Successful vamachari tantrik

December 30, 2005

Bama would often sing songs with him. Bama's father was an ecstatic, falling

into states of bhava (strong religious emotion) while he sang. While singing,

he would sometimes forget who and where he was. Even when not performing, he

spent so much time in bhava that his wife would beg him to pay some attention

to his physical circumstances so they would not starve. Bama described his

father as a yogi. When Bama would role on the ground shouting "Jaya Tara"

(victory to the goddess Tara) his mother became upset, but his father only

smiled. His father also took Bama for his first visit to the burning ground (a

place sacred to the goddess Tara) at Tarapith. Bama took initiation from his

family guru and had his sacred thread ceremony when he was sixteen years of

age. His father died soon afterwards and his mother asked him to get work, to

keep the family from poverty. However, he was absent-minded, and indifferent

towards work and found it difficult to keep a job. He spent

much of his time at Tarapith, the great burning ground and shrine of the goddess

Tara. He spent days and nights there singing before the goddess' image. In 1864,

Brajabasi Kailaspati came to Tarapith as a monk (sannyasi) wearing sacred tulsi

beads, and the red cloth of a renunciant. He violated traditional purity rules

by eating with dogs and jackals. People thought him to be a powerful monk who

practiced black magic (pisaca siddha). When Bama began to follow him and do as

he did, the villagers began to refer to him as one without caste (he lost his

Brahman priest status in their eyes and became an "outcaste"). Kailasapati was

rumored to have brought a dead tulsi tree to life, walked on the flood-waters

of the Dvaraka river, lived under water and flown in the sky. He was also said

to have instructed ghosts and demons. Bama often saw ghosts and spirits

assembled who would jump into trees and disappear into the dark when he was

with his companion. Kailaspati

explained that they had done meditation in this graveyard during their time on

earth, but had died afraid and would come to him seeking advice. Bama's actions

became upsetting to the villagers. He saw a boy on the road who claimed to be

the Narayana deity of one of the nearby houses. The boy asked Bama to take him

with him and give him a drink. Bama dipped the stone idol given him by the boy

into the river. Then he went back to the village collecting all the roadside

statues of deities and took them with him installing all of them on a sand

altar at the river's edge. The villagers were furious that their statues had

disappeared, including a deity that had been inside a house. Bama hid in a hut,

and blamed it on Narayana (the boy-deity he had met). Kailaspati returned the

statues to the villagers who watched their statues more carefully after that.

In a dream, Bama saw the goddess Tara who told him to set fire to the rice

paddy near the village. He set the fire and saw

himself as Hanuman setting fire to Lanka (from the Ramayana). The fire spread

through the village, and the villagers spent much time trying to put it out. In

the midst of the flames he saw the goddess Tara, and he danced in ecstasy before

her. He told the villagers he would atone for the fire by jumping into it which

he did shouting "Jaya Tara" (victory to Tara). They could not find his burnt

body, but he was seen later running into Kailaspati's hut. They wondered if he

was a ghost, or somehow alive, or had learned magic and used it to protect

himself from the flames. Bama later said he felt Tara's hands lift him out of

the fire and throw him into the forest. Bama's mother tried to have him locked

up, as she thought him mad, but he escaped to Kailaspati. She feared Kailaspati

and only watched from a distance. Bama called her "small mother" and the goddess

Tara "big mother". Bama took initiation from Kailaspati and saw a great light

condensed into the form of the Tara

mantra, which was his personal mantra. He saw a demoness with long teeth and

fiery eyes, and later the environment was transformed- the bushes turned into

mythical divine figures, and he heard the voice of Tara, who told him she lived

forever in the "salmoni" tree, and that she would be its fiery light. The tree

shot forth flames and he saw a blue light which took on Tara's form. Wearing a

Tiger's skin, she stood on a corpse with four arms, matted hair, three eyes,

and a protruding tongue. She wore snake ornaments, and an erect snake on her

head. She embraced him and vanished at dawn. Some accounts say that this

experience was preceded by a vision of Kailaspati walking on water in the form

of Bhairava. Bama also learned about religion from Vedagya Moksyananda, who

taught him religious texts - the Vedas, Puranas, and Tantras. Bama was subject

to mood swings, alternating emotional love and exhilaration, with anger and

hatred. He would curse the Goddess Tara and her ancestors,

throw bones and skulls, and frighten away visitors. He would call Tara stri

meaning earthy women or prostitute, and said that she was a demoness who had

harmed him and that he would have his revenge by calling down a thunderbolt

upon her. He would rage and then sink into a trance. Bama became a priest at

Tara's temple at Tarapith, and his stay there was marked with confrontation. He

roamed around the cremation grounds happily, making friends with the dogs,

naming them, and sharing his food with them (very unacceptable actions for a

Hindu). He would eat food to be offered to the goddess before the worship

ceremony was finished thus making it impure and unsanctified. The caretakers of

the temple were angry at this and beat him severely. He insisted that the

goddess Tara asked him to take food in this way. After this, the temple owner,

the Rani of Natore, had a dream: She dreamt that the stone image of Mother Tara

was leaving the temple at Tarapith and going

to Kailasa. Tara Ma looked very sad, and tears were flowing down her face, and

she wore no mark on her forehead. She was bewildered and emaciated. Her back

was bleeding and full of cuts, and vultures and jackals followed behind her,

lapping the blood from her wounds. In fear, the Rani asked, "O Ma, why do you

show me these terrible things, and why are you leaving us?" The goddess

answered, "My child, I have been in this sacred place (mahapitha) for ages. Now

your priests have beaten my dear mad son, and as a mother, I have taken these

blows upon myself. See how my back is bleeding, I am in great pain ... For four

days I have been starving, because they have not allowed my mad son to eat my

ritual food. So for four days I have refused to take their offerings of food

.... My child, how can a mother take food before feeding her child? You must

arrange for food to be offered to my son, before it is offered to me, at the

temple. If not, I will leave there permanently.

Bama got his priest job back, and people began to visit him, to come as

devotees, or simply to see him. He performed worship after this, and a crowd

gathered to see it. Bama did not follow the traditional rituals; he sat before

the image and said laughingly, "So girl, you are having great fun, you will

enjoy a great feast today. But you are just a piece of stone without life, how

can you eat food?" He then ate all the food that was to be offered to the

goddess and asked an assistant to sacrifice a goat- again without the

traditional rites. He did not say any Sanskrit mantras, only a few in Bengali.

He threw some leftover food to the image saying "there Ma, take that." He took

a handful of flowers marked with sandal paste and stood before the goddess. He

cursed her and threw the flowers at the statue. He wet the flowers with his

tears. Although the flowers were thrown with an attitude of abuse instead of

reverence using mantras, they arranged

themselves into a neat and beautiful garland around the goddess' neck, and the

observers were amazed at the mantraless form of worship of the madman. He then

went into trance which continued all day, and he emerged from it on the

following day. He was not a priest who followed schedules- often the time for

worship would have passed and no one could find Bama anywhere. He would later

be seen in trance under a Hibiscus tree, on in the jungle, having arguments

with the goddess. Nilamadhava, a villager, wished to know if Bama was a saint,

so he hired the prostitute Sundari to seduce Bama. On seeing her, Bama said,

"Ma, you have come." He then began to suck her breast so vigorously that blood

came out. In pain, Sundari began to shout, "Save me!" His devotees were shocked

to see a prostitute there and told her to leave. A variety of stories about

Vamaksepa are told by Bengali Shakta devotees. They say that he drank liquor

and ate human flesh from corpses, that he had

supernatural powers, that he was in a continuous state of bhavavesa for his

entire life. Perhaps the story most often repeated was his unique worship of

the image in the Tara temple, when he took his own urine in his hand and threw

it at the image, saying, "This is the holy water of the Ganges". Alternative

stories say that he answered a crowd's protests in response to his actions by

saying: "When a child urinates or defecates while sitting on the Mother's lap,

is she defiled? Can a mother think that she has been defiled by her loving

child?" Another story told by many informants describes his mother's death

ceremony: Bamdeb was in the Tarapith burning ground, amid rain and thunder,

meditating. Eight miles away, over the river Daroga, his mother died. Bamdeb

knew instantly, for he heard her voice as she died. He swam the river during

the storm to get her body and swam back with her body to get her cremated at

Tarapith, a holy

place. The family and relatives objected, but he would not listen and shoved

them aside, taking the body. Ten days after her death, there were last rites

and food for hundreds of people. Rain clouds gathered, and a storm broke. But

Bamdeb made a circle with a bone, and no rain fell inside that circle. All

around was pouring rain, but in the circle all was dry. Because of his

continuous bhava, normal etiquette could be rejected. He would share the food

offered to him with dogs, jackals, crows, and low-caste people, all from the

same leaf, and would eat temple offerings on the burning grounds, sharing them

with whoever or whatever wished to eat. He would drink liquor from the broken

neck of the bottle, or from a skull. Yet he became highly respected, and was

called Sri Sri Baba Vamaksepa. It was believed that he had gained spiritual

perfection, and had regained all memories from previous lives. He was harsh to

disciples who did not appear sufficiently

dedicated: One person came and asked for initiation, saying that he wanted to

renounce the world. Bama told him to bathe in the river. When he returned, Bama

gave him a kick and told him angrily to leave and never come back. Bama's

disciples protested, and he told them that this man was still thinking of his

business in Calcutta while taking his ritual bath. He also had unique curing

techniques; these stories, too, were told by several Shakta informants: A

person came to Bamdeb with a swollen scrotum. He had no money and said, "I am

in great pain because of this". Bamdeb stared at him and then kicked him in the

scrotum. At first the man doubled over in pain, but then he was cured.... When a

devotee was bitten by a snake, Bamdeb took the poison into himself, and he

turned blue in trance. He cured another patient by squeezing his throat,

although it looked to his devotees as if he were trying to murder him. His

rituals were famous

for their sacrilegious (ashstriya) character, but as they were done in a state

of bhava, they nevertheless had great power- to cure illness, to stop epidemics

and natural disasters, to affect the mood of crowds. At the Calcutta Kalighat

temple, while in a state of bhava, he tried to lift the statue of the Mother

and take her on his lap. When stopped by the priests, he shouted, "I do not

want your black Kali! She looks like a demoness coming to devour [someone]. My

Tara Ma is beautiful, with small feet. I do not want your black Kali- my Akasa

Tara is good enough for me." People would call on him, asking him to pray to

their household images, to enliven them with his bhava. He would fall into

trance when he visited their statues, and often he performed neither worship

nor chanting of mantras. He would loudly call into the air for the Mother, and

many observers saw the statue appear to take the form of a human being. He

could create such a powerful mood that even

sarcastic people who came to laugh at him found the scene impressive. Bama, who

practiced a form of kundalini yoga, was interviewed by Promode Chatterji. The

author tells some of Bama's ideas in his book of interviews with saints:

Tantrabhilasir Sadhu-sangha: Ma (the Mother goddess) is asleep in the muladhara

chakra and should be awakened- if she is not awake, who is there to give one

liberation? Only she can do this.... The first sign of the awakening of

Kundalini is that the person does not feel satisfied with the ordinary state of

life- one gets a great urge within to get over this confinement. The awakening

of Kundalini gives men great pleasure, a kind of pleasure that ordinary men

never attain ... as you pass through and move from one chakra to another, you

feel the manifestations of the varied bhavas of Kundalini Sakti. But what is

important, as a result of kundalini Shakti's functions in every chakra, is the

kind of bhava

it creates, a different bhava in each place, and the feeling of these bhavas

brings such a state of bliss that it cannot be described. He felt that the soul

departs the body through the spinal channel at death, through an aperture in the

skull, and it enters a state of emptiness and peace, nirvikalpa samadhi. This is

the home of Tara Ma, which is beyond the material world, the heaven worlds, and

the home of Kali. Tara's grace is necessary to reach this state. Even in later

life, he retained the madness of his youth. He would walk through monsoon rain

and thunder, calling on the Mother or cursing her. At one point, he gathered

all the warm clothes and shawls that he could find, which had been donated by

his devotees, and set fire to them. As the flames rose high up in the air, he

began shouting happily, "See how bright is Tara Ma’s image in the flames." His

followers tried to stop him, but he told them that he was performing the ritual

offering fire

(homa) with clothes. Shortly before his death, he became withdrawn and spent

most of his time in trance and meditation. He ceased to talk with his

disciples, speaking only rarely about death and Tara Ma. His love-hate

relationship with her continued until his death in 1911. Bamaksepa was a Shakta

with strong shamanic tendencies, who became the symbol of devotion for millions

of Bengali Saktas. Divine madness was present in him from childhood, when he

would have tantrums because the stone image of the goddess would not speak to

him. He was associated with impurity (sharing food with jackals, eating the

flesh of corpses, refusing to bathe, using urine in ritual, performing corpse

rituals, and daily consuming wine and hashish) and shamanic powers (reading

minds, acquiring knowledge at a distance, perceiving ghosts, spirits, dakinis,

and yoginis, having skill in nature-magic and healing). His healings often

incorporated aggressive acts: one patient was cured by

being kicked in the scrotum, another by being strangled. His techniques of'

worship also included aggressive elements: he would curse both goddess and

devotees, and set fires in which to have visions. Yet he is the saint seen by

many Saktas as the ideal child of the Mother, more faithful to his goddess than

any other devotee. Westerners may find it difficult to understand Indian

devotional traditions where devotion creates both powerful positive and

negative emotions. However from the Indian standpoint, true surrender to the

god means total involvement and dependence on him or her for everything. The

acceptance of negative emotions in devotion along with the positive ones leads

to a kind of obsession where the concentration on the god becomes almost yogic.

This same intense concentration is cultivated by the yogic practitioner but

without the strong emotional component that is normally part of the path of

devotion. The erratic behavior can be interpreted in two ways

from a tantric standpoint. The second or "hero" stage of Tantra where one has

passed beyond normal human desires strives to break free of the moral

conventions of society by ritually performing the five forbidden actions. Such

ritual action is normally highly controlled and disciplined involving

concentrated use of mantra and visualization. However, the mad saint dispenses

with the "ritual" performance, and chaotically violates society's norms in

order to break free of the conventional nature of normal human awareness to

encounter the divine reality. Such strange behavior also has the added

advantage of scaring away unwanted attention from the curious which leaves much

time for spiritual practice. A second interpretation is that the mad saint has

entered the third stage of tantric development (divine bhava) where he is

identified with the divine reality and therefore is beyond the human realm

altogether. His behavior therefore obeys no law or pattern, and appears chaotic

to

outsiders. Clearly both stages are dangerous when looked at from the standpoint

of societal norms. The last point that might help outsiders make sense of the

actions of a saint such as Bama is understanding of the primary goal of Tantra.

Contrary to many western writers who believe that Tantra is mostly concerned

with sexuality and sexual ritual, the more important goal of Tantra is to face

up to the greatest spiritual challenge in life- the fear of death. Sexuality is

a passion that tantrics become detached from by spiritualizing sexual activity

through complex ritual behavior. In the same way, the powerful passion of fear

whose root is fear of death can also be controlled through tantric ritual. This

is why so many tantrikas in West Bengal spend time at burning grounds meditating

on corpses, sitting on cadavers at midnight, worshiping liminal goddesses of

life and death (Kali and Tara), and communicating with ghosts. The constant

involvement with death reduces

and even eliminates the fear of death. It also concentrates the tantrika's mind

on the fleeting nature of life, and motivates the tantricka to seek a state of

consciousness that is beyond life and death, and beyond duality itself.

Bamaksepa embodies the unorthodox (sometimes referred to as left-handed) path

of Tantra in Bengal. It is a chaotic path that combines the extremes of

passion, and the union of the opposites of hatred and devotion, sacred and

sacrilegious, and life and death.

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tantrums: when the Kali (goddess) image would not answer his prayers, he would

roll on the ground screaming and crying. Thus, even as a child he was

considered mad Bama, or Bama Kepsa. He had little interest in studies, and the

family was too poor to afford schooling for him. His father was a professional

singer, and Bama would often sing songs with him. Bama's father was an

ecstatic, falling into states of bhava (strong religious emotion) while he

sang. While singing, he would sometimes forget who and where he was. Even when

not performing, he spent so much time in bhava that his wife would beg him to

pay some attention to his physical circumstances so they would not starve. Bama

described his father as a yogi. When Bama would role on the ground shouting

"Jaya Tara" (victory to the goddess Tara) his mother became upset, but his

father only smiled. His father also took Bama for his first visit to the

burning ground (a place sacred to the goddess Tara) at Tarapith. Bama took

initiation from his family guru and had his sacred thread ceremony when he was

sixteen years of age. His father died soon afterwards and his mother asked him

to get work, to keep the family from poverty. However, he was absent-minded,

and indifferent towards work and found it difficult to keep a job. He spent

much of his time at Tarapith, the great burning ground and shrine of the

goddess Tara. He spent days and nights there singing before the goddess' image.

In 1864, Brajabasi Kailaspati came to Tarapith as a monk (sannyasi) wearing

sacred tulsi beads, and the red cloth of a renunciant. He violated traditional

purity rules by eating with dogs and jackals. People thought him to be a

powerful monk who practiced black magic (pisaca siddha). When Bama began to

follow him and do as he did, the villagers began to refer to him as one without

caste (he lost his Brahman priest status in their eyes and became an

"outcaste"). Kailasapati was rumored to

have brought a dead tulsi tree to life, walked on the flood-waters of the

Dvaraka river, lived under water and flown in the sky. He was also said to have

instructed ghosts and demons. Bama often saw ghosts and spirits assembled who

would jump into trees and disappear into the dark when he was with his

companion. Kailaspati explained that they had done meditation in this graveyard

during their time on earth, but had died afraid and would come to him seeking

advice. Bama's actions became upsetting to the villagers. He saw a boy on the

road who claimed to be the Narayana deity of one of the nearby houses. The boy

asked Bama to take him with him and give him a drink. Bama dipped the stone

idol given him by the boy into the river. Then he went back to the village

collecting all the roadside statues of deities and took them with him

installing all of them on a sand altar at the river's edge. The villagers were

furious that their statues had disappeared, including a deity that had

been inside a house. Bama hid in a hut, and blamed it on Narayana (the boy-deity

he had met). Kailaspati returned the statues to the villagers who watched their

statues more carefully after that. In a dream, Bama saw the goddess Tara who

told him to set fire to the rice paddy near the village. He set the fire and

saw himself as Hanuman setting fire to Lanka (from the Ramayana). The fire

spread through the village, and the villagers spent much time trying to put it

out. In the midst of the flames he saw the goddess Tara, and he danced in

ecstasy before her. He told the villagers he would atone for the fire by

jumping into it which he did shouting "Jaya Tara" (victory to Tara). They could

not find his burnt body, but he was seen later running into Kailaspati's hut.

They wondered if he was a ghost, or somehow alive, or had learned magic and

used it to protect himself from the flames. Bama later said he felt Tara's

hands lift him out of the fire and throw him into the forest. Bama's mother

tried to have him locked up, as she thought him mad, but he escaped to

Kailaspati. She feared Kailaspati and only watched from a distance. Bama called

her "small mother" and the goddess Tara "big mother". Bama took initiation from

Kailaspati and saw a great light condensed into the form of the Tara mantra,

which was his personal mantra. He saw a demoness with long teeth and fiery

eyes, and later the environment was transformed- the bushes turned into

mythical divine figures, and he heard the voice of Tara, who told him she lived

forever in the "salmoni" tree, and that she would be its fiery light. The tree

shot forth flames and he saw a blue light which took on Tara's form. Wearing a

Tiger's skin, she stood on a corpse with four arms, matted hair, three eyes,

and a protruding tongue. She wore snake ornaments, and an erect snake on her

head. She embraced him and vanished at dawn. Some accounts say that this

experience was preceded by a vision of Kailaspati

walking on water in the form of Bhairava. Bama also learned about religion from

Vedagya Moksyananda, who taught him religious texts - the Vedas, Puranas, and

Tantras. Bama was subject to mood swings, alternating emotional love and

exhilaration, with anger and hatred. He would curse the Goddess Tara and her

ancestors, throw bones and skulls, and frighten away visitors. He would call

Tara stri meaning earthy women or prostitute, and said that she was a demoness

who had harmed him and that he would have his revenge by calling down a

thunderbolt upon her. He would rage and then sink into a trance. Bama became a

priest at Tara's temple at Tarapith, and his stay there was marked with

confrontation. He roamed around the cremation grounds happily, making friends

with the dogs, naming them, and sharing his food with them (very unacceptable

actions for a Hindu). He would eat food to be offered to the goddess before the

worship ceremony was finished thus making it impure

and unsanctified. The caretakers of the temple were angry at this and beat him

severely. He insisted that the goddess Tara asked him to take food in this way.

After this, the temple owner, the Rani of Natore, had a dream: She dreamt that

the stone image of Mother Tara was leaving the temple at Tarapith and going to

Kailasa. Tara Ma looked very sad, and tears were flowing down her face, and she

wore no mark on her forehead. She was bewildered and emaciated. Her back was

bleeding and full of cuts, and vultures and jackals followed behind her,

lapping the blood from her wounds. In fear, the Rani asked, "O Ma, why do you

show me these terrible things, and why are you leaving us?" The goddess

answered, "My child, I have been in this sacred place (mahapitha) for ages. Now

your priests have beaten my dear mad son, and as a mother, I have taken these

blows upon myself. See how my back is bleeding, I am in great pain ... For four

days I have been starving,

because they have not allowed my mad son to eat my ritual food. So for four days

I have refused to take their offerings of food ... My child, how can a mother

take food before feeding her child? You must arrange for food to be offered to

my son, before it is offered to me, at the temple. If not, I will leave there

permanently. Bama got his priest job back, and people began to visit him, to

come as devotees, or simply to see him. He performed worship after this, and a

crowd gathered to see it. Bama did not follow the traditional rituals; he sat

before the image and said laughingly, "So girl, you are having great fun, you

will enjoy a great feast today. But you are just a piece of stone without life,

how can you eat food?" He then ate all the food that was to be offered to the

goddess and asked an assistant to sacrifice a goat- again without the

traditional rites. He did not say any Sanskrit mantras, only a few in Bengali.

He threw some leftover food to

the image saying "there Ma, take that." He took a handful of flowers marked with

sandal paste and stood before the goddess. He cursed her and threw the flowers

at the statue. He wet the flowers with his tears. Although the flowers were

thrown with an attitude of abuse instead of reverence using mantras, they

arranged themselves into a neat and beautiful garland around the goddess' neck,

and the observers were amazed at the mantraless form of worship of the madman.

He then went into trance which continued all day, and he emerged from it on the

following day. He was not a priest who followed schedules- often the time for

worship would have passed and no one could find Bama anywhere. He would later

be seen in trance under a Hibiscus tree, on in the jungle, having arguments

with the goddess. Nilamadhava, a villager, wished to know if Bama was a saint,

so he hired the prostitute Sundari to seduce Bama. On seeing her, Bama said,

"Ma, you have come." He then began to suck her

breast so vigorously that blood came out. In pain, Sundari began to shout, "Save

me!" His devotees were shocked to see a prostitute there and told her to leave.

A variety of stories about Vamaksepa are told by Bengali Shakta devotees. They

say that he drank liquor and ate human flesh from corpses, that he had