Yoga, Tantra-Yoga

The Diwali lights are still on the houses amongst the rice paddy fields even though the festival is over and winter is coming to South India with a bit of a chill in the morning air and daytime temperatures only like a good English summer!

            I have just finished two weeks of tantra-yoga at an ashram ( www.shrikali.org ) run by a tantra-yoga practitioner. This is rare as in India tantra is associated with black magic and bad deeds so most tantriks are very well hidden.  He is a Kaula and Trika practitioner; profound tantric systems with Trika better known as Kashmir Shavism.  For beginners like me, the first few weeks are nearly all yoga with a few talks on tantra, yoga, Ayurveda  and mantra and one puja. I have done about five hours a day of yoga asanas and some pranayamas (breathing exercises).

So what makes this tantra-yoga different to the yoga found in most gyms, village halls and adult education centres up and down the country? Recent scholarship shows that all  yoga comes from tantra and there are pictures several hundred years old of tantriks doing asanas and sun salutations. The yoga we have today in the West; often called Modern Postural Yoga and systems like hot yoga, power yoga, Ashtanga, Iyengar, Bikram Yoga are recent inventions and locate it as part of the health and fitness industry designed to improve us. The Indians who came to the West; like Swami Vivekananda at the end of the nineteenth century wanted to impress the West with their worthiness and downplayed their tantric roots (he was initiated by Ramakrishna a tantric Kali practitioner). They were keen to present yoga as self-improvement for the body. As a narcissistic society we are very keen on this. But tantra says that at the deepest level you are perfect as you are and striving to improve focuses us on an ideal and a future not on being here radically accepting as we are.

            Yoga videos usually show beautiful young bodies in designer yoga clothes against a backdrop of an exotic beach. Yoga leaflets often show bodies knotted up like pretzels into improbable postures. Perhaps with enough effort we can be like them. I imagine that there are yoga studios like dance studios with mirrors around the walls so we can check how we look and if our asana looks right as the teacher or the video shows it should be done.

          

             As many yoga teachers know, asanas are only a small part of yoga and Patajali’s yoga sutras contain almost nothing on postures. It simple states that the purpose of asanas is to prepare the body (asana means “seat”) for meditation. The first yoga book with pictures and lists of asanas was published in 1938 and yoga in the West really took off with Jane Fonda in the 70’s.

            The problem is that everything in the modern world is externally-focussed and we are also fragmented so that we try and fix the different parts of us so that at least we will look OK.  The tantra-yoga approach is to see yoga asanas as meditations for and through the body. They are not to stretch or tone muscles or ligaments but to open the meridians and nadis of the body. They are best done in a state of meditation; very relaxed, eyes closed and returning frequently to the basic posture which is Shavasana or the corpse pose where deep relaxation can occur. You are encouraged to find your bliss in each asana and to love yourself deeply in the practice. There is no right way to do the asana and your body will gradually adjust to your best version of it. You are encouraged not to compete, even with yourself. The focus as in any meditation, is internal not external. As nadis and meridians are opened deep relaxation is cultured along with a steady flow of energy. It is this energised and relaxed meditative state which is the basic state for the practice of tantra

An Auction of Bribes

The general election is nearly upon us and like all elections for a generation now it has felt like an auction of bribes to vote for the party which promises you the most money or services rather than a discussion over values or principles. It makes it all rather depressing. There are now voters in their 30’s who will have no lived experience of a time when political debate involved values; there was even one word. The “s” word; socialism that was all about values and principles. Unfortunately Mrs Thatcher and the rise of New Labour did away with that and we all fell in to implicit belief that there was an abstraction called “the economy” which had to be strong and experts knew how it worked and if the economy was strong that would be good for all of us. This is the “trickle down” theory that if the rich get even richer then it will benefit us all. It is of course nonsense and long discredited by reality; which is simply that the wider the gap between rich and poor the more violent society becomes. If any candidates' communication contains numbers; its not really about politics but about economic management.

Growing this fantasy called the economy is also based on the mad idea that the planet is infinite and that everything can grow forever. The economy is a fantasy in the terms it is talked about and we are asked to make sacrifices for it (just like in another era ordinary people were asked to make sacrifices for “the Fatherland”). If I exchange some vegetables I have grown with you in return for some childcare then the economy is no better off. But if I sell you the vegetables and then pay you for childcare that has grown the economy and we are all very pleased. It is an abstraction. You have never seen the economy but you are asked to make a sacrifice for it or wait for it to grow. In reality this abstraction is so complex that no-one understands it or really controls it and those that come closest, use their partial knowledge to make money. Complexity itself is anti-democratic. How can people really understand what caused the banking crisis or what a hedge fund does or what money really is? The banking crisis and scandals like Enron show that well-paid educated people in suits can behave with greed and stupidity.

Another crazy idea is that creating jobs is good. The Nazis created jobs by putting out contracts to build gas chambers. It is what activities people are doing that create real fulfilment and value, that matter in making society flourish.  Gross National Product needs to be replaced by gross national fulfilment and gross national happiness. Connected with this fantasy of the economy is the strange idea that trade is good. If you have to bring something from a long way away then it means that you are not able to make or grow it  yourself locally. It also means that fuel has to be burnt to transport it with consequences for ecological well-being. Increasing the skills and resources and diversity of each local community is the foundation for a sane society.

The election as an auction of bribes has gone on now for thirty years but more recently we have had politics as a sort of talent show so with TV debates there comes the question of who won. This is a very odd notion as we do not have a presidential system. In Britain we vote in a Parliament and then the majority party will form a government and appoint a prime minister. It is, in my opinion very dangerous if the best politician is to be the best looking or most skilled at making a cutting retort in a TV debate or has learnt best from their media advisers and spin doctors.

The most important thing in my view is to have people making decisions who are supporting the whole society to evolve towards a higher level of consciousness in Ken Wilber’s model. This can never be done by appealing to greed through bribes but by discussion on values and encouraging global thinking and feeling and a longer timescale; like the next hundred years at least. From this perspective there is one overriding issue; climate change caused by consumerism, rapid industrialisation and population pressures. If there are future generations then they will be astonished at how little this is mentioned in this election. The rich are not particularly bothered by rising sea levels; it gives them more space to sail their yachts. It is the poor who are drowned and this is already happening in places like Bangladesh. In terms of economic management; all borrowing is theft from future generations and we have been stealing from our children and grandchildren for a long time now. Government borrowing is now £60,000 for each family in Britain.  

In terms of an issue. It is morally indefensible to exterminate millions of people at the press of a button so there can never be any use for Trident or any other nuclear weapons. The whole of the military needs to be recreated as a disaster relief and peacekeeping service. Britain needs to become more de-centralised rather than power all going to Westminster. We need to protect and cherish childhood as a time of creativity for fragile and impressionable beings. So school should not start till 7 at the earliest and then be based on supporting creativity and the valuing of each child; not on tests and league tables. Manual work needs to be encouraged rather than trying to get children to universities and then society having no plumbers or carpenters. Real apprenticeships should be encouraged to support the transition to the world of work and adulthood.   

Anyway; I am not standing for election and in reality whichever candidate gets elected they will feel relatively powerless in the "boys boarding school" atmosphere of the Palace of Westminster. The world is largely run by an implicit collusion of transnational corporations, shadowy security and financial agencies and powerful groups of the rich. We still have to do what we can.

Do vote; as cynicism creates more feelings of powerlessness.

Tonight is Maha Shivaratri

     Maha Shivaratri, the spiritual night of Lord Shiva, is considered to be the most sacred night of the year. There is fasting during the day and the puja goes on all night with mantras to Shiva whilst anointing the shivalingam with water, milk, honey, and flowers.

     It happens the night before the new moon and is a chance to honour Shiva and the masculine principle of consciousness and awareness. For everything is consciousness and it is on this foundation principle that the world is danced into being through the awesome creative power of Shakti.  

     There has probably never been a time in history when the principle of the Divine Masculine needs to be honoured and affirmed as it does now, for it is precisely the qualities of the Divine Masculine that can create the space and the safety for good mothers and mothering to happen. Far too often, in many cultures across the world women are trying to hold both poles of masculine and feminine at the same time and be mother and father to their own inner child and to their "outer children". Men are physically absent for many reasons or emotionally absent from their own lack of connection to the Divine Masculine and their historic lack of good enough mothering and fathering. They then end up as wounded, disconnected and dangerous; perpetual teenagers fuelling the cycles violence that are destroying the Earth. Celebrate the masculine as the force of awareness, consciousness, presence and the Truth of who we really are. 

Workshops, Life and Therapy

I don’t know how I can put it more simply than I have before;  but I will write it again; "Workshops are not life" and "Spiritual practice is not therapy"!

           I have come across more people for whom going to a workshop is a refuge from the real problems and challenges of ordinary life. They can function well in the refined, structured and boundaried space of a workshop with the controlled intimacy of exercises but faced with ordinary real life with its fluidity, chaos and need for choices and practical action they simply collapse into regression or depression.

            

           Spiritual and esoteric practices can of course help the spiritual development of the practitioner; but as Ken Wilber has shown with his map of lines of development; there is virtually no linkage between spiritual development and; emotional, moral, intellectual, aesthetic, somatic or any other sort of development. In particular, spiritual practice doesn't help produce a solid sense of self for dealing with the world. This comes from a good enough early childhood and then from living life - and if that isn't working, then from therapy. Therapy isn't best done in workshops with dramatic and intense experiences. It comes best from the experience of a steady therapeutic relationship where past traumas can be gradually cleared and with good enough holding, empathy and mirroring; to develop an ego strong enough to deal with the challenges of life without dissociating, disintegrating or regressing. So often, as with catharsis; we mistake relief for real healing. Ironically, many esoteric practices actually encourage the letting go of the ego and connection with everyday life. Again we are back to Ken Wilber’s map of the different regions of the arc of consciousness; the pre-personal the personal and the transpersonal. 

             It is “courses for horses”; but in today’s quick-fix and intensity-addicted world, few want the “boring” journey of therapy when instead they can be offered instant enlightenment or intimacy or mind-blowing ecstatic or orgasmic states on a workshop or in a festival.  There are exceptions in terms of workshops that can make a huge therapeutic difference. In my experience some psychodrama and in particular family constellations workshops can really change past influences but the process of working though and anchoring these changes and insights may still need ongoing work. 

          Having said all this Transcendence is re-starting its tantra workshops with a residential workshop for committed couples 14th - 16th March. The lucky participants will have enough homework ("homeplay") from this weekend to last them for a further three months at least. After this workshop, at the end of March, we are running a workshop to teach the Cobra Breath a powerful method from tantric kriya yoga which is a daily practice taking a maximum of then minutes which can also be used to transmute sexual energy in lovemaking. Again it is taking the practice into life that is what counts. See www.tantra.uk.com for more information.

Candlemass and Light

     

           This night is Imbolc or Candlemass the Celtic and pagan celebration of the beginning of Spring. Warmth is returning to the weak wintery sunlight; the days are clearly getting longer and the darkness of night waning.  Snowdrops are out and life is visibly stirring in the earth for a new cycle of fertility and growth.

          It is traditionally celebrated by lighting all the candles in the house; it is our Diwali; our festival of light. In the tantric tradition and far beyond light is associated with consciousness and awareness; shining a light into the dark recesses of the unconscious; the basements and attics of our mind and body. It is a quality of Shiva of  basic consciousness that is the basis of everything. Consciousness is a quality of the masculine and meditation shines a light onto the operation of our mind and small ego and opens us to the vast spacious qualities of consciousness; Rigpa in the Buddhist tradition the vast, spacious illuminated qualities of mind. This is en-light-enment. But it is more complex than that, for the primary quality of the feminine; of Shakti, the goddess is that of radiance. When the feminine enters a room; it is as if a light has gone on; something lighter, and brighter and warmer has entered. So the masculine is Light and the primary quality of light is feminine - Radiance. The tantric dance of masculine and feminine is everywhere.

         This night I lit an altar full of candles for my mother who died last week; with a central large candle to Shiva, as consciousness. I chanted the  Mahamrityunjaya Mantra to Shiva as the three-eyed one; the third eye being a beam of light.

       Light flows down the body from the splendour of the crown chakra reflecting the light of the Divine entering the body; through the third eye as a searchlight of awareness beyond the surface of things; to the heart and the hands as "wings of the heart" which in the healing traditions channel light from the crown as healing energies through touch. Then last but not least (but least understood); the lingam, or wand of light in the Hindu tradition; vajra, lightning in the Tibetan, as a bringer of light, consciousness, healing and above all pleasure and bliss.

Life, Death and Tantra

      In Christianity most of the images are rather static, a figure on a cross is stuck there and you can’t imagine the Virgin Mary dancing. Tantra often uses Indian figures of Gods and Goddesses because they are usually depicted moving. Most of the Goddesses are pretty active and even Shiva where more of his many forms are sitting in meditation; there are common ones like Shiva Nataraj who is dancing. In the upper right hand, he holds the drum that calls the world into creation, whereas in the upper left he carries the destroying fire, symbolizing life and death, order and disorder, creation and destruction. His lower right hand is raised and the palm is turned outwards, in a gesture that means, “Don’t be afraid; it’s All Right,” because  as his left hand shows; he is dancing and treading on a small figure on the ground; dominating greed, ignorance and the possessive small ego.  Shiva is the Lord of life and death; creation and destruction.

         With some of the Goddesses, such as Kali it more obviously looks like destruction with her large knife and necklace of severed heads. Kali cuts off heads representing the ego. Chinnamasta also has her own head severed and the garland of skulls. It is very clear that destruction and creation go hand in hand. The dance is invariably of both creation and destruction. When a painter puts a mark on a canvas to start a painting, the pristine emptiness of the canvas is gone for ever.  

         Popular Western ideas of tantra with their emphasis on sexuality can seem a long way from many of the tantriks of India with their rituals in the burning Ghats. However sex, also requires surrender and a letting go of the small ego into bliss and ecstasy as the French for orgasm la petite morte (the little death) shows. The preparations for such tantric practices have to include purification, ritual and meditation otherwise they just enhance the ego and become another means of self-delusion. Sadly, in the current enthusiasm for festivals of "tantra" as “conscious sexuality” there is much more interest in the sexuality than in the consciousness.  Today, in front of  a statue of Shiva Nataraj the Lord of creation and destruction I am writing something for the funeral of my mother who died last week at the age of 91. At the end of the simple Quaker service I want them to play The Beatles, Here Comes the Sun as people leave the Western version of the burning ghats; the crematorium.

Shiva/Shakti, Symmetry and Consciousness

     When people come across tantra and hear that it is to do with sex (which it is!) and that there are two principals Shiva and Shakti and they are connected to consciousness and energy, and that they can also be characterised as masculine and feminine; many are delighted. It is the answer to their deepest hopes; how to have a good relationship and great sex and be spiritual all wrapped in to one new package. They then make one massive mistake if they only takes Western neo-tantra as their guide. They project on to tantra a sort of symmetry and mutuality. It becomes about Mrs Shakti and Mr Shiva and how they can have this equal, mutual, satisfying partnership. It becomes couple therapy externally, or for their inner estranged couple. They may link it to the yin/yang symbol with its black and white fish eternally chasing each other in a circle. Perfectly complementary and equal. If they are women; and get that tantra deeply honours the feminine as the creator of life itself (which it does!) then it can add a bonus, that after all their suffering under the last few thousand years of patriarchal oppression they will be freed and compensated. If they go to tantra workshops and breathe, move, dance their socks off and get high on; the energy, the cosmic orgasms and the freedom then they are sold! They can both be honoured and worshipped and have everything and a beautiful equal relationship within and, hopefully also, without.

     There is one little problem with this. It simply doesn’t accord with the thousands of years of tantric practices and knowledge which exists as texts and as methods within the deep and sometimes complex world of tantra as it has evolved in many cultures and places. It is not just from India, but there it stayed in the culture so that texts were written and temples built. By about the 11th century it had reached a high point before the Mughal invasion. In England, Stonehenge had long been a ruin and we were busy with 1066 and all that.

     The problem is the symmetry bit. Energy and consciousness are not like Mr and Mrs! Even though in the body the two channels, ida and pingala have a symmetry in their winding journey from the coccyx to the brain, the two qualities are simply not in that sort of relationship.  We certainly can’t get entranced by the energy and phenomena side, and hope that consciousness will follow in time. That simply is addiction. It attracts the child, like sweets in a sweet shop. And tantra workshops can turn in to giant sweetshops and most of the participants become exited children. Great fun and for many a necessary relief. Hence lots of tantra festivals now. But it hooks what the Jungians called the puer and puella eternus, the eternal child, and the tantra world is full of such figures taking refuge from the challenges of being a grownup in a very difficult world. The idea of a regular practice seems ridiculous. As if I need to practice eating chocolate cake! 

     I think it is usually the women who notice first.  The men, often supported by the odd belief that polyamory is central to tantra, are simply not quite there! Presence and awareness are notoriously hard to teach compared to energy practices with breath, sound and movement as their simple and effective guidelines.  Women can also become so busy “skydancing” that they never quite get around to landing and having their feet firmly on the cool damp Earth of reality.

     The fact is that at one of the highest and most sublime times when tantra was flourishing in 11th Kashmir;  Abhinavagupta a great practitioner and scholar (for there was no separation then) wrote The first Shiva sutra, Chaitanyamatma, which can be translated as ‘The nature of reality is consciousness’, or, ‘Everything is consciousness’. It may not be immediately obvious that everything is Consciousness. Our culture is based on its opposite; everything is atoms and stuff. Kashmir Shaivism says that Consciousness underlies all creation. It was there in the beginning, it is there in the middle and it will be there in the end. It is the fundamental stuff of the universe. In Hindu tantra there is the wonderful image of Kali dancing on the prone

body of Shiva. Far from being the patriarchs’ nightmare of being killed and trampled underfoot, it shows that Shiva, as consciousness (he isn’t dead but in deep meditation), is the platform on which everything can be danced into existence. Consciousness, and its cousin, awareness; is the basis of tantra. 

     There is no easy symmetry between Shiva and Shakti. There has to be the deepest respect for consciousness first. So Indian tantra says that everyone is Shiva. Without that foundation, we are lost in maya; in illusion. At the Solstice, as we mark the return of the light; the return of the sun, it is good to worship the light of consciousness for it is from the light of consciousness that things arise; just as it is the return of the sun that will allow the seeds to grow and abundance to flower.