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The tantric concept, that power is transformed erotic love, is also familiar from modern
psychoanalysis. It is just that in the Western psyche this transformation is usually, if not always, an
unconscious one. According to Sigmund Freud it is repressed erotic love which can become delusions
of power. In contrast, in Tantrism this unconscious process is knowingly manipulated and echoed in
an almost mechanical experiment. It can — as in the case of Lamaism — define an entire culture. The
Dutch psychologist Fokke Sierksma, for instance, assumes that the “lust of power” operates as an
essential driving force behind Tibetan monastic life. A monk might pretend, according to this author,
to meditate upon how a state of emptiness may be realized, but “in practice the result was not
voidness but inflation of the ego”. For the monk it is a matter of “spiritual power not mystic
release” (Sierksma, 1966, pp. 125, 186).
But even more astonishing than the magical/tantric world of ancient Tibet is the fact that the
phantasmagora of Tantrism have managed in the present day to penetrate the cultural consciousness
of our Western, highly industrialized civilization, and that they have had the power to successfully
anchor themselves there with all their attendant atavisms. This attempt by Vajrayana to conquer the
West with its magic practices is the central subject of our study.
Footnotes:
[1] The first known Tantric Buddhist document, the Guhyasamaja Tantra, dates from the 4th century at the
earliest. Numerous other works then follow, which all display the same basic pattern, however. The formative
process ended with the Kalachakra Tantra no later than the 11 th century.
[2] A conference was held in Berkeley (USA) in 1987 at which discussion centered primarily on the term upaya.
[3] This cultural integration of the tantric divinities is generally denied by the lamas. Tirelessly, they reassure
their listeners that it is a matter of universally applicable archetypes, to whom anybody, of whatever religion,
can look up. It is true that the Shunyata doctrine, the “Doctrine of Emptiness”, makes it theoretically possible to
also summon up and then dismiss the deities of other cultures. “Modern” gurus like Chögyam Trungpa, who
died in 1989, also refer to the total archetypal reservoir of humankind in their teachings. But in their spiritual
praxis they rely exclusively upon tantric and Tibetan symbols, yiddams and rites.
Next Chapter:
3. THE TANTRIC FEMALE SACRFICE
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