A WEB OF RELATIONS: INTERPRETING INDIAN YOGA AND TANTRA AS FORMS O F ESOTERICIS Gordan Djurdjevic Simon Fraser University Preliminary text, copyrighted by the author. Please do not quote without seeking the author’s written consent. Permeable boundaries generate anxiety.1 Academic disciplines and scholarly categories tend to aspire towards clear marks of delineation and mutual distinction. This is particularly the case with newly established disciplines and areas of research. It is thus no surprise that Antoine Faivre, one of the founders of the academic study of Western Esotericism, in several instances argued against the inclination to make a claim for a ‘universal esotericism.’2 According to this view, which is not isolated, esotericism should be seen as a specifically Western cultural phenomenon. The reasons for this position appear sound: there is a historic continuity among Western esoteric currents, there is a specifically Western universe of discourse that esotericism occupies, and the binary twin of esotericism, its exoteric wing, consists of the Western religions, primarily Christianity and the classical (pagan) heritage subsumed by it, in addition to 1 “All margins are dangerous,” writes Mary Douglas in Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (London and New York: Routledge, 2002 [1966]), 122. “Any structure of ideas is vulnerable at its margins” (ibid.). She locates the symbolic centre of this notion in the structure of the human body, with the orifices representing the most vulnerable points due to their function, which necessitates the contact at the place of margin between the self and the other. 2 The following statement exemplifies Faivre’s position: "In the Far East and in other cultural terrains, esotericism does not even has its own status, while in the West it does. To be perfectly clear, it would be difficult to understand what a 'universal esotericism' might be." Antoine Faivre, Access to Western Esotericism (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1994), 6. Note that the argument of my proposal does not invoke the concept of universal esotericism but rather suggests the study of regional and denominational varieties of esotericism. 1 Judaic and Islamic influences. Closer analysis, however, will demonstrate that the above conceptualization of esotericism lies principally in its heuristic expediency: it makes sense and it is appropriate to study esotericism as a Western phenomenon for the reasons mentioned above, but there is no inherent rationale to adopt this orientation as the only valid approach. Like any other cultural notion, the category of esotericism is a theoretical construct3 - a discursive formation, rather than a historical unit - and as such it may be used as a tool with which to approach what appear to be reasonably similar manifestation of human though and behaviour in other cultures. What follows is a suggestion of how this may be done with respect to Indian (South Asian) traditions, with an implicit conviction that something similar may be done relative to the other areas of study. A note of caution against the attribution of the category of esotericism to the Hindu tradition was also voiced early on by a Traditionalist author René Guénon. According to his assessment, there is no strict opposition between the exoteric and esoteric teachings in Hinduism; instead, there is only progressive deepening of esotericism.4 Broadly speaking, this argument – just as Faivre’s - has some merit, since it is true that in Hinduism the divine is typically not construed as existing outside of the believer. But there are many shades of meaning to this assertion. There are, in fact, 3 In other words, esotericism is to a large degree an etic, rather than an emic category. It merits mentioning that the noun esotericism first occurs in French, as l’ésotérisme, only as late as 1828. See, for example, Kocku von Stugrad, Western Esotericism: A Brief History of Secret Knowledge (London: Equinox, 2005), 2. 4 “In India it is not possible to speak of esotericism in the true sense of the word, because there is no doctrinal dualism of exoteric and esoteric; it can only be a matter of natural esotericism, in the sense that each goes more or less deeply into the doctrine and more or less far according to the measure of his abilities, since there are, for certain individualities, limitations which are inherent in their own nature, and which it is impossible to overcome.” René Guénon, “Oriental Metaphysics,” in Light from the East: Eastern Wisdom for the Modern West, ed. Harry Oldmeadow (Bloomington, Indiana: World Wisdom, 2007), 9. 2 traditions that internalize the doctrines in a more restrictive, elite, and/or secretive manner so that access to teachings and practices of this kind is only possible by the guidance from a guru, which typically presupposes the necessity of initiation, transmission of secret knowledge, employment of coded discourse (sandhyā bhāṣā), and a claim of absolute knowledge and/or supernatural powers (siddhis). All these elements inhere in the category of esotericism. But even if we accept Guénon’s interpretation, this does not have to mean that we must abandon the use of the category of esotericism when studying Hinduism. Instead, we need to acknowledge that there exists more than one model of esotericism and that the particularity of the Western branch lies in the sharp distinction between it and the normative, exoteric religion, while in India the distinction is one of degree rather than kind. Historically speaking, the view of India as a repository of the occult knowledge is very old and it has entered Western imaginary subsequent to Alexander the Great’s military conquest of the northwestern region of the country. The view of the occult India gained its strongest momentum upon the formation of the Theosophical Society in 1875. The stance of the Theosophists provoked the famous Victorian orientalist Friedrich Max Müller to unequivocally reject their position. “There is nothing esoteric in Buddhism,” wrote Müller. “There was much more esoteric teaching in Brahmanism. There was the system of caste, which deprived the Shudras [servants], at least, of many religious privileges. But … even in Brahmanism, there is no such thing as an esoteric interpretation of the Shastras.”5 It is evident that Müller equates esotericism with secrecy, which is a limited interpretation. Nevertheless, secrecy is an important aspect 5 Friedrich Max Müller, “Theosophy,” in Life and Religion: An Aftermath from the Writings of the Right Honourable Professor F. Max Müller (New York: Doubleday, Page & Company, 1905), 218-9. 3 of tantric and yogic teachings, particularly with respect to actual practice. According to Joseph Alter, “all techniques of yoga were conceived of as quintessentially secret, being imparted by a guru only to select highly adept disciples.”6 Even more striking, but not unusual at the time of his writing, is Müller’s equation of Buddhism with what is obviously only Theravada Buddhism. He neglects to take into consideration that one of the three major divisions of Buddhism, the Vajrayāna, in fact represents precisely an esoteric school, with secret teachings, initiations, magical charms (mantras), symbolic diagrams (maṇḍalas) and the like. In a similar vein, he glosses over those aspects of Hinduism that contain pronounced elements of esotericism and limits his position to the issues of social exclusivity and scriptural interpretation. In doing so, Müller overlooks Tantric elements in Hinduism that define their position in a precisely opposite way: the foundational 12th century Kulārṇava Tantra makes a characteristic declaration that the doctrines of the Vedas, Śāstras, and Purāṇas may be revealed, but that those of the Śaiva and Śākta āgamas (i.e. tantras) are to be kept secret.7 In suggesting that some segments of Indian religious tradition may be included under the umbrella term of esotericism, I have primarily in mind an array of yogic and tantric disciplines. But before addressing these specific forms of Indian religiosity, it is appropriate to make some remarks of a general nature. What are the grounds that 6 Joseph S. Alter, “Modern Medical Yoga: Struggling with a History of Magic, Alchemy and Sex.” Asian Medicine, Vol. 1: 1 (2005), 121. 7 Kulārṇava Tantra, III, 4: “vedaśāstrapurāṇāni prakāśyāni kuleśvari / śaivaśāktāgamāḥ sarve rahasyāḥ parikīrttitāḥ. “ Similarly but more harshly, the doctrines of Vedas, Śāstras, and Purāṇas are compared to a courtesan, who is exposed to public gaze, while the Tantric doctrines (here specified as śāmbhavī vidyā) are to be kept hidden like a woman of a good family: “vedaśāstrapurāṇāni spaṣṭāni gaṇikā iva /iyantu śāmbhavī vidyā guptā kulavadhūriva” (Kulārṇava Tantra, XI, 85). This statement is also echoed in 15th century Haṭhayogapradīpikā, 4, 35: “vedaśāstrapurāṇāni sāmānyagaṇikā iva / ekaiva ṡāmbhavī mudrā guptā kulavadhūriva.” 4 justify the usage of the notion of esotericism when applied to Indian spirituality? Some suggestions are as follows: Linguistically, as June McDaniel has recently argued, there are several designations in Sanskrit that semantically approximate the meaning of the term esoteric and related concepts. Thus we have adhyātmika (spiritual), alaukika (nonworldly) and alaukika jñāna (spiritual knowledge), gupta (hidden) and gupta sādhana (hidden/secret rituals), siddha darśana (occult perception) and the like.8 It is also important to mention that the designation yogi or jogi often means and is translated as magician, and yoginī as witch. If esotericism, in the most general meaning of the term, is understood as an inner aspect of the conventional/normative religion, it is significant that already within the context of Vedic tradition there arises, in the Upaniṣads, a distinction between ritualism as such and the knowledge about ‘secret connections’ (bandhu) that provide the metaphysical validity for the ritual actions. In the latter case, it is assumed that this knowledge (jñāna) itself, by its own virtue, surpasses the merit acquired through the performance of rituals, so that the actual ‘external’ or ‘exoteric’ ritual is either completely abandoned (knowledge itself being sufficient), or replaced by a correspondent mental act: the meditation surpasses the rite, and meditation is predicated upon the secret knowledge of the invisible connections between germane aspects of reality. “The assumption then is,” as Patrick Olivelle explains, “that the 8 June McDaniel, “Is There an Eastern Esotericism? Siddhis, Magicians, and Spiritual Bodies in Some Bengali Yogic and and Tantric Traditions.” A paper delivered at the 3rd International Conference of the Association for the Study of Esotericism, College of Charleston: May 29- June 1, 2008; unpublished manuscript. 5 universe constitutes a web of relations, that things that appear to stand alone and apart are, in fact, connected to other things.”9 Traditional Vedic ritual presupposed the necessity of the altar of fire into which the offering was made: in the Upaniṣadic reinterpretation of this sacrificial act, the fire is internalized and identified as the bodily heat and the offering customarily became a controlled act of mentally focused breathing (prāṇāyāma). Keeping in mind the enormous influence that the Upaniṣads exerted onto subsequent Indian religion and philosophy, it could be argued that one of the foundational pillars of the Hindu tradition was predicated upon an esoteric move: from ritualism to gnosis and liberation (mokṣa), based on the soteriological value of the knowledge of correspondences.10 The conceptual patterning of reality along the system of correspondences rests upon the operation of analogical thinking. Alex Wayman has argued that this form of thinking is one of the four fundamentals of Vajrayāna Buddhism, in addition to “the subtle body, the three worlds, and initiation by the hierophant.”11 In Western esotericism, the fundamental statement at the root of such thinking is given in the famous “Emerald Tablet” (“Tabula Smaragdina”) in the form of “As above, so below.”12 In Indian alchemy, the corresponding principle is expressed through the phrase “As in metal, so in the body” (“yathā lohe, tathā dehe”). In Sanskrit Buddhist form (as found in the late 11th or early 12th century Niṣpannayogāvalī by Abhayākaragupta), this is given in the expression “As 9 Patrick Olivelle, trans., Upaniṣads: Translated from the Original Sanskrit (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), lii. 10 One of the most explicit statements in which there is a clear distinction between the respective merits of knowing the truth (based on the knowledge of secret connections) as opposed to performing the rites, is contained in Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad 6:2:15-6. See also Chandogya Upaniṣad 5:10:1. 11 Alex Wayman, Yoga of the Guhyasamājatantra: The Arcane Lore of Forty Verses. A Buddhist Tantra Commentary (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1977), 62. It could be argued that all these four fundamentals mentioned by Wayman inhere in the category of esotericism. 12 On “Emerald Tablet,” see (among others) E.J. Holmyard, Alchemy (New York: Dover, 1990 [Penguin, 1957]), 97-100. 6 without, so within” (“yathā bāhyaṃ tathā’dhyātmam iti”).13 As Wayman explains, the most important aspect of analogical thinking in Vajrayāna relates to the well-known principle of ‘affiliating’ one’s own body, speech, and mind with the body, speech, and mind of the Buddha through ritual gestures (mudrās), incantations (maṇtras) and deep concentration (samādhi).14 We may again simplify the complexity of Vajrayāna Buddhism for the purpose of making a statement and argue that its ultimate goal, becoming enlightened and thus a Buddha, is accomplished through the ritual enactment of the esoteric principle of correspondence. If esotericism is conversely recognized through the presence of its disciplines or ‘schools,’ such as magic, alchemy, astrology, and divination, it is significant that all of these are well attested in Indian culture. Both two great classical epics, the Ramāyaṇa and even more so the Mahābhārata, as well as traditional collection of stories, such as the Kathāsaritasāgara (or, the Ocean of the Streams of Story), contain a great deal of narratives and motifs that relate to magic. It could be argued that the religious practice associated with the oldest preserved Indian texts, the Vedas, was in itself a form of magic, for the rituals performed utilizing Vedic hymns were considered to have inevitable results. This relates to a fundamental notion of karman, which eventually came to mean an outcome of any action, but which originally meant a definite outcome of the performance of a Vedic rite. In other words, Vedic ritual was not a form of supplicant prayer to which the God(s) may or may not respond favourably; quite the contrary, the favourable outcome was the necessary effect caused by the performance 13 Wayman, Yoga of the Guhyasamāja, 62. ‘Without’ and ‘within’ in this quote refer to a symbolic diagram, maṇḍala, which is both drawn outside (without) and reflected in one’s own mind (within) in meditation. 14 Ibid. The rendering of mudrā, mantra, and samādhi by ‘gesture,’ ‘incantation,’ and ‘deep concentration’ is Wayman’s. 7 of the ritual. This is a typical presupposition behind the theory of magical activity. There can be no doubt, however, that the youngest of the Vedic compositions, the Atharva Veda, is a straightforward collection of magical formulae, consisting as it does of numerous charms that function either to dispel negative conditions or to attract the positive ones.15 The significant presence of magic, astrology, divination, and alchemy in Indian culture consequently justifies both a prospect of comparative engagement with these phenomena and those in Western esoteric traditions as well as it justifies an effort to understand the particularly Indian cultural manner according to which these disciplines have historically developed. s My central argument is that Indian yoga and tantra are the closest South Asian analogues to the Western esoteric tradition. There are two aspects to this argument. On the one hand, there is a formal similarity between important features of Indian and Western esotericism: the common belief in the importance of correspondences, in the reality of the subtle or astral body and what Henry Corbin designated as the mundus imaginalis, the common belief in the possibility of developing magical powers or siddhis, in the possibility of finding the elixir of immortality or amṛta, the common belief in the human perfectibility, in the possibility of acquisition of absolute knowledge, and so forth. In other words, I suggest that there is common ground, shared space, between these two regional forms of esotericism. In addition, there is also an analogical resemblance, a correspondence between the two, which justifies the usage of the conceptual model of esotericism even in those cases where the mutual similarity is not apparent. As I have already suggested in an earlier work, I propose that (at least some 15 It may be observed that there is a great deal of similarity between the intended result of the charms in the Atharva Veda and those in later Greek Magical Papyri and even later Arabic Picatrix. 8 forms of) yoga and tantra stand in analogical relation to Western esotericism, and more specifically, that at least some forms of yogic and tantric meditation are analogous to Western (ritual) magic. Most specifically, I suggest that there is an analogy between meditation and ‘active’ or ‘true’ imagination, imaginatio vera (as understood in its technical meaning in Western esotericism). This is particularly the case in those forms of South Asian meditation techniques that utilize images in their modus operandi.16 It may be mentioned that the relation between Indian and Western esotericism resembles the characteristics of the two major forms of magic as analyzed by Frazer: contagious magic – in this context, those areas of esoteric theory and practice that are influenced by direct or mediated historical contacts;17 and sympathetic magic – those that mutually overlap in their major formal characteristics, as is the case with alchemy and astrology, and those that exhibit mutual analogical relations: thus, yogic meditation is analogous to magic ritual, mantras are analogous to chanting, maṇḍala is analogous to a magic circle and so forth. As already argued by Stanley Tambiah, these two forms of magic resemble the features of metonymy and metaphor; it may be argued then that metonymic and metaphoric tropes also illuminate the relationship between Indian and Western esotericism. If yoga and tantra relate to magic, whether analogically or structurally, it is a desideratum that some definition of magic be given. As I have already suggested 16 In other words, this would exclude those forms of Indian meditative techniques that are based on the cultivation of bodily and emotional awareness from being regarded as esoteric. Example would be vipassana meditation. 17 For contacts between Indian and Western civilizations in antiquity, see Thomas McEvilley, The Shape of Ancient Thought: Comparative Studies in Greek and Indian Philosophies (New York: Allworth Press, 2002). In medieval times, the mediating, although indirect and limited, force was Islam. Indian alchemy, with connections to yoga and tantra, influenced Islamic alchemy, which in its turn made some impact on Western alchemy. In modernity, the contacts between India and the West were coloured by the experience of colonialism and post-colonialism and as far as esotericism is concerned, the influence of Indian spirituality gains its momentum after the formation of Theosophical Society in 1875. 9 elsewhere,18 magic is in my understanding that aspect of religious thought and behaviour that is principally related to the issue of power: in magic, what people conceive of as the sacred manifests as power. One feature of this phenomenon addresses the fact of agency: magic is about doing things by influencing the outcome through the knowledge of hidden patterns of reality. Another important aspect of the relationship between magic and power lies in the notion of perfectibility, which in its ultimate form implies the possibility of the deification of the magician (or yogi). Closely related is the presence of a discourse about the possibility of acquisition of absolute knowledge, gnosis, that the pursuit of magic (and tantra/yoga) promises to its practitioners. There are, needless to say, important differences in the manner that the above-mentioned notions are constructed in the regional variants where magic is actively pursued. This fact in itself justifies the study of these regional varieties, including also a possibility of comparative investigation, so that a clearer insight is gained with respect to both similarities and differences between the regional forms. The value of enlarging the study of esotericism by incorporating it as a conceptual tool in an effort to understand the religious ideas and practices of nonWestern cultures is, I suggest, threefold. Firstly, by looking at a specific local tradition through a novel lens, we gain new insights. Seen from a different angle, the matter under study yields new insights. Secondly, by moving beyond the geographical and cultural boundaries of the West, we also enrich our understanding of esotericism itself as well as particular esoteric currents, such as magic, alchemy, and/or astrology. The more knowledge we possess of the regional varieties of esotericism, the better and 18 See Gordan Djurdjevic, Masters of Magical Powers: The Nāth Yogis in the Light of Esoteric Notions (Saarbrücken: Verlag Dr. Müller, 2008). 10 broader our understanding of the category will be. And finally, the benefit of the study of other forms of esotericism lies in opening the possibility of comparative investigation. Such investigation shall not presuppose the existence of universal and unchanging esotericism. It will instead be alert to the particularities of the regional social, historical, and ideological context, and such a comparison will engage what reasonably appears as genuine similarity19 and family resemblance between Western and non-Western, historical, contemporary, and other forms of esotericism. 19 In a recent article, David Decosimo (drawing upon work of philosopher Nelson Goodmen) argued that “[a]side from giving us basic norms by which to evaluate the success or value of the comparison as a whole, a clear goal for comparative work gives us norms for judging whether the chosen objects of comparison are appropriate, whether, in a basic way, the comparison is coherent or makes sense.” Idem, “Comparison and the Ubiquity of Resemblance,” in Journal of the American cademy of Religion, Vol. 78,1 (March, 2010), 239. Decosimo asks that a comparative work distinguishes “between ‘genuine resemblance’ and ‘trivial resemblance’ or ‘mere property sharing.’” Ibid., 232. My argument is that the grounds for comparison between (at least some forms of) yoga/tantra and western esotericism are genuine. I also concur with Decoismo’s statement that “[o]ften, however, some of the most interesting comparisons do involve genuine disagreements between traditions—claims that are truly competing.” Ibid., 254. 11