Tantra as a major religious and philosophical movement emerged
around the fourth century of the common era. According to Eliade, Tan-
tra “assumed the form of a pan-Indian vogue from the sixth century on-
ward,” popular among philosophers and theologians as well as ascetics
and yogins, and influential in philosophy, mysticism, ritual, ethics, ico-
nography, and literature.^49 The origins of Tantra are not precisely known,
but in the pre-Vedic Indus Valley civilization, centuries before the com-
mon era, the germs of Tantra existed in the worship of the Mother God-
dess, and the Mother and Father of the universe.^50 Tantra rejects the caste
system and the exclusion of females from participation in religious activ-
ities. Tantra has long provided a religious domain for persons excluded
from the Brahminical system because of caste or gender, as well as for
those whose religious ideas and practice diverge from Hindu orthodoxy.
Though T ̄antrism is a major current of Indian culture, it has tended to re-
main on the fringes of society.^51 Tantra has been misunderstood—and
maligned—for advocating activities that are traditionally or morally ob-
jectionable, and among the many subtraditions of Tantra, some do in-
volve extreme and even bizarre practices. Ritual sexual union (both ac-
tual and symbolic) is an aspect of some forms of Tantra. However, to
reduce the whole tradition of Tantra to particular sects or rites, or to re-
ject Tantra based on a sensationalized view, would be a misconstrual of
this vital aspect of Indian philosophy and religion.
Like the Vedic tradition, Tantra’s foremost concern is spiritual real-
ization, but its approach to the relation of human being, world, and the
sacred aims for transcendence of materiality by integrationwith it, rather
than separation from it. Liberation as conceived in Tantra includes spiri-
tual well-being in this life. S. C. Banerji writes that “T ̄antric philosophy
vigorously advocates j ̄ıvanmukti(liberation in life).”^52 In comparing the
“emancipative core” of psychoanalysis and Tantra, Sudhir Kakar writes
that in Tantra, liberation is not only the “mystical” freedom from all
human conditions, but is “also relevant to the individual’s concrete his-
torical conditions.”^53 Tantra’s soteriological goal is the realization of the
unity of the individual’s soul or j ̄ıva with the one Supreme Reality, Pa ra m
Íiva, which has the static and transcendent aspect Íiva, and the dynamic
and immanent aspect Íakti. The masculine Íivais pure Being, of the na-
ture of consciousness, and the feminine Íaktiis the power that activates
and manifests Íiva: “The universe is a manifestation of the immanent as-
pect of the Parama Íivain the form of Íakti.”^54 WhileSívais Being, Íakti
is the operativeform of Being, called in the Yogin ̄ıhÓrdaya: ‘the creative
matrix’ (ÓsÓrÓstir ̄up ̄a).^55 Íaktiand Íivaare one, as water and its current are
body and philosophies of healing 31