wisdom lies in your heart already. You are always in contact and in harmony with the whole – Tantra is about waking up to that knowledge. It doesn’t happen through the mind, but by building up your energy and opening the chakras.
Pip, 46: I was in a stone circle with my partner. We were lying under the central stone, dozing into the energies. Everything outside the circle disappeared. We felt both connected and independent at the same time, and I was waiting with a sense of expectancy. The energy felt very high and I tried to see what would unfold by relaxing into what was already there.
I asked my partner to lie on her front, and found myself tracing quite specific designs on her back. Lines up her back which spiralled into her shoulder blades and back down again three times on each side. The thought came to me that I was unfurling the wings of an angel, and allowing energy to open up. She began to dance tentatively, exploring this fine feeling. She looked like an elf or a fairy, both innocent and raunchy, as she danced around barefoot and topless. In her dance she’d become an energy being. Then she climbed up the central stone, which leans like a giant phallus, and perched onto the tip, looking like an amazing ‘playboy of the year’ image.
I felt it was a taste of how it is to touch paradise while still being on earth. That’s how we want to live our life together.
Tantra is not particularly concerned with dry philosophical speculation, and the texts have little to add to Hindu or Buddhist philosophy, except for their emphasis on lived experience. Tantras are not concerned with splitting hairs about how to define the absolute: Tantric practices are geared towards creating a different subjectivity from the one we’re used to, a different way of experiencing ourselves and the world. The techniques can seem elaborate to us, because they’re not part of our own background cultural knowledge. They’ve been refined over thousands of years, and are firmly embedded in a particular Hindu way of looking at reality, yet in spite of this they’re simple and accessible. It’s not necessary for modern Western practitioners to learn all the subtleties of the complex body maps and cosmologies familiar to Eastern Tantric practitioners. What’s most important is developing a heart-centred modus operandi, and using some sort of meditation practice to experience these feelings of non-duality.
In meditation it is particularly important to focus on the heart area. Once this energy centre has been balanced, it will tend to harmonize the others automatically. A simple visualization for cleansing the heart chakra is to imagine your body wrapped in a ball of golden light, like a cocoon. Then, imagine a clear emerald green light in the heart area of your chest, which gradually permeates your whole body, and expands to colour the golden ball a bright emerald green. You can do this meditation with your partner as well, visualizing the cocoon around both your bodies.
Traditional Tantric practices involve purifying the body for Tantra through a vegetarian diet and through breathing techniques (known as pranayama), and working on the body’s flexibility through the physical postures of hatha yoga. Then the work of awakening and raising the Kundalini-Shakti energy through the chakras can begin. Kundalini yoga uses a range of techniques to harness the libidinal energy of the body for spiritual development, including visualizations, breathing, sound (mantra) and gestures (mudras). In order to work with the energy body, meditation and visualizations are used to influence the body’s subtle physiology as well as to deepen experience.
A traditional Tantric ritual involved investing space with sacredness through rituals: for instance, drawing the fundamental triangle mandala shape (yantra) on the ground facing north, or internally visualizing a yantra and the associated deity. Then the yogi recited lots of mantras to worship, invoke and identify with particular deities. Ritual food and drink were taken, and sometimes hemp, before finally making love while using visualizations to sanctify the ritual.
Maithuna is the traditional ritual practice of making love as the divine, recreating the moment of creation as Shakti and Shiva.
SACRED TOOLS: MANTRAS AND YANTRAS
Mantras are sacred sounds chanted by the adept to bring them into alignment with the energies of the cosmos. The famous mantra om is considered to be the sound of the universe humming. It is only when we have cleared our subtle body enough, and are able to enter states of deep meditation, that we can hear this spontaneous vibration of the universe, which is always resonating with energy.
Mantras – words of power
Seed syllables, which create the appropriate spiritual intention:
| Aim | seed syllable identifying self with teacher |
| Hrim | seed syllable of shakti |
| Klim | seed of desire |
| Krim | seed of union |
| Shrim | seed of delight |
| Trim | seed of fire |
| Strim | seed of peace |
| Hlim | seed of protection |
Another series of sacred sounds, associated with the chakras:
| Lam | base chakra (muladhara) |
| Vam | sacrum (svadhisthana) |
| Ram | solar plexus (manipura) |
| Yam | heart chakra (anahata) |
| Ham | throat chakra (vissudha) |
| Om | brow chakra (ajna) |
Mandala is Sanskrit for circle. It describes the outdoor earthen platform used for rituals, as well as being a generic term for a ritual space, and a gathering of yogis. Mandala also refers to the yoni in Tantric usage, which means an enclosed sacred space as well as the female genitals.
Mandalas are used for the ritual in which a spiritual teacher assigns a mantra (sacred sound) to her or his student. Traditionally, the teacher designs a mandala with four gates in each direction, made with coloured powders. The teacher invests the mandala with sacred power through purification practices, mantra recitation, and the visualization of deities inside the mandala. Within this space the student receives his spiritual instruction about which mantras to use for invoking deities. Traditionally, the reciting of mantras is thought to be worthless without having had some sort of initiation ritual to empower the power word.
Yantras are more simple geometric designs, which represent the energies of a particular
