Tantric Sex: Making love last. Cassandra Lorius

bliss. Bliss stays in the heart of each individual throughout life. In Tantra, this bliss is most easily realized through making love just as the original Shakti and Shiva did.

      As part of the Tantric idea that God is in everything and everybody, you are encouraged to recognize the God and Goddess within yourself and your partner. In Tantra, this is the goddess Shakti and the god Shiva. Tantra also embraces the alchemical idea that each of us has an inner man and an inner woman, and that our sexual partners are external reflections of this inner marriage. When we unite with our partner, we unite with the other half of ourselves, becoming whole.

      In fact, Shakti is not so much a goddess, as the creative force behind existence, who manifests in different forms. That’s why she’s not depicted as a single deity, but as a number of goddesses who represent the various qualities of this primal energy. So the wide range of local goddesses and gods revered by the Indians can be considered different aspects of primordial Shakti energy. Shakti is as changeable as the phenomenal world she has brought into being:

       As the divine seductress who initiated the act of love-making responsible for creation, Shakti is represented as Mohini – the temptress.

       As the maternal principle, Shakti is represented as Lakshmi, depicted holding a lotus flower, symbol of spiritual development.

       In her creative aspect, Shakti is depicted as Saraswati, who plays a musical instrument called the vina, and is regarded as the patron of the 64 arts one should cultivate in life – especially the arts of love.

       As in the cycle of birth, death and rebirth, all Shakti brings into existence returns to its original essence. In her destructive aspect she is depicted as Kali, the sabre-rattling goddess who wears a necklace of human skulls. She is depicted dancing on the corpse of her lover, the god Shiva. Shiva is often described as the footstool, or mattress of Kali – and if she’s not dancing on him, she’s mounting the erect phallus which is the only thing that animates his corpse.

      Shakti depicted as Mohini, the temptress.

      Tantrics regard Shiva as a corpse without the energy of Shakti to bring him to life.

      Shiva is the masculine equivalent of Shakti, the generic term for the male energy of consciousness, which needs Shakti to give him form. Shakti, the feminine creative energy is considered to be pure energy, and as pure energy is formless and flowing, she needs Shiva to give her consciousness. Each aspect complements and provides the identity for the other, as a means of becoming whole.

      Shakti is often depicted dancing on her lover’s chest, showing that she is the active principle without which Shiva would be nothing – quite literally a corpse.

      The kundalini energy is often depicted as a snake. In this popular image of Shiva, his personal kundalini energy has come to fruition at the crown of his head – the traditional site of his sexual union with Shakti.

      Shakti is considered to be especially concentrated in a woman, and for this reason women are particularly venerated. The sexual energy is also thought of as Shakti energy, in both women and men.

      Tantra is unique in that it celebrates the power of sexuality, acknowledged in many cultures as the creative force behind existence. As a spiritual path it embodies a feminine awareness, since the divine principle underlying reality is feminine in nature. Just as all of reality is a manifestation of the divine, so too are women and men the embodiment of divinity. Men as well as women are honoured as god-like manifestations of the divine. Tantra advocates gaining knowledge of the divine through practical experience. Ritual sexual practices are considered the key to balancing the polarity in women and men, by unifying female and male energies in the body and aligning them with the cosmos.

SACRED SEX

      Learning Tantra involves learning the art of spiritualizing sexuality.

      Simon, 33: I’ve learnt to really slow down in sex. I can choose to go for it, or to make love another way. There’s a choice about how to be. I spend hours making love, penetrating and then stopping to explore each other’s bodies and cuddling and talking. Sex is no longer a one-off thing where you go for it and stop when you ejaculate. Now I can choose whether to ejaculate or not, now it’s half and half. Tantric sex is more conscious. You’re more conscious of what you’re choosing to do, and conscious of exploring other things: exploring different feelings and physical sensations which you become aware of when you move away from bonking. For instance I hated being tickled, but now I love it.

      John Hawken, Tantra teacher: In Tantric practice we learn to relax into excitement, especially with the pelvic floor muscle (love muscle or fire muscle) to allow the sexual excitement to spread, first of all from the genitals into the whole body, then beyond the limitations of the physical body into an expanded energy body, bringing us into connection and melting with our partner as the Other, and through them melting into the whole universe.

      By consciously breathing the sexual energy into our higher energy centres, we can make love with our hearts and our spirits, celebrating sexual union as an all-embracing conscious experience of transcending aloneness into All-Oneness. On the level of pure energy, sexuality and spirituality become mutually completing aspects of our being.

      Tantric practices involve a meeting on the sexual level. Sex is the beginning rather than the ultimate step in the journey you are taking together. Sexual practices are performed with consciousness of what you’re doing, and why. More important than what you’re doing is how you’re doing it, and the intention you have when you’re making love. Love-making with the intention of exploring real intimacy and connection with your beloved, and allowing yourself to see where that connection takes you, rather than limiting your focus to genital pleasure and orgasm, creates the right space.

      Tantrics see sexual union as a means of achieving divine bliss. The pleasures of orgasm can be expanded into a whole body experience that links sex with your hearts and spirit. In developing the spiritual dimension of sex, you can enter the realm of divine ecstasy. You don’t need to believe in Tantric philosophy, or follow its precepts to the letter, all that is needed is the right intention.

      Tantra is not just about sex, it’s about the free flow of energy within yourself, as well as with others. It’s more about this flow of energy than about sexual intercourse or fancy postures for love-making. The emphasis in Tantric love-making is on non-doing – relaxing into pleasurable experiences and the energy connection you have with your beloved, rather than trying to build excitement and make something specific happen (orgasm).

      You can use tried and tested Tantric techniques to help you explore the connection between sex, heart and spirit. In ‘Tantric sex’, you focus on connecting genital sensations with the heart and the spirit, using breathing and meditation techniques, which connect up the energy centres in your body. Integrating the energy flow within yourself and with another expands your sexual experience. The exercises in the third and fourth part of this book lead to what SkyDancing teacher Margo Anand calls ‘riding the wave of bliss’ – divine sex.

      The following is a list of key basic elements that Tantric techniques use to help transform sex into an experience of the divine, which will be developed in Part