What is Tantra?

Table of Contents.......................................

What is Tantra?.........................................

LESSON ONE: BASIC DEFINITIONS...........................

LESSON TWO: TANTRA IS THE GREAT YES....................

LESSON THREE: BECOMING THE ARTIST OF YOUR OWN LIFE.....

LESSON FOUR: TANTRA EXPLORES THE VEHICLE OF YOUR BODY..

LESSON FIVE: THE FUNDAMENTAL BENEFITS OF TANTRA........

LESSON SIX: TANTRA OPENS YOU TO MYSTICAL UNION.........

LESSON SEVEN: ON SEX...................................

LESSON EIGHT: TANTRA, SEXUAL PRACTICE AND BLISS........

CONCLUSION.............................................

What is Tantra?

To some, Tantra means crazy, wild sex, mind-blowing sex. To others, Tantra means something like disciplined sex, somehow related to that odd book, The Kama Sutra. To them, it means coordinated breathing (prana) techniques, deep eye gazing, energy stimulation up and down the body and energy management. To others, it means that the guy has to hold back his orgasm from anything like one hour to thirty years.

To still others, its some kind of exotic, Eastern sex cult. To women, the mere mention that you, as a man, are training yourself in Tantric practices -- it is a killer turn-on. A promise of pleasures they rarely are given. (Remember, most women are very disappointed in the sex they experience with most men).

To still others, mostly, Californians, Tantra is a clothing style, a local restaurant, or the name of their cat. Tantra is indeed all of these things. It IS a set of breathing or sexual practices. It’s probably the name of several cats in California. And it is DEFINITELY a way to get women to stop and listen when you mention that you are studying it, or in any way, practice it.

What makes Tantra TRULY worth learning about is that it is far more than any of these things. Tantra is a very deep well from which to drink. It is a worldview AND a body view, it can change the way you imbibe all of life as well as the way you imbibe and pleasure your sexual partners.

It’s makes life better. A WHOLE LOT better – both in its philosophical form, and its sexual expressions.

On two levels:

First, on the ATTRACTION level – it’s good for every guy to know something about Tantra. It certainly makes for better conversation than “hey, what’s your sign,” or “where did you grown up” or “what do you do for a living?”

Tantra goes to the core of being alive – and raises the erotic temperature of any conversation. Plus, you can get a good, quick read on a woman’s erotic nature by her reaction to the subject and what you have to say. Learning Tantra fits in to a simple but ESSENTIAL principle of “Invite Her Into Your Exciting Life” – to which I add, Then GET an Exciting Life.

Let’s not forget that essential second step.

On the PHILOSOPHICAL/SEXUAL level, a good, basic integration of tantric beliefs and practices will simply make your life better. It will open you up to expansive ways of being and will feed your sense of inner FREEDOM – This level of Freedom helps you hone a level of confidence that is way beyond game and techniques.
Because it comes from your core. And if you are reading this, then that means you are on this journey toward whole new levels of inner freedom – and you deserve this kind of confidence.

This article gives you the “what” of Tantra. This article gets you through the basics of the “what” so one can get to the “how” in an informed, grounded fashion. By the end of reading it, you will have a powerful, fundamental understanding of the basic concepts and depth of what Tantra offers. And it allows us to get to the “good stuff” sooner! What Tantra teaches is universal and does not belong to any one culture. There are certain terms you must know, that are useful, however.

LESSON ONE: BASIC DEFINITIONS

The word Tantra is Sanskrit, the ancient, sacred language of the South Asian Subcontinent. It derives from the root word tan, which is usually translated as “weave” but also translates as "to extend, expand, spread, continue, spin out; to put forth, show, or manifest." Tantra implies an infinite interweaving of your self and everything around you, and a never-endingness. Tantra is continually expanding, spreading, and manifesting itself – it is often compared to the "cosmic weave.”

No, that is neither a dance move nor a hair-style. It is something we all belong to. It suggests dissolution of the boundaries between self and other.

Another way to break down the Sanskrit word to its roots:

Tan - thread, web, stretch, spread or expand, and

Tra - tool or instrument.

Tantra - tool for expansion or weaving.

Whatever your “beliefs” (and whatever you believe is wrong and partial anyway, since we are all of limited brain and experience), it seem fairly indisputable that you and I are part of this weave of the universe and not separate from it.

Western religious tradition likes to separate humanity from the animal kingdom, as well as the plant kingdom (though we all share the same chemicals and organic processes) – as well as from the seemingly “dead” molecules that make up the planets, the stars and whatever stardust is floating around up there. But Tantra teaches that there is no separation. There is an interweaving to which you and I, other people (including ex-girlfriends and uncles who have hair growing out of their noses, and even people like Carrot Top), all living things, AS WELL AS every type of energy and matter, belong.

This “Cosmic Weave” includes the obvious physical universe, as well as more subtle energies such as thoughts. Tan-Tra is a tool to help you re-weave yourself back into the All. This isn’t some kooky, new-age dream state. It happens to be science… Remember what Einstein taught – that matter and energy are interchangeable. That’s what E=Mc(2) means. Under certain conditions, energy can become matter and matter can become energy. They are not different items. They are the same item under different conditions. You, me, Hamsters, Cannabis, Osama, Jessica Alba, Haley’s Comet and a McDonald’s Happy Meal are all the same stuff – just under different conditions. You and your lover are of the same stuff – just under different conditions. Tantra understood this centuries ago What if you could be made aware of this during lovemaking? What if you could open your partner to this reality, this feeling, this sensation during lovemaking?

What might be possible, then?

Tantra can thus be defined as “cosmic interweaving.” As a practice, it is a way to get “out of your head” – or more specifically – a way to penetrate beyond the brittle little brain-ideas we create as individuals, cultures, nations, races, genders, religions or as a species to sustain the supposedly comforting belief that we are SPECIAL. Or DIFFERENT. Or, to get to the real heart of it – in any way, “other,” or separate from anyone or anything else.

Tantra, like most mystical traditions, is a destroyer of separation in all its forms.

Which ultimately means a re-unification of with the All, or the Divine, or God, or the Oneness of all Being – or whatever the hell you like to call it. What you call it doesn’t matter in the end. In fact, what you call it only gets in the way. So let’s just use Douglas Adams’ term from The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy…

Tantra helps you re-join in borderless union with… …Life, The Universe and Everything.

LESSON TWO: TANTRA IS THE GREAT YES

Tantra doesn’t resist anything. It doesn’t make anything “other” or foreign to you. It is a tool to reweave you into a sense of union with what you are actually and already part of.

In other words, Tantra says YES! to everything…

As one teacher has put it…

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 become the ego already; a conflict has come in, now you are at war.

And…

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 without anything missing from it.

And…

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.

This Cosmic “Yes!” is available to you and me, always, in all places. It happens to be a very happy place in which to live.

It is often drowned out by the noise of TV and cynicism, and by fear in all its forms. You have to remember that some people thrive on creating fear. It’s their business. That includes Al Qaida as much as the sensationalist media.

If there were nothing to fear, people would be out making love and having fun instead of learning how to blow themselves up or staying glued to their television and watching ads and buying and hoarding stuff to feel safe or important. Now please – I’m not saying a fundamentalist terrorist is the same thing as some couch potato – it’s just that certain people in the world manipulate fear to aggregate power and money to themselves and their causes. So the mechanism of fear-creation to provoke a fear-response is the same.

They are purveyors of the localized “no” which distracts you from the opportunity to live your Cosmic “Yes.” You probably have friends who do that. Or parents. Or voices within you that say no. Voices that keep you from embracing this delicious, aromatic, sonorous, complex, simple, breathing, heaving, confusing, wet, teeming world in all its overwhelming wonder.

You find a glimpse of this Cosmic Yes with little kids. They get it. You find it buried here and there in the Psalms, where the stones and hills are understood to be singing praise (and that’s before LSD.) You see it in the writings of William Blake and R. W. Emerson and of course, the poetry of the Muslim Sufi mystics, Rumi and Hafez.

LESSON THREE: BECOMING THE ARTIST OF YOUR OWN LIFE

Now, again, saying Yes to the “all” is not some easy, new-agey surrender. Without getting into it here, because we couldn’t possibly explore it all, just remember this truth from Neitzsche,

"If a tree wants to reach to the sky, its roots need to go to the very hell."

So saying Yes to all means yes to ALL. That requires facing your deepest fears, your death, your darkest thoughts and desires, awful and unpleasant as they may be.

As Jung famously said, what gets repressed, will get EXPRESSED.

What you don’t want to face about yourself, or about humanity, or about death – will find another way to manifest in your personality.

So you are better off – FAR better off – by being honest about your dark side, about embracing your totality – and rather than shrinking from what is, turning it into ART.

Tantra wants you to become an artist of life, using everything – every thought and part of your body – as material to reweave into the One.

One favorite teacher, David Deida, writes extensively about the masculine desire to kill – and about how to welcome and channel that impulse and energy into service to the all.

He also writes about rape fantasies, and shows how that is most often just a desire to “ravish” women with love, to open them beyond their boundaries and limits – which they want too!

He only ingredient that differentiates a rape fantasy from a ravishment fantasy (gift) – is love.

He adds that sex without including your light side is rape.

Sex without including your dark side is boring.

Now a question many guys ask is, why you when people think about Tantra, do they tend to think about sex?

First, well, it’s generally fun to think about sex.

But second, sex is where our darkness often comes out. Bringing together your darkest ravishment urges with your highest love/service urges makes sex soar into new realms.

The point for now is, Tantra does not allow you to repress your true sexuality, and your true dark side within sexuality.

It allows you to explore your sexual edges, with both the spice of danger and a whiff of transcendence and divine service.

Tantra teaches you to make art out of your life with ALL the colors available. Not just pink and lavender and pastel blues. It includes the raciest reds, inkiest blacks and the death-hue of blood. Tantra insists that you bring ALL of yourself to your partner, for example, in service of your mutual opening to the great YES to everything.

More than that – it aids you in bringing ALL of yourself to a partner in service of your partner.

How many women get to experience THAT from men?

Tantra releases you from the b.s. of social strictures, mental habits and family neuroses.

It EXPANDS you. It expands your vision. It expands your self-conception. It expands what you bring to sexual contact and communion. With the “how” practices, it expands your sexual skills and gifts

Which is why it is such a powerful, life-changing discipline.

LESSON FOUR: TANTRA EXPLORES THE VEHICLE OF YOUR BODY

So you can see that no simple definition is going to sum up Tantra.

Though “yes to all” is a great working definition for us here for our purposes – because it gets to the heart of breaking down the boundaries between you and the world… … and more specifically, you and your sexual partner.

There are many Tantric streams that flow through Buddhist and Hindu traditions, and so it has picked up lots of local cultural influences and gods and demigods and expressions.

So what? You don’t need to know them all.

People often get caught up in localized expressions of what are universal truths and practices. There is no need to need to.

The goal here is not be a scholar of the flow of Tantra through the centuries. You can do that on your own, if you wish. Rather, focus on what you feel you NEED to know so you know what you’re talking about when you get into a conversation on Tantra, and what you need to know so that you can learn from genuine teachers of Tantric practice – and absorb it intelligently and deeply.

So here’s a bit of history…

Just as with Christianity, there was, in the East, an ascetic tradition. That is, the belief that to purify the soul and attain divine communion, you need to deny the body. Tantra was a corrective to this dualistic approach to the mind and body. Tantra sees the body as a VEHICLE rather than a hindrance to the divine. Tantra sees the body as a vehicle for full expression of your OWN completeness, your own inherent divinity. Tantra is a vast body of spiritual and physical knowledge, and many, though not all of these practices, include the body as vehicle. These practices include sex and all forms

of yoga.

But the goal is not to discover your divinity in service of great sex.

It is to use the vehicle of sex – to re-include the sexual body into spiritual practice – in service of your inherent divinity.

Tantric practices are aimed at expanding consciousness and liberating you from limited beliefs THROUGH life and not through escape or monkishness, USING the body as an

instrument, not denying it. Which, of course, has made a lot of religious authoritarians angry over the ages. And makes a lot of repressed religious body-haters really, suspicious of Tantra now.

It’s easier to make fun of than to truly comprehend. (Did you realize, for example, that Yoga was outlawed in many states in America, including California in 1911, because the men who ran things thought it made women “loose.”!!! They were right, actually – yoga, tantra and other body- awareness and body-vehicle spiritual practices loosen you from the b.s. strictures of established religions, which usually served the most powerful and repressive men in society. When you control a woman’s sexuality, you control the whole woman.)

LESSON FIVE: THE FUNDAMENTAL BENEFITS OF TANTRA

Does Tantra offer you ways into mindblowing sexual communion? Yes.

But take a big step back, first…

Because these sexual experiences don’t come without personal homework, knowledge and – especially - physical awareness practices.

In other words, you have to know your body. You have to become aware of what your body does. And you have to learn to create and sustain altered states in your body. Nothing outlandish. But basically, you learn to manipulate your body as the instrument it is, just as you would in dance, or with a piano or in martial arts. You learn to manage its functions and its energy flows. And that only comes with some time put into actual practices.

With Tantric practices, you can release energies YOU ALREADY HAVE which connect you to energies surrounding you - but to which you might have been asleep.

You can USE these energies for intense new levels of pleasure, for achieving your worldly goals, as well as for nourishing your spiritual evolution as a loving – AWAKE – being.

By embracing Tantric practices, we become more complete. Because by recognizing, stimulating and managing our sensual gifts, we discover parts of ourselves that have remained untapped or have been repressed by social norms.

So on one level, Tantric beliefs and practices can serve as therapeutic – as a way of clearing beliefs and practices that have bottled you up, or stopped your flow of love, your flow of natural compassion, your flow of personal power or your flow of sexual expression.

This is a level that is very appealing to a lot of people, for obvious reasons, and although it is CERTAINLY not the end-game, or the depths of what Tantra can bring you, it is to be highly valued.

Meeting partners in "pick-up" or being attracted are different.

Learning “pick-up” techniques is a good way for men who are shy, too “nice” or just not naturally skilled a conversing easily with women to sharpen their confidence and lightness.

But once one get those skills down, you must move on to deeper levels of attraction if you are going to grow as a man. You must deepen your own life, your excitement about living, your sense of service to your highest purpose rather than the many distractions of your lower ones. It is about honing your physical, emotional and spiritual presence so that you can offer your gifts in every moment. Because that is where real joy and fulfillment, real confidence and fun, lie. Tantric practice offers a similar pattern of growth.

So on the first level, basic Tantric thought and practices can help dissolve guilt or fear, help you slough off limiting self-imposed or cultural boundaries.

The next level, you can call mystical…

LESSON SIX: TANTRA OPENS YOU TO MYSTICAL UNION

Tantra is a mystical practice.

And here’s your practical definition of mysticism…

Mysticism is just a fancy name for direct experience.

Some call it direct experience of the divine, or of your innate belonging to the weave of the all. There’s just no one in between you and the experience, no one to have to depend on to understand anything.

To have a mystical experience – to feel you actual belong to the universe, you don’t need a priest or Minister; fancy garments or incense, Imams or bibles or any tools.

You just need you. You at your most open, and your fullest.

To have the mind clear enough of the usual garbage and chatter and distraction of day to day life - “getting and spending,” eating, winning or losing minor competitions of the day, peeing, organizing lusting etc.

That’s our normal state – and to have direct experience, it helps to quiet this state. That is why mystical experience often requires that you “heighten” your state… Here are some of the ways you’ve probably heard of…

Sometimes chants get you into a different state – mantras, prayers, those kinds of things.

Sometimes dance gets you there – Sufi spinning (“whirling dervishes”), or a Burning Man rave. Same thing, more or less. Any kind of ecstatic dancing that produces a “rush”

which can be channeled into a new kind of awareness.

Sometimes fasting does it. Sometimes breathing practices. Sometimes deep meditation. Sometimes the use of medicine plants in ceremony (peyote, ayahuasca, San Pedro). Sometimes it just hits you while you’re walking down the street. And… sometimes… it happens during sex. Tantric sex.

There are MANY ways to have a sudden illumination of a direct experience of your place wholly embedded within the flow of the all.

None are bad – though churches and bureaucracies HATE direct experience because then who needs priests, churches, tithes, donations and bloated bureaucracies?

Tantra teaches way to get to direct experience of what you really are – part of the weave of everything, not a separate ego-being looking on at the world from the outside.

LESSON SEVEN: ON SEX

One of the many definitions of Tantra has to do with some very, very old scriptures from India, often in the form of dialogues. That’s why you’ll find a definition like:

"a type of mystical teaching set out in the form of dialogs between a cosmic couple.”

These books, dialogues, or interchanges are usually between a guy and a gal –specifically between incarnations of the divine masculine and the divine feminine. Between a God and Goddess. The most common god and goddess pair who have these intense spiritual and sexual interchanges are Shiva and Shakti.

You will sometimes hear people talk of Shiva energy – that is your masculine energy. It involves presence, direction, penetration by mind and body into the world. Shiva energy burns away illusion and distraction and fearlessly exposes truth in all its forms. It’s a damned good thing to embody. Women who get this kind of thing are turned on by a man in his Shiva Energy.

Shakhti energy is concentrated feminine energy. It involves the flow of love, of surrender, of the juiciness of nature.

In ancient times, these sacred-sexual dialogues were written down, and are seen as divine expressions of Shiva and Shakti. These dialogues are known as “Tantras.” The same way that some ancient Hebrew poems/exhortations have come to be known in English as “Psalms.”

One difference is – not a whole bunch of sexual secrets in the Psalms. Lots of requests to help wipe out the enemy. Lots of requests for comfort in the storm. Not much in the way of cosmic orgasms. (p.s. – for Hebrew sexual mysticism, you have to look The Song of Songs, )

These ancient scriptures, known as “Tantras” – and they exist in Hindu, Jain and Buddhist forms - give detailed instructions on a whole wide range of subjects, including spiritual knowledge, technology, science as well as sex. So again, sex is only a part of the whole of Tantra. This is essential to your knowledge… …sex is seen as only one vehicle of expression of a larger spiritual knowledge and liberation.

One thing about these Tantric Texts: you can’t pick them up and read them and understand them. They require a whole backlog of information and preparation,

cultural immersion, terminology etc. Like most mystical texts, they don’t make “obvious” sense, similar to the Kabala. As with the texts of the Kabala, there is a dizzying blurring of the usual clean borders with which we comfort ourselves in our daily life.

There is no line between science and mysticism, sensuality and asceticism, or God and you. No borders. No differences. Same substance, only in different forms under different conditions. Energy is matter, matter energy – Einstein all over again.

Why does this kind of knowledge bother people? Like we’ve already said, established bureaucracies have a vested interest in downplaying the possibility of direct experiences. If you don’t need an intermediary like a

Priest, they are out of a job and had better learn data input or something. This is why the Church burned mystics and Islam viciously went after the Sufi sect.

But there is another, deeper reason why blurring of

comfortable divisions unnerve people… It’s the same reason that “slimy” things bother people universally. Slime, or “the viscous” exists between states - neither liquid nor solid. Unclear boundaries make our little human brains uneasy. We like rules, borders and clear definitions.

Think about it - what’s the first thing Adam does in the Garden of Eden? No, not TantricSex. He NAMES things. He DEFINES them.

He creates DIVISIONS. Mental division serves plenty of purposes. It allows for intellection, production, creativity – basically, it allows for advanced thought and

civilization. Which bring their own kind of comfort. And, as fearful physical creatures, we like comfort.

Which explains why so many people are afraid of – and therefore suppress or make fun of – mysticism because it blurs borders, and therefore a familiar kind of comfort.

The comfort of seeming to understand the world. Of being able to “control” its wild complexity with our belief systems and categorical thinking and scientific naming.

Of course, there is another effect of blurring borders of thought… … it gets you to stop thinking… … it returns you to your bodily self… … and OPENS YOU into a fuller embeddedness into the real, sensual, living, breathing, confusing, world of the NOW. Of what is real before and after and beyond our handy-dandy human definitions.

It allows you fuller expression of your true self, and your one-ness with the All. And of course, your one-ness with your sexual partner. In the Now.

LESSON EIGHT: TANTRA, SEXUAL PRACTICE AND BLISS

Through Tantric practice, one can experience an expansion of consciousness and recognize the interconnectedness of the web of existence.

Through Tantric practice, one can experience, at once, an absolute union with your sexual partner, and absolute union with all beings and all life. In Tantra, the energies of the body are used as the fuel for spiritual awareness and development.

So what are these energies of the body?

You could learn them WITH your body, which is much more effective. Take a Kundalini Yoga class for starters. In fact, in the West, Tantra is often called the "Yoga of Sex." There are several “yogas” – the yoga of breathing, the yoga of walking, the yoga of eating, etc. And Tantra is often called The Yoga of Sex.

However, Tantra is about much more than sex. Tantra isn’t merely about having better orgasms or about becoming a better lover – though both are excellent benefits. And yes, those things motivate a lot of us into Tantra.

But once you get inside Tantra, you begin to understand and feel that Tantric practices expand who you are as a human being.

Tantric practices can expand your capacity to give, receive and experience pleasure, not only sexually but in all areas of life.

Tantric practices can expand your capacity to give, receive and experience pleasure, notonly sexually but in all areas of life.

As it has been written: Tantra says yes unconditionally. “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 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. Opening your being. Helping a man/woman open there being. Bringing that “yes” of openness and service and of merging to your sex life is the beginning of understanding what Tantric practice can create for you.

It’s not so much making love with someone, but being so open, so in “yes” state – that love is making love through the two (or three) of you into a new state of love.

In other words, you are not merely making love. Love is making love – through you and your lover as vessels. Vessels that are clear conduits, uncluttered in the moment by ego and separation. Total union. Total communion. The bliss of merging. The bliss of dissolving. The bliss of being liberated from all the small ideas you carry about yourself, all the limitations that have been foisted upon you, all the names you’ve been reduced to by others and by your self. Infinite bliss. And the bliss of infinity. Now, all this doesn’t happen in the head. If you go to learn, Tantric Aspiration must be accompanied by Tantric Practice. Through mind practices, breath practices, genital-control practices, eye-gazing practices, hand practices, posturing, positioning and a whole suite of fairly simple practices you can do alone and with a partner, you will raise your sexual game.

As you develop your Tantric Skills, you will gain these gifts:

• The ability to guide a partner through several waves of Orgasm

• Relieve any guilt or confusion around love and sexuality

• Mastery of your orgasmic control – for longer lovemaking and multiple orgasms without ejaculation

• Deeper connection with a woman

• Deeper trust and surrender for your lover

• Access energy and ability beyond your own body

• Manifest as the lover you have always wanted to be

Put it all together, and what you gain is an entirely different level of sexual skill, and an entirely different level of sexual bliss and connection. Giving these gifts – carry over into your sense of confidence and well-being. How a vastly improved sexual life vastly improves your entire life.

CONCLUSION

Who doesn’t want to experience these levels of bliss?

You want to know? I’ll tell you… Those who are afraid of leaving their comfort zones. Those who are afraid they will fail. Those who are freaked out by anything exotic or unfamiliar. Those whose natural happy sexuality has been shut down by body-hating religious traditions and their self-serving bureaucracies.

We all have been afraid, and we all have resisted leaving our comfort zones. And many of us have passed through, or grown up in, some kind of repressive tradition or culture. But those things need not limit us NOW. Tantra is just a fancy Sanskrit word for the bliss of getting over yourself… and embracing a far more expansive sense…and getting into the Great Self.

The One of Self.

When all Being, which, when you take away the mumbo-jumbo sound of this subject, it’s really it, is just relaxing into the fact that we, just like Bob Marley told us, are all one.

One love. Keep growing daily., And be the man or women, yearned for.

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