WHAT IS TANTRA?

Three Articles on Tantra

1. Tantra and Tantric Sex - An Overview byTanya

2. The Difference between Tantric and Normal Sex byTanya

3. The Tantric Way by Steven Vogue

TANTRA AND TANTRIC SEX - AN OVERVIEW

Anya

Tantra is a spiritual path and a path of sacred sexuality, whereby you come to experience the union of your sexual and spiritual energies. In so doing, you experience the divinity in yourself, your partner and in all of existence. Tantra is concerned with the transformation of energy. It directs us to transform our life-force energy and sexual energy into spiritual energy for the purpose of spiritual enhancement and enlightenment. Within the context of Tantra, sexual relationships and experiences are grist for the mill of our spiritual advancement – which includes creating a bond of sacred love with our partner.

Tantra is an ancient tradition with its roots in Hinduism and Buddhism. It came to America and the west, pioneered in a new form, known as Neo- Tantra. It’s resurgence can be attributed mainly to the enlightened Tantric master Osho Rajneesh and his disciples – although others, such as the kria-yoga Tantricas played a crucial role too. Osho Rajneesh underplayed the emphasis on mantras, positions and ritual and placed it on spiritual consciousness, and a unique combination of meditation, risk-taking, wildness and spontaneity. The issue was to go deep, find your true core and express it in it’s fullness – both in life and in your sexuality.

The Tantric couple approach their love-making without performance concerns, goals or agendas – other than to taste fully the essence and form of each moment. They are not concerned with the pleasures or pains of the past. They are not anticipating the future, longing for or reaching toward this or that experience. They are not moving towards orgasm. Only this moment exists for them and they let it fill their senses, surrendering to it completely. and the next moment rises inevitably out of the fullness of their experience. Their love making is slower, calmer, more meditative. They are in no hurry to get anywhere. There is nowhere to go but here – and now here – and now here. They attune their breathing and circulate their sexual energy together – either in synchrony or in counter-point to each other. By this means they build a powerful charge of subtle energy. By focusing their attention on their conscious intention and their breathing and by visualizing of the movement and direction of this subtle energy, they are able to draw their life-force and sexual energy up their central meridian to the higher spiritual centers in the brow (the third eye) and the crown, thereby igniting their spiritual centers and uniting their spiritual and sexual energies. Through the same means they are able to transmit these energies to their partner or receive them from their partner, in one of a variety of different configurations, that includes circling the energy between them and sending it back and forth in a U-shaped dimension. In so doing, they create the Circle of Bliss that Tantra talks about – in which the lovers experience a powerful force of light traveling within and uniting their two bodies. This force can become so expansive that they disappear into the light either individually or together, and so become one with each other and all of existence.

There are a number of pre-requisite for Tantra without which no Tantra exists.

• The first has to do with the relationship between the partners. This relationship is one of the sacred heart space. When a couple is in the sacred heart space, the partners acknowledges and experience the sacred dimension in both themselves and in their partner and pay homage to the Godhead within. There is a term in Tantra called Namaste. It means: “The God in me salutes the God in you. I bow down to the divinity within you. I honor your high being.” Thus, in Tantra, it is from a place of high honoring, reverence and cherishing that two people meet - whether or not they are lovers

• The second prerequisite is to be totally present in the moment – sensing and feeling into it - and out of your mind. Thinking is the anesthetic of the senses. When you are fully aware, with your consciousness in your senses, and are out of your mind, you experience much more, with far greater intensity and vividness. You are more alive in both your life in general and in your sensuality and sexuality in particular.

• The third pre-requisite is to celebrate life regardless of what life brings. To be Tantric is to say “yes” to life with gratitude.. This requires that we not be attached to our preferences of how we want things to but rather to find the blessing in the “what is” of life and flow with it.

• The fourth pre-requisite is to be able to run energy – to be able to move and direct your life-force sexual energy, spreading it across your body, so that your whole body becomes alive, and to be able to send it up your central meridian and interweave it with your spiritual energy. In doing so you are able to experience yourself in a profoundly heightened spiritual and sexual state simultaneously, thereby weaving together these energies and centers. When love-making, a Tantric couple must be able to circulate this transformed energy between their bodies, which, in an expanded ecstatic state, they will experience as full body orgasm

It can be said that Tantra teaches you how to use sexual energy to achieve altered states of consciousness that create a union between the earthly and the divine, between the sexual and the spiritual. This is achieved by slowing down time by slowing down the breath and being absolutely present to what is being experienced in this slowed down time. By focusing your attention on your senses, you become so attentive to what you are experiencing, you begin to attune to the energetic realm within yourself and your partner. You use your attention to intensify, expand, and direct your energy to different places in your own and your partner’s body. In so doing you can create a circle of bliss between yourself and your partner and can now generate ecstatic states at will. Tantra is best taught through direct experience of being with an adept.

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN TANTRIC AND NORMAL SEX

Anya

Tantric love-making is a matter of the heart and feelings. The two partners come to each other from the sacred heart space and meet each other on the level of their high being – that part of them that is their most beautiful, loving, compassionate, up-lifted selves. They honor, cherish and revere each other because they chose to focus on the best in each other, especially during their intimate times together. They bring sacredness to their sexual experiences with each other and yet at the same time free up that part of them selves that is wild, abandoned, primitive and spontaneous. In normal love-making, the novelty of new lovers keeps them very attentive and honoring with each other and thus the sex is hot. Over-time familiarity steps in and couples become less attentive and honoring with each other, and begin to take each other for granted. They do the same thing over and over again in the same location and, often at the same times, and are not fully attentive as they do it. As a result the sex becomes routine and they lose their desire for each other and become disappointed in their sexual partnership with each other.

Normal sex is a fast moving, continual escalating rise of energy from no excitement to a peak of excitement and orgasm The goal of intercourse is orgasm – an orgasm that comes far too soon for most women to have orgasm during intercourse. Tantric sex has no goal but to enjoy the moment. It is a slow, heart connected, experience with rises and falls of energy and plateaus and multiple peaks that goes on and on over extended time.

With Tantricas, there is a lot of eye contact and heart connection, a lot of playfulness and even silliness. There may be breaks for erotic dancing, snacks, a change of positions, such as from man on top to scissors position, or from sitting in yub yum to anal sex, from sensual massage and erotic sensual delights that pleasure the skin, taste, smell and ears of a blind folded receiver, and that might include sucking liqueur off a breast, or searching for a grape in a yoni, to making love in a Tantra swing hung from the ceiling. There is no push for anyone’s orgasm and at no point does anyone want there to be more arousal than there is. The desire only is to totally enjoy whatever is happening and to be fully present to it to all the enjoyment it has to offer.
The bodies of Tantricas are relaxed and abandoned. There is no resistance to the sexual energy. They are fluid and undulating and shift positions often. Typically, lovers are fairly rigid; their body’s tense with the sexual energy and apart from the man moving in and out with powerful, and often numbing thrusting, there is little movement.

Tantricas use their breath, attention, the movement of their bodies, the contraction of their p.c. muscles, their sounds and their imagination or consciousness to move their sexual energy from their genitals into their body so that their whole body becomes alive and turned on with sexual energy. Some of that sexual energy may be taken out of the genitals in the case of the man, which means that he is a little less aroused genitally and in a better position to receive more arousal without ejaculating. In normal sex all attention remains on the genitals and building the energy there and so ejaculation happens much more quickly.

Tantricas know that where consciousness goes, energy flows. They use their concentrated attention to move their energy throughout their body, particularly sending it to their heart and third eye, which is their spiritual center. In this way, they can experience the unions of the sexual and spiritual energy and imbue their sexual energy with their love for their partner. This movement of their energy results in streams of vibrations and the experience of light moving through their body. They can similarly use their consciousness to direct this energy into their partner and to receive this energy from their partner in a variety of configurations. Through this means Tantricas create a great deal of their own turn-on instead of relying on their partner to turn them on. Ordinarily, the sexual energies and experiences of the non-Tantrica are more dependent upon each other, in that each is more reliant or the visual and kinesthetic behavior of their partner for their turn-on rather than on their own ability to access and run sexual and love energy. Their sexual energies are also more separate from their partner in that they are more focused on the arousing sensations in their own body or the fantasies in their secret mind, than on the movement of sexual energies between their bodies in a variety of configurations and on the experience of their merged energies becoming as one.

Tantricas slow down time and slow down the speed of their sexual experience by slow, deep belly breathing. Exhalations are often through the mouth with a sigh or a sound that gives voice to the sexual feeling that is being experienced. In normal sex, breathing is often fast and shallow. There may be panting or very little breathing at all.

Sound is a key to the sexual energy of the Tantrica. The Tantrica is very noisy throughout lovemaking; making moans and groans, sighs, gasps, etc. Non-Tantric lovemaking is much more silent, especially on the part of the male, with most sound coming at the moment of orgasm. All sound is energy. Sexual sound is sexual energy. When you make sexual sounds you fill your body with sexual energy. You fill the room with sexual energy, you partner hears and they get filled with sexual energy. The more your body is filled with sexual energy the more energy you have to send to your partner and the closer you are to full body orgasm. For a male Tantrica who knows ejaculation mastery, that means orgasm without ejaculation and the opportunity to keep on making love and having many more orgasms.

Normal sex is wonderful but it has trouble with-standing the test of time and every long, successful relationship puts it to the test of time. Tantric sex is more wonderful and becomes more wonderful over time. This is because Tantric couples share the deep truth of their existence with each other and acknowledge and honor each other, thereby becoming continuously more emotionally intimate. Emotional intimacy is the foundation of sexual intimacy in long-term relationships. When you add to this emotional intimacy and the sacred heart space that leads to it, the Tantrica’s skill in focusing their attention in their senses and out of their mind, in moving their sexual energy and merging it with their spiritual energy and with their partner’s energy, and in surrendering to each other from the place of their high being, you have Tantric sex.

THE TANTRIC WAY

Steven Vogue

When one travels along the path of conscious sensual intimacy one comes to a fork in the road – one path is well known and we’ve traveled it many times; it is the mountain path leading to the peak, the usual path that starts with touching, thence to kissing, thence to foreplay and stimulation, to building excitement, and fairly quickly to sex. The participants primary movement is that of more and more excitement, faster breathing, and within a short period of time a peak experience of energy breakthrough known as an orgasm – a peak orgasm, usually experienced by the male, who, having released this energy has no more energy left to facilitate an orgasm for his partner. Indeed, some statistics demonstrate that 90% of women are pre-orgasmic and 90% of men ejaculate prematurely – and there is a meaningful relationship between these two statistics – the main reason so many women are pre-orgasmic is due to the man’s habitual pattern of yearning for and quickly attaining the peak orgasm – “getting off” as it were.

The path less traveled by is the path that leads into the valley – This is the Tantric path. As one comes to the fork and looks down the Tantric path there is a mystical signpost that is mandatory reading for the traveler on this path. The signpost reads, “At the start of sexual union keep attentive on the fire in the beginning, and, so continuing, avoid the embers in the end.” The signpost was planted there by Shiva centuries ago and is one of the 112 meditations. The traveler is encouraged to travel this path as a meditation and in meditation.

Most westerners, if they have heard of Tantra at all, believe that Tantra has something to do with sex. Although this is true, Tantra is all inclusive. Tantra is a pathless spiritual path in the sense that a path infers that one is going somewhere on something that leads somewhere. Tantra, however doesn’t go somewhere or lead somewhere, thus it is pathless. Tantra represents a state of being, not doing. The Tantric state is that of total acceptance, an acceptance of what is in this moment. Tantra says there is only one reality – that which is now, only this moment. The future is non-existential – it doesn’t exist – tomorrow doesn’t exist – when it comes it will be today, then it will exist. The past is non-existential – it doesn’t exist – yesterday doesn’t exist.

In the sensual/sexual/intimate arena Tantra allows for everything – complete indulgence with complete awareness present – from soft and slow to hot and wild to completely mad. However, it is suggested that the beginner on the path go slowly, breath slowly, look into your beloved’s eyes, the windows of the soul, and feel the ecstatic moment. Touch in a way that focuses your unified consciousness on the energy of touch – touching yet not touching – so close physically with fingers or lips that you are about to touch and yet an infinitesimal distance away so that you are not quite touching. In that space and state of being put your attention on that space – the space between touch and non-touch. The energy is there.

The experience is much like riding a bicycle. When attempting a bicycle for the first time one has to remember technique – which way to turn the wheel when the bike leans left, etc. Ultimately, as the knack is developed, the technique is dropped and forgotten about if one wants to achieve the highest expertise. Likewise, technique is valuable in Tantra up to a point. After that, the knack is developed and the technique is dropped in favor of experiencing the bliss of being, not that of doing as technique would imply. One has to “do” a technique – one has to “be” an experience.

Once the enlivened touch/non-touch energy space is experienced, breathing together slowly brings about more focused awareness and intensity. Tantra says that the breath is the bridge between the physical and the spiritual. Experiencing the unified breath does a number of things. Firstly, a slow breath slows down the mind and its thoughts and brings you into the present – into meditation. Tantric “turn-on” is in the present. Secondly, by slowing down the breath and thence the mind, the attention is taken out of the head and into feeling – into the heart Thirdly, attention on the slow breath and consequently slowing of the mind particularly in sexual union produces an excitedly relaxed state such that the male can focus on the breath, remain in the present (the fire in the beginning) and withdraw his attention from his genitals, and shift away from the urge to ejaculate and shift toward the state of ecstatic union – with the recognition of the truth that the male-female energy is one.
As the participants stay in the present, they perceive their union as a vibrant, living, energy and as it becomes more energetic it becomes more meditative and the more meditative it becomes the more each of you melt and merge into each other, forgetting you even have bodies. And since you are not “going anywhere” and are totally in the moment and totally excitedly relaxed, there is no peaking out with an ejaculation because the energy is moving up – and the male can now be in sexual union for hours simply because he heeded the Tantric signpost with the centuries old sutra that said, “At the start of sexual union, keep attentive on the fire in the beginning, and, so continuing, avoid the embers in the end.”

Tantra says stay in the beginning – forget all about the end. Tantra says, stay in the moment, in the present. Tantra has no future and has no past -- its only existence is in the here now. Thus, forget about having an orgasm, simply stay in the present moment. Stay in an excitedly relaxed space, without being in a hurry. This is not an oxymoron. Excitedly relaxed is that of keeping the attention on the present energetic level of excitement without looking for anything more – its an attitude that says, “This moment is so magnificent and perfect that nothing more is wanted, nothing is wished for.