In 1956 1
did field work with headhunters in the Philippines. My interest was in primitive religion -particularly in
what is termed an "unacculturated" area — where there had been few
missionaries. When I arrived in Ifugao (that's the name of the tribe), I didn't
believe in black magic; when I left, I did. An Ifugao priest (a munbaki) named
Talupa became my best friend and informant. In time I learned that he was
famous for his skill in the black art. He took me to the baki, which is a
ceremony of ritualistic magic that occurred almost every night during the
harvest season. A dozen or so priests gathered in a hut and the night was spent
invoking deities and ancestors, drinking rice wine and making sacrifices to the
two small images known as bulol. They were washed in chicken blood, which had
been caught in a dish and used to divine the future before it was used on the
images. They studied the blood for the size and number of bubbles in it, the
time it took to coagulate; also, the color and configuration of the chicken's
organs gave them information. Each night I dutifully took notes. But this was
just the beginning. I won't elaborate on Ifugao magic; suffice it to say that
by the time I left, I had seen such a variety and quantity of supernatural
occurrences that any scientific explanation was virtually impossible. If I had been predisposed to believe anything when I arrived.
it was that magic had a wholly natural explanation.
Also, let me say that I don't frighten very easily. But the fact is that I left
Ifugao because I saw that their rituals not only worked, but they had worked on
me at least twice.
I say all this so that what I say about Hindu practices
and places of worship will not seem incredible, the product of a "heated
brain."
Eleven years after the Ifugao episode, I made a
pilgrimage to the Cave of Amarnath, deep in the Himalayas. Hindu tradition has it the most sacred place of Siva
worship, the place where he manifests himself to his devotees and grants boons.
It is a long and difficult journey over the Mahaguna, a 14,000 foot pass, and
across a glacier; so there was plenty of time to worship him mentally on the
way, especially since the boy who led the pack pony didn't speak any English,
and I didn't speak any Hindi. This time I was predisposed to believe that the
god whom I had worshipped and meditated on for years would graciously manifest
himself to me.
The Siva image in the cave is itself a curiosity:
an ice image formed by dripping water. It waxes and wanes with the moon. When
it is full moon, the natural image reaches the ceiling of the cave — about 15
feet — and by the dark of the moon almost nothing of it remains. And so it
waxes and wanes each month. To my knowledge, no one has explained this
phenomenon. I approached the cave at an auspicious time, when the image had
waxed full. I was soon to worship my god with green coconut, incense, red and
white pieces of cloth, nuts, raisins and sugar — all the ritually prescribed
items. I entered the cave with tears of devotion. What happened then is hard to
describe. The place was vibrant — just like an Ifugao hut with baki in full
swing. Stunned to find it a place of inexplicable wrongness, I left retching
before the priest could finish making my offering to the great ice image.
The facade of Hinduism had cracked when I entered
the Siva Cave, but it was still some time before I broke free. During
the interim, I searched for something to support the collapsing edifice, but I
found nothing. In retrospect, it seems to me that we often know something is
really bad, long before we can really believe it. This applies to Hindu
"spiritual practices" quite as much as it does to the so-called
"holy places."
When a student is initiated by the guru, he is
given a Sanskrit mantra (a personal magic formula), and specific religious
practices. These are entirely esoteric and exist in the oral tradition. You
won't find them in print and you are very unlikely to learn about them from an
initiate, because of the strong negative sanctions which are enforced to
protect this secrecy. In effect the guru invites his disciple to prove the
philosophy by his own experience. The point is, these
practices do in fact work. The student may get powers or "siddhis."
These are things like reading minds, power to heal or destroy, to produce
objects, to tell the future and so on — the whole gamut of deadly psychic
parlor tricks. But far worse than this, he invariably falls into a state of
prelest, where he takes delusion for reality. He has "spiritual
experiences" of unbounded sweetness and peace. He has visions of deities
and of light. (One might recall that Lucifer himself can appear as an angel of
light). By "delusion" I don't mean that he doesn't really experience
these things; I mean rather that they are not from God. There is, of course,
the philosophical construct that supports every experience, so the practices
and the philosophy sustain each other and the system becomes very tight.
Actually, Hinduism is not so much an intellectual
pursuit as a system of practices, and these are quite literally — black magic.
That is, if you do x, you get y: a simple contract. But the terms are not
spelled out and rarely does a student ask where the experiences originate or
who is extending him credit — in the form of powers and "beautiful"
experiences. It's the classical Faustian situation, but what the practitioner
doesn't know is that the price may well be his inmortal soul.
There's a vast array of practices — practices to
suit every temperament. The chosen deity may be with form: a god or goddess; or
formless: the Absolute Brahman. The relationship to the chosen Ideal also
varies — it may be that of a child, mother, father, friend, beloved, servant or, in the case of Advaita Vedanta, the
"relationship" is identity. At the time of initiation the guru gives
his disciple a mantra and this determines the path he will follow and the
practices he will take up. The guru also dictates how the disciple will live
his everyday life. In the Vedanta (or monistic system) single disciples are not
to marry; all their powers are to be directed towards success in the practices.
Nor is a sincere disciple a meat eater, because meat blunts the keen edge of
perception. The guru is literally regarded as God Himself — he is the
disciple's Redeemer.
At base, the many "spiritual" exercises
derive from only a few root practices. I'll just skim over them.
First, there's idolatry. It may be the worship of
an image or a picture, with offerings of light, camphor, incense, water and
sweets. The image may be fanned with a yak tail, bathed, dressed and put to
bed. This sounds very childish, but it is prudent not to underestimate the
psychic experiences which they can elicit. Vedantic idolatry takes the form of
self-worship — either mentally or externally, with all the ritualistic props. A
common aphoristic saying in India epitomizes this self-worship. It is So Ham, So Ham,
or "I am He, I am He."
Then there's Japa, or the repetition of the
Sanskrit mantra given to the disciple at his initiation. In effect, it's the
chanting of a magic formula.
Pranayama consists in breathing exercises used in
conjunction with Japa. There are other practices which are peculiar to the
Tantra or worship of God as Mother, the female principle, power, energy, the
principle of evolution and action. They're referred to as the
five Ms. They're overtly evil and rather sick-making, so I won't
describe them. But they, too, have found their way to this country. Swami
Vivekananda prescribed this brand of Hinduism along with the Vedanta. He said:
"I worship the Terrible! It is a mistake to hold that with all men
pleasure is the motive. Quite as many are born to seek after
pain. Let us worship the Terror for Its own sake. How few have dared to
worship Death, or Kali! Let us worship Death!" Again, the Swami's words on
the goddess Kali: "There are some who scoff at the existence of Kali. Yet
today She is out there amongst the people. They are
frantic with fear, and the soldiery have been called
to deal out death. Who can say that God does not manifest Himself as Evil as
well as Good? But only the Hindu dares worship Him as
the Evil. "
The great pity is that this one-pointed practice
of evil is carried on in the firm conviction that it's good. And the salvation
that is vainly sought through arduous self-effort in Hinduism can only be
wrought by God through Christian self-effacement.
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