"Tantra" is
a Sanskrit word of two parts. The prefix, tan, means “to
expand, join or weave.” The latter part, tra, means “tool.” Therefore,
the definition of the term Tantra has a two-fold meaning—“a
tool to expand, liberate, and bring together.” What is
known about Tantra is that the most common form is preserved
through such writings as the Kama
Sutra (probably written around the time of
Christ) and the Ananga
Ranga (a collection of erotic works from around 1100
A.D.) The purest form of Tantra was not passed down in writing,
but only by way of initiations and personal instruction.
Some people believe
that Tantra evolved from the practice of yoga, which,
like Tantra, is about liberation and joining. In
fact, many of the physically challenging sexual positions
of Tantric lovemaking are actually yoga postures
used for personal awakening.
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When we say Tantra,
some say " Yoga
of sex"
This is incorrect traditionally.
Tantra is often translated as “warp”, like
the warp on a loom. This means that in this Universe,
everything is actually "connected" as
woven fabric etc. In this Universe there exists a web
that connects all to all. An Arab phrase says: if you
cut a blade of grass, the whole world shudders.
This concept is amazing, since it shows us that the ancient
Tantrics knew and percived the " Universe "at
a level that only today we begin to understand.
Although
most "spiritual
disciplines" insist
on evolving into higher states of consciousness by
controlling or "denying
the senses"and
so called lower states of consciousness ,
Tantra teaches that you cannot experience complete
personal
and spiritual
liberation while restricting a part of your being
How can one experience Total unity
whilst denying a part of that Totality
?
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Growing out of the yogic tradition, Tantra
appears in provinces that had not been strongly Vedicised:
e.g. the Northwest, Bengal, and the South (Eliade, Ibid p.201)
in the fourth century of the common era. Within the space of
a few centuries it had attained pan-Indian inflence. A number
of distinct and independent branches developed, so that one can
speak of Mahayana Buddhist tantrism (Tibetan Vajrayana, Mahamudra."adamantine
vehicle", and Japanese Shingon "Mantra teaching")
Shaivite tantrism (in Kashmir, emphasising the monistic Vedantic
perspective), Natha tantrism (a hybrid Shaivite yogic movement),
Shakta tantra (in Bengal, emphasising the chakras, kundalini,
and occult practices), cosmological tantrism (the Pancharatra
movement), Jain tantrism, and even Vaishvana tantrism (among
devotees of Vishnu and Krishna).
"Here ("within" this
body) is the Ganges and Jumna...here are Prayaga and
Benares - here the sun and the moon. Here are the sacred
places, here the Pithas and Upa-pithas - I have not
seen a place of pilgrimage and an abode of bliss like
my body."
Saraha (Indian Tantric Buddhist adept) |
TANTRA is indeed dangerous. It is a threat to all those belief
systems and institutions that have "limited
your potential", stolen your power
and sought to "control" you
through "guilt" and "fear".
That’s why it’s been literally forced underground
for thousands of years.
WHEN A MAN IS IN FEAR,
even though he has been a life long atheist, he starts
turning
into a theist. Priests/Gurus came to know about it, and
then they manipulated it down the ages. The whole past
of humanity is fear ridden. And the greatest way to create
fear is to make man feel guilty about natural things. He
cannot drop them, and he cannot enjoy them because of the
fear of hell, so he is in a double bind. That double
bind is the base of man's exploitation. You cannot just drop your sexuality
because some stupid priest/Guru is saying that it is wrong.
It has nothing
to do with your idea of right and wrong; it is something
natural, something in your very being. You were concieved out
of it, each of your cells is a sexual cell. Just by talking,
you cannot drop it. Yes, you can start repressing it,
and by repressing you can go on accumulating it in the
unconscious, and that becomes a wound. And the more you repress, the more
obsessed you become with it. And the more obsessed you
become, the more guilty
you feel. It is a vicious circle. Now
you are caught in the trap of the priests/Gurus, and of
those seeking to control YOU .
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Margaret Miles observes
that "the regulation of sexuality
was a major power issue in the fourth-century Christian churches.
Regulation of sexual practices was a way to inject the authority
of church laws and leaders into the intimate and daily relationships
of Christians. Analyzing the canons of the Council of Gangra
in AD 309, [Samuel] Laeuchli found that 46 percent of the eighty-one
canons were concerned with sexual relationships and practices." 259
Philip Yancey notes that "between the third and tenth centuries,
church authorities issued edicts forbidding sex on Saturdays,
Wednesdays, and Fridays, and also during the 40-day fast periods
before Easter, Christmas, and Whitsuntide--all for religious
reasons. They kept adding feast days and days of the apostles
to the proscription, as well as the days of female impurity,
until it reached the point that, as Yale historian John Boswell
has estimated, only 44 days a year remained available for marital
sex.
The Tantrikas tried to transform sex into spirituality,
but the preachers of
morality in our history did
not allow the message to reach the masses |
"Where there is ecstasy,
there is creation
Where there is no ecstasy, there is no creation.
In the infinite there is ecstasy
There is no ecstasy in the finite.''
--Chandogya Upanishad |
Tantrikas had the first insight that man's sexual energy
can be transformed easily. The only barrier is repression. If
you repress it, then you cannot transform it. Don't "repress
sexual" energy, don't "condemn" it,
but create a friendship with it, that's what I have been saying.
Don't think of it as a sin; it is not--you are born of it. The
whole life is sex. If you call sex sin, then the whole life becomes
sin, then the whole existence becomes sin--and this is not a
religious approach to the world. We should make the whole world
divine--not sin.
Two bodies, naked and entwined, leap over time, they are
invulnerable,
nothing can touch them, they return to the source, there is
no you, no I, no tomorrow, no yesterday, no names, the truth
of two in a single body, a single soul,
oh total being . . .
Octavio Paz |
Tantrism says that because all beings, all things originate
in the same source (The Absolute, "God")
they all have an essential common trait, that is the Individual
Self ("ATMAN"),
which is identical with The Source of all existence (PARAMATMAN).
Quantum theory thus reveals
the basic oneness of the universe. It shows hat we cannot
decompose the world into independently existing smallest
units. As we penetrate
into matterr, nature does not show us any
isolated basic building blocks but rather a complicated
set of relations between the quantum particles.These
relations always include the observer in an essential
way. |
It is thus obvious that, as all things and beings are
part of the creation, nothing can exist and not have this spark
of Divine Consciousness.
Just like the esoteric oriental tradition of spirituality,
modern physics does not conceive matter as being passive, inert,
static, but as being in a continuous vibratory movement.
When
you look at this life of action—the growing tree, the bird on the wing,
the flowing river, the movement of the clouds, of lightning,
of machines, the action of the waves upon the shore—then
you see, do you not, that life itself is action, endless
action that has no beginning and no end. It is something
that is everlastingly in movement, and it is the universe,
God, bliss, reality. But we reduce the vast action of
life to our own petty little action in life, and ask
what we should do, or follow some book, some system.
— Krishnamurti, Bombay 1958 |
The rhythms of these movements are determined,
among other things, by the atomic, nuclear and molecular structures.
Therefore both science and spirituality converge toward the idea
that the Universe is dynamic, being in a continuous movement
of oscillation.
Nature is not in a static, but in a dynamic
equilibrium. Here is what a Taoist text says about this
matter:
"The silence in
silence is not the true Silence. Only when there
is calmness in movement, the spiritual rhythm [vibration]
which penetrates the Sky and the Earth is born."
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Tantra considers the outer world (objects) and the self
(subject) have the same ultimate nature, acting as an inseparable
whole - this is the principle of unity within diversity and diversity
within unity.
"He,
who sees "inaction in action", and "action
in inaction" is wise among men; he is a yogi,
who has accomplished all action".
Gita c4v18
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. What is this sex energy? Why is
it such a powerful disturbance in our lives? Why does it pervade
our
entire beings? Why do our lives revolve around it, even to the
end? What is the source of this urge?...
"The
most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious.
It is the source of all true art and all science. He
to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer
pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as
dead: his eyes are closed."
Albert Einstein
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my conjecture is that man had his first luminous glimpse
of samadhi during the experience of intercourse. Only in the
moments of coitus did man realize that it was possible to feel
such profound love, to experience such illuminating bliss. that
in the moments
of climax the mind
becomes empty of thoughts. All thoughts drain out
at that moment. And this emptiness of mind, this void, this vacuum,
this freezing of the mind, is the cause of the shower of divine
joy..
The Maithuna Ritual is
basicaly sex with complete attenteion,One places high
emphasis on the squeezing of the male and female Pc muscles,with
practice you will be able to lay or sit with your partner
fully connected, hardly moving except for the internal
squeezing, this action brings waves of exstatic orgasms,
which travel up the spine to the brain, rapturous mind
orgasm and complete
unity Is a common experience…
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Sex is also termed the small death. And because of that
small death in sex, there is so much release of joy in you. For
a single moment you disappear, and that moment is the "climax",
the "orgasm".
In that single moment you don't know who you are. In that single moment
you are pure energy vibrating, pulsating. With no center to it, with
no "ego" in
it.
The
following conversation took place between Jesus and his disciples:
His disciples
asked, When will you become revealed to us and when shall
we see you? Jesus answered,
When you disrobe without being ashamed and take up your garments
and place them under your feet like little children and tread
on them, then will you see the son of the Living One, and you
will not be afraid.[
Gospel of Thomas
The concept of nakedness is
a subjective one. To a simple mind, to an innocent
mind, nudity is not offensive; it has its own beauty.
But up to now, man has been fed on" poison",
and gradually, with the passage of time, this poison
has "spread" from
one pole of his existence to the other.
Consequently, our attitude to "nakedness" is
completely unnatural
Sad Conditioning
"The
stripping off of clothes particularly by married
and elderly women is a way of shaming men -- some
of whom believe that if they see the naked bodies
they will go mad or suffer some great harm. The curse
extends not just to local men but also to any foreigner
who it is believed would become impotent at the sight
of "the naked mother," says Sokari Ekine,
the International Coordinator of the Niger
Delta Women.
Nakedness
Phobia
One may
note the comments of Pope John Paul II in this matter: "The
human body can remain nude
and uncovered and preserve intact its
splendor and its beauty... Nakedness as such is not to
be equated with physical shamelessness... Immodesty is
present only when nakedness plays a negative role with
regard to the value of the person...The human body is
not in itself shameful...
Shamelessness (just like shame and modesty) is a function
of the interior of a person
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"When you are
making love don't control. Go into uncontrol, go into chaos.
It will be fearful, frightening,
because it will be a kind of death. And the mind will say 'Control!'
And the mind will say 'Jump in and keep control, otherwise you
will be lost in the abyss of it.' Don't listen to the mind, get
lost. Abandon yourself utterly. And without any technique you
will come to see a timeless experience. There will be no two
in it: "oneness".
A consciousness will be there, a lucid passive consciousness
will be there, you will know what is happening, because you will
be fully aware.. But you will not be there. Awareness will be
there.
You have to imbibe the Tantra spirit -- it is not a technique to be learned.
In that single moment of orgasmic space you lose all boundaries,
separation. You become vast, huge. You are no more separate from
the other. That's
why there is so much joy -- although the moment is very small"
Because the moment of orgasm is very small.
In Tantra That moment can become very deep, that moment can remain
there for hours.
That moment, once you know the art of remaining in it, can surround
you twenty-four hours. Tantra transforms sex.
Sex is not a need like food or thirst or hunger. Sex has
a definitely total dimension, a different dimension altogether.
It is a way to contact the ultimate reality. It is an urge to
move to the original source.
The Tantra attitude about sex is that sex is not a need.
It is a cosmic experience, it is an experience of meditation.
It is an instinctual return to our ultimate reality, one of the
highest forms of meditation.
Tantra says: The appeal of sex is because it gives you
a moment of egolessness, timelessness, meditation.
In a Tantra coitus you can remain for hours. It is a kind
of melting with the woman or with the man, it is a kind of relaxation
into each other's being. And it is meditative, because there
is no ego, no thought stirs. And time stops. This is a glimpse
of God. Tantra is the natural way to God, the normal way to "God".
The object is to become so completely instinctual, so mindless,
that we merge with ultimate nature -- that the woman disappears
and becomes a door for the ultimate, the man disappears and becomes
a door for the ultimate
This is the Tantra
definition of our sexuality:
The return to absolute innocence, absolute oneness
Real Tantra is not technique but love. Is not technique
but prayer. Is not head-oriented but a relaxation into the heart.
Please remember it. Many books have been written on Tantra, they
all talk about technique. But the real Tantra has nothing to
do with "technique".
The real Tantra cannot be written about, the real Tantra has
to be imbibed. How to imbibe real Tantra? You will have to transform
your whole approach
The Chinese philosopher Su Nu Ching sums it up
most effectively: "All physical
and psychological debility must ultimately be attributed
to the faulty practice of sex. The art of love is to be
considered foremost of all arts in that, correctly practised,
it brings one towards the goal of immortality.'' |
Q: We have always heard
that tantra is basically concerned with sex energy and sex
center techniques, but you say that tantra is all-inclusive.
?
A :The first thing
is to understand sex energy.
As you understand it, it is just a part, one part, one fragment
of the life force, but as Tantra understands it, it is just
synonymous with life. It is not a part, not a fragment - it
is life itself. So when Tantra says "sex" energy
it means "life" energy.
The same is true about "Freudian" concepts
of sex energy. Freud was also very much misunderstood in the West. It
appeared to people that he was reducing life to sex, but he was doing
the same thing that Tantra has been doing for so long.
The
Spirituality of "sex" energy was relized by all
religions
" Islam"
" Bhuddism"
" Hinduism"
" Christianity"
"Is
Chrisianity Moral"
Things
are not always as they appear
The "OM
mantra",
shown in Fig. 1 below, represents a linga being
inserted in the yoni represented
by a woman?s derrière The buttocks; the
rear.. Also shown in Fig. 1 are some early forms
of the OM glyph taken from Indian sources, as well
as the Devanagari spelling of the Sacred Syllable.
We should not forget that the Yoni-lingam is India's
most sacred symbol, and that the sex act is deemed
holy in India, as it in fact is, being in reality
the performance of the only divine act of Creation
that we humans are able of performing. |
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Life
is sex. The word "sex" is
not confined to reproduction, the whole play of life energy
is sex. Reproduction is just a part of that play. Wherever
two energies are meeting - negative and positive - sex has
entered.
It is difficult to understand. For example: you are listening to me.
If you ask "Freud",
or if you ask Tantra masters, they would say that listening is passive,
feminine, and speaking is male. Speaking is a penetration of you and
you are receptive to it. Between a speaker and a listener a sex act is
happening because the speaker is trying to penetrate you and the listener
is receiving. The energy in the listener has become feminine, and if
the listener has not become feminine there will be no phenomenon of listening.
That is why the listener has to be totally passive. He should not think
while listening because thinking will make him active. He should not
go on arguing within because argument will make him active. While listening,
he should be "simply
listening", not doing anything else. Only then can
the message penetrate and become illumined. But then the listener has
become feminine.
Communication happens
only when one party has become male and the other party has
become female, otherwise there can be no communication. Wherever
negative and positive meet, sex has happened. It may be on
the physical plane - positive and negative electricity meet
and sex has happened. Wherever polarities meet, opposites meet,
it is sex.
So sex is a very wide, a very "spacious" term,
it is not concerned only with reproduction. Reproduction is only one
type of phenomenon which is included in sex. Tantra says that when the
ultimate bliss and ecstasy comes inside you, it means your own positive
and negative pole have come to a meeting - because every man is both
man and woman, and every women is both man and woman. You are born not
only from woman or from man, you are born out of a meeting of the opposites.
Your father has contributed, your mother has contributed. You are half
your mother and half your father and they both co-exist within you. When
they meet within, ecstasy happens.
"Buddha
sitting under his Bodhi tree" is in
a deep inner orgasm. The inner forces have met, they
have melted into each other. Now there will be no need
to seek a woman outside because the meeting has happened
with the inner woman. And Buddha is non-attached to,
or detached from, woman outside, not because he is against
woman, but because the ultimate phenomenon has happened
within. Now there is no need. An inner circle has become
whole, now it is complete. That is why such grace comes
to Buddha's face. It is the grace of being complete.
Now nothing is lacking, a deep fulfillment has happened,
now there is no further journey. He has achieved the
ultimate destiny. The inner forces have come to a meeting
and now there is no "conflict".
But it is a sexual phenomenon.
"Meditation" is
a sexual phenomenon, that is why Tantra is said to be sex-based,
sex-oriented - and all these hundred
and twelve techniques are sexual.
Really, no meditative technique can be non-sexual. But you have
to understand the wideness of the term "sex". If you
don't understand you will be confused, and misunderstanding will
follow.
So whenever Tantra says "sex-energy" it means the "elan-vital",
the life-energy itself. They are synonymous. Whatsoever we call
sex is just one dimension of life-energy. There are other "dimensions".
And really it should be so.
You see a seed sprouting, somewhere flowers are coming on a tree, the
birds are singing - the whole phenomenon is sexual. It is life manifesting
itself in many ways. When the bird is singing it is a sexual call, an
invitation. When the flower is attracting butterflies and bees it is
an invitation, because the bees and butterflies will carry the seeds
of reproduction. Everything appears to be divided into these two polarities.
And life is a rhythm between these two opposites. Repulsion and attraction,
coming nearer and going far... these are the rhythms.
Tantra uses the word "sex" wherever
the opposites meet. It is a sexual phenomenon. And how to make
your inner opposites meet, is
the whole purpose of meditation. So all these hundred
and twelve methods are sexual. There cannot be anything
else, there is no possibility. But try to understand the wideness
of the term "sex".
From: Osho, The Book of Secrets
Sex is the characteristic of "destiny" and
in reality uncontaminated. Sex gets contaminated if it is sin
and sin is of the ego and "ultimately
illusion". We are here to play, have
fun and enjoy. Life is not a drag, She is miraculous, beautiful,
awesome. Lila is the divine play of life, enjoyment, love. Our
species is truly destined for eroticism, sensuality and pleasure.
Sex is meditation because it is not solely a procreative act
but truly spiritual because in its very essence sex is egolessness,
decoupled from its animal drive and “I”ness a human
couple can accede true bliss," love",
amorous ecstasy. Osho
We are already that which we will be, which we should
be, which we are to be. The future is already hidden in the present;
the whole possibility is here in the seed. Suddenly one day Buddha
realizes the inner treasure, the Lotus. Then he is no more a
beggar, he becomes a master. The distance between Gautama Siddhartha
and Gautam Buddha is infinite. It is the same distance between
you and Buddhahood but the Lotus (Shakti) is hidden within you;
the flower is hidden in the seed.
All
one needs is to grow and evolve
Tantra
avoids mind and encounters life face to face, neither thinking, “This
is good,” nor thinking, “This is bad”: simply
facing that which is. So it is difficult to say that this is
an attitude – in fact it is a non-attitude.
The second thing
to remember, that tantra is a great yea-sayer; it says yes to
everything. It
has nothing like “no” in its vocabulary, there
is no negation. It never says no to anything, because with
no the fight starts, with no you become the ego. The moment
you say no to anything, you have come the ego already; a conflict
has come in, now you are at war.
Tantra loves, and loves unconditionally.
It never says no to anything whatsoever, because everything
is part of the whole, and everything has its own place in the
whole, and the whole cannot exist with anything missing from
it.
It is said that
even if a drop of water is missing, the whole existence will
thirst. You pluck
a flower in the garden, and you have plucked something out
of the whole existence. You harm a flower, and you have harmed
millions of stars – because everything is interrelated.
The whole exists as a whole, as an organic whole. The whole
exists not as a mechanical thing – everything is related
to everything else.
So tantra says
yes unconditionally. There has never been any other vision of
life which says yes
without any conditions – simply yes. No disappears; from
your very being no disappears. When there is no no, how can
you fight? How can you be at war? You simply float. You simply
merge and melt. You become one. The boundaries are there no
more. No creates the boundary. No is the boundary around you.
Whenever you say no, watch – immediately something closes
in. Whenever you say yes, your being opens.
osho
In my personal
opinion the reason that tantra persists despite the persecution
of sexuality in most modern civilizations, the reason
it arises spontaneously in different eras and places,
and the reason
that it crosses socio-cultural lines is that it is based upon some
neurological hard-wiring of the human body; something which, when
practiced correctly, allows the participants to experience what
seems to be -- what IS, for all intents and purposes -- the presence
of deity in the person of the sex partner.
unknown
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Just as some
of the world’s greatest "spiritual
teachers" have said that Heaven
cannot be accurately described in words, the essence
of Tantra cannot be captured in either "oral
or written words". To truly
understand Tantra, it has to be experienced.
Once
Lord Rama asked Lord Hanumana the epitome of knowledge "Gyaaninanaagraganyam" Who
are You? " O my master As the Son of AnJani ( body Consious)
I am your Slave (Dvaita). As a Jiva I am A part of Yours
(Ansa) (Vishishtadvaita) and in the light of Knowledge I
am what you
are O my Lord (Advaita). Thus it all depends what bhumi (stage)
you stand. All Schools were started by avataras, nobody can
be wrong and other right. All schools of thought are beautiful
flowers of the garden of Vedanta. |
Although
most "spiritual
disciplines" insist on evolving into higher states of consciousness
by controlling or denying the senses"and so called
lower states of consciousness , Tantra teaches that you cannot
experience complete personal and spiritual liberation while restricting
a part of your being...
So Put away your pointless taboos and restrictions
on sexual energy , rather help others to truly understand its wonder
and beauty, as you let go and realise this freedon this incredible
lightness of being, honor the many sensefull moments, this Blissful
Tantric unity, that arise, from a mind that is free
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