“Tantra is the actualization of the premonition of silence in space-time. The premonition of silence is non-duality.” (p. 33, L’unico desiderio, Eric Baret)
Tantric teachings are a weaving together of many spiritual traditions of India which, after centuries upon centuries of dualistic and separative philosophies — highly unbalanced and harmful to oneself and to others — were spread abroad to provide a transformative path finally conducive to true evolution, one that, instead of dividing — body and soul, masculine and feminine, sensuality and mortification, sexuality and abstinence, “saint” and “prostitute,” virtue and sin — finally united!!
The word “Tantra” in fact means “Loom,” referring, then, to the weaving of a number of different threads into a single fabric; this concept can also be given another meaning, namely “Instrument for expanding Consciousness.”
In this sense it is also a spiritual Path, and like all spiritual Paths, it is always a journey toward oneself.
Tantrism, then, consists of a very ancient spiritual path, dating back more than 5000 years, which first developed in the Indus Valley, in India. It predates the birth of India’s official religion, Brahmanism, which was influenced by it while initially still retaining a dualistic attitude. According to the tantric path, God Is everywhere, in all of Creation and in all things, and manifests through the union of opposites and of all dualities, in particular through the union of the Feminine Energy of the Goddess Shakti and the Masculine Energy of the God Shiva.
Shakti means Strength, Energy, and is the dynamic, material aspect of the Universe, precisely “the energy in perpetual motion and continuous change, which also represents the impermanence of form.”
Shiva, on the other hand, represents the Eternal Consciousness, the Source of all things, and is depicted in a static position as “the spirit that perceives everything without being influenced by it, and thus an immutable consciousness without any spatiotemporal limit and without attachments.”
Shiva and Shakti represent two currents of Energy that flow through the chakras, the first descending, the second ascending.
These two Energies seek each other, attract each other: Shakti, rising up from the earth, is the divine aspiration of the human, incarnate Soul, while Shiva, descending from above, is the manifestation of divine Grace: neither can exist without the other, and both reside within each of us.
Shiva, the descending current, is manifesting, while Shakti, the ascending one, is liberating: the former descends from Consciousness, becoming ever denser — “the materialization of Spirit” —; the latter leads us out of the limits of the three-dimensional plane to reach freer, and therefore more expanded and global, states of being — “the spiritualization of Matter.”
Indeed, if in Vedanta (first among its proponents, Sri Ramana Maharshi) “You are not the body, the senses and the mind, but you are the knower,” in Kashmir Tantrism “You are equally that which knows and that which is known: the known is included through the felt, which comes from our senses in relation to our physical body.” This is because whatever we do not carry into the body we do not fully live, and it remains merely a thought in our mind.
Tantra teaches us that we must approach Life creatively, since everything flows, everything moves, and there is no stasis. So we must stay in the Here and Now, in Presence, using everything our senses convey to us, in order to attain spiritual ecstasy. The senses, then, are not to be repudiated but transformed, so that from being limiting they become exalting, granting liberation and ecstasy as well. In every ritual, whether codified or spontaneous, the tantric practitioner aims to increase the energy that is released through playful, sensual experimentation, in order to use it for their own growth.
Unfortunately, there is a great deal of misinformation, or mistaken and misleading information, about Tantra; very often it is thought to be a discipline that offers a handbook of techniques which, like the Kamasutra, provide a foolproof method for becoming a great lover with formidable erotic performance.
Nothing could be further from the truth!!!
Paradoxically, here too — and lovers of doing and overdoing, of performance at all costs, please forgive me — a golden rule applies, one deeply connected to all true spiritual paths: the less you do, the more you do!
This obviously does not mean that we must spend all our time idle, on a sofa, throwing our life away, but rather that we should not spend most of our time in a mode of compulsive doing, chasing as many goals as possible in a single day. In continuous, if not obsessive, doing, we obey our mind, which is essentially Fear: fear of dying, of going mad, of not having enough, of not having done enough, of not knowing enough, of not being loved enough. In Tantra Yoga, this “doing less” simply means shifting the emphasis toward a more meditative practice, one that allows us to remain in Presence in every instant of our union, rather than living the union impetuously and unconsciously, governed by our passions rather than by our consciousness.
All the ancient texts on the discipline of Tantra Yoga state that tantric practices consist of transforming our vital energies into ecstasy, starting with the sexual energy, which is the mother of them all. Indeed, sexual Energy is, not by chance, the Energy that gives Life: without this particular Energy we would not be here! The scriptures give it the name Kundalini and place it coiled at the base of our spine, precisely between the anus and the perineum, where it resides, waiting to be awakened.
Tantra Yoga also agrees with the idea that Everything is Informed Energy, that is, Information carried by Energy. The latter, within the tantric vision, is called Spandan.
Tantrism is thus the art of recognizing the majesty of life in every one of its expressions. And the Tantric Path is thus a way of drawing closer once again to the cosmic laws, so as to be able to perceive our connection with all living beings and with the Whole. The experiences we live can be called “tantric” the moment we give total attention to our actions and to how we live them deeply, establishing a complete psycho-physical-energetic-spiritual contact with them and with the Cosmos.
“From the point of view of the Kashmiri path, Tantrism is the art of celebrating the ultimate in everyday life” (p. 36, Eric Baret, L’unico desiderio.)
Chakras (“wheel” in Sanskrit) are centers of activity for the reception, assimilation and transmission of Life Energy. If the body is considered our vehicle of consciousness, the Chakras are the wheels of life that allow this vehicle to move. (On this subject, I recommend reading two books by the same author, Anodea Judith: “Wheels of Life” and “Il libro dei chakra,” and one by Caroline Myss: “Anatomy of the Spirit”)
This movement is action within awareness, that is, the evolutionary journey we chose to undertake the very moment we agreed to incarnate into this vehicle-physical body. It is Shakti, who, when residing in Muladhara, the root Chakra, rests. In this non-place — not physical but energetic — She becomes Kundalini, a coiled serpent wound three and a half times around the Shiva Lingam located in the base Chakra — from “kundala,” meaning coiled. Here she represents everything that is potential within matter, the Feminine Energy of Creation, and the evolutionary Force of Consciousness within the human being. If awakened, this Energy uncoils and rises upward, until it reaches, chakra by chakra, the crown Chakra, Sahasrara, where it will meet Shiva and unite with Him.
So Tantra Yoga, in its ritual practice, consists in transforming into ecstasy the Life Energy that, as we have seen, is primarily sexual. By not living it out fully in the immediate moment, and by delaying physical union with the other sex and the explosive pleasure that comes from it, this powerful “fire that would consume everything in no time at all” is transformed into a warm, controlled fire that can burn for hours, completely warming every part of our body! In the first case, everything would end in a few seconds’ climax of pleasure, without ever turning into ecstasy. If, instead, one induces an entirely acceptable — for man, on the path to awareness and awakening — frustration of desire and of the final pleasure, the doors can be thrown wide open to an ecstatic experience, based on a new, deeper and more intense relationship.
“The call of the soul stirs the serpent fire, or kundalini, nestled at the base of the spine, and pushes it upward, so that it burns away every obstacle and vivifies all the etheric centers, including those of the head, where the vital areas within the ventricles of the head are activated.” Alice Bailey
The so-called Awakening of Consciousness, and the consequent activation of the Body of Light — in my opinion — does not occur when Kundalini reaches the Crown Chakra and suddenly activates it, but rather when all (all!) the main Chakras — obviously including the first three, the so-called “lower circuit of consciousness” — are open, active and aligned, through an integration of our defensive Ego-Personality! Awakening is thus not a destination but a Path: the path of Kundalini from below upward, and then from above downward!
Recalling Hermes Trismegistus: “As above, so below.”
“Any kind of inner development implies the need to overcome certain resistances and to make efforts toward the achievement of a specific goal. The tantric practitioner makes use of every form of sensuality to generate new impulses toward the final goal, instead of regarding sources of attraction as obstacles. He says yes to the world and continues to reproduce it so that it may help him achieve his own inner development.” (From “The Body of Light,” p. 34, Mann & Short, Edizioni Mediterranee)
As Eric Baret states, regarding what in India is called the Tantric Path of Kashmir:
“One must allow oneself to be led back to the origin by every emotion, from the moment it is felt and not thought!”
When we dwell too much in the mind and ask ourselves too many things, ask too many questions, and — relying solely on the mind — wait for all the answers; when we have too many expectations or expect to obtain everything we want through the use of our personality, with too much haste and impatience, we disconnect from the Source of Life, from Cosmic Consciousness.
We have incarnated in order to have experience and to remember, from Soul to Soul, and through this experience our highest task, let us remember, is that of spiritualizing matter, by materializing spirit!
Bringing the divine into the three-dimensionality of everyday matter means that it cannot simply be lived as an imaginative process, experienced within our mind, otherwise it would have no transformative benefit at all. Bringing it into the body, bringing this change, this transformation, into the physicality and three-dimensionality of matter, into everyday life, means this: becoming aware of it and enacting it in every instant, rather than relegating it merely to a mental process that brings about no real change.
It is not necessary to completely and totally purify all our energy centers, if only because we are incarnated in this physical body of ours; we are not entirely saints or ascetics, and these experiences in the three-dimensionality of matter are useful for our evolution. It is, instead, desirable to use the Energy steeped within these energy centers, vital as they are to our existence and our evolution, freeing it and using the power thus unlocked, letting it flow, and placing all of this in the service of the Higher Centers of Consciousness.
How can we think that the Path to true Awakening could be a path of separation: good and evil, life and death, man and woman, sacred and profane, love and sex, or of “rejecting” our desires, our pleasures, our deep connection on every level, the sexuality that gives life and the sensuality that it activates? Without the pursuit of pleasure and our deep desire for union, we human beings would not be here: we would have gone extinct thousands and thousands of years ago!
A path that mortifies the body, that annuls physical pleasure by judging it wrong, is not a suitable path to Liberation, because it does nothing but increase dependency and separation!
When a woman allows the activation of her own Feminine Energy, she puts herself in a position to experience pure Masculine Energy, free from conditioning, that “stably stands” and is fully available to her to feed this Sacred Fire.
When a man, through gentleness, listening, welcoming and openness of the Heart, activates the woman’s Feminine Energy, he allows his own virility, his Masculine Energy, to be received by the woman in all its fullness, strength and vigor.
In this way, the so-called Tantric Union develops.
Yeshua Ben Josef said: “When you make the two into one, you will become sons of man, and when you say: <Mountain, move away!> it will move.”
Logion 106, Gospel of Thomas
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