Tantric Jyotish (with some typos corrected)

[Guest guest]

Many thanks for your kind words and interest. Das Gupta is one strong resource

among (what I think, anyway) is a meager handful of reliable texts in English

on Tantric traditions generally, and specifically on the roots of the Bengali

religio-literary (if such a silly word exists; it's past this Infant Jyotishi's

bedtime) universe. I have been reading chunks of it for the past several months

and using it mainly as a reference when presenting informal talks at my local

Buddhist group; what I must do soon is simply read it from cover to cover. I

need to clarify here in case I slurred and blurred ideas earlier that this is

in _no_ way a work on Tantric Jyotish. What it will do is reveal that much of

what goes on in Indian ritual frameworks today has tantric antecedents and/or

will take on even greater lustre and richness when viewed through a tantric

lens.

Ajay, I know from both the humor and the cadences of your letter that your

humility is of the deep, hardy and true type that I so long to cultivate in my

person and heart. It is patently _not_ affected humility, as is becoming

almost de rigeur (to achieve business success -- sickening) among my

countrymen, in my wonderful and pathologically dysfunctional nation. So your

letter is a balm -- refreshing and healing -- and I feel the same order of

warmth from -- and connection to -- you, Carol . (Regarding your son, I think

of Peter O'Toole as T.E. Lawrence on the silver screen uttering what I have

swiped & made my most public mantra: "Nothing is written!" This is the only

way I can live. In a recent phone conversation, Das referred to those rare

individuals [was it 10% or much, much smaller?] who can truly rewrite the

screenplay of their lives (or for the pure theists on board, so fully cooperate

with God's grace and plan that it is only God's creativity flowing through them

and nothing else) AS "COSMIC HACKERS"!!* )

Ajay, your image of the diners inside and outside of the Ritz really got me.

Poignant to read it, because you don't know which one I am in the Ritz or how I

happened to get in. I'm that mangy dog I described in the other email. This

doggala likes to imitate the tantrikas at their feast celebrations by dragging

a bone around everywhere. Just now this pooch has snuck himself and the bone

scandalously into the high-caste vegetarian feast held at the Ritz*. (By the

way, this dog is oddly vegetarian, save the sacramental meat he consumes trying

hard to emulate his true sadhaka masters and siblings. He is really trying to

integrate everything. He recognizes Das' predicament as a sacred calling; as

harrowing, terrifying for all involved; as apparently insoluble, as ultimately

workable. POTENTIALLY workable. The game is on, and this dog wants impossibly

to attain a precious human birth AND enlightenment somehow in this mutt

lifetime.

I like the intelligent discernment you both exhibit. If you discuss spiritual

matters with others regularly, you have learned to watch out for the Mystical

Fundamentalists. You know there are trustworthy practitioners about, and also

MOFO*** mountebanks. The sellers of snake oil exist in all dimensions from the

grossest to the most subtle; and can co-opt any and all markets and human

situations.

Oh, Ajay, a sexy affair is probably safer than hanging around in the smashan,

but if your heart draws you toward any to the sadhanas performed in the latter,

you will inevitably gain access to them. (I assume you know Svoboda's _Aghora_

series.)

I am looking for ways you and/or others might get a hold of Das Gupta's book. I

will try to scan a passage or two from the bk later today; & will also forward

some links I've found relevant (Here's one to start, Ajay: Go to

<http://www.vajranatha.com/>; click on "Excerpts from Published Works"; and go

to the selection titled "Wicca, Paganism and Tantra".

Off to bed now! All my best.

Sincerely.

Jesse

PS Many thanks for putting up with this huge tsunami wave of Mithun verbiage.

_______________________ * This and other signs proved to me that Das is in

fact a natural tantrika -- I also say responsible heretic. (Sometimes you see

the ones afffected really badly by their calling or the calling of the

muse/Vision end up in epileptic seizures until they completely welcome and

fully accomplish the calling. I have to emphasize that this does not make

Raghu infallible or somehow beyond the need for the most basic kind gestures.

His is a psychic and quite visceral vulnerability which _most_ requires such

kindnesses. Those on the list who would seem to smell blood on the list

surface ---- who want him to buy the General Electric (GE) brand life, GE

brand scripture, GE brand exegesis and GE brand condoms [cf. Trungpa's _Cutting

Through Spiritual Materialism_ if the GE metaphor is too far out: I'm talking to

others; I know Carol, Das and the Mike my superb ally from the USMC will get the

quip!] as if there were only one prescription for any given problem/crisis ----

show me they only smile and celebrate God from the neck or maybe the chest up;

not with every cell in their body! The whole body is not linear, monolithic or

capable of being fit into one spiritual scrip. The whole body can enact whole

new yogas, whole new creative planetary dances and languages: for the human

body experienced as a whole is the mandala of the universe in microcosm. On a

global level, Das' depression-as-vocational-calling/wake-up call is not

atypical. Happens all the time. In individual communities and our specific

intertwined lives, however, such a descent into dark night / call to enact new

planetary dances and healings IS A RARE CRISIS. May we all by the example of

such a crisis yearn to see new angles and possibilities in our own and other's

charts and thereby cooperate with divine creative agency!!!