Integrate through Tantra

Dear sweet one, shall we explore together the sublime art of Tantra? What can be said on this? Tantra is the art of life itself. It is the way of total integration. Nothing shall be left behind, unabsorbed, unchallenged, unexperienced, unrealized, unknown, unfulfilled. Tantra is the path of completion. Without it, your efforts to become integrated will only be halfway attempts. Your struggle to integrate yourself in opposition to life is like trying to build a castle on top of clouds. It may seem like a nice idea, “look here, this perfect castle in the sky, how nice and high up it is!”, but the moment you go to live in it, you but fall to the ground. This is where Tantra starts, in the ground of things.

The ground is the source of all richness. A tree may yield thousands of fruits, a flower may please dozens of eyes, a field may harvest food for an entire city, yet the ground is the true source of abundance for all nature. It is quite well and good for the preachers of tradition to ignore this ground, to cover up the mud of existence with seeded grass, to draw your attention to the colorful plant life, to show you the heights of the trees, yet, it is no coincidence that it is the feet that touch this foundation of life that are the most respected features of Great Beings. Buddhas are born from deep within the earth, dear one, not from the tops of trees.

It is the amount of fertile richness in the soil of your being that determines the growth of consciousness when the seed of Enlightenment is planted. Look here at all this sacred imagery, how many gods do you see sitting on lotuses? You may like to think they are just floating on the surface, but if you look within you can see the root of the lotus going deep into the water and spreading out into thousands of fibers weaving their way through the decomposed mud of the Earth. If you should go and cut this root, the lotus shall wither away and the gods shall drown in murky waters.

It is very comfortable for you to say “see here, I am fighting gravity, I am climbing high up into this tree!” It gives you satisfaction, a sense of accomplishment to fight with nature. All the word obsessed ones have made you afraid of the earth, disconnected from the Mother of all things. The very energies that gave life to you have been made into your enemy. Look at this so-called modern schizophrenic society which is the result of such thinking. On the one hand are the grossly indulgent ones saturating the minds of millions with vain pleasure seeking, and on the other hand are the religious puritans denying the very life sustaining energies of the body, and caught in the middle is a mad mass of humanity not knowing where to turn one moment to the next.

Tantra is the way of the future. It is the most reasonable and effective method of healing the consciousness of the planet. It is the necessary catalyst to spark the evolution of fully integrated human beings who can both serve the highest aspirations of the cosmos while being sustained and nourished by the creative energies of the Earth. Simple yoga and meditation will not do. These have become just one more technique, one more egotistical challenge that leads either to a more concrete ego, an upgraded self that can but consume more and more, or to a false ego, a fantasy of self that chooses to escape from life rather then boldly face the challenges that threaten humanities existence.

Tantra is the harmonizing middle way of balanced fusion, but it must be properly understood and embodied. The repressed western culture has made Tantra into an obsession with extraordinary sex. Tantra is not something to add to an activity like “Tantric sex”, “Tantric breathing”, “Tantric golf”. Tantra is nothing if it is not total. Tantra comes before all activity and is realized within all activity and is completed beyond all activity. Most are afraid of this, since they are conditioned into halfway efforts, momentary distractions and weekend retreats. Only if you are integrated will Tantra have its full effect in you, yet at the same time Tantra is the very process of integrating yourself deeper and deeper into all the layers of existence. This is why trying to understand Tantra can only go so far, it must be lived. Understanding Tantra is understanding that it is beyond your understanding, that everything you hold to be known is up for challenge, that everything you shun from your experience is to be acknowledged, that everything which appears to be conflicting and set apart is to be made whole in your very being.

So moving from the ground of things, Tantra takes up the initial separation, the split of self and other, of body and cosmos and says, “Dear friend, the Cosmos is your very body, your body is the very Cosmos! Experience this now and all delusion is wiped away!” Yet, who can accept this fully? Such truth goes against every understanding that has been put into you. Therefore, tremendous inner energy is needed to blast through all your doubts, your partial remembrances, your faded dreams. Tantra proves this truth not in theory, but in practice, and beyond practice into pure substantial fact, so that the very energy and vibration of the whole cosmic system is awakened and enjoyed through your flesh, bones, cells and being. This seeming impossibility is the essence of all Tantra, it is the very medium through which life itself is made into Enlightenment, Samsara into Nirvana, duality into oneness, confusion into clarity, suffering and limitation into supreme bliss and awakening.

Tantra is for those who are courageous enough to be swallowed up by paradox, drop the chattering mind, and then work on their being itself to transcend the source of all paradox. There is no conclusion to Tantra separate from what happens in your being, your felt experience, the network of nerves and energies that swirl throughout your body and universe.

The limited view of mind is the primary barrier. This is where Tantra comes and says “Dear friend, there is no such thing as good or evil, high or low, this or that, for every single particle of life is a shimmering reflection of the divine!” Integration comes through totality, there is no other way. If but a single imaginary dust form of the world should be determined as unworthy, then all shall be lost. When you integrate yourself totally through Tantra, so that even the darkest and most despised parts of yourself are made into allies fueling the fire of illumination, then you work as a cosmic force breathing divine life into all things. When you hide from your responsibility to integrate yourself, you make more solid the duality of existence, “See I am good, they are bad. This is right and that is wrong. Do this, don't do that.”

There are many techniques to break the barriers of the mind. But such things require intimate connection and complete trust between a Master and disciple. They are to be found in life itself, not in a cave or some hideaway. This is why Tantra is often considered as an esoteric or secret practice. It is simply due to a lack of maturity in humanity. When the humanity evolves such understandings and techniques will be widely accepted and practiced.

The Tantric connection between Master and disciple is one of union, of wholeness merging into wholeness. There are no set guidelines, no restrictions of time or space, it is more like a love affair then anything else. Trusting in the auspicious nature of existence is all that is required to maintain it. Lucky for you, the Divine comes down into human form to share the bliss of Tantra with the world.

Lord Shiva is the most excellent embodiment of Tantra. He is both the austere ascetic and the ecstatic enjoyer. He goes to both extremes, sometimes at the same time. His ways are beyond all knowing. He is at once the highest embodiment of pure consciousness and the ruler of darkness, the keeper of death, the god of intoxicants, the supplier of every imaginable pleasure, the careless cremation ground wanderer who crushes the whole of existence for but a single moment of rapturous delight. He expresses the amoral truth of existence, that our human modes, morals and standards of being and understanding are mere partial fabrications, no matter how high we may raise them, they are still only the haphazard blinking of fireflies twinkling in the endless field of infinite existence.

Shiva comes down in human form and laughs at all the pretentious spiritual conformity of the world. He smiles with amusement at those who would make some spiritual fantasy out of life that goes against the innate capacities of the body. He shows you that your very body is capable of experiencing the Ultimate now as it is, that it is simply a matter of aligning your energies with the cosmic shaft of light that is perfectly reflected through your nervous system. He winks at the play of Maya which makes countless beings miss the very sweetness of existence, the purity of Self, the immeasurable bliss that surges uncontrollably through all things. He wonders mindlessly at how His ecstatic play could be made into such a serious affair. He goes on radiating tremendous waves of bliss even amongst the most dreadful of conditions.

Dear one, listen carefully to the secret of Tantra, it is through total disintegration by which total integration is to be realized and embodied. Everything is to be melted down to its essence by the bliss of samadhi. Only when all has been dissolved, when you become one with the ground of existence, shall the golden seed of the Master sprout a tree of Enlightenment within you that reaches above the atmosphere of mental fluctuations and penetrates into the vast cosmos of eternal bliss. Shiva is ever present, ever available to you. For the brave, seek to become Him. For the devoted, love Him totally and His bliss will become yours. OM