Many of you surely know that sádhaná means Tantra and Tantra means sádhaná. The word tantra can be interpreted in two ways. Behind every action, behind every expression, there is a particular sound. By hearing the sound of someone’s approaching footsteps, you conclude that Mr. So-and-so is coming. Every action – moving, walking, etc. – has its own sound. Sometimes human beings sit completely motionless – they are inert. The acoustic root of inertness is ta.

Often we use a special sound to help us do a particular thing. For example, while goading the bullocks of a cart, different sounds are produced at different times by the driver. In the olden days, drivers of four-wheeled horse-drawn coaches (which resemble the contemporary tom-tom) would utter a ra-ra-ra-ra sound to make the horses gallop off. And when the driver pulled the reins and shouted tha, the horses would stop. So this coach became known as a ratha: a coach which starts with a ra sound and stops with a tha sound. Many words have been created in this way.

Another example: In the olden days, orthodox people wouldn’t use leather shoes and wore wooden sandals instead. (They were nothing like the laced shoes which people wear today.) Now, when they walked those wooden sandals would make a t́hak-t́hak sound. T́hakam-t́hakam karoti yah sah t́hakkura [“One who makes a t́hak-t́hak sound is called a t́hakkura.”] The surname T́hákur [anglicized “Tagore”] is derived from t́hakkura. So people who wore wooden sandals were addressed as “T́hákur Mashái”. In this way many such words have come into existence. Even today in Gujarat, you will find many people with the surname T́hákur. In Maharashtra they are named T́hákre or T́hákare.

To resume our original discussion, ta is the acoustic root of inertness or staticity. Tantra is the spiritual practice which liberates one from the bondage of staticity (ta). It makes one active and dexterous in action. It exhorts people to work, to leap headlong into action, to run, to extend their hands and feet. This is the spirit of Tantra. Taḿ jádyát tárayet yastu sah tantrah parikiirttitah.

So “Tantra is the practical process which removes jad́atá [dullness and inaction].” In Hindi jad́atá is called jáŕ – and winter is called jáŕa, because in the winter people sit like lumps of inert matter. When the warm wind blows they burn up that inertness. On the night of the Holi festival, observed one day before the Dol Yátrá festival, young people burn a heap of rubbish which represents the dullness of winter. The spirit of this is, “From today I shall no longer remain inert. I will not sit like a lump of clay in fear of winter.” This is called the Holi festival in northern India.

Tantra has another meaning. The Sanskrit root verb tan means “to expand”. A child’s body gradually expands, and this expansion continues up till the age of thirty-nine; but the younger the person is, the faster the expansion. Young children have a big appetite; moreover, their hands and feet are constantly active, and this exercise facilitates the process of growth and expansion. As long as the body is expanding, it is called tanu; it expands in one way or another up till the age of thirty-nine. After thirty-nine years, however, the body gradually wears away: the head become bald and the skin wrinkles. At that stage the body is called shariira, which literally means “that whose nature is to wear out, to become wrinkled, and finally to be destroyed”.

So the root verb tan means to expand, and thus Tantra is the scientific process which leads to liberation through the process of expansion.

These are the two meanings of tantra: their inner spirit being the same.

What is the nature of the sádhaná of human beings? The bondages and mental limitations that afflict human beings exist not in the external sphere, but in the internal sphere. One whose mind is very narrow is a mean-minded person, whereas one whose mind is broad is a great person. Sádhaná broadens and enlarges the mind. How? It is the innate characteristic of the human mind to become as it thinks – Yádrshii bhávaná yasya siddhirbhavati tádrshii [“As you think, so you become.”] To associate oneself with Parama Puruśa, the Supreme Entity, is the actual sádhaná. There is no one greater than Parama Puruśa, and so, when the mind ideates on Him, it expands.

And when the mind expands, what will happen to the bondages of crudity imposed on it by Prakrti? As an analogy, imagine what will happen if your body has been bound with a rope and you then expand your body. What will happen to the rope? It will snap. Similarly, the moment your mind expands, the bondages of Prakrti, which had kept you so small, will snap, will be ripped apart.

This is Tantra in a nutshell. You should bear in mind that the fundamental spirit of humanity is expansion. Brahma paves the way for expansion and, in the process of expansion, liberates human beings from their bondages. This is why Tantra has been given its name. So Tantra is sádhaná and sádhaná is Tantra. Without sádhaná the practice of Tantra is impossible.