Heart of Tantric Sex (3 page)

 I 
F SEX IS SUCH A NATURAL FORCE intrinsic to all human beings, how did we lose touch with its deeper orgasmic potential? How did we lose the art of generating love? Of staying in love? Why are we so focused on orgasm? The simple answer, sadly, is that as we have become more civilized we have become less conscious. Over thousands of years men and women have fallen dramatically out of balance with each other. We have become progressively time-and goal-oriented, conditions in which true love and uplifting sex deteriorate.

With technological development we have become addicted to time, to achievements, to plans in the future and to reaching our goals, whatever they may be. The more highly developed the country, the more important time becomes, with people living on tight schedules with back-to-back appointments. This creates so much pressure we not only lose our ability to love, we actually become sick. Stress is responsible for an extremely high percentage of illness in the modern world. Relaxation and inner ease have become so unfamiliar to us that when we are not "doing" anything we feel restless and bored. We long for action, excitement, stimulation. It seems that we have reversed the rules of nature. Living with and against the clock seems to give our life meaning while "being" and stillness and quiet arouse our anxiety.

Why are we so goal-oriented in sex?

How often have you said to your lover or yourself, "I want to make love. I just don't have the time." In a sense that is true, because satisfying sex requires time. However, when we do finally make love we are always in a hurry to get to the end part, the orgasm part. When we are striving toward that, we are ahead of ourselves. We are not really "here," we are not even really together. We are almost using each other and our every move or touch is oriented toward our goal. The orgasm has become the only means of fulfillment, and we feel that sex is not really sex unless we "come," unless there is a peak and release of energy. When this is our experience, millions of women are worried, in emotional pain, when the elusive orgasm is not reachable, and most men are deeply concerned because they ejaculate much sooner than they would like—or at least well before they can satisfy their partner. Unless we "come together," we feel that we are missing something, that we have failed or are sexually inadequate.

This urgency for an orgasm operates unconsciously within us, almost like an automatic reflex, seeming to leave us little choice but to head for orgasm, as we usually do. This desire is so strong it seems to be absolutely instinctive, which makes it even harder for us to imagine there might be other ways of making love! And so we repeat ourselves in sex, looking for a certain fulfillment that we never seem to find.

This tendency of goal-orientation, and the resulting haste in sex, has been going on for centuries and together with religious dogma, it has effectively and seriously repressed our sexual energy. We are subject to a host of fears, insecurities, anxieties, tensions, and pressures around orgasm and sex, and our pleasure is kept, through this and unknown to us, within certain definite limits of enjoyment. We have lost knowledge of alternatives in lovemaking, and the expression of our sexual energy has become subject to certain conditions which dictate that we automatically travel along a specific sexual route: we start
this
way and we finish
that
way. It is virtually a routine. And unfortunately these conditions operate without us even knowing they are there, because mother and grandmother and great-grandmother made love in this way and if it was good enough for them, why not me? That is the way I thought until I began exploring love within a different frame.

From doing to being

The eventual outcome is that through forcing the sexual energy toward reaching a specific goal, we have lost the capacity to discover how the genitals themselves "make love"; what they "want to do." We have a fixed idea of what we want in mind. In this way we have unsuspectingly lost our "organic genital intelligence," and today sex is a function of mind instead of true body. This sexual conditioning has led to an extroverted and biological approach to sex. Along with it our sexual energy has become congested and our bodies unduly tense. Our lifetime habit of compressing sexual energy and forcing it intentionally although unconsciously along a fixed, goal-oriented route, has resulted in a chronic twist in sexual energy, with what could be described as an almost "corkscrew" effect. The accumulated physical and emotional tensions of our past experiences sit in the genitals making them tense and much less sensitive than they should be. Sex is now more of a mechanical "doing" and reproductive function and we are without access to the divine "being" aspects of sexual union. We only know how to "do" in love, and not how to "be" in love.

Picture a flower that stays compressed in a bud, restricted, and never given the opportunity to open and blossom. Such is our condition. It is a chronic tension, and the sexual center is turned and twisted in on itself in such a way that the naturally expansive energy is prevented from radiating throughout the body. Sex becomes limited to local genital sensations, we are unable to create higher ecstatic experiences. The inward and upward swing of the sex energy required in Tantra happens as bodies and genitals relax, no longer compelled by orgasm, and that same energy spreads and expands deliciously through the body. Yet very few of us have had this experience because we simply get much too tense as we try to control and force the direction of the sex energy. When the same energy is free to move absolutely of its own accord, sex becomes a glorious mixture of rampant passion and sobering silence.

Personal psychology and programming

The sexual center is the seat of our individual psychologies and personalities. This is where our programming is molded. Our earliest unconscious impressions surrounding sex and life are lodged here, affecting us long before we become sexually active, and on into the rest of our lives. The negative imprints, the centuries of sexual misunderstandings, the phrases, the looks, insinuate themselves into our bodies while we are still young. In this way we inherit our sexual conditioning, which resides in the body in the form of physical tension with a restless, excitable quality. The tension of our collective past adds to the tensions of our personal past, and these can be both conscious and unconscious.

Excitement and sexual tension

As soon as our level of sexual excitement reaches a certain point, the unconscious tension within each of us is triggered to form an urgent physical desire, which sets up a powerful craving for orgasm. With this forceful injection of tension, we swing automatically away from the here and now, working frantically toward an artificial climax created by a focus in the future. In fact we are not truly present in sex because we have gone in pursuit of a specific outcome. In this way sexual energy fails to be an empowering and moving force, but simply a pleasurable build up and corresponding discharge of tension. This sexual tension unfortunately seldom moves through or out of the body completely. Instead, it lives on as frustrated desire, accumulating with time and continually seeking release. It makes our genitals tough and insensitive while it makes us feel emotional, restless, lustful, or angry. When this accumulated tension is triggered, or thrust forward by sexual stimulation, it adds to the already disturbed energy in the sexual center.

Like the foundation of a building, if the base is weak, all the upper structures will lack strength and support from the earth. In the same way, the higher energy centers in the body will also lack vitality, nourishment and integrity. Therefore, when the tensions of achieving orgasm are the underlying theme of lovemaking, an already bottom-weak system will cave in. The pull or corkscrew twist on the fragile sex center will automatically hook and mobilize the entire collective unconscious surrounding sex. When the flood of psychological sicknesses and perversions that have arisen over thousands of years seep through to us today, the innocence and spirituality of the sexual act is lost. This is effectively a psychological sickness, and while it is expressed through the body, it is really a condition of the mind.

Time for relaxation

Tantra directly addresses the mind and the restlessness of the psyche by re-aligning us with our essentially sexual nature. Sex is an aspect of the spirit. Since heart and spirit have little to do with the sexual act today, the recent resurgence of interest in ancient sexual attitudes and practices is a sincere attempt to turn the rising tide of sexual ignorance. By bringing intelligence into sex, by experiencing sexual energy in an innocent, playful, childlike way, absorbed beyond any preoccupation of outcome, we begin to sever our ties with our conditioned personal and collective pasts, and open up to a new world of experience.

To begin, we need to have a flexible attitude toward time because time is what we make of it. If time is money, then time exerts pressure to fit more in and do more things. Where time is cyclic as in nature, there is patience, which removes pressure and replaces it with relaxation. Some plants wait for years for the rains to come so that they can blossom for a few short hours. Have you ever wondered how on earth you would get everything done, then suddenly you are on the plane, up and away, with everything sorted out and slotted into place? If time is what we make it then it must be flexible, where time can even stand still. This happens as we enter the present moment, which is why Tantra asks for an
unhurried
loving approach. When we are not in a hurry, or concerned about time, this makes us aware of the unfolding present moment which is filled with richness. When I lived in India, I observed that time had almost no significance; in fact nobody really cared about it in the slightest. Yesterday, today, tomorrow—it did not make much difference. Interestingly in Hindi, the same word, "kal," is used to describe yesterday and tomorrow! This attitude toward time gave the whole country an extremely relaxing quality, one of being rather than doing. On any given day an overcrowded train can stop, and stand dead still for five hours at the end of a five-hour journey, just twenty minutes from its destination, as mine did without any explanation for the nature or the length of the delay. When this happened to me, the other passengers just sat quietly, there was nothing said or done, and everyone fell into immediate, joyful acceptance. Adults relaxed and chatted, children played and moved about the crowded compartment as if they were at home, spicy snacks appeared and eventually the train started up again. No panic or fuss because no one was determined to reach their destination by any specific time.

After living in India for several years and having returned to Europe, I remember traveling on a German plane from Frankfurt to Berlin. The young businessman next to me kept checking his watch, agitated because the departure was already one minute late! When we took off some fifteen minutes later he was absolutely furious that life's circumstances had interfered with his goal by a few minutes, and he would be late for his all-important meeting. He was restless for the remainder of the journey, unable to experience even a moment of peace and relaxation.

In the Western world, goals, plans and time rule our lives. In fact these days it is almost chic to be busy and often we keep busy to avoid facing the insecurities or anxieties we may feel about love and intimacy. How often have you been too busy for love? And then when you found some time, it was last thing at night, a quick fifteen or twenty minutes before you went to sleep. Or it was a quickie first thing in the morning before work. In this kind of sex, time has entered our lovemaking, and brought with it the pressure that something
has
to happen, and fast! So in our desire to create pleasure quickly, we move immediately toward orgasm because it feels good. In contrast, Tantra tells us that lovemaking needs time, lots and lots of unhurried time. Sexual energy needs hours to relax, blossom and flower, to bring the deepest pleasures of satisfying lovemaking. When we give ourselves this opportunity we find beautifully fresh and unexpected experiences, where the energy itself celebrates differently each time. You cannot possibly get bored. In truth, we ourselves are creating not only the difference, but also the extent to which we are able to relax into the immediacy of the moment.

A healing force

This Tantric dimension opens up naturally and accidentally when lovers are relaxed, open and available to each other, perhaps freshly in love or surrounded by the gorgeous greenery of nature. Many of us have had this magical experience where the moment itself feels like heaven. I remember it happening to me spontaneously in India during an intense monsoon rain, late one night. The thundering and torrential rains created the sensation of being encapsulated within a whirlwind of intensity. I was with my lover of many years in his huge bamboo bed when suddenly time stopped and we moved as one body, passionate and aimless, consciously absorbed in the unfolding present moment. I was golden and floating, ecstatically filled with love for hours, with no idea of how I had gotten there.

Through Tantra I can now access this mysterious present dimension consciously and at will, not merely by accident or chance. Many of our problems, anxieties, and unhappinesses, even illnesses, have their source in sexual issues. When we validate sexuality by incorporating consciousness as nature and God intended, we discover sex to be a healing spiritual force. And surprisingly, the sexual interest does not gradually burn out as is commonly experienced by lovers. In glaring contrast, the attraction
increases.
The sexual experience gets finer and finer as time passes, the genitals learning to respond to each other with a new ecstatic "intelligence."

Tantra, which is everybody's birthright, removes the darkness and brings light to life.