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

transformed through disciplined thought control into wisdom-providing
"nectars" sacred to Tibetan Buddhism. As is often the case, the Tibetan
Buddhist adept – who radically rejects the reality of all apparent planes of
existence – mentally imagines those taboo actions which the Indian Aghoris
actually perform in keeping with the concept that maya is paradoxically real
and illusory at the same time.
The Aghori's preferred initiatrix in sexual congress is a menstruating
woman of the "untouchable" lower caste, whose menstrual blood mingled
with his own semen is sometimes consumed at the conclusion of the rite.
This Aghori practice has a secular analogue in a modern Western "sect"
dedicated to taboo-transgression; a well-known rite of initiation for the Hell's
Angels motorcycle club decrees that the Angel must "earn his wings" by
performing cunnilingus on a menstruating woman.
The Aghori sexual rite is often performed in a cremation ground at night,
while both partners are seated upon a corpse. Unique to the Aghori among
Tantric sects is a special emphasis on necromancy. The spirits of the dead
still thought to be present in the recently expired corpse for a designated time
are supposedly controlled through Aghoric sexual magic. These once secret
rites were first documented outside of India by a sixteenth century Persian
chronicler, at the beginning of the Aghoric movement. During the Victorian
age, India's British conquerors were horrified to learn that these practices still
continued among the remaining Aghori, who numbered no more than 300 by
the late nineteenth century. Nevertheless, the Aghori are still commonly
revered as holy men by many respectable middle class Indian devotees to this
day.
Even more than the other left-hand path Tantric sects, the Aghori
emphasise direct, spontaneous insight of reality rather than merely
intellectual knowledge of books or scriptures. As B. Bhattacharya describes
them in his autobiographical account of left-hand initiation: "The Aghoris are
direct teachers who make nothing of the body, nothing of the body functions,
nothing of fear, shame, scorn. They look like the rejects of life and senses;
but they reject nothing." Only very few teachers competent to awaken this
form of initiation are traditionally understood to operate at any given time,
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and these few make themselves extremely difficult to locate. Although a few
contemporary writings of varying reliability on the Aghoric left-hand path
school have emerged in recent years in the West, actual initiation into the
school is always carried out through one-to-one personal induction.
If the revulsion inspired in the conventional-minded by Aghori lefthanded
practices were not enough to scare away those only superficially
curious in their practices, Aghoris often affect the outer appearance of a
perpetually angry or insane temperament as added deterrent to the profane.
Those who have sought instruction from them by appearing at the forbidding
cremation grounds and garbage dumps they frequent are often met with
mocking derision. Their habit of adopting serpents as mascots has not
endeared them to the squeamish, and many who have approached the Aghori
have had human skulls and bones thrown at them as a greeting.
The Aghori well illustrate Philip Rawson's cogent observation:
"Anyone who actually carries Tantra to its ultimate degree, as real devotees
must, can only end up a scandalous outcast." It must be said that very few
initiates who walk the left-hand path, in East or West, ever go this far. In
their refusal to accord with socially acceptable concepts of the spiritual, and
their deliberate worsening of reputation, the Aghori are the living example of
the Tantric left-hand path proverb that states "without earning a bad name,
one does not get to the nameless."
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At The End Of The Path: Liberation
Such are the most prevalent historical methods of the left-hand path. But