PREFACE
THE Tantra is pre-eminently a sadhana-sastra. Its scope is wide, and its spirit catholic. It does not make any demarcation between secular life and the religious, nor does it recognise any distinctions of caste or sex. It seeks to embrace all life in its application and strives to uplift every one towards the Divine Spirit. All spheres of life-activity are taken as legitimate domains of the God-seeker since the whole of the Universe is cherished as the manifestation of the Divine, a lila of Delight. The Divine manifests out of its Bliss and draws the rasa, the sap of Delight, from its cosmic Play. Man too is intended to participate in this scheme in full freedom and joy—a fulfilment that is possible only when he liberates himself from his limited ego-consciousness chained to Ignorance and grows into identity with the Divine Consciousness manifest in the universe.
The Tantra provides the sadhana, the psychological and physical discipline, for this purpose. It takes up humanity into its varying steps of development and gives to each section the discipline most suitable to it. Broadly, it divides men into three categories: the animal man, still engaged in earthly rounds of desire and pleasure; the awakened man who wills to transcend his limitations of nature and looks upward; the cultured and ripened man who has firmly moved away from moorings in the lower nature and is ready for the leap into the expanses of the Immortal Spirit. Each one is given the sadhana that is natural to his stage of evolutionary progress and led upward through the circumstances in which he finds himself.
This series of Gems which starts with the collection from the Kulãrnava is intended to underline this practical aspect of the Tantra, its relevance to every man who seeks to improve himself and grow into the full figure of perfection that is designed for him by a kindly Providence.
Sri Aurobindo Ashram M. P. Pandit
Pondicherry
CONTENTS
Achieve
Action
Ananda
Atheist
Atonement
Bhakthi
Bhoga and Yoga
Body
Bondage and Release
Concentration
Creative Order
Death
Divine Manifestation
Empty-Handed
Gradations of Approach
Guru
Guru and God
Guru and Parents
Guru’s Word
Here
Holy Company
Holy Men
Human Birth
Images
Immediate
Inner and Outer
Inner Truth
Intellectual Knowledge
Japa
Japa and Dhyana
Japa & Stotra
JrvA & Shiva
Just Use
Karma
Kaula
Knowledge
Liberated
Liberation
Life-Span
Live the Truth
Mantra
Mine and Not-Mine Mind
Mind Gradations
Mortification
Paduka
Past Determinants
Philosophies
Pratistha
Presence
Punya and Papa
Rules and Regulations
Self-Consciousness
Self-Help
Self-Killer
Self-Revelation
Self-Revealing
Shiva-Shakti
Sins of the Disciple
Supreme Truth
Tantra Sadhana
Upãsanã
Upãsanã Gradations
Veda
Veda and Tantra
Verbal Knowledge
Wine
Worship
Yantra
Yantra and Mantra
Yoga
Yogin
Yogin and the World