Tantra

Tantra Roots

Tantra comes to us specifically from the dimmest mists of the Indian civilization, yet similar Nature-based mystical magic traditions have seen parallel development in all native cultures, as these practices know no geographical boundaries.

When the Human brain originally developed to the formidable extent of making us Homo Sapiens, society was still in its early stages and neither had physical technology developed much.

Thus most of Thought would have been unconditioned by deep memories, and its impact on psychological conditions as well in the material world would not have reached systemic proportions as it has today.

In this early stage the psychological use of Thought was likely limited to its fascination with the world of Nature, by deifying cosmic forces as “gods” and imagining stories of their antics. 

The application of Thought in these dim mists of esoteric human pre-history likely further evolved as Humans figured out that they could create an intimate relationship with these forces of Nature by treating their bodies as a willing internal playground for her forces.

All that existed was the Human body and the Universe, and no pesky Mind to worry about, , fragmented or entangled by the misuse of psychological Thought.

The full expression of such Nature-based magic traditions though, requires free living communities that have not been suppressed by religion, war, or industry, which is why true practitioners are hard to find.

Meaning

Tantra = Tan (body) + Tra (to protect while expanding).

Tan means body, which is the human body at one level, and also the entire body of Nature herself.

It’s interesting that in English ‘to tan’ means to darken the skin of the body!

Tra indicates something like a weaving loom that expands its thread into finely woven cloth while ensuring that it does not tear. In short, to protect while expanding.

That is, Tantra means to expand the body through the fabric of Nature while still keeping it protected.

In Tantra the Body exists to embody the Universe so that the Universe can express its manifestation through us. 

Thus Tāntric practitioners are known to use their entire body in their magical practices.

That is, the microcosm & the macrocosm reflected each other, and in a deep and profound way the microcosm also influenced the macrocosm according to this closely held mystical tradition.

Tantra Rituals

Because of its intimate connection with Nature, and our association of Nature with the feminine aspect of life-giving, the art of Tantra is as inscrutable as the female mind and equally seductive!

Tāntric practitioners in their secretive, ceremonial rituals exhibit seemingly unexplainable psychic phenomena and their full-body experiences leads to out-of-body experiences too. 

Ritual sex, cremation site practices, flying female Yoginis, and much more, are all a part of Tāntric culture, and all Natural substances that help in this process, either generated from within the body or available in Nature, are considered sacred. 

No substance is profane in Tāntric practice, because it is about the entirety of the Universe, with no fragmentation.

Tantra Practitioners

Those so finely aligned with the elemental forces of Nature usually also have a fine-tuned nervous system. 

When we meet someone who seems emotional, or sensitive by nature, they are naturally adept for this art, but unfortunately modern society puts them down and in school systems kids with even mild nervous conditions are drugged into conformity.

We are unfortunately suppressing their psychic Energy.

Tantra is an individuated and small group practice to approach cosmic unity, but is difficult to practice particularly as society developed over millennia.  

Yoga integrates Tantra

Yoga starts its evolution now as awareness technology to systematically understand the practice of Tantra and reproduce its magical results.

Yogis replicated some of the effects of Tantra into a more sanitized practice, thus making it more palatable to the constraints of a developing society so many more could enjoy free play in this cosmic playground.

Here are some examples:

Sensitivity in Tāntric-Yoga

Tantra requires a keen level of sensitivity on the part of the practitioner which naturally occurs in those observing and participating in the rhythms of Nature, thus it was that the physical practice of Hatha Yoga came about to sensitize the nervous system. Yes, Hatha Yoga also is about making the body fit in other ways, but fundamentally it is about fine-tuning the nervous system to act as a "Life-Fi" antenna.

Raising energies in Tāntric-Yoga

Instead of relying on external psychotropic or psychedelic substances, or using sexual partners to increase the flow of energy, which are commonplace practices in Tantra, the practice of Hatha Yoga generates the energy of Prāna Shakthi internally by just channeling and holding the breath through the body in particular ways.

Scaling Tantra

The next obvious development is how to scale the effects of Tantra for mass consumption, for even Yoga (let alone Tantra) is challenging, requiring significant effort on the part of its practitioners.

This has resulted in the development of Veda as a science of universal Consciousness encoded in the oldest surviving literature of all humanity, to understand human nature and its relationship to the entire Universe, similar to Yoga and Tantra.

Veda

Meaning

Veda conveys the meaning of deep knowledge and a derived word Vidyā means applied knowledge, which is similar to the English word ‘video’ and conveys a set of images that comprise such applied knowledge. 

Veda is often described as an Avatār too, for example Garuda the eagle as a vehicle for Vishnu is considered an  Avatār of Veda, so meditating on that form and its attributes results in us becoming fully aware of Veda.

4 branches of Veda

Because of its voluminous extent, Veda was, millennia ago, branched into four sections and groups of practitioners became experts in each section, which unfortunately led to everyone talking of Veda as the 4 Vedas. 

That is sadly ironic, because Veda is the outpouring of beings that speak lyrically of the magnificence of the unity of the Universe in which we all reside. 

There is only one Veda, like one tree of knowledge, with 4 branches.

So we retain the use of Veda in the singular form.

• The Rig Veda section is about using Mantras to invoke the forces of the Universe.

• The Yajur Veda section is about using Mantras to work with these invoked forces.

• The Sāma Veda section is about Mantras expressing the bliss that results

• The Atharva Veda section is about watching all these activities to ensure no flaws 

  • Otherwise there could be unintended consequences.

  • Thus Atharva Veda is also about working with hidden practices such as casting spells & curses - in other words this part of Veda comes directly from Tantra.

Although it sounds like Veda came historically after Tantra it is considered eternal knowledge that got “downloaded” once we had all the tools of consciousness worked out, such as :

Aspects of Veda

There are several aspects of Veda to understand, with respect to how Yoga coevolved in its Seed form.

• Vedic Sanskrit

• Mantra

• Yagnya

• Tapas

• Brhman

Vedic Sanskrit

The cognitive software of human language to encode the transmission of Vedic knowledge, coevolved in conjunction with the operating hardware of the brain, in the form of the Vedic Sanskrit language.

This resulted in the most profound coevolution of knowledge systems, a systematic science that, in its essence, scales Tāntric effects to benefit the whole of society.

Because of the precision of Sanskrit, the sounds of the Veda have been transmitted error-free across millennia although some of the meaning and many parts have been lost over time.

Veda thus manifested as an oral transmission of the science of Consciousness, so it cannot be considered a mere “text”, although it has been made available in print form in recent centuries. 

Veda should thus be considered more as a very elaborate sonic meditation that exemplifies Sanskrit psycholinguistics in the form of Mantra chanting.

Mantra

Meaning

Mantra = Man (Mind) + Tra (to protect while expanding) - is like a psychic trip combined with a trip-sitter to help us, in one convenient package, obviating the need for any external psychotropic substances, as the psychedelic Soma is generated internally.

Notice the similarity to Tantra from earlier, which protects while expanding the Body.

Mantra chanting is a form of Yoga that expands the Mind and keeps it protected while doing so, and is a very evident expression of using sonic vibrations for psycholinguistic effects.

Bīja Mantras

Bīja or seed Mantras are focused more on experiencing the resonance effects in the body, and not fixated on language and logic, as such they likely evolved in the earlier Tāntric models, probably even pre-dating the Sanskrit language per se. 

They come from the root sounds of Nature & Natural Beings - water, air, plants, birds, animals, earth, etc. And that's how we are tuned into all sentient beings, and thus we cultivate the ability for super-consciousness - or so we think. Remember, it's a generative model. We are just generating super-consciousness, using Bīja Mantras here.

As such Bīja Mantras are more Intentional in character, where the practitioner allows the seed to flower into their consciousness, while they cultivate the biological and psychological terrain in a coevolutionary growth aligned with the sustainability of Dharma. 

Longer Mantras

Beyond Bīja Mantras we have the longer Mantras which are more Purposeful in character, and consequently their outcomes require an attention to integration in Yoga, thus the chanting expresses its resonant power and achieves its objectives without getting fragmented.

Longer mantra sounds come from human tribes who communicated orally, in particular ways to form their own version of words, yet these are based on a common psycholinguistic vocabulary, because Sanskrit made it a point to map all of these root sounds into a common framework.

Thus Sanskrit is the foster mother of all natural languages, whereas the natural mother of each such language is biological Nature that enabled & impelled us to create vehicles of communication. 

One such example of a longer Mantra is the Gāyatri Mantra with its 24 syllables is loaded with meaning so as to act as a meditation & also contemplation on the nature of the Universe.

Most practitioners allow their Mind to wander during Mantra chanting, but because of the psycholinguistic resonance effects mentioned earlier, the Mantras still do their magic. 

These longer Mantra forms then made their way back into Tantra, one notable example being the lyrically written Tāntric text of Soundarya Lahiri which describes literally every aspect of the Goddess Shakthi where each Mantra verse is used as a magical incantation for specific outcomes.

Yajnya

A Vedic Yajnya is the core ritual of Veda.

A Yagnya is how the physical Universe works too - big bangs, supernovas, black holes - one gigantic flaming cauldron of stardust.

Sound of Yajnya

Yajnya = Ya (This! - in the superlative sense of ‘this amazing’) + Jnya (subtle knowledge).

Jnya is pronounced by sounding Jya nasally for the 'n' sound'.

The sound Jnya, is a composite sound where all parts are articulated simultaneously in Sanskrit, resonates through the upper palate and thereby impacts the pituitary gland, and thence the hypothalamus and pineal glands. 

Or what’s called the Third Eye, the seat of transcendental knowledge beyond mental concepts.

The word ancient English word of Gnosis, like the word knowledge itself, is derived from this root sound of Jnya, and in Sanskrit this subtler form of knowledge is known as Jnyān.

Form of Yajnya

Yajnya was deprecated by the Buddha because many practitioners of those times were more into the form of it rather than the substance, however the Vedic Yajnya is a very powerful psychic energy amplifier when done properly.

The superficial form of the Yajnya is a fire offering - to which the commonly ascribed word ‘sacrifice’ hardly does justice because when the whole cosmology is that everything belongs to the Universe anyway - then what is ours that we are sacrificing?

The Yajnya ceremony is typically seen as being conducted by a holy man ably assisted by his faithful woman handing him wood sticks, ghee and other fire offerings, in order that cattle, crops, and other riches may accrue. 

This is merely the form of it.

The actual substance of a Yajnya is when we conduct the holy offering (in the sense of its original meaning “whole”) with the aid of our internal feminine energy of Shakti which fans the flames to burn away our ignorance and results in the riches of true knowledge.

During the practice of a Yajnya it is routinely seen that the Vedic practitioners engage in Tāntric practices, so during Vedic rituals we focus placement of deities in:

• our head region because of the intense Mantra chanting that demands a certain divinity of space in its reverberatory chamber, and

• also on our hands because we manually do the rituals of Yajnya so that too has to be an expression of the fundamental forces of Nature.

Tapas

While conducting a Yajnya the heat of the rituals will naturally burn and this is a physical austerity to endure. The burning heat is symbolic of burning away all impurities and reduce the offerings to their barest of essence.

Yoga integrates Veda

Performing Vedic science rituals (or is it experiments) is no easy matter, requiring deep knowledge of Sanskrit, fire pit sacred geometry, personal lifestyle observations and the like.

Now we see how the Avatār of Yoga evolves by absorbing the essence of Vedic rituals into its own framework, and thus evolves from the awareness technology of Tantra into conscious technology.

Here are some examples:

Tapas in Yoga

Tapas in Yoga means to “burn up” all the internal impurities in their entire life, body & mind, so there is no blockage to view our own essence. 

By so doing our bodies are now a fit vehicle to embody the forces of the entire Universe.

To do any kind of Tapas the Mind and Body have to be properly trained, and there is no better technology than Yoga to do any kind of systematically integrated training.

This is simply a natural consequence of Yoga being used in Tantra, but it went further.

Inviting Devas

The Vedic practitioners are adept in inviting the “gods” of the natural Universe into their fire pits so that their energies could benefit all of humanity.

The Yoga approach is to make the spine as the center of the Universe itself, after all the microcosm reflects the macrocosm concept arose in Tantra.

Consequently, these self-same “gods’ invited into the fire pits of Veda are now made internally available to the dedicated Yogi.

Mantra in Yoga

Yoga absorbs the aspect of Mantras by incorporating specific Mantras for example during the Prānāyāma breathing practices. 

At a purely utilitarian level Mantra chanting is useful to time the breathing in/out cycle and at a deeper level it is useful to enhance the psycholinguistic impact of the Mantra.

Yajnya in Yoga

Yoga absorbs Vedic Yajnya by utilizing the entire body and mind as a personal cauldron, making it a fit container for divine energies.

Brhmacharya in Yoga

The nature of the Human Mind to understand Brhman is literally depicted in the observance of Brhmacharya which is one of the key constraints of a Vedic lifestyle which was taken to specifically indicate sexual abstinence.

The general idea is that by remaining celibate, say for a decade or longer, in deed and Thought, there is a sufficient pool of sexual energy chemicals at the base of the spine which can then be raised up to the crown of the head, much as trees raise fluids up from their roots,  where it can be put to good use in the brain.

However, Yoga as usual found a more direct and workable approach by providing meditation techniques in the navel that likely stimulate the Vagus nerve, the longest such in the body, which then uses electrical signals to stimulate the brain without the need for sexual chemical transport.

Sanyās in Yoga

The outside world being too much of a distraction, the Vedic lifestyle considered Sanyās as its peak expression where celibate monks renounced not just their sexuality but also all worldly attachments and went off to live separate from societal bondage, changing their names, attire, everything about them.

The word Sanyās is a combination of:

• Sum - as in complete, like in arithmetic, or we see it in Latin where a graduate who has mastered the subject is considered Summa cum Laude, and 

• Nyās = Ni (inward) + as (to place) which means “inward placement of” psychic Energies in the body-mind complex. 

Yoga, of course, figured out through cleansing the system, using Mantras that invoke deities in combination with breath and meditation, how to perfectly place these psychic energies anywhere as needed. Without necessitating a total withdrawal from society.

Taittiriya Upanishad

This masterful treatise was originated by the great Rishi Yājnya-Valkya, where the word jmeans one who comes from a Yajnya, the flaming cauldron of the Universe into which we have burned all our mental conditionings.

It is said that the Rishi, having “digested” the entire Veda, then “regurgitated” the processed contents into little black bits of spiritual nourishment. 

These bits were then “swallowed” by his students who had taken on the nature of the Titthiri bird, which are curious little birds always pecking away to find food - in this case, of course, the food of knowledge.

From Tittiri we get Taittiriya, and thus this is part of the corpus of the Vedānta we call the Taittiriya Upanishad.

The Outline

The first section of this Upanishad describes an ideal Vedic student’s life and conveys the feeling of a convocation ceremony for students graduating from their Guru’s residential forest academy, the Gurukul, and are enjoined to live according to what they have learnt painstakingly over the years. 

Much of the content is described using the concept of Loka, meaning Location, of course.

Loka details come from Sanskrit literature define that these are locations (in the Mindscape) that are populated with conscious Beings of different kinds based on which Loka we are talking about.

The second section is an elaboration on the nature of Brhman, how it is composed of the Pancha Bhūta (5 ever subtler psycho-material elements), that have evolved from its need to sense the world.

Note we are not anthropomorphizing Brhman to look like a human being, but nonetheless stating that sense capabilities are intrinsic to the material Universe, and thus at least capable of sentience.

It specifically says Brhman cannot be understood through the Mind (that is, through Thought), even though it describes Brhman through mental concepts. 

This really means that we go through the ever subtler mental concepts so as to make the Mind (nervous system) more sensitive, until we actually understand Brhman.

Brhman can be known in the supreme space residing in the Heart - clearly indicating the importance of heart-felt Intent. 

The word used for Heart is Guha which is literally a Cave that houses Brhman.

The third section speaks of how to understand Brhman and the ecstatic outpouring that ensues.

The process takes the seeker through increasingly subtle mental concepts of Brhman and instructing the student to drop these along the way. 

Finally the student discovers that the most subtle Brhman is nothing but the essence of Annam (nourishment) itself - consuming and being consumed - an interesting parallel to Tantra, and identical to how the original Rishi Yājnya-Valkya himself consumed and then passed on the knowledge as nourishment to his students.

An Enquiry beyond Concepts

The young student in this Upanishad is called भृगु Bhrigu, where the sound भ Bh typically indicates a spark of fire, or the burning desire to know because he is in the cave of darkness (गु Gu). 

Note that Gu is also used in Guru as in someone who gets rid of darkness.

Bhrigu approaches his father वरुण Varuna to enquire into the nature of Life. 

We saw earlier the sound Vara in Sanskrit means a boon, and अणु Anu means atom.

So Varuna is the atomic essence of such a boon which is to give Life, and this comes of course through water. We speculate that the Vr sound could have possibly given rise to English water.

Thus Varuna is considered a force of the waters, by which it means that sense-ability which mediates the sense organs that are so fundamental to Life, as their inputs flow into the Mind. 

Naturally Varuna first starts by telling Bhrigu to observe all the obvious aspects of the senses that he uses in living his life.

Varuna instructs Bhrigu to do this enquiry as a Tapas, for Tapas is Brhman - that is to not get stuck on Brhman as a static concept but a live process as dynamic as Tapas and similar because both require stripping away everything that is non-essential. 

So Bhrigu investigates but is not satisfied that such a gross manifestation could in fact be the supreme Brhman that he has heard being extolled! So he comes back for more instruction.

So Varuna, (possibly) understanding that his son’s head as a recently graduated student is filled with mental concepts, expounds upon a set of mental concepts that could point the way to Brhman.

These concepts are called the कोश Kosha which is a way to model multi-layered concepts, so worth expanding on.

Varuna asks Bhrigu to enquire into the seemingly simplest Kosha first which does not satisfy the son, and then he comes back repeatedly as the father each time points him to the next Kosha, each made of increasingly subtle substance. 

The implication of this is that in order to get rid of mental concepts that have clogged up our Mind we need to get increasingly subtle in our attention, until we completely loosen the fetters of our conditioning.

The Five Koshas

The word Kosha signifies a store of some value, with an interesting possible cognate with the English cash and Tamil kāsu. 

For example, a thesaurus in Sanskrit is called a Kosha because of its rich repository of linguistic roots.

That is, as we go deeper into the subtler realms of the Embodied Mind we are uncovering a treasure chest of value.

There are considered to be five such Koshas, each of which Bhrigu investigates thoroughly as instructed by Varuna when asked to go deeper, but he is not satisfied that no matter how subtle the Kosha whether it actually represent Brhman, because each Kosha is a mental concept of Thought, except for the last.

In what is pictured in the image we see also that each Kosha maps directly into a multi-layered model of any Yoga story, going from the grossest to the most subtle aspect.

The word मय Maya in Sanskrit used below, meaning ‘made of’, derives the more popular Sanskrit word माया Māyā, meaning the power to create an illusion of substance, like when we measure psychological Time.

So in this Kosha model Maya indicates how each subtle layer seems to represent Brhman.

Kosha Meditation

Having investigated and rejected the first four of these Koshas as not subtle enough to represent Brhman, Bhrigu’s senses & nervous system are presumably so finely tuned that he is able to finally realize, that in the Ānanda-maya Kosha, Brhman is made from Bliss beyond Thought.

Now when Bhrigu goes back full cycle, with his senses so finely tuned, he is able to detect that essence of Annam is indeed Brhman, that is the essence of the entire material Universe is Brhman.

And thus the Upanishad ends with an ode to Annam (food/consciousness), since the student when now presented with Annam actually recognizes the subtleties all the way back to its source Brhman.

 In other words, a hark back to the whole idea of Tantra itself!

This Upanishad, like all others, does not lay out facts saying “This is the Truth!” but asks us to enquire & observe, to do the Tapas, make the whole process a Yagnya. 

Once Brhman is known in this manner then every mental concept “runs away” from it, as though shadows in fear of the light, and all that is left is our own unshakeable understanding of the Universe and our place in it.

Picturing the Kosha Model

Some writers picture the Koshas like Russian dolls stacked one inside another, but that presents an incorrect analogy because it seems like they are separated from each other, or contained within each other. 

The right perspective is that all these Koshas are really the same thing but just increasingly subtle views, where the next subtle view pervades the previous view fully.

The Storytelling perspective

The essential aspects of each of these Koshas is also represented as a Bird-like Human, so as to mirror the Titthiri bird-form which the students had figuratively taken on in their quest to learn.

So in each Kosha the Rishi identifies the essential aspect of the Kosha with a body-part of this Bird-like Human:

This Kosha Model is really useful when looking at multi-layered representations of any living structure, and is a beautiful way to navigate deep into the nature of the Self, as will be evident in a later chapter when we dive into the Rāmāyana storyline.

Nature of the Self

The Upanishads talk repeatedly on the nature of the individual Self, and various interpretations have been made on how this relates to Brhman (we can think of this as the cosmic Self).

This Cosmic Self is the product of simpler times when we were concerned only about loftier aspects of the Universe and our relationship to it, and can be considered as Gyān Yoga.

Self is Āthman

The Sanskrit term for the Self is आत्मन Āthman = Āth + Man (pronounced “muhn” meaning Mind).

The Āth sound is used to usually indicate coming from somewhere, e.g. Ākāsh+Āth means coming from Ākāsh. 

Therefore a plausible meaning of just the Āth used with no prefix could meaning coming from Nothing, that is from the Nothingness of Brhman!

So the Self, as in Āthman, means the (human) Mind that comes from the vast mind of Brhman.

Self-Realization

There are three main non-Dual schools of Thought that each have a particular notion of Self, and suited for absorption into Yoga.

Note that non-Dual does not mean direct opposite of Dual rather it is about the various ways in which it is different from Dual, so it is not correct to think of them as Monism either.

The schools became extremely complicated over time, akin almost to Religions, so here we present a simplified overview sufficient to absorb into Yoga.

No-thingness

This is the Buddhist model where there is only the non-Self  (anĀtman) as a verb-process because there is no-“thing” - just processes that ebb and flow into and out of No-thingness, each moment a fresh moment.

Only-Oneness

This is the Advaita Vedānta model where there is only the One Self as a noun-thing, and we merge into this Only-Oneness.

Each-in-Oneness 

This is the Vishishta Advaita Vedānta model where there is only One Self as a noun-thing, but when we merge into it we still retain our own Self so it is an Each-in-Oneness.

Two-in-Closeness

And then there is the Dualistic system.

The Dvaita model is where there is the One Other, call it the One God if we wish, and there is us having a close relationship with this One Other, with no merger of any kind. This model is very conducive to worship, but stops short of full Yoga since there is no full integration. 

Yoga integrates Vedānta

In the profound Vedānthic literature there are some key terms that spring out and we see how Yoga absorbs them and thus the Avatār of Yoga evolves further and we see parallels with Patanjali’s Sutras of personal development.

Self in Yoga-Vedānta

The types of Self, defined as above, are but a convenient mental concept to consolidate our Thinking into a single point of focus, depending on each of ours' personal nature.

Eventually of course we let the Self go, like all other mental concepts, but until then it is very useful to consolidate a fragmented Mind, just like we use props in yoga classes until we don’t need to.

Perfected Thought in Yoga-Vedānta

Mantras can be considered as perfected Thought Forms.

Mantras are aligned with the Intent of Dharma and integrated in the Purpose of Yoga, so they are compatible with the tenets of Vedānta as they do not lead us into psychological Thought traps.

Any other type of entangled or fragmented Thought form to achieve some narrow end would merely feed back into our System of conditioned Thought from which we cannot escape as we have observed earlier.

In order to set Intent we could use Bīja Mantras (seed sounds) which literally have not yet sprouted hence have no manifested meaning per se. 

One obvious Bīja Mantra is Om, which is clearly defined in Patanjali’s Sutras as that which as the sound of Īshvara, that which envelops everything. 

In this stage of the Avatār of Yoga we are still in its Cosmic manifestation so OM is the sound that envelops the entire Universe.

When a Bīja Mantra is used in meditation practice it is done sparingly, for example when we get lost in a Thought stream and we catch ourselves, we can just silently & gently chant a Bīja Mantra to re-commence our next dive into watchfulness. 

When doing continuous Mantra chanting, as a Japa, and even if the Mind wanders, it may seem as though we are creating new grooves of conditioning in the Mind, but we are creating a new positive habit pattern that reflects the connection of Om to Wholeness.

Longer Mantras such as as the Gāyatri Mantra are loaded with Meaning and hence can serve as a means of setting Purpose.

Brhmacharya in Yoga-Vedānta

ब्रह्मचर्य Brhmacharya= Brhma + Charya (to conduct one's self), really means to cultivate a mind that is broad and vast, consequently it is able to understand the nature of the infinite Universe where the pettiness of all conditioning drops away.

We see this empirically in our everyday behavior that we are never quite satisfied having achieved or experienced anything, that the Mind continually seeks out new territory to explore.

Of course it is another matter that when the Mind is still conditioned then the System of Thought continually trips over itself preventing us from being in Brhman.

Tapas in Vedānta-Yoga

The burning of ignorance (notice the ‘jn’ sound again, of jnyān knowledge) and is the relevant interpretation of the substance to 'burn' in Tapas as Yoga evolves into the personal Mind Sciences.

Unlike the pleasant Spanish dish of the same name, the practice of Tapas is hardly pleasant (at first) as we shed layers of our stuck ignorance, similar to how a snake first moults its skin. 

Tapas in Yoga is to burn all relationships mediated by ignorance and the Yogi becomes so lustrous in their everyday interactions they are almost hardly recognizable by those who knew them as they used to be.

Yagnya in Vedānta-Yoga

As in the pursuit of any Science, when we fully commit to Yoga it consumes us, and because of its inherent integration power we are thus also the consumer.

And all that is left then in the life of a Yogi is this continuous process of understanding, by consuming and being consumed in the flames of enquiry & observation.

One example of Yajnya is the process of writing of this book itself or any other endeavor of such proportions.

As Patanjali says at the very start: “Om, Atha Yoga-anushAsnam” - now begins the inner discipline of Yoga, that is we have gathered all the necessary ingredients for the Yajnya and have set it alight.

The Avatār Lands 

By this time, because these Upanishads are liberally peppered with references to the term Yoga, the Avatār of Yoga is clearly seen as formed, in its coevolution with the form of society.

We have observed these aspects in the coevolution of the Avatār of Yoga.:

• Tantra is its original experience as awareness of the Natural world,

• Veda is its science for scaling such consciousness into society,

• Vedānta is the conscious breakthrough beyond mental concepts into the fullness of the Universe.

This is no mere armchair philosophy.

Yoga is the empirical technology that has absorbed all of this to make it all happen, in all walks of life, and even including a flexible approach to Self-Realization.

We shall now see how this Avatār of Yoga can break through existing limitations to express itself through us and thus we actualize any kind of life we choose.