At first glance, one’s limited mind, perceives each religion as different from one the others. Each religion has its own gods, holy books, prayers, rituals, holy places and temples, as well as numerous rules by which believers should live. What in one religion is considered a virtue, in another, can be a sin. For example, the killing of a cow for Hindus, is a graver sin than the murder of a  human, while in some other religions, during the holidays, it is normal to slaughter cattle. In a synagogue and a mosque, it is prohibited to enter with an uncovered head, but in an Orthodox Church men cannot wear any headdress. Jews are not allowed to mention the Lord’s name in vain, while Hindus believe that the more often they  recite the name of God, the better. For a Muslim, drinking wine is a sin, but Christians administer communion with wine in their churches. Individual differences between some religions may seem contrary, and there are hundreds of such examples.

What is common in all religions? To answer this question, you need to see how each of them is “arranged”. Every religion has a) a cult and b) a particular worldview. A cult, or a cultic practice, implies a specific action for a believer (for example, a prayer or attending  church). A worldview, or a world perception, includes ideas about the world and human. The most important thing in the religious worldview, is the concept of a supernatural, non-material world.

Indeed, if we take from each religion what makes it different from the others, the essence or the «core» will remain, which is similar to all religions. This essence says that the Universe is more complicated than it seems at first glance, and that besides the visible world, common to all people, there is another one, an invisible world, that affects what is happening around it. Human  should take this world into consideration, correlating his behavior with certain laws. This knowledge came from the people who became known afterwards as prophets, messiahs, avatars, teachers, and lead to creation of all the world’s religions.

It is important to emphasize that the founders of every religion talked only about what reality was for them, the result of their own experience. They did not have faith in what they were saying, but  rather the direct knowledge of it. Direct knowledge is a result of direct perception; it is the same as when a sighted person knows about the existence of the sun because he sees it, while a blind human can only believe in its existence from the words of a sighted human.

That is why in every religion there is a compulsory element of faith and, as a consequence, there are various rituals of worship with accompany it. After all, ordinary people, attracted by the miracles, the preaching and charisma of the saints, have never experienced anything similar to such experiences. So, the only way for them to touch the great Truth has been faith and worship. Churches were built and prayers and rituals were created. All that strengthened faith and contributed to worship.

However, there were always people who were capable of doing more. Due to the special methods self-development such people perfected themselves so much that they learned to experience what their teachers had been spoken about by themselves. Methods of self-perfection were passed on from a teacher to his disciples; their number grew over time, forming whole schools.

So, every religion, since its emergence, developed simultaneously in two directions. First, the well – known and popular external direction, based on belief and observance of religious prescriptions. This direction eventually took shape in the religious organizations with their symbols, rites and temples where believers could worship. The second direction, is small and closed to the uninitiated. It is the internal, based on secret knowledge and intensive practices. This is the esoteric (from the Greek. – “internal”, “hidden”) that permitted its followers (the esoterics) to change themselves practically in accordance with the ideals proclaimed by the founders of each religion. At the same time, the esoterics, through direct experience, cognized the deepest truths, which lie at the basis of all religions.

For esotericism, it is important to obtain a mystical experience, and not to observe rites and rituals, which are based on certain religious norms and rules. So, esoterics are also called mystics (from the Greek. – “mysterious”). Mysticism is an extension of the boundaries of perception beyond the material world. A mystic manages to touch the innermost mysteries of the Universe and of human, based not on his faith, but on his own experience. So, true there have never been any disagreements between veritable esoterics, and in particular, confrontations, even though they could have belonged to different traditions and schools. After all, mystical experience depends on the in-depth fundamental construction of human and the Universe, and these things are the same for all people and times.

The oldest of the currently known esoteric schools appeared about 7-10 thousand years ago. Some schools have disappeared; others still represent a living tradition. Such schools were present or still exist in Jainism (Digambara), in Hinduism (schools of Hindu Tantra and yoga), Bon (Yungdrung Bon), in Buddhism (Vajrayana, Dzogchen), Taoism (“internal” alchemy, some schools of qigong), in Judaism (Hasidism, Kabbalah), in Christianity (in Orthodoxy, the Hesychasm; in Catholicism, the followers of Ignatius of Loyola, and the Malabar Christians), in Islam (many of Sufi orders), in voodoo, in the indigenous traditions of American Indians (the lines described by Carlos Castaneda), among the aborigines of Australia, in the tradition of pre-Christian Russia. Many prominent mystics (Empedocles, Pythagoras, Paracelsus, Jacob Boehme, G. I. Gurdjieff, R. Steiner, Osho Rajneesh and many others) can not be attributed to any definite tradition for several reasons: they often, by themselves, created other new traditions.

Mystics have always kept their knowledge in secret because if it is misunderstood or not used properly, one can harm oneself or others. But, the majority of the representatives of traditional religions have a very negative attitude to esotericism, without any understanding of it, and therefore, consider it harmful heresy. They are “right”, because they care about «defending faith», but not  about the search for perfection. These “religious leaders” turn their religions into social organizations, which fight aggressively, based on dead dogmas, to achieve power over human minds. Being only spoken by their founders, the initial ideas were almost always quickly destroyed by their followers, who were completely devoid of charisma, and only concerned about the spread of “true faith” and the creation of appropriate social institutions. So, none of the bright master fit within the framework of tradition that existed in their times (as they were already dead). The Master created a new tradition wich, in turn, was safely killed later by its “followers”.

Esotericism is often confused with occultism, or even with black magic. However, it has nothing to do with the evocation of spirits or witchcraft. People often refer to esotericism as prophecies about the future of the Earth, mysterious legends about the ancient times, stories of invisible countries, etc. Such stories often contain a myth about a continuous secret war between “white” and “black” forces. Such theories naturally lead to the search for dark forces around us (at the same time, one can, of course, attribute oneself to the representatives of the “light” forces). Such teachings are sometimes called mesotericism (from the Greek. – “average”), i.e., the middle doctrine between ordinary knowledge – exotericism (from the Greek. – “external”) and esotericism. If one sees only a small part of the truth, it is natural to imagine the other part to get the whole truth according to one’s ideas about it. So, in this way mesotericism appeared.

Thus, every religion is conventionally divided into two layers – the external (ceremonial and ritual) and the internal (esoteric). These two layers of each religion (in the ideal “healthy” religion) complement each other, as they allow different people to improve themselves according to their natural capabilities. For example, there are some cases when ordinary believers had a profound mystical experience during their prayer. However, one of the tasks of esoteric practices is to teach human to achieve such states  consciously and purposefully.

Sometimes, the external (the ceremonial and ritual) part of the religion is compared to a body, and its inner (esoteric) part with a soul. Esotericism is like a huge iceberg, the biggest part of which is under water and is hidden from the view of the uninitiated.

Evolution of consciousness in the multidimensional Universe

Mystics of all times similarly saw a majestic picture of how the Universe is arranged, how it lives and evolves. According to their discoveries, the Universe is multidimensional. In addition to our well-known material world, there are many other worlds wich are not similar to this one. These worlds are called spatial dimensions, spaces or levels. Spatial dimensions vary in their degree of “density”. So, there are more “dense” worlds, and there are more “subtle” ones.

Worlds exist within the same volume, as if they were placed one into another. At the same time various levels usually interact slightly with each other. The most “dense” is the material level and the most “subtle” is the highest spatial dimension, also called the Divine level.

Each spatial dimension is filled, “inhabited” with so-called energy (not to be confused with the meaning of the word “energy” in physics), belonging to the concrete plan of creation. Energies move continuously interacting with each other and modifying themselves. Everything that happens in the numerous worlds, including our own, depends on the movements of these energies.

Consciousness is also a special kind of energy. The Supreme or the Divine level, is filled with infinite consciousness, which is called the Divine Consciousness of the Universe. The Universe can be compared to a human. The soul of the Universe is the Divine Consciousness, and its body is all the worlds that exist in it.

The life of the Universe, as well as human life, consists of cycles. First, there is the creation of the worlds. They exist and develop (this period lasts for many billions of years), and then, they disappear. Everything disappears except for the Divine Consciousness that, for some time, is the only thing that exists. Then, all that is followed by another creation of new worlds; everything is repeated. A new Universe is not like the previous ones. The Present Universe is, by the way, at the beginning of its evolution (it may upset those who are afraid and are looking forward to the imminent end of the world).

The creation process can be described in the following way. Some part of the Divine Consciousness condenses so that it starts to emanate all the worlds from itself, even the material ones. Another part of the Consciousness is dissipated in the created Universe for the subsequent formation of individual souls. The biggest part of the Divine Consciousness remains unchanged and resides in the highest spatial dimension.

After the creation of the Universe, the process of evolution of consciousness starts. The whole Universe is like a “field for the cultivation of consciousness.” On planets like our native planet Earth, the dispersed energy of Divine Consciousness is deposited in hard rocks in the form of clots in their crystal lattice, thereby forming the beginnings of the future souls or individual units of consciousness. Thanks to this, stones have memory.

Millions of years pass and the stones get destroyed. But, tiny formed souls incarnate into plants. Clots of individual consciousness evolve and grow in the bodies of plants. Plants not only possess memory, but they are, also, capable of experiencing emotions – joy, fear, etc. (remember the experiments by K. Baxter)… When a plant dies, its consciousness moves to the next plant, continuing its growth and evolution. So, gradually improving, a consciousness reincarnates into plant bodies many times.

Having exhausted the possibilities of evolution in plants, a consciousness reincarnates into the body of an animal. There are many more possibilities to further a soul’s evolution. It is all due to a very complicated organism, enabling the consciousness that exists in it to grow intensively, and it happens thanks to the abundance of various situations that every animal can experience in the course of its life. Animals possess not only memory and emotions, but also the rudiments of intelligence (there are some animals which have many more rudiments of this kind than some people do).

Each time the individual soul reincarnates into a body of a more highly evolved animal. Eventually, one day, this consciousness reincarnates into a human body and becomes a human soul for the first time. This fact is not connected to a number of previous incarnations, but to the growth and evolution of consciousness. And, it is only the beginning of the next big stage. A human being, besides having memory, emotions and intelligence, possesses the ability to consciously self-improve.

The purpose of the evolution of individual consciousness is union with the infinite Divine Consciousness, i.e. a return to its Source, but not as a rudiment of a soul, but as a perfect consciousness, which is identical to the Divine Consciousness. It is interesting to mention that one of the translations of the Latin word “religion” means, “return to the source.” The Sanskrit word “yoga” is translated in the same way.

If human consciousness aspires to become perfect, it will take many lives to achieve this and, also, huge efforts for its evolution. Having reached the state of perfection, consciousness dissolves in the infinite ocean of the Divine Consciousness and is no longer reincarnated. When the Universe is about to end its existence, all the worlds with all their contents, including the material, disappear sequentially. They get transformed into a higher energy, which is absorbed by the Divine Consciousness. This happens with the individual consciousnesses that have not yet been able to reach a state of perfection.

Consciousness of human can evolve but also can degrade during physical life. Most people evolve slowly. Evolution can occur in two directions. Consciousness can grow, increasing its “mass”, i.e. the amount of energy of consciousness, so it becomes “stronger”. That is possible thanks to the absorption of energy from the outside and its processing and assimilation in the course of life. At the same time, the quality of consciousness may change, it can become more improved, highly organized, perfect, fluid and subtle. However, a human who, for example, becomes angry, loses the consciousness’s “mass” and its previous achievements.

As a result of evolution the amount of energy of consciousness can be increased through three sources. One part of the energy comes from food. In a human body, this energy is separated from the substance of food and sustains the physical body’s life. But some part of this energy can change and transform into the energy of consciousness, thus it feeds a growing soul. Another part of the energy comes from inhaled air. This type of energy is more easily converted into the energy of consciousness. Another energy source is experience obtained in the course of life. The energy contained in  impressions is assimilated directly by consciousness, by a growing soul. A growing consciousness is equal to the quality of the impressions it receives, so if they are coarse, the consciousness  becomes coarse, too. An important discovery of the mystics was the following: it turns out that the quality of impressions does not depend on what a human can see or hear, but on the way he perceives them, and on what he gets from them. And the latter depends on the state of consciousness.

In esotericism the main difference between people is not determined by the age of their bodies, their nationality or their gender, but by the state of their consciousness and the quality of their soul. The state of the soul depends on the qualities and level that the soul is at. The more times a consciousness is incarnated, the more time and opportunities it has to improve certain qualities. Thus, the state of the soul depends on its age.

Mystics discovered that consciousness improves qualities in a certain sequence and the acquirement of one quality can sometimes even take several lives.

This process looks like the following example in a series of reincarnations. At first, a human is a “disciple” and a “doer”. At this stage, he learns to live in the material world. At the same time,  reality for him is only what is at the material level. Everything that is beyond its limits is unreal or abstract for him. In specific situations (not always pleasant) a human can improve his ability to love and to have compassion, to sharpen his mind and to cultivate determination. Acquiring autonomy and independence, he begins to feel that in addition to the material, there are other levels of the Universe. Religious truths become more real and become more significant for him.

In the end (perhaps after many lives), there comes a period when a human starts to devote himself to self-improvement. The esoterics found that in order to achieve that one should not isolate oneself from other people or stop one’s social activities. On the contrary, they believed that such extremes lead a human away from real life and prevent him from improving a series of necessary qualities.

When a human dies, his consciousness frees itself from his body and remains in one of the spaces beyond the material world for a while. Then, the next incarnation comes. At the same time, a consciousness retains all the qualities that have been improved over the past lives (for example, an improved mind, will, the capacity for unconditional love or negative qualities as greed, cowardice, laziness, and so on.). However, the situations in which the improvement of these qualities took place gets erased from memory. Thus, the memory of past life does not complicate another new life.

After a soul has incarnated into a new body, it is necessary that the acquired qualities get manifested and become evident. Usually, this time is approximately equal to the time it takes to reach physical adulthood (adulthuood in the true sense of the meaning, not the legal one). At that point, one starts the development of new qualities and one’s further improvement.

Since some people experience one of their first incarnations in a human body, and others have already had many such incarnations, it will be relevant for all of them to perfect different qualities through different situations. Therefore, each human has his own destiny. But who determines what body a human must reincarnate into, who knows what quality is now necessary for him to improve, who creates all these situations?

One of the great discoveries of ancient esoterics was that everything in the Universe is interconnected. This interconnection is carried out by of energy that fills and pervades all the worlds. When a human acts in a certain way in his life, he influences the world around him. From these actions the world changes a little, and in  turn, influences this human and changes the circumstances of his life. Sometimes one can think that some intelligent force affects his life, either rewarding, or punishing him. But that is not so. A human determines and programs his future through his concrete actions. Some actions can immediately affect his destiny, while others affect  it after many years have passed. There are those, however, which  affect only his future lives.

For mystics, it is clear that actions are not only what a human does in the physical world. Thoughts, emotions, wishes, moods are special kinds of energies. When consciousness produces them, it creates actions in other spatial dimensions. These actions also affect the external world and a human’s destiny.

What is commonly referred to sin, in esotericism, is simply ignorance. A sinful human is an ignorant man for two reasons. Firstly, he is not aware of all the negative consequences of his behavior for himself. Secondly, he does not know how to order those internal energies (most likely he does not even feel them) and that their movement makes him commit sinful acts.

However, as ancient mystics discovered, sometimes an otherworldly force intervenes in human life. This force comes from the Divine Consciousness and is manifested only when additional energy is required for the further evolution of a human. In no other cases does the Divine Consciousness manifest itself. It does not possess the qualities of a human or a judge who can punish or reward. The “good” or the “evil” in the human understanding of the Universe can never come from the highest plan of the Universe.

Esoteric methods 

The esoterics discovered that in the process of evolution, a human needs to perfect some qualities. These include love for all that exists, compassion, a clear mind and inner strength with its main aspect, the will.

There are two kinds of methods of self-perfection. The first are exsoteric (the external, the open), i.e. all the situations that one encounters in one’s daily life. The situations can be common and ordinary or extreme and stressful. 

One of the mystics’ discoveries was that we could perceive, consider all the situations as learning experiences. From this point of view, any situation in which a human finds himself, to some extent, changes him (even if he doesn’t realize it). In that case, if one is aware of this, one can get much more use from each situation and, so, one’s evolution will be faster. It was found that the more complicated, difficult or adverse the situation is, the more it can teach. Some qualities can be improved only when you’re in special conditions; therefore the esoterics looked for or deliberately created those necessary situations. Sometimes they even had to risk their lives.

Another kind includes methods of perfection, which are called esoteric, i.e. hidden from the uninitiated. To understand how they work, it is necessary to know about the multidimensional human structure. Thousands of years ago, mystics saw that human is  consciousness living in a body, and a human organism is as complicated and multidimensional as the Universe is. In addition to the physical organs of the human organism, there are some special,  intangible ones, located within the limits of the body, but in other spatial dimensions. In these “organs” or energy centers, there are energies that circulate providing life to the entire organism and to the existence of consciousness in it.

The esoteric discovery of great importance was that energy centers influence the state of consciousness. If the work of the energy center changes and begins to produce different energy, the state of a human starts to change immediately. To understand how this happens, you can use the following as an example. A human, whose mood is neutral, looks out the window and sees some drizzling autumn rain. As a result, his mood can get worse: the weather affects his mood.

In the same way, the “weather” inside the body affects the state of consciousness. And this “weather”, i.e. the state of energy inside the body, depends on the work of energy centers of the body. Mystics discovered that if an energy center works for a long time in one state or mood then it consolidates a corresponding state of consciousness. Such states can be love or fear, determination, or anger, peace of mind or random thoughts, and much more.

It turned out that a human’s positive and negative qualities are often associated with the healthy or unhealthy work of these centers. Having discovered them, the ancient esoterics learned to use their energy centers for self-perfection. To achieve this, they had to master the art of managing their actions.

The esoterics found so many ways to influence the work of energy centers, and through them the state of their consciousness and elaboration of necessary qualities. For this purpose, they used special methods of concentration, breathing, movement, pronunciation of sounds (mantras, names of gods, prayers), listening to special music, putting their bodies in the appropriate position, using special scents, contemplating images, using different rituals, dreams, being in special places and much more.

Such practices can help a mystic not only eliminate his own faults, but also improve his virtues according to the religious ideals. This happens “naturally”, i.e. in a natural way. Moreover, thanks to special techniques in the moments of the highest state of ecstasy you can experience such peaks of the spirit, when you cease to exist as a separate being, you get dissolved into the ocean of the Divine and in infinite bliss, only feeling the flow of Eternity.

In some esoteric schools (for example, in the Hindu Tantra, Yungdrung Bon, and Taoist schools of internal alchemy, Dzogchen, in indigenous traditions of Africa and of the Ancient Russia, etc.) the most outstanding mystics reached such deep transformation of their consciousness that it affected even their physical body. The substance of their body, as if it were imbued with consciousness that attained Divine perfection, returned to the original state of pure energy. When a mystic left this world, he dematerialized his body. It  was either like a gradual process during which the body became more transparent and disappeared slowly, or like an instant flash of light, after which there was nothing left. Sometimes it represented a slow decrease of the body in several days until its complete disappearance (there were only hair and nails that remained)…

The main method of mystical practices is meditation, i.e. a special state of consciousness in which the mind is silent and not present, but attention is maximaly heightened with consciousness that remains awake. This means that the process of thinking has stopped; the mind is empty, there are absolutely no thoughts, but there is only perception and awareness.

During meditation, consciousness is aware of itself. So, given to it, not occupied and freed from ordinary activities, the consciousness becomes absorbed in its real existence; it is usually obscured by thoughts, memories, dreams and emotions. Consciousness, as if it “remembered” its origins from the ocean of Divine Consciousness, starts to approach it, reaching higher and higher states. One should not confuse real meditation with the quite commonly spread “meditation” of nowadays, as a means to “calm the nerves”, to cheer up or to achieve social success.

Another important technique is being in the here and now. Whatever an esoteric does, he tries to be “here and now” and focuses only on what is happening in him and around him, throughout the whole system called the human. In other words, he focuses on his body, thoughts, emotions and moods and even down to the shapeless depth, which has its roots in the infinite ocean of the Divine Consciousness. This state is called the state of presence.

The work in any esoteric school always begins with a radical revision of one’s former life and the awareness of important ethical principles. Without the deep study of these phases, a pupil is never allowed to further continue to work.

If this rule is not observed, the following stages can harm a student’s health and affect his psyche, or his subsequent work can lead to the cultivation of selfish traits. Sometimes, before you work in some esoteric schools, it is common to study the rituals and religious part of a given religion, going through this stage as a religious monk or a layman.

* * * * *

Human is like Universe. Mystics have used this fact to apply to their internal world the truths concerning the external world. The external truth, understood esoterically, is spiritual guidance.

It is known that when the Prophet Muhammad entered Mecca, he destroyed the idols in and around Kaaba. For a mystic, the meaning of the story is this: a human must remove all idols from his soul, to purify it from all that is not God. The Kaaba is the symbol of the soul; the idols are a symbol of all that occupies inner attention, distracting him from the search for perfection.

Mystics often used a special language, understandable only to initiates, to describe esoteric practices and mystical states. In some esoteric schools (alchemic) the original state of the human was called lead, and the final state of perfection, gold. In this case, all the intermediate stages of turning lead into gold were designated as the alchemical reactions of transformation of some elements into others. Therefore, if some alchemical texts are understood literally, they may seem not to make sense because of the impossibility of those chemical reactions that they describe. However, if you know what these symbols represent, the “internal” alchemy becomes the science of spiritual transformation of a human.

Additions

Global ethic 

The existing religions can be compared to buildings of different architectural styles. The appearance and form of these buildings is different, but every building has a foundation, basic structures and a roof. Similarly, many religions, impressing with their abundance of rituals, different structures and decoration of temples, have similar components: the “foundation” and “basic structures”, presented in their creed.

“The Foundation” of most religions is the same, it is a mystical experience. Mystics, prophets of all times and nations speak about their mystical experiences using the same words. The Supreme Reality appears to be a compassionate, loving, blissful space filled with light.

As for the creed, its main “basic structures” often represent common principles. The arrangements of the external and internal world of a human and the way leading to God and liberation, have common features. Many religions recognize that the only way to God is the path of rejection of human’s selfish aspirations, the way of love, and they instruct their followers to comply with ethical rules, the commandments of the New Testament such as: “Hate what is evil; cling to what is good.” (ROM. 12.9).

If we consider the main ethical principles of the main branches of Christianity, Hinduism, Taoism, Buddhism, and other religions, we will find that they are the same in their essence. For example, the New Testament says, “God is love”; Sanskrit sutras recognize God as “the source of all knowledge and any love”; the Taoism notes, “Tao is a tender being”; but the Coran says: “Allah the Merciful, the compassionate”. This implies that in the origins of being there is  Divine Love, and one is able to approach God only by increasingly developing one’s perfect love. “Relentlessly cultivate bodhichitta” (i.e., committed compassion for all living beings), exhorted Buddhist monks. “These things I command you, that ye love one another” (Jn. 15.17), taught Jesus Christ. And for the mystics of Islam, God “is Love, Loving and Beloved.”

Many religions offer a detailed explanation of how to improve perfect love. This happens when one learns to love the whole world and to see in every person and event, a manifestation of God’s Will and Love.

Other prescriptions and rules, from the main testament of many religions, are also very similar. They include principles which are similar to the commandments of the New Testament, i.e., the prescriptions “thou shalt not kill” “thou shalt not steal”, etc., in Hindu and Buddhist traditions the principle of “thou shalt not kill” corresponds to Ahimsa (nonviolence to all living beings, neither in thoughts, nor in words or in actions) and the principle of “thou shalt not steal” – Asteya (no desire to possess another’s property), etc.

However, beyond that approach, which is usually called a gradual way of human’s development, there is another non gradual one. The examples of this non gradual way are dzogchen, advaita and zen. They are based on the doctrine that a human already possesses all the perfect qualities and he is divine by nature (“posseses” the Buddha-nature”) and there is no need to develop anything else. A practitioner should only stop clinging to what obscures the light of the Truth from its direct experience. We just need to stop identifying ourselves with the mind and its duality and to cease identifying  ourselves with the personality, with the ego. Just as the wave ceases to think of itself as separate from the ocean, the practitioner begins to see the water, an omnipresent Divine consciousness.

The gradual way is the way of personal efforts, it is the way of one’s ego’ efforts. The gradual way is the cessation of all efforts, the relaxation of all tensions of consciousness and means total surrender.

Although the gradual path is based on the ego’s efforts, these efforts lead to the disappearance of the ego at the end of the road. But, the non gradual way is instant abandonment of the mind, the ego.

The similarity of basic religious moral prescriptions leads to the fact that many philosophers, theologians and religious scholars begin to speak about global ethics, “universal ethics”, more or less, presented in the moral code of any particular religious tradition.

Swami Vivekananda, a well-known religious reformer of the twentieth century, compared those who reject all religions except for their own ones, to a dog that does not recognize its beloved master, dressed in different clothes.

The Truth

The source of all religions is the same and constant, though the teachings of different religions seem, at first glance, to be quite different and unrelated to each other…

A sage knows that the basis of all religions and beliefs is only one thing, the Truth. The truth has always been disguised in two garments: a turban on a head and a cloak on the body. The turban is a mystery, known under name of mysticism and the cloak is a morality called religion… Those who see it [the Truth] without any covers, don’t see any reason or logic, good or evil, high or low, new or old, in other words, they cease to distinguish all the names and images. The whole world for them is the only Truth. In their understanding, the Truth is the only one, but appearing to human eyes, it takes many forms, and the difference in perception it appears thanks to its manifestations in different places and times.

“Truth can be compared to a fountain, which spurts with one water jet up, and then it falls in a great number of drops down at different times and at different places” (Inayat Khan).)

Know thyself 

Know thyself – that is the first principle and the first requirement of ancient esoteric schools. We remember these words, but we have lost their true meaning. We think that to know ourselves means to understand our particular desires, tastes, abilities and aspirations, when, in fact, it means the knowledge of the mechanism, i.e. the knowledge of the structure of our own machine, its parts, the functions of the different parts and their working conditions etc. Speaking about a simple car, we cannot say we know it until we study it. It is also necessary to remember this when  speaking about ourselves. We have to study our organism like we study a car. This study is self-observation. There is no other way, and no one will do this work for us. We have to do it by ourselves.

(From the book “The Psychology of Man’s Possible Evolution.” by P. D. Ouspensky, a disciple of G. I. Gurdjieff , famous mystic,)

Dematerialization in the twentieth century 

In India and Nepal, the immortal Babaji from Haidakhan (Uttar Pradesh) has been known since 1800. In the 1920’s of the XXth century, Babaji in the presence of the king of Nepal and many other people walked on the surface of a river up to its middle point, turned into a pillar of light and disappeared. Before that, this Saint told the king that it was already time for him to leave this world and that his body had served all its purposes (although it looked very young).

In the works by Carlos Castaneda, an American esoteric, there are some repeated descriptions of how his teacher, don Juan Matus and his companions dematerialized their own bodies: “On the top of a mountain they lit themselves with “the fire from within”, flashed like a dazzling star and disappeared.”

Namkhai Norbu, a famous contemporary dzogchen master (the highest practices of full continuous awareness) in his book “The Crystal and The way of Light”, says that in 1952, in Tibet there lived a very old human. In his youth, this human was either a servant, or an assistant of a teacher of Dzogchen and heard many teachings for several years. It other aspects this human led a very modest life. He carved mantras on the stones and this gave him some means of subsistence. This went on for many years, and no one noticed  anything unusual in him and no one had any idea that he practiced Dzogchen. One day this human announced that he would die in seven days, and sent a note to his son, the monk. The monastery spread  this news widely and many people gathered there. The representatives of all the great monasteries, even members of the Chinese administration and militaries arrived. In the presence of many people, the room in which the old human had been locked up for seven days was opened, but his body was not found. All that had been left in the room were some clothes lying in the place where the Saint had sat, as well as his hair and nails.

In the same way, both the main teachers of Namkhai Norbu, his uncle, Togden (by the way, a mentally sick person in his youth ) and Changchub Dorje left this world. Changchub Dorje’s daughter also dematerialized her body.

A few examples of mystical practices 

Hesychasm (from the Greek. – “inner silence”), the mystical practice of Orthodoxy, the origin of which related to St. John. The followers of Hesychasm experienced the real being of God. For this they combined in a special way breathing with special postures, saying a prayer, but not with their lips but with a “spiritual heart” so it could silently sound in the chest, revealing Jesus’s love to the entire world. Hesychasts also practiced “Illumining by Fabor Light” – entering the flow of pure light and grace of the Holy Spirit. In the late XIX – early XX century some isolated settlements of Orthodox Hesychasts were in many places of Russia and the Caucasus.

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In 1534 in Paris, the Catholic Ignatius of Loyola founded the Jesuit Order “Society of Jesus”, in which the main mystical practices were “8 days spiritual exercises”. Spiritual practitioners identified themselves with Jesus Christ in the last week of His life. These practitioner’s experiences were sometimes so vivid and real that his hands, feet and body got stigmatas: Jesus’ bleeding wounds. 

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In Tibetan Buddhism, the schools most saturated with mystical practices are Nyingma and Kagyu. Their followers often practice the Six Yogas of Naropa, named after the great Saint of X-XI centuries. Naropa discovered Tummo, yoga of inner or mystic heat, when he had spent several months without fire in an icy cave inundated with snow. This yoga produces so much energy that in winter practitioners can melt blocks of ice with their naked bodies during one night. Guillou-Lus – yoga of the illusory body – allows us to understand the illusory nature of everything in the Universe, including our own body. Mi-Lam – yoga of the dream state – allows us to maintain awareness during our sleep and control our dreams. Using odsal – yoga of the clear light or radiant light, when we can see the Mother-Clear- Light, i.e. the Divine Consciousness of the Universe. The Bardo – yoga of death or intermediate state that allows us to use death to achieve Liberation or to choose another body for future reincarnation.

Phowa – yoga of the transference of consciousness that allows us to practice the transference of our consciousness through the top of the head and to move it freely around in space. Phowa is usually associated with the art of John-jig, the art of entering a dead body, enabling our consciousness to move into the body of a newly deceased person or animal. Tales of many peoples of the world (for example, the Russian folk tale about how Ivan Tsarevitch turned into a wolf and then back to Prince) are distant echoes of real events.

Immortal Saints 

The origin of some of the Sufi orders have been associated with the Prophet Muhammad, and others since even more ancient times, believing that Islam served as a breeding ground for the manifestation of already existing Sufism. Sometimes the main Sufi Saint called al-Ghadir (Khizr), one of the first people, the mysterious immortal righteous human. Khizr appears at times to the heads of the Sufi orders, giving further instructions and techniques. A similar role is played by another immortal Idris. It is interesting that Idris is identified with the biblical Enoch, and with Hermes Trismegistus (Threedimension), the founder of the Egyptian esotericism, who brought this knowledge to Egypt from Atlantis.

Sanatana Dharma 

The immortal Indian Saint Babaji, last materialized his body publicly  in 1970 in the Himalayas and left it in the same place in 1984 and  preached Sanatana Dharma – the “eternal religion”, which is the source of all religions. Sanatana Dharma is the spiritual essence of the Universe. The founders of different religions experienced this state and called it Tao, Brahman, Allah, Mother Clear Light… Babaji mentioned that one of his favorite disciples was Jesus, who had spent nine years with him. In some of the ancient libraries of Ladakh (Himalayas) there are some notes, which still remain about Jesus’s stay in India and Tibet.

Babaji said all religions lead to the same goal and are similar to the rivers flowing into one infinite ocean of Sanatana Dharma. Sanatana Dharma does not have any rituals, and it has only three principles – truth, simplicity, love – which are the basis of all religions.

What is Shambhala 

The appearance of esoteric Buddhism, is often viewed as the return of the knowledge that Buddha once gave to the kings of Shambhala and of Oddiyana… Mystics state that Atlantis, Lemuria, Uddiyana, Shambhala are not geographic places on the Earth, but they are the names of subtle spatial dimensions (including the dimensions of consciousness), from which the great saints of the past had gained their wisdom and knowledge.

Mysticism and science 

Science and esoterica complement each other. Science studies the phenomena of the external world; mysticism studies the phenomena of the inner world. Science give us not only knowledge about nature, but also helps us to use its power to our advantage. Mysticism also helps us not only to get to know the inner world, but also to merge with it.

Science studies the external world with its laws and relationships,and esotericism studies the inner world whose center is the knower himself.

Many thousands of years ago, among an amazing beauty of tropical valleys, surrounded by eternal snows of the great Himalayas and filled with fragrance of flowers and singing birds, on the shores of the purest mountain rivers, Parvati asked her beloved Shiva: “O Shiva, what is your true reality? What is this wonder-filled Universe? What  constitutes seed? Who centers the Universal wheel? What is this life beyond form pervading forms? How may we enter it fully, above space and time, names and description? Let my doubts be cleared!” Shiva answered the questions made by king’s daughter of the Himalayas, and their dialogue formed the basis of Tantra texts.

Subject and history of hindu tantra

Tantra does not answer the question “What is the truth?”. It answers the question “how can we experience the truth?” As a practical system of intensive spiritual development, Tantra aims at full realization of one’s divine nature. The Sanskrit word Tantra comes from two words: tanoti and trayyati. Tanoti means “expand” and trayyati “release”. Along with this, both words refer to consciousness. Thus, the word tantra means “liberation through expansion” or, to be more exact, “liberation of consciousness by means of its expansion.” Also, the word tantra is commonly translated as “activity” or “action”, referring to the activity or action of consciousness. A modern master of tantra has defined it as: “Tantra is an energy that arises in a consciousness between the emergence of an question and finding an answer to it.” The word “tantra” is also reffered to the sacred tantric texts, such as “Vigyan Bhairav Tantra,” “Sammohan Tantra”, “Tantraradzha Tantra”, “Kularnava Tantra”, “Mahanirvana tantra” and others. Some of the tantric texts do not have the word “tantra” in their titles, for example, such as “Shiva sutra”, “Ananda Lahari”, “Thirumandiram” and others.

Like any other religious system, the Hindu tantra also includes some complicated religious and philosophical ideas about the world and the man, as well as a complex of various religious rites. However, much of the techniques used in tantra, goes far beyond the usual concepts of religious rites. Many of tantric practices are really complicated, aimed at a complete change of the whole man, including his body, energy and consciousness. (This is why tantra texts are sometimes called sadhana shastra, i.e. sacred texts which are practice-oriented.) In this connection, tantra is sometimes called tantric yoga. It is interesting to note that almost all Hindu yoga is a branch of tantra. A characteristic feature of tantric practice is the use of sexual energy for its further transformation into a spiritual energy. Another feature of tantra is that it uses absolutely all available means and human qualities for spiritual progress. That is surprising, but even one’s vices and defects can become a powerful tool for Liberation! In Tantra there is no single aspect of life, which could not be transformed into a spiritual practice.

The history of tantra is lost in the mists of time. It is believed that Vedas and tantric texts arose from one common source. In “Tirumandirame” it is said that the Vedas and Agamas (tantric texts) differ only in giving much importance to some practice or other. And, also a small number of tantric texts of ancient writing period cannot be explained by the fact that tantra never existed at that time. Firstly, in tantra the knowledge was always carefully guarded from the profane in order to avoid its misapplication. Up to a certain time knowledge could be transferred from a teacher to a disciple only in an individual oral form resulting in being written only at a later time. Secondly, in tantra there is a unique view of the fact that there is a continuous process of replacement of old texts with the new ones. In this case the actual nature of the texts is preserved, but the form of presentation and the language comply with the new times, with the place and the circumstances.

The reason for this is that tantra is not a dogmatic or unchanging formal system. Tantra is a living and constantly updated system which permanently improves its methods. Therefore, the emergence of tantra is not associated with the name of one person, it has been formed by many outstanding masters. Perhaps, the first one, among all the famous ones (chronologically and by his importance) is considered to be Shiva.

Shiva

According to a legend, Shiva lived about 5 – 7 thousand years ago, and was recognized by all the high priorities of his time as the greatest Mahasiddha (attained complete perfection) and an avatar (divine incarnation). His wife Parvati was also a great practitioner and together with Shiva she could completely realize her divine nature. Subsequently, Shiva and Parvati became identified with the respective deities of Hindu pantheon, and some details of their biographies have become legends of gods Shiva and Parvati. Many tantric texts have got a form of dialogues between Shiva with Parvati .

Having reached the highest stage of spiritual evolution ever possible in a human body, Shiva transformed his physical body into a state of “immortal golden light.” (In Taoism this achievement is called as “diamond body”, in Tibetan Buddhism as “rainbow body”, it is called by indigenous mystics of Africa as “body of light”, in esoteric Christianity as “body of glory”. Such transformation of the physical body Don Juan Matus called as “burning with fire from within”.) In this immortal body Shiva showed himself to many outstanding masters of tantra and yoga, taking them to various secret practices.

Among some other famous masters of the past were Nandi Dewar, Agastyar, Tirumular, Boganathar, Matsyandranat, Goraknat, Patanjali, Vasugupta, Sri Kant Nakulisa, woman Kudambay, Valmiki and others who “broke the scepter of death, wandering in the Universe.” They all made a significant contribution to the formation of tantric yoga.

Structure of the Universe. The three gunas

According to the views of tantra, the entire Universe is composed of the unmanifested and the manifested parts. The unmanifested part of the Universe is an infinite ocean of the eternal Supreme Divine Consciousness called Shiva. The manifested part of the Universe, from its atoms to galaxies, was created and is being maintained by the eternal infinite Divine Energy or Power, called Shakti. Shiva is a static aspect of God, His Consciousness, and Shakti is a dynamic aspect of His creative, executive Power. At the same time, “Shiva has the power to create only in connection with Shakti” (“Anandalahari”). Moreover, “Shiva without Shakti becomes like cadaver (“Devi Bhagavata Purana”). Shiva is in constant connection with Shakti. “Everywhere Divine Form dwells, everywhere there is Shiva-Shakti”.

According to tantra, the manifested part of the Universe, or Prakriti (the Great Nature), created by Shakti’s power has three gunas, i.e., the main characters or the main properties. They are: sattva is a principle of light, harmony and balance; rajas is a principle of activity, mobility, and anxiety; tamas is a principle of inertia, darkness and reaction. The human consciousness also has three gunas. The guna, that manages to dominate, determines the human being’s existence, his behavior and his relationship with the world around. Sattva is a proper state of consciousness, appearing in it as a clear perception and wisdom. Sattva’s people appreciate the truth they have high creativity and intelligence, they are in a state of harmony with themselves, with others and with nature. Those in whom rajas is most strong, they are passionate and venturous, they energetically seek power, they love to lead and they appreciate prestige and authority. They are “warriors” in the wide sense of this word. People, in whom Tamas prevails, are inert, they are in the trap of fear, ignorance, servility and of destructive forces.

Each of the three gunas is necessary, but in its own place. With their unnecessary confusion or change of places there is what is subjectively perceived as impurity or disharmony. As an example, we can take an ordinary mud, which is a mixture of soil and water, each element of which is not considered individually as something impure. In Tantra, the purification of man is not removing of “impurity”, but restoring of the proper order of gunas, i.e. their separation from chaos. At the same time, what the man considered inside of him as “impurity”, “sin” and “evil”, now becomes for him like a valuable source from which practitioner can extract some building material to restore his harmony and purity. But, tantra is not just limited to that, leading a practitioner even higher, to the Divine, which is beyond the three gunas …

Five elements

The three gunas give birth to five elements, or natural elements. From sattwa consisting of clearness, ether arises, i.e. space. From rajas, consisting of activity, we have fire. From tamas consisting of inertia, earth originates. The “layer” between rajas and tamas, combining both mobility and inertia, is water. And between sattva and rajas there is a subtle but rather movable element which is air. These Mahabhutas (great basic elements, or entities) symbolize the five levels of density of any substance in the Universe: matter, energy and consciousness. For example, they are the following for matter : solid (element of earth), liquid (element of water), gaseous (element of air), radiant (element of fire) and ethereal (element of space). As all was created by a Divine creating energy of Shakti and all consists of her, all the existing is just her various forms. The five elements are just pure modifications of Shakti. In human consciousness, in the emotions and in the body all these five elements are also manifested.

Symbolism and language of hindu tantra. Lingam and Yoni.

Tantra is also called kauladharma or kaula. Kaula comes from the word kula, which means Shakti and «akula», which means Shiva. Kaula is the unity of Shiva and Shakti. The universal principle of unity between Shiva and Shakti is symbolically embodied in lingam, or in Shivalinga (phallic symbol, representing Shiva) and yoni (symbol of female genital organs, representing Shakti). Lingam in Yoni symbolizes sexual coition. Lingam in yoni is a model of any thing, and even of the entire Universe. With respect to humans, this symbol means the following. Lingam is atman, i.e. Divine Consciousness which is present in a human being. Yoni is a man himself: his body, energy, mind) Lingam in yoni means that Divine Consciousness is present in a human being as natural, strong and organical, as it is in a man and in a woman at the time of thier sexual coition. Another interpretation of this symbol is that from lingam (from the depth of the space) in yoni (into our world) a continuous stream of energy is flowing which is nectar (sudha-dhara-gamya-pradesha), flowing from coition (samarasya) between Shiva and Shakti. This energy animates the existence of our world, filling it with itself as the wind fills away the sails. Also lingam represents Purusha, i.e. the Primal Spirit (Shiva) and yoni (Prakriti), i.e. the Great Nature (Shakti). In India, for example, many of the mountain peaks are sacred places for the pilgrimage of tantra practitioners, as they represent shivalingam (Sri Kailash, Adi Kailash Shivalinga, etc.). According to some reports, throughout India there are over thirty million of lingams established (mainly in stone)!

Almost all the symbolism of tantric is sexual (and that is why it is beautiful, attractive and it can have a strong impact on the person who is perceiving it). Even the ultimate goal of tantra is usually described as sexual union with the Divine Truth, which gives endless freedom and is accompanied by infinite bliss. Many tantric practices are described as maithuna sadhana (practice of sexual coition). In tantra maithuna in a natural and obvious way symbolizes the complete fusion of the two separated parts into a whole. Here is an example to describe this practice from “Hatha Yoga Pradipika” (“Explanation of hatha yoga”) by Svatmarama:

“Between the Ganges and the Yamuna (rivers in India) there is a young virgin. It is necessary to take  her by force on the royal throne.” 

An ignorant man, if he understands the words of the text in thier direct menaning and tries to fulfill them exactly as they are, he will be sure to find himself in the wrong boat. An initiated knows that the Ganges and the Yamuna, they are ida and pingala (the left and the right energy channels running along the spine). A young virgin means kundalini, or the kundalini Shakti or kulakundalini (the primordial energy, hidden in the base of the spine). The royal throne means sahasrara (the top chakra, an important energy center, located in the top of the head area). Thus, this technique describes the process of lifting of a latent internal energy and its merging with consciousness. Consciousness, awakened by this energy and having absorbed its power, arouses for the cognition of the Divine reality. This leads to samadhi (a higher state of Divine Consciousness) and to mastering siddhas (hidden superpowers).

Chakra, kundalini and nadi

According to tantra, every human being has consciousness, energy and body. The body is the most dense, “material” part. The body itself may exist only as a corpse. The energy circulating in special energy structures makes it alive, which are called chakras and nadis. Nadis (literally “flows”) are channels through which the body’s energy moves. Nadis converge and intersect in seven chakras (literally “wheels” or “whirls”) located along the axis of the body, corresponding approximately to the spine. Chakras are “containers” in which energy is accumulated, converted and stored. The energy, chakra and nadis exist within the body, but not in the physical level, but in other (more “subtle”) spatial dimensions. There are thousands of Nadis (sometimes the exact numbers are cited from 72,000 to 300,000) extending from sushumna which is the central channel lying within the spine. (I would not be correct if we replace the word “energy” by “prana” where is only possible, as they are used to do in the West, because prana is really only one of the fifteen kinds of energy.)

Chakras and nadis under the influence of special practices can help us to awake our highest spiritual faculties. The lowest chakra muladhara is situated at the base of the body. It is the place where the kundalini energy is, providing the potential to achieve higher levels of consciousness and mergence with God. In the dormant state muladhara is an instinctive nature of a person, it is the center of both passion and inertia, but being awakened, it is spiritual potential and immutable base. Svadhishthana is situated above muladhara, in the lower abdomen. Normally this chakra is the sex center, the center of the subconscious, the storehouse of all the experiences and aspirations. Awakening this chakra is associated with the transformation of all the repressed and forgotten, with the transformation of sexual energy. At the level of the upper part of the abdomen is manipura, which represents will and action. For another thing, it is also responsible for the production of negative emotions like anger, for example. Her awakening gives a new permanent base for kundalini (which was formerly muladhara) and encourages an practitioner to spiritual practice. Anahata is located at the heart level and chest and is associated with love and compassion, with creative power and ability to overcome one’s fate. Vishuddha is at the throat level and it is the center of discernment, orientation in situations and acceptance of life in all its manifestations. Ajna is located at the eyebrows level and is associated with the activity of consciousness, particularly with intelligence and awareness. Sahasrara is in the top of the head. It is like a crown of ascending consciousness, its transition to the ultimate reality.

The awakened kundalini, which is difficult to be a managed, is identified with goddess Kali, tending to destruction. When kundalini becomes manageable and brings peace and bliss, it turns into Durga, a beautiful goddess. At different levels the awakened kundalini manifests itself as a creative energy, and, in accordance with the level of manifestation, it is identified with Lakshmi, Saraswati, Parvati, and other manifestations of Shakti. When kundalini reaches sahasrara, it is identified with maithuna (connection) of Shiva (consciousness) and Parvati- Shakti (kundalini), and it reveals in a human the highest level of the Divine Consciousness.

Schools and methods of hindu tantra 

“Classical” Tantra exists in various schools, among which the main ones are shaivas (or shivaites), shaktis, vaishnavas, ganapathis, kaumaras (or skandas) and sauritys. The most significant among them are shaivas, shaktis and vaishnavas, which, in their turn, are divided into directions. In addition, there are small tantric groups formed around a guru, and they mainly differ in their own traditions. (In general, such division into different directions and groups is conventional. In fact, tantra practitioners are not interested in this division, but the so-called “researchers” from outside, who can commonly understand tantra like just a simple spoon tasting soup.)

As a rule, the texts by shaivas and shaktis form a dialogue between Shiva and his spouse Shakti. Such texts are of two types: agama and nigama. “Agamadvayta nirvayya” says: “Agama is called so because it comes from the lips of Shiva and passing to his wife Shakti.” Thus Shiva is a guru (spiritual teacher) and Shakti is a shishya (disciple). If we take it all vice versa (Shakti will be a teacher and Shiva will be a disciple), as it is the text “Nigama kalpadruma”, the text will be called nigama. “It is called nigama because it comes from Shakti, to be heard by Shiva” (“Agamadvayta nirvayya”). The texts of other schools are usually called Agama, although they are not presented in the form of a dialogue between Shiva and Shakti.

For shaivas the main deity is Shiva, symbolizing the infinite Divine Consciousness. Shaivas use lots of different exercises where yoga in its many forms is the essence of practical shivaism. The main areas of shivaism are Kashmir shivaism, or northern advaita, or trika (created by Vasugupta, North India), shivaite siddhanta (created by Tirumular, South India), shivaism of Lingayats (Central India), pasupata (created by Nakulisoy, Gujarat), siddha siddhanta (created by Gorakhnath, North India), shiva advaita (created by Sri Kant, South India). Other shivait groups are aghorus (that sometimes consider themselves shaktis), udasinys, nagys, dundees, viraktis, kapalikas, kalamukhas etc. whose followers, in their majority, are wandering ascetics or hermits, applying intense and sometimes very harsh methods of practice.

Shaivas and Shakti are very alike, sometimes so much that a shaiva can simultaneously be shakti and vice versa. The main deity of shaktis is Shakti that has dozens of different forms. The difference is that shaivas mainly use ascesis, but shaktas use much more in their practices what can give pleasure. “Rudrayamala tantra” says: “Liberation and pleasure are between the two folded hands.” Therefore, Tantra is also called bhuktimuktikaranika, i.e. the practice of using pleasure to achieve liberation. I Shiva Parvati teaches in “Vigyan Bhairav Tantra”, “Wherever satisfaction is found, in whatever act, actualize this”. But, there pain is also offered as a practice: “Pierce some part of you nectar filled form with a pin, and gently enter the piercing and attain to the inner purity.” Then, Shiva starts to explains “O Beloved, put attention neither on pleasure nor on pain, but between these.”

For vaishnavas the main deity is Vishnu. Such groups as nimbarkas, madhvas, valabhis, ramanandas, bayradzhis or tyagis, rasikas, sakhis, etc. belong to the vaishnavas. For example, some rasika men wear women’s clothing and they identify themselves with a female deity to merge the internal male and the female (consciousness and energy). Sakhi men use visualization of maithuna with a selected deity, feeling his goddess-wife. For ganapathis the main deity is Ganesha or Ganapati, the eldest son of Shiva and Parvati with the head of an elephant. Ganapati almost completely ceased to exist as a separate tantric school and now it is generally merged with Hinduism. Kaumarams worship Kumar, the youngest son of Shiva and Parvati, also known as Skanda, Subramani, Kartikeya and Murugan. He is depicted as a beautiful young ascetic. This trend is common in South India. Sauritys worship Surya, a god of Sun. In India the minorities following this tradition remained mainly in the states of Assam, Orissa and Bengal.

Hatha yoga, pranayama, dhyana and tapasya

Ancient masters of Tantra eleborated a great number of excellent methods of spiritual development. Among them Hatha Yoga, a practice dating back to Shiva, Patanjali and Gorakhnath. In hatha yoga they use retention and relaxation of the body in certain postures (asanas). Each asana works, firstly, on the practitioner’s body, developing his body healthy, strengthening and rejuvenating. Secondly, each asana changes the distribution of inner energy, making it move on certain nadis, thus developing and purifying them, and also some certain chakras. Third, each asana corresponds to a particular state of consciousness, its own meditation (sancrit dhyana). (From the word “dhyana” there is the Chinese “channa” which gave the name for chan buddhism. The word “chan” got turned into the word “zen” in Japan). Meditation is the basic method for many practices of tantra and yoga. In classical yoga of eight grades Patanjali dhyana corresponds to the penultimate seventh grade. Meditation is a state in which our consciousness is completely merged with the object of observation, i.e., the observer is identical with the same object of obsevation, being in a state of full awareness of what is happening. If an object of meditation is, for example, a flower, the meditator can really feel himself to be a flower. He will continually feel his petals, his mostures flowing along the stem, the way the energy moves inside of him, how he can feed upon the power of the Sun and the Earth. At this moment his consciousness, which is the consciousness of the flower, results that the meditator is the flower. The most common objects of meditation are consciousness itself or God. In tantric yoga it is believed that the present knowledge of something is only possible through meditation, i.e., by experiencing fully the truth, and not by using intellect alone. Intellectual knowledge is an attempt to understand the truth by your mind, and meditation is an attempt to feel it by all your being where mind is only a small part of it.

Other good practices to work with the body, energy and consciousness are pranayamas (prana is ascending energy, yama means control). The initial pranayamas use the connection between breathing and the state of inner energy of human. Like asanas, pranayama can purify and develop chakras and nadis, they can calm one’s mind and change a state of consciousness. Higher pranayamas are not associated with physical respiration, they can change the quality of a human body and consciousness, saturating them with God and making them immortal: “If you breathe … the ascending up fire manifests itself as a guru, which manifests as the essence of the Truth. It dissipates the darkness of the night. … If the energy circulates, the short-lived physical body will manifest the power of ten million suns. ” These are the words by the immortal Tamil Siddha Boganathar, who, according to a legend, visited China with a spiritual mission under the name of Lao Tzi, taking a form of a Chinese. (To be more precise, he transfers his consciousness to the body of a recently deceased Chinese and then to revive it with his energy. That’s why in China, Lao Tzi is called “born old”.)

Tantric methods of ascetics, who are usually implemented by about four or five million people just only in India (!), are realized in numerous tapasyas (practices) to transform the fire of sexual energy into a spiritual fire. For the uninitiated ones, such tapasya looks like unclear and often shocking. However, behind an exotic strange form a very deep inner meaning is hidden. Here are some of tapasyas which have been frequent so far. Mauna is silence. Khareshvara is a continuous standing for at least for twelve years. Thus it is impossible to bend over, sit or lie down, even during the sleep. For the rest one can use only a special support which can be used only for a slight recline. Ek-bahu is a continuous holding of one’s right hand raised for a period of twelve years or even more. This tapasya certainly should be completed by lowering one’s hands. In tapasya punch-agni (five fires), one of the most ancient ones, the practitioner surrounds himself with four fires and then contemplates the Sun, as the fifth highest fire. Full Panch-agni lasts for eighteen years, meanwhile the intensity of the fires increases gradually so that when some time has passed, the tantra practioner gets surrounded of flame ring. Each of the five lights symbolizes the flame, transforming the five elements of the body, energy and consciousness into the Divine elements.

Mantras

Many tantra practices use mantra. The word mantra comes from the words «manas» that mean mind or conditioned consciousness and «trayyati» that means to liberate. Mantras are sounds or words that have the power to influence the state of the body, energy and consciousness. With the help of mantras we purify the inner space so that God could enter there. Mantras can also heal, affect the functioning of internal organs, clear energy channels, activate chakras, convert the internal energy, cause desired emotions, comfort or concentrate the mind, clear the consciousness and immerse it into a state of meditation. Bija-mantra (seed-mantra) is untranslatable monosyllabic mantras, each of which is an acoustic incarnation (manifestation) of a certain type of energy. Each Bija-mantra corresponds to a specific action (expansion, compression, etc.), to a area of a organism, to a element or to some aspect of God. For example, Bija-Mantra “lam” is associated with an earth element and with muladhara chakra, “vam” is assiciated with a water element and with svadhisthana, “ram” with a fire element and with manipur, “yam” with an air element and with anahata, “ham” with a space element and with visuddha. One of the practices of tantra is an experiencing of any sound like mantra. All the letters of the Sanskrit alphabet are bija mantras. The name of any object or phenomenon in Sanskrit (and in some other ancient languages) is that a combination of bija-mantras making up an appropriate word, expresses exactly the energy which is contained in an object or phenomenon. (All the names of objects were created in that way. Just like a ray of light passing through a prism, decomposing into a spectrum, i.e. into those rays of which it consists, as well as the energy, which is inherent to any thing, was “decomposed” by an enlightened consciousness of a master into different elementary components. And they were verbalized according to appropriate bija mantras. Obviously, all that process was not a result of itellectual analysis.) Therefore, in tantra it is considered that to tell the truth is very important. If the words do not correspond to the reality, the energy, awakened by them, does not correspond to the energy of the reality, either . The energy, created by lies, does not have any place in the real world, and it, finally, turns against the one who has pronounced those lies. On the contrary, if a realized master says what is not true, his words will get materialized. The energy, which he awakens with his words, is so strong, that it can change the reality. Tantra says that the nature of a man is manifested in his speech and, as a sound is closely related to the energy, the word “speech” is often understood not only as “normal” speech, but the entire human inner energy, and sometimes the term “energy” is often replaced by the word “speech”.

Many mantras have complex effects, influencing directly on the three spheres of human existence: body, energy and consciousness. For example, such property is one of the main mantras of shaivas “Om namah Shivaya”. We can translate it as “Om. I praise the name of Lord (Shiva).” Its inner and secret meanings are the following. “Om” is a conjoint recitaion of bija mantra “aum”. In Tantra there is an idea that all the Creation is generated by mantra “aum”, which is the bija-mantra of the Universe. In “aum” the sound “a” refers to the manifested world, to the physical Universe. The sound “y” refers to the world of energy. The sound “m” personifies Higher Consciousness. For human the same sound “a” corresponds to his body and to his normal state of consciousness. The sound “u” refers to inner human energy and consciousness in the dream state. The sound “m” refers to the consciousness in a state of sleep without dreams. (“Mandukya Upanishads”). “Nama” symbolizes the direction to anywhere or connection with anything. “Shivaya” symbolizes an ocean of Higher Divine Consciousness. Thus, the recitation of “Om nama Shivaya” means: “I, with all my body, energy and with all the states of consciousness, merge with God.” (It is interesting that the word “Allah” for Sufis has exactly the same meaning. So, the sound “a”, the letter “alef” symbolizes a human being. Double «L» (“ll”), two letters “lam” is an aspiration for something, a worship to something. “Ah,” symbolizes the transition to something transcendental… Indeed, the “Truth can be compared with a fountain, which spurts with one water jet up , and then it falls in a great number of drops down at different times and at different places” (Inayat Khan).)

Mantra is repeated not only loud (japa), but also to oneself (ajapa japa). They are repeated, too, concentrating on any chakra and achieving a sensation of mantra sounding inside one’s chakra. There are practices in which mantra can saturate every cell of the body so that the entire organism turns into a vibrant mantra. The repetition of mantras is often combined with respiration exercises. For example, in mantra “so ham”, meaning “I am That (i.e., God)”, on an inspiration “so” is pronounced, and on an exhalation “ham”.

Yantras

Also, in the practice of tantra yantras are used which are closely connected with mantras. Yantra (literally means a machine, a functioning device) is a pattern in the form of diagram, which like mantra, has the power to influence the state of the body, energy and consciousness. Mantra is an embodiment of a sound energy, yantra is its visual form. Like sounds of music, which can be written down, mantra can be represented as a corresponding yantra. Complex yantras are called mandalas. Yantras are painted on silk, on the bark of certain trees, on copper, on gold or on body. The process of yantra creation itself is a special ritual. For meditation yantra is contemplated so that it could “absorb” one’s consciousness. In order to intensify the effect, yantra is often contemplated, while reciting a corresponding mantra. The images of many yantras already contains a corresponding mantra . Yantras are not only for contemplation. They can also be visualized inside the body. Some yantras are big and they are painted on the ground. Such yantras are used for having special pujas inside of them (worship rites). Meanwile yantra works as a device manifesting the Divine energy. Dhuni (a pit for a rite to make a sacred fire) is also yantra. In Tantra, all objects and phenomena are considered as a kind of yantras. Even the entire Universe is an endless cosmic yantra. The best yantra is a human body. So, asanas (postures) of hatha yoga is nothing but yantras formed from the body. Each “body yantra” creates its own energy, which is “working” in a given asana. A special role has the practice in which an individual consciousness is perceived as a yantra that allows to go beyond one’s own limits.

Pujas. Rites of worship 

In Tantra a wide variety of pujas are often used, filled with deep inner meaning. In puja a worshiped deity represents some aspect of the Divine Consciousness and His creative energy. In tantra a worship rite implies the merging of a worshiper with an object of worship. Doing puja for Shiva or for Ganesha, for Kali or for Durga, the practitioner gets connected with waht is beyond the form. A deity is a gateway through whom a tantra practitioner steps into Eternity. In addition to that, a specific deity represents one aspect of One God, and therefore represents a certain standard state of inner energy or consciousness. Identifying with a deity during a rite a tantra practitioner can reach this state. So, Kali, who is managing the energy and transforming it from one form to another, personifies power. Ganesha is a power capable to clarify, including to destroy different obstacles and interferences on one’s spiritual way. Saraswati is a power of wisdom and creativity. Lakshmi is good luck and prosperity, etc. For example, if tantra practitioners find in themselves any vice, they can regularly practice a special puja. And, they should to visualize (i.e. to figure clearly) themselves in a form of Kali, cuting down the head of a corresponding demon that represents that vice. Some secret rites are associated with the representation of sexual coition with a deity (maithuna). In this case we use an image of two deities (for example, Shiva and Shakti), coupling with each other. Tantra practitioners must fully identify themselves with one of them. Feeling like a deity, a practitioner merges with a deity-partner, dissolving into each other) It can help to plunge in a desired state.

To dissolve in Shiva one can only by merging with Shakti that is in a continuous connection with him. That requires purification of the five elements. For such purification, called bhuta suddhi (i.e. purification of the elements) there is a great number of practices, including puja which is very important in tantra. The simplest puja may look like an offer of a picture or a sculpture of a deity of various offerings, among which the obligatory ones are: flowers, incense, food, sandalwood paste and a fire in an oil lamp. In this regard, flowers correspond to a space element , incense to an air element, an oil lamp to a fire element , food to a water element, sandalwood paste to an earth element. Consciously bringing all these offerings and realizing the mystical sense of what is happening, the practitioner is able to connect the respective elements of his body, energy and consciousness with the original source of the Divine, at the same time purifying them.

Pancha makara. Sexual tantra 

The same technique or puja at different stages of tantra is performed in different ways. The fact is that in the first levels of tantra it can look like an external form of worship, at a more advanced level of practice it works with inner energy, and then, with consciousness. This is a natural way. When a tantra practitioner moves forward, his inner experience is becoming deeper. A practitioner begins to identify himself not only with his own body but also with energy and with consciousness. As an example, you can take a well-known practice of tantric purification pancha makara sadhana (practice of five “m”). At the initial level they eat some meat (m ansa), some fish (m atsya), some cereals (m udra), some wine (m adira) and they practice sexual contact with their partners (m aythuna). Cereals correspond to earth, fish corresponds to water, wine to fire, meat to air, sex to pure space. A practitioner of this rite uses consciously each of the first four “m” to awaken and activate his corresponding energy and element. With their help, the sexual energy is intentionally activated. In the following sexual contact a tantra practtioner identifies himself and his partner with the two deities (usually it is Shiva and Shakti). Visualization (imagination) of all this should be so strong that a practitioner could really see and feel himself and his partner as those deities. The caused state of excitation is used to discover for the awareness of those depths of consciousness which are not usually reachable. In concurrence with this, the sexual energy separated from the emotions and desires that usually accompany it, completes ojas which is a subtle energy essence that has a vivifying effect on the entire organism. Climbing up into sahasrara, ojas kindles tejas which is a fire of consciousness that enhances medhagni a fire of mind and perception. Tejas and medhagni burn all darkness in consciousness. With the help of tejas and medhagni “inner maithuna” is carried out. When inner Shakti (i.e. the kundalini) merges with the inner Shiva (i.e. consciousness). Consciousness, liberated from the captivity of material world by the power of Shakti rushes to the Incomparable, the eternal Center, to the ocean of the only Reality, to the Divine.

Not every one who practices tantra is able to perform correctly this pancha makara. As for the people who are ignorant, on hearing about that rite and on complementing their ignorance with luxuriant fancy, they form a flagrantly falsified opinion about tantra, as about a sort of debauchery. As the humans usually tend to interpret everything, after they have learned a small part of something, they start to finish the whole picture with their own ideas. This is one of the reasons why tantra has been always kept in secret. In tantra, sexual contact is considered as a Divine gift, a sublime prayer, a possibility of contact with God. Ancient tantra teachers realized that such understanding was initially proper of a small number of people, and therefore they established a system of initiations, which protects the knowledge from any misinterpretations. In this respect, it is very interesting to see a symbolic meaning of many ancient tantric temples of India, such as that one of a famous temple complex in Khajuraho (which, by the way, in 1999, celebrated its millenium anniveresary). The facades of such temples are decorated with hundreds of erotic figures in the most possible unimaginable positions. But inside the temple there is nothing but the only symbol of the Divine Consciousness and its creating Energy. If a person remains outside the temple, he will see only these countless erotic figures. Entering inside, he will find only the Divine.

In the inner pancha macara five “m” acquire different meanings. Cereals are asanas (postures) that contribute to free energy movement, including kundalini, fish is pranayamas (a special kind of respiration), clearing energy channels, wine is amrita (a nectar of immortality, a special energy), born in the head and then descending into the body, meat is speech that represents the energy of the whole organism, sex is “inner maithuna”, i.e. kundalini connection with consciousness in sahasrara, leading to the merger of an individual consciousness with the Divine. The highest level of this practice is called adhidaivika (i.e. transcendental) pancha makara and it is associated with a complete purification of the five elements of the body, energy and consciousness. As a result, they clarify their state to the original state of shining light, from which they were once created. The preliminary stage of this process looks like a good transition of a physical body into a state of perfect youth. Further transformations realize a “body of golden light” , the highest state of Divine immortality.

Body of golden light 

On the way to the realization of body of golden light, a person overcomes five barriers: narai (gray hair), tirai (vague vision), muppu (old age), noi (illness) and maranam (death). In the process of all that, eight supernatural powers or siddhis manifest itself.

Here is how tantric saints describe the realization of body of golden light.

“There was a time when I despised my body, but then I saw God inside it and I realized that my body is a temple of Lord, and began to treat it with great care.” “The Supreme Lord, who gave me Knowledge, has entered into me and has manifested Himself in flesh of my body he has settled in me forever.” “By the sun and moon inflammations located in muladhara, even the hair got soft, delicate, shiny and emitting light.” “If a person reaches a lasting unity with the beautiful Divine Shakti … the wrinkles in his skin, and the gray in his hair disappear, and he becomes young again.” “Who has knowledge … can achieve immortality, gain a transformed body, forever young, free from aging and senility, which is a perfect incarnation of the Divine” (Tirumular). “I have prayed for a radiant body that would be forever … He fulfilled what I was praying, and now I have the body … O people, seek sanctuary in my Father, a ruler of Indescribable Magnificence, making even a physical body immortal ! .. Lord, Eternal Universal Love has given me a golden body and has merged with my heart. Merged in me, You with the Light of Mercy has transformed alchemically my body. ” The last words belong to Ramalinga Svamigalu, a saint of Vadalura (South India), who on the 30th of January, 1874 disappeared in a flash of violet light in the presence of disciples.

Unfortunately, the traditional perception of Hindu tantra in the West is amazingly primitive and superficial. The vast majority sees just only an “exotic art of love” in the radiant splendor of the way to achieve the Divine Perfection …

Additions: 

Meaning of the word “God”

In this article the word “God” (and its derivative adjective “Divine”) is not used in anthropomorphic, i.e., endowed with any of human qualities. Most often an anthropomorphic God is endowed with the qualities of the “Supreme Head”, a ruler, a judge, a punisher, a giver who can be asked for something. In the words of Xenophanes (6-5 centuries BC): “All create their own gods in their own likeness: if bulls and horses were able to sculpt, they would invent their own gods like bulls and horses.” The anthropomorphic conception of God is a product of fears and hopes of a limited human mind.

In reality, no human notions can correspond to the Reality, which is called God. Buddhists speak about it as something that is impossible to understand Nirvana with the samsaric (i.e. conditional) mind. Seeking God, some Hindus practice mantra “neti, neti” ( “not this, not this”). Each time with its help, they reject what they reveal as a result of their search. Hesychasts (mystics of Orthodoxy) perceive an apophatic experience, rejecting any idea of God in order to experience Him in direct experience. Don Juan tells Carlos Castaneda that “a man is left to the the mercy of forces which are totally irrational, although at first glance they seem quite reasonable.”

The meaning of the words “Shiva” and “Shakti”

The word Shiva has several meanings. Here are some of them.

 Shiva is eternal ocean of the Supreme Divine Consciousness, the one God.

 Shiva is one of the three main gods of the Hindu pantheon (the other two are Vishnu and Brahma).

 Shiva symbolizes one of the three aspects of the divine perfection, an aspect of the Divine power (and Vishnu symbolizes the Divine love, and Brahma the Divine wisdom).

 Shiva is Power, destroying (or, to be more exact, dissolving) the Universe at the end of its existence (and Brahman is Force creating the Universe, and Vishnu is Force that maintains its existence).

 Shiva is a cosmic male principle.

 Shiva is the supreme consciousness of a human being.

 Shiva is force that destroys the defects in the process of spiritual perfection.

 Shiva is a historical person, one of the founders of tantra and yoga as a system.

 Shiva is the name of human spiritual evolution of the highest level, as well as one who has reached this stage.

There are other meanings of the word Shiva.

Here are some meanings of the word Shakti.

 Shakti is the great universal infinite Divine energy that is a creating and executing force of the ocean of the Divine Consciousness (Shiva), while Shakti is in a continuous merging with Shiva, representing with him two inseparable aspects of the only one Reality.

 Shakti is Divine Mother.

 Shakti is a manifested world.

 Shakti is Mother Nature.

 Shakti is a goddess of the Hindu pantheon, a wife of god Shiva.

 Shakti is inner energy of a person.

 Shakti is a cosmic female principle.

 Shakti is a female priciple of a man, his female half.

 Shakti is a female partner practicing tantric yoga.

Kali, Durga, Lakshmi, Saraswati, Parvati, Chamunda Devi, Bhavani, Tripura, Sundari, Bhairavi, Chandi, Tara, Meenakshi, Lalita, Kamakshi, Rajarajeswari are various forms of Shakti. Each of these forms represents an aspect of Shakti.

Shiva and Shakti

… Those who are ignorant they claim foolishly that Shiva and Love are two different things, and they do not know that only Love is Shiva. If a person knows that Love and Shiva is the same thing, he will become forever Love like Shiva. Everywhere Divine Form exists. Everywhere Shiva-Shakti … Everywhere there is Divine Dance. As Shiva is everywhere, Shiva’s mercy is omnipresent. Everything, everything is His divine playing …

(From “Tirumandiram”)

… O, Shakti! You are the sun, illuminating the inner darkness of ignorance, you are the source of sweetness of awareness, flowing for ignorance, … for which it was worth diving into the ocean of births and deaths … You the only one who gives freedom from fear and fulfils wishes … O, Custodian of the worlds! You are able to give more than we can wish for … Those are truly happy who worship You, the wave of consciousness and bliss, whose tenement is the bed on which resides the Supreme Shiva … O, the Divine, you thrusted through earth in muladhara, water in svadhistan, fire in manipur, air in the heart, ether over the heart and consciousness between the eyes, and so going up, in a secret lotus of sahasrar you are taking pleasure in your lord the Supreme Shiva …

(From “Ananda Lahari”)

Mastering the body connection with vices

If a tantra practioner does maithuna sadhana with his body, then he manages to master his body. That means the following. To connect with the body means to connect with your body your consciousness, i.e., start to percieve your body. Awareness is symbolized as sexual penetration of attention in the body, in every cell connecting them together. Tantra says that every one can really master one’s body only when getting aware of it. Awareness puts the body in order and gives a tantra practitioner comprehensive knowledge of all its functions and the ability how to manage them. As a result, a practitioner himself becomes master of his own body, and now his body starts to obey him, but not vice versa.

If a tantra practitioner does maithuna (connects) with his vices, his vices get transformed into virtues. In other words, tantra considers all qualities of a person, as a manifestation of his inner energy. A negative quality is manifestation of a contaminated energy. What is perceived as contamination of energy it is actually a violation of its right course. There may be whirls or obstacles on its way which manifest like vices, defects, imperfections, weaknesses. The energy itself is pure and faultless. It’s Shakti, the original Divine energy. All you need to do is to release the energy, connecting your consciousness and energy, i.e. becoming aware of the flow of energy. Just as in the case with the body, this connection symbolizes sexual attention and energy. What occurs from this connection is like untwining knots. Awareness “straightens the curved and expands the narrow.” The liberated energy begins to move freely and naturally. This flow of Shakti manifests either as a positive quality (virtue) or as siddhi.

In Tantra there is no concept of sin. There is ignorance, an inability to feel and to transform “bad” energy into a “good” one. If people knew all the consequences of their acts, they would have never done what they did. This approach is very constructive instead of a destructive and oppressive sense of guilt a human being is offered to learn and to change himself, i.e., to become perfect.

Everything is a manifestation of the original energy or Shakti. Shakti is in constant connection with Shiva or the Supreme Consciousness. To connect with this Divine Consciousness one can only by merging with Shakti. In the arsenal of tantra are methods to merge directly with Shakti, for example in the form of kundalini. There are methods to release Shakti in one of its manifestations, which can be a vice or a virtue. In this case, Shakti can be identified, detected in everything. We have just to “see the water behind the waves.” For this we need to merge with the form, with the manifestation. A simple example explains why the merger with the manifestation reveals content. Imagine that you are in a turbulent sea. If you resist the waves, they will throw you from side to side, beat your face, without letting you to see. If you sway on the waves, then you are motionnless respecting them. In this case, before your eyes there is a surface of calm waters, the waves do not interfere with the process of seeing them. In fact, waves do not exist for you. Waves are manifestations (vices, virtues, pain, pleasure, etc.). Water, i.e. is “building material” from which waves are made and they are Shakti.

Hinduism and tantra

The impact that tantra has had on the formation of traditional Hinduism is consuderable, but it is little known or often ignored. In fact, modern Hinduism is based mainly on tantra. It is not based only on vedas, as many people think. The main deities of vedas are Prajapati, Agni, Indra, Varuna, etc. But, nowadays, there are almost no temples in India dedicated to these gods. In modern Hinduism Shiva, Vishnu, Kali, Durga, Saraswati are worshiped , and in fact all of them are tantric deities.

Some of the techniques from “Vigyan Bhairav Tantra”

… Consider your essence as light rays from chakra to chakra up the vertebrae, and so rises “livingness” in you.

– Intone a sound, as AUM slowly, as sound enters soundfulness, so do you.

– Kind Devi, enter etheric presence pervading far above and below your form.

– Put mindstuff in such inexpressible fineness above, below and in your heart.

– When in wordly activities, keep attention between two breaths, and so practicing, in a few days be born anew.

– Focuse on fire rising through your form from the toes up until the burns to ashes but not you.

– With intangible breath in center of forehead, as this reaches the heart at the moment of sleep, have direction over dreams and over death itself.

– At the point of sleep, when the sleep has not yet come and the external wakefulness vanishes, at this point Being is revealed.

– Gracious One, play. The Universe is an empty shell wherein your mind frolics infinitely.

– Sweet heartened One, meditate on knowing and non-knowing, existing and non-existing. Then leave both aside that you may be.

– Look lovingly at some object. Do not go to another object. Here in the middle of the object – the blessing.

– Feel the cosmos as a translucent ever-living presence.

– When eating or drinking, become the taste of food or drink, and be filled.

– In summer when you see the entire sky endlessly clear, enter such clarity.

– Waking, sleeping, dreaming, know you as light.

– When some desire comes, consider it. Then, suddenly, quit it.

– This so-called Universe appears as juggling, a picture show. To be happy, look upon it so.

– Suppose you are gradually being deprived of strength or of knowledge. At the instant of deprivation, transcend.

-Be the unsame same to friend as to stranger, in honor and dishonor.

-I am existing. This is mine. This is this. O, beloved, even in such know illimitably.

– Feel the consciousness of each person as your own consciousness. So, leaving aside concern for your self, become each being.

– This consciousness is the spirit of guidance of each one. Be this one …

QUESTION: There are so many people now who are engaged in all sorts of practices of self-perfection, they “work on themselves.” Such practices can bring tangible results, and the practices, of course, are able to get a feeling of some kind of spiritual transformation and internal progress. So, can such sense of self-growth correspond to the reality?

ANSWER: It is known that real change in human is a change of his average state of being. Human evolution is a change of his ordinary, everyday state. A human is formed, composed of many sophisticated  “parts” and “systems”. The average condition of a human is the result of the combination work of all these “systems”. Every “particle” of a human makes its contribution to the final result. It turns out that a path to harmony means a change of the whole human, not only just a part of him.

An erroneous feeling of “spiritual self growth” appears frequently for obvious and real reasons.

One of the reasons of a false sense of progress are unusual experiences that can occur during meditation or during some kind of psychotechniques. Thus, for example, one is able to see the Divine Light, feels the universal love, feels the cosmic energy flow and experiences different subtle states, etc. Also, the reason for such unreasonable feelings of spiritual progress can be a discovery of unusual abilities such as clairvoyance, etc.

But, all that is no more than a sort of extension of perception. For example, if during your meditation, you manage to see the Divine Light, but at the same time if one of your close relatives plunges you into depression again, it means that you have not changed. It just means that only your own ability to see the Divine Light has changed. In this case, the ability to perceive has changed, but the concrete person the one who sees, the one who acts, has not changed and remains the same.

Achieving higher states of consciousness is like a tour to distant and desirable worlds, but such a tour does not necessarily mean a change of place of residence, it does not necessarily imply the entire change of a human … (It should be noted that there are rare occasions when even such a single experience can completely change the whole human. In this case, that relative of yours, who was constantly annoying you before, has suddenly stopped being “a stumbling block” for you).

The second reason for a false sense of progress is the seeming change of the average state.

All at once, one’s usual state of mood can improve, one’s interests and relationships with other people start to change. In other words, the whole lifestyle changes … However, this may just be the result of the replacement of some habits and stereotypes with other ones. In this case, one’s activities and experiences tend to change. But one who acts, one who experiences all that, the whole human does not change and remains the same.

For example, some time ago you might have cared a lot about “money” and “women” and now you are really interested in “meditation” and “enlightenment”. It means that your interests have changed, but it does not mean that you have changed yourself. It’s as if you were tightened a wooden spoon roughly in your hand, and now, instead of it, you are delicately handling a silver fork. But, eventually, you notice that your hunger has not gone away!

These changes are similar to the process of “plastering” one’s consciousness. Its ideal looking glass is buried under a compressed layer of old rubbish called “personality”. So, human starts to pile another new layer of techniques, methods, philosophy on this old stuff. Gradually the surface becomes perfectly smooth, almost like a mirror. Different techniques work, and the human thinks that he has changed.

This new layer accretes, grows in such a way that it can not be distinguished from the first one, and only in some extreme situations, an old “bottom” can appear, buried under a layer of what we have learned, of what we have already gotten used to. Different people need different blows to make this “plaster” come off them and revealing the reality. For example, it could be a sudden fright. The strongest and always the most guaranteed blow for anyone is one’s own death. But it is not necessary to keep waiting until it happens just to find out what state you are in now…

QUESTION: So, how can one find out what has changed inside of one’s personality or if one has changed entirely? Are these seeming changes real?

ANSWER: It is very easy. The whole Universe is an endless ocean of energy. All that is in the Universe is a manifestation of this energy. Everything is connected to a single whole. A human is also energy. All of his qualities are a manifestation of his energy. Vices represent imperfect flows of energy, a some kind of its turbulences, narrow and dark places, etc.

If the great energy of the Universe happens to be flowing through a human, one starts to experience what is called love. This great energy entirely permeates the whole Universe, linking everything into one. When this energy flows through a human, one receives communion with the harmony of the whole Universe. For love is an attraction to perfection, to wholeness, to non-duality, to what is beyond harmony. If you begin to love someone, it means that you start to feel separated from someone you love. Love is an attraction to someone you are separated from. If you get fully connected, love disappears. There is only total existence. The flow of this energy is so complete that it can entirely capture the whole human. And if at this moment one manages to look at oneself, it will become clear who one is. It is now obvious where in the depths of one’s being is spaciousness and clarity, and where there are just bottlenecks and darkness.

And above all, such a flow does not always show what you really represent, but it cleanses you and the bottlenecks start to become wider, the curved places start to straighten…

Love is a great “diagnostician” and “cleaner”.

QUESTION: Could you tell more about all that? And what is “ordinary” love?

ANSWER: What is commonly called love, including its strongest manifestation, up to full happiness or unhappiness is a mere shadow of the great mystical power that is behind it. This mystical power itself is Love.

What people usually experience is simply passion caused by addictions, but it is not love. It is a shadow of love, but not love itself. Passion can be so strong that it can lead one to suicide or to a paradise on earth, but all that is just passion.

That’s what can be compared with the following. Imagine an old rare stamp which costs several millions of dollars (such stamps do really exist). This is a stamp, which depicts the “Sistine Madonna” by Raphael. For a collector this stamp can mean more than his life. Finally, he gets it, admires it, looks at the imprint on the corner … At this moment he does not think about any Madonna! What on earth has Madonna to do with anything? The stamp by itself is what is so important to him!

Madonna was the reason Raphael painted that picture. The picture was the cause of printing that stamp. The stamp, rather than the Madonna, causes a storm of feelings in the collector. Due to the stamp and not because of the Madonna, he rejoices or grieves. The farther the Madonna is from the stamp, in the same way love is far from passion that make people fly up to heaven, or to take their own life.

So, what we call love, in other words, are all kinds of experiences. And the cause of these experiences is Love itself.

All “troubles” are due to the fact that an ordinary human is not able to completely experience all existence. First, he singles out and isolates different objects, taking them separately from everything that is around him, from the whole. Second, even when dealing with the object “cut off from the whole”, he does not see the whole object entirely, and he sees again just only one of its properties, only one aspect. Third, he is divided inside into many parts. He is not holistic. Some of these parts, besides, are in conflict with each other. It turns out that a part of the whole deals with a part of another one’s wholeness. How can there be a real, veritable, whole experience? Just shreds…

These “shreds” are called “relations” to something. In particular, relations between people…

QUESTION: Could you explain it again in connection with love?

ANSWER: There are different kinds of relationships between you and the outside world: “men and I”, “women and I”, “my parents and I”, “my children and I”, “my friends and I”, “nature and I”, “music and I” and so on. Refracted in specific ways, the energy of love causes the experiences that correspond to these relationships. People perceive these experiences as love. So, it turns out that for each type of relationship there is its own kind of love.

Therefore, we can say that there are different kinds of love with various aspects. For example, the purest, most sublime, the brightest love between a man and a woman. This is one kind of love.

A mother’s love for her children, it is a completely different kind of love, and it is not like the love between a man and a woman. A mother loves her child in a different way. It is another kind of love.

Love for parents is not like anything else either. It differs from the love between a man and a woman, and from love for children. There can be love for our friends, and it will be different, too. A love of nature is like no other, someone can be crazy about the sea or the mountains … And again, such love is not like other kinds of love. If you pay attention to yourself, you’ll notice that love for arts, for music or painting, for example, is also special.

There is also a religious love…

To understand the anatomy of your soul, just look at how you love. All the narrow and dark places of your soul give a special contribution to your feelings, colouring them with different respective experiences, such as jealousy, for instance.

Q: Tell us more about it…

ANSWER: There are a number of features that can be found in ordinary love…

This is the first sign of human love. All normal and good people are necrophiliacs. They love the dead. Necrophilia is the love of corpses. Almost all normal people are necrophiliacs. When you think that you love a living human, you are deeply mistaken, in fact, you love a dead one. And you create this corpse! A human head is a mausoleum, which houses your lover’s carefully manufactured a mummy.

It does not take much time and effort to make such mummy. All that happens very simply. When you fall in love with someone, suddenly that human becomes quite unique for you and different from all the others. You isolate that human, who becomes really special to you, from the crowd. You start to think about and to dream about that human …

Love makes you think about your lover. And you always remember just what you like in him or her. At this point, love shows itself through flashbacks. When you are separated, you can experience only this kind of love, which are memories. If you cannot touch your lover with your hand or with your look, you touch him or her with your thoughts and dreams.

This entails what is called crystallization. Crystallization is a creation of a sustainable image of someone you love. You crystallize in your mind an image and this image gets fixed inside of you. You constantly refine it, finish and polish it, working at it without any rest … So, you create an image, a pattern, a picture that you love.

But this is not the original! In fact, it is a copy of a living human, but it’s not the living human as he or she is, it’s just a scheme, which has nothing to do with reality in any way. This image can be very, very similar to the original. But it is dead. It is just full of some fixed ideas about that. In fact, it turns out that you love someone else, a person that does not exist, the human that you have created yourself.

And then, the most important thing happens. You start to get more acquainted with your lover, you begin to know your lover better and better until one day you find out that the human you love is different from your ideas about him. He does not correspond to your expectations. In fact, you have already got a projection of what he should be …

In the end, there will be a situation that will let you see that the man or woman you love is a living person and he or she is different from what you would like to have. It seems as if you had drawn a picture, and then you discover that the original is different from the image of your lover you created.

And, what happens next, this is really too much. You begin to correct the original according to the pictures already drawn in your mind ! You start to correct the original so that it can become similar to the image that you carry in your head and correspond to your expectations.

This is the second sign of ordinary people’s love. Ordinary love is rape, a rape of someone you love. The first sign is necrophilia, and the second one is a rape of a living human being in order to bring him into line with the dead scheme in the head. Why does the rape start? If your love is true, then, of course, you want to make your lover be better and you try to help him. But he, dear, is so silly that he cannot understand it… So the rape starts. Moreover, all that is determined by a sincere desire to help, which comes from your true love…

Without any doubt, such behavior – necrophilia and rape – is not the result of any subtle calculation or analysis. By acting so, you are just following your mood, your emotions. You are acting sincerely until you realize one day what you are really doing…

In fact, if you want to change someone, it means you do not like this person. You’re lying to yourself, thinking that you love someone. In this case, your attitude can be expressed by the words “he’s good, but some improvement is needed”. You happened to catch someone who was by your side at that time, someone who was available, and you wanted to make that poor raw material into your dream. Be honest now, you wanted to correct him or her for your own self and to make him or her fit you and your love. All that gives you the possibility to love him without any problems, satisfying yourself and also to be troubled by him as little as possible.

A few decades ago some people started the process of domesticating foxes. They selected only good-natured animals for breeding. Animals with undesirable traits were not allowed for breeding. So, they got domestic foxes. They were all very friendly to people and not aggressive. By their nature and behavior all those animals were no different from dogs. They stopped being foxes. They became dogs. Later it was found that such foxes did not have any distinct individuality and they were less intelligent. They were very convenient for people as animals, but they had lost their wild natural beauty, grace and strength. Having “cleansed” from the fox all the qualities that were not desirable, they lost what made these animals different from others … The same thing happens with your lover when you try to “remodel” him.

If we consider that carefully, we will see that the third quality of ordinary love is just business. Why can ordinary love be business? Because you want something from your lover, you expect something from him. For example, you want your lover to be near you so that you can see him or so that he can love you. More and so, that he can love you in a form that is appropriate for you. Or, may be, so that he dresses as you want, or studies in a certain institute, or that he tells you specific words, gives you what you like, perfects himself and that he has other parents … and so on without end…

There can be millions of demands, or only one. It does not matter. It is important that there is something you want; you want it in exchange for your love. So, you give your love in exchange for what you want. As soon as you see that your desire is not fulfilled and than your expectations have not come true and your lover does not correspond to what you want from him, you will get angry.

This is «unfair business». You give him love and he, in return, does not give you what you would like to have. When you see that you have been cheated, i.e. your partner’s «business» is dishonest, you start to rape…

It turns out that ordinary love is conventional, i.e. your love for somebody or feeling of displeasure depends on some conditions. It is necessary that the one you love can fulfill some conditions and can be this or that. If not, and note that your love is sincere, the rape starts as you want to help him with your pure heart. You want to make someone you love perfect. You begin to fight with his defects. You start to “rescue” him. So, you are supposed to privately know better than he himself what he should be; because you are in love with him, you know better.

The fourth quality of ordinary love is loss of freedom. Such loss is caused by a lie. By loving someone you imprison yourself and you want to imprison your lover, too. First, you imprison yourself.

It happens in the following way. If you love someone, you want to please him. You also want to be loved. You think about your behavior. You analyze it. You evaluate it…

You consider each step that your lover takes, thinking: “If I act so, will he like it or not? Maybe, I could do something different? Maybe I shouldn’t do it at all?” You choose, in your opinion, the best alternative for what to wear, for what to say, for how to smile, etc. You remodel and deform yourself, distorting yourself in accordance with what your lover is sure to like. You add something to yourself, and there is also something that you take away … Your behavior becomes artificial. You start to lie in order to please your partner. So you lose your naturalness, imprisoning yourself.

The chosen behavior is insincere and artificial, as it is generated by your mind, your thoughts, and not by your heart. Your heart generates the desire to be liked or loved by someone. But how can you achieve this your mind tells you what to do. Most often you are not even aware of it, all this happens quite unconsciously.

The same thing happens with your lover. If he loves you, he begins, in the same way as you do, to alter himself, to be artificial, to be insincere to make you like him. And he also deprives himself of naturalness and freedom. He puts himself into a prison. And both these prisoners appear to love each other.

But the problem is not that you only start to lose your own freedom, but you deprive your lover of his freedom, too. You only allow him or her to be something or someone in a strictly determined way. In turn, your lover also becomes very unnatural and starts to limit you. You become each other’s jailers.

All that is not bad, it is as it is, in the end, people are made this way. It is necessary to investigate it in order to see clearly and to be aware of what is happening to you and around you. Only then, can something very important, something will change. You will stop lying to you and your partner.

And here’s the fifth sign or quality of ordinary love. Ordinary love deprives you of force. You lose energy. Consider the end of all ordinary love stories when people leave each other, when they part. People break up, losing their force with a gloomy look, without energy, without joy. There is just anger at each other, total dissatisfaction. You can ask a reasonable question: is it love that can do all this to people? When people have just met each other, they feel a burst of energy. They are full of energy. They want to sleep and eat less, their eyes sparkle, they can fly … They cannot pass by unnoticed! When they break up, they are without energy and sad.

Of course, love is not to blame for this. It is not love that causes all of it. It is what people do with love. But they do not do it intentionally. What one gets is the only possible variant. Each one behaves as it is natural for him at a given moment in time. It is not a matter of choice. It can’t be any other way. People suffer from love, not because of love itself, but because of who they are. After all, love is not a punishment!

So what shall we do now? Not love? But the majority of people can’t control love. They can not start or stop loving by their own will.

Through such experiences, people change. As a matter of fact, they begin to do things in a different way, not from their mind but from the heart. Love is the touch of the Divine to human. 

Long ago, people thought that if one falls in love with someone, Cupid’s arrow hits somebody’s heart. Cupid and Amur were portrayed as two winged boys with bows. They shot arrows into people’s hearts with arrows of love that consequent made them fall in love. An arrow is a symbol of an “advance” of energy, which we get from Heaven. This is an opportunity to experience such divine experience, which is love, thanks to another person at the moment when he becomes your lover.

But everyone manages this energy, this “advance” in their own way. If you were given a large sum of money, you would spend it right away on a drink or invest it in some business or you would buy some books or you would travel …

In the same way, this happens with love. You get an opportunity to love someone and some energy is “released” to you. But what will you do with this energy? Where will you direct it? Into yourself? Into your partner? Into feelings? Will you disperse or waste it? All that will happen to you and your lover depends on that.

But all of us sometimes face glimpses of another kind of very special love. This love lies on another level, on another dimension. During one’s lifetime, one has the ability, at least from time to time, to feel such love. Perhaps such an experience lasted for just one second and was aimed at a certain human, but we will never forget it, we will never confuse it with other feelings. That would be impossible.

Such love is different from the one we have just spoken about. First of all, it is different because this time you love a real human. You love a living human. You love him or her for what he or she is. You love all of him or her. At this moment you embrace him fully with your love. You do not cut him like a butcher, choosing edible and inedible parts for your love. No single particle remains in his or her soul that you did not love at that moment.

This kind of love is similar to the behavior of alga in the water. Long green alga are so flexible that it fully merges with the flow of water. It follows the flow completely, it has no desire to “correct” the flow of the water or to change it. Alga fully merges with it and becomes part of it. It can only be seen because it has a different color. It follows every slightest change in the flow…

If you love a person in this way it means you accept all of him at this moment, entirely. Even the gesture symbolizing love, if you love someone, you embrace that person, you give him a hug …

This kind of love is acceptance. Acceptance of what you are. You accept without any desire to change something and without any desire to have something in return. Without any hope of getting something in return, you feel happy because there is someone you can love.

In the East, there is a legend that once, at the beginning of time, God was alone. He was completely alone, but he was filled with love. He did not have anyone to love. Then, he created the Universe in order to have someone to love. And he was grateful to the Universe to be able to shed His love on it.

You can also be grateful to your lover, because he or she really exists, and you have someone to love.

In a monastery, I saw a small epitaph, which was written on a tomb: “Thank you for what you were.” For what he was, not for the fact that he was a loving father or a loving husband, but just for the fact that he was. In fact, that is the reason of love – the existence of someone you love.

How does a mother love her little child? She loves him without any apparent reason. Her child’s existence is the reason she loves him. She does not expect anything from her child. She does not stop loving him when he wets his diapers because she does not put any conditions on him of what he should be. His existence fills her with joy. That’s all. But adult men and women so rarely love each other in this way.

Remember how you love the sea or the mountains. You do not want them be in the only one state.  You do not impose any obligation on them. You do not put any conditions on them. On the contrary, you get joy from the variety and variability, from the uniqueness of each new day. The sea is very nice both when it is calm and in a storm, in the afternoon, and at night, when the moonlight plays the with water, and it reflects the stars. And, in the morning, it is sometimes impossible to find the boundary between the sky and the water, it seems that they have merged into each other. You seem to be bathing in the sky. The mountains are also beautiful both in winter and in summer, and when the alpine meadows start to bloom. You do not put any conditions on nature: “Let the sun always be at the zenith, let this tree be only slightly green, let the flower only grow there.” On the contrary, this diversity energizes you.

All that so rarely happens to people. Imagine that you were expecting him or her to come at seven. He did not come at seven. He came at eight but not in the evening, but in the morning, and, by the way, not to your place, but you start to rejoice with the variety and spontaneity of his behavior! It is unlikely…

Normal love is like a huge gun, which you aim at your lover. You catch him in the cross of the target and you start to love him like- bang, bang, and bang! But a living human being does not stand still. He moves. He changes his location. He goes in every direction. And he himself is changing. But your weapon weighs tons (maybe it is the Tsar-Cannon). It is so inert, that it cannot be moved even to be able to keep up with a moving target that is your lover. It is much easier to get your lover back in the cross of the target and to chain him to the place at which the gunpoint of your “gentle” love is aimed. And, then you start to love him until death do you part…

But if your love is like algae, not like a cannon, everything is different. You do not rape anyone. You only have something to offer. Yes, you can offer someone your love. You can offer something.

After all, love means giving. The process of love is a process of giving. You experience the pleasure of giving the energy of Love. Energy comes from your heart, bringing you to bliss. The surprising fact is that the more you give, the more full you are. The more you radiate, the stronger the source of love inside of you becomes…

Loving so, you can offer something to your lover. You will never rape him with your offer. It is up to your lover to decide to accept it or not.

From such love, you will not lose your freedom. You will not appear to be artificial. You will be not correcting your behavior “by him.”

And such love will not weaken you. On the contrary, it will fill you with power and energy. It will give you more joy and more freedom. It will free you. The more you are immersed in love, the more you feel freer and more sublime.

This kind of love, in the East, was compared with the scent of a flower, with the fragrance of a rose. When you walk past a rose and smell it, you experience something pleasant, some kind of bliss. You smell its scent and enjoy it. And even though you go away and stop smelling it, the rose  remains the same. It continues to be fragrant. The smell has ended for you, you have moved apart and now you do not smell it anymore, but it still persists in the rose.

The rose still smells, but not for you. It just simply smells. This is one of its attributes, just as are as the number of petals, their shape and color. We experience this part of its existence as something very pleasant.

Love is the same. It can be a part of your existence, your quality, and your state. Thus love is not simply a relationship between two people: I’m doing different things for you: giving you flowers, writing poetry, and carrying you in my arms…. I am ready to die for you…

This is an attitude. It is very good, but it is an attitude. But love is a state. It is a special state of consciousness, a state of your soul. When you are in this state, and someone is close to you, he is immersed in the field of your love that you are radiating at that moment. You feel love for this person, and he feels it…

All that is weak needs a lot, and all that is strong needs a little. If your love is strong, you will not demand much from your lover. You will not put any conditions on him. You do not need your lover to be this or the other person. But if you are not able to immerse yourself deeply in love, if your consciousness has not grown enough for such ecstasy, so you will only be able to experience “weak” love, love with special conditions depending on external circumstances.

Here’s one more thing that is important.

It is necessary to distinguish between two fundamentally different things: connection and affection. Affection means that you have firmly caught hold of someone and you do not allow this person to turn around, nor to move away from you or to come closer. You do not allow your partner to move, to whirl, to dance around you. You cannot see your lover in all of his or her beauty, feel him in his entirety. You tied him and you also tied yourself. You are an anchor for him and he is an anchor for you. In this case, there is no possibility for growth, for changes. There is no freedom, no real life.

Connection is another thing. It is similar to a mobile phone, which both of you have. Wherever you are – near or far from each other – in fact, you are always present. You just need to dial a number, and you can hear your lover’s voice, and he will hear yours. It is similar to telepathy. You are together now. When you feel a connection, indeed, you are always together. The stronger your connection is, the freer you are. It sounds strange, but, it is really so.

Love is always a force of attraction. It is something that connects. It connects the one who is in love with someone else or with something that one loves. Love is a connective force connecting two lovers. It is a great Universal pimp. The connection can be mental, emotional, and physical…

Connection is a channel between you and your partner, in which love is moving. It is your openness towards your partner. This is something that enriches your partner and you.

The two types of love are completely different. In the first case, your love lives in your head, and in the second one it lives in your heart.

Why in the head? Because you always remember, compare and plan.

The first impulse of each love is always born in the heart. But when you start to think about love, the energy leaves your heart and starts to fill your head. That is why the head has grown enormous, and the heart small. Suddenly the head cannot stand all that and finally it “explodes” and you cease to be satisfied with you lover. And, then, you leave him. Your love is over. That kind of love always comes to an end. If there are not any new arrivals of impressions from outside that love gets dried up.

Of course, at the beginning of relationships you can eat your heart’s energy of love feeling the emotions. In this case, the energy is spent on emotions. But when this energy comes to an end when your heart does not radiate your love anymore, you begin to “eat” your lover. Ordinary love feeds on who you love. You devour your lover.

You will say: «It is nonsense.»

However, that is so.

There are different kinds of food. One food is the food that we eat for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Some people can even include here a five o’clock tea. Another kind of food is a more delicate one. It includes the energy, which we get from the environment, for example, when we breathe.

Also, there is another kind of food. It is the finest food we eat. It is our impressions or, in other words, the information that is the food on which our consciousness and our soul feeds. The soul needs such food for life and growth, because one’s soul grows throughout all one’s life. And if this food, if the impressions, are rough, both our consciousness and our growing soul become the same.

By the way, you get only one part of all your impressions from outside. The other part, the biggest part, you make it yourself. You take any reason from outside and, then, add to it something that you generate inside of you. That’s the way in which bad impressions are created. You always create them. Very often you do not even realize that it is happening precisely in this way…

Harmony is proportionality, the balance between what you give and what you get. But if you really want something from someone and you always think about this man or woman, you start to remember him or her. So, there is no balance. In this case, you get much more than you give.

Even plants feel when you think about them. The experiments done by Baxter, way back in the 60s, showed that the body of plants reacts violently to any mental desire, for example, to break a branch.

The same thing happens to the human body.

That’s why attention is a channel that connects you to what whatever you focus on. But people are able to feel just a very small part of themselves, just the superficial one. They are not able to feel such influences, but they do exist! All that has been said above is not intended to cause a neurosis like “I am being thought about, I am in danger!», or a prohibition to think about others. It happens to everyone, but almost no one realizes it.

If you love with your heart, on the contrary, you fill your lover and the space around you with the energy of love, not with your own ego, but with what is going through you but does not belong to you.

All the great saints left this world much more beautiful than they had found it after they had come to this world. Living here, they filled the world with love, made it more beautiful. Such people are links between the ordinary world and subtle harmony. They are windows from which the light of other realities pour through. Such people shed the fragrance of love all the time…

Kahlil Gibran wrote in “The Prophet”:

 “…Let there be spaces in your togetherness,  

     And let the winds of the heavens dance between you.  

     Love one another but make not a bond of love:  

     Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.  

     Fill each other’s cup but drink not from one cup.  

    Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf.  

     Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone,  

     Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music. 

      Give your hearts, but not into each other’s keeping. 

      For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts.  

      And stand together, yet not too near together:  

      For the pillars of the temple stand apart,  

      And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other’s shadow.”

Such love does not have two sides. It is holistic. Ordinary love always has two sides: joy and suffering, bliss and pain, happiness and unhappiness. Strange but true that the one who gives you happiness becomes the cause of your unhappiness.

For example, you love someone and you’re happy thanks to this man or woman. But, suddenly, he has to leave, for example, to go on business, and you start to suffer. He has not taken away your happiness, because, after leaving you, has lost it too. You both get lonely and, as a consequence, you both start to suffer.

Loneliness makes you unhappy. Before that, you were not alone. You were with your lover. But, then, he goes on a business trip, and your happiness comes to an end. Is it true happiness, if it depends on the location of your lover? May be, it is just an illusion of happiness, isn’t it?

You can merge completely into each other just by remaining alone. If you remain alone, you can be infinitely close to each other. There is no contradiction. You can continuously move towards each other, without getting stuck at any single distance. As you remain alone, there is nothing that can stop you from moving.

So, all that seems to you, as ultimate closeness today, will become a huge distance tomorrow. It seems to you that it is impossible to be closer, but suddenly a new horizon has been discovered. All the time you seem to have recently met your lover, you are just starting to know him or her. You are approaching him closer and closer. While approaching him so, and all the time, you will start to feel that there is always something new that earlier never existed for you. Whenever you are alone, your lover remains new for you all the time. You contact him, his state in which he is in that moment. Each time you experience a new love.

Only a lonely man can experience true happiness. “Alone” means separate from what makes him unhappy. “Alone” means to be separated from what causes unhappiness and the fact that you are alone with your happiness face-to-face.

The reasons for your unhappiness are always inside of you. It’s as if there was an “organ” in your mind that could produce that feeling of your unhappiness. This “organ” produces unhappiness from any incoming material. That’s why any impression may be the cause of your disorder: your lover, the dollar’s exchange rate, the state of the environment – anything. That “organ” functions continuously and very regularly.

But if that “organ” is not given any food, it will atrophy. Nature is thrifty. The body is not so wasteful to expend its energy for the maintenance of non-functioning parts. It just gets rid of them. If you stop eating in the usual way, your intestine will get atrophied, and it will already be completely impossible to restore it. The same thing happens to your consciousness.

It is clear that it is very difficult to make that organ of “disaster” starve. If it were easy, everyone would be continuously happy for a long, long time. So, any efforts in this direction will be rewarded generously. You will have to “try” much more than you ever tried before to feel unhappy…

To achieve something significant it is only possible when you are completely immersed in the present action. A human can sometimes experience such moments, while he notices that even a second ago he was absolutely inseparable, indivisible, with what he had been doing. It can even be just simple dish washing or watching a movie.

At that moment, you are what you are doing: dish washing or watching a movie, you do not feel apart from this activity. You do not have any ideas, you have no past, and you feel like what you are doing. In fact, “you” do not exist, there is only dishwashing, only this thing is what really exists …

So an everyday action can turn into a meditation.

In all other cases, people are more or less dualized. This is what happens when you, for example, are doing something, and at the same time you are in the process of thinking about something, and a large part of you is just “sleeping.”

It is called doing something automatically.

For example, you are driving a car and, at the same time, you are communing with your thoughts.

But the duality is much stronger when you disagree inside of you with what you are doing right now. In this case, you are lying. You make yourself do what you are expected to do. You are doing what you cannot agree with. But you have to do it. And it happens very often.

It is a simple duality: outside you are one person, and inside of you is completely the other one. You are torn by the internal contradiction. Your inner behavior is different from the external one. So, you become insincere.

In this state, it is impossible to do something fully, holistically, truly. When you are dualized, you’re weak. It occurs because only one part of your force goes towards the definite “purpose”, only one part of your attention, and the other part is spent on protest or on internal resistance. If you are not real at this moment, how will you be able to create something real? And your actions at this time are false, too. You do not agree with what you are doing.

What you are doing always bears the imprint of your state at the present moment.

What you do is similar to you.

If you are insincere, so your creation will be insincere, even if apparently everything is done well and good. Thus such creation can just only be a smile or an act, or it can be even the whole life…

In fact, a vast majority of people always act like that. They are being a little disingenuous, somewhat not agreeing with what they have to do. They continuously slightly rape themselves. It becomes so usual for them (as everyone has already been trained since childhood, hearing constant “you must not” and “you must”).

Even if you want to notice something like that inside of you, it will be almost impossible. It is already a part of you. It has merged with you. It has become normal.

If there is something that is continuously present in you, even in small concentrations, it gets accumulated and forms into a very substantial quantity.

Look, people, who were completely immersed in what they were doing, have created all of the most outstanding things. They had devoted themselves completely to that. They werat the extreme level of their sincerity and integrity.

If you are dualized, you have two options either to act according to your inner feeling or to act as you are expected to.

“Dual” means “di”, “opportunities” – “able”, ” two opportunities” sounds like “di able”. “Di able” is “diable”, devil. It is not a creature with two horns. It is a state of conflicting duality, of unnaturalness, of fears and of doubts in your actions. Two horns is a symbol of duality.

Note that the horns come out of the head. The head with its thoughts is a source of a dualizing force. When there is no sincerity, you condemn yourself to hell inside of you. It can be hidden very deep, but it is always the same…

In ordinary human life there are three opportunities to encounter  mysticism; birth, sex and death. Birth and death occur, as a rule, once in life, whereas sex occurs more often. However, most people miss the opportunity to experience mysticism…

If sex, for you, is just a sexual act, then there is nothing in common between love and sex. Since love is a state of consciousness, a sexual act is a physiological incident involving two bodies.

If sex, for you, is a physical manifestation of love then there’s no indifference between love and sex. In this case, sex is a process of love. Sex is love in a dynamic form.

Love and sex give pleasure and bliss. In both cases, we feel pleasure when we touch our partner. In the case of sex, pleasure comes from physical touching. We connect with our partner’s body of the partner, we penetrate into his or her depth. In the case of love, pleasure comes from touching of consciousness and attention.

Attention flows from the eyes when we look at someone. When you remember something, you connect to it by giving it your attention through your thoughts. We touch our lover with our attention, penetrating into his or her depth…, we actually “rub” against our object of love with attention and thus we get pleasure from this. This is similar to what happens during sex!

During sex, our attention is connected by touchings the body. In a sexual act, the focus of attention is on the genitals.

It turns out that there are two kinds of sex. The first one, called sex, is a physiological one, associated with the body. The other one, called love, is a more subtle one and is associated with energy, attention and consciousness. There is no difference between these two kinds of sex, they are both the same. Since our attention is also a part of the body, only a more subtle one, not a physical one. Furthermore, the body and attention are equal parts of a human. That’s why love is “sex” which deals with consciousness, but  ordinary sex is sex where the body acts.

This analogy can be continued. For an individual consciousness,  attention has the role of the male penis. In fact, attention is a “penis”, by which the consciousness penetrates into what attention is directed to. And the process of perception has the role of vagina, when you admit something new in your consciousness.

Thus, consciousness manifests itself, as a vagina, or as a penis. And the process of cognition is sex between consciousness and Truth.

The root of the word «sex» means «divided», that is something that is divided into parts. Thus, sexual connection is a process of connection of the separated parts.

At the same time, love is a connecting force. It is a force of attraction that connects a lover and a beloved but sex is how this force is manifested itself. It is what happens when gravity of love begins to act freely, when there is a merger of two parts into one.

It is useless to define the boundaries of sex by saying: “This is sexy, but that is not.” What and how you perceive depends on your state at that moment. For example, at this time one kind of touching gives you some sexual feelings and after some time, the same touching will seem completely neutral. The touching will be the same, but you will not.

Everything depends on the condition of perception, on the state of your energy at the moment. What is your internal energy aimed at, what does it vibrate with? What energy center of the body dominates at this moment? The more active your sexual energy is, the more your center of perception shifts to the sexual area. Although, if you were in a different mood, you would perceive it differently.

In fact, it make no sense to single out sexual energy as something very special. It is even possible to say: «there isn’t any sexual energy». There is just energy. The whole Universe is an ocean of energy, flowing from one state to another. When there is a lot of this pure energy in the head (and the mind, meanwhile, is healthy), you feel it as a clarity of thought and perception. If we have a lot of  the same kind of energy in our chest, where our “spiritual heart” is, we feel subtle emotions, such as love and tenderness. But if we have a lot of that energy in the lower abdomen we feel it as sexual power.

The fact is that some part of the body has more energy where that energy actively manages to manifest itself. It can be an intellectual, emotional, sexual centre or anything else. Of course, each of these centers give their “color” to the energy, but its main quality remains the same. It’s just energy.

And now consider what people usually do with sex, how they humiliate it.

It is known that love does not submit to the will. Love it or not , it does not depend on you. You can just state the fact: “I love” or “I do not love”. You can’t control love. But, on the contrary, you are controlled by it. If you try to love according to your will, nothing good can happen.

What is real sex? It is a manifestation of love. It is love associated with the body. Real sex and real love are ruled by the same laws. With this, love is uncontrollable. What do people usually do with sex? They try to control it. They decide whether to have sex or not, they consider it. And then, they start thinking if everything was “right” during sex.

But if everything is harmonious and natural, the body will respond accordingly, and as a consequence, you will experience real sex. If the situation is far-fetched and artificial, it is impossible to squeeze out any real sex from the body. You can only squeeze out a pimple… sex of this quality is just fake. From such sex there are  only disturbances: «Has anything wrong happened to me?» The sensations are dulled, the body does not respond as it should do, etc.

The body can not be fooled. The body is a part of nature and it lives according to its laws, it is natural. It reacts to what exists. It is as an indicator. For the body, love and sex are inseparable. The body does not distinguish between sex and love. This separation, sex and love, is the result of the analysis, and the analysis deals with the mind, not with the body.

If you urge the body to have sex, when it does not want it, when it is not full of love, the result will be disappointing.

Imagine yourself instead of your body! You are forced to do work that you do not want to do. How should the body respond in this case? Just fool you and imitate the sexual experiences.

In fact, during normal, ordinary or dull sex, the physical body doesn’t have any special energy for sex. If you force the body to have sex when you do not want to, you take a little bit of energy from everywhere, from all the organs and systems. It’s like an unexpected tax. Eventually, fatigue comes with the feeling of emptiness and loss of energy. But real sex can not bring any fatigue!

After all, real sex comes from the overflow of energy. In other words, real sex does not happen when you force your body to have sex, but when you can’t avoid it, when you can’t help having sex.

Diogenes of Sinope, wrote about sex in his letter to Apelido: “I sneeze when my nose gets a speck of dust”. You see, if dust does not get into the nose, it is not necessary to make any effort to an attempt to sneeze.

All of the greatest and the strongest things in this world were created by people who were fully immersed in what they were doing. They were in the state of extreme integrity. This can fully be applied to sex. You merge with the process so strongly that you dissolve totally in it. You stop existing as something separate. You can’t even say that you are having sex because you and sex do not exist as two different things in that moment. There is only a stream of pulsating energy…

The sex center of any human being is a “node” through which absolutely all of life threads go. This is what constitutes life. And if you change something in your sex center, it will affect your whole life. Your emotions change, your relationships with people, your creativity, your perception of the world, your whole life… Of course, sex changes, too.

The sex center is similar to an ear. The surface of an ear has active points which are connected to all the organs of the body. If you prick one point on the ear, your liver function will change, and if you prick another one, your stomach function will respectively change, too. The entire body is projected on the surface of the ear. The same is true of the sexual center. A person’s whole inner world  is connected to it.

The sexual energy of each person is a huge and an enormous force, however, it is usually repressed. It is known that repressed energy is always manifested either in jokes or in bawdry. Research studies done by culture experts show that in all languages humor and swearing are associated with sex.

The sex center is a continuously operating source of a powerful force. However, an ordinary human does not know how to handle that sexual energy. Although, the ability to manage your own sexual energy is a question of inner culture. If a human has hands, but he has not learned how to use them, he can easily gouge out his eye! But the same hands can be Paganini’s hands or Leonardo’s ones… It is better to compare sexual energy with fire. If you ignore it, you’ll either freeze, or it will burn you!

It is known that for most people sex is just a habit. This means that in a given situation, a person acts automatically, as he or she is  accustomed to act. A human becomes a machine that executes a program for the implementation of a sexual act. At first, in order to do this, your ’’inner computer’’ must determine whether the  situation is sexually promising. And if the answer is positive, everything starts to move in well-worn path.

In other words, starting from some moment, you certainly begin to think that the situation leads to sex. When this moment comes, it is already recorded in your “computer”. For example: she (he) has looked into your eyes, or you are alone at night, and she says she is not in a hurry and sits beside you, or you both find yourselves accidentally in the same bed and naked.

If the program starts, a human, as a machine, begins to achieve his goal. Most often, this goal is a sexual act. Your target becomes your partner’s genitals.

If you avoid sex, everything works in the same way except now your goal is the opposite, to avoid the sexual act at all costs! To protect your genitals! This situation is more familiar to women.

Where did this come from? From your inner world. What is the inner world? Where did it come from? It is formed by your upbringing, by the books you read, by the movies you watch, by your parents, by your friends, by your personal fantasies… It is formed by everything  that lives inside you and that makes you act like a puppet.

It turns out that it is not actually you who is having sex, but rather the group formed by your parents, your friends, writers, teachers,   film and theatre directors, by deputy members! You are like a zombies. Those who created your personality and who filled your head with all the stuff, that is called culture, upbringing, decency, and common sense, etc … The same thing happens to your partner. It turns out that neither you nor your partner are having sex, but the two groups of people. And it is lucky if somewhere among these groups you accidentally both manage to run into each other…

You need to get rid of this dictatorship…

Tantric sex is a deep and relaxed meditation. In order to have  meditative sex, there’s a simple fundamental rule: do everything slowly and without any purpose. When that happens, you begin to be “here and now”, i.e. to be completely absorbed by the experience of all that is happening at that very moment…

To be “here and now” means to perceive continuously only what is happening to you at that very moment. You don’t have any thoughts even about the last moment! For this to happen you need to feel every moment again, as if you had just come into the world. Thus, the whole Universe is limited by you and your partner, nothing else  exists now for you. You live only in the present moment. 

Why do you think during sex? Real sex doesn’t occur in the past or in the future (because there are just memories and dreams). Sex exists only in the present, in this very moment. Master said: “This moment is the only reality”. In order to be completely ‘‘in the present’’ a very simple method can be useful: to do everything slower than usual. All of your attention should be directed to what you feel and to what you experience. You need to savor every moment, to be immersed in it.

In order to act to more slowly, you have to let go of any purpose. After all, if there is an unconscious purpose, an unconscious human  tries to reach it as fast as possible. A sexual act should not dominate over you as a prevailing purpose. Genitals should not be the place that overshadow everything.

Furthermore, if there is a subconscious purpose, there is also a subconscious fear that you will not attain it. This can interfere  with being in the present moment.   

All these interferences come from the mind, out of the head. In real sex there is no place for the mind nor for thoughts, but just for feelings. After all, sex is an experience, not a reflection. During sex,  the mind should «die», turn off, the thoughts should go away. But instead the mind just starts to desperately resist such “temporary death.” It controls your behavior and suggests all kinds of thoughts, in order not to focus all your attention on sex and not to allow you to immerse yourself entirely in the moment. Real sex is like a guillotine, it cuts off the head with all its thoughts, fears, conditionings and masks.

Among insects such as mantises, it is common for the female to eat the head of the male immediately at the beginning of a sexual act and to continue to have sex, completely devoid of any thoughts …

Why does this principle “slowly and without any purpose” work so well? To answer this, let us consider three kinds of food; 1) usual food, 2) air and energies, and 3) impressions, the third and most subtle kind of food. Impressions are the food of consciousness. And, sex is a source, including subtle impressions.

Like any food, to assimilate an impression you must “digest” it. Impressions are “digested” by a subtle fire of consciousness which at the same time, extracts energy from them. It feels like inspiration. This energy nourishes consciousness, allowing it to grow. It will take some time to digest it because digestion happens at its own pace.

What happens if you rush into sex? The rate of new impressions exceeds the rate of digestion. In other words, the impressions do not have time to be absorbed, i.e. to be really felt or sensed by you. Being undigested, the impressions are pushed further to the depths of your memory, and, thus, their place will be occupied by the next ones. The undigested impressions manifest themselves in dreams, fantasies and thoughts. They determine your behavior.

If consciousness does not have time to digest impressions, the energy will not be extracted from them. You will experience it as dullness, routine, boredom. You almost don’t have any impressions in this case. And, if there aren’t any experiences of sex, what is it? What do we have? Of course, just sluggish, bland, something ordinary. If you have time to digest the impressions as they arrive, every moment is alive, fresh and new.

That is why it is so important not to rush. By acting slowly, you gain a deep attunement with your partner and you get an inspiring energy, an inspiring force from sex. You have time to absorb all that sexual interaction can give you. You should slowly enjoy every cell of your partner and all of his or her smells. By the way, a healthy and a clean body produces only pleasant, fragrant smells…

It is naive to believe that if you follow the rule, which is called “slow and without any purpose,” you will never reach your partner’s genitals, and as a result, sex will not take place. Only an ordinary theorist with a superficial knowledge and a limited mind can speculate this way.

This rule does not exclude the possibility of spontaneous sex. If there is an instantaneous resonance between you and your partner, the best thing you can do is to surrender completely, to surrender to this impulse. Such spontaneous explosion is impossible to be programmed or predicted, that‘s why it should be appreciated.

Spontaneous sex is like a tsunami. Is it possible to arrange or predict a tsunami? No. Also, a tsunami cannot be slowed down or sped up. What do we have to do? We have to enjoy the tsunami, in  all its phases.

In this state, it doesn’t matter how long your contact lasts, ten minutes or ten hours. The sensation of time only appears, if there is some inertia, but if you are totally spontaneous, there is no inertia. Time disappears. There is inertia of perception only when your mind functions and, as a consequence, you get a sensation of time and of its duration. But if you are spontaneous, it means absence of mind.

To have real sex, you need true love, love at that particular moment. When there is love, there is openness and there is no fear. Your energies will start to attract each other and resonate. It will give you sensations, emotions, and your body will start to play. From all this, real sex blossoms.

If you love someone in “general”, but if at the present moment you do not feel any real love, love as attraction to your lover, sex will be mechanical.

Another important point is that real sex happens if there is only a man and a woman, without their masks or stereotypes.

Only a man and a woman can merge into each other, because their Supreme nature is the same. They are just two halves of the whole. But if two masks, two images try to achieve that, they get some kind of an animal with two heads looking in different directions because sex does not take place between a patriot and a secretary or between a Christian and a basketball player, but between a man and a woman.

Most people constantly fantasize about sex and are eager to have it. However, most people are afraid of real sex. If a human is a potential sexual partner for you, you feel insecure with him. If a human is not a potential sexual partner for you, you feel quite free with him or her. For example, a certain man can easily talk with an old lady or with a little girl. But, standing in front of a woman that he likes, he gets shy. He is afraid of her but at the same time he desires her terribly. He is afraid of her because that woman represents the possibility of sex.

In a potential partner, one is afraid of the possibility of sex! It is as frightening as something huge and unknown, infinite. This fear is completely irrational and unconscious. It is due to the fact that sex has a great mystical power. This strength comes from a depth which is unconscious for the vast majority of people.

The trick is that almost no one is fully aware of the cause and the layer of fear which makes a human get shy in front of a potential sexual partner. Some psychologists even say that this fear is caused by the fact that a potential partner can reject you; “I’m afraid of him or her because he or she may reject me and I will not not be given something that l don’t have.” Well, what can we add to that?!

A sex partner is a window or a door that leads to another dimension. This door opens during orgasm. Orgasm is beyond of sex; orgasm is not sexual. After all, orgasm is nothing but a burst of energy. This explosion takes you away from everyday, accustomed existence. Orgasm is an experience of explosion of pure energy, when nothing else remains. This explosion destroys all of your ego, your whole personality.

We must remember that orgasm is the same kind of event as birth  or death. And we must treat it as such. This means that you either get everything or nothing. You can not only be just half born or half dead. When orgasm begins, it is necessary to experience it until the end, to the very limit, to lose yourself… We can say that orgasm is like a prayer energy. Orgasm is a communion of absolute freedom.

In orgasm you no longer feel yourself a man or a woman. Orgasm allows you to experience yourself as pure energy, as pure consciousness. Through this stream you connect with all the infinite energy of the Universe, and it’s not empty words! In this case,  orgasm is the most spiritual of all experiences available to ordinary people.

When energy is low, orgasm does not rise above physiology. There isn’t enough energy to penetrate the veil of the material world. When there is not enough energy, orgasm turns in a wave of pleasant sensations. This wave is born in the genitals and brings a state of relief and relaxation.

In men, this kind of orgasm is associated with ejaculation and with a loss of energy. As an ordinary orgasm is directed outwards, it’s like a spit of energy in your partner, a quiet whimpering orgasm. But your partner is not able to catch this energy, and it flies off into space. Such orgasm produces an appropriate attitude to sex, to your partner and to the sexual organs.

To avoid this, a man should stop being in a hurry. The rule “slowly and without any purpose” is especially important for men, because rushing into sex is a biological feature of men. As for women, they should stop being shackled. Women should stop being afraid of their sexuality.

Women have much more sexual energy than men. If in ordinary sex a woman reveals all of her sexual energy, a man will feel tired much sooner. Boccaccio wrote about ordinary sex: “One cock can satisfy nine hens, but nine men will never be able to satisfy one woman.” Until a man rises above the level of biology, he will not be able to become a real sex partner for a woman.

By the way, for a man to have orgasm, it is not necessary to have  an ejaculation. Orgasm can be separated from ejaculation. Ejaculation is necessary only for conception. Orgasm only goes together with ejaculation in ordinary, physiological sex. There is nothing wrong with this kind of sex but human is capable of experiencing much more.

There are also exercises to achieve orgasm without ejaculation both in tantra and in taoist yoga. There are exercises for women to stop menstruation. Menstruation is a loss of energy like ejaculation is for men. If you are not going to conceive a child, there is no need for a monthly cycle.

Orgasm becomes an ultimate experience when it is spiritualized. «Spiritualized» means to be connected with the spirit; with your spirit, i.e. with your consciousness. It is necessary to connect  orgasmic energy and consciousness. Usually orgasm originates in the down part of the body, and your consciousness is usually located in the head. There are two ways to connect it and they complement each other very well. The first way is when you raise the orgasmic energy upwards. The second method is when you shift your consciousness down to the sex center.

In the first case, you don’t allow your energy to move downwards, as it usually does. You guide it up to your head. At the same time, you feel the orgasm rising up through your body. When it comes to your head, it gets connected with your consciousness. It is experienced as the explosion we have already talked about above.

To implement this in the initial stages, one usually makes a strong muscular contraction in the crotch area, and , then, “draws” the orgasmic energy upwards. In the future, it is enough to only have the intention for this to happen.

The second method involves shifting consciousness to the sex center. This means an immediate awareness of sexual energy.

It should be noted that sex can turn into a spiritual practice when it becomes conscious. This means that sex becomes meditation.

It is a mistake to think that awareness is a serious analysis of what is happening. If you try to be aware this way, you’ll look like a bad student. Awareness has nothing to do with that.

Awareness means a continuous living presence in the current moment. It is the work of consciousness, but not of the mind. The mind is turned off, and you do not analyze. It is a deep meditation. You are centered, that is you do not lose yourself in what is happening. You are a perceiver. Meditation permeates everything: your body, energy, emotions… You “live”, continually feel everything that is  happening to you in that moment. Your attention should be very relaxed….

Here is an example. Imagine a rose in front of you. In the first case (the work of your mind) you carefully study its petals and its veins. In the second case (awareness) you begin to slowly inhale its fragrance, as if drinking it, tasting it. The fragrance comes into you and becomes part of you. Your eyes become half-closed….

We must remember that true sexual contact is achieved only when you are not completely shy in front of your partner. The indication for you is when you feel as uninhibited in front of your partner, as when you are alone. It is very important.

It is not necessary to continue having sex until your senses are dulled and sex has become lacklustre. As soon as your feelings wane, you should stop. It is very important, because the feeling of dullness can be anchored, if you experience it for a long time. One of the sayings of Shiva “Vijnana Bhairava Tantra” says: “At the start of sexual union keep attentive on the fire in the beginning, and so continuing, avoid the embers in the end.”

Of course, if you feel sex as something sinful, nothing will happen. In this case, any sexual practices are out of the question. There is an apocryphal (secret) gospel, which is called “Mary’s questions”. In it, Jesus tells Mary Magdalene about sexual relations. He tells her:

“… do not sin anymore, thinking that you are a sinner.”

This means that if you perceive sex as something bad, it becomes a source of internal contamination. Nevertheless, you still continue to have sex. If you feel sex as something pure, it becomes a source of purity and an act of purification. Sex itself is neither dirty nor purifying. It is neither a virtue nor a sin. Your attitude to sex makes it dirty or pure.

Sex is surrounded by incredible hypocrisy. For example, in some traditions, children are considered a gift from God. They appear due to sex, but sex is considered a sin! How can it be that a result of a sin is also gift from God?…

That’s why we can say that sex is a ladder between heaven and hell. You can use it to climb up or to go down. You choose the direction of your movement.

The Greek word “Eros” means energy between the human world and the Divine. It is like a channel that connects the human with the Divine. In early esoteric Christianity, the same importance was given to the Holy Spirit. It is said in the Hadith of the Prophet: “Your every sexual act is sacred.” In Tantra, sex is seen as an elevated form of prayer. A sexual partner is perceived as a Divine one.

Tantric sex is a deep and relaxed meditation. Tantric orgasm is a form of Samadhi. This orgasm is sometimes called a “valley orgasm”. But orgasm is not the purpose of sexual union in Tantra.  This is a very important point. Orgasm, in Tantra, is “flowers on the roadside.” Your aim is a journey on the road leading to Infinity, and the flowers on the roadside are just a pleasant fortuitousness.

Here is the practice that can lead you to a “valley orgasm”. While having sex, you and your partner, come close to an orgasm as slowly as possible. For this, to happen, the one who gets excited faster, must slow down and wait for his or her partner. When you’re nowhere near achieving orgasm, you don’t allow to happen it. You start to balance on its edge. You should stay in this state as long as possible.

If you manage to do that, after some time, you might get to the state which is called the “valley orgasm”. In that moment you will feel yourself and your partner as a formless, dense and sweet energy. You will feel that energy dissolve everything but not itself and just   an infinite feeling of bliss will remain, nothing else.

This is nothing more than an orgasm stretched in time. If an orgasm is compared with an explosion, the “valley orgasm” is a slow explosion. It is a considerably slowed down orgasm. It starts gradually and it can last for a very long time.

Here’s another practice. The partners start to have sex and try to enter a state of greatest possible excitement, of a physical one, of an animal one, without any limits. The only thing they must avoid is an ordinary orgasm and ejaculation. All this must be done in order to mobilize more and more sexual energy.

They should remain in this state for approximately 15 minutes, after which the partners should make a complete, momentary stop. It is similar to the technique of “Stop!”, used by the Sufis. It is absolutely necessary at this moment to forget about each other, about sex and  about everything that can excite you. You should lie down, not touch each other and relax, like corpses, no matter what position you are in. All attention must be absorbed only by your own feelings, by what you feel at that very moment in your body. You must be aware of all that.

It is necessary to enjoy all these experiences as a manifestation of the Divine in your body. As a manifestation of the absolute, of radiant purity. Everything you feel, you have to feel in that way. It is necessary to eat all of these sensations by your attention. You need to savor them. In such way energy reaches the depths of your perception. You are totally relaxed and you start to absorb your attention all that you are feeling. Perceiving this way, you transform your sexual energy into a subtle energy of consciousness. From this, your consciousness grows. That is the purpose of this practice.

Such practices also have some healing properties. It is their useful side effect.

In Tantra, there are many ways to do this exercise. You look into each other’s eyes and you start to breathe slowly and deeply. You can hold hands. You need to remain in the most open and relaxed state as you can. It is necessary to imagine that your inhalation and exhalation comes via the perineum, via the genitals. It is necessary to imagine respiration, as something very pure, Divinely pure. Your genitals must be felt like a shining open flower. Breathe for about 15 minutes. Sometimes, in this exercise both partners gradually contract the muscles of the perineum during inhalation.

Although in this exercise you both look into each other eyes,  your  attention is focused in the crotch area. Your attention should be very relaxed, without any tension.

Thus, you achieve a state of a profound harmony with your partner. This practice is usually done before sexual contact. Although it can, by its own means, produce an orgasm.

Here is another practice that can give the highest state. You have sex with your partner and slowly come closer and closer to orgasm. For some time you balance on the edge of orgasm without having one. Then you both sit back to back and lean on each other like on the back of a chair. Your bodies are relaxed, your eyes are closed. After that, exhale gently and hold your breath. Contract the muscles of your perineum, gently pull up and flex your stomach and slightly strain the muscles of your neck, as if you were trying to touch your chest with your chin.

Stay in this position as long as you can. Then, relax all the muscles and inhale. Restore normal breathing by taking a few breaths. Repeat. Each partner must do this at his or her own pace.

The most important thing is that during the pause of your breathing you should imagine that there is an updraft of clear space through your body moving upwards.

You should do this for 5 minutes. It’s nothing else but a variant of the three bandhas used in pranayamas.

And then, without opening your eyes and without changing your position, bring your hands to your chest. Then, slowly start to open your arms and move them apart. Imagine that from the depths of your breast you start to send forward a pure energy of a tender and  unconditional love. With every movement try to do it more subtly and stronger. Do not limit yourself to the level of the achieved state.

You should also do this phase for 5 minutes. Then, you can do the relaxation.

Here is another practice which can lead to a very strong ecstatic state. Do it during or after your sexual contact.

The man must exhale deeply, and the woman must inhale deeply. Then the man + the woman should link their mouths and breathe the same air. The breathing should be deep and smooth, without sudden efforts. Gradually, the breathing will speed up as they will not have enough oxygen. When they can’t breathe any longer this way, they should  unlink their mouths.

Restore normal breathing by taking a few breaths. Repeat.

Do this practice for 5-10 minutes. It is only necessary to ensure that during the joint breathing the air does not come out through the nose.

Here is a very simple exercise which can improve the quality of sexual experiences. It is an exercise for endurance and for strengthening the muscles of the pelvis and of the perineum. For endurance, do 100 to 200 successive contractions of these muscles. This contraction is similar to the interruption of urination. The contraction must be short and not very strong. During the daytime, do 2-3 such series of 100-200 contractions.

The next day, do 2-3 series to develop your strength. In one series, do 10 contractions. Each contraction must be done at maximum intensity and, then, it must be held for 2-3 seconds. Meanwhile, the rest of the body must be relaxed. On the third day, have a rest, and then, repeat the cycle. If you feel that your muscles haven’t recovered, add one day of rest.

You can do also meditation where you contemplate your partner’s   genitals. Genitals are tools that connect a man and a woman. In Tantra, the body is seen as a temple. Genitals are seen as a reservoir of purity and strength. They possess a mystical beauty.

In this meditation, you contemplate the sexual organs, as yantra. Literally, yantra is a “working device”. Yantra is often called a magical diagram that has mystical powers. Yantra can affect the state of consciousness. Yantra is a visual embodiment of energy. So, genitals are yantra. They are the objects of meditation.

Meditation is a state in which consciousness is fully merged with the object of its observation. Of course, the mind is silent, there is no analysis, there is just pure perception….

Sometimes the area in the perineum is called the “gate of life and death.” During the meditation of contemplation you allow yourself to become completely absorbed by this gate.

The genitals are contemplated like a flower….

By the way, flowers, the beauty of which we all admire, are nothing else but the sexual organs of plants.

It turns out that people give each other whole bunches of genitals, and no one is ashamed! If only people had such a pure attitude towards their sexual organs!…

People admire flowers, but they are ashamed of their genitals. Isn’t that right?

The reason for all that is that from early childhood, many parents have tell their kids: “don’t touch, don’t look”! Genitals are ignored, and so a negative attitude forms. Children’s dolls don’t have sexual organs! Where are they?…

There is a law of conservation of genitals. There is a law of conservation of energy and also genitals. All those genitals that were taken away from dolls, didn’t disappear. They can all be found in sex shops. Huge vibrators and rubber vaginas in sex shops… All those genitals which dolls do not have !

Tantra teaches you to be real and natural. It teaches you to be relaxed. Tantra teaches you not to fight with sex, but to use it. Tantra makes you turn from simple lovers into spiritually close people.

There is a very large number of various sexual techniques. But we must remember that Tantra is not a technique, it is a special meditative state. A state of infinite inner beauty and purity….

All practices are only needed in order to attain this state. All practices are only the instruments through which our consciousness is released from all that makes it limited and not free.

If an ignorant human hears about all these sexual exercises, he may be confused. Why? People tend to interpret everything. If one learns a small part of something, one starts to complete the whole picture based upon one’s own views. Also, his views may not be very pure …

This is one of the reasons why tantra has always been kept a secret. In Tantra, sex is seen as a Divine gift. Such an understanding of sex is inherent to very few people; thats why  there was a system of initiations which protected knowledge from any ignorant interpretation.

In this respect, it is very interesting to see a symbolic meaning of some ancient temples of India. For example, the famous temple complex in Khajuraho. The facades of the temples there are decorated with hundreds of erotic figures in the most unimaginable poses. If you remain outside the temple, you will only see these countless copulating figures. But if you go inside you will find the unique symbol of the Divine Consciousness and its creative Energy. On the other side of sex there is only the Divine. All the rest remains on this side.

Brodsky begins his “Letters to the Roman friend” with the following words:

In this windy day the combs of waves rise steeply.

Everything’s to change as autumn adds same hue.

Color shift moves you, dear Postum, much more deeply

then your girlfriend does whenever dressed anew.

You take joy in her to some extent precisely –

nothing goes so far as is her wrist or ankle.

How much fun enfolds the bodiless clad nicely:

Being neither hugged nor cheated nor entangled.

“Fun enfolds the bodiless clad” means that you love from your depth the depth of the partner. There’s nothing to seize, and there is nothing what you could seize with. We must not be afraid of this depth. You should give yourself up to its attraction. It is like an orgasm.