Extract from “Sexual Secrets for Men,
what every woman would want her man to know’
by Kerry and Diane Riley,
directors of ASOT.
Copyright Spectra 2000 P/L 2005
Lovemaking as a spiritual experience.
It is written in the ancient texts of China
and India that it was common for emperors, kings
and noblemen trained in the art of lovemaking
to be passionately making love in their nineties,
with up to twenty consorts or lovers, all of
whom they were keeping sexually satisfied. In
the ruling class a man's power and respect were
judged by the number of consorts he could keep
satisfied. A husband was respected more for
keeping his wife sexually satisfied than for
anything else. In the ancient cultures of Egypt,
Arabia, India, Nepal, Tibet, China and Japan
polygamy was common, so it was essential for
a man to know the art of lovemaking.
The ancient sexual secrets of India are revealed
in Sanskrit texts, where it is written that
the emperor should make love to nine chosen
consorts every night, progressing from the lower
ranks to the higher. With retaining his semen
by proficiency in the Art of Love, the Emperor
concentrates powers within. Then, at the full
moon, he bestows his seed on the Queen of Heaven.
A child born from such a ritual was supposed
to have magical powers.
Most men these days ejaculate within the first
fifteen minutes. They wouldn't have commanded
much respect in ancient China. This shows us
how much our education and proficiency in the
art of lovemaking is lacking. Yet every man
has the ability to master these sexual skills.
Ancient texts from the East taught that sex
was sacred, and this was one of the reasons
I was attracted to these studies. I liked the
idea of my lovemaking being sacred. I don't
use the term sacred here in the conventional
religious sense of something existing above
us somewhere. Such a view tends to split reality
into two parts, a degraded earth below and a
pure holy heaven on high. Things on this earthly
plane can be sacred if we have the eyes to see
the sacredness in them the sacred order of the
earth and the sky, of life and death, of the
mind and the heart and the body.
We can view human existence itself as sacred
and, if we choose, we can see lovemaking as
sacred.
Many people today are seeking spiritual growth.
When I tell them that Diane and I use our sexual
love as a way of becoming more spiritual they
are quite shocked. This probably stems from
the fact that many religions proclaim that if
we want to become spiritual, we must deny ourselves
any earthly pleasures. In Eastern and Western
cultures, celibacy was often a requirement for
those who sought a spiritual life.
As a child, I was taught, as I'm sure many
people were, that the way to God was through
prayer and going to church. However, these things
never really gave me any profound experience
of God. About twenty years ago I travelled through
India where I was introduced to meditation as
a practice for spiritual growth. When I practised
meditation, it did give me an experience which
I felt was spiritual. In the East this was called
a mystical experience. A mystical or spiritual
experience is foreign to most Westerners.
A mystical state itself is not easy to describe
and yet anyone who has had the experience can
recognise it. People describe certain common
elements in such an experience things like a
sense of tranquillity, of timelessness, of intense
awareness that everything you see is vivid and
everything you touch is very alive; a transcendence
from the thoughts of daily life; an expansion
of consciousness; a feeling of being connected
with the cosmos or at unity with all things.
Some say they have a tangible experience of
God or actually experience the bliss of union
with the divine. Some of these experiences can
happen during lovemaking, and when they do,
it is important to acknowledge this as a spiritual
experience.
When you are in heightened orgasmic states,
this is a spiritual experience.
Ancient spiritual systems such as Taoism and
Tantra readily acknowledged this.
TANTRA AND TAOISM
Tantra is a spiritual science from ancient India
and in its basic essence is very similar to
Taoism from China. Both involve balancing the
male and female energies to create harmony and
both have an ultimate goal of spiritual unity
with the universe or the source or God, (the
God within, as opposed to God being separate
from us).
The Tantric interplay of the male and female
energies was represented in Hindu mythology
with Shakti and Shiva, and represented in Taoism
with yin and yang. Both Tantra and Taoism aimed
to create union of body, mind and spirit. And
in both, sexuality was seen and practised in
a spiritual context.
One of the differences between Tantra and Taoism
is that Tantra is filled with rituals and religious
deities, gods and goddesses, whereas Taoism
is more scientific in its approach. People who
are more 'right-brain' oriented, (more intuitive),
would probably be more attracted to Tantra,
while those who are more 'left-brain' oriented,
(more into the rational and logical), would
be attracted to Taoism, although this is certainly
not a rule.
In the seminars which Diane and I conduct,
we find that women are more attracted to the
Tantric approach and men more to the Taoist
approach, at least initially. However, as the
men open their heart centres more and become
deeply connected with their women, they move
forwards into the Tantric approach to sexuality.
It is said that Tantra is the oldest single
source of knowledge concerning the energies
of the mind, body and spirit. It is the origin
and essence of today's popular studies and practices
of Eastern philosophies, including yoga, martial
arts, tai chi and the grand philosophies of
the Buddha, Confucius and Lau Tzu.
Tantra means to expand, to be free, to be liberated.
If we are to be really free, our sexuality should
not be repressed, it should be lived in its
totality with joy and without any guilt. The
more we suppress sex, the more we will be bound
by it;
and the more it is repressed the more it wants
to burst out. The sad thing is that it often
bursts out in harmful ways. The current explosion
in evidence of child sexual abuse is an example
of what can happen as a result of suppression.
Tantra always emphasises the sacredness in
sex; it teaches that there should be no repression
or guilt attached to sex. It also teaches that
when a man approaches his beloved, he should
have a sacred feeling, as if he were going into
a temple. Tantra claims that to know the truth
about love, you need to accept the sacredness
of sex.
Relics of Tantric rituals date back nearly
five thousand years and Tantric texts began
to appear within a few centuries of the beginning
of the Christian era. It is speculated that
Indian Tantra, which spread to Tibet, may have
originated with ancient Taoists in China, then
re-entered China hundreds of years later and
revitalised Taoist sexual practices.
Both Tantra and Taoism advocate exploring every
aspect of life and consciousness, so obviously
the study of sexuality was included; not only
included, but revered. Through the centuries
many mainstream religions have frowned on Tantra
and Taoism because both systems use sexual union
as a vehicle to enlightenment, as a way of experiencing
a deep connection with God, or the cosmos, or
the divine or the source of all existence, or
whatever you call it according to your beliefs.
Most religious systems make sex taboo, claiming
it leads man away from God. This predominant
religious approach created oppression which
forced Tantric practices underground. Its practices
and rituals have been kept secret for hundreds
of years.
Only recently have Tantric and Taoist practices
been interpreted, published and made available
for Western study. This has been refreshing
and enlightening for many of us because it has
helped us to look at love and sex from a different
perspective. We start to question our own attitudes
and realise how deeply our consciousness has
been conditioned by our Christian upbringing,
which suggests that sexuality is somehow evil.
We are taught at school that the first sin
in the Garden of Eden was committed by Eve making
Adam eat the apple. But that's not a sin. What
is sinful is that some sexually insecure man
invented a God who couldn't rejoice in Adam
and Eve's sexual nature. It's a tremendous mistake
that the very act on which the procreation of
life depends is depicted as a sin. We have been
taught that we must be either spiritual or sexual,
that we must not be drawn to 'the Devil' by
bodily pleasures. Even though these days most
people would see this as ridiculous, it still
subconsciously affects our attitudes towards
sex and we carry part of this negative conditioning
into our lovemaking.
If we were brought up in a culture which revered
sexuality, it would be much easier to have a
healthy attitude towards sex. A Tantric attitude
towards sex is that it is God's greatest gift,
that it is sacred, that to have pleasure from
sex is a prayer to God, a way of showing gratitude
for our existence. Tantra sees sexual union
as a way of generating life-
force through the body that is healing, rejuvenating,
energising;
it can be used as a meditation to reach mystical
states of love and consciousness.
Because Tantra covers the full spectrum of
life, it accepts and reveres sexual love and
pleasure. It does not accept any kind of religious,
cultural or tribal inhibitions. It's about exploring
the extraordinary in your love and your sexuality,
with the only proviso being that it causes the
other person or yourself no harm. Tantra teaches
that we deserve all the love and sexual pleasure
we can possibly receive; that sexual loving
is a way to reach the mysteries of the heart,
the soul, God and Goddess within each person.
It also teaches that sex is a way of bonding
with a lover physically, emotionally and spiritually
to create feelings of ecstatic pleasure, deep
intimacy and expanded consciousness. It's a
way of transcending daily life and the ego to
become one with your beloved, one with all things,
and create a tangible experience of God.
Taoists especially would say lovemaking is
the way to longevity and that by applying certain
techniques we can rejuvenate ourselves and awaken
our intuitive centres. They also believe that
we can use our lovemaking to heal ourselves
and our partners because when we are in heightened
states of sexual energy, our whole body is charged
and the immune system strengthens.
SACRED SEX: THE DOOR TO ENLIGHTENMENT
Imagine how our lovemaking would affect us
if we were educated in Tantric and Taoist techniques.
They would give us a far more healthy attitude
towards sex than most of us have been conditioned
to have. It's important to recognise that any
judgements we have about sex reflect our inhibitions
and demonstrate that we are not entirely free
and accepting of our own sexuality.
What we need is a new man, a man who can bring
back to sex its original sacredness, who is
able to make love in such a way that it opens
the door to enlightenment for his beloved and
himself and fulfils his deepest yearnings for
the meaning of life.
We need education in lovemaking because it
will increase our choices and our knowledge.
We don't have to assume the attitudes handed
down to us by society. We can adopt new attitudes
which serve us better and help us to have a
more fulfilling, happy, healthy love life.
Some aspects of Tantra and Taoism may seem
a little strange at first, especially the link
between sexuality and spirituality, but like
anything in life, we need to consider all approaches,
and then select what serves us. Of course sometimes
when a new attitude is presented to us, we take
it on immediately because it rings true for
us. At other times we have to let it sit for
a while; we put it on the shelf and perhaps
use it in years to come. It's important to experiment,
play with the attitudes, with innocence and
openness as a child plays with a new toy. Parents
terrorise their children out of the delight
of their sexual feelings, experimentation, play
and openness. But we are not children any more.
It's time to choose new ways of exploring sex
and love on physical, emotional and spiritual
levels.
A HEALTHY ATTITUDE TOWARDS SEX
Having a healthy attitude towards lovemaking
makes all the difference to the experience.
You can be in exactly the same lovemaking position
as someone else but ultimately it's the mind
that creates the experience. If the mind is
saying: 'I wish this would finish,' you may
have some sort of resistance to pleasure from
past conditioning or experience. If the past
was all positive then how could the most sensitive
part of the body, with the most nerve endings,
not be giving you pleasure? Have you ever thought
about that? If however, your attitude is that
to make love to reach high states of sexual
pleasure is healing, then the experience will
be totally different. Our experience of lovemaking
is affected by our attitudes. A man who has
been conditioned to believe that his lovemaking
is a spiritual encounter will have a totally
different experience to a man who sees it as
an opportunity to get another notch in his belt.
Anything that happens in our lovemaking is
interpreted through our attitudes and beliefs
first. From these we derive our experience.
One way to alter our experience is to change
our attitudes and beliefs. Some people watching
a high Tantric experience might see it merely
as two people having good sex. Well, what's
the difference between Tantra and just having
sex? One of the key differences is where the
mind is. It's the same in life. One's experience
of life depends on where the mind is. We are
all living in the same world, but our experiences
are determined by our perception.
Extract from “Sexual Secrets for Men,
what every woman would want her man to know’
Copyright Spectra 2000 P/L 2005 |
