Yoga, Tantra and Sex

                                                It is believed that a supreme power has created each and every object in the Univerce. The said supreme power has been named as Ishwar, God, Khuda, Parmatma, Niranjan etc. In different Dharmas and religions. For ages this unknown, the supreme has been a subject of curiosity and attempts have been made to see it, watch it, to achieve its nearness. Too much has been said in its praise and against it. There is a huge mass to accept its presence where as so many deny its presence and treat it as fake and imaginary. Whether God is or not is a riddle unsolved .It does not matter at all that we accept its existence or out right ignore and reject it but looking to the Phenomenon of universe and its object, the regularity and harmony in the occurrence of events in nature, Continuity in creation, flora & fauna, creatures and animals, males and females, livings and non livings, creation and destruction, life and death, one has a solid ground to believe that there exits for sure a supreme power to regulate the universe whatever its name may be whatever its form may be.

                                               The existences in universe can roughly be classified as visible and invisibles. All the visible can again be classified as livings (chetan) and non-livings (jada). They all have definite but different characteristics. The mordent age is the age of Science and Technology. There are different branches of science and various technologies. Physics a major branch of science deals with matter and energy. It is concerned with characteristics of matter and nature of energies. It is also concerned with the transformation of matter into energy and so also in its reversal. It says that matter is indestructible and so also the energy is, matter can neither be destroyed nor created, so also the energy, but we see the matter perishing and destroying and energy consumed and generated. What really happens? The answer is, the matter is transformed into energy in a part or as a whole, so also the energy is transformed from one form to other or to matter itself .The process of disintegration and integration goes on. Physics speaks of energies like mechanical (kinetic &potential), Thermodynamic, magnetic, electrical, atomic and other such energy. All the said energies can be transformed in each other. Apparently energy is inherited in matter and matter may be transformed into energy by some mechanical techniques. Matter is a visible existence where as the energy is an invisible one .We can only realize its presence, can observe its effects and impacts but cannot watch it.

                                                    My concern is not the non - living, not the matter but the livings and especially human beings. Modern age has witnessed and is witnessing a great increase in the span of human life, longevity steadily going up, so many incurable diseases and physical disorders being cured and under control but it looks that whole modern civilization is sick and not only sick but disastrously ill. People are getting more and more health conscious. It means that more and more men and women are ill and are attracted towards all types of health and healing practices. Yogik practices are broadly in fashion and this indicates that there is something wrong with the patterns of modern life, unknown to earlier ages so many new diseases have cropped up. Dr. Larry Dorsey says -"The human body reflects the machine like characteristics of the universe it self, machine like bodies inhabiting a machinelike world. Disease thus arose is disorder of mechanism. Something went awry in the machine”. A mechanistic approach is based on fragmentation, into its constituent parts. A dissection of the reality is the only way to understand the reality. In this mechanistic approach mind and matter are regarded as irreconcilable opposites. The modern scientist wishes to understand the living by dissecting the dead and it is the problem. Fragments do exist but they ought to be seen in the perspective of the whole. Shri Aurbindo has said,” One must know the whole before one can understand the part. "The whole is mysteriously present in the part even in the tiniest part. The whole is in the part and not away from it. In Isa Upanishad it is stated, "The whole is whole. Even when everything is taken away from Whole the whole remains the whole". Whole refers to the quality of things. And as such whole suffers no diminution by any quantitative alteration. The mind judges by measurement but the measurement however precise it may be the quality escapes. The modern civilization judges everything by measurement. Shift from quantitative to qualitative approach is a must; a fundamental change from dialectical to integral is needed and such radical transformation needs tremendous energy .We live in an age of unprecedented energy crises, not so much external as internal. Human consciousness needs a fresh release of internal energy. Modern physical science says that energy can neither be created nor destroyed so how the internal energy crisis faced by human beings today may be solved? Can internal energy be created? The answer is yes but fundamentally it is the domain of yoga and tantra. By yoga&tantra man can understand the secret of creating new energy. Beyond the scope of physical science dealing with the physical energies as mentioned before Indian spiritual science, traditions and philosophy mention about some internal energies such asParashakti, jnanashakti, Icchashakti, kriyashakti, Kundalinishakti, Matrikashakti etc. Tantra and yoga are the two most ancient spiritual traditions of India. Literally speaking Tantra means Technique and Yoga means Perception. Yoga is included among six systems of Philosophy in Hindu thought, Philosopy means Darshan or Perception as such yoga belongs to the sphere of Perception and Tantra as it means technique is concerned with practice, it is the technique of achieving Superconciosness from consciousness.

                                                                      Yoga systems are many and varied so also of Tantra in India.Each System has its own method and the ultimate goal. Patanjali`s approach of Yoga is very systematic and is a good attempt to synthesize different approaches existent in his time. Yoga is a perceptive wisdom and aims to render human psychological system living and therefore open. Patanjali defines Yoga as"Chitta Vritti Nirodh" i.e. the dissolution of all the centers of reaction of mind. Vritti can be explained as tendencies or modification of mind. Vritti modifies the nature of mind and as such is the second nature of mind an acquired nature, a nature superimposed on the real nature of the person. Purpose of Yoga is to free the mind from all such impositions. These superimpositions render human mind closed and Yoga shows the way to make mind completely and utterly flexible therefore. Yoga means union, union with Brahma, the ultimate reality. In our spiritual traditions it is said that Atman and Brahma are not different, there is no duality in individual soul and the Universal spirit, and they are inseparably one. Union with Brahma is the union with oneself. According to Patanjali when the acquired tendencies of mind are dissolved, psychological organism of the person is rendered living and open. Ready to respond to even the faintest whisper of the soul and at this stage it is endowed with tremendous energy because it is in touch with inexhaustible source of energy which is life itself and it is only when the experience is at the point of highest enjoyment .       

                                                                 The Patanjali Yoga system is based on eight limbs, four outer and the four inner. The outer ones are concerned with the behavior pattern. They are: Yama, Niyama, Sayyama and Pratyahar and these four steps are identical with that of Tantra and are concerned with reactive tendencies, the conscious use of the formative power of thought (Ichha Shakti). They are also amenable to the technique of Visualisation.Tantra is the Science of visualization and the process of visualizing has four steps, 1- The conservation of energy 2- The creation of energy 3- The concentration of energy 4- The transformation of energy. As such energy is the base of visualization .The fourth step Pratyahar is the culminating point of Tantra &Yoga, where the two bifurcate. From here the Tantra moves to the areas of Psychic development, of awakening of Kundalini, Stimulation of Chakras etc. Tantrik practices have laid much stress on these aspects where as the Yoga moves to Dhyana, Dharana, and Darshana & Samadhi.

                                                              . Tantra is the best and the oldest spiritual tradition but too much has been said against it, also that it leads to indulgence in illicit practices, with the result it became forbidden among the common mass. The fullness of experience without indulgence is the secret of Tantra.Tantra has never advocated indulgence or illicit practices but the emphasis is on the withdrawal at the highest peak of enjoyment because in full and intense experience there is no duality of the perceiver and the perceived, no duality of the experience and experienced, no duality of the observer and the observed. As already said the Pratyahar is the culminating point of Yoga and Tantra. In its absence the Yoga becomes a frustrating struggle against an object, an exercise in fruitless resistance and Tantra moves along the path of indulgence. Pratyahar (withdrawal) is the mid- point of the spiritual journey .0ur usual efforts are in the direction of ending event or the object, but it is the mind that withdraws first, the mind is the enjoyer and as such the thought attention must be withdrawn at the peak of enjoyment, during the moment of highest tide not during the moment of ebb. Now here the path of Yoga and Tantra differ. Tantra is associated with the withdrawal at the highest peak of enjoyment were as Yoga is associated with the certain amount of detachment. Tantra is the path of outgoing, the Pravritti Marg and the Yoga is the path of turning inwards, the Nivritti Marg.Tantra is the path of withdrawal at the highest peak of enjoyment but not at all the indulgence as it is propagated.

                                                                      In all the objects of nature there is a rhythm, life functions happily so long as the rhythm functions without interruption. This rhythm is the living tradition of life. This rhythm In Chinese. Philosophy is known as Yang and Yin, in Hinduism as Shiva& Shakti and modern Psychology speaks of the masculine and feminine qualities of consciousness. There is a rhythm of consciousness, there is the rhythm of mind and there is a conflict. Traditions of Yoga and Tantra are to maintain the true rhythm of life not getting entangled in the rhythm of mind. Shiva is the masculine aspect of consciousness where as Shakti is the feminine counterpart. In Tantra it is the Shakti aspect of life that is worshipped, signifying the feminine expression of life. Yoga is concerned with the conquest of new realms of being where as the Tantra is concerned with the consolidation for it is the mother or the feminine aspect that looks after the consolidation of the movement of life. Yoga is Goal-Setter, Tantra is Energy-Refresher, in the process of living energy is bounded to expended but there must be the means to restore and regain the energy loss. Yoga is a speeding up process where as the Tantra is a slowing down process for consolidation needs the operation of slowing down phenomenon. Yoga is the directional power of consciousness (Ichhasakti) where as the Tantra is concerned with the formative power of thought (Kriyashakti). Yoga emphasizes on Nirodh (suppression) where as Tantra uses whatever is available for the purpose of energy release. Tantra is essentially concerned with the problem of energy while Yoga is concerned with direction. Tantra uses thought to transcend thought with the help of mind, it transcends the sphere of mind. Mind is always the creator of difficulties and handicaps in the further movement of an Aspirant. Tantra places method discipline, which is quite different from otherwise, accepted approaches. Traditional approach in spiritual disciplines is to resist and relentlessly fight those obstacles and impediments. Tantra has nothing to do with the resistance but it does not talk of indulgence either, indulgence in weaknesses and vices. Neither resistance nor indulgence is the way of Tantra and is done by the use of the formative power of thought -Kriyashakti.

                                                           Now if life is a truth, the sex and the death are also equally true. Sex is the phenomenon of creation, where as the death is a must for renewal of life. Sadly enough our so called religious preachers and moralists have made the common mass to be afraid of death a horrifying end of life and the sex an illicit act, a sin. Now every one is afraid of death as though it is the most pleasant experience and a banging of a new journey, a new life, so also one is burdened with a feeling of guilt, involved in a sin, and illicit practice performing the sex act. I am not to deal with death but I shall try to locate how our spiritual traditions of Yoga & Tantra deal with because the Yogis &Tantrik have been performing wonders and miracles by means of Ichha Sakti & Kriya Sakti. Yogis use Ichha Sakti where as Tantriks use Kriya Sakti. As already said Yoga emphasizes on Nirodh of Vrittis and suppression of wishes. It believes on resistance and relentless fight the obstacles and impediments the Yogis emphasize much on Brahmacharya, as though it literally means - To move with Brahma, To be in nearness with Brahma, To be in nearer touch with Brahma but I do think so is not the case, they are always talking about Brahmacharya in respect to the involvement in sex. They are proud of never being indulged in sexual acts. Now suppose all the creatures and beings including human beings are restricted are restrict by their own from sex , what will happen to the continuity of creation? Will not it be finished and lost? Who will remain to perform Yogic practices? Now what about Tantra? As already said Tantra uses what so ever available for restoration and release of energy and as such Tantra does not hesitate to use sex as well for the purpose and it is why the Tantra has been denounced and defamed .A Yogi is deemed respectable where as a Tantrik is supposed to be dangerous and condemned. In general all those involved in many illicit and unwanted practices also are named Tantriks as though they have to do nothing with Tantra. Nothing to say Tantra has always appealed people for the wrong reasons .If you do indulge in wine, in women and the other such things you can feel and understood attracted towards Tantra than Tantra is only a trick, a facade; you are not attracted to Tantra but to some thing else that you think Tantra allows you but Tantra does not in fact.        

                                                                  Tantra is a science and its knowledge is deeper than Atomic knowledge because Atomic science is concerned with the matter and the Tantra is concerned with you and you are always more dangerous than any Atomic energy. Tantra is concerned with biological atom, with you, the living cell, with life consciousness and how its inner mechanism works .One who is interested in life and consciousness will automatically become interested in sex because the sex is source of life, of creation, of love, of all that is happening in world of consciousness. That is why Tantra is interested in sex. If a Seeker is not interested in sex, he may be philosopher but not is a seeker at all; Philosophy is always more or less nonsense thinking about things that are of no much use. Tanta is interested in actual existential life. It is not interested in God; Moksha, Hell and Heaven .It is interested in basic things like sex and love. You are a play of sex energy and unless you understand this energy and transcend it you will never be anything more. To know it your path is not through conflict, you can not know anything if you are in fighting mood because you are not receptive then. When you are fighting you are outside, when you are fighting sex you are outside and secrets will be hidden from you. If you surrender to sex, you reach the very inner core of it, you are inside and all the things become known to you. You are in sex always with fighting attitude and you can not know the secrets of sex. If you are flowing with the sex energy with total willful surrender sooner are later you will arrive at a point where you will know that sex can not only give birth to a new life, can also give more life energy but you need to surrender and once you surrender the dimensions change.

                                                           Tantra is of the opinion that if you ejaculate in the sex act then it can not be life giving to you. You need not to ejaculate, forget to ejaculate, you ejaculate because you are always fighting. The lover and the beloved can be in deep sexual embrace simply relaxing in each other with no hurry to end up the affair, to ejaculate and if the relaxation is total they both will feel more life, more energetic, they both will enrich each other, there is no consumption but there is a release of energy. If you are not in hurry, not on worry with sex you can increase your life span. If a male and a female are deeply relaxed with each other, not in tension, not in guilt so many Alchemical things will happen because the life juices of both, electricity of both, the Bio- energy of both meat and because they are anti (one is negative and one is positive) they invigorate each other, make each other more vital more alive, they can live long never becoming old. It is possible only when you are not in fighting mood and it looks paradoxical. Those fighting sex will is ejaculate sooner because the tense mind is in hurry and wants to be relieved with tension and the act ends up with the disastrous energy loss.

                                                              The man goes on doing the sex act as if a sin, he feels it as a guilt for some thing not to be don and while making love he is also thinking about some saint or Mahatma and how to transcend this guilt, this sin and if there is none like that then there is God watching the sin and the feeling creates anxiety and that brings ejaculation sooner. When there is no anxiety, no struggle, no fight, no presence of some one watching ejaculation can be postponed for hours, for days for years, for ever there is no need of it. In deepness of love-making both can invigorate each other and ejaculation completely ceases. The two lovers can just relax in each other, their bodies’ meat and relax, they enter sex and relax. Sooner or later then sex will not be a excitement, it will be a relaxation, a deep let-go but it will happen only when you have first surrendered inside to the life force, the life giving energy and then to your lover to your beloved. Tantra says that this happens and arranges also how it can happen.

                                                            Tantra says that never make love when you are excited, it looks absurd, you want to make love only when you are excited and if not the partners excite each other in order to make love. Tantra says in excitement you are simply wasting energy; make love when you are calm, serene, and meditative. First meditate and then make love and while making love do not go beyond limit, do not become excited and violent so that your energy may not get lost .In general if you see two persons making love it looks like a fight, looks violent, it looks ugly not beautiful Tantra says make it beautiful, more musical & harmonious. The partners should look as if they are dancing, as if singing a harmonious melody creating an atmosphere in which both dissolve and become one then only they may feel relaxed charged up with fresh energy. As such Tantra has much concern with sex but it is least sexual; it is not sexual at all. Sex may become life giving as Tantra says but it is now only death giving, you are gradually dying through it, wasting, consuming and detoriating. Tantra can help to make it the deepest natural meditation also may make you to reach the stage of Samadhi. When your thought ceases completely, when totally relaxed you are with your partner, your lover, mind is not there, your thoughts cease, only your heart beats in serenity, it becomes a natural meditation, the Samadhi and if love can not help you in meditation nothing can help, every thing else is just superfluous. Love has its own meditation, unfortunately you do not know love, you do not know sex, you only know the misery of wasting energy to get depressed and decide to take a bow to Brahmacharya and the bow taken in frustration, in anger, in depression after waste of energy and it is not going to help at all A bow is helpful only in meditative mood. Tantra says sex is very deep because it is life but you can be interested in Tantra only for wrong reasons, if you are not interested for wrong reasons you will not feel that Tantra is dangerous and Tantra will look to be life transforming then you is the central subject matter of the Tantra. Right now you are nothing but a sex unit and unless the unit is understood deeply you cannot be spiritual unit. Sexuality and the spirituality are the two ends of one energy. Tantra starts with you as you are and the Yoga starts with the end what you ought to be and it is always good to start with the begging because if the end is made the beginning you are creating a misery you’re self. You have to become a Mahatma, you have to become an ideal, you have to become a god where as you are simply an animal that goes mad and crazy because of the ideal of god, of mahatmas and saints.

                                                                        Tantra says forget God, forget Mahatmas; you are simply an animal, understand the animal in totality and in that understanding God will grow himself and if he does not, forget it. Ideals cannot bring possibilities out, only the realities can. Your actuality and your possibilities are the subject matter of Tantra if you go to understand Tantra does not discuss God, does not discuss Moksha, do not discuss Nirvana. Tantra discusses which make you feel disgusted, which you do not want to discuss. You do not want to discuss sex for the reason you think that you know all about it because you can reproduce, you can give birth and sex is every one’s problem. No one wants to discuss love because every one feels that he is the greatest lover already but your life in it is just hatred and nothing else and as such the love is only a slight relaxation from hatred for you. Look at the world you will come to know that you know nothing. You are groping in the dark and if every one else is also groping in dark it does not mean that you are living in light, you are also in dark. Tantra starts with you, as you are, wants to enlighten you about the basic things that you cannot deny. Make the sex act a meditation, love a divine experience simply by surrendering; surrendering to the force of life and creation. Do not think about sex, let it happen, do not seek the result, simply be in act and then sex can be a deep insight into being here and now. Nowhere can you be here and now excepting in love and sex. Just surrender and move with the force of life forgetting everything, do flow in the moment. Right now just know how to surrender and it does not mean to know a technique, you have a natural possibility of surrendering in love. Surrender in love and feel it there and then, now and ever. Surrender to your lover and he will become divine, surrender to your beloved and she will become divine, surrender to a tree, a river, a mountain, a stone and you will see there is no tree, no river, no mountains, no stone they all will become a life, a divinity. There is nothing like divine, there is only the surrendering mind, which has created the divinity and will always do. Stone carvings of Mathun-Mudras in the temples of Khajuraho, Konarka and places like that may be a guide and an eye opener for you.

                                                                              To sum up we can say that the Yoga and its practices are mostly prevalent and are in fashion these days for restoration of health and energy. Yoga believes on Nirodh-the suppression and is a path of resistance, struggle and conflict with the self and insists on Brahmacharya that needs suppression of a natural instinct using strong will power and has no place for sex. By the way any sort of suppression is always dangerous and even on the highest peaks one is endangered to end up with distraction, deviation, egoism an ultimate miserable fall. Those highly blessed only can achieve the goal. From the worldly people we can hardly expect to proceed long on the path. They may either withdraw frustrated, tense and disappointed or end up becoming escapists. What to say of new release of energy they can hardly in position to conserve the energy already in store. You cannot go long against the flow and will give up halfway tired and exhausted. Tantra is a path to go with the flow surrendering to the force of life, energy of creation the sex and has got no place for resistance, struggle and conflict. It believes on total relaxation without ant excitement and ejaculation while performing sex and thus to reach in a meditative state to make the experience divine, everlasting intercourse without ejaculation is the aim. It never advocates in indulgence or to be involved in illicit practices, women and wine and if not accepted for wrong reasons& misunderstood but sensibly adopted may be a competent path not only for the conservation of the internal energy but also for its new release. Anyhow if possible the integrated efforts of Yoga and Tantra both may be the best way and they may become once again a boon to humanity facing internal energy crisis.   

                                                  (Based on the Astanga Yoga of Patanjali and Vigyan Bhairava Tantra)        

                                                                                                                  Swami Dr. Vijayanand

  396-Khunthi

  Satna (M.P.)