The tantric tradition exemplifies the understanding that an infinite, living substance is the essence of all that exists. It is the substance of our self, and of the mind, body and cosmos that appear to us. Therefore, this substance is being experienced right now, as the substance of these very words, and of the one who is aware of the words. It is not far away, in fact, it is no distance at all from our self. In this regard, tantra expounds a direct path to this present experience - a pathless path - which not only reveals with absolute clarity the reality of this unitary substance, but also goes further to awaken a feeling of this substance manifesting as our body, all bodies and the cosmos at large.
Through its various practices, tantra emphasises the power of embracing the total panorama of life in our meditation. It is not - as some may think - a method solely circumscribed to the utilisation of sexual energy to excite refined states of consciousness. Indeed, there are many fun exercises to play with which transmute sexual energy into a whole host of beautiful states, which merge our feeling of self with the feeling of our lover and the cosmos around us. But sexual energy is not the only channel through which that merging can be realised. Our body-mind-system is a plenum of living energy. As such, we can use this energy - that of sensations and imaginations - for shifting our sense of separation into an experience of all-pervasive union.
If we look at the broad message and essence of the massage that tantra gives to us, in its expression as contemplative explorations or 'tricks', we discover a way of enlivening the primal feeling of unity between the interior experience of the body-mind and the apparently exterior experience of the foliage, animals, people, planet, and the whole thing going on here. So, a hallmark of tantra is that we're invited not to merely recede into the caves of a one-pointed-attention practice, into the landscape of our closed eyes, maintaining a perfectly still posture of solitude, but instead we are invited into the vibrancy and earthy texture of daily living, through all its rugged trails and trials, with eyes and attention fully open, embracing our humanity.
Tantra has been designated as 'the householder path' because it can be walked efficaciously by anyone with a job, an intimate lover, active social engagements, a large family, without having to veer away from any of these interests. We can live in a tantric way whilst typing at our laptop, kissing our lover, eating in a restaurant, lifting weights in the gym, conversing with friends, whatever! All that is necessary is the enthusiasm to apply the understanding of our oneness with everything to the feeling and perception we have of everything.
How does this look practically? We start by noticing the fact that there is only one reality of existence, or at least, we start by opening our mind to the possibility of such a oneness, and from that noticing or opening we play with the content of experience, to bring about a shift in the way we feel our self and the totality. And this noticing or opening can be as swift and undramatic as, "ah-ha, yes oneness is the true nature of reality", or "yes, I'm open to that." So, then, just for fun, we pick up a toy in our play-box, that is, we pick up any of the tantric tricks.
For example, we're walking along a path in the forest, and we ask our self; is there more than one experience present now? And then we proceed to tune-in to awareness, the mind, the body and the landscape simultaneously, feeling them all together as one experience. This 'tuning-in' is invoked simply by inviting attention to defocus and expand into the totality, feeling our attention like a fluid mixing with the fluid of the mind, body and cosmos, until we have the sense of one smoothie of experience. And from here we taste the flavour of this smoothie. Delicious!
If we somehow feel a separation between some of these fluids, say between the sensation of the body and the perception of the landscape, we can play with that wobbly, fluid boundary, by intentionally feeling the sensation of the body merging with the perception of the landscape. We imagine that merging and then potentiate a feeling of that merging. A way to do this is to feel the sensation filled to the brim with awareness, made of fluid awareness, and allow that fluid fullness to pour over the brim into the surrounding space, blending sensations with the textures of sights, sounds and whatever our attention can caress with its sensitivity. This exercise, as simple as it may seem, gradually stabilises a feeling of being everywhere in the space concomitantly. It restores the sacred unity of the cosmos as our true body.
Amazingly, we all enact this expansion into the space of the landscape regularly, in most cases without recognising it. When we enter a room or view a vista for the first time, our body of sensations expands to feel into the space, to assess its size, the comfort of the atmosphere, the aesthetic quality of the topography, whether the Feng-Shui is right for our sensibilities, etc. This is why we feel a natural love for wide open spaces, like the panorama of the sky or the sea touching the horizon, and this is why, most of us, feel an aversion for narrow, messy, dirty, cluttered spaces. We actually feel our self, to a greater or lesser extent, filling the space, and becoming the space. This feeling is, in fact, not a special state that requires effort to maintain. It is, rather, the natural state of our body. Openness to and relaxation into the earth and ecosystem is our default condition. That's how we experienced our body as infants, one with the earth, one body of earth.
Through socialisation and psychosomatic programming, we learned to feel our body as if separate from the planet and the cosmos. This feeling is not natural or essential to us. We acquired it, just as we acquired the inclination to prefer playing rugby, watching sci-fi movies or listening to classical music. Such inclinations for feeling are not intrinsic to us. They arise as a precursive impulse at a specific time in our early development, and are cultivated through repetitive reinforcement. We were not born a fan of rugby, (even though our parents may be convinced we were). Nor were we born feeling separate from the totality. In our original condition, we felt our self as the totality of what is. That feeling can be uncovered, revealed and laid bare, like our naked bodies stripped of all their clothing.
The value in understanding this separative feeling as an addition, like a shirt or skirt we wear from time to time, is that we understand it can be removed from us, just as every thought and feeling is removed from us at the moment of its disappearance. And the beauty is that it can be removed just as easily as we acquired it. In fact, releasing it is much easier, for in the release we simply relax into the effortlessness that resides underneath it, the effortlessness of feeling unity, our natural state, much like we would relax into the underlying rest of Asamprajnata Samadhi. However, instead of dropping into a state that is devoid of thought or cognitive processes, a state of deep absorption in pure awareness where thought, sensation and perception cease to appear, we experience the whole gamut of cognitive and sensory phenomena, yet remain feeling the essential unity of all that is. We simply cease overlooking that unity, and rest into Sahaja Samadhi.
Fortunately for us, an effort is required to maintain a feeling of separation. Cease the effort and the feeling wholly vanishes. And it is easy to let go of the effort the moment we recognise it to be superfluous and unnecessary. We don't need to make the effort to feel separate. It is only one option available to us, and we can choose a different option, that is, we can reeeeellaaaaaaxxx. We can function perfectly well without such a feeling. Indeed, we function with a greater degree of grace and ease than before, for now our energy can settle and relax into a concordant flow with the totality, rather than erecting and maintaining illusory boundaries and resistances.
Those boundaries and resistances arise because the mind fabricates an image of a separation and boundary around our body, an image that requires effort to keep in place. The mind then repeatedly superimposes that image onto our sensations, bolstering the effort, and consequently conditioning the tissue of the body through the nervous system to contract, giving the impression of a thick wall between it and the 'outside world.' We feel these tensions vibrate across the skin, around the outer surface of the body, resisting the supposedly 'outside world.'
The potency and gentleness of the tantric approach is in the understanding that when these tensions and imaginations are recognised to be incapable of truly separating the body from the totality, that their role is verily useless, the inherent intelligence of the body automatically flushes them out, just as we would naturally relax our shoulders upon noticing an unnecessary tightness there. We don't need to actuate any special, forceful purging process. The body knows what to do all by itself. Once it is clear that no separation is really being experienced, and that the effort and tension of the illusion of separation is felt to be unnecessary, we leave the body alone, letting it revert back to its natural state, all of its own accord.
So these tantric ticks are a way of knowingly employing a similar process of conditioning we received in our upbringing, that of cultivating psychosomatic tendencies, but here, instead of learning, we precipitate an unlearning of the tendencies we have already acquired. We no longer rehearse the old ways of feeling, rather we explore true ways of feeling - ways of feeling that reflect the reality of experience - and in that exploration an automatic letting go happens, whereby the superfluous layers fade out, and our body awakens its instinctive cellular memory, that of a seamless intimacy with the totality. We have not lost our innate cellular memory of oneness. It is still there, and arises quite spontaneously, as we reflexively, and often unknowingly, allow our sensations to expand into the space of a room or vista, and as we feel a love flow connecting our self with people and animals we meet.
A feeling of love or beauty - between our self, people, animals, landscapes, any form of life - is a glowing symptom of experiencing this unity. We know our exploration of tantra is serving us well when we are feeling love for and seeing beauty in everyone and everything. Love and beauty are, in truth, the experience of feeling our self and the apparent 'other' as one indivisible, infinite being. So if we are feeling love and seeing beauty, that is perfect, there is nothing more to do. We enjoy life for the sake of it.
Just as the Buddha described his teaching as a 'vehicle' or 'conveyance' that can be left aside once you have arrived at your destination, the tricks of tantra are another such vehicle that can be left aside once we feel clearly the absence of distance between our self and the totality. In that absence of distance, love, beauty and unity are experienced as our reality. However, if it seems in the moment that we are not feeling a oneness of reality, we can hop in the vehicle again and enjoy one of the many playful trips of tantra. The love, beauty and oneness are available to our feeling always. They are only a short trip away, no distance from our self.
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