"No Country for Women": A Tantric Interlude by Neela Bhattacharya Saxena

August 31, 2013 at 10:09pm

It is curious that as some people waited for the world to end, regenerate, or recycle itself into a new Yuga at the end of 2012, small worlds did end in two countries I have known rather intimately.  On December 14, child sacrifices were offered at the altar of the 2nd amendment in the US. At the southern end of the globe, two days later a young woman was brutally sacrificed at the altar of male sexual violence in New Delhi.  Neither event was particularly exceptional. Gun violence is accepted as a norm in the US; horror stories about rapes in India emblazon the news headlines.  I can’t even begin to mention war ravaged other parts of the world. And yet, and yet! Did the exceptionally gruesome nature of those events in the age of the Internet shake the complacency of the average human being? 

Switch to Mumbai 2013: “No country for Women?” cries the India Abroad headline, and women tourists shun the ancient land adding to the rupee’s ominous downward slide; however, the latest reported rape case inaugurates something new. This woman in a Mumbai hospital refuses to be a victim and says what most people are not used to hearing; “rape is not the end of life”!  The shame associated with a “defiled body” scares women no less than the danger associated with rape. As a Shakti worshipper who has been watching the awakening of the woman’s compassionate power along with a curious return of an often maligned ancient path of Tantra, I want to present a short Tantric interlude via a Bengali book called Tantrabhilasheer Shadhu Shanga (In the Company of Tantric Sadhus).  The writer Pramod Kumar Chattopadhyaya (1885-1979), a brahmin interlocutor who assumes female inferiority, records in this rare book, among other things, his conversations with two Tantra sadhakas, Aghori Baba and Bhairavi Maheshwari Ma.   
  
Pramod Kumar asks Aghori Baba about the attraction between men and women using the standard Sanskrit/Bengali/Hindi words, nari for woman and purusha for man.  Aghori Baba swiftly interrupts, “I will hear other stuff later; first you have to fix a mistake.  You said nari and purusha but that ought to be nari prakriti and purusha prakriti, you must say nari (ordinary woman) and nar (ordinary man).”  Pramod protested: “Oh that is just your semantic excess!”  Aghori roared: “ফের শালা তুই না বুঝে পনডিতি করছিস Hey idiot, you are trying your intellectualism without knowing anything.  In this grand universe of Prakriti, is there even one Purusha?  The one you are calling purusha, he is a mere creature of Prakriti.  Having a big linga does not make one Purusha! The qualities of Purusha exist as much in woman.”
  
Here is the crux of Aghori Baba’s indignation.  Patriarchal systems convince even some women in India that the mere male of the species is somehow spiritually superior because she is nothing but a body.  It is at least somewhat connected with the mixing up of terminology.  The word Purusha has deep connotations of a cosmic being, a realized being, a Shiva, a Buddha, a witness in “his” splendid isolation who scoffs at the dance of Prakriti or Nature, often gendered as female.  Nothing new in the world of your usual religions! But Tantra turns this into its head by seeing the Adyashakti Mahamaya, the Great Mother Principle, the root of all, in Mula Prakriti. 

Later when our Pramod Kumar hesitatingly talks to the Bhairavi, Maheswari Ma, she points out how all the nonsense in Brahminic India about women and their bodies have created “bhrashtachar” or immoral behavior in society.  She explicates the most astounding Shaiva path of union between women and men in total equality without any caste barrier. Trying to defend Brahminic control of the woman, Pramod timidly asks about women’s “shatittva” or the so called purity of her body: “In Tantra since married men and women are allowed to separate, won’t that destroy the woman’s life?” Ma thunders: “Why? She can start her life with another as does the man”!

Our 22 year Mumbai woman who is eager to return to work must have known her indwelling Mahashakti, and she has nothing to fear.  India’s problem is a global problem; it starkly reveals the diseased ideologies, the nadir of whatever has been going on for a long time in human history ,abysmal degradation of whatever is called woman, body, matter, sexuality under interlocking oppressive systems that are out to destroy the very planet because we think we are the masters of Prakriti.

Maheswari Ma points out how power hungry Brahminic orthodoxies have distorted Tantra in India.  This has made India impotent as it lost its Shakta mooring, the very birthright of all human beings.  Tantra that belongs to no narrow religion, teaches how to live life and recognize its breathtaking beauty; Ma says, traditionally it made no distinction between grihasthi (householder) and sanyasi – (wandering yogi).  Excessive emphasis on world/woman denying religions especially a misreading of the word Maya in India (world as illusion) has partially led to our troubles. Yet  because the Mother Principle could not be suppressed in old India by any power structures, there remains the traces of an ancient path of sanity, beauty, and strength that is not about domination but recognizing one’s deepest potential. 

In today’s world a Tantric teacher Khepababa, Kulavadhuta Satpurananda, clarifies a misunderstood philosophy that is the substratum of Tantra: “According to Sankhya Sutra the realizers or Purusha are many but the realized is one Prakriti. This is why innumerable prophets, avataras, Budhhas and Bodhisattvas have realized the same Truth through veracity of Realization. Each one is unique and reflecting the same Truth in the teachings through various views and thus various ways or means discovered as various medicines for curing various diseases.”

May we then dare imagine women’s “purushartha” in the 21st century and attempt to cure today’s societal diseases? May we teach the Shakta path to women without any agonistic relationship with the average male of the species? I have tried to unearth this Gynocentric Matrix in my work because as a Kali worshipper I know that  true Tantric dhyan awakens Prajna, the deep feminine wisdom and helps us recognize our birth right (Sahaja), our true potential as a human being who is spontaneously attuned to the cosmic dance.