I. VAMA MARGA Foundations Of The Left-Hand Path - staticfly.net

Tantrikas in the spirit of moral condemnation. They are primarily a
practical acknowledgment of the character of our time. Under such severe
circumstances, the Tantras ask, what methods of initiation could possibly be
effective? Their answer is that only Tantra and the radical measures of the
left-hand path can provide an appropriate way of illumination for those who
live in Kali's dark age. So tenacious an epidemic demands strong medicine;
extreme times call for extreme measures. In this sense, it is often said
elliptically by Tantrics that poison is the only cure for poison.
In this spirit of the Kali Yuga, what past orthodoxies have banned
as dangerous, the left-hand path Tantrika cheerfully brings upon his or her
self. Thus, it is often said of left-hand path adepts that they "work with the
venomous snake", "ride upon the tiger", and "walk upon the sword." But
characteristic of the multi-layered Tantric approach, nothing in the swirling
inconstancy of maya can be perceived only from one perspective; there are
– at the very least – two ways of looking at the Kali Yuga; the outer
exoteric, and the inner esoteric, the bipolar interior and external forms that
manifest so frequently within left-hand path thought .
Kali Yuga is thought to be the last era, an Iron Age concluding a
cyclic succession of four Aeons which began with the long-forgotten Satya
Yuga, or Golden Age, many millennia ago. For the Tantricist, the divinely
ordained teachings of austerity, asceticism and self-denial which informed
the Golden Age are now devoid of meaning, and the holy scriptures which
once guided mankind's spiritual development are nothing more than dead
letters on a page. The Mahanirvana Tantra tells us that in this Kali Yuga, all
of the sacred texts of the past are "as impotent as venomless snakes, and are,
as it were, dead." Furthermore, the refined spiritual teachings of the Golden
Age would be useless for humans of this Aeon, who are pitilessly described
as "without restraint; maddened with pride, ever given over to sinful acts;
lustful, gluttonous, cruel, heartless, harsh of speech, deceitful, short-lived."
The doorway to illumination in the Iron Kali Yuga is only through
the very actions that were previously condemned. Thus, the left-hand path
initiate frequently seeks liberation in forlorn places haunted by death, and
through deliberately confronting that which inspires terror and fear. He or
she who knows that this is Kali's time embraces what the unawakened mind
would recoil from as "negative", transforming such rejected phenomena into
holiness itself. The adept attuned to the reality of the Kali Yuga realizes that
the Absolute and divine is manifest in the totality of experience, including –
perhaps especially – those worldly delights and pleasures of the senses
castigated by ascetic paths of initiation. This includes the erotic reintegration
of the male and female polarities. More precisely, Woman herself, who is
the living incarnation of Kali-energy on the planet, is now the gateway to
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initiation. The initiate in the Kali Yuga cannot attain the supreme state of
consciousness by turning away from this disintegrating and disordered
world, or dismissing maya's manifestations as senseless illusion, as previous
spiritual schools recommended.
Orthodox Eastern spiritual teachings have insisted that moksha, or
liberation, can only be apprehended when the initiate has rejected all
experiences of this physical world as delusive traps to be avoided at all
costs. This is often accomplished by a deliberate dwelling on the supposedly
dreadful state of things in the human sphere. This negation is frequently
expressed in Buddhist writings that bemoan this wheel of suffering with the
happy refrain that sarvam dukham – all is misery. Most miserable of all, we
are led to believe, is the ravenous demon Kama (desire) which causes us to
be attached to this illusory shell of flesh. Traditional Buddhism and
Hinduism utter a furious "No!" to maya, seeking total obliteration in the
blinding white light of nirvana.
This creed of oblivion is countered by the Tantric left-hand path,