An interview with Margot Annand

“Absolutely not. I totally disagree with you. I
would say radically no. The tantric path is profoundly a spiritual
path,” she stated emphatically. Had I
gone too far? I had just asked Margot Anand [formerly Margo Anand], the
world-renowned teacher of tantric sexuality, if modern tantra may not really
be a genuine spiritual path.

Only four hours earlier, sitting in a crowded café in Larkspur, California,
sipping a fruit smoothie colored green with spirulina, I had been testing my
tape recorder and reviewing my notes before going to meet Anand. I laughed to
myself—just when I thought I had escaped the paradisal blue skies, the reluctant-casual
displays of wealth and the sensitive New Age smiles of Marin County, California,
I found myself drawn back again. With both more BMWs and meditation cushions
per capita than anywhere else in the United States, it is a strange land where
almost everyone has a spiritual teacher, a spiritual therapist, a spiritual
health regimen or a spiritual lifestyle. I was relieved, after having spent
five years as an ambivalent Marinite, to have finally relocated to the rural
East Coast, where you can’t necessarily find smoked tofu or arugula pesto in
your corner grocery, but where things are much more—refreshingly, straightforwardly—as
they seem. Only Margot Anand could have brought me back.


Anand,
a pioneer in the movement to bring the ancient esoteric practices of tantric
sexuality to a popular Western audience, was one of the first people we considered
interviewing for this special issue of What Is Enlightenment? Her books,
The Art of Sexual Ecstasy and The Art of Sexual Magic, which together
have sold over 200,000 copies, present one of the clearest, most methodical
approaches to contemporary tantra in print today. She has developed a unique
system of sexual practices that she calls “SkyDancing Tantra,” which
combines elements from Tibetan Buddhist, Taoist and Hindu tantric teachings
with humanistic and transpersonal psychology. Since Anand began teaching in
the 1970s, hundreds of books, workshops and videos proclaiming tantra as a path
to spiritual enlightenment and a better sex life have sprung up to meet
burgeoning interest. All the while, Anand herself has remained one of the boldest
and most popular voices on the subject. She has established SkyDancing Tantra
Institutes in eight countries and certified close to a hundred people to teach
her “Love and Ecstasy Training” programs. And she is currently working
on a third book.


Sitting
in the café, I reflected on the two weeks I had just spent preparing
for this interview. It had been a mind-expanding experience—not only because
Anand’s approach to the spiritual path is so unusual, but also because her books
describe in graphic detail some very unconventional sexual mechanics.
For Anand, “sex and spirit are one”; sex is both the doorway to ecstatic
mystical experience and an expression of the spiritual force itself. And while
this is not a unique belief, Anand does have a particularly original approach.
In The Art of Sexual Ecstasy she describes the pinnacle of tantric
practice as the “orgasm of the brain.” This experience, she writes,
“creates a bridge between the left and right hemispheres, fusing the intellect
of the left hemisphere with the intuitive faculties of the right. It is this
fusion that creates the experience of ecstasy, in which body, mind, heart and
spirit all participate.” And in The Art of Sexual Magic she writes,
“In deep sexual embrace, the mind stops. Quite literally, you ‘f__ your
brains out.’ Your consciousness becomes clear, innocent, fresh.” As a guide
to attaining these “ecstatic states,” Anand provides an extensive
(and explicit) manual, or “menu” as she calls it, of exotic sexual
practices.


With
a high-society upbringing in Paris and a graduate degree in psychology from
the Sorbonne, Anand has traveled extensively around the world, studying and
practicing tantra with a number of different teachers. The greatest influence
on her own philosophy probably comes from the renowned “sex guru,”
the late Bhagwan Rajneesh (now known as Osho), of whom she was a disciple for
many years and who gave her the name Margo Anand, which means “the
path to bliss.” It was Osho who encouraged her to begin teaching the tantric
methods in which she was becoming adept. Anand is an extraordinary woman, someone
who has chosen throughout her life to follow a calling that led her outside
the mainstream, someone not afraid of taking risks. Confronting and harnessing
the power of sexuality has given her an unusual confidence and sense of personal
power. And she is at times bold, outrageous, even shocking in her defiance of
sexual taboos.


The
Art of Sexual Ecstasy, Anand’s first book, guides the reader step by step
through a series of exercises designed to break through sexual inhibitions,
increase trust and communication between partners, and develop sexual yogic
skills. While she does introduce spiritual themes periodically throughout the
book, it is primarily a collection of therapeutic techniques for improving psychological
and sexual well-being. It was her second book, The Art of Sexual Magic,
that raised the most questions for me. In it she combines sexual techniques
with creative visualization for the purpose of manifesting personal desires.
She has developed a unique method of projecting a visualized object of desire
into the “astral network” at the moment of orgasm. She writes, “It
is in these moments of expanded consciousness that you can project a vision
of your goal, your creation, into the harmonious fabric of the universe that
surrounds you. In ecstasy, you come very close to the universal source, the
creative womb out of which all things arise. What better moment to make magic?”
Throughout the book she includes examples of how to use this technique to acquire,
among other things, a new job, a new home, or even a new lover. According to
Anand, her system of sexual magic is a means to access higher states of consciousness
and to bring more of the spiritual dimension into her work; she often describes
it as a spiritual practice. Yet as I read her book, while I found it educational
and innovative, I couldn’t help but wonder again and again, What does all this
really have to do with the spiritual path?


When
I arrived at her sunny hillside home, Anand greeted me graciously, and as we
sat down to begin the interview, I took in the decor. The walls were adorned
with thankas (Tibetan religious art) depicting male and female deities
in tantric embrace. Crystals, softly colored cloths and pillows, bells, candles
and numerous ritual objects were carefully placed throughout the room. There
was a faint scent of incense in the air. She put on a tape of soothing New Age
music for atmosphere and told me that the previous day she had been in a “very
enlightened space,” which she thought would have been good for the interview—but
which was disturbed because today she had gotten enmeshed in a number of frustrating
and difficult encounters. We proceeded to talk for several hours, and she was
charming, animated and generous throughout.

interview

WIE: I’d like to start,
if you will, with a simple definition of the path of tantra.



Margot Anand: I would say that tantra is a path
that opens a person up to the possibility that sexuality can be a door to higher
states of consciousness. And another definition I have is that it is a way to
weave the many contradictory aspects of your personality into one unified whole
for the purpose of the expansion of your consciousness. The beauty of tantra
is that it is a spiritual path that teaches about enlightenment, yet it is one
of the rare spiritual paths that actually does not leave sexuality out but teaches
that sexuality can be a door to personal illumination or waking up. Many, many
spiritual traditions, as you know, especially Christianity, have taught that
in order to achieve enlightened states, you have to let go of sexuality or you
have to consider that it’s of the lower realms. You have to just be “above
the belt.” What is “below the belt” is just not to be dealt with.
So that’s why I appreciate tantra. It’s an approach of the whole person that
includes everything.



WIE: Why do you think tantra has become
so popular in the United States and Europe in the last decade or so?



MA: I think the reason it’s so popular is that
we’re now healing ourselves from the Christian tradition that taught a complete
separation between flesh and spirit and impregnated us with the idea that we’re
born in original sin—which is the most ridiculous idea I’ve ever heard. The
Church and the people in power have all been in a kind of conspiracy to preserve
the anti-ecstatic attitude that we live in, because when you keep people in
bondage through guilt and shame, you cut off their most vital, powerful force
and energy. That is the energy of orgasms, which opens the door to one’s own
direct, creative self. When you cut people off from that, they are despondent,
and then they go to you to tell them what to do and expect you to be the intermediary
between them and God.


If you
study the traditions we come from, you know that about a century or two after
Christ, through the apostles and the writing of the New Testament, the power
of the Church was developed. And there was a tremendous association with pain,
suffering, being martyred, being sacrificed. So it became almost more desirable
and more respected to be someone who was in pain, sacrifice and martyrdom than
to be someone who was in pleasure.


This
is why in my Love and Ecstasy Training I always bring forth the mythology and
cosmology of the tantric perspective, with the idea of the marriage between
Shiva and Shakti, between consciousness and energy, between life and spirit.
This is a much more life-affirming, pro-ecstatic approach than that of the Judeo-Christian
tradition. It is in this union between the masculine and the feminine, which
is a creative and erotic act, that all the forms of the universe are born. I
think that now we’re at a crisis point, and we need to come to a holistic consideration
about spirituality that includes the body, that includes the emotions, that
includes our sexuality.


Another
reason why tantra is popular is because we need sexual healing. Unfortunately,
the downside of that is that there’s a tremendous misunderstanding of tantra,
especially in America. For many years, tantra was misunderstood as simply sexual
healing and indulgence. Many so-called tantra teachers and so-called tantra
movements—and even the Hollywood socialites, you know, some of whom I used to
teach—think that you just need to tickle your G-spot for four hours and take
a few drugs and then you reach enlightenment and that’s what tantra is about.
No, it isn’t. There has been a great misunderstanding, a feeling that after
such a long time of sexual repression, now we are entering into the garden of
delight, and we can basically do whatever we want—cavort and f__ and suck and
do all these things—albeit more consciously than before. This is still not tantra.
So I think it’s very important to really make the distinction that tantric spirituality
is not about just indulging in sexual orgies.



WIE: You’ve been speaking about the fear
and shame about sex, about the body, which are the legacy of our Christian heritage
and which, in spite of the sexual revolution of the 1960s, still are very deeply
rooted in our culture. One of the most important aspects of your work, it seems
to me, is that you give people powerful tools for facing and liberating themselves
from this fear, shame and guilt, which are so often repressive and destructive.



MA: Yes, well, it’s interesting to know how
the idea of original sin was actually introduced into our religious thinking.
It turns out that St. Augustine was a very devoted man, devoted to God, and
at a very early age wanted to enter into the Church, into priesthood and celibacy.
But he was also a very sexual being and he had a lot of sexual energy. Throughout
his entire life, he struggled without success to control his libido. And so
it ended up that almost every day, he couldn’t resist; he had to pleasure himself
and release himself. St. Augustine was in great pain because he was really sincere,
and he couldn’t understand why, with all of his desire to be with God and to
transcend, he didn’t manage—why the urge of his instinctual libido always plagued
him so and why he always had to deal with it in a way that he didn’t want to.
So finally, out of this, he concluded that there was an element in us that predates
the control that we can have through our mental and spiritual powers, and he
called this “original sin.” He introduced this idea into the doctrine
of the Church. And it was then adopted as a very useful tool for the
Church.


There
is also the split between male and female, where the patriarchy basically took
over and it was considered that anything that had to do with women was secondary.
There are so many myths in our religious traditions that are simply totally
ridiculous, including the myth of Adam and Eve or the Virgin Mary. How could
Mary have given birth as a virgin, and why should that be?


There
can be no true spirituality, in my estimation, if there isn’t a complete reconsideration
of the fact that God has a masculine face and a feminine face, that there is
the father and the mother and that they are both of equal necessity, that they’re
both equally valid archetypes to help us understand the totality of God, which
transcends both genders of course.


What
is finally becoming more and more prominent is an awakening of a spirituality
that takes sexuality along. It is the understanding that now it’s possible,
and it’s attractive, to have a direct experience of God, that in fact
it’s possible to have what I would call a “spiritual orgasm,” and
that enlightenment happens through this experience of spiritual orgasm. There
was an article by Deepak Chopra in Playboy magazine that asked, “Does
God Have Orgasms?” I love that title, you know. And I believe that through
the orgasmic experience you can have an experience of ecstasy which then opens
you up to having an experience of the Divine. Obviously it takes some practice
and some understanding, but now people are beginning more and more to understand
that we don’t need the priest, the middleman. We don’t need to think of spirituality
as a “place” where you just go to church on Sundays—where you confess
your sins and then go back to doing the same things. We need spiritual teachers
who will initiate us, but that’s different from going to a Catholic priest with
an attitude that says, “Tell me what to do. Absolve me of my sins.”
That’s a very childish kind of attitude. And all of this results from the Church’s
having valued pain over pleasure, having split the flesh from the spirit. And
we still get this from our parents and grandparents.



WIE: In The Art of Sexual Ecstasy
you write about a number of people who were greatly empowered by the sexual
practices that you teach. Because sex is such a powerful force, to become the
master of it rather than being controlled by it in one way or another clearly
would give one a lot of self-confidence.



MA: There’s a woman who has a top job in this
country as the leader of a big business organization. She’s currently in my
yearlong training. She said that the ability to clear her yoni (as we
call the female sexual organ) of tensions through the practices that we do in
the training opened her up to an incredible understanding. Until that day, she
never felt she could be accountable to important clients beyond a certain level
because she felt she would fail. She felt she didn’t have it together as a woman
and wouldn’t have enough power. When she cleared herself and was able to access
much deeper levels of orgasm and, in the process, was able to guide her partner
and tell him how to give her what she needed sexually, she suddenly found that
now she was totally empowered. She could go back to her company and accept much
larger responsibilities and be accountable for much larger jobs. She attributes
this to her ability to access a deeper orgasmic power and to channel that power
through her other chakras, or energy centers.


This
empowerment takes many forms. At first I thought that my Love and Ecstasy Training
would be about learning how to have more orgasms, better orgasms, deeper orgasms.
But we discovered that life is not just about having more orgasms, but rather
it’s about being orgasmic in every moment.


Another
thing I discovered is that most of the people in this country who are creative,
who are innovators, who are visionaries, who are making a difference are closet
ecstatics. They’re all cultivating ecstatic states in their lives, many through
tantra, some through other approaches. But they just don’t talk about it because
they know if they did—some of them work in the White House or have important
jobs—they would have the press on their backs, or they wouldn’t be respected
or taken seriously. So everybody pretends that they’re all aboveboard, but it’s
all going on with everybody.



WIE: Tantra, as it’s become more popular,
has become equated in many people’s minds with sex only, rather than understood
as a comprehensive spiritual path. What would you say to people who are critical
of tantra’s focus on sex?



MA: Well, there are many paths of tantra. I
certainly respect the traditional Tibetan approach, which says that these sexual
practices should be kept secret because they require a tremendous amount of
preliminary education, purification and spiritual practice before a person is
actually ready to tackle the question of sexual tantra. Now people haven’t done
this preparation in this culture, and everybody goes around saying “tantra”
just because they had a blissful experience through an extended orgasm during
lovemaking. But in truth, to really access the spiritual dimension or ecstatic
freedom and maintain it while you make love, you need to purify, you need to
cleanse yourself majorly. Otherwise, you get stuck with your orgasmic energy,
and there’s sort of an ego aggrandizement—”Oh, this is special; this is
great; now I have more power; now I have you and you have me.” You see,
as long as you stay in the first three chakras, you’re stuck. You’ll
be stuck in dependency, neediness, jealousy, the whole bit. To be able to transcend
that and move to the higher chakras requires a combination of intense
spiritual inquiry as well as developing the skill of channeling sexual energy.
Ideally, I speak of a process in which you can do both in a parallel sense.



Osho,
who was one of my greatest teachers and masters, used to say that sex is like
the fruit on the tree. When the fruit is ripe, the fruit falls off the tree
and there is no longer any need for the fruit to be on the tree. He was saying
that you need to really go to the roots of what this sexual energy is, you need
to fully explore it, to fully taste it. Then you will transcend it. This approach
is to go through the sexuality, live the sexuality to the fullest, and
take that energy and begin to channel it to all the other areas of your being.




WIE: You’re saying that tantra is a path
that is definitely supposed be about more than sexual pleasure?



MA: Yes. The energy of sexual pleasure can
transform consciousness when it moves through the chakras. But you may
ask: What about the spiritual domain? I would say that there comes a point for
some people, depending on their past lives and their karmic predicament, where
sexuality has been known, understood and tasted, and it’s not so important anymore.
What Osho meant is that at a certain point in a person’s spiritual evolution,
the intense concern about sexuality drops away. One is not so dependent on it
anymore. One doesn’t need it so much. It seems to me that, more and more often,
I feel that I am free. Freedom for me means that I am equally happy and feel
equally satisfied whether I am with my partner or on my own. I don’t need to
have the security of something fixed and established in terms of a sexual menu
or sexual practice. Sometimes it’s there, and it’s immensely intense and incredibly
enlightening, and sometimes it’s not there, and then it is my task to be just
as open and enlightened without sexuality in my life. Ultimately, all the rivers
lead to the ocean.


And love
doesn’t just depend on sex. With or without sexual bliss, everything is all
ultimately an expression of love for Self. The deeper you can love yourself,
in the true sense of the word, the deeper you can love God. Since you are God’s
creation, when you experience a great orgasm, you are rejoicing in the joy of
connecting with the Divine. Now you can experience orgasm with sex, or you can
experience orgasm without sex. You can also have an ecstatic experience through
meditation or through dance. This too can be orgasmic. Moreover, when you dwell
in the ecstatic freedom of spirit, sexual orgasm sometimes seems like a poor
parent to this sense of unbounded freedom. Spiritual awakening is all-encompassing
and all-transcending. It is vast, spacious, as if your consciousness expanded
beyond the boundaries of the body. Sexual orgasm, on the other hand, is grounded
in flesh and bone. I guess you could say one needs to have strong roots—and
sex is such a strong root—in order to be able to fly.



WIE: Traditionally, as you just mentioned,
before one was initiated into tantric sexual practice, one was supposed to have
done a lot of preparatory practices and demonstrated a certain spiritual maturity.
For example, in Tibetan Buddhism, which has a strong tantric tradition, even
the Dalai Lama has said that he personally hasn’t achieved the level of spiritual
attainment required to do the tantric practices with an actual consort. What
do you think about the idea that if tantra is to be taken seriously as a spiritual
practice, one has to be able to demonstrate a significant degree of spiritual
maturity first?



MA: The Dalai Lama’s answer is very real and
legitimate. Like him I could say also that I haven’t achieved that level either.
The Dalai Lama has a mission, which, it seems to me, goes beyond the exclusive
focus on sexual tantric practice with a consort, you know? Tantric practice
requires focus, time, devotion. It is a profound process. It tends to take you
away from the world, and the Dalai Lama has an immense mission in the
world. And the bigger the mission, the less time you have to devote to the cultivation
of tantric sexual practices. When you’re a bodhisattva, you are dedicated
to the enlightenment of all beings. Of course, a tantrica would say: “I
dedicate my orgasms to the enlightenment of all sentient beings!” The Dalai
Lama’s practice is totally committed to serving all of the Tibetan people. It
requires great sacrifice and compassion. You have to give up many pleasures.
And, ultimately, it doesn’t matter. I have also experienced many times when
I had to give up what seemed like greater tantric pleasures because I had to
be of service to others, to my work, to my own dharmic [spiritual teaching]
path. So I’ve also made a lot of sacrifices—but that’s fine; I’m not complaining.



WIE: I’d like to come back to the idea that
if you’re going to do sexual tantra as a genuine spiritual practice, then it
is a serious practice that requires preparation and commitment—versus something
you try to do on weekends, for instance.



MA: Yes. And in this modern and busy time,
such preparation is not always possible. I have fallen into the trap many, many
times of mixing the romantic with the spiritual, of having a crush on someone
and being totally led by the vajra [the male sexual organ] and the yoni
and all that. I did that many, many times until finally I burned through it,
and I understood that the higher practice resides at another level. Now I have
very clear boundaries and parameters, and I tell my tantric partners who want
to practice with me that these are the rules of the game—so we can keep the
energies pure.



WIE: What about the people who come to your
workshops?



MA: I have followed every guideline I’ve gotten
from every master I’ve worked with, and there have been many. And I haven’t
chosen to be a teacher of tantra; that’s the other thing you need to
know. I was put on this path. I was sent out to do it. There is a magic and
a transmission in this training that is beyond any kind of logical explanation.
What can I say? This is just how it is. It was meant to be. I have total trust,
and if someone takes this just to one level and goes off and forgets about it,
then that’s all it will be. They will have a little something. If they take
it all the way, hey, great. But if they really want to understand this practice,
they will go so deep that there is no end to it.



WIE: Why should one practice tantra rather
than meditation or other kinds of spiritual practices? Taoist sexual yoga master
Mantak Chia said in a recent review that “You can either pray 100,000 hours
or you can consciously guide the [sexual] energy up the spine.” Do you
agree with this statement? Is it really that simple?



MA: Well, I’ll answer that by saying that tantra
is an activation of all of our energies. And by channeling the sexual energies
through the various chakras, you can reach levels of ecstasy, states
of merging and fusion through your partner with the Divine that are so powerful
that I would certainly say that tantra is a shortcut. It’s a shortcut for courageous
people, the ones who take risks, who jump into the fire, who confront themselves
with a lot of uneasy and difficult parts of themselves. It is a very powerful
path. It is not an easy path if you take it in its totality and not just simply
as sexual indulgence—”Let’s have long orgasms,” and stuff like that.
So in that sense, yes, I would agree with him that it will quicken your ability
to connect with the Divine. However, I would also say that it is possible, through
meditation and other kinds of practices, to have access to experiences that
are just as ecstatic and fulfilling as the sexual experience. You see, you can
either start from the root and go to the crown, or you can start from the crown
and come to the root. You thereby manifest the two functions of the human being,
which are to be the one who connects the earth to the sky and the sky to the
earth. So I would agree to a certain extent, but I would say that the deeper
levels of the spiritual/mystical experience are just as powerful and as great
as having a sexual orgasm—if not more so.

WIE: I’m curious to know what you think
about the practice of celibacy—especially given that many of the greatest spiritual
masters throughout history have been celibates or have advocated celibacy.



MA: On the tantric path, you discover the sacred
marriage between your inner man and your inner woman. Then you don’t need to
have sex with another human being because it’s happening within yourself. When
this happened to me, I was perfectly satisfied, and I became abstinent. But
the problem was, there was always a man who seduced me out of my abstinence,
so I basically ended up succumbing to the temptation. But I did experience what
it could be. It was to dwell in a space where there is no more desire, where
there is no more “I have to have this” or “I have to have that.”
It was very special, I would say.


Celibacy,
well . . . I think that it should not be something that is forced. I think the
attitude of the Church about celibacy is a big mistake, as are teachings that
say you have to be celibate if you want to go on a spiritual path. I think if
it happens as the outcome of the fruit being ripe and falling off the tree,
then it’s the right way because the person has left behind them a full life
of having really understood this, and therefore can help other people. But the
people who repress sexuality because they are on the spiritual path—that’s
very dangerous. Osho often mentioned the example of Gandhi who, until the end
of his life, was obsessed with sexual thoughts and dreams. He finally tried
to sleep between two virgins because he thought that, with their presence behind
and in front of him, maybe it would somehow remove the obsession. If sexuality
just falls away from you in total contentment and in a total “Yes”
from your deepest inner being that this is the right thing for you to do, then
abstinence or celibacy is okay. But if not, if it’s a forced thing because some
outer authority or religious teaching told you that this is the way to go, forget
it. You’re never going to get rid of sexuality. It’s always going to be somehow
or other knocking at your door.


But also
I do see that there is a great advantage to celibacy because you can remove
yourself from the preoccupation with all the mundane things that have to do
with sex and that tend to keep you attached, needy, jealous and so on. If you,
once and for all, don’t bother with it and remove yourself from it, you probably
have a much better chance to focus your energies on spiritual matters. So I
see that as a great possibility, but as I said, it has to happen at the right
time, with maturity.



WIE: Osho taught that the moment of sexual
orgasm is an “energy event” that can be equated with mystical experience.
And a number of traditions equate or relate sexual ecstasy with spiritual bliss.
But another way of looking at it is that this is a false parallel, and that
equating these two conditions is, on the one hand, a sanctification of something
that is actually a physical, biochemical experience, and on the other, a materialization
and reduction of something that really is ineffable. From this point of view,
there may be a danger, on both counts, of not seeing these experiences clearly
for what they are. When you try to bring them together and say they’re the same
thing—



MA: I agree . . . well, I would say it’s a
matter of degree. The level of sexual enlightenment that a person is going to
experience is no different from the level of their personal evolution, their
spiritual evolution, you know. It’s always all linked. Nothing is separate.
For instance, if a person is a first chakra person, they’re concerned
with survival, with how much money they’re going to earn and all that kind of
stuff, and they’re going to have a kind of sexuality that is going to reflect
that. They’re going to have a sexuality where they’re just going to take and
not give. There are as many orgasms as there are stars in the sky!


The keys
are, one, clear the wounds and the shame and the difficulties around sexuality.
Two, learn the skills of blissful loving, which I explain in depth, and learn
how to communicate about your sensations clearly and objectively without shame
or guilt. This in itself is a tremendous learning in intimate sharing. So I
can have my legs spread open and my partner looking at me and learning how to
touch exactly the right part of my clitoris under my own loving guidance until
he does it as well to me as I do it to myself. So I can have complete trust
and let myself go in his hands for an hour or two hours; it becomes a total
meditation and I’m completely relaxed and yet I’m completely aroused at the
same time. This is just such a wonderful way of sharing love. What better can
we give each other?


So this
is already a skill in itself, but we’re not yet at the spiritual level. We’re
approaching. We’ve learned how to clear the wounds. We’ve learned the skills
of love. In the process we’ve learned how to become deeply intimate, more deeply
loving with each other. We’ve learned how to prolong orgasms. The next step
would be to begin the lovemaking process as a ritual, as a prayer in which you
meditate and honor the Divine in your partner. You project the divinity in your
partner and you dedicate your moment of bliss together to the divinity in whatever
form, whatever shape—to the healing of the planet, for instance. In sexual tantric
practice, as I said earlier, you can dedicate your orgasm to the enlightenment
of all beings or to the healing of a person who is sick. It’s your contribution
to the transformation of the planet because we’re all interlinked. And as more
people have orgasms and are cleared sexually, we will reach at some point a
critical mass where more and more people are doing it. And every time one person
is doing it, they heal themselves, and they contribute to the healing of the
whole planet.


So in
a sense, when lovers are doing the higher sexual practices and joining the physical
with the spiritual, they eventually end up in shunyata, which is where
emptiness and form are merged into each other. To achieve that experience with
your beloved, when you join in the physical sense and circulate the orgasmic
pleasure up the spine, you transcend ego, you transcend personality, you transcend
male/female, you transcend everything. You’re exactly in the same place together
as you would be when you are in the deepest meditation on your own. So that’s
it.



WIE: I’ve been thinking about the common
idea in tantra that sexual longing and sexual ecstasy are fundamentally the
same as spiritual longing and spiritual ecstasy. My colleagues and I began to
question whether these two experiences are really the same thing. What is it
that happens in the moment of sexual release that could lead one to the conclusion
that it is identical to a spiritual experience? There’s bliss, peace, release;
there is a quieting of the nagging mind. Then we realized that these experiences
occur in both cases—but for completely different reasons. In spiritual experience,
the ego is in abeyance; it is silent because it is in submission. But in sexual
experience, the ego is temporarily satisfied; the force of “I want”
that is the ego temporarily ceases because it has been satiated. Is it
possible that these two experiences have been confused—that superficially they
may seem similar, but that in fact they are not at all the same?



MA: Well, there’s a misunderstanding in the
question, and I’d like to talk about it. You see, they’re not different, and
I would like to say why. Because you can have a sexual experience that is exactly
this—just the satiation of your ego. However, if it lasts long enough, you will
go beyond that. In other words, you’re not going to be in the same state in
your connection to God when you’ve had a fulfilling lovemaking session that
lasted five hours in which you’ve had nine orgasms as you would be if someone
ejaculated in you after ten minutes. I mean, let’s face it. There are many,
many different levels. Just like there are many levels of realization in someone’s
spiritual practice. They can be blabbering a mantra all their lives, and you
could say they’re just using a crutch to stay asleep. This is not waking up.



So it’s
the same thing with sex. It can be used as a crutch, or it can be used as an
awakening. The misunderstanding is in the level at which you place the sexual
experience. For me, ultimately, if the sexual experience is allowed to move
away from the sex, if the energy is allowed to travel through the fluidity of
the movement of the bodies, through the empowerment of the sun energy radiating
through both beings, through the deep merging, letting go and compassionate
melting of two beings who fully see and understand each other at the moment
of this orgasmic circulation—and beyond that moment, to the expression of their
own truth, to the sound and music of that truth, to seeing their energy as colors
and in visions and patterns that actually enlighten their brains, and then through
releasing the whole thing to the Divine and receiving the blessings of the Divine
in that moment of the tantric practice—then, even though they might be joined
sexually, it becomes something else. They have moved beyond sex, in a sense.
The genitals themselves are just tools that open the door to other dimensions—just
as any other practice or recitation of a mantra or hatha yoga is a tool to open
the door to other dimensions. It’s just that at that level, it’s a very skillful
tool that requires the partners to have already mastered hatha yoga, to have
already mastered in fact my entire book before they can get there. So it’s not
a simple tool. Lovemaking can indeed remain something that is just a fulfillment
of the egoic personality, but it can be something else.



WIE: You’re saying that it can be, but that
it isn’t necessarily.



MA: It can be if the people have reached the
necessary level of understanding, of work, of dedication, of practice. They
have to be already in harmony at all these levels so that they can allow the
energy to flow through without its being blocked by certain knots that have
to be undone first, so that they don’t freak out or all of a sudden have a quarrel.
I mean, there are zillions of things you have to go through before you can achieve
the state of the perfect dimension, the form and the formless merging with each
other. I mean, this is like a high practice!



WIE: The way you’re speaking about it now,
it certainly sounds like a very serious practice.



MA: It is, but I’ll tell you sincerely that
I don’t find the possibility of doing that so often myself. And of the many
partners I’ve had, there have only been certain times, in certain moments, with
most of them where we have reached that level. I would say that being able to
reach that on a constant basis, in the kali yuga [dark age] that we’re
going through, is almost impossible. Because it would require two partners who
are in a commitment to each other that this is a spiritual path that they walk
together, who believe they’re doing God’s will, and who can integrate their
tantric practice and not be very bothered by the demands of the Western world
today. I find the idea that you could possibly be so involved in the world of
work and run a business and be an active teacher extremely difficult. To be
able to fulfill all these multidimensional areas is a tremendous challenge nowadays.
It’s very difficult to create continuity in the tantric practice at the level
that I’m talking about—very difficult. Look around; you won’t see many so-called
tantric teachers who are able to actually maintain it to a level where they’re
able to create a kind of stable, rounded, ongoing harmony in the couple life.
The harmonization of the tantric practice at the depth of which I speak, with
involvement in the world of everyday life is, in this day and age, not supported
at all. You would practically have to retire to a monastery to be able to do
that. Which is what I do periodically when I’m practicing tantra in my apartment.




WIE: It’s interesting to explore this. We’re
talking about crossing the line between a therapeutic approach and a serious
spiritual practice.



MA: The therapy itself works on the level of
the ego, on the wounds and the suffering and the difficulties, until you can
create a certain level of insertion of the person into normal life. That’s how
psychology and therapy are understood today. When you get to that place, that’s
when the spirituality begins.


WIE: Or it can.



MA: It can.



WIE: But the goal of spiritual practice
really means something. It means—



MA: It means a lot of letting go, a lot of
giving things up. For a person who is dedicated to the high tantric practice
at the level I’m talking about, they would have to give up, for instance, concern
with money, concern with success, concern with having a lot of possessions,
concern with spending their entire time in survival.



WIE: The way you’re speaking now makes tantra
sound like a renunciate path.



MA: Yeah. I mean, in a way, it is.



WIE: You’ve been a therapist for many years,
and now you also have a role as a spiritual teacher. Do you see a distinction
between these two roles?



MA: Well, you see, I’ve never been a person
who likes to repeat herself. I’ve been a very creative person who always moves
into new areas, new cultures, new domains and new explorations. And what the
public, the industry, the establishment tends to want is that once you’ve been
successful in one area, you’re labeled and people always want you to deliver
the same thing. But what I’m trying to do is to move ahead in my own personal
evolution. I had a very deep experience last January where everything turned
around 180 degrees, and what seemed to be so important to me before all of a
sudden took on much lesser importance.



WIE: Can you say more about that?



MA: I can’t really, because I’m in the process
and it’s going to take a little while longer. But I’m moving toward a mystical
dimension right now, which is a mystery to me. I have these cycles periodically
where something new is born. But I’m not there yet—it’s just percolating. There
is still a great desire for me to transmit what I’ve created so far to other
people and for other people to teach my work, but I am not considering this
work to be the basis of my livelihood from now until the day I die. In my organization
now, I’m teaching people to function without me. I’m just a consultant, and
I go teach once in a while. I’m the spiritual mother. I’m not attached to all
this. I want this work to happen more and more through other people and less
and less through me, so that I can be occupied with other levels that have more
to do with ecstatic states of consciousness, enlightenment, mysticism. I’m kind
of moving with the times. There’s a lot of that happening actually.


But that’s
not to say that I don’t have anything to do with sexuality. It’s not true. I
just spent four months with my boyfriend in the most insane sexual practices
that lasted up to five hours every other day if not the whole night. We definitely
were totally with God and in God and with the Goddess, and it was the most delightful
thing. It was totally empowering. But now, there’s peace and quiet. He’s gone
to Nepal, and I’m happy to be on my own! It’s like there is a certain detachment,
so if that happens, great. If that doesn’t happen, great. I’m not depending
on it. I am very, very attracted by the mystical dimension right now.



WIE: There are a lot of therapeutic tools
in your books that are very healing and empowering for the individual. And there
is also an emphasis, particularly in The Art of Sexual Magic, on the
idea that it is our birthright to feel ecstatic and to have everything we want—the
house, the car, the boat—we deserve it. Yet I can’t help feeling that
this is basically a materialistic and narcissistic approach that many people
are embracing now and calling a spiritual path. My question is: Isn’t
there a distinction between this kind of popular-spiritual-therapeutic approach
and authentic spiritual practice—in which one is sincerely interested in surrendering
to God, in which one seeks to come to the point where one can genuinely say,
“Thy will be done”? Where it’s not about me and what I
want and how I’m going to get what I want?



MA: I agree, I agree. It’s a very good point.
These books have been a mirror of my own personal evolution. The first one was
the fruit of many, many years of research around the world, teaching in India
and building this organization. In the second one I came to the realization
that when you are in an ecstatic space, you’re in the perfect space into which
you can plant the seed of a new manifestation or new vision. Deepak Chopra talks
about this too. He says you just have to plant a seed when you’re in the “gap.”
At that moment the seed is planted, and then the universe will take care of
the details. And the fact is, you attract certain energies to yourself then.
But the question is: Is this spiritual?



WIE: Exactly. We all do this in one way
or another in our ordinary lives—but is that spiritual?



MA: Yeah, I agree . . . well, it’s a very delicate
matter. I would say that “Thy will be done” is definitely the next
level after that. I say that it all has to do with your degree of personal and
spiritual evolution at any given moment. Everything that you were interested
in before is going to be in your picture—it’s just that you’re going to choose
and discriminate differently. You’re going to be more attracted to “Thy
will be done” than to “Won’t you send me a Cadillac?” or “I’ll
have a big orgasm so I can get more money.” It’s just like all of a sudden
your values shift and things that have been important before are not so important
anymore; your focus and your attention are on the deeper mysteries, which are
what I’m finding myself into right now.



WIE: Profound spiritual experiences are
supposed to diminish, or burn, the ego. The significance of a spiritual experience
would be determined after the experience subsides and you see what has happened
to your pride, your aggression, your selfishness. That’s the point. So my question
is, Do you believe that the experience of sexual ecstasy produces the same effects?
Do experiences of sexual bliss really serve the same function?



MA: Yes and no, yes and no. You can’t just
say that through sexual ecstasy you’re going to reach all these levels. But
if you do sexual tantric practice in the context of other spiritual practice—for
instance, if you do it in a way that includes the body but also includes the
heart, the understanding, the spirit—then you make it complete, you integrate
it into a complete practice, and then I would say yes. Because it quickens the
whole thing, you know.



WIE: So you’re saying that other spiritual
practice has to be included, and then it can work. But if it doesn’t—



MA: Yes. Yes, if it doesn’t, you just get addicted
to having great orgasms and you probably become a very radiant and happy person,
but it doesn’t necessarily take you further.



WIE: This is an emphasis that isn’t very
clear in your books.



MA: It becomes clear in the practice. I had
to find a way of translating what I brought back from India, which was something
that was way beyond the understanding that anybody had. When I arrived here
from my mountaintop, if it hadn’t been for Jeremy Tarcher, who became a kind
of publisher-cum-mentor and helped me to translate all that in ways that could
reach the American public, I probably would have given up or not found a way
to make it accessible for the public, which is, of course, what every publisher
wants you to do. And at the same time, to stay clear with it all.



WIE: So you’ve said that if one is going
to take tantra seriously as a spiritual path, and not just as a form of therapy
or a kind of recreation, then it is a very serious matter. My feeling is that
there’s nothing wrong with presenting modern tantra or sexual magic as a kind
of therapy. But when you present it as a spiritual path, that is something else.
That requires enormous dedication, commitment and sincerity. But the fact is,
not very many people are interested in that. So I keep wanting to clarify what
we’re really talking about here.



MA: Well, wait. I want to stop you. Because
this is one thing that you bring forth a lot, and I would say no. There
are moments in your life when you have to go through that—sacrifice, celibacy,
etcetera. And there are moments when you have to go through the opposite, and
one is not better than the other. That’s so important to recognize. If you’re
pursuing your own enlightenment, your own spiritual growth, then you have to
go in all the areas. You have to go into the hell of darkness. You have to f__
your brains out. You have to play the dandy. You have to get clothes from Christian
Dior. You have to taste the best foods. You have to go into the cave and meditate.
You have to do it all. If you do it to wake up, all of it is good. . . . It
is possible to be a mystic in celebrative garb. And it’s possible to be a fool
who seems to be jumping around and doing silly things and yet be a profound
spiritual teacher.