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Philosophical Writings
Mukti and Bhoktı. Here there is no renunciation of worldly objects or even woman. There is no curbing or controlling of senses. In Tantra senses are to be fully fed and not to be controlled. There is on the contrary, self-indulgence in Tantra. Tantra believes in advaita - Reality as One, Reality as non-dual; but then unlike Vedas, there is no principle of Maya in Tantra. All religions are anti-life - antipleasures, while Tantra is not anti-life, it is pro-life. SOME ASPECTS OF TANTRA: Synthetic Approach:
Tantric discipline is in its nature a synthesis. It has a synthetic approach, both as regards its philosophy and discipline. It is based on a large universal truth that there are two poles of being whose essential unity is the secret of existence. Brahaman and Sakti. Spirit and Nature. To raise Nature in man is its method. It includes in its system ‘Yoga, Hathayogic process and Rajyogic purifications, meditation and concentration, the leverage of will-force, the motive power of devotion, the key of knowledge'. Tantra actually, enlarges in two directions. It deals with human quality, desire, action etc. It also includes not only liberation, which is the one all-mastering preoccupation of the system, but also 'cosmic enjoyment of the power of the spirit. According to Sri Aurobindo ‘it is a bolder and larger system””. “Discussing the synthetic approach of Tantras, Swami Prataikatmananda says, “To him (conscious being) therefore the theoretical objectivity of an alien universe is of much less practical account than the fact that he has his own universe to live and function in. We may call this later the universe of appreciation and acceptance. This implies that this universe grows in stature and brightens, or else, shrinks and darkens, in accordance with the individual centre's appreciative and reactive ratio, which of course views in the same individual as also case to case..... The best or worst possible world is man's own world as determined"l2 by him. Sri Aurobindo says “The Purano-Tantric system was a wide, assured and many-sided endeavour, unparalleled in its power, insight, amplitude, to provide the race with a basis of generalized psycho-religious experience from which man could rise through knowledge, works or love, or through any other fundamental power of his nature to some established supreme experience and highest absolute status."13
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