The only transformer and alchemist that turns everything into
gold is love.
-Anais Nin
To discover the mysteries of sacred sex is to embark upon a
journey of joy. The ancient path of ecstatic sexuality, leading
to a state of enlightenment and bliss, has long been traveled by
followers in many different spiritual traditions. Each tradition
has developed distinctive ways to cultivate and harness the potency
of sexual energy, affirming the vital connection of body, mind,
and spirit.
Sacred sex harmonizes the dual energies within each of us - whether
we call them God and Goddess, Yin and Yang, or darkness and light
- using passion and intimacy to combine and direct those forces
both within and between ourselves. Through this process we break
through the limitations of the personal self and experience a sense
of oneness with creation. Infusing our sexual relationships with
spirituality, we take our pleasure to a new dimension, transforming
our sexual drive into spiritual energy, transcending the physical
body, and entering a state of heightened consciousness.
Sex with Spirit introduces the beliefs and reveals the lovemaking
secrets of a number of sexual-spiritual traditions, including Tantra,
Taoism, Wicca, and Sex Magick. You may be inspired to investigate
a particular path further, or to weave the practices into your own
belief system, or simply to expand and clarify your thoughts. You
can work straight through the book as a guide, from the preparation
of body and mind through to advanced postures and techniques, or
you can pick and choose interesting ideas and alternative approaches.
These are offered as suggestions, to be adapted and altered as you
feel comfortable, or used as a starting point for further exploration.
Many of the exercises in the book can be practiced on your own.
Getting to know your own body and your sexual responses profoundly
enhances your sexual and emotional confidence. Some energy-raising
and moving exercises are best practiced without a partner, and there
is a long tradition in Buddhist Tantra and in Sex Magick work of
solo cultivation. Understanding, expressing, and fulfilling your
own sexuality is a process that is inherently life-affirming, and
it forms a solid base from which to explore sexual bliss with future
lovers.
Sacred sex is a path of love and acceptance that is open to everybody,
whether you are straight or gay, single or in a long-term relationship.
The focus on harmonizing male and female energies does not confine
it exclusively to heterosexual couples. We all contain both polarities
of energy, and gay singles or couples can play with these energies
just as effectively as heterosexuals. Where exercises refer specifically
to male and female partners they can, in almost all cases, be adapted
for same-sex couples.
Sex and Spirituality
In most mainstream religious traditions, sex has long been regarded
as an obstacle to spiritual progress, something to be overcome and
transcended. Earthly desires are seen as sinful, and sexual restraint
- even celibacy - is thought by many to hold the key to spiritual
knowledge and experience. However, there are two Eastern paths with
a refreshingly different perspective. Tantra and Taoism both take
the approach that one should not only not reject the body and its
desires, but actually embrace them on the road to enlightenment.
They share the view that sexual intercourse can be a sacrament and
a means of spiritual transformation.
These ideas can also be found in the West. The pre-Christian pagan
traditions of Europe celebrate and honor sexuality, regarding the
act of love as a way of worshipping the Great Goddess and her consort;
and the present-day practice of Sex Magick recognizes and harnesses
the natural power of sexual energy in ritual.
Tantra
Love, enjoyed by the ignorant,
Becomes bondage.
This very same love,
tasted by one with understanding,
Brings liberation.
Enjoy all the pleasures of love fearlessly,
For the sake of liberation.
- Cittasuddhiprakarana
The ancient cult of Tantra originated in India's earliest tribal
societies, long predating the first Tantric texts, which were probably
written in the sixth century CE. The Sanskrit word tantra
is related to the concept of weaving and expansion - it derives
from tan, meaning to expand, spin out, and weave. We weave
the disparate strands of our nature into a unified whole, and so
grow and expand into joy. Tantra can also refer to those teachings
in the sacred Hindu texts that are generally presented in the form
of a dialog between the god Shiva and his consort Shakti, whose
joyful coupling creates and sustains the universe.
Unlike Western religion that polarizes the sacred and the profane,
Tantra regards our physical senses as vehicles of liberation and
enlightenment. Its goal is the reintegration of body and mind. It
sees the macrocosm - the realms of heaven and spirit - reflected
in, and accessible through, the microcosm of the Earth and the human
body.
Tantra is a spiritual science that works with action, in which
every aspect of worldly existence is approached as an act of worship.
Enlightenment can be found in all forms of activity, including sexual
intimacy, and the practitioner's aim is to transform the everyday
into the divine. In Tantra, all the senses are harnessed, and the
experience of ecstasy is sought as a spiritual tool. Desire is mastered,
not through the flight from pleasure, but by total immersion in
it.
Tantra offers a radical shortcut to illumination, holding that
it can be attained in a single lifetime by tuning directly through
ordinary awareness and conventional thought patterns. The everyday
world of illusion coexists with the eternal, and enlightenment is
achieved by realizing that each level of reality contains, and interlaces
with, the greater transcendent whole.
Tantra's non-hierarchical, non-judgmental, and all-accepting approach
toward experience was a challenge to both Hindu and Buddhist cultures.
The view that enlightenment could be achieved by all men and women,
regardless of their backgrounds, was revolutionary in caste-bound
India. Many of its followers came from the lower castes, and much
of its practice was specifically designed to break down barriers
and taboos. Buddhist Tantra arose outside of the powerful Buddhist
monasteries in the eighth to twelfth centuries CE, as a protest
movement, initially championed by laypeople with the aim of creating
a more accessible and inclusive religious system.
Many of Tantra's magical rites were deliberately rebellious and
non-conformist, designed to shock in order to break through prejudices
and so leave the adept open to the experience of Oneness. While
some Tantric methods of transforming energy to aid spiritual evolution
- such as visualization, sitting meditation, and breathing - could
be performed entirely as an internal practice, the "left-hand path"
embraced sexuality as a gateway to transformation and liberation.
It allowed men and women to pursue enlightenment together through
a series of ritualized expressions of intimacy that would transform
the energy of their physical passion into spiritual ecstasy.
The central Tantric ceremony, known as the Five M's, highlights
its convention-defying nature. This takes place at night, and is
attended by a number of couples who ritually enjoy the five pleasures
ordinarily forbidden to high-caste Hindus: madya (wine),
matsya (fish), mamsa (meat), followed by mudra
(parched grain), and culminating in maithuna (sexual intercourse).
Tantra, particularly the Tibetan Buddhist schools, uses the rapture
of sexual union as a basis for meditation. By maintaining a clear
realization of emptiness in the midst of passion, it becomes possible
supreme bliss. Sexual arousal is used ritually, as a sacrament,
to weave together the inner and outer realities.
Buddhist and Hindu Tantra shared an emphasis on feminine, goddess
power, and on women as embodiments of female divinity. The universe
was considered to be generated by the primeval female energy of
Shakti, and men were required to honor and worship their female
partners. Female Buddhas started to appear in religious iconography
for the first time, along with symbolic images of Buddhist deities
coupling in sacred union.
In Hindu Tantra the sacred union of opposites is epitomized by
the cosmic dance of Shakti and Shiva. When they embrace, love ripples
through the universe. Shakti is the creative force behind all existence,
whom all women embody. She is depicted by a range of deities who
represent her various qualities, such as Parvati, goddess of beauty,
Mohini the temptress, and Kali the destroyer.
Shiva is the male energy of pure consciousness who needs Shakti
to give him form, just as she needs him to give her consciousness.
In this way they act as complementary forces, depending upon each
other in order to be whole. Their union is the union of energy and
consciousness, which creates bliss, and the entire physical and
transcendental world is continuously created by their interplay.
Men also have the feminine principle within them, in the form of
Kundalini energy - the individual's latent store of energy , visualized
as a coiled snake at the base of the spine. Tantrics seek to awaken
Kundalini energy and direct it upward to unite with Shiva energy
in the crown of the head. To experience the dynamic balance of consciousness
and energy, all individuals must achieve an inner marriage of their
masculine and feminine natures.
Tantric couples worship each other as embodiments of the divine
male and female principles. They make love as Shakti and Shiva,
and use spiritual, psychological, and physical lovemaking techniques
to heighten and transform their sexual energy into the bliss of
liberation.
Neo-Tantra
Tantra has always adapted itself to suit its time and place, and
this is no less true of its migration to the West in the 1960s.
The form that developed there dispenses with many of the culturally
specific beliefs and rituals of traditional Hindu and Buddhist Tantra,
and as such it is more properly known as "Neo-Tantra." It found
a ready audience in the Sixties generation: the sexual revolution,
overseas travel, an interest in mysticism and all things Eastern,
and minds opened by psychedelic drugs, had all prepared the ground
for spiritual sexuality.
In the 1970s the Indian guru Osho (formerly Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh)
further popularized Tantric sexuality as a viable path for Westerners
with a special fusion of Tantra and psychotherapy that bridged the
cultural divide.
Elements from psychotherapy also feature in many Neo-Tantra programs
taught today. These workshops and seminars tend to concentrate on
the quality of the relationship, and apply Tannic techniques, removed
from the original framework of Hindu culture and religion, as a
way of developing and enhancing a couple's intimacy. In traditional
Tantra, by contrast, intimacy is achieved in sexual union through
the creation of a shared visionary universe, and the goal of the
relationship is enlightenment.
