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Statues of Chandidas and his female consort Rajakini.
Chandidas was a 15th century Bengali poet
claimed (perhaps wrongly) by the secretive Sahajiyas. |
Recently, I looked at two relatively short scholarly pieces by Glen A Hayes. One is titled "The Necklace of Immortality: A Seventeenth-Century Vaishnava Sahajiya Text", the other "The Vaishnava Sahajiya Traditions of Medieval Bengal". Why? Well, have you read Hare Krishna founder Prabhupada´s purports? Wouldn´t you *really* like to know who the lascivious sex cultists are, condemned by the very same Prabhupada? Of course you would, and here we are. Ashtar Command Book Blog to the rescue, as always!
The Vaishnava Sahajiya tradition is a highly secretive Tantric tradition in "Greater Bengal" (Bengal, Bihar, Orissa, Assam) that seems to have existed between the 16th and the 19th centuries. Its roots are obscure, and the tradition is highly eclectic in nature. If you´re into these things, you will probably see similarities with Taoist alchemy (not explored by Hayes), but also Vajrayana Buddhism and the Gaudiya Vaishnava movement going back to Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu. Today, no authentic teaching or initiatory lineages of the Sahajiyas are left, and the few people who claim to be Sahajiyas are actually inspired by 20th century literature on the original tradition!
The secrecy of the Sahajiyas was easy to understand. The sect carried out sexual rituals, and these were supposed to be between a man and a woman that isn´t his spouse. Many gurus in the tradition were female. Orthodox Vaishnavas, including Gaudiya Vaishnavas, were scandalized by these practices, and by the attempts of the Sahajiyas to claim the mantle of Caitanya for themselves. The Sahajiyas simply incorporated the Caitanyaite bhakti as a lower or preliminary stage of their own activities. However, I cannot stop wondering if there is more going on. Gaudiya Vaishnavism have a distinctively erotic-mystical flavor, and while the eroticism is merely "internal" or visualized, the more hands-on approach of the Sahajiyas might be seen as extremely threatening to a puritanical movement that wants to stop the erotic mysticism half-way.
Modern scholarly study of Vaishnava Sahajiya is difficult. For obvious reasons, the gurus wrote under pseudonyms and often used a secret coded language. Many manuscripts are still unpublished, languishing in archives all over West Bengal. Hayes makes a valiant attempt to decode the secrets when translating excerpts from Sahajiya writings. Interestingly, much of the material is in Bengali (the vernacular language) rather than Sanskrit, suggesting that the movement was regional rather than pan-Indian. Hayes also speculates that the frequent references to rivers and lakes are inspired by the Bengal landscape (including the large Ganges delta).
To an outsider, the esoteric teachings of this Tantrika cult must seem positively bizarre. Every man is "Krishna", every woman is "Radha" (Krishna´s mistress in the myths). The primordial divine unity (Sahaja) can only be reached through a process of bodily alchemy, during which the practitioner creates an "inner" human (a kind of spiritualized body?) which can reach the heavenly worlds - but these worlds are said to exist in some strange sense "inside" the physical body. Part of the practice is to visualize a number of sacred "ponds" inside the body, each one associated with a goddess, one of whom looks like an enchanting 16-year old maiden! Hayes doesn´t say, but could this be Tripura Sundari? The symbolic language is "watery" rather than "fiery" as in most other Tantric or yogic traditions.
But the most controversial part of the practice is that actual sexual intercourse is necessary for the alchemy to work. During intercourse, the male is supposed to absorb the sexual fluids of the female, while controling his own orgasm, thereby literally filling the "ponds" in his body with a mixture of semen and female fluids. A peculiar feature of Sahajiya is that the scriptures are written from a male perspective, despite many teachers in the tradition being women. While both male and female partners are necessary for liberation to occur, it´s de facto the male that plays the "active" role in the magic. Hayes believes that this tradition has yet another peculiar feature: the magical partners are supposed to arouse each other by various forms of erotic foreplay. This is strange, since the real point of the sex magic isn´t really erotic or sexual, but rather the *control* of passion in order to harness the bodily substances necessary for the divine transformation...
I already mentioned the scandal Sahajiya Tantrism created among the "orthodox" Gaudiya Vaishnavas, something I find ironic, given the peculiar eroticism and gender-bending of the latter. Caitanya was a mad ecstatic (think Hare Krishna on main street but ten times wilder) and his followers regarded him as a double incarnation of Krishna and Radha in the same body! Hayes points out, surely correctly, that this notion is eminently Tantric in nature. I think we´re dealing with the usual conflict here between "Right Hand" and "Left Hand" paths within Tantrism (or religion in general). Gaudiya Vaishnavism took the Right Hand path, where the male mystics "only" visualize themselves as female gopis in eternal love-play with Krishna, while externally keeping to the social norms of Brahminical caste society. Vaishnava Sahajiyas also practice this form of mysticism, but then take it much further, secretely flouting rules of marriage, caste and sexual propriety. As for gender-bending, I originally assumed that this is impossible within Sahajiya, since a physical union of biological male and female bodies is necessary for liberation. But on second thoughts, the gender-bending is surely there: note how the male is "impregnated" and becomes "pregnant" with an inner human!
With that reflection, I end this highly suggestive posting. You got exactly what you came for.
