Hindu Medicine c8.3

c8.3

The Hindu devotee who practises Tantric ritual is taught to think of himself not as the ordinary being whose duties he performs and whose rôle he plays in the course of his daily routine, but as a microcosmic sum total of the divine cosmic forces. This he realizes by withdrawing into devotional meditation. As part of his act of daily worship he is enjoined to perceive the presence of the Hindu pantheon in his own body, distributed throughout its organs and limbs. He cultivates an awareness of the ever-present assembly of divine energies within the frame of his mortal existence, awakening them from the dormant state of unconsciousness through a ritual of gestures and invocations. He shapes with his fingers symbolic figures which stand for the essential character of each deity (mudrā), and places these figures, in turn, on the supposed abodes of these deities in various parts of his body (nyāsa). In this way, he is able to evoke before his mind the presence of the gods, accompanying his gestures with corresponding mystic syllables and incantations (mantra). These, again, contain the essential energy of the divinity addressed, guised this time in the subtle form of sound.