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January 8, 2006

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December 31, 2005 12:22 AMSubject:

Successful vamachari tantrik

Vamaksepa, more than any other teacher in this group of biographies, could best

be characterized as a "mad saint". He was throughout his life continually

violating the normative rules of society and religious practice. He was born in

1837, in the village of Atla near Tarapura (or Tarapith) in Birbhum, West

Bengal, India. He was named Bamacara by his father, a religious man named

Sarvananda Chatterji. He was the second son and had a sister who was later

widowed. Because of his sister's religious zeal, she was called ksepsi, or

madwoman. As a child, Bama (or Vama in Hindi pronunciation) was subject to

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 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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Attachment: (image/jpeg) bamakhepa.JPG [not stored]

January 10, 2006

Subject: Successful vamachari tantrik