It developed out of early matriarchal Indian culture, whose early goddess worship can be traced right through to today’s popular Shakti cults. Different groups arose around different teachers, and cultivated their own practices.
Tantra is best understood as a group of texts and practices geared towards direct experience, rather than a spiritual system. The texts, called Tantras, outline methods for self-realization. Many of the Sanskrit texts take the form of question and answer dialogues between divine lovers, in which ritual practices and philosophy are discussed. Like all mystical paths that emphasize inner development, many Tantric teachings are esoteric – their spiritual meanings obscure to the uninitiated.
These methods were handed down orally, and practised by teachers and their followers. Tantra wasn’t institutionalized, and there were no rules or hierarchies to limit access to the teachings. All that was required was the will to learn and the persistence needed to actually track down a teacher – since they didn’t advertise themselves.
With the development of the Vedic system, based on a group of texts called the Vedas, introduced by Aryan invaders and subsequently favoured by Hindus, Tantric practitioners were marginalized. Asceticism, or physical renunciation, gradually gained ascendancy amongst Indians. The philosophy of learning through suffering, or working through suffering and hardship in this lifetime in order to earn future rewards in the next was regarded by Tantra teachers as a misapprehension of reality. Tantra says you don’t need to suffer to attain enlightenment. Paradise is not in the next world, but here and now, if we can only see it.
Tantra developed partially in revolt against the proscriptive and caste-bound hierarchy of orthodox Hinduism. Some of the practices used by Tantrics were clearly conceived as blatant affronts to orthodox sensibilities. The central Tantric rite, called the five Ms, involved the use of five items considered taboo by Hindus. Mady (alcohol), mamsa (meat), matsya (fish), mudra (kidney beans – an aphrodisiac) and maithuna (ritual intercourse) are all used in Indian Tantric rituals as part of the core practice of invoking and identifying with divine Shakti energy. Tantric methods were concerned with challenging conventional taboos and restrictions – viewed as examples of limited, and limiting, thought patterns. Within Tantra, the process of achieving enlightenment was accelerated by confronting fixed ideas about caste, ritual cleanliness and gender. Taboos were broken as a way of developing non-judgement. These were ways of developing awareness that every experience, and every individual, was intrinsically pure. Rather than attempting to master the flesh by punishing it, or attempting to control sexual impulses through celibacy, sex and the body were used as a vehicle for spirituality.
Although the caste system has been in place for thousands of years in India, Tantra was always open to people of all castes. Tantric texts taught that all men and all women had equal capacities for enlightenment within themselves. In contrast to orthodox Hinduism, many early teachers were among the lower castes. Tantrics came from a wide range of backgrounds. Tantric meditations were designed to be adapted to any situation or occupation – a wine maker could distill bliss from the grapes of experience, while a weaver could weave passion using threads of freedom to produce a rug of enlightenment.
The goal of Tantra is to merge the phenomenal world with the divine, in one integrated, unified reality. Tantrics believe that in order to fully experience this reality all that is needed is a change of awareness. You are already divine, you just have to wake up to that fact. You don’t need to change anything about yourself or work to achieve anything – you are innately divine.
Robin, 37: I thought it was normal to lose interest in sex as you got older. But I’ve discovered that my sexuality had just been put in a box to be brought out now and again. From childhood I’d been indoctrinated with the idea that sex is something good girls shouldn’t do.
Now it feels like a natural part of life. I can experience things sexually and it doesn’t have to involve sex. Sexual energy is just like any other quality produced by the different centres in the body – like the heart – but we don’t allow the sexual feelings out. I realized it’s always been part of me. If I hadn’t learnt to hide it, it would be such a natural thing. Just to touch each other more. Sexual energy isn’t just about sex – it’s about aliveness.
On the workshop I got in touch with the more sensual side of sexuality – through touch and movement. We did some wild dancing, and afterwards standing still, someone touched me. Waves of intense sensation passed through my body. We don’t know half of what we can experience, if we only just allowed ourselves.
Like all spiritual paths, Tantra is a philosophy with core values, which can be a problem for Westerners who are attracted to the open sexuality and the aura of permissiveness around Tantric practices. It is a spiritual path, which means that the search for bliss is not about pleasure for its own sake, since that is always transient and ultimately unsatisfying. It is about using worldly experience as a gateway to another perspective on our existence. A perspective that allows us to realize that we are already in a state of bliss – if we can only open ourselves up to that awareness. Paradise is here and now.
Unlike religions that separate existence into the earthly and the divine, Tantrics believe that our own reality is inseparable from the divine, and that you can’t split them into two realms. Christian, Judaic, Islamic and Hindu traditions all split existence into a polarised duality of good and evil, heaven and hell, above and below. The path of Tantra is a direct path that cuts through dualism, not judging things as either good or bad.
We so often view our world as split into polar opposites, such as male/female, solar/lunar, heat/cold. Sexual union is considered to epitomize the essential unity of all things by the joining of male and female energies. Sexual ecstasy is the perfect example of the ways in which our experience of dualism can be transcended through experience – the experience of two bodies and souls merging into one.
Catherine, 43: I no longer feel Tantra is something I need to do with my partner, or that it’s just through sex. Ecstasy is very simple. It’s not that intense, cathartic experience people think of, it’s something very simple.
Ecstasy feels cool and still to me, and I can access it easily. I get into very ecstatic states through dancing, through pleasuring myself, or through simply looking at a flower. It’s more a state of being. I feel it’s about relaxing and opening up to that life force, that sexual energy.
It’s a feeling of being at one with myself, and very much in my body. It’s a sense of aliveness in my body. I can feel energy streaming inside me, little pulsations here and there. There’s a warm feeling around my heart, a free and open feeling in my chest, and in my mind – the area around my third eye.
I find I’m accessing intuition more and more, and opening up to inspiration. There’s a sense of unflappability, which comes from a deep sense of trust that I’ll be able to deal with whatever comes my way. At the same time I’m much clearer about what I choose to do, how I choose to do it, and where I’m coming from in making that choice. I don’t have to worry around in my head wondering what’s right for me, I know it. Tantra has changed the way I am in life. I won’t agree to do things that don’t feel good anymore, whether in relation to work, or other people. I also just get on with what needs to be done – the boring, mundane things – without struggling against them.
