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| <back | home Sacred Sexuality & Relationships by Andrew Harvey BODY AND SEX HATRED have characterized and disfigured all the patriarchal religious and mystic transmission systems and created a schizophrenic split in the psyche of humanity that has led most human beings to feel subtly ashamed of having a body at all, to feel guilty and tormented about their natural desires, and to be radically alienated from, and blind to, the glory and power of nature. The wound that this terrible and false divorce between body and spirit has inflicted on the human psyche is the source of vast despair and violence, and the source, too, of that blindness to the beauty of life and the wonder of the creation that fuels humanity’s current course of self-destruction and destruction of nature. The answer to this destructive lack of balance is the restoration of the vision of tantra and of sacred sexuality and sacred relationship to humanity. Tantra is a term that derives from the Sanskrit verb tan-to: “stretch” and “expand,” and it refers to a set of spiritual and physical exercises in Hinduism and Buddhism designed to initiate the seeker directly into the divine ground of life, to “stretch” and “expand” his or her consciousness so that it can embrace all the levels of reality in one overwhelming experience of interdependence and unity. One aspect of tantra as practiced in ancient India was a celebration of sexuality as a way to divine initiation and divine ecstasy; tantric philosophy knew the inextricable mutual relationship of soul and body, spirit and matter, and knew that this electric dance could be experienced in all its bliss and power and healing force and ecstatic joy in the practice of a consecrated sexuality. Restoring this great secret to humanity will restore the balance to human life, give all beings a way of being initiated into their divine truth in the core of life, and empower all beings who follow it with tremendous powers of self-healing and expansion of the mind and heart. The deep philosophy of tantra, both in its Buddhist and Hindu forms and in the reflections of this universal wisdom that can be found in aspects of shamanism, cabala, and certain Sufi mystics, has a marvelous simplicity and symmetry about it. For tantrics, the universe is a perpetually self-renewing creation of an eternal lovemaking between the “masculine” and “feminine” forces of the One; one Hindu poet, Kalidasa, describes all things as being always “wet with the golden love sweat of the God and Goddess.” This eternal lovemaking that engenders all the aspects of the cosmos takes place in an eternal rapture, a perpetual dance of bliss, and from this rapture and bliss stream incessantly tremendous energies of natural initiation and healing. Two human lovers, heterosexual or homosexual, who consecrate themselves and their lovemaking to the Divine, worship each other as living manifestations of the Divine, and surrender themselves beyond all thought or concept to the ecstasy of sexual passion infused by love, compassion, tenderness, and profound respect will know what the “god” and “goddess” know in their eternal love dance. They will be swept directly, in fact, into the primal divine energies that are creating the universe and bathe directly in the glory of their all-renewing fire. And just as the universe itself is the child of the god and the goddess, so through experiencing the love dance of the god and goddess both between and within themselves, both lovers will, over time, help birth in each other the divine child. Such tremendous possibilities and rewards demand, of course, their price. True tantra has nothing whatever to do with the semi-pornographic celebrations of promiscuity and indiscriminate sex often preached in its name. True tantra is, in fact, profound and difficult, as precise and exacting a discipline as true celibacy. From my own experience and from my extensive study of all the different mystical traditions that honor the creativity of consecrated sexuality, five interlinked “laws” for the practice of tantra emerge. The first “law” is that both lovers in a tantric couple should be spiritual practitioners dedicated to offering their love to the service of illumination and to living their love in the light of divine truth and divine compassion. The second “law” is that the “masculine” and “feminine” sides of both lovers should be in love with the “masculine” and “feminine” aspects of the other; this means that their love must be a complete one, not merely physical but also emotional, spiritual, intellectual, and mystical. Authentic tantric couples are those in which the mind, heart, body, and soul of each partner is in love with all aspects of the other; nothing less than this can bring about the conditions for mutual interpenetration on all levels and its attendant initiation into oneness with the primal energies and truths of the universe. The third “law” is that there must be a radical equality between the lovers; neither can have power over the other. Any inequality of power or desire for domination of any kind destroys the miraculous subtle balance that is essential for authentic abandon and mutual surrender. If both are to worship each other as equal manifestations of the Divine -- the condition for the divinization of desire in tantra -- then each must treat the other with divine tenderness, respect, and honor at all times and in all circumstances as far as possible. The fourth “law” is that there must be fidelity between couples who practice it. The level of trust required for the sometimes very exposing work of real tantra demands that each knows beyond any shadow of a doubt that the other is completely dedicated to him or her. Without this “sealing of the vessel,” the energies that need to be aroused and refined cannot be awakened. A Taoist tantric once said to me: “It’s simple, really. This fidelity business is like making vegetable soup. If you take the lid off, the flavors of the vegetables will not be able to run together.” The fifth “law,” which includes and consummates all the others, is that the essence of tantra is not technique of any kind or even sexual pleasure (which can, after all, be enjoyed in situations that have none of the defining characteristics of tantric union) but passionate and profound love. Love is the fusing divine power in tantra, the glue without which true merging cannot take place. Without love, no amount of fancy gymnastic techniques, such as those sold in the often hilariously vulgar tantric manuals that are flooding the market, will be of any alchemical use. Such techniques when practiced without profound love may well result in heightened sexual delight -- and delight is a divine gift -- but the radical emotional, physical, and spiritual fusion that is the goal of true tantra goes far beyond even the most delicious and health-giving forms of pleasure. When in the service of profound love, these techniques, perfected over centuries of practice, can help tremendously in taking both lovers to heights of initiatory ecstasy. As an old Hindu once said to me in Benares: “Lust without love can be very wonderful but the heavens will not open for it. When lust streams from love like the rays of light do from the Sun, then heaven comes down on earth and the body is lit up with the fire of the Eternal.” It is necessary to know and honor these laws of authentic tantra not only because they are the conditions for true soul and body fusion but also because the work of tantra can sometimes be difficult and exhausting and will require tremendous stamina, faith, and commitment from both partners. This is because the kind of final exposed intimacy that. tantra demands and engenders necessarily brings up all the “dark” and “shadow” aspects of both partners. The all-embracing physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual healing that tantra can give necessitates this bringing up of all of the broken, tortured, and manipulative sides of the self and all the projections and games that spring from them. How else can they be seen and healed? Facing the pain and humiliation of this process -- and the violent feelings of despair or resentment it can engender -- demands of both partners a sustained level of spiritual practice. Without this, neither will be able to remain in the crucible of the relationship, and the intricate, many-leveled alchemy that tantra is designed to produce cannot take place. Excerpt from Andrew Harvey’s The Direct Path. <back | top^ |