Bharati received his initiation in a shakti tantric group in Assam and from his description (given in Light at the Center, Context and Pretexts of Modern Mysticism) it was consensual between adults.

Bharati had been born in Vienna and survived the Nazi occupation and he hated authoritarian abuse of power and hated intellectual dishonesty and despised coercion.

He died in 1991, so he lived just long enough to read the news coverage of Chogyam Trungpa's descent into alcoholic sex piggery, his invidious creation of ranks, arranging for beginning students to function as servants and do tasks for the higher level Vajrayana students--all of which would create heirarchy and inflame ego, not assuage ego.

Bharati may not have known of the full extent of child abuse in the Tibetan system, its use and disposal of child tulkus. He was friends with early refugees from Tibet, themselves products of that abuse system.

Still, Bharati can offer us ways to identify whether someone is qualified to teach tantra or shining us on.

Agehananda Bharati received tantric initiation in India, in 1952, and from his description in his memoir, The Ochre Robe, he went to a ritual center in Assam--eastern India, in the forest.

These were shakti Hindu practitioners - adults.

In Ochre Robe, Bharati described a renowned Shakti adept, a woman named Siddhamata. She was in her thirties at the time of this meeting. According to rumor, she had been born into a noble family, was intellectually precoccious, then the night before her wedding, she ran away, and could not be found. She was sighted here and there in forests.

Then after years, she emerged--as a practitioner of shakti tantrism. Bharati described her as wearing her hair long, she carried an iron trident, wore a tiger skin over her robes, --and she was was renowned for her learning. Siddhimata was known and respected by the monks, and Bharati said it was touching and impressive to see these male monks sit and wait for Siddhimata to finish her ritual obligations before she joined them at meals.

Bharati was invited to have a public discussion with Siddhimata, and the topic she selected was the place of simile in ritual language. They discussed this in Sanskrit until the moderator humbly implored them to speak in Hindi so that the entire audience could understand them.

Siddhimata had the training and acuity of a university professor.

Later, when Bharati reached the ritual center in Assam where he was to receive tantric intitiation, he met Siddhimata again. She said that she visited there every year. Bharati replied, "I should have realized it, but I did not."

He left a tantalizing silence whether this amazing and powerful woman was his tantric preceptor.

And it would require a confident and secure man to be capable of arousal and maintainance in relation with a woman of Siddimata's intellectual capacity. And who owned and could use an iron trident.

One thing Bharati does in Tantric Tradition is describe the difficulties of translating various terms. It is far from a straightforward business.

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walter1963
Highly sanitized - symbolic unlike the Aghori that still engage in ritual human sacrifice/cannibalism - when they can steal a child away from village and do you know what to them.

Yes there are schools of Taoism that utilize sex in their rituals but most are entirely negative - basically for a form of energy vampirism. Up until 20 years ago there was a invite only club in Taiwan where it was regularly practiced. Some well known American martial artists engaged in it. That stuff from Mantak Chia and Margo Anad is white washed made up material for bored yuppies and DINKS looking for new sex thrills. There are also another Taoist school where women are used for some really twisted rituals - I won't go into them because the material is x rated. Suffice to say one can find it, if you are into a certain rare Chinese martial-art. You have to go to SEAsia to practice it though.

This has the ring of truth, the ring of insider info. I, myself, have been wondering about the Taoist sex practices and how they play out in terms of male-female power dynamics, ever since I first began researching abuse issues in Tibetan Buddhism, and the history of tantra. The energy vampirism aspect is definitely there in Indian and Tibetan tantra, but it represents a degenerate form of original tantra, which was matriarchal, and controlled by women. (See N.N. Bhattacharya, and Judith Simmer-Brown's "The Dakini's Warm Breath", and Miranda Shaw)


On another note, Central Asian shamanism does not have a sexual component of this nature, or any nature, AFAIK. No scholars of shamanism have ever mentioned this, nor has it been my observation, after spending a fair amount of time talking to Siberian shamans and the people among whom they live. Shamanism is about healing, serving as an intermediary between humans and the spirit world, and trancework for the purposed of healing or diagnosis, predictions, clairvoyance. (For the Tibetan version of traditional Central Asian shamanism, see the film "Oracles of Ladakh", by Mystic Fire video.)

It can be difficult teasing out the different elements in Tibetan Buddhism from the tangle of influences, but after considerable study, I feel confident in attributing sexual magic or sexual "longevity" practices squarely to tantra and its Hindu antecedents. A few scholars posit that those practices originated in China with the Taoists, and spread to India, but that's the minority view.
Giuseppe Tucci does a good job of analyzing TB and identifying the different threads that make up its warp and weft in: "Religions of Tibet".



Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 12/14/2012 02:35AM by Misstyk.

Also read this TIDS whereby adherents believe that they are immune from such as HIV / AIDS because they practice tantric rituals.

[www.american-buddha.com]

TANTRA-INDUCED DELUSIONAL SYNDROME ("TIDS")

by Charles Carreon

TIDS: Tantra-Induced Delusional Syndrome

Abstract

Taking clinical note of the increased manifestation of acute and chronic delusional ideation among practicioners of tantra, a new entry for DSM-V is proposed: Tantra-Induced Delusional Syndrome (“TIDS”). Currently, enthusiasm for tantra is high among mental health professionals seeking alternative analytical and therapeutic models, and critical awareness is correspondingly low. This article, authored not by a mental-health professional, but rather by an attorney with extensive experience with tantric lifestyles, focuses on the case histories of three American tantric teachers who manifested destructive delusional behavior. The article identifies the risk-promoting character of tantric doctrine as the etiological root of their pathology, considers how delusional pathology transfers to tantric students, and describes the social dynamics of guru-dominated communities as potential breeding grounds for self-reinforcing delusional behavior. The article proposes three types of TIDS, “Guru-side,” “Student-side,” and “Transitional,” and suggests treatment modalities.

Tantra, A Risk-Promoting Spiritual Path

Tantra originated in India during an indistinct time period in the second millennium B.C., as a spiritual style that infused virtually all Indian religions, including the Vedic, Jain and Buddhist traditions, with colorful, imaginative characteristics. Once tantra touches a spiritual path, it is irrevocably reshaped into a path that extols the virtues of risk-taking and focuses on attracting students with an appetite for drama and excitement. Buddhist tantra bears little similarity to the original teachings of the Buddha who was born in Lumbini, enlightened at Bodhgaya, and founded the world’s largest and most enduring monastic brotherhood. The original Buddhists engaged in simple meditation practices to clear the mind and still the passions, Tibetan “Vajrayana” Buddhists practice magical rituals in which they invoke a “tutelary deity” through the use of a “seed mantra” and cognize themselves as “emanations” of this divine being, residing in an alternate universe where all sounds are the divine mantra, and all thoughts are divine wisdom. Although the Buddha disclaimed guru status and advised his devotees to “work out their own salvation with diligence,” Vajrayana Buddhists venerate their gurus extravagantly, literally believing them to be infallible and more important than the historical Buddha.

While there are no doubt legitimate manifestations of tantra, it always proceeds on the basis of postulates, not on the basis of introspection or subjective observations. Several tantric postulates make the tantric path attractive to spiritual strivers:

· The nature of ordinary existence is divine;
· The divine nature is concealed by the passions;
· Wisdom is revealed by transmutation of the passions;
· The guru has the power to transmute the passions; and,
· Rejecting the guru’s grace is the path to self-destruction.

The passions referred to in these postulates are all emotional and intellectual distortions of “clear perception,” including the core attachment to one’s own self-identity. Thus, when presented to beginners as a dualistic, either-or approach to enlightenment, the door to dangerous misunderstandings is flung wide open. Ironically, the tantric path is often made more attractive to risk-takers by the outright declaration that it is dangerous, like a steep climb up a cliff, compared with the slow and steady ascent pursued by stodgier practicioners.
Teachers and Students Enable Each Other

In modern-day America, “tantra” is often taught by virtual neophytes encouraged by traditional tantric teachers eager to seed new soil with their doctrine. Presented with the opportunity to play the guru, many of these newly-minted give in to the opportunity to exploit their students, and thus fall victim to the first danger of which serious tantric teachers give warning – the seduction of worldly power. Students who start off as bohemian rebels and non-conformists easily fall under the spell of tantric teachers who strut like fast-buck artists, adopt tough-guy personas, and exude an air of the-devil-may-care. Ironically, they may soon find themselves in the clutches of a psychology familiar to habitués of the bondage and domination scene.

Modern tantric teachers set about magnetizing a “mandala of students” who find their own individual reasons to adopt and spread the belief that they have established contact with a genuine tantric guru. Once a sufficient critical mass of students adopts this belief, it sets in motion a whirlpool of self-reinforcing behavior that exerts the psychological gravitational force of a black hole, sucking in large numbers of vulnerable souls. The community of Student-side TIDS sufferers reinforce each others’ mental enslavement through a shared, self-perpetuating delusion. Mid-level managers of the community primarily suffer from Transitional TIDS, a tense condition alternating between pride at being a community insider and anxious fear of exposure and humiliation. At the apex of this pyramid of misery sits the proliferator of the scheme, immersed in the psychotic pleasure of Guru-side TIDS.

Guru-side TIDS

In this article, which is but a preliminary foray into a promising field of diagnostic research, three case studies provide the basis for our hypothesis that Guru-side TIDS is a particularized psychological disorder -- Thomas Rich (Osel Tendzin), Catherine Burroughs (Jetsunma), and Franklin Jones (Adi Da Samraj). As these cases reveal, Guru-side TIDS is definitively a predatory, antisocial pathology that sometimes assumes criminal proportions and leads to devastating consequences.

Thomas Rich

Rich’s ascent to the status of Tantric guru was facilitated by his own tantric teacher, the once-legendary enfant terrible of Tibetan Buddhism, Chogyam Trungpa. Trungpa, the author of “Born In Tibet,” and many other books, was enthroned in early childhood as the Eleventh Trungpa Tulku of Surmang Monastery in a remote region of Tibet. Trungpa established the Vajradhatu organization in Boulder, Colorado, and prior to his death, pronounced Rich to be his Vajra Regent, to rule in his stead after Trungpa’s death and until the birth of the Twelfth incarnation of Trungpa Tulku.

Trungpa himself had been a famous drunkard and womanizer, as well as a talented poet and magnetic personality. Rich attempted to behave similarly. Tragically, Rich suffered not only from Guru-side TIDS, but also from AIDS. Not long after Trungpa’s death, he embarked on a series of sexual escapades and engaged in unprotected sex with several students. The reason? Due to TIDS-caused delusions, Tendzin believed that his bodily fluids did not transmit the disease. As a result at least one student and his female partner died of the lethal virus.

The conduct of Rich’s devoted students was equally reprehensible and casts a harsh light on the behavior of Transitional TIDS victims, the middle-managers of the dysfunctional Vajradhatu dynasty. Although many of Trungpa’s closest students were writers and artists, including the renowned poet Alan Ginsberg, and the Vajradhatu had its own newspaper, The Vajradhatu Sun, the entire matter of the AIDS deaths was hushed up, and never discussed openly by the cult leaders. Rich’s personal criminal misconduct was covered up, and legal protections against lawsuits by the victims were adopted in a corporate reorganization that downplayed Trungpa’s legacy and changed the name of the cult from Vajradhatu to Shambhala. In her biography, Trungpa’s wife has claimed Trungpa regretted appointing Rich his Regent, but failed to take action to disempower him. Since Trungpa, decimated by alcoholism, was barely able to relieve himself without assistance at the end of his life, it is not surprising that he was unable to disarm the time bomb he’d unleashed on his students. A man named Patrick Sweeney continues to gnaw the cud of the disgraced Regent, claiming to be his “dharma heir,” and operating the Satdharma group under those questionable auspices.

Catherine Burroughs

Catherine Burroughs began her career as a garden-variety psychic medium who purported to “channel” the spirits of wisdom teachers who had long ago departed this earth. Operating from her suburban lair near Washington, D.C., Burroughs tapped the manic energy that drives the over-achieving technocrats and hyperactive communicators who swarm through the bureaucratic warrens of the nation’s capital. Gifted with a knack for giving orders, Burroughs imposed heavy demands on her followers, pressing them into keeping a twenty-four hour world peace vigil that induced heavy competition among her devotees.

Burroughs’ transformation to Guru-hood was also accomplished with the aid of a Tibetan lama, who was wowed by her ability to maintain a stable of high-achieving, top-dollar donating students. Gyatrul Rinpoche, a Vajrayana teacher of the Nyingma sect who had established his own temple near Ashland, Oregon, endorsed Burroughs as a tulku, a reincarnated Bodhisattva, or “Hero of Enlightenment.” Burroughs saw the opening, and quickly negotiated a merger of her people skills with the established cachet of the two-thousand year-old Vajrayana brand, assuming the name of Jetsun Akhon Norbu Lhamo, and redecorating her temple with a blend of traditional Tibetan imagery and New Age crystals. “Jetsunma,” as she came to be familiarly known, assumed her place on the traditional lama’s throne, donned resplendent brocade robes, and doffed the peaked “lotus hat” that lamas wear on ceremonial occasions. The effect would have been silly if anyone with ordinary sensibilities had been able to view the proceedings; but by then the critical mass of Student-side TIDS sufferers had generated a field of delusive glamour, and Burroughs’ unabashed self-love conquered all hearts. For a while.

As her authority grew unchecked, her antisocial inclinations and intolerance with dissent waxed ever more virulent. Burroughs’ demands for money and power crescendoed in a rampage of bizarre behavior that included serial marriages to several students twenty years her junior, rapacious financial exploitation of her flock, and culminated in her arrest by the Maryland State Police for battery on a young nun. Shortly thereafter, Burroughs moved to Sedona, Arizona, and in almost clichéd fashion, Burroughs predicted a series of “earth catastrophes” that failed to take place in 1999.

Franklin Jones
Jones was once a handsome young writer with a Masters in English from Stanford. After serving his apprenticeship with the two tantric gurus Rudrananda and Muktananda, he assembled his own flock of sycophants. A prolific writer blessed with the gift of gab, Jones’ spiritual opus, “The Knee of Listening,” became a staple on the bookshelves of hippies inclined to philosophical nattering. Starting out in Los Angeles, he took advantage of the drug culture in the sixties to induct young, beautiful women into his cult. Jones’ story gives us insight into one of the important methods of inducing Student-side TIDS among followers. It is axiomatic that women will perceive any man as dominant who commands the devotion of all other men. Jones conquered women by surrounding himself with subservient male devotees. During all-night drug and drinking parties, Jones would deploy his male devotees to separate women from their boyfriends or husbands. Jones would then make his move on the new woman. By morning, she would have discovered a new form of bliss in the arms of the guru, and her ordinary lover would have his ego reduced to the size of a pin. Unable to leave his woman behind, and equally unable to argue her away from Jones, the cuckolded man would often become a new devotee. Thus Jones acquired two TIDS victims for the price of one.

In 1985, Jones’ abuse of his devotees exploded in the national press and a he settled a string of lawsuits that alleged what was widely-known in hippie society – that his “communities” were parasitic projects that enriched him with sex, money and power, leaving his devotees psychologically and financially deprived. He bought a small island in Fiji from actor Raymond Burr and moved there with a clutch of disciples whose fate it was to explore the heart of darkness.

Over the years, Jones extracted enough wealth from his devotees to sustain a remarkably self-indulgent lifestyle, toward the end of which he was able to pose as a visual artist who integrated digital photography with monumental aluminum installations that were displayed in Italy and praised by a stable of pet intellectuals in fatuous post-modern style: “It is Adi Da Samraj’s imaginative triumph to have conveyed the illusions created by discrepant points of view and the emotionally liberating effect when they aesthetically unite in the psyche of the shocked perceiver.”

Until the end of his life in November 2007, by way of singing for his supper, Jones continued to emit his original spiritual prose stylings: "I Am The Perfectly Subjective Divine Person, Self-Manifested As The Ruchira Avatar—Who Is The First, The Last, and The Only Adept-Realizer, Adept-Revealer, and Adept-Revelation of The Seventh Stage of Life.”

For several days after his death, Jones’ devotees entertained the notion that he might “wake up” from a fatal heart attack, a notion that they apparently abandoned reluctantly, presumably when the odor of putrefaction became evident. Even the most slavish student-side TIDS sufferers will be forced to admit, after a decent interval, that the guru’s shit admittedly stinks.

Student-side TIDS

Student-side TIDS can develop after relatively brief immersion in a Tantric guru-student relationship. The roots of Student-side TIDS lie in the student’s feeling that they are missing out on the truly miraculous character of a world they believe exists, but are unable to contact. They may have experienced, through drugs, romantic adventures, travel or other emotional stimulants, a sense that life has occasionally parted the veil and allows them to glimpse a magical universe, and that if they could establish a connection with this other realm, they could escape the dull reality in which they feel themselves confined. Tantra is generally not for those students who are comfortable with sustained intellectual effort in pursuit of spiritual awareness. However, it often attracts those fond of mastering an arcane vocabulary, esoteric symbols, and a pantheon of gods and goddesses. Spiritual seekers drawn to tantra share some of the psychological traits of compulsive gamblers, who have an unshakeable faith in their unique luck, and a passionate desire to harvest outsized rewards.

Students of tantric teachers often suffer from a derogatory self-image, and seek to ally themselves with the glamour emanating from the guru. Inclined to believe in their own specialness, but convinced that they cannot achieve transcendence by their own efforts, they place their faith in esoteric traditions that hold the promise of revealing secret knowledge. Tantric teachers whipsaw students emotionally by alternately deriding them for their emotional and intellectual efforts, teasingly making a show of effortless transcendence, then accusing them savagely for being unable to make the petty sacrifices of time and money that would demonstrate the sincerity of their devotion. Tantric teachers also use standard methods of breaking down social conditioning and inducing dependence on the tantric teacher by requiring participation in lengthy rituals and practices, demanding that they render personal services to the teacher and his family, and doling out humiliation as if it were a blessing. Sleep deprivation and rote repetitions of ritual acts also serve to deaden mental acuity and induce an undiscerning mental state in which a fog of confusion can be recharacterized as a sense of removal from worldly attachment. In the tantric environment, all activities and events are re-imagined as sacred portents and harbingers of blessings or misfortune. Nothing that happens in the “mandala” is ever ordinary, thus life becomes charged with imputed significance.

The net result of the tantric milieu is to institutionalize a groupthink founded on individual helplessness and total dependence on the guru. Individually, this may deepen into self-hate, an obsession with the person of the guru, performance of acts of extreme self-sacrifice to obtain approval from the guru, and even the veneration of the guru's physical detritus, i.e., nail and hair clippings. Student-side TIDS may induce bouts of acute anxiety alternating with depression, episodic flights from reality characterized by transient ecstasy and self-deification, compulsive meditative or devotional behavior, and the nagging fear of damnation, referred to in tantric circles as "Vajra Hell."

Student-side TIDS also takes on various apparently benign forms, that manifest in persons with a bland personality or low intellectual vitality, who feel best when kept in a low position without hope of advancement. People who avoid challenges and suffer anxiety primarily when presented with changes of routine may find Student-side TIDS to be a perfect refuge from the rigors of ordinary life. When combined with the narcotic effect of mantra recitation and avoidance of troubling discursive thought, the result can be the formation of a personality happily uninterested in the various pursuits that comprise the elements of an ordinary, satisfying life, such as relationships with other people, having children, a satisfying career, or aesthetic and intellectual activities.

Transitional TIDS

Transitional TIDS develops in some victims of Student-TIDS after a long period of earnest striving to earn the favor of the guru. Transitional TIDS emerges only when fertilized by encouragement from the guru, and is characterized by feelings of superiority, identification with the dominating image of the guru, and confidence that one will in fact attain guru status. Transitional-TIDS sufferers assume the role of go-betweens in the TIDS community, transmitting messages to and from the guru, arranging monetary transfers, and helping Student TIDS victims to establish their credentials. Transitional TIDS often manisfests in subtle and gross anti-social predatory behavior typical of those afflicted by Guru-TIDS. Transitional TIDS usually develops into a cyclic pattern in which the characteristics of Student-TIDS, i.e., ambitious hope and low self image, alternate with the manic character of Guru-TIDS, i.e., self-deification and megalomania, creating a alternating vortex of delusional activity that is manipulated by the guru to satisfy his or her own pathological whims.

Transitional TIDS sufferers, torn by the tension of alternating between ambition and hope on the one hand, and humilitation and despair on the other, often suffer from a suppression of affect that gives them a rigid, serious cast of mind. Transitional TIDS tends to extinguish the sense of humor, and victims of the intense mental division that characterizes this state of mind rarely smile or laugh except when the Guru makes a joke. They will often make attempts at humor that they believe reflect the Guru’s apparently spontaneous style, but such attempts usually fail, eliciting only false laughter from Student-side TIDS sufferers, who are attempting to curry favor from a higher-status devotee. Transitional TIDS sufferers thus are entombed in their personal rigidity and surrounded by a social environment of extreme conformity and predictability, a sort of frozen hell from which they gain a respite only during bouts of despondency and self-loathing.

Treatment Modalities

Student-side TIDS is treatable if the victim can be removed from the TIDS-saturated environment and is engaged in extensive talk-therapy with persons who know nothing about the guru who is the focus of infatuation. For example, simply being put to work in a position involving manual labor, in the company of people who do not know or care about the guru, can be remarkably effective. The complete lack of responsiveness to discussion of the guru tends to give the TIDS-sufferer pause, as they realize that people can live not only without their guru, but without any guru whatsoever. Talk-therapy with people of a “spiritual” bent is, not surprisingly, generally unhelpful. The key to treatment, if a quick cure is desired, is simply to extract the victim from the environment, expose them to ordinary life, and allow their mind to recover from the continuous flow of obsessive guru-regard.

Transitional TIDS poses somewhat of a more difficult problem, but is treatable. The Transitional TIDS sufferer is much more likely to break out of their cycle through an explosion of anger when their hopes of achieving Guru-hood are suddenly exploded. Interestingly, gurus can provoke such occurrences by taxing a student’s loyalty to an extreme, suddenly breaking the illusion that the guru actually loves the student, leaving the student feeling extraordinarily bereft. Another exit point may appear when the Transitional TIDS victim hits a low point of disappointment, that may be provoked by an excessive humiliation at the hands of the Guru or one of his/her minions. Finally, jealousy may arise when a Transitional TIDS sufferer realizes that other people, less spiritual, less devoted, even less intelligent or sensistive to life, are having a wonderful time on a much smaller endowment of spiritual excitement.

Guru-side TIDS is of course, statistically a much rarer phenomenon than Student or Transitional-Side TIDS, and occasions for treatment are almost never presented. Further, by and large, the experience of Guru-side TIDS seems to spark little desire for change in the mind of the guru, and without that impetus, change is extremely unlikely.

Conclusion

In conclusion, while there are hopeful methods of treatment for Student-TIDS and Transitional TIDS, those afflicted with Guru-TIDS face a bleak diagnosis, because once a Tantric authority “recognizes” an individual’s Guru status, and students begin reinforcing it, a self-reinforcing delusional system is established from which anecdotal evidence indicates there is no exit. Indeed, because enabling the Guru’s pathology is the central rationale for the TIDS-powered community, it sets up a perpetual-motion machine that defies the erosion of popularity that even pop stars and first-tier Hollywood actors suffer. If we were sufficiently cynical, we might entertain the notion that Gurus have somehow achieved an enviable position, but then we would be obliged to elevate tapeworms and ticks to a position higher on the evolutionary ladder.

Copyright 2009, Charles Carreon

CharlesCarreon.com

"Although almost buried under explanations, very
difficult to understand, about the phases of the moon, the central idea of
his (Yeats')philosophical system seems to be our old friend, the cyclical
universe, in which everything happens over and over again. " George Orwell, essay on W B Yeats.


The Kalachakra Tantra is based on a cycle of time. So are some forms of Hinduism (the Kali Yuga). Dogen Zenji (13th century Japan) argued against beliefs that the times had declined into such corruption that human beings were no longer capable of practicing dharma to high standards achieved by past masters. Dogen disagreed with this.

There is are implications if one views history as cyclical vs linear and, using social critique, scientific methods, potentially progressive, capable of creating new discoveries, new ways to adjust society and distribute benefits in a manner so more can benefit rather than a privileged few.


[www.george-orwell.org]

Quote

How do Yeat's political ideas link up with his leaning towards
occultism? It is not clear at first glance why hatred of democracy and a
tendency to believe in crystal-gazing should go together. Mr Menon only
discusses this rather shortly, but it is possible to make two guesses.

'To begin with, the theory that civilisation moves in recurring cycles is
one way out for people who hate the concept of human equality. If it is
true that "all this", or something like it, "has happened before", then
science and the modern world are debunked at one stroke and progress
becomes for ever impossible.

'It does not much matter if the lower orders
are getting above themselves, for, after all, we shall soon be returning
to an age of tyranny. Yeats is by no means alone in this outlook.

'If the universe is moving round on a wheel, the future must be foreseeable,
perhaps even in some detail. It is merely a question of discovering the
laws of its motion, as the early astronomers discovered the solar year.

Believe that, and it becomes difficult not to believe in astrology or
some similar system.

A year before the war, (1939)examining a copy of
GRINGOIRE, the French Fascist weekly, much read by army officers, I
found in it no less than thirty-eight advertisements of clairvoyants.

Secondly, the very concept of occultism carries with it the idea that
knowledge must be a secret thing, limited to a small circle of
initiates.

But the same idea is integral to Fascism. Those who dread the
prospect of universal suffrage, popular education, freedom of thought,
emancipation of women, will start off with a predilection towards secret
cults. There is another link between Fascism and magic in the profound
hostility of both to the Christian ethical code.

and

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all praise of the past is partly
sentimental, because we do not live in the past. The poor do not praise
poverty. Before you can despise the machine, the machine must set you free
from brute labour. But that is not to say that Yeats's yearning for a more
primitive and more hierarchical age was not sincere. How much of all
this is traceable to mere snobbishness, product of Yeats's own position
as an impoverished offshoot of the aristocracy, is a different question.

A lot of the powerholders in Vajrayana had been 'impovrished aristocrats'.

Others who buy into the cyclical universe theory are those enthralled with various forms of Traditionalism (Guenon, Evola, Schuon and their successors)

If you buy into the belief that history occurs in repetitive cycles, its the perfect way to distance oneself from the the pain being suffered by persons who are suffering under the crush of history, ignoring one's neighbor or the cries of the oppressed.

Orwell in this same essay comments,

Quote

There is another link between Fascism and magic in the profound
hostility of both to the Christian ethical code.

The innovation taught by Jesus was that one's neighbor was not just a fellow member of one's tribe. Part of the scandal caused by Jesus was that he violated social code by eating and socializing outside of his tribal/social boundaries.

The story of the Samaritan helping the man beaten and helpless in the road was a tale of a socially marginal person (the Samaritan) exercizing the virtue of care and concern and spending money (ie paying the equivlaent of hospital bill for someone not his own tribe).

Whether one appreciates and agrees with the rest of Christianity, what Jesus did was to explode the current understanding of 'neighbor' by making 'neighbor' mean someone outside your tribe or social class or caste group.

Fascism and other oppressive societies want everyone in his or her proper place.

Feel free to go visit the essay by Umberto Eco "Eternal Fascism"

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1. The first feature of Ur-Fascism is the cult of tradition.

Traditionalism is of course much older than fascism.

Not only was it typical of counterrevolutionary Catholic thought after the French revolution, but is was born in the late Hellenistic era, as a reaction to classical Greek rationalism. In the Mediterranean basin, people of different religions (most of the faiths indulgently accepted by the Roman pantheon) started dreaming of a revelation received at the dawn of human history.

This revelation, according to the traditionalist mystique, had remained for a long time concealed under the veil of forgotten languages -- in Egyptian hieroglyphs, in the Celtic runes, in the scrolls of the little-known religions of Asia.

This new culture had to be syncretistic. Syncretism is not only, as the dictionary says, "the combination of different forms of belief or practice;" such a combination must tolerate contradictions. Each of the original messages contains a sliver of wisdom, and although they seem to say different or incompatible things, they all are nevertheless alluding, allegorically, to the same primeval truth.

As a consequence, there can be no advancement of learning. Truth already has been spelled out once and for all, and we can only keep interpreting its obscure message.

[webcache.googleusercontent.com]

This resembles the output of commentaries and "discovered" allegedly ancient teachings in Vajrayana.

There is nothing new.

It is all newly discovered from the past.

Note Dr Berzin notes that a Kalachakra temple was founded in Saint Petersberg
"comisssioned" by Nicholas II, the last Tsar.

According to James Palmer, in his book The Bloody White Baron, a history of White Russian activity in Mongolia, Aghvan Dorzieff a Buriat Buddhist monk who was influential in Tibet and at the Tsarist court, sought to demonstrate that Nicholas II was an reincarnation of Tsongkapa, founder of the Gelukpa sect, and by this means to convince the Vajrayana Buddhists that Nicholas would be the liberator from the North/Shambhala. This was at a time when Imperial Russia and Great Britain were contending against each other to keep the other out of Tibet. So, that Kalachakra Temple in St Petersberg was a political entity and we should face that the Dalai Lama, a king in exile, is doing much the same thing.

Keep in mind that those who can afford to attend Kalachakra events, unless they already live in the areas where these are staged, have to pay considerable sums to travel there.

Vajrayana Buddhism is not cheap. Persons with underwater mortgages and who lack credit or liquid cash cannot access 'em.

Kalachakra Initiation Instructions in Graz, Austria

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http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:GZLyu8KBba8J:[www.berzinarchives.com]

Brochure for the Graz Kalachakra Initiation 2002
Alexander Berzin
Kalachakra means “cycles of time” and is a Mahayana Buddhist teaching in the highest class of tantra. I

n it, the Buddha presented a system of external, internal and alternative cycles of time.

*The external cycles deal with the motion of the planets through the heavens and various cycles or divisions of time measured by their motion in years, months, days and so forth.

*The internal cycles treat the cycles of energies and breaths through the body, and these are parallel to those of the external world.

(Corboy This matches remarkably with the beliefs of medieval and early modern magicians and alchemists that the movements of the cosmos mirrored those within the human body. The human person was considered a microcosm of the cosmos. One feature of this manner of thinking which was, in its way, logical and rational, was that reasoning was done by use of analogy, and signs (words, numbers and symbols were and are equated with things. To manipulate words or substances was, potentially to manipulate that which was signified.

The hazard with this massive analogies and closed systems is there is no way to test whether any of this is inaccurate and needs to be modified or discarded. These cosmologies also give a premature sense of integration, as though one is inhabiting a vast poem. There is no open door to investigate and determine whether anything has more explanatory power. )

The alternative cycles involve the various meditation practices of the Kalachakra system of Buddha-figures (“deities”) used to gain control over or to purify the former two cycles.

(note what has happened. According to the Berzin text of the introduction use of variosu meditation practices of the Kalachakra system to gain control over or to purify the former two cycles. These systems are no longer merely in parallel. This is the promise of control. The domain of magical thinking in which there is no longer a cognitive distinction made between sign and object.

In other words, external and internal cycles of time occur due to collective and individual impulses of energy (“winds of karma”). One may experience them in either a disturbing or a nondisturbing manner, since states of mind relate closely with subtle energy.

With the Kalachakra practices, one works to overcome being under the influence of uncontrollably recurring external and internal situations (samsara), such as astrological, calendrical, and biological cycles. No longer limited or disturbed by them, one is able to realize one’s fullest potential to benefit others as much as is possible.

Buddha taught The Kalachakra Tantra more than 2800 years ago in present-day Andhra Pradesh, South India.

Later generations preserved the teachings in the northern land of Shambhala and reintroduced them to India in the tenth century of the modern era. From India, Kalachakra study and practice spread to Burma, the Malay Peninsula, and Indonesia, but died out in these areas by the fourteenth century. Indian masters transmitted them to Tibet several times between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries, and later Tibetan masters spread them further to Manchu China, Mongolia, Siberia, and East Turkistan. At the start of the twentieth century, the last czar of Russia even commissioned a Buddhist temple in his capital, St. Petersburg.

Kalachakra has received prominent attention in the medical and astrological traditions of Tibet, Mongolia, and Central Asia. This is because the science of calculating the Tibetan calendar, a great portion of the Tibetan astronomical and astrological teachings, and a certain small portion of the Tibetan medical knowledge, particularly the formulas for making precious-gem medicines, derive from the Kalachakra literature. The Mongolian traditions of these sciences developed, in turn, from the Tibetan ones.

For compare and contrast, here are some citations by which to read some material by Brian Vickers on differences between the occult and scientific mentality.

Have a peek at these and then ponder the Kalachakra instructions.

[forum.culteducation.com]

According to the introduction to the Kalachakra Tantra given above,

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Buddha taught The Kalachakra Tantra more than 2800 years ago in present-day Andhra Pradesh, South India.

It appears that this area was the heartland of Indian alchemical/medical study.

A great contrast as most scriptures prefer to situate Buddha in Northern India/Nepal at Vulture's Peak.

This alchemical activity seemed to be especially active during the years when the Hindu Deccan region was under heavy proslytizing and military pressure by the Delhi Sultanate.

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Deccan PlateauThe Deccan is a peninsular plateau located in central India that includes inland sections of the states of Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra and Karnataka.
www.deccanplateau.net/ - 20k - Cached - Similar pages

Sri Sailam, a quite ancient Siva temple mentioned below as having old images depicting alchemists, is also located in Andhra Pradesh

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Srisailam - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Sri sailam (Telugu: శ్రీశైలం) is a holy town and mandal (temple), situated in Nallamala Hills of Kurnool district, Andhra Pradesh, India. It is on the banks of River ...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Srisailam - 83k - Cached - Similar pages

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ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RELIGION, SECOND EDITION

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...effecting a bodily transformation conceptualized as the fixing of the Thought of Enlightenment (bodhicitta).

This is not to say that mercury-based alchemy (called “gold-making”)had no place in Indo-Tibetan Buddhism: rather, because the practitioner was dependent on external elements rather thanhis own contemplative practice, it was deemed inferior.

In India, external, laboratory-based Hindu alchemy would also become internalized from the thirteenth century onward. No original works on the subject appear after 1300 CE, and much of elixir alchemy becomes applied to more modest therapeutic ends in the emergent emergent field of iatrochem-istry.

There was, however, a final phase in the history of Indi-an alchemy that may be referred to as Siddha alchemy. This is most readily identified by its emphasis on combining the use of mercurial preparations with the practice of external sexual and internal yogic techniques, with the aim of attain-ing both an immortal, unaging body and the status or mode of being of a semi-divine Siddha.

Practitioners of Siddha al-chemy often referred to themselves as Siddhas—that is, the“Perfected Beings” they aspired to become through their practice.

This two-pronged approach is already alluded to inthe Rasa¯rn: ava: “Mercury and breath [control] are known asthe Work in two parts” (1:18).

Over time, the external, labo-ratory techniques, as well as the use of mercury-based com-pounds as elixirs and agents of transmutation would come to be fully internalized in the various techniques of hatha yoga; however, a close examination of the terminologyand dynamics of the latter tradition shows that it developed,at least in part, out of the former.

One may deduce from internal textual references,manuscript colophons, and Siddha lists that most of the au-thors of the major tantric alchemical works were either court physicians or members of one of the medieval Sa¯kta-Saiva or tantric religious orders.

Many of these authors had namesending in the -na¯tha suffix, and their names figure in a num-ber of lists of Siddhas found in both Indo-Tibetan Buddhist and Hindu sources.

These include lists of the BuddhistMaha¯siddhas and of a number of Hindu groups: the Tamil Sittars of the eastern Deccan, the Ma¯hesvara Siddhas of the western Deccan, the alchemical Rasa Siddhas, and the hathayogic Na¯th Siddhas.

Internal geographical references point to the Vindhya region and western Deccan as the heartland of Indian alchemical practice, in spite of the fact that the literature identifies the Himalayan region and Inner Asia as the source of many of its botanical and mineral re-agents.

Sri sailam, a sacred Saiva mountain located in the eastern Deccan, is the most frequently mentioned “paradise”of Indian alchemy, and it is here, on the outer walls of the Mallika¯rjuna Temple, that one finds the sole extant sculpted images of Siddha alchemists and their apparatuses.

Thesebas-reliefs date from about 1300 to 1400 CE.

Apart from the foundational Rasahr:daya Tantra andRasa¯rn: ava already mentioned, the “canonical” works of Indi-an alchemy include the following, all from the common era:the twelfth-century Ka¯kacan: d: esvar¯ımata and Rasopanis:at
Gorakhna¯th’s Bhu¯tiprakaran: a and Somadeva’s Rasendra-cu¯d: a¯man: i, both from the twelfth or thirteenth century;Yasodhara Bhat:t:a’s Rasapraka¯sasudha¯kara, Nityana¯tha’sRasaratna¯kara, and the Ma¯tr:kabheda Tantra, all from thethirteenth century; Na¯ga¯rjuna’s Rasendraman˙gala andVa¯gbhat:t:a the Second’s Rasaratnasamucchaya, both from the thirteenth or fourteenth century; the fourteenth-centuryA¯ nandakanda, and A¯dina¯tha’s Khecar¯ı Vidya¯, also from thefourteenth century.SEE ALSO A¯yurveda; Gorakhna¯th; Na¯ga¯rjuna.

BIBLIOGRAPHYThe most comprehensive studies of Indian alchemy are DavidGordon White’s The Alchemical Body: Siddha Traditions inMedieval India (Chicago, 1996) and the rich survey of thealchemical canon found in G. Jan Meulenbeld’s A History ofIndian Medical Literature, 5 vols. (Groningen, Netherlands,1999–2003). Several outstanding articles on Indian alchemyhave been authored by Arion Rosu, among which are “Alche-my and Sacred Geography in the Medieval Deccan,” Journalof the European Ayurvedic Society 2 (1992): 151–156, and“Mantra et Yantra dans la médecine et l’alchimie indiennes,”Journal Asiatique 274, nos. 3–4 (1986): 205–268. A usefulcompendium of Indian alchemical texts in Sanskrit, withcommentary and selected English-language translations, isBhudeb Mookerji’s Rasa-jala-nidhi; or, Ocean of IndianChemistry and Alchemy, 5 vols. (Calcutta, 1926–1938). Ex-cellent historical studies of Indian alchemy, in Hindi, areSatya Prakash’s Pra¯c¯ın Bha¯rat mem: Rasa¯yan ka¯ Vika¯s (Allah-abad, India, 1960) and Siddhinandan Mísra’s A¯yurved¯ıyaRasa¯sastra, Jaikrishnadas A¯yurveda Series no. 35 (Banaras,India, 1981).DAVID GORDON WHITE (1987 AND 2005

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Introduction to the Kalachakra Initiation, Second Edition


Beginning of the section on alchemy in Kalachakra. Interesting claims.

[books.google.com]

The Alchemical Body Siddha Traditions in Northern India

[books.google.com]

[science.jrank.org]

Some of Evans-Pritchard's most important contributions followed from an attempt to ... to contrast what he called "empirical thought" and "mystical thought," which included magic. A central point in his discussion of magic and witchcraft was that Azande thought is founded on rational processes and empirical knowledge of their world.

His ideas offered a radical departure from the preoccupation of previous literature with the dichotomy between magic and science, and between thought that either was or was not scientific.

Following Levi-Bruhl's observation that the body of collective representations in cultures with prescientific thought limited possibilities for the thought system's self-critical appraisal,(Vajrayana cultures seem incapable of critical self appraisal, hence the recuring scandals and no mechanism by which to correct them or prevent future ones.-Corboy)

Evans-Pritchard used examples from his Azande material to explain how this took place. Azande responses to the failure of magic to achieve the desired result were not to question their technique or knowledge, but to question the specific acts of the magician and to assume that other magic conducted to counter theirs was stronger.

These and other explanations, which Evans-Pritchard termed "secondary elaborations of belief," did not require the Azande to confront the failure of their explanation, nor the failure of their entire system of thought.

This, he said, was responsible for the continuation of the belief in magic despite evidence that it was fallacious.

Evans-Pritchard characterized these systems as "closed systems of thought." He observed that they were only able to operate in limited ways that did not extend beyond their own parameters. Certain forms of scientific reasoning therefore would be outside the paradigm.

Robin Horton elaborated on this issue by contrasting open and closed systems of thought.

Horton offered that open systems had the ability to either prove or disprove particular causal relationships between acts and natural consequences. Closed systems did not encourage the verification of what was hypothesized, and the result was that the thought system continually supplied ways of accounting for particular successes or failures.

(Corboy aka 'confirmation bias'. If Vajrayana is indeed a closed system of thought, this may account for why Vajrayana sanghas have such difficulty identifying and correcting abuses of power.

Vajrayana 'Buddhism' appears to have many charactertics of what Horton might term a 'closed' system of thought. It system accounts for abuses of power by making it seem that its an error of perception on the part of whoever feels injuried or dismayed. The only perscription is for whoever is injured or dismayed to repair his or her error of perception by intensifying personal dharma practice, privatizing a political problem.

There is no way to consider alternatives or even to take them seriously if all troubles are written off as errors of perception on the part of whoever has been harmed and or those who feel distressed and dismayed witnessing those being harmed.

Buddha started out teaching what could have become the foundations of open thought, but the Vajrayana interpretations turned it into a closed system incapable of recognizing malfunction or remedying malfunction.

"For example, words and language in a closed system of thought take on a special and often magical significance because words are the means of making contact with reality and in a and in a closed system it is impossible to escape the tendency to see a a unique and intimate and intimate link between words and things."

[books.google.com]

Mantras, anyone?

"It is the 'closed' nature of traditional thought which gives it its compelling and unchallengeable character. It becomes sacred and any threat to it is chaos and disorder.

[books.google.com]

The Sociology of Religions, page 67



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/06/2016 09:43PM by corboy.