Inner Tantric Yoga (David Frawley)
Informative but Flawed Tantric Yoga Text
[My 3-star Amazon review (NDA) of “Inner Tantric Yoga: Working with the Unversal Shakti: Secrets of Mantras, Deities, and Meditation†by David Frawley.]Â
I first learned of Dr. David Frawley a few decades ago, when I attended a presentation of his on Ayurveda. But I never read any of his writings until a student of mine sent me some interesting excerpts from “Inner Tantric Yoga†a few days ago. The excerpts inspired me to purchase the text, which I will now proceed to review.
This book has some real positives. The author, Dr. David Frawley, an Ayurvedic physician, is a long-time serious student and practitioner of Hindu Yoga. He has a great deal of knowledge about the Yoga tradition, and a newbie to yoga and/or tantrism will learn a great deal about Tantric Yoga. But for me, the book’s negatives equal or outweigh its positives. I am a long-time expert in Tantric Yoga, and I found myself continuously cringing at Dr. Frawley’s prose. Frawley is not a coherent thinker-communicator, and has an affinity for ambiguity and contradictions. I have pages and pages of notes that detail my unhappiness with the material in this book. But because this is just a book review and not a book, I will have to limit my critique to several paragraphs.
First off, Dr. Frawley informs us “there is but one power in the universe, which is a power of light and consciousness called ‘Shakti’ in Sankrit.†But then he pluralizes ‘Shakti,†and describes multiple ‘Shaktis’, or ‘Divine’ energies.’ ‘Shaktis’ should not be capitalized when one talks about stepped-down, cosmic energies (such as pranic energies) that derive from Shakti, the only Divine Power, or Energy, in the universe. Frawley contradicts himself when he sometimes describes Shakti as ‘Divine’ and at other times as ‘cosmic.’ The one Shakti from which all lesser shaktis (or stepped-down) energies derive is ‘Divine’ (meaning its stems from the timeless, spaceless Godhead), and ‘cosmic’ pertains to the temporal-spatial universe; but Frawley fails to make the important distinction between ‘Divine’ and ‘cosmic,’ and sloppily conflates the two.
Dr. Frawley devotes considerable space to the subject of worship of Devatas (personal forms of deities, such as Kali, Durga, and Sundari), but again he errs when he writes, “Deity yoga involves working with Divine powers.†No, it doesn’t. There is only one Divine Power, and Deity yoga is simply a means of connecting to this single formless Power through devotion to a particular form.
Here are some examples of poor writing by Dr. Frawley: “Your True self is the pure light of awareness beyond body and mind.†No, your True self is awareness itself, and the pure light is its radiant nature. Dr. Frawley writes: “This is our initial encounter with Shakti, which is the energy of awakening streaming down from the higher planes. These energies typically take the forms of deities ...†Firstly, Dr. Frawley never again mentions or elaborates on these “higher planes.†Previously, he stated that Divine Shakti was the power of light and consciousness, and now it is energy filtered through higher planes. Secondly, in the next sentence ‘energy’ inexplicably becomes ‘energies.’ And unbeknownst to Dr. Frawley, these energies do not take the forms of deities. Deities do not exist in nature; they are just man-made representations of particular energies.
A final example of Frawley’s poor writing: “Shakti is the power of inner peace that becomes a channel for the cosmic powers of the greater universe of consciousness and bliss to flow into us.†If I were his editior, I’d rewrite it thus: Shakti is the Power of the Divine Presence, and when we connect to that Presence, we channel Her as Bliss-full Energy.
Dr. Frawley writes: “The formless Self or Brahman cannot be a goal in any practical way because it is beyond time and space, cause and effect.†Yet elsewhere he enjoins us to “be you Self†and to “assert your true universal Self.†But he doesn’t tell us how to be it or assert it. Frawley’s book is teeming with innumable meditation methods, but what’s missing is a description of the single, radical (gone-to-the-root) method for directly and immediately plugging into the Divine Being and channeling Its Power, or Shakti. I teach this method, which I call Plugged-in Presence, and if Frawley himself had “cracked the cosmic egg,†he’d also teach a similar-type integral method (which teaches one how to be the Self) rather than a slew of lesser practices.
A recurrent complaint of mine in my (140 and counting) Amazon reviews of spiritual books is the failure of most of these books to consider the subject of esoteric spiritual anatomy. But I ‘m happy to say that this isn’t a problem with this book, and Frawley, in fact, presents some deep and interesting material on the interrelationship among the spiritual heart (Hridaya, not Anahata), the sahasrar, and the other chakras.
In sum, this is a poorly written book that covers a lot of ground regarding Hindu Tantric Yoga. It provides a good deal of information, but suffers from inaccuracies and superficiality (except for the chapters on esoteric anatomy). I would like to give this book four stars, but the writing is so bad I can only, in good conscience, give it three.
[My 3-star Amazon review (NDA) of “Inner Tantric Yoga: Working with the Unversal Shakti: Secrets of Mantras, Deities, and Meditation†by David Frawley.]Â
I first learned of Dr. David Frawley a few decades ago, when I attended a presentation of his on Ayurveda. But I never read any of his writings until a student of mine sent me some interesting excerpts from “Inner Tantric Yoga†a few days ago. The excerpts inspired me to purchase the text, which I will now proceed to review.
This book has some real positives. The author, Dr. David Frawley, an Ayurvedic physician, is a long-time serious student and practitioner of Hindu Yoga. He has a great deal of knowledge about the Yoga tradition, and a newbie to yoga and/or tantrism will learn a great deal about Tantric Yoga. But for me, the book’s negatives equal or outweigh its positives. I am a long-time expert in Tantric Yoga, and I found myself continuously cringing at Dr. Frawley’s prose. Frawley is not a coherent thinker-communicator, and has an affinity for ambiguity and contradictions. I have pages and pages of notes that detail my unhappiness with the material in this book. But because this is just a book review and not a book, I will have to limit my critique to several paragraphs.
First off, Dr. Frawley informs us “there is but one power in the universe, which is a power of light and consciousness called ‘Shakti’ in Sankrit.†But then he pluralizes ‘Shakti,†and describes multiple ‘Shaktis’, or ‘Divine’ energies.’ ‘Shaktis’ should not be capitalized when one talks about stepped-down, cosmic energies (such as pranic energies) that derive from Shakti, the only Divine Power, or Energy, in the universe. Frawley contradicts himself when he sometimes describes Shakti as ‘Divine’ and at other times as ‘cosmic.’ The one Shakti from which all lesser shaktis (or stepped-down) energies derive is ‘Divine’ (meaning its stems from the timeless, spaceless Godhead), and ‘cosmic’ pertains to the temporal-spatial universe; but Frawley fails to make the important distinction between ‘Divine’ and ‘cosmic,’ and sloppily conflates the two.
Dr. Frawley devotes considerable space to the subject of worship of Devatas (personal forms of deities, such as Kali, Durga, and Sundari), but again he errs when he writes, “Deity yoga involves working with Divine powers.†No, it doesn’t. There is only one Divine Power, and Deity yoga is simply a means of connecting to this single formless Power through devotion to a particular form.
Here are some examples of poor writing by Dr. Frawley: “Your True self is the pure light of awareness beyond body and mind.†No, your True self is awareness itself, and the pure light is its radiant nature. Dr. Frawley writes: “This is our initial encounter with Shakti, which is the energy of awakening streaming down from the higher planes. These energies typically take the forms of deities ...†Firstly, Dr. Frawley never again mentions or elaborates on these “higher planes.†Previously, he stated that Divine Shakti was the power of light and consciousness, and now it is energy filtered through higher planes. Secondly, in the next sentence ‘energy’ inexplicably becomes ‘energies.’ And unbeknownst to Dr. Frawley, these energies do not take the forms of deities. Deities do not exist in nature; they are just man-made representations of particular energies.
A final example of Frawley’s poor writing: “Shakti is the power of inner peace that becomes a channel for the cosmic powers of the greater universe of consciousness and bliss to flow into us.†If I were his editior, I’d rewrite it thus: Shakti is the Power of the Divine Presence, and when we connect to that Presence, we channel Her as Bliss-full Energy.
Dr. Frawley writes: “The formless Self or Brahman cannot be a goal in any practical way because it is beyond time and space, cause and effect.†Yet elsewhere he enjoins us to “be you Self†and to “assert your true universal Self.†But he doesn’t tell us how to be it or assert it. Frawley’s book is teeming with innumable meditation methods, but what’s missing is a description of the single, radical (gone-to-the-root) method for directly and immediately plugging into the Divine Being and channeling Its Power, or Shakti. I teach this method, which I call Plugged-in Presence, and if Frawley himself had “cracked the cosmic egg,†he’d also teach a similar-type integral method (which teaches one how to be the Self) rather than a slew of lesser practices.
A recurrent complaint of mine in my (140 and counting) Amazon reviews of spiritual books is the failure of most of these books to consider the subject of esoteric spiritual anatomy. But I ‘m happy to say that this isn’t a problem with this book, and Frawley, in fact, presents some deep and interesting material on the interrelationship among the spiritual heart (Hridaya, not Anahata), the sahasrar, and the other chakras.
In sum, this is a poorly written book that covers a lot of ground regarding Hindu Tantric Yoga. It provides a good deal of information, but suffers from inaccuracies and superficiality (except for the chapters on esoteric anatomy). I would like to give this book four stars, but the writing is so bad I can only, in good conscience, give it three.
