Tantra and Gnosticism: Questions and Observations

Tantra and Gnosticism: Questions and Observations



Copyright 1990 by John R. Mabry



Before the current quarter began, I wouldn´t have thought it possible that my two classes, Essence & Development of Hinduism and the Gnostic Gospels, were in any way reconcilable. They seemed at opposite ends of the religious spectrum, castaways in their own disparate regions of the East-West dichotomy. For most of the quarter, nothing challenged this impression; and then I discovered Tantra. Is it possible that these traditions, each reviled in its own way by its dominant orthodoxy, could have some things in common? Is it feasible that the cause of these coincidental similarities isn´t coincidental at all--but, in fact, might these traditions have crossed paths, or even derived from a common source or influence? These are not questions I am prepared to answer definitively, but they are questions that intrigued me and drove my thinking during these last few weeks of the term.

Emerging from the middle-East even before the apostles were dead, Gnostic Christianity caused quite a ruckus in the early Church, playing fast and loose with the historical and mythic elements of the life of Jesus. For four hundred years, orthodoxy would wrestle with this, its arch-heresy, and there was no part of the Roman Empire untouched by its influence. There is no reason to think that it stopped at the border of the Empire, however. Tradition holds that St. Thomas (of Doubting Thomas fame) attempted to evangelize India near the end of the first century of the Common Era. Gnostic scholar Elaine Pagels acknowledges that "Trade routes between the Greco-Roman world and the Far East were opening up at the time when gnosticism flourished (A.D. 80-200); for generations, Buddhist missionaries had been proselytizing in Alexandria."1 Pagels also reports that Hippolytus, a Christian scholar in Rome, wrote about the Indian Brahmins´ "heresy:"



There is...among the Indians a heresy of those who philosophize among the Brahmins, who live a self- sufficient life, abstaining from (eating) living creatures and all cooked food...They say that God is light, not like the light one sees, nor like the sun nor fire, but to them God is discourse, not that which finds expression in articulate sounds, but that of knowledge (gnosis) through which the secret mysteries of nature are perceived by the wise.2

What Hippolytus describes could very well be one of the four valid Hindu paths to salvation, Jnana yoga, or salvation through the discipline of knowledge. The etymological similarity between Jnana and Gnosis is hard to miss, and the common soterologies invites closer inspection. To Krishna in the Bhagavad-Gita, knowledge means "Humility, sincerity, nonviolence, patience, honesty, reverence for on´s teacher, purity, stability, self restraint..."3 Not arguing Krishna´s point--these are all very commendable virtues--but there is more to this question than this shallow list of behaviors. In most cultures, knowledge and language are closely linked; this is certainly true of the two traditions in question. For the Jew and the Christian, it is the power of the word (or the Word) that set the Universe in motion. God spoke and the Universe blazed into being. Knowing something´s name in most native traditions gives one power over it. For the Brahmin, the words of the mantras established in "elementary form the basic correspondences between being, sound, languages, and thought and between macrocosm and microcosm."4 All this says a lot about a bunch of sounds, but as Seyyed Hossein Nasr says in Knowledge and the Sacred,



"This illumination in turn enables man to realize that the very essence of things is God´s knowledge of them and that there is a reciprocity and, finally, identity between knowing and being. The intellect becomes transformed into what it knows, the highest object of that knowledge being God."5

Although Nasr is discussing early Christianity, his observations are equally applicable to the two traditions in question. Knowledge, in both, contains Universal power and identity with the Known.



It is this "identity with the Known" that drives the traditions. In Tantrism, duality is the natural order of things. It is the goal of Tantric practice to reach beyond the illusion of duality and experience the unity that gives birth to all of being. Breaching this veil, one attains moksha, becoming released from the cycle of rebirth and suffering. One then "knows" Brahman, the unity. It is similar with Gnosticism, in that in the beginning, divine Wisdom (Sophia) became separated from the Godhead, and whose misadventures resulted in the creation of an evil demiurge (Yaweh). Yaweh in turn, created the world, and who, with his minions, holds all of our beings in a perpetual cycle of rebirth and suffering until the basic, primal duality is rectified. Once the duality is amended, the believer has obtained cosmic immunity from the wiles of the Monster demiurge and his minions and "knows" the real God beyond and above this mess. These traditions speak of similar situations couched in their own peculiar mythos, and although Gnosticism is considerably more bitter in attitude, both also find release in similar ways.



Common to both traditions is the importance of serpent imagery. This imagery in Hinduism goes back quite a ways; in the Shatapatha Brahmana (compiled about 1000 BCE) it is said that true knowledge, "the Veda, is in fact the wisdom of the serpent."6 In Tantra, the serpent is Shiva, the masculine principal, which lies dormant at the base of the spine. It is the goal of the practitioner to "wake Shiva up," which results in the rise latent power called "Kundalini." When the Kundalini serpent rises through the system of chakras, it, if carried to its intended end, unites with the "thousand-petalled lotus," the final chakra which represents the feminine energy of the universe. This union brings the salvific knowledge which releases one from rebirth. In the Gnostic mythos, the serpent is sent by the Real God to foil Yahweh´s plans to hold Adam and Eve in the slavery of ignorance. The serpent persuades Eve to break Yaweh´s law by eating of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Once done, the first humans´ eyes were opened and they were released from Yahweh´s evil spell. It is the serpent (the phallos/masculine) who invaded the Garden (feminine) that gained release from deadly ignorance. The serpent was the Gnostics´ primary symbol of power. They were worshipped as divine and some Gnostic consecrated the Eucharistic bread by letting serpents slither all over it on the altar.



There are other mythic elements these traditions hold in common as well, such as the hierarchical system of powers that govern the world. M.P. Pandit writes that, for the Hindu, it is from the regional traditions of gods and goddesses that,



...there have emanated a number of subsidiary powers, Shaktis and Vibhutis to participate in the activity of the Cosmos. A number of Beings and Powers in the worlds that constitute the gradations above our physical world...derive from the Higher Godheads and are there to help the outflowering of the Divine manifestation, each with his or her specific charge. They are the numerous Devatas, Beings of Light....There are also beings and powers who are of a different character--beings of darkness. Some of them are what may be fittingly called the fallen angels."7



From the Gnostics´ experience there are mostly fallen angels, but there are plenty of those. There is nothing about this universe even remotely good or wonderful. The Gnostics called these levels of manifestation (in this case, manifestation of evil) Archons, from the Greek Arche, beginning or origin, and the source of our word "archetype."



Another parallel occurs in the systems´ categorizations of people. Both propose three distinct "types":

1. Tamasic (Sanskrit)/Hylic (Greek): Those who are inert, dull and governed primarily by needs and impulsions of the physical nature. "Animal" man or "material" man best describe these types.

2. Rajasic/psychic: Those who by nature are restless, possessing spiritual sensitivity but not ready or worthy of enlightenment (Orthodox Christians, if you ask the Gnostics).

3. Deva/Pnuematic: The refined, spiritual elite, the "divine men" of the Tantrists and "spiritual men" of the Gnostics.8



It is no mystery what group those who held such categorizations fell into. And, as such, practitioners of both traditions engaged in certain rites preparatory to the attainment of their goals. The number five seems to be important to both traditions. For the Gnostics, there are four sacramental rituals before the (fifth) sacrament of union. Likewise, in Tantra, there are four ritual "indiscretions" before the (fifth) "ultimate indiscretion" of holy union. There are also five "sheaths" of the body, five "body" chakras to ascend before the "divine" chakras, Ajna and Sahasrara. Both ritual progressions are preceeded by a rite of bathing (baptism, for the Gnostic).9 Another common ritual is the smearing of ashes or oil on the head of the initiate. Ash, for the Tantrist, invokes Agni, the god of fire; while oil, for the Gnostic, symbolizes fire as well, but a purificatory fire, in complement to the water cleansing.



Though these correspondences are very interesting, it is the culminating ritual in both traditions that most concerns us. For it is within both that the actual act of sexual intercourse translates the initiate through the veil of illusion into union with the divine and awards possession of divine knowledge. For the Tantrist, the



"intrinsic duality, is considered to be the source of all change and sorrow and suffering....The ultimate aim of each human being´s spiritual strivings should be, so it is held, an escape from the world of duality into an existence in which the opposites are transformed into a higher unity.10

This "higher unity" is the result of a "reuniting for the instant of sexual orgasm, thus evoking ´androgynous Shiva,´ the Ardhanarishvara, and the oneness of the Beginning...The law of duality [is] suspended."11



For the Gnostic, this final rite was known as "the bridal chamber." The use of sexual imagery to symbolize human union with the divine is not unfamiliar to orthodox Christians or Jews, indeed, canonical sources are rich with it. The Song of Songs in both Jewish and Christian interpretations positively drips with sexually unabashed language and with spiritual overtones that suggest much more than they actually say, and even approach Indra´s exploits in the Vedas in explicitness. In the Christian scriptures, Jesus often relates parables in which he casts himself as the bridegroom and the souls of humankind as the bride. In the Gnostic mythos, it is Jesus´ role (as redeemer) to reunite with Sophia, and, mythically, to allow humankind with the help of gendered angels (with whom the initiates "join") to share in that mystery "It was for this purpose that his body came into being. On that day he came forth from the bridal bedroom as from what comes to pass between a bridegroom and a bride."12 In the Gnostic scripture, The Gospel of Philip, it is written "When you make the two one, and when you make the inner as the outer and the outer as the inner and the above as the below and when you make the male and the female into a single one...then shall you enter the kingdom."13



One must not make the mistake of thinking that either of these paths are for the hedon. As tittilating as they appear to the casual investigator, both are for nothing less than the most disciplined initiate, whose sole end is not pleasure, but bliss, whose only source is direct knowledge of the divine.



When therefore, the Vira eats, drinks or has sexual intercourse he does so not with the thought of himself as a separate individual satisfying his own peculiar limited wants; an animal filching as it were from nature the enjoyment he has, but thinking of himself in such enjoyment as Shiva....And when the sadhaka enters into union with his woman...it is not done as a means for the gratification of passions; it is conceived by both the partners as a veritable creative act of union between the Supreme Shiva and Shakti. Both have to raise themselves to their highest state of consciousness, forget their petty humanity and be nothing more, also nothing less, than embodiments of the Ishwara and Ishwari. In this way is the whole of life sought to be transformed into an act of worship and a Yajna.14



This is no less true for the Gnostic; in fact, one Gnostic sect believed there are 365 levels of archons to break through to escape this world. The only way to break their hold was through achieving union. So, for this sect, the goal was to seek union with a different woman every day--without fail--for 365 days. Talk about a discipline! It could not have ceased to be pleasurable very long after beginning on this path. For the Gnostic, the bridal chamber was the holy of holies, the most mysterious of all their rituals, and the most efficacious. After completion, the initiate was considered free from the Archons´ power, even before death. It is also quite telling that the Hebrew word for knowledge, "Yada," the equivalent of the Greek "gnosis" and the sanskrit "jnana" includes among its primary connotations sexual knowledge, as in the biblical passage "And Adam knew his wife again..."15



What of, then, these numerous parallels between seemingly disparate traditions? That both had roots in ancient Persia seems likely. The Gnostic Christians can trace the influence of Gnostic thought back through certain Judaic sects to the mystery cults of Greece and Persia. It is not difficult to imagine that some of these ideas spread to India, especially with the establishment of regular trade routes between India and the West. Tradition holds that early Thomic Christianity came to India in the late first century, but I think it unlikely that St. Thomas would be a full-fledged Valentinian Gnostic, even though the apocryphal gospel attributed to him is one of the most popular works in Gnostic literature. Instead, I think that upon such short reflection the probable explanation is that the two traditions in question had no influential contact, but derived from related sources. There does not appear to be too much speculation on the traditions´ relationship in print, and I look forward to probing deeper into the mystery of their connectedness in the future.

[link to apocryphile.org]