आगमे विश्वासटिप्पन्यः

Mantras in the human body

An interesting aspect of Tantric mantric practices and speculations concerns the (imaginary, of course) presence and circulation of mantras in the human body, or, more exactly, in the structure of channels (nāḋī) and centres or nodal points (granthi, cakra or padma) imagined in the haṭhayoga tradition as being present in the physical human body. This imaginary pattern is often called ‘subtle body’. But this is a misnomer since the subtle body properly so-called, sūkṣmaśarīra or liṇgaśarīra, in Sanskrit, is made up of an ensemble of tattvas, forming the element that transmigrates from body to body, and has by nature no form or aspect: it can be conceived, but not visualised; whereas the yogic structure is to be imagined, visualised, and it does not survive the death of the body. We shall therefore not call it subtle body, but rather yogic or imaginary body. In this structure, with which the Tantric adept lives and which he imagines (and sometimes visualises mentally) as being within his body, mantras are deemed to be present in the nodal points and to circulate in the nāḋīs like a fluid, as a flow of power. To look briefly at this bodily presence of mantras may be of some interest from the point of view of the nature of mantras, but also as regards the way in which Tantric adepts perceive and experience their body. For the yogic body is not only ‘intraposed’ (to use T. Goudriaan’s felicitous expression) within the physical body, but also it oversteps it (the dvādaśānta cakra is twelve fingerbreadths over the head). Furthermore, it includes cosmic visionary elements which transform it (or rather transform the way in which it is experienced), elements which also connect it, sometimes identify it, with aspects of the cosmos. The Tantrika’s experience of his body is thus of a very specific sort, being both human and cosmic or divine.

Mantras are evidently not present by nature in the human body. They are imagined as being there through the meditative effort of the yogin who not only imagines abstractly their presence in his body, but also comes to ‘visualise’, to see them mentally there, abiding in the cakras or circulating in the nādīs. Many texts, ancient or modern, prescribe or sometimes describe this mental practice.

It is most often by nyāsa (on which see here the chapter on the subject) that mantras are placed on or in the body of the adept or devotee, and are thus imagined by him to be present in him or to help him to identify himself with the deity he invokes or worships. In this chapter, the aspects of the subject I would rather underline are some peculiar forms of the presence of the word in the body (brought about notably by such ritual practices as nyāsa, but also otherwise) and the transforming effect of this presence on the image of the body2 and therefore on the way the body is perceived and experienced by the adept or devotee. The latter’s body appears thus as permeated by the power of the word which may simply purify it (for the performance of a ritual, for instance), but which can also inhabit it to such an extent that it becomes the receptacle of the deity and even is identified with it. It is sometimes said in such cases that the adept has (at least for the time the rite lasts) a ‘mantra-body’ (mantraśarīra or mantradeha),3 a problematic term, for what can such a body actually be? The problem, at least for us, is a double one. For, first, of what kind are the mantras that are present in the body? Are they aspects of the word, subtle forms of power, or deities? Then, how can one imagine and, still more, how can one have the actual, ‘lived’, experience of a mantra-body? What sort of experience and mastery the yogin has of a body thus transformed? Then, the body of the adept fully inhabited by mantras is often described as a divine body (dīvyadeha), or it is said that the nature of the adept becomes that of a mantra (mantratva), which are other complex notions. By their presence in it, mantras do not merely purify or divinise the body: being supernatural entities with a cosmic dimension and role, they ‘cosmicise’ it. Embodying as they do the traditional Indian homology of the human body and the cosmos, they give a cosmic dimension to the image the Tantric adept has of his body: he transcends his limits.

A case in point is the description given in the Jayākhyasaṃhitā (JS)4 of the cult of Viṣṇu. In this text, as is the rule in Tantric ritual worship, the pūjā, the so-called ‘external’ (bāhya) cult, that is, the cult materially, visibly, performed, is preceded by an ‘inner sacrifice’ (antaryajana), which is entirely mental, all the parts of the cult having to be done in imagination, using as a support of these imagined actions the image of the body of the performer. During this mental ritual process, the officiating person resorbs, in ‘the ether of his heart’ (hr̥dākāśe), his consciousness (caitanya) and his vital force (jīva) into a ‘mantra body’ (mantraśarīra), the mantra being the mantra of the deity, therefore the god himself. The adept is then deemed to have no other body than this divine mantra-body. This moment of imaginary fusion with the deity is followed by several mental representations which will achieve the complete transformation of the officiant, so that, with his purified and transformed physical body – of which he somehow again takes possession – he will be able to enter the next, physically performed, part of the worship.5

To come back to nyāsa, it is normally accomplished using a particular position or gesture of the fingers (a mudrā) which are to touch the part of the body where the mantra is to be placed, the gesture being done together with the vocal or mental enunciation of that mantra, which is also to be visualised.6 What is thus to be mentally evoked (by dhyāna) is the aspect as described in ritual texts or manuals of iconography of the deity whose phonic essence and highest aspect is the mantra. The mantra itself is therefore what the adept sees mentally while placing it.7 By nyāsa one may also place abstract entities, difficult to imagine visually but which are also symbolised by a mantra. Such is the case of such cosmic elements as the kalās or the tattvas. These cosmic elements can be placed by nyāsa of their mantras on the body (of the initiand notably) which is thus imagined as ‘cosmicised’.8 According to some texts, what is to be imagined is the written form of the letters, to be visualised as shining since mantras are divine and therefore luminous. The forces thus placed on the body are therefore deemed not only to inhabit and transform it, but also somehow to illuminate it. One sees thus that the mental, imaginal aspect of nyāsa is essential to it, the image being not merely mental, but also experienced, felt as being present in the inner structure of the yogic body of the performer.

This mental visual aspect of nyāsa is all the more important when mantras are to be placed, as is sometimes prescribed, on the cakras or other centres of the yogic body. The practice is then necessarily entirely mental, even if a gesture towards the body is sometimes to be done: while uttering the mantra one is to imagine it as being placed on the cakra which is thus permeated with its power. The small figures of deities one sees in the traditional Indian images of haṭhayoga9 are the mantras which the yogin is mentally to place there. It is always mantras that populate (if one may use this word) the centres and channels of the yogic body described in Tantric texts.

Another form of the presence of mantras in the body is found in such ritual practices as the cult or invocation of deities. As we have just seen, the inner, mental pūjā which precedes the external concrete ritual worship is a mental worship, done entirely with mantras, which transforms the nature, the ‘ontological statute’, of the body of the officiating person. The deity, in this case, is to be invoked and imagined as present in the heart of the adept. Since this deity dominates the world which is as it were his/her throne (āsana), all the constitutive elements of the cosmos, the tattvas, from that of the earth to the one that precedes the deity, are to be imagined as tiered below the deity, being placed mentally, using mantras, by the officiant in his body. Thus, in the mental cult (mānasayāga) of Viṣṇu described in chapter 12 of the JS, the officiant who is already identified with the god (viṣṇumāyā) will build up his body as the āsana of the deity by visualising meditatively (by dhyāna) both the visible (anthropomorphic) and the phonetic (uttered and/or written) aspect of the mantras of all the elements constituting the cosmos, which will be thus placed in imagination in his body. He must first place, with their mantras, the supernatural powers and deities present in the cosmos together with the corresponding cosmic levels. He tiers them vertically along the axis of the suṣumnā and the ascending path of the kuṇḋalinī, beginning with the ādhāraśakti, the supporting power which is the pedestal of the universe, imagined as being in the mūlādhāra, continuing with the earth, the directions of space, the Vedas, the three Luminaries (Sūrya, Soma, Agni), Sun, Moon and Fire, and other divine entities, up to the god Gārūḋa (Viṣṇu’s mount) with Varāha. The throne is to be made up of the mantras of the twenty-seven tattvas from earth to īśvara. We may note here that this interiorised throne thus built up with the mantras of all the universe reflect two visions of the cosmic process: one mythical, theological, the other that of the structure of the cosmos inherited from the Sāṃkhya.10

In the Śaiva domain, we find an analogous process described in the SvT 1.88ff. for the cult of Svacchandabhairava: the throne of the god is first installed in the body of the adept, then the mantras which constitute phonetically the cosmos, then the god which is to be mentally worshipped.11 Similar but more complex is the mental installation of the three supreme goddesses of the Trika – Parā, Parāparā and Aparā – for the purpose of initiation, shown in chapter 15 of the TĀ. The worshipper, in that case, must first divinise his body by imposing on it mantras of somatisation (mūrtimantra) as a preliminary to the mental creation in his yogic body of several divine entities. Then he is to install in himself, by their mantras tiered along the suṣumnā, the divisions of the cosmos, the tattvas, with their presiding deities. This will transform him into the throne of the goddesses who are to be imagined as above his head, each seated on a Bhairava lying on a lotus, each placed on the tip of the three prongs of a trident issuing from the top of his head.12

Mantras, however, are not merely present in the imaginary body of the Tantric adept. They move inside it, spreading out their power, divinising the adept, and/or uniting him with the supreme godhead, leading him towards liberation. Several Śaiva or Vaiṣṇava examples could be given of this intra-bodily, liberating circulation of mantras which, more than the nyāsas, put into play the creative power of imagination when associated with the existential perception of the ‘lived’ body.13

The very term uccāra, used for an action which both enunciates a mantra and activates its power, underlines the bodily basis of this process. For uccāra denotes the ascending movement (uc-√CAR) of the vibrating subtle phonic substance of the mantra, the nāda (it is the nādoccāra), the inner ascent which goes together with the movement of prāṇa in the yogic body. It is an inner, intra-corporeal movement of the vital breath, together with a movement of consciousness towards the deity.14 The fact that this breath is ascending, associated with the ascent of kuṇḋalinī, shows that it is not a respiratory breath. It does take place in the adept’s body, but on the level of the yogic body ‘intraposed within the visible body’, to quote again T. Goudriaan.15

There is no dearth of cases of this intra-corporeal circulation of mantras. A first case in point is the mantric practice of the ajapājapa, the ‘recitation of the nonrecited’ where the bodily transit of the mantra is identified with the respiratory breath. I have described it in chapter 3 and therefore leave it aside now. I would like, however, to draw attention to the fact that in the ajapājapa the practitioner’s inner consciousness is to be eventually focused, not on the respiratory breath, but on the ‘central breath’ (madhyamaprāṇa) which is an aspect of the divine energy. The practitioner’s attention shifts from concentration on the movement of breath going on in his physical body to concentration on the vital, subtle breath which takes place in his yogic body: there is thus a coalescence of two visions and experiences of ‘breath’. Tantric texts often insist on the necessary connection between mantra and prāṇa in the sense of subtle vital breath. This is done for instance by Abhinavagupta in the TĀ (7.39ff.) where, referring to the Siddhayogeśvarīmata,16 he says that it is in harmonious connection with the vital breath (prāṇasamā) that the kuṇḋalinī reaches the transmental unmanā plane of the mantric utterance, adding that mantras, even repeated thousand of times, would be without effect (na siddhyanti) if not conjoined with the eternal ever-surging divine power by being enunciated in conjunction (yukta) with the movement of prāṇa.

We shall see now a few cases where mantras placed or deemed to be present in the yogic body move in it without involving the physical body, which is nonetheless not entirely non-implicated, since it is the milieu where the yogic body is imagined as present. It is therefore with his whole ‘lived body’ – his ‘Leib’ – that the Tantric adept lives, experiences himself, even though all that happens in such cases is, as we shall see, entirely imaginary.

One of the best-known cases of such intra-bodily mantric practices is the utterance, the uccāra, of OṂ, the praṇava, whose nasal ending, Ṃ, is considered as persisting through eight phonic stages (kalā), from bindu to samanā. The three phonemes, A, U, M, constitutive of OṂ, which are the three first kalās, are on the level of the (audibly or mentally) spoken word; the eight other kalās (bindu, ardhacandra, nirodhini, nāda, nādānta, śakti, vyāpini, samanā), then unmanā, form thereafter eight progressively more and more subtle planes of the enunciation which, in unmanā, eventually dissolves in the (silence of the) Absolute. It is a phonic ascent going from this world of distinct speech to fusion in the silence of the supreme godhead. Since it is an ascending movement, it naturally follows the movement of kunḋalinī, the divine power as present in the human body. The utterance of the mantra (uccāra) and the ascent of kuṇḋalinī are, from this point of view, identical. This ascending flow of OṂ is in fact sometimes explicitly named haṃsoccāra (in SvT 4.262, for instance).

There are, in Śaiva tantras, different descriptions of the uccāra of OṂ: the number of kalās may vary as well as the powers or cosmic divisions to which they correspond. This last point is of no importance in the present context. I mention it here to emphasise the cosmic and transcendent aspect of most mantric utterances, and especially of this one. For though the uccāra of OṂ is imagined as taking place in the yogic body of the adept, this body, if only because mantras are placed on it, has a supra-human dimension. It is patterned along the structure of the anatomical body, but it transcends it both because it is pervaded by the divine power and because it is the means through which the human creature can overstep its limits and tend towards the Absolute.

To come back to the bodily presence and ascent of OṂ, its ascent, associated with the movement of prāṇa and haṃsa, begins, according to SvT 4.263,17 with A, on the level of the heart centre (hr̥d). It continues with U in the throat (kaṇṭha), M in the palate (tālu), bindu between the eyebrows (bhrūmadhya), and nāda on the forehead (lalāta). Then, higher in the head, appear and dissolve the next ever-more subtle planes of the phonic vibration (with the corresponding cosmic planes), up to unmanā, which is not mentioned in the SvT but is probably above the head. The description of this practice by the NT 22.25ff. is largely similar, OṂ being, however, divided into five kalās only – A U M, bindu and kalā – conceived as pervading (vyāpti) the body, that is, being generally present in it, from the feet to the heart (A), from the heart to the palate (U), from the palate to the forehead (M), and then, for nāda, from forehead to dvādaśānta, the subtle centre twelve fingerbreadths above the head.18 This practice results in pervading the whole body of the adept with the power of the mantra which he will thus be able to master.

One of the most elaborate description of the ascending utterance – the uccāra – of a mantra is, I believe, the japa of the śrīvidyā, the mantra of the goddess Tripurasundarī, which is to be performed at the end of her pūjā, and which is described in the third chapter (śl. 169–174) of the Yoginīhr̥daya (YH), a Śaiva text, probably from Kashmir, dating from the tenth or eleventh century. The four stanzas which describe it are far from clear, but they are explained in Amr̥tānanda’s (thirteenth to fourteenth century) commentary.

This japa, the YH 3.169 says, consists in ‘the conjunction [carried out] in the three parts [of the śrīvidyā] and in the threefold kuṇḋalinī of the vibration of the cakras tiered one upon the other’.19 This abstruse formula underlines the link of the mantra and the kuṇḋalinī during this ascending process. What is actually to happen is as follows.

The mantra that the officiant is to raise from the lowest cakra, the mūlādhāra, to the highest one, the dvādaśānta, is the śrividyā, made up of the following fifteen syllables: HA SA KA LA HRĪṂ HA SA KA HA LA HRĪṂ SA KA LA HRĪṂ. The utterance of the three HRĪṂ, the hr̥lekhā, the flame of HRĪ, which crowns as it were each of the three groups of syllables is deemed to prolong itself, as in the case of OṂ, after the three letters HRĪ, through the nine kalās, from bindu to unmanā we have already seen, this movement going from the lowest cakra, the mūlādhāra, to the summit, the dvādaśānta. This is how the nāda, the phonic vibration of the mantra associates in the same ascending movement (the same upwards going thrust of energy) the three parts of the mantra and the three sections into which the kuṇḋalinī is considered as being divided.20 This being so, the officiant is to imagine that in the mūlādhāra are the phonemes of the first group, HA SA KA LA crowned by HRĪṂ (HRĪ + bindu), over which, going upward along the suṣumnā (therefore together with the ascent of kuṇḋalinī, prāṇa and nāda), the six kalās from ardhacandra to samanā, reaching and overstepping the svādhiṣṭhāna and maṇipūra cakras, the ascent going thus up to the heart (hr̥d or anāhata) cakra. There, in the hr̥d, is now be imagined the second group of phonemes, HA SA KA HA LA followed by HRĪṂ, with over them, again, the kalās ardhacandra and so forth, which will go on ascending in the same way, overstepping the cakras viśuddha and tālu (neck and palate), up to the bhrūmadhya cakra (between the eyebrows). There, the third group, SA KA LA followed by HRĪṂ, will be mentally placed, with over them the kalās which, in this case, include unmanā, and which also carry with them in their ascent (according to Amr̥tānanda’s commentary) the kalās of the two first groups. Thus the uccāra of the mantra reaches with the totality of its subtle part its highest point, where all phonic vibration dissolves into the Absolute. There, too, it oversteps the limits of the physical body of the adept since the plane of unmanā is reached in the dvādaśānta cakra twelve fingerbreadth above the head. The śrīvidyā thus travels through the whole yogic body of the adept, from the lowest to the highest cakra, pervading it with the divine power of the śrīvidyā, which is the phonic power form of the goddess, thus bringing him to the plane of the Absolute. Such a mantric practice needs an intense mental imaginative concentration on the part of the practitioner. If it is effectively realised and experienced, it cannot but influence the officiating adept’s consciousness of himself, all the more so if the process is to be repeated at least once every day during the daily regular (nitya) worship of Tripurasundarī. It goes without saying, that in the everyday ritual practice of śrīvidyā adepts, such an intense identification is probably a rare case; it ought nevertheless normally to take place since, in principle, all Tantric cults aim at bringing about an identification of the officiant with the deity he ritually worships.21

Another interesting case of the presence and circulation of mantras in the channels and centres of the yogic body is that of the ‘subtle meditation’ (sūkṣmadhyāna) of the Eye-Mantra (the Netramantra) of Śiva, god and mantra, both also named Mr̥tyujit (‘Conqueror of Death’), described in chapter 7 of the NT, a meditation of which there are two forms.

The tantra first (śl. 1–4) mentions a particularly large number of channels and centres of the yogic body: there are six cakras (plus the dvādaśānta), sixteen ‘supports’ (ādhāra), three ‘objects’ (lakṣya), five voids (śūnya), twelve knots (granthi), then three ‘celestial bodies’ or ‘glories’ (dhāman), these centres being connected with each other by innumerable veins or channels, the nāḋīs. This being so, for the first method (śl. 5–15), the adept is to imagine Śiva’s energy as present in the central ascending breath, and to place mentally on this ascending force the mantra which then vibrates. This subtle phonic vibration, following the course of the suṣumnā, will pierce through the cakras, the sixteen ādhāras and the twelve granthis till it reaches the dvādaśānta where it will fuse with Śiva. Thence it flows down by the same way till it reaches the heart cakra which the adept is to imagine as filling up with ambrosia (amr̥ta) which then spreads in the whole body through the numberless nāḋīs, which results in making the adept immortal: the physical body of the yogin is thus transformed, made divine, by this mental imaginative action on the (equally imaginary) yogic body.

The NT then describes (śl. 16–52) another practice where the meditation begins in the mūlādhāra (here called janmasthāna, place of birth), whence the adept’s consciousness, together with the mantra, will first go down to his toes.22 Then, it will go upwards again, reaching in succession the centres we have seen before, which, being as it were obstacles on the way,23 must be overstepped or pierced through. To this effect, the yogin uses the ‘Sword of Gnosis’ (jñānaśūla) which is, the commentary says, ‘the flashing of consciousness transformed into mantric energy’, the power of the mantra fused with the consciousness of the adept, that is. This is achieved by a particular yogic technique causing the ascent of kuṇḋalinī. His consciousness having thus reached, together with the mantra, the highest point, the dvādaśānta, the adept acquires henceforth the power to move into the ‘ether of consciousness’: he is *khecara.*24 Pervaded by this Energy he fuses into the supreme godhead. The NT, very Tantric in that, adds that this point once reached, the Energy engenders amr̥ta which, as in the first case, will spread in the body of the adept who becomes immortal: he is mr̥tyujit, ‘conqueror of death’. Here too mental representations act on the physical body. Not entirely surprisingly, one might say, since the human creature is inseparably body and mind and since he ‘s’existe’ en s’imaginant’ (he exists imagining himself). This squares, too, with the Tantric conception of liberation as being less a renunciation to the world than a supernatural (‘magical’) control and domination of oneself and of the universe. That such a goal can be reached by the presence and circulation of mantras in the body is also very Tantric – and even, from many points of view, typically Indian.