OM. May Brahman protect us both! May Brahman bestow upon us both the fruit of Knowledge! May we both obtain the energy to acquire Knowledge! May what we both experience reveal the Truth! Om. Peace! Peace! Peace!
— Ancient Tantric Invocation
Michael and Tara have something exquisite that surpasses ordinary love relationships. They have what they call a sacred, spiritual marriage. They see each other as united — truly in union — what sacred matrimony was meant to be. They share a lifetime commitment to the spiritual awakening of each other and to the world-at-large. Michael is a chiropractor and Tara works with him as a skilled bodyworker. Their life-work is a natural extension of the deep love that they share for each other and also the ecstasy that they cultivate by practicing the ancient path of Tantra yoga.
Michael and Tara admit that Tantric sex is a sacred communion far superior to ordinary sex. They often experience mutual orgasms with Tantra which they say are indescribably sublime and not confined to only the genitals. Each experiences full body-mind-spirit orgasms which involve all energy centers (chakras) simultaneously. It is an enduring ecstacy which arrives with the recognition and co-realization of their oneness with each other and with the Divine. To achieve this level of enduring bliss, Michael and Tara, like other practitioners of Tantra yoga, use sex as a disciplined practice for the purpose of transcendence.
When they enter the gateway of sacred sex, they transcend the ego and all of its conditioning and defensive strategies. They transcend the madness of our culture and its obsession with acquiring, accumulating, and “making it.” In ecstatic embrace, gazing into each others’ eyes for hours, they transcend even time and space and enter a radiant reality where they become for each other the unborn primal god and goddess who are eternally making love, but who are also simultaneously, a mysterious Oneness.
Joy, lady! is the spirit and the power,
Which wedding Nature to us gives in dower
A new Earth and new Heaven,
Undreamt of by the sensual and the proud
[or the]...poor loveless ever-anxious crowd.
— Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Michael and Tara are part of a growing number of couples who have turned to the ancient practice of Tantra which is currently growing in popularity here in the West. According to the yogic philosophy of Tantra, a relationship is a sacred vessel wherein two individuals, by the power of their love and attraction, empower and hasten each other’s spiritual growth and final enlightenment. Sex is regarded as an ever-evolving purification ritual and a playful celebration of unity. Ultimately, couples practicing Tantra find themselves working for an ever-higher purpose. For some, this means a spiritual adventure which includes raising happy, balanced children. For others, a Tantric relationship works as a foundation force for the transformation of suffering in the world.
This partnership style of spiritual context is radically removed from what people usually associate with spirituality. Most of us in the West don’t associate sexuality with a serious, mystical pursuit of truth. Traditionally, would-be saints and sages, emphasizing the “other-worldliness” of ultimate reality, followed a solitary path that included seclusion and celibacy. They wanted to retreat far away from the temptations of ordinary life. The world was regarded as an illusion created by the self-deluding senses.
In the religious traditions of both the East and the West, the sexual path of the “householder” was regarded as a slower, inferior spiritual path. This viewpoint fostered the impression that something was “wrong” with the body and with nature at large. Indeed, in our Judeo-Christian West, since the time of St. Augustine, the human body has been regarded as “sinful.” Hence, sexual intercourse for purposes other than reproduction was considered hazardous or even evil. The attitude that the “flesh is weak, is laden with sin,” had also been sifted through Western science since Descartes, who posited the body/ spirit split. Such dualisms which attempt to cut the body away from the mind have been handed down to us and are deeply ingrained in our collective Western psyche. The consequential guilt and the suppression of the sex drive contributed to the repudiation of pleasure in general. Ultimately, it has contributed to the trivialization and titillation of sex that bombards us daily through the media and is glamorized by Hollywood and the Playboy philosophy. In our culture, sex often becomes either taboo and thus forbidden, or, something one over-indulges in hedonistically.
Ancient Tantric adepts turned this all around by offering a new appraisal of human embodiment and physical reality. They offered a spiritual path that steered clear of the limitations of puritanism but which also avoided Western sensationalism. Derived from ancient Hindu and Buddhist religious philosophies, Tantra was designed to be a spiritual pathway for our modern times. Anticipating the hectic pace of a materialistic and sensory-bombarded age to come, ancient enlightened theorists proposed an alternative yoga to the exclusive one of celibacy and monasticism. Understanding that there are only a select few in any generation that are cut out for the rigors of the celibate, monastic life, the early Tantric adepts forged a mystical path open to all. Bodily existence, according to Tantrism, is not in conflict with the highest spiritual reality. The universe is the delightful play of the all-pervading One Being manifesting as a loving union of god and goddess. God and goddess are two halves of a whole — like the Chinese yin-yang diagram. God and goddess are eternally embracing each other, eternally making love with each other.
The central teaching in Tantra is that all of life is sacred, especially our sexuality. This is because Tantrism views the sex power as being the same inner energy that powers our enlightenment. The practitioner of sexual Tantra attempts to use the powerful sexual force as an agent for awakening and transcendence.
Tantrics believe that it takes a lot of energy to “remember” the original Oneness. Instead of involving seclusion and a solitary path of abstinence to generate this energy, Tantrism teaches that this energy is available within us all as our sexual power — variously called kundalini (Sanskrit) or Ming Men, “Life Gate Fire” (Chinese). This energy can be awakened and directed toward the spiritual goal of realizing the clear vision of divine unity. In Tantrism, energy and consciousness are one and the same like the two sides of a coin. In the Hindu Tantra, this polarity is personified as Shiva (consciousness) and Shakti (life energy). The practitioner of sexual Tantra intends to reach ecstatic union with her or his partner through surrender of the ego to this released energy. Love and sexual attraction stir the energy awake and allow it to rise. Consciousness expands between love partners to the point where there is the possibility of directly experiencing the true nature of each other as a profound identification with the primal god and goddess. It is at this point that the sense of separateness vanishes and a true ecstatic merging or union is possible.
However, the sexual dimension of Tantra is only one of many methods. Tantrism, as an ontological system spanning thousands of years, includes copious rich teachings and techniques called Tantras. This sanskrit word has a variety of meanings including “continuity,” “interweaving,” “network,” and “relationship.” Sometimes Tantra yoga is referred to as the “yoga of relationship” or the “yoga of transformation.” This is because in Tantra, Life is regarded as the sacred relationship between “you” and “me” — the I and the thou. The universe is a vast network of interconnections that appears diverse and separated and yet in reality is one and whole. The ancient Tantric teachings support the deep yearning of our hearts to realize the pristine condition of non-separation, the bliss of realizing that we are all interconnected, that we are the same transparent Being!
We are one but we divide for the sake of love, for the chance of union
— From an ancient Vedic hymn
The Tibetan Tantric literature emphasizes uniting the male and female principles within oneself viewed as a microcosm of the cosmos. This is usually achieved through visualizations of certain deities (bodhisattvas) and the transformation of karmic energies. In Tantra, the spiritual work to be accomplished requires positive, life-affirming attitudes in contrast to the monastic tendency to close off to life. The impurities and obscurations that we all possess and which keep us stuck are not viewed as obstacles to be removed, but rather as inherent aspects of our nature to be transformed into their natural state. The body is regarded as a “spiritual laboratory” where all of these subtle energy transformations take place. Tantrism teaches that our actual, innate condition is complete and perfect as it is. We need only to be present in and remain undistracted from this already-existing primordially optimal state.
With a loving partner, through the power of one’s attraction to the beloved’s beauty and unique mystery, we can release and raise sufficient energy to awaken to this primordially optimal state — to the mystery of non-separation. However, there are dangers in the Tantric path as there are in any mystical, spiritual tradition. Since transformation and enlightenment are achieved through cultivating a conscious, loving relationship, we need to follow the many guidelines that have been passed down to us concerning compatibility and safety. A novice practitioner would do well to find a teacher who offers support, teachings, and the requisite initiations into this sacred practice.
In Tantric sexual yoga there are three requirements for choosing a mate: 1) emotional maturity, 2) sexual chemistry, and 3) sharing a similar spiritual philosophy. These three components ensure compatibility and are the necessary context for commitment. Long-term commitment is an important requirement in true Tantra practice because it takes time to develop the high level of unconditional love and acceptance which forms the foundation for the practice of sacred sexual union. A commitment to sacred union involves a mature acceptance of the dark, shadow sides of each other. The worst and the ugliest sides of ourselves inevitably become exposed in the light of blissful awakening. In our ordinary relationships we too often flee from each other when the “shit hits the fan” not realizing that these impurities are arising to be healed and transformed. And often we cling to the adolescent romantic “high-voltage” phase. And far too often there is societal support for abandoning a potentially viable relationship. (No wonder the divorce rate in America since 1980 is 61 percent!)
True spiritual love involves a grinding down of the ego with all of its masks and pretensions. C. G. Jung once stated, “Love...is the dynamism that most infallibly brings the unconscious to light.” In Tantra, we pick a partner that will help us to finish the “homework” of healing our childhoods. The “baggage” of our wounded past with all of its unmet needs is waiting to be loved and transformed. In the face of ecstatic Tantric sex, all “buttons” get pressed, character armor is released and in the mirror of lover and beloved, childhood vulnerablities eventually diminish freeing up enormous reserves of creative energy.
The ultimate ideal or fruit of sacred Tantric practice is that each lover realizes true union with the beloved. Each lover realizes that the beloved is the same being — and that “we” have always been the same being. Furthermore, that all beings are also arising out of the same transparent Oneness. It’s just that, out of intense mutual love for each other, we have chosen our beloved (out of innumerable choices) as a vehicle for this realization. We have found that our love, attraction, and spiritual compatibility were strong enough to bring us together for this feast of awakening. At this point, it becomes clear that Life is the precious, playful path to Divine Reality and concomitantly, a loving celebration of Oneness. And that the spiritual function of a sacred relationship is to make the bumpy ride toward liberation a little smoother for each other. Then the relationship can function as a base and a force for regenerating the world for the benefit of all sentient beings.
Justin Pomeroy is the director of Life Gate Center which offers acupuncture and acupressure treatments and classes. He was an instructor of Tantra at the Learning Annex in the 1980s. For information on Tantra instruction call Justin at 773-281-4450 or email him.