As many of you will know, I have spent the last couple of years researching an ancient tradition in Indian philosophy. The broad term for this tradition is Tantrism, and the specific flavour of it that I have been studying is called Kashmir Shaivism.
Now, I say “ancient tradition.” This is not strictly true - Kashmir Shaivism really flourished in around what we would call 700-1100 CE. This is more “medieval” than “ancient.”
But even though that might not be strictly true, there are still good reasons to call this tradition ancient.
Tantrism goes back a long way. In fact, if you look at the spiritual and religious traditions that feed into Tantrism, you find yourself going way back into the past. Even way beyond Vedism, which is known to be at least 5000 years old, and is widely regarded as the oldest religious tradition in the world.
One of the interesting things about Tantrism being ‘ancient’ is that it is also a ‘technology.’ That is, when you study or practice Tantrism, you are not studying gods or goddesses or spiritual beings like angels and devils or even ghosts, at least not in any traditional sense.
When you practice Tantrism, you are essentially using ancient technologies of the self. That is, as people learnt more about what it means to experience life as a human, and built on each others’ learning, they developed techniques for enhancing and embracing that experience.
These technologies are the foundation of Tantric practice. They are not, at least as I read them, esoteric or mystical in the way this is usually understood. They are certainly not meant to take you away from or out of the ordinary experience of being human.
Quite the opposite. They are designed to alert you to your own experience. They are technologies for opening up conscious experience. This is one of the reasons Tantrism is so complex - anything that works in terms of intensifying experience gets included.
We seem to very worried about technology at the moment. The general term that captures all of this fear is “AI.” A big part of my day job is in this field, bringing AI into higher education in meaningful ways.
All of this worry means we have a unique opportunity to ask ourselves about our relationship to technology. And Tantrism, ancient as it is, holds one of the keys.
Technologies that enhance the human experience are worth holding on to.
Neil