Lesson 2 - Meditation, bhakti, and tantric sex

From: Yogani
Date: Tue Jan 27, 2004 2:59pm

New Members: It is recommended you read from the beginning of the
AdvancedYogaPractices main group web archive, as previous lessons are
prerequisite to this one. The first lesson is, "Why This Discussion?"
It is also recommended you read from the beginning of this tantra
yoga archive. The first lesson is, "What is tantra?"


It was not an arbitrary choice that way back in the beginning of
AdvancedYogaPractices we started out discussing desire and
meditation. We got our desire focused enough to get started
meditating. The process of diving deep into pure bliss consciousness
in meditation brings up silent awareness and an instinctive
recognition in our nervous system. This recognition resonates with
more knowledge we encounter and then we have more desire for the
divine, which leads us to more practices. This rising desire for
divine experience is called "bhakti." Bhakti is a product of our
desire combined with purification occurring in our nervous system.
And it is intentional on our part – we enter into the divine desire
by our own choice. With daily practices bhakti goes up like a spiral,
spurring us onward into ever-higher levels of yoga practice and
divine experience.

What has this got to do with considering tantric sex?

For starters, if we approach so-called tantric sex looking just for
better sex, under the best of circumstances that is about all we will
get, some better sex. A short-lived victory. If we come to tantric
sex on waves of bhakti spawned by our daily routine of advanced yoga
practices, then it will be a completely different ball game. Then we
will become filled with permanent divine ecstasy. So, the first
recommendation regarding tantric sex is to put a strong foundation of
daily meditation, pranayama, and other advanced yoga practices
underneath. Then tantric sex will come naturally, and have real
spiritual potential, even before we start doing it.

It was the same thing when we started taking on advanced yoga
practices such as mulabandha and siddhasana, both for the purpose of
stimulating sexual energy upward into our nervous system. Had we done
mulabandha and siddhasana first, before meditation and pranayama,
we'd be trying to send energy up through mostly clogged pipes, so to
speak, with limited potential for a successful outcome. Better to do
some house cleaning first, and continue it daily as we begin to move
sexual energy upward into the higher realms of our nervous system.
The same thing applies in beginning tantric sex.

How will we know if we are ready for tantric sexual techniques? It is
easy enough. We will want to do something regenerative with our sex
life. It will become important to us. The more we want it the better
it will be. The level of bhakti in us is easy to feel, and easy for
others to notice as well. It comes as the nervous system purifies
itself as a result of advanced yoga practices. It is a kind of
magnetism that rises calling us toward more. It takes a strong call
to get us into a new spiritually oriented mode of sexual activity,
because we have to do something radical. It takes a radical desire to
undertake tantric sex. We are embarking on a journey to alter the
course of a mighty river. In tantric sex, we are learning to engage
in sex for the purpose of cultivating sexual energy upward, and
putting our deeply ingrained obsession for orgasm second. Spiritual
cultivation of sexual energy first, orgasm second. A big shift in our
aspirations. If our bhakti is strong, we will be able to expand our
sexual functioning to a cultivating mode, just as we train our
arousal brought up in siddhasana to a much higher function over time.
It is like that in tantric sex – a gradual training over a long
period of time. Tantric sex is not an overnight accomplishment. It is
an evolution over time – over many months and years. As our bhakti
strengthens it will happen, because it must to fulfill our journey to
enlightenment.

The sexual journey through yoga will not be the same for everyone. It
will be as different for each of us as our sexual inclinations are.

For those who are light to moderate in their sex life, there is not a
great necessity to introduce yogic methods into sexual relations,
though learning tantric sex certainly will enhance lovemaking, and
the rest of advanced yoga practices as well. Occasional sex is not
much of a deterrent to enlightenment. The traditional methods of yoga
(right-handed tantra) discussed in the main lessons will be more than
enough to get the job done.

For those who are very active in sex, it is a different story. Though
the storehouse of prana in the pelvis is huge, there is a limit to
how much one can expel and still be spiritually vibrant. This is
especially true for men, where large quantities of prana are released
during orgasm with the ejaculation of semen. It is somewhat true for
women also, but not anywhere near to the same degree. It is the man
who holds the keys to tantric sex, for it is he who experiences the
greatest loss of prana during orgasm. Because of this, it is also he
who determines the duration of the sexual joining, and, therefore,
the extent of cultivation of sexual energy that can occur during
lovemaking. While a woman may be filled with bhakti to bring sexual
energy higher and higher in herself and her partner, it is the man's
bhakti that will determine to what extent this can be accomplished in
sexual union. So the roles of a man and woman in tantric sex are
somewhat different. Yet, in another way, their roles are the same.
For tantric sex to occur, both the man and the woman must be involved
in the intelligent management of the man's ejaculation. This is true
in the beginning stages of learning tantric sex, and remains true for
some time.

In time, and with practice, the man becomes the master of his semen
and is no longer dependent on help from his partner to control his
ejaculation. When this level of proficiency has been reached, both
partners are free to cultivate sexual energy virtually indefinitely –
the equivalent of an ongoing super siddhasana, if you will. We have
all seen Asian visual art of tantric lovers in union playing musical
instruments, reading poetry, meditating, or joined in long loving
conversation. This is not usually what we think of in the West as
sex, or even tantric sex. Never the less, this is what real tantric
sex is – long preorgasmic cultivation of sexual energy in lovemaking.

It is important to mention a couple of things.

First, tantric sex does not make a good end in itself. It does not
stand alone as yoga practice. By itself, tantric sex is a weak
practice for globally purifying the nervous system. Meditation and
pranayama are the primary tools for this. Once some purification is
coming up, traditional bandhas and mudras, siddhasana, and kumbhaka
are very useful for stimulating sexual energy upward. This leads to a
rise of ecstatic conductivity in the sushumna (spinal nerve) and the
thousands of nerves in the body. Tantric sex can play a role in this,
especially for sexually active yogis and yoginis. Tantric sex is not
something we do to get ourselves to be more sexually active. It is
something we can do to improve our yoga if we are already sexually
active. So, this discussion is not for the purpose of calling
everyone to have more sex in a tantric mode. If you are light to
moderate in sex and happy in your advanced yoga practices, you are in
very good shape. Don't dive into sexual escapades for the sake of
these lessons. These lessons on tantric sex are for people who are
sexually active already and are seeking ways to bring their sexual
activity into the overall spectrum of their yoga practice.

Second, it may seem like a bad idea to some that we are leaving
orgasm somewhat on the back shelf while we develop the ability to
cultivate sexual energy endlessly upward. It might seem like we are
throwing the baby out with the bath water here. After all, orgasm is
the deepest pleasure we have known in our life. This is a normal and
valid concern, and we are right to ask,

"What about orgasm? What happens to it?"

These lessons are not anti-orgasm. In fact, the path of advanced yoga
practices is a path of pleasure, a path of ecstasy. Orgasm is an
ecstatic response in the body that is elicited by a particular type
of stimulation – sexual stimulation that is biologically oriented
toward reproduction. The condition in the nervous system that we
call "enlightenment" is also an ecstatic response in the body that is
elicited by a particular type of stimulation – stimulation by
advanced yoga practices that is biologically oriented toward the
birth of our awareness in unending pure bliss consciousness and
divine ecstasy.

Is enlightenment at the expense of orgasm? No, enlightenment is a
flowering of orgasm, an expansion of orgasm into endless full bloom
in the whole body.

Ramakrishna said that divine ecstasy is like innumerable yonis
(female sex organs) in continual orgasm in every atom and pore of our
body.

So, while in the beginning it might seem like we are putting
something important on the back shelf, what we are really doing in
advanced yoga practices is gradually expanding our orgasmic response
into the cosmic realms through our purifying and opening nervous
system. There we find ecstasy to be unbounded in magnitude and
duration. It is only a matter of cultivating our nervous system to
reveal what is already there inside us.

It is through our desire that all this is accomplished. Each day we
choose our path anew.

Okay, let's get into the specifics of the practices of tantric sex.

The guru is in you.

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