Most people are unaware of the fact that Tantra is the spiritual root that has given birth to many important branches of yoga. It has influenced and formed society and religion, as is evident in Tibetan Tantra. In the west, Tantra is regarded as a set of strange sexual practices meant to prolong sexual pleasure and to improve sexual performance. Few suspect the profound and enlightening transformation of our being that is made possible through these super-sensual experiences.
This absence of genuine understanding of Tantra, is mostly due to the lack of authentic and coherent information and to the lack of practice. Tantra is an array of practical methods that gradually guide the aspirant towards a spiritual state and realization. Tantra helps to successfully surpass the limitations that we all inflict on ourselves during the process of personality development. Many of the questions raised by philosophers of various epochs naturally find their answers in Tantra.
The practicality of these answers makes them singularly useful for spiritual seekers. The Tantric system is a priceless gift that antiquity has handed over to us in the modern age, who are faced with so many problems of hitherto unprecedented scale and seriousness. The answers to the fundamental questions offered by Tantra are singularly practical and directly involve the individual.
Tantra is directly oriented towards Truth and does not lose itself in sterile formalism that protect and amplify the meaningless labyrinth of the ego. Since most of us already understand why the “Truth scares the perverted and the ignorant”, we can see why the Tantric teachings where hidden in legends and myths in order to avert the superficial seeker from the true Tantric path.
In the frame of this spiritual system, we generically call “Tantra”, physics and metaphysics, science and spirituality cannot remain separate but are united in a daring and deep synthesis, that brings the essentials from each path into the light of direct knowledge. Tantra is a system that embraces different aspects of reality in order to unify them into a coherent and useful synthesis. The Sacred and the sensual melt together in Tantra through an ineffable fusion that is presented beyond the border of ordinary reason. The feast of the five senses and of the five elements conquers all the individual limitations, through the techniques of this ancient discipline, the sensations being transcended, apparently in a paradoxical manner.
The source of life as well as the passage of life into death are regarded with perfect detachment by Tantra, which sees beyond the process of becoming, the immutable and transcendent presence of an Absolute principle, of God. Tantra gives practical methods to make Love the driving force of a swift and profound transformation of the human being; Transformation that makes the ephemeral and impermanent become eternity, thanks to the process of inner alchemy that is consciously initiated by the Tantric adept. Tantra is a path that has to be walked step by step and gradually understood.
Tantra points out that it is not possible to have a coherent overview of the entirety of the journey from the beginning till the end, all such ideas could only be prejudgments and limited ideas based on too little knowledge and experience.
(Just like you don’t know what it is to fall in Love before you try it, or like a child that is unable to understand what it means to become an adult).
Instead we have to give ourselves to life, trust life and rely on it; just like when we are in the water, we need to give ourselves to the water and allow it to carry us. If we fight the water we sink and drown, but by trusting the water we can let it lift us effortlessly up to the surface where we can relax in the sun.