body and health in yoga, Ayurveda, and Tantra

ody and philosophies of healing 31
Tantra as a major religious and philosophical movement emerged
around the fourth century of the common era. According to Eliade, Tantra
“assumed the form of a pan-Indian vogue from the sixth century onward,”
popular among philosophers and theologians as well as ascetics
and yogins, and influential in philosophy, mysticism, ritual, ethics, iconography,
and literature. 49 The origins of Tantra are not precisely known,
but in the pre-Vedic Indus Valley civilization, centuries before the common
era, the germs of Tantra existed in the worship of the Mother Goddess,
and the Mother and Father of the universe. 50 Tantra rejects the caste
system and the exclusion of females from participation in religious activities.
Tantra has long provided a religious domain for persons excluded
from the Brahminical system because of caste or gender, as well as for
those whose religious ideas and practice diverge from Hindu orthodoxy.
Though T¯antrism is a major current of Indian culture, it has tended to remain
on the fringes of society. 51 Tantra has been misunderstood—and
maligned—for advocating activities that are traditionally or morally objectionable,
and among the many subtraditions of Tantra, some do involve
extreme and even bizarre practices. Ritual sexual union (both actual
and symbolic) is an aspect of some forms of Tantra. However, to
reduce the whole tradition of Tantra to particular sects or rites, or to reject
Tantra based on a sensationalized view, would be a misconstrual of
this vital aspect of Indian philosophy and religion.
Like the Vedic tradition, Tantra’s foremost concern is spiritual realization,
but its approach to the relation of human being, world, and the
sacred aims for transcendence of materiality by integration with it, rather
than separation from it. Liberation as conceived in Tantra includes spiritual
well-being in this life. S. C. Banerji writes that “T¯antric philosophy
vigorously advocates j¯ıvanmukti (liberation in life).” 52 In comparing the
“emancipative core” of psychoanalysis and Tantra, Sudhir Kakar writes
that in Tantra, liberation is not only the “mystical” freedom from all
human conditions, but is “also relevant to the individual’s concrete historical
conditions.” 53 Tantra’s soteriological goal is the realization of the
unity of the individual’s soul or j¯ıva with the one Supreme Reality, Param
Íiva, which has the static and transcendent aspect Íiva, and the dynamic
and immanent aspect Íakti. The masculine Íiva is pure Being, of the nature
of consciousness, and the feminine Íakti is the power that activates
and manifests Íiva: “The universe is a manifestation of the immanent aspect
of the Parama Íiva in the form of Íakti.” 54 While Síva is Being, Íakti
is the operative form of Being, called in the Yogin¯ıhÓrdaya: ‘the creative
matrix’ (ÓsÓrÓstirūpā). 55 Íakti and Íiva are one, as water and its current are