Conscious Choice: Sex as a Divine Experience

February 2004

Sex as a Divine Experience

by Virginia Lee

A native of France, Margot Anand first experienced tantra at the age of 18 while a student at the Sorbonne in Paris. After graduating with a degree in psychology, philosophy and art history, Anand spent the next seven years traveling the world in search of understanding the deeper meaning of her life.

She is the author of The Art of Sexual Magic, The Art of Sexual Ecstasy and her most recent book The Art of Everyday Ecstasy.

Conscious Choice: How did you discover tantra?

Margot Anand: The first time I made love, I discovered tantra. Although I had never heard the word "tantra" and didn’t know what tantra was, in fact what I had was a tantric experience. In other words, it was an experience of consciousness expansion beyond the body, beyond the mind and beyond time so that I connected with the truth of who I truly am, that which existed before I was born and will continue to exist after I die. I am referring to the eternal self. I realized the light of spirit and I knew that sexuality was going to be my path of awakening as a woman. That was my revelation the very first time I made love. That’s what put me on my path. After I finished my studies at the Sorbonne, I went on to research sacred sexuality around the world for seven years.

CC: How do you define "tantra"?

MA: I would say that tantra is the art of choosing with awareness what brings you joy, so that it opens the door to your spirit. That’s one definition. Another is that tantra is the art of weaving the contradictory aspects of your personality into one whole for the purpose of expanding your consciousness. Let’s say you’re on a date. Maybe your heart says, "Yes, I want to open up. This is the one." But your mind says, "Absolutely not, remember what happened last time." And then your body says, "I’m turned on. I want sex." All the different aspects of your self are in contradiction to one another. You’re not in harmony, you’re in pain. So the tantric work I teach on the chakras harmonizes your energy and your consciousness into one entity. It’s the marriage between shakti (pure energy) and shiva (pure consciousness). When they marry, the world is born.

CC: What is the greatest misconception about tantra?

MA: There is a big misunderstanding in this country about tantra. Unfortunately, tantra has gotten a very bad reputation and is often thought of as a bastardized, semi-mystical sexual therapy. Some people seem to think if they can manage to have a one-hour orgasm, they can claim to be enlightened. Everybody who has been repressed by this puritanical culture becomes obsessed with the senses and the garden of pleasure, and all of a sudden, sexual prostitutes are called dakinis. The original meaning of the word "dakini" is the female Buddha, the enlightened woman. It saddens my heart to see how low we have gone. As one of the original teachers of tantra in this country, I see that most people don’t really know what it is all about.

In this country, it is hard to talk about sex and maintain any dignity. Sex is often perceived as something hidden, dirty and forbidden. Although that’s exactly what makes it so interesting, it’s what brings so much violence into it. It is as if you have to fight through all the cultural taboos to have a good time. That’s where I come in, to recondition people’s bodies, hearts and minds to understand that’s not the right approach. And I’m quite successful at it.

CC: Why is the spiritual element in sex so important?

MA: Orgasm is what brings us the closest to the experience of the divine. In the moment of orgasm, there is a bonding between the right side of our brain, which is the artistic and feeling side, and the left side, which is the center of thinking and logic. When intuition and intelligence fuse into one zero point of total connection, the ego disappears, time disappears and you become one with energy and consciousness. Even the enlightened Vedic masters of 5,000 years ago, discovered meditation through exploring orgasmic states in sex. There’s a close connection between advanced meditation and a good orgasm.

CC: What do you mean by High Sex?

MA: High sex for me is simply a method to get high naturally. Sex is a practice that releases endorphins, that expands our brain and releases natural opiates that can relieve pain in the body. I’ve discovered that if you have one long orgasm a day, your whole life will change — your creativity, your career, your magnetism, your ability to handle crisis, your finances. Sex is the shortest and best way to access your naturally high state of being.

CC: Is there a right way and a wrong way to make love?

MA: Yes. Usually the wrong way happens because physiologically speaking, there is a different psychology and timing in the way the body responds in the woman compared to the man. When the man is excited or stimulated, when he sees the beauty of a certain type of woman, his penis responds automatically. It is a brain/sex reflex that he has very little control over, and it’s something that happens within a few seconds to a few minutes. Once he is inside the woman, then he can relax and that’s when he opens his heart. This may take all of ten minutes. The erect penis just wants to be in the garden.

However, the woman is very different. Where the man starts with sex and moves to the heart, the woman starts from the heart. She needs a lot more time. She needs to feel safe and protected. She needs to be touched in her heart and held as a little girl so that she can relax and trust the man. When all of that is given, then something relaxes in her, her juices flow, her sex opens and she is ready. All this takes about a half an hour at least, so he is ready way before she is.

Confusion arises if she just lets him have his way without telling him what she needs, and he ends up landing before she has time to take off. Maybe she doesn’t really have an orgasm and she’s frustrated. Maybe she doesn’t even talk about it, and expresses her feeling toward him as anger. The whole situation can escalate because there hasn’t been honest communication about what each partner needs. So the wrong way is to have sex is without awareness and communication. The right way is to have sex the tantra way in a sacred space, which is explained thoroughly in my first book, The Art of Sexual Ecstasy.

CC: How can sex induce healing?

MA: You cannot have good sex unless you drop the past and the future — and become totally present. That’s why so often when lovers get excited, they have to have a quarrel first, because they are about to drop their defenses. When those defenses drop, all the little demons of frustration and resentment that haven’t been dealt with suddenly emerge and there’s a fight. Actually, the fight is a catharsis to release all the charged energy that has accumulated. When the lovers are able to navigate through this negative energy, forgive and focus on the real goal of having an orgasm together, then they arrive at a place where the energy can be healed and transformed.

CC: Can you help those who want to heal from sexual trauma and abuse?

MA: Those people come to us all the time. We teach the Love and Ecstasy training on five-day retreats with different topics. In The Art of Sexual Ecstasy, there is a chapter on "Healing the Yoni" in which I explain what trauma does. Trauma, especially sexual trauma, leaves such a violent impact on the tissues of the body that it goes numb and consciousness leaves the body. The place that was violated becomes numb to protect the person’s psyche. It is as if the body is saying, "I will help you not to feel there anymore, so it won’t be so painful." So, people wonder why they don’t feel anything in their genitals and don’t have orgasms. It’s because they need to release sensation back into that place. To feel sensation again, they need to be touched and massaged the way that I explain in the book, so that the memory of that trauma can come back and be healed as an adult in a safe situation with a loving partner.

CC: Why do you think so many religions have taboos about sex?

MA: Traditionally, religion has always tried to control human sexuality, because when someone becomes ecstatic, they are free. The system that is run by the politicians and the priests want to harness people’s energy so that the citizens will make money and support the priests and politicians. People are taught to believe that a priest is necessary for them to have a relationship with the divine. They do not believe it is possible to have this experience on your own, which is what tantra teaches. So, the priests have a vested interest in controlling people, especially when it comes to having an ecstatic experience. This is where the traditional separation between the flesh and the spirit comes from. The body has been regarded as the abode of evil instincts, while the spirit is what will bring you to God. When people are convinced of their original sin and guilt, they are under control of the church and are powerless. This is what I mean when I say that we are trapped in the Anti-Ecstatic Conspiracy. The system does not want us to wake up to our natural ecstasy. The moment a person does wake up, they become a free thinker and are considered dangerous. That’s when they become a "cultural creative," someone who demands to have meaning in their life in every moment.

CC: What culture in the world has the healthiest attitude about sex?

MA: Bhutan. It is the only tantra culture left in the world. It is the only culture where women are openly allowed to have many lovers without being chastised or judged in any way. A man is happy when a woman comes to him and asks for a wonderful night of lovemaking, because they believe that an orgasmic woman is a happy woman who will serve the community better. It is his goal and duty to make her happy. It’s not the other way around like it is in our culture, where the woman is expected to serve the needs of the man.

Raising the children is taken on by the whole village, not just by an individual person. And it is a matrilineal society where property and wealth can be transferred equally to men and to women.

CC: What is the source of your inspiration?

MA: My yoni! That is the source of my inspiration. I just spent seven months doing a fast with no lovemaking, to intensively explore enlightenment, zen meditation and consciousness without sex. I was in silent retreat for weeks at a time. I just broke my fast a few weeks ago. And I find my yoni as responsive and happy as she ever was before. I was worried that she would atrophy.

There is a deep connection between my yoni and my brain, so when my yoni has an orgasm, I feel empowered to write books, give workshops and be playful in the feminine. For many years, my yoni was my teacher and whatever she was telling me, I would listen.

CC: What is the essential message of your most recent book, The Art of Sexual Ecstasy?

MA: It is possible to take the tantric experience outside of the bedroom and bring it into our everyday life. The skills and the realizations you have in becoming a good lover are the same ones you can apply to your work and your family life. Intimacy with yourself and with whatever you do is just a matter of being present.

For example, if your first chakra is closed, you will go around feeling like you never had enough money or a good enough place to live. If your chakra is open and relaxed, you are grateful for what you have and you feel fulfilled. And it’s like that for each of the chakras. It’s like a behavioral map, so that you can read yourself, your partner and change your behavior.

CC: Do you believe that heaven is to be found on earth?

MA: Yes. Heaven is within.

Virginia Lee is a writer who specializes in holistic subjects. She’s author of: The Roots of Ras Tafari (Avant Books, 1985) and Affairs of the Heart (Crossing Press, 1993). She lives in Santa Cruz, CA.

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