The People's Ashram

Author and scholar Georg Feuerstein subtitled his excellent book about Hindu tantra, "the path of ecstasy."  This is an apt characterization of an effective practice of tantra yoga.  Let me suggest another, "the path of adventure."

Tantra sadhana is perhaps unique among spiritual paths that claim meditation as a central practice in that the meditator is allowed and even encouraged to actively explore the rich and complex phenomenology of her own contemplative experience.

This exploration must transpire by virtue of a series of foundational practices.  One must spend substantial quantities of time developing the quality of mental and physical stillness required for increasingly deep inner adventure.  For tantra yoga, mystical wisdom, or insight, cannot be achieved apart from the evolution of one's embodied consciousness.  Tantric aspirants must rediscover how to breathe through hours of daily breath work.  He must literally re-impattern his breathing process.  Her body must begin to automatically breathe deeply and regularly--even and especially when experiencing physical or emotional stress.  

One reason for this transformation of breathing is to stimulate the activity and one's awareness of the activity of the frequency of energy, or shakti, that serves as the "vehicle" if you will, that moderates the specifically spiritual relationship between mind, body and transcendental Self.  Another reason for this transformation of breathing patterns is to enable the practitioner achieve deep states of mental and physical stillness while maintaining maximum power of awareness.  When in meditation one's breath virtually ceases upon arriving at a kind of marvelous "middle" point between the inhale and exhale, then the quality of one's meditative awareness has become quite powerful.  One is then able to gather and focus one's spiritual energy to explore increasingly subtle sensations of consciousness. 

This "middle state" differs somewhat from the varieties of meditative absorption characterized by some of the samadhis described by other Hindu or Buddhist traditions.  The achievement of samadhi, or contemplative absorption is accomplished not by gathering one's attention to a single point or activity, such as the breath or a mantra, but by cultivating a state of maximum openness.  This "open state" occurs when one abandons all thoughts, feelings, images-all mundane content, and abides in increasingly effortless states of undifferentiated awareness.  This quality of awareness is characterized by eyes that are poised and watchful, ears that are open and receptive and skin that seems to 'feel' without boundary demarcating inward and outward.  In this state one's entire instrument of awareness is placed at the service of experiencing extraordinarily subtle phenomenological experiences.  One such phenomena is the subtle OM that one begins to perceive with one's whole instrument of awareness.  One begins to sift through all of the inward experiences of sound to identify a single, unchanging tone.  One begins to experience the amazingly subtle and transformative sensation of this OM vibrating throughout one's inward landscape. This is indeed, as Feuerstein describes, richly ecstatic.

Additionally, one cultivates this state of maximum, contentless awareness to discover other marvelous subtleties.  For example, one may identify that particular energetic vibration that can be called, divine grace.  For this experience, one focuses meditative awareness on the desire for the gift of grace to assist in one's achievement of peace, compassion or wisdom.  As one focuses on this plea for grace, one begins by using the thought and yearning for grace to direct and concentrate one's attention.  In time, however, one begins to set aside this thought and the yearning sensation that one can feel in one's body, to recognize the particular vibrating frequency that this desire for grace produces within one's undifferentiated field of receptive awareness.  One then begins to luxuriate effortlessly with the erotic sensation of this 'yearning for grace.'  The reward of grace often follows.

While tantric meditation uses some of the same tools and techniques of other well-known meditative traditions, the particular intent is to cultivate maximum awareness and equally, maximum openness toward the apprehension and recognition of the unique energetic frequencies that comprise the subtle topography of our universal, immanent/transcendent Humanity.  Tantric meditation serves to unite the erotic essence of pure manifest reality with the transcendental source that is perfectly clear awareness.