79 - Discourses on Tantra Volume One

Chapter 21

Throughout the Ages (2)

In the prehistoric age, before even the Vedic Age started, people used to follow the system of phallic worship. I have mentioned in my book on Ráŕh that in those days there were severe conflicts among the different clans. They were never secure, neither at night nor during the day; so they always wanted to increase their numbers. Thus they worshipped the phallus as the symbol of their earnest desire to multiply. This phallic worship was more or less in vogue in almost all the countries of the world, not just in one particular country. Phallic worship was common in India, Southeast Asia, and Central Asia, and also widely prevalent in Central America – that is, in the southern part of North America and northern part of South America. Some think that this phallic worship was brought to America from India during the Shriishaelendra Empire of Andhra under the Pahlava, Pandya, and Chol Dynasties of South India. The phallus worshippers of Central America belonged to the Mayan civilization; thus America is called Máyádviipa in Sanskrit [Mayan Island]. However, the fact is that those people followed this phallic worship from prehistoric times more as a social custom than as a spiritual or philosophic cult. In the Jain age, the naked idols of the Tiirthauṋkars aroused a new thought in the minds of the people, and thus for the first time phallic worship was introduced as part of the spiritual cult of Digamvara Jainism. Shaeva Dharma existed side by side with Digamvara Jainism; alongside the Jain and Buddhist doctrines, there existed Shiva Tantra(3) also in a metamorphosed form, which may be designated as Post-Shiva Tantra. In this way the worship of Shiva-liuṋga [phallic worship] was introduced in Post-Shiva Tantra through the influence of Jainism. Thus the prehistoric phallic worship, being associated with a newer spiritual awareness and philosophical outlook, produced a new trend of thought. (It should be remembered that metaphysics had already emerged by that time, for Jainism and Buddhism were propounded after the great sage Maharśi Kapila.) Thus the worship of Shiva-liuṋga was introduced about 2500 years ago. But the phallic worship of the pre-historic age, and the worship of Shiva-liuṋga in medieval India (around 2250 years ago), were not the same. The latter, invested with a novel philosophical and spiritual significance, awakened a new trend of human thought. The people of that time started worshipping Shiva-liuṋga with a new outlook, just as they gave new significance to the Tiirthauṋkaras. The intention behind the prehistoric phallic worship, as I have already said, was the worshippers’ earnest desire to increase their numbers – because they had to fight day and night to survive. But in later times, when Shiva-liun-ga worship was introduced in Jain Tantra, Buddhist Tantra, and Post-Shiva Tantra, it received a new interpretation, Liuṋgate gamyate yasmin talliuṋgam [“The entity [[from which all things originate and]] towards which all things are moving is liuṋgam”]. All the psychic flows and existential vibrations are flowing in the mahákásha, the mahávyoma [the eternal void], and these vibrational expressions will finally terminate in that Supreme Principle of Transmutation, that Supreme Metamorphosis. So this Shiva-liuṋga is the final destination of all expressions, the culminating point of all existence. Thus the mode of worship of Shiva-liuṋga was altogether transformed.