Tantra, Mandala and the Emergence of Religion

Humanity's defining feature may be its ability to construct and observe the concept of time. And time, perhaps inevitably, is best measured and observed in the cycles of the sun. Indeed, the sun provides us with several units of time: the day, the seasons, a year.

And in observing its cycles, the sun reveals a compass. With each individual cycle, every new solstice and each rising equinox, the four directions of the earth can be mapped. But what if lines are drawn, from the point of observation, at the centre of the compass (perhaps we could call this the bindu) and the most significant points mapped by the solar cycles, and further lines are trodden between the points themselves. Soon, shapes begin to emerge, circles and triangles, and through these shapes a pattern. 

And if the same process is repeated with another celestial object, if lunar cycles are equally observed and mapped, then new measures of time and new geometric patterns can be found. As patterns are overlaid an intricate geometry is discovered, one of harmonious symmetry that appears to defy coincidence. These patterns appear to be there by design, the product of a directing mind.

If there is a directing mind then surely, from these observations at least, the sun and the moon must be their tools, and time itself is the message. These then - the sun, the moon and time - become deified. And the patterns, the mandalas, are an expression of God; God’s manifestation on Earth. These too then are deities in themselves, as is the Earth on which they are mapped.

But the Tantric revelation is that these geometric patterns, these deified mandalas, can exist anywhere. They are determined by the location of the centre - by the bindu. And the bindu does not need to be a fixed point on Earth - a mountain top or a temple - the bindu could be a person. 

A person then, could sit in stillness and imagine themselves as the bindu, imbued by the deified mandala woven by the movements of the cosmos; bound by the cycle of time, expressed in the cyclical breath.

From this perspective the entire observable universe is like a giant loom. The bindu is the spindle at the centre with the rotating sun and moon acting as the cosmic wheels, constantly spinning through time, binding reality with the invisible geometric threads of the eternal mandala.

Indeed, the bindu can become even smaller. A single point in the navel, the heart space or even the forehead. In this way the practitioner comes to conceive of themselves as consisting of the holy mandala, as filled with God. As God themselves. It is easy to imagine then, the logic that underlies the Tantric notion of self-deification.

But we know now that this understanding of the cosmos is flawed. It is not the celestial objects that rotate around the Earth, defining time with their motion. Rather, it is the Earth that spins around the sun, and the geometric patterns we observe are the product of gravity and mathematics.

It would be easy then, to dismiss Tantra as the product of a juvenile human mind, an interpretation of reality based on incomplete information. Except …

As those early practitioners sat in silence, visualising themselves as the bindu sitting at the centre of the celestial loom, a living mandala, an expression of God themselves, something remarkable occured. They felt it. They felt their own deification. They felt the mandala weaving around them, binding them to the Earth and the cosmos. They experienced unity - yoga.

These experiences acted as confirmation of their beliefs, and whilst modern science perhaps dispels the origin of the train of thought, the lived experience of unity and non-duality is more difficult to dismiss. Modern Tantra then (for me at least), is not about the deification of celestial objects, or the reverence of a geometric pattern. Modern Tantra does not need to concern itself with ancient perceptions or iconography. Rather, it is about lived experience. It is about understanding our own subtle bodies and the connection we feel to the subtle energy that flows through the universe.

The loom may not be how those early practitioners imagined it to be, but that doesn't mean that the loom does not exist. We feel its threads, we experience the unity that exists in the weaving of its energy. We can still be Tantricas, and all the better for understanding how we have evolved.