World of Philosophy

Author(s): Christopher Key Chapple, Intaj Malek, Dilip Charan, Sunanda Shastri, Prashant Dave
Publisher: Shanti Prakashan

Page 654

8. to annoy the orthodox, that is teasing the orthodox religious
bourgeois; perhaps a sort of linguistic catharsis10; 9. to project the yogin into the paradoxical situation indispens
able to his training"; 10. to provide the yogin with a means of describing supernormal
experiences for which ordinary language is inadequate;
11. to provide a working basis for the interpretative analysis of
the mandalas and the cakras used in secret meditative transmission to be revealed to the initiated disciples only;
12. to ensure that knowledge about advanced practices would
remain concealed from all those known to be incapable of
applying those practices effectively12; 13. to supplement and illustrate the instructions given by.gurus,
each symbol suggesting in vivid graphic form some essential characteristic of the technique to be practiced13;
To understand the twilight language requires a total hermeneutic of reading, awareness, in fact, of the total religious and philosophical structures, which infuse into it.
How the twilight language of the Siddhas originated is a problem that scholars have yet to confront. Let us note some of the suggestions regarding its origination without entering into a discussion.
1. The twilight language may be due to the love of paradox
common to all spiritual traditions. It may be viewed as a special extension of mantric language.
The twilight language may perhaps have been merely another of the many diagressions from the path of mediation!“; It originated because the common parlance is inadequate to express the highest experience of the mind.
4.
4.
An interpretation of the five 'm's
In Tantric literature and in Siddha poetry we come across the panca-makara which refers to the five rites which all begin with the letter 'm' madya, mamsa, matsya, mudra, and maithuna. Panca-makara admits of literal or mukhya reading and metaphorical or gauna reading. Mukhya reading would imply vamacara. or left hand practice of Tantra and metaphorical reading would imply daksinacara or right hand practice of Tantra.
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