Tantra, Chakras, and Dimensions

Sharing Energy Fields

A recent book on tantra presents the task of the female as making herself a 'clear vessel' through which the male can pour his energy and then, in a loop, bring it back into himself. While traditional, this approach is not the tantra we speak of here. We move past the concept of 'male' as 'active or creative' and 'female' as passive or receptive. In particular, we come to understand feminine energy as actively magnetic. The female does not merely allow the energy to move through her; she draws it into and through her and directs its course and purpose.

We must also remember that whatever body form we occupy, we have both yin and yang energetic patterns. Thus tantric meditation between two persons is perfectly possible whether or not they are of opposite sex. It will still be the male in each of them extending energy and the female in each of them drawing energy. Energy circulates through both bodies in a double-loop, as well as forming an active field between or including both of them.

Tantra is not necessarily genital intercourse or aimed to produce genital intercourse. Although genital contact may be tantric, it is not required. Tantric fields may be formed between two persons holding each other without direct genital or frontal contact; with or without clothing; without any physical contact; or even in a case where one of the two parties is not physically present. (Since this is a 'tantra for humans' description, we won't consider the case in which neither party is physically present. Though if you have second sight and get the chance to watch two elementals exchanging fields, you likely won't be needing much else in the way of entertainment.)

Let's begin. Assuming for the moment that you have chosen someone (physical) as a partner, take a position facing each other which expresses the comfort you already have with one another, or the risk you both feel willing to take. Unless you are quite sure you already know the feel of the tantric experience, do not press directly and fully against one another; allow some space between. For instance, one party might have his or her legs spread out, and the second sit between them with legs over the partner's thighs; the 'ground' partner might have their hands upon the shoulders or about the neck of the other, while the 'top' partner could be holding the other around the small of the back. The position should be comfortable for both, while maintaining that slight separation which allows a strong energy field to develop.

Begin breathing (see Breath and Meditation) until each of you is comfortable with your own breath. Then gradually allow your breath to entrain with each other until you are sharing the same breathing rhythm. This may be done with eyes closed or looking into each other's eyes. Eyes closed makes it a little easier to find your own comfort zone as you begin, while looking into the eyes raises the intensity of the experience. Experiment with the form which works best for both of you. It's often a good idea to go back and forth, raising energy and sharing love with eyes open, then, eyes closed again, integrating and settling deeper. As the energy intensifies, there may be a strong impulse to pull together physically and become more directly sexual. This could be great sex, but you may be missing some of the more subtle possibilities, or equally, missing the opportunity to create a more lasting bond. The evolutionary edge is to learn to maintain equilibrium in a highly charged field. That is, to become comfortable with the high potential you have created.

Once you have created your mutual field, there are many alternatives on what to do with it. Your kundalini will be flowing, and you may move the charge up or down the chakras, opting to experience various levels of energy together, from deep subsonic grounding resonances through erotic, compassionate or highly refined spiritual states. Do not make the mistake of thinking that one kind of energy is 'good' or to be sought at the expense of others. You may of course let yourselves be drawn according to your own innate preferences, but above all you are learning to work as cooperative creative artists at play with the entire range of cosmic possibility. You may choose to move through different chakra states - one person, for instance, might experience a tableau of glistening geometric shapes or mandalas, while the other hears music or feels shifting emotions. You are also playing with the ability to pass the lead back and forth between you, sometimes the guide, sometimes the tourist, and sometimes the mutual creators.

What If It Isn't Working?!?

Drop back into yourself and run some basic checks: Have you lost touch with your breathing? Has your physical position become too uncomfortable to allow you to relax? Are the two of you too close, or too far apart? Has fear taken over, causing you to erect an inner psychic barrier against real or imaginary threats? Have you yourself tried to force your partner or the energy to go somewhere they don't want to go? Let your partner know what you're experiencing and ask that you both go back to the last point in the process in which you felt comfortable. Perform your breathing rituals again, and begin again.

Tantra With Spirits

Here by 'spirits' we could mean lovers or friends at a distance, angels, fairies, elementals, ghosts, ancestors, totems, or any entity which has reality for you but is not physically present.

Begin as usual by finding a comfortable position. Upright seated positions will increase the strength of the field. If you prefer a cross-legged position and are at ease in it, this is good, but seated (not slouched) in a comfy chair is also fine. Perform the usual breathing rituals to enter your own meditation space. When you feel fully centered, invite in front of you the being you wish to create a tantric field with. This could be a lover, or someone you might wish to be lovers with. If the object of your attention is someone who has not given you direct permission to be intimate with them, then ask them in your own psychic field if they are willing to share tantric energies with you. You'll generally get the message pretty quickly one way or another. Remember that anyone who comes into your consciousness has at a soul level already given permission for some kind of connection; you are only required to explore psychically with them what kind it is.

Also remember that tantric connection does not need to be explicitly erotic or have more than a small erotic component. For instance, a mother separated from her child might invite the child for a psychic visitation to breath together and reaffirm their bonds. Or one might invite a beloved relative who has passed over to return and hold or be held by you. An animal totem or ally can be invited to be present and share the energy field in such a way that teachings or messages are given or an alliance strengthened. Angels may be called to reconnect us to the divine realms. What makes this a tantric experience is that there is always at least some subtle element of Eros, since erotic energy is the binding force. Don't imagine that angels and buddhas and saints are not sexual 'd0 they are. They have simply tempered the energy and used it to bind other fields of experience. Yet at the same time there must be also be an admixture of more subtle or spiritual energy fields passing through to make sure that the participants are not trapped in what has been created.

The Tantric Field

Just as you don't plug your tv directly into the current from the nuclear reactor at the generating plant, tantric fields are formed to translate step-down currents among different levels of reality. Tantric practices teach us to become comfortable with the transition from the spiritual and sub-spiritual planes into the physical, and back again, to travel back and forth in our consciousness. This is never accomplished alone. As one of my favorite philosophers puts it: 'Out of relation, nothing. And by nothing, I mean NOTHING.' As persons, we are a temporary locus of energy and consciousness, and the body in which we wrap ourselves is slowed down light. We become 'light workers' (and 'light players' or 'light artists') in our capacity to play with the more subtle currents which comprise us and interpenetrate our reality. Everything is a meeting, into which we merge, and from which we emerge, in a rhythm as regular as the breath. Even the soul is such a temporary locus of energy or perspective, emerging from and dissolving back into greater wholes. Consciously choosing to use our meetings with each other in tantra is a way of exploring the 'great sea of being' in which we find ourselves.

The charkas or energy-vortices along the spine are one way of navigating these fields. Briefly, the first chakra governs our survival; in effect, our ability to temporarily close ourselves or a part of ourselves off from dissolution in a larger field (flee the tiger lest you become tiger rather than man). The second chakra is the bonding force which locks fields into mutual relation in order to create alliances and new forms (be they children or dreams or art works or widgets). The third chakra is the power and balance center, and establishes a pecking order - rules of domination and submission. The 4th chakra, the first of the 'spiritual chakras', opens the understanding that others exist in and of themselves, and not merely in terms of how they affect us; thus giving us an escape from the material restraints of our own more limited reality. The 5th is the channel of precision craftsmanship known as Truth - the ability to recognize things as what they are and not confuse them with what they are not. The 6th chakra opens panoramic vistas of reality. And the 7th allows us to merge with the other levels of existence.

It is also possible to speak of reality in terms of planes or dimensions. The Physical is the wrap of slowed-down light which we choose as a play-pen to hold our spirits during their explorations of form. Like a forensic scientist selecting a single frame from a video, and then blowing it up to find the clues, material existence slows time to allow us to examine it's structure. We call this 'learning'. The Etheric is the level of crystallization before the Physical. In this reality we are neither quite 'fixed' in our forms, nor fully fluid either. It is the slightly eerie form of the shape-shifter, the protein body, the Werewolf, the Selkie, the Mermaid. Or even the 'spirit-made-flesh-made-spirit-again' of our religious mythologies. The astral plane is still more fluid than the Etheric. It is the world of dreams, of evanescent forms which suggest material possibility, but never cling to it. We might think of an Etheric being, such as a Yeti, coming so far into the physical as to leave a track on the ground or a spoor behind, before vanishing again into the 'forest' of our uncertainty. While from the astral, 'fairy gold' leaves no material remain except the grains of sand which we had cloaked in the gleam of astral light. We might ask then, are astral or etheric dimensions as real for astral and etheric beings as the physical is for us? The answer lies in our own assessment of how real the various dimensions of our world seem to us. There are 'higher' and 'lower' astral and etheric planes. Just as there are 'higher' and 'lower' expressions of our physicality. The Tantric field gives us to the chance to explore any of these dimensions, their rules and dynamics, their appeal to our own desires.

Some speak also of a Vital Plane of Life Force. This is the spark that flies between and among all creatures, alerting them to the presence of the Other. While the Emotional Plane is the responsive resonance which we feel to the urges of the vital force. Vital and Emotional are a Yin-and-Yang of a single coherent reality.

Next comes the Mental Plane. The Lower Mental is Calculation, an assessment of strategies energy into favored patterns. How much money from my paycheck will pay the rent is on the same level with how many conversions to my church will make my religion dominant. The Higher Mental is Contemplation. The game of chess shifts from how to win the match to aesthetic pleasure in contemplating the panorama of strategies possible from any given point in the game. The Higher Mental Plane is concerned with the geometic and aesthetic continuum of reality as a mandala of beauty.

The Mental Plane in turn gives way to Value on the Causal Plane, where aesthetics based on values serve as focusing devices around which strategic possibilities are assembled. The Good, the Beautiful, the Just and the True are rallying points for organization of life possibilities, and so the Causal Plane is a shift to the deeper, fuller or 'still higher' possibilities of the Higher Mental. Spoken tantrically, it is erotic love for the art of perfecting our service to life.

Finally, the Spirit Planes lie at a level of perfection and integration which are subtly beyond the reach of, yet call and reach out to, image, thought and emotion. While perfect stillness lies in the realm of the Higher Mental, and perfect Motive in the Higher Causal, the Spiritual Planes are describable only in terms of what they are not. Not This, not That. Not Moving, Not Still. Not Physical, Not Not-Physical. We speak of them in the plural as Planes, although they are One. Just as we speak of the One as Unity, though the One is also Many. We have reached the edge of what our minds and beings can perceive, become one with, and register at the same time as Self and Not-Self. I prefer to call it Great Mystery, for in that mist as we dissolve lies the solution and resolution to all our desire. This is the Tantra of Spirit.

Group Tantra

Finally, tantric fields can be formed with more than two participants, in circles or other geometric forms. In this regard the energetic meetings, challenges, fusions and missions come from what we face and embrace, but also what holds us from behind, from below, inspires us from above, surrounds us, and comes to us as angels (angles) of mercy or merriment from all possible directions.

One of my favorite group tantras I call the Dragon. This is done with three active participants, one as the body of the Dragon, and one as each of the wings. This might represent, for instance, a Teacher and two Students. Or the roles of body (Teacher) and Wings (students) might be passed among the three, or conceptualized from the stand-point of each of them as being the body with the other two as wings. Physical touch or proximity may be a part, or not, as desired.

In any case, the Dragons are group souls and the body is always the collective, while the wings are the developmental possibilities. One wing may be more 'yin' and incline the Dragon to fly in a more 'female' direction, the other more 'yang' and guide the body, or circle or collective, in a more yang tangent. The wings of themselves may suggest, impel, or yearn to rise or fall or turn as they desire. But it is always up to the body to integrate the impulses of the two wings. Working together in this way, the Dragon Triad dreams and explores the worlds at its disposal.

Another form I enjoy, in a group dream or meditation, is the Dragon's more etheric relation, the Dragon-Fly. Here the possibilities are likely to be less concrete, more gossamer or ethereal. Now the body must integrate six wings. One way to do this meditation is lo let each dreamer start as the body, integrating one pair of wings at a time. As you absorb and integrate with the energy fields of your partners, how is your own dream, your own destiny stretched and changed, how does it shimmer with new sensations and possibilities?

Still another is the six-pointed star, in which the two triangles form and then interpenetrate each other. But there is no end to the possibilities of the dreaming field. In the Tantra of two or ten-thousand (the Many), we learn that we are each other, and life reveals dimensions and possibilities muttiplying without end.

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