The Tantric Shaman

Continued from Mind-Altering Practices...

From an Asian perspective, there are certain classes of non-physical beings that thrive on the energy that is generated by warfare and killing. The Tibetans have up to eight classes of beings that affect humanity in different ways. Epidemic disease is associated with a specific class of being which feeds off of the energy of the dying.

In many of the traditions of China, India and Tibet, the tantric shaman has the ability to fulfill any of these aforementioned functions when fully trained. These shamans become mahasiddhas who have united the Three Bodies. This is the highest level of power. In many civilizations, the first king or ruler was a tantric shaman. In China, this includes the Yellow Emperor and Lao Tzu.

Tantric shamans have attained power through successful practices that often include fasting and sensory deprivation, as well as sexual yoga. This type of shaman employs dreams, visions, and inter-dimensional travel in order to retrieve useful information from other realms for all the members of the tribe, clan, or community.

Shamans serve as intermediaries between the worlds of the dead and the living. Shamans have the ability to guide the souls of the departed to their next destinations. Shamans translate the inner meanings of dreams for the benefit of the tribe.

The majority of descriptions of ascending or descending (journeys to an "upper," "middle" or "lower" world) are based on shamanic intervention on behalf of a student or patient. A shaman's journey is the defining practice of shamanic visionary experience.

In many tribes in Siberia, the shaman has to have experienced eight dismemberments of the subtle body. This is one of the key characteristics of shamanic initiation. This experience of dismemberment is also the basis of the Chod practice of Tibetan Buddhism, wherein the practitioner visualizes dismembering him/herself and offering the body parts to various "guests” at the ritual feast.

Until the latter decade of the twentieth century, Western science did not include the concept of multiple worlds, but this has been the basis of the shamanic worldview for thousands of years. The Western physicists' discoveries that echo Buddhist billion-world theory have confirmed the essential shamanic worldview: there are many parallel dimensions, and our waking reality obscures our perception of these other worlds. They are always present, but most of us cannot observe or visit them. Shamans can.

Six Yogas of Naropa

The Six Yogas of Naropa are a collection of techniques passed down by enlightened couples, many of whom have achieved the permanent union of the Three Bodies. These yogas can be done before or during death, with the understanding that some yogis can only achieve full Buddhahood at the time of death. Each of the techniques is considered a complete method of transcendence in and of itself; the Six Yogas represent a collection of practices of a number of Mahasiddhas. In many ways, the Six Yogas appear to be based on the original shamanic and yogic methods of inner power development; the most complete form results in the union of the Three Bodies.

Naropa, one of the most well known practitioners of Buddhism and tantric yoga, was a student of Tilopa in India in the 10th century. He studied with Tilopa by first being subjected to what are known as "The Twelve Trials of Naropa,” which involved Tilopa's placing Naropa into situations that were quite challenging and painful, testing Naropa's willingness and devotion.

There are many stories of spiritual teachers who test their potential and ongoing students with extremely harsh conditions, demands, requests, and questions. The trials to test sincerity, which many teachers put their students through, are meant to eliminate dilettante practitioners who do not have the mental fortitude or devotion to traverse the path to its end. The students who successfully pass through these trials demonstrate a level of devotion conspicuously absent from many modern spiritual or religious disciplines. The focus and dedication that it takes an Olympic athlete to earn a gold medal are similar to what is necessary for a student to master advanced spiritual disciplines, such as those in chi gong or mahamudra teachings.

The Six Yogas of Naropa, advanced teachings that are the foundations of the Buddhist lineages, especially in Tibet.

True Nature of the Mind

According to the Mahamudra and Mahasandhi/Ati yoga systems, considered the most advanced philosophical sciences of Tibetan civilization, the true nature of the mind is complete and perfect awareness; the underlying purpose of reality is to achieve a greater level of creative awakening through the self-observation of the Original Mind.

The human body perceives reality in terms of waking, dreaming and sleeping states of consciousness in which material, dream and primordial levels form the structure of the mind. The completion stage of meditation results in a union of the three bodies—material, subtle and super subtle, which is both the trikaya of Buddhist meditation theory and the Trinity of Christian Gnosticism. The Christian Trinity is also the description of the three bodies, known in Sanskrit as nirmanakaya, sambhogakaya and dharmakaya. In Latin alchemical terminology we have corpus (physical body), anima (soul), and spiritus (original spirit).

The true Philosopher's Stone of Western civilization is the deepest level of the unconscious mind and is represented as the Secret of the Golden Flower in Chinese alchemy and as the kundalini in Indian yoga. In Buddhism this primordial level of awareness is described as the dharmakaya truth or reality body, which must be united with the sambhogakaya (subtle body) for true Buddhahood to occur.

The concept of the three bodies and their union is the basis of non-theistic Asian inner science. These inner sciences are based upon thousands of years of thought- experimentation in which full-brain activation is sought using a variety of techniques that access the original energy of the body. Inner science includes internal alchemy, the Six Yogas of Naropa, meditation, breathing exercises and sexual yoga.

Until recently, it was not understood that the Spiritual Embryo of Taoist cultivation was the Truth body of Buddhism, the kundalini of yoga, and the hermetic androgyne of Western alchemy. The Tibetan description of the completion stage of meditation is the union of mother and son lights, with the mother light representing the dharmakaya body and the son light representing the sambhogakaya. In China, the union of mother and son lights is described originally as the marriage of the dragon and tiger. All these terms used are really trying to describe the same concepts—the dragon and tiger are the dharmakaya and sambhogakaya bodies, the causal and astral bodies, and the spirit and the soul. The process of uniting material, subtle and void levels of reality into a single whole is represented as the Tao, as well as the Western term The Great Work.

The Christian Gnostic description of enlightenment is based upon the union of body, soul, and spirit. The human body is composed of interdependent fields of matter, sound and light. The completion stage of authentic meditation is based on the unification of sound and light, which is the basis of Tantric Yogic theory. In many cases, the theory and methodology of subtle body activation has been lost in modern times.