Shakti and Shâkta : essays and addresses on the Shâkta Tantrashâstra

THE PANCHATATTVA

in religion which it effects, the principle will always retain its inherent value for the followers of the Advaita Vedanta. It is capable of application according to the modern spirit without recourse to Chakras and their ritual details in the ordinary daily life of the householder within the bounds of his DharmashAstra.

Nevertheless the ritual has existed and still exists, though at the present day often in a form free from the objections which are raised against certain ancient liberties of practice which led to abnse. It is necessary therefore, both for the purpose of accuracy and of a just criticism of its present adherents, to consider the intention with which the ritual was prescribed and the mode in which that intention was given effect to. It is not the fact, as commonly alleged, that the intention of the Shastra was to promote and foster any form of sensual indulgence. If it was, then the Tantras would not be a Shastra at all whatever else they might contain. Shastra as I have previously said comes from. the root “Shas” to control; that is Shastra exists to control men within the bounds set by Dharma. The intention of this ritual, when tightly understood, is on the contrary to regulate natural appetite, to curb it, to lift it from the trough of mere animality; and by associating it with religious worship, to effect a passage from the state of desire of the ignorant Pashu to the completed Divyabhava in which there isdesirelessness. It is another instance of the general principle to which I have referred that man must be led from the gross to the subtle. A SAdhaka once well explained the matter tome thus: Let us suppose he said that man’s body is a vessel filled with oil which is the passions. If you simply empty it and do nothing more, fresh oil will take its place issuing from the Source of Desire which you have left undestroyed. If, however, into the vessel there is dropped by slow degrees the Water of Knowledge (Jnana) it will, as being heavier than oil, descend to the bottom of the vessel and will then expel an equal quantity of oil. In

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