Maithuna: "Sacred Sex"

According to tantra, sexual life has a threefold purpose. Some practice it for procreation, others for pleasure, but the tantric yogi practices it for samadhi. He does not hold any negative views about it. He does it as a part of his sadhana. But, at the same time, he realizes that for spiritual purposes, the experience must be maintained. Ordinarily this experience is lost before one is able to deepen it. By mastering certain techniques, however, this experience can become continuous even in daily life. Then the silent centres of the brain are awakened and start to function all the time.  – Swami Satyananda Saraswati 

 

Maithuna is a tantric term for a particular spiritual practice or sadhana which involves the union of masculine and feminine principles.  The masculine principle is consciousness and the feminine is creative energy.  The universe of our experience is created through the interplay of these two.  Neither can exist without the other.  If we consider our experience we find that we are always enjoying the alternations of pairs of opposites: day and night, hot and cold, male and female, happiness and sorrow, pain and pleasure, birth and death.  Our home is unaltered peace and joy but we entered this world of experience for other reasons.

When the two poles of consciousness (Shiva) and energy (Shakti) are in balance we experience absolute bliss, love and deep peace.  This state is referred to as samadhi in yoga.  It is the state of spiritual union beyond ego.  Amazingly enough Tantra says we can enter this state through one of our favorite activities: sex.  As the Vigyana Bhairava Tantra tells us, “When you practice a sex ritual, let thought reside in the quivering of your senses like wind in the leaves, and reach the celestial bliss of ecstatic love.” 

Ordinarily sex is problematic for us.  As ego-beings we feel ourselves driven by our libidos.  Religion has conditioned us to feel that sexual pleasure is wrong and sinful.  Tantra is a spiritual philosophy and methodology which is beyond religion.  Tantra does not believe in judgment, sin in the ordinary sense, or some antagonistic relationship between spirit and nature.  Every aspect of experience is sacred.  Everything and everyone is an expression of divine consciousness.  It is our job to realize this within and through every experience of our lives.  The violence, violation and pain inflicted within our world is a reflection of ignorance.  Fear, guilt, jealousy and resentment are reflections of ignorance. 

Most of us have been lead to believe that love is some mixture of sexual desire and emotional attachment.  Tantra says that we can rise above these through the power of awareness, of nonattachment.  Nonattachment means that we can observe our physical, emotional and mental states without judgment or identification.  Whatever we experience on these levels is temporary.  Our essential Self is the ever-present observer.  However this inner divine presence observes with unconditional love and compassion.  We enter this world of form through the act of procreation.  Tantra says we can liberate ourselves through the same act.  “We rise by that by which we fall.”

Maithuna is the name of a specific Tantic ritual which includes sexual intercourse on either a literal or virtual level.  It is a ritual of offering and surrender which includes offering the five elements of our existence to the Divine within.  The five elements (tattwas) are earth (pritvi), water (apas), fire (agni), air (vayu), and ether (akasha).  Earth is the solid aspect of material experience, water the liquid, fire the thermal, air the gaseous, and ether is the zero-point field.  So symbolically the ritual involves sacrificing every material aspect of our beings, from gross to subtle, to the formless absolute within. 

In the ritual these elements are represented by various aspects of the performance.  As Swami Satyananda says, “The five tattwas, or elements, of tantra are madya (wine), mansa (flesh), maithuna (sexual union), mantra (the chanting of stanzas, scriptures, or psychic sounds) and mudra (practices like shambhavi mudra, yogamudra, etc.). If you have been to church during the communion, you will have seen the flesh, the wine and the chanting of scriptures. It is a tantric practice.”  (Very few Catholics realize the true origins of the Mass.)

Celibate yogis are said to internalize this whole process (and we are not talking about masturbation.)  It is a union of the feminine and masculine energies within out body-minds.  However many of us feel the need to connect with another on a physical, emotional, mental and spiritual level.  However this takes discipline, patience and karmic fortune.  The first thing is to find a suitable partner.  The next is to be involved in a mutual practice of yogic discipline.  You cannot practice Tantra without yogic training.  Otherwise everyone who got drunk, ate meat and had sex would be enlightened.  Somehow this doesn’t seem to be the case.

 

     According to the tradition people have sex for three different reasons based on their level of consciousness.  The most basic level is unconscious instinct for procreation.  This is considered the animal level.  The next level is pleasure and this is the ordinary human level (on which we get trapped.) The third level is when we use sex as a means of transcendence.  It is a matter of intention, focus and desire.  Maithuna requires a postponement of orgasm.  It requires that we enter fully into the moment of pleasure before release and maintain it for as long as possible. 

     "Maintain the fire and avoid the ashes."

Form and Emptiness

They call Him Emptiness who is the Truth of

Truths, in Whom all truths are stored!

There within Him creation goes forward, which is

Beyond all philosophy; for philosophy cannot attain to Him:

There is an endless world, O my Brother!  And

There is a Nameless Being, of which naught can be said.

-          Kabir

 

 

Form is known to us through the mind and senses.  We live in the world of forms and become attached to them.  However we forget that all forms exist with the space of emptiness.  Form is the surface level of existence.  For example, you find yourself attracted to a person who is physically beautiful but once you get to know him or her you are repulsed.  Form is the package, presentation and veil which appears to hide a deeper truth. 

Does this mean that form is bad?  Of course not, we might be attracted to someone’s beauty and come to know how wonderful they are as a person.  Form is simply superficial and if we get stuck on this level we might be in for trouble.  We might actually feel we are bitten by the rope we mistake for a snake!  When we become attached to form we suffer because all forms are transitory.  As the philosopher Heraclitus put it, “Change is the only thing that is permanent.”  Try as we might we can’t cling to anything in this phenomenal world.  If we are deeply attached this thought in itself might cause us anxiety or despair.  As Ram Das says in Be Love Now:

When we realize how finite are the limits of gratification or possible fulfillment within the play of forms, then despair arises.  That despair is born of the world-weary understanding that nothing in form can provide ultimate meaning.  It also forces and demands awakening and seeks transcendence of suffering.

Transcendence comes from both accepting impermanence in terms of form and realizing the changeless essence of things.  This changeless essence is also the essence of who we are.  It is our own essential nature, svarupa, the formless-form of our inner being.  It is consciousness itself apart from its content.  Of course we never actually experience consciousness without some content although we come close in deep sleep. 

In terms of Yoga there are three major states of consciousness: waking, dreaming and dreamless sleep.  There is also a fourth state which is present in all three.  It is referred to as turiya, the fourth, which is awareness of awareness itself.  It is a transcendent state of consciousness revealed through contemplative practice.  This “transcendent” center of awareness is also completely familiar to us.  It is the ground of our experience, the underlying presence that has always been and will always be here.

“Emptiness” sounds dismal to some.  We might imagine it as a state of nothingness, of emotional void.  This is not the spiritual meaning of emptiness or shunyata.  Instead it is the open presence which gives birth to and embraces everything.  It is the mirror in which the universe appears, the pond which reflects the moon.  Form arises spontaneously within emptiness as an expression of love and joy.  As William Blake wrote, “Eternity is in love with the productions of time.”  We are temporarily housed in the productions of time but our true home is in eternity. 

When we enter into a profound state of meditation we rest in the embrace of eternity, of emptiness.  At the same time we are not rejecting the world of appearances.  We are not seeking to escape but to gain perspective.  We can neither cling to form nor emptiness, but we can seek to harmonize both.  When we are under the sway of a powerful emotion such as jealousy or anger we can use emptiness to create space around it.  When we experience positive states such as joy or love we allow them to expand into the infinite space of being.

In Buddhist terms emptiness also means that nothing exists in and of itself.  All form, perception and mental states are mutually interdependent.  Take away one aspect and it all comes down like a house of cards.  Within emptiness there is complete freedom and it is a creative freedom.  From within emptiness a fresh view arises and with it a new world.