The University of Nalanda c10.232

c10.232

We shall close our valuation of Tāntrism with what Avalon thinks of the aims and means of the Tāntrics and his opinion of the system as a whole. He is writing in the same tone as we just cited. “It is a commonplace however, which is nevertheless to be remembered,” says he, “that in all religions there is a mass religion suitable to the less developed minds of the majority of the community and the religion of the highly educated, the spiritually developed, and sages. . . . . . . There is thus a high philosophic Tāntricism and that of the crowd with its cruder beliefs. Whilst the adherents of the former are blamed for ‘their sublime vacuity and indifference to earthly claims,’ the majority are called to book for making religion a means to secure material gain—as if man all the world over did not seek and pray for earthly benefits. . . . In the philosophic presentment and its accompanying ritual, the idea of the Void (Śūnyatā) dominates. After the Chelā has gained a clear vision of the Devatās occupying the different parts of the Mandala of worship he arrives at a point in which the Devatās gradually melt the one into the other, and are all absorbed in the principal Devatā which occupies the centre of the Mandala and this in its turn gradually effaces itself and is absorbed in the Bindu between the eye-brows (Ājna-Chakra) where is the Point of Light which itself disappears into the Void. . . Thus the Sādhaka is made to practically realise that as he is one with all that is, and that all is at base Śūnyatā. . . .