore, science can also be defined as an empirical study.
But by using the same faculty of reason, it also becomes clear that science is based on empirical experience not by definition but simply because present-day science knows of no mode of experience other than the empirical one. If some other modes of experience were discovered, there would be no hesitation on anyone’s part in calling it scientific. The only burden would be to prove that it is a genuine experience and not something such as a reverie, hallucination, or illusion. It would become scientific by virtue of being experience.
Tantra is based on the actual experience of the seers and yogins. They sought to investigate the inner nature and potentialities of humanity and made wide experiments at the individual and societal levels. Their laboratory was the human being and, to some extent, society. They did not have modern methods and facilities for recording, processing, and preserving the data; they did, of course, have their own methods of doing so. Moreover, in order that the record of their discovery is palatable and entertaining, they did not adopt the prosaic scientific language but expressed their findings in poetic terms using metaphors, symbols, and allegories.
We should not labor under the illusion that everything written in the extensive corpus of the Tantra is based on experience. Just as what appears in the Veda is not all revelation, what appears in the Tantra is not all experience. The Tantric texts also contain a lot of hyperbolic and speculative material, as well as some material that can be set aside as irrelevant. If we are to take a realistic view of the Tantra without any undue sentimental attachment to the Tantric texts, we must carefully weed out the unnecessary elements in order to understand the true Tantric position.
There can be no doubt that reason is the only available tool for accomplishing this task and the only criterion for making any judgment. Even the suprarational does not oppose reason. To be beyond reason means to be unknowable by reason, not to be irrational or anti-rational. Therefore, reason is the best tool and the best criterion for determining the real purport of the Tantra, just as it is the best tool for judging anything else. Even when we accept revelation (śruti), we do so because reason tells us that we cannot know or experience Reality through reason or sense perception, and therefore we have to resort to revelation. It is only by using reason that we become aware of the limitations of reason itself and recognize the need to accept revelation. That Reality is beyond reason is made clear by reason alone! Reason is required not only to make a revelation intelligible but to make us aware of the desirability of revelation in the first place.
The position of Tantra is sound not only logically and epistemologically, but also ontologically and axiologically. Tantra gives a complete world view, satisfactorily explaining all aspects of reality. Its metaphysical concept of dynamic consciousness (chit shakti) with freedom (svātantrya) as its nature, consistently explains all the existential problems of reality, including life and the world. The Tantric discovery points out that the phenomenon of consciousness, which we call the “Self” or the “I”, that appears at the surface level is just the tip of a bigger reality lying deeper in us. Consciousness is like an iceberg, only a tiny portion of which is visible above the surface, or like an artesian spring that is invisibly connected to a deeper and vaster underground water reserve. If we accept this premise, it follows that we can reach the deeper levels of our reality step by step. Self-realization can be achieved in degrees. Even in our normal state, we have some degree of Self-realization, as the power of consciousness (chiti-shakti or kuṇḍalinī) is already working in us in the form of our mental faculty. Obviously, it is possible that in different people this consciousness will manifest in varying degrees, either naturally or by the deliberate process of uncovering or unfolding the qualities of Consciousness. We can logically stretch this process to the extent of achieving the fullest manifestation of Consciousness – Self-realization, or spiritual attainment to the highest degree.
The most significant contribution of Tantra is in the axiological field – the field of values. The Tantric seers were aware from the beginning that there are two basic sets of values in life. One is the ethical value of goodness or morality and the other is the material value of pleasure or happiness. The former is technically called śrēya, meaning “the good”, and the latter is prēya, or “the pleasant”. In the Indian system, there are four values: dharma (morality), artha (money), kāma (satisfaction of desires) and mōkṣa (self-realization). Morality comes under “the good”; artha and kāma fit under “the pleasant”. The seers were also aware that in actual life there is a dichotomy between “the good” and “the pleasant”; people have to undermine or sometimes totally suppress “the pleasant” in favor of “the good”. The seers were therefore quite clear that a value system that is merely “good” with no element of “the pleasant” is not practical.
Therefore, they sought to discover a system that synthesized within itself both “the good” and “the pleasant”, or truth and beauty, or the good of oneself and the good of others. They found the answer in what is called Self-realization, or mōkṣa. Mōkṣa is not an otherworldly value, but the ground of overall success in life. All talent and all power to work efficiently and gracefully in every walk of life come from the Self, just as all the electric power that moves fans and lights bulbs comes from the powerhouse. All creativity, artistic or otherwise, springs forth from the Self. It is from the Self that the illumined understanding of anything comes to the mind as a spontaneous flash in a phenomenon technically called pratibhā. Therefore, the more a person is in line with the Self, the more the power flows. Thus, a person of Self-realization will be a better teacher, a better philosopher, a better scientist, a better leader, and so on.
Self-realization incorporates within itself both morality and the satisfaction of desires. Morality is naturally present in mōkṣa for two reasons. First, the Self that is attained in mōkṣa is naturally good. That is why it is called śiva (literally “the benign”). It would be illogical to think that bad actions could spring forth from a naturally benign self. Just as only honey can drop from a honeycomb, only good actions can spring forth from the śiva-state.
Second, in the state of mōkṣa, one feels one’s unity with all. It is quite natural for such a person to do good to all. What obstructs the Self is called ignorance (ajnāna). Ignorance is defined as the sense of duality (dvaita-prathā or bhēda buddhi). When this sense of duality is dispelled, and one’s unity with all is realized – then one of the most essential characteristics of Self-realization is achieved.
The uniqueness of the Tantric conception of mōkṣa is twofold. First, according to Tantra, mōkṣa is not an otherworldly value, it is the ground of overall success in every walk of life. This corrects the misconception that mōkṣa is somehow separate from the present life. Second, mōkṣa, according to Tantra, does not merely consist of “the good”, but is a synthesis of both what is good and what is pleasant. The notion of mōkṣa modifies the popular Indian classification of the four values of life. According to the popular classification, money (artha) and the satisfaction of desires (kāma) come under “the pleasant” and morality (dharma) and realization (mōkṣa) both come under “the good”. But according to the Tantric classification, morality alone comes under “the good”, as mōkṣa is really a synthesis of both “the good” and “the pleasant”, and is thus a value higher than even “the good”.