Then I was God

There was nothing spiritual about my visit. I was on an assignment a colour piece on the Kamakhya Temple in Guwahati, which a fellow scrib...

There was nothing spiritual about my visit. I was on an assignment a colour piece on the Kamakhya Temple in Guwahati, which a fellow scribe had described as the principal seat of Tantrik studies. Visit it early in the morning and meet the secretary, he had advised. But by the time I could make it to the temple, it was nearly five in the evening. “Just 15 minutes left for the garb graha to close,” muttered the driver, stepping on the gas for the uphill drive. My head reeled with images of skulls and spells as the city became a speck of thousand lights, and monkeys took over the road. The hill-top temple itself was a blur as we bounded up the stairs. All I can recall is a series of bells and a pujari, Neeraj Sharma, who got us a quick darshan.

It was pitch dark by the time we came down the stairs. It was here we met Amiya Kumar Banderkayastha, a soft-spoken pharmacist who also doubles as the temple secretary and chronicler with six books on Kamakhya to his credit. It’s the most important devi temple in the subcontinent, he said, and of special significance to tantriks who feel it is the centre of fertility. Myth has it that it is here that Parvati’s private parts fell when her dead body was cut into 51 pieces by Vishnu’s Sudarshan chakra. But Banderkayastha was tight-lipped about tantricism. “A tantrik alone will be able to tell you more about it,” he said. Or an IAS officer in the secretariat who has a PhD on tantra and Kamakhya, said the scribe. That was interesting.

Seated in a poorly-ventilated room at the heavily guarded civil secretariat in Dispur, the suave Dr Prem Saran, who introduced himself as an atheist, seemed very unlike a tantrik. Yet, he admitted, he was initiated into tantricism 20 years ago. It is part of the Shakta tradition which worships a female godhead, he explained, and its aim is moksha or liberation from the existentialist suffering. He added, eyes closed: “It is the samadhi experience I crave. Even one such moment gives you lifelong stability.” I believed him.

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My distrust of tantriks was ebbing fast, but he seemed to sense its dregs. “The popular misgivings,” he said, “stem from its use of erotic techniques and wine, etc, to concentrate. Tantriks believe all kinds of pleasures are acceptable so long you are not harming anyone. So they use libido, instead of suppressing it, as a ladder to achieve mystical experience.”

His words were echoed by 82-year-old Dr Muktinath Sharma, a highly-venerated tantrik. “Our five senses give us pleasure, but the supreme bliss comes from self-realisation.” It was the death of his son in 1960 that made Dr Sharma, a practising allopath, turn to tantricism. “I was shattered by the tragedy and went to a tantrik. He told me the body dies, the soul doesn’t. I wasn’t convinced till my son appeared before me.”

Tantricism, smiled the saintly old man clad in saffron, is very scientific. “The universe is governed by a divine energy, the God. You can’t see Him, but you can see His actions. And you can realise Him by meditation.”

Mesmerised, I listened as he added: “Every action has an equal reaction. When you meditate, or focus on the supreme being, you send a wave to Him and He beams it back.” Sitting in that small room, I was strangely awash with peace. And tears.

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“Do sadhna,” he reiterated. “When your mind connects with the supreme force, you will realise who you are, why you have come here, what will happen to you in the future. You are not your body, or your mind, you are God yourself. Aham Brahm.”

I wanted to touch his feet, but he touched mine.