Tantra (a Sanskrit word which means "woven together") is a term loosely applied to several divergent and even contradictory schools of Hindu yoga in which the sexual union of male and female is worshipped either in principle or in human practice. It has also come to be applied to sex-based religious practices developed in other religions, including Bon, Tibetan Bhuddism, Taoism, Christianty, Judaism, and Transcendentalism.
Pre-Hindu tantra: Shaktiism and Shaivism
Perhaps the earliest strand of tantra yoga, derived from the Dravidian,
pre-Hindu religion of Shaktiism (worship of the goddess in her numerous
forms), focuses on yoni puja, a ceremony honouring the vulva -- either
of a statue or a living woman. Depending upon the school of study, this
puja may involve making offerings of food and liquids while chanting prayers
or it may involve the deliberate sexual arousal of a woman who is believed
to embody or personify the deity. A related thread of tantra yoga that derives
from Shaivism (the worship of the god Shiva, which predates the syncretistic
religion now known as Hinduism) has at its center linga puja, a ceremony
honouring the penis, often in the form of a natural upright stone.
Contemplative yoga as an influence on tantra
One major strand of Hindu tantra yoga centers on meditation. Allied to non-sexual
meditative schools of yoga, such as hatha yoga (the yoga of body posture)
and bhakti yoga (the yoga of devotion), this contemplative school of teaching
advocates a fairly non-sexual approach to sex religion, in which visualization
of a deity, chanting of a mantra, and concentrating on iconographic symbols
are the foremost activities. A highly attenuated form of yoni puja
is sometimes encountered in this school, with the practitioner meditating
upon a yantra or iconographic image -- often a downward-pointing triangle
-- that symbolizes the vulva of the goddess.
Kundalini yoga as an influence on tantra
Some Hindu tantra yoga teachers recommend practices that may include meditation
but also share elements with kundalini yoga, in which subtle streams of
energy of thought to be "raised" in the body by means of conscious
posture and strenuous breath control. Most teachers in this school of tantra
advocate the retention of semen as a prerequisite for spiritual advancement,
although they differ on how much sexual arousal it is good to provoke while
retaining semen -- and few have anything at all to say about a possible
female counterpart to semen retention as a spiritual path.
Hindu "right hand" and "left hand" path tantra
yoga
Best known to Westerners are the several strands of tantra yoga in which
worship services take the form of a sexual ritual featuring slow, non-orgasmic
intercourse as a prelude to an experience of the divine. This broad category
of tantric sex ritualism, which derives from the pre-Hindu religions of
Shaktiism and Shaivism, has in turn produced two schools of practice: The
"right hand path" is one in which the ritual is more or less seen
as a monogamous rite or may be allied to the yoni puja of Shaktiism,
while the "left hand path" is one in which dozens -- or hundreds
-- of couples may engage in the ritual sex act at the same time, sometimes
following the lead of a pair of teachers. This latter path is the one that
has earned tantra yoga the reputation of being orgiastic and even "satanic"
among thse who are ignorant of its history or prejudiced against sexuality.
Tibetan Buddhism and pre-Buddhist Bon forms of tantra
A modified verion of pre-Hindu tantrism can be found in contemporary Tibetan
Buddhism, where it seems to be a blend of pre-Buddhist goddess worship mingled
wih influences from the ancient Tibetan animist religion known as Bon. Like
Hindu tantra, Tibetan Buddhist tantra encompasses schools of practice that
range from the meditational to the sexually active.
Taoist tantric alchemy
That other great Asian religion, Taoism, has its own tantric schools, each
with a different view of the role of sexual activity in the life of the
aspirant. One strand of Taoist tantra is called tantric alchemy, and, like
Western alchemy, it places a certain amount of emphasis on the search for
immortality or at least long life. Presumeably influenced by the male-centered,
kundalini-derived forms of Hindu tantra, Taoist tantric alchemy involves
breath and muscle control and emhasizes the retention of sperm as proof
of spiritual attainment. Other Taoist tantra teachers, working out of a
paradigm that seems to be derived from Shaktiism, claim that Lao Tzu, the
founder of Taoism, was in fact advocating a form of yoni puja or
worship of the vulva when he wrote about "the valley spirit."
Judeo-Christian tantra: karezza et al
Going still farther afield, the term tantra is frequently -- for the sake
of convenience -- applied to Western religious or spiritual practices in
which slow, non-orgasmic sexual union or masturbation creates a path to
the experience of spiritual ecstasy. Some of these Western practices arose
during the 19th century, apparently by spontaneous discovery -- although
one American popularizer of Western sacred sex is known to have travelled
to India to study Hindu tantra yoga. Each "discoverer" gave his
or her system a unique name -- the Reverend John Humphrey Noyes preached
the doctrine of MaleContinence A. E. Newton wrote of The Better Way, Alice
Stockham pioneered Karezza, Paschal
Beverly Randolph advocated The Anseiratic Mysteries, Thomas Lake
Harris practiced a form of breath-eroticism as well as non-corporeal sexual
union with beings from other dimensions, Stockham's student John William
Lloyd coined the term Magnetation, and Stockham herself published George
N. Miller's novel, "Strike of a Sex," in which he described the
fictional but Karezza-like "Zugassent's Discovery." While these
Western spiritual practices share certain common sexual techniques with
traditional Hindu tantra yoga, most of them fit conventiently into Christian,
Jewish, or Transcendentalist conceptual frameworks, obviating the need for
the practioner to adopt a culturally "foreign" religion.
Sex ritualism: a biological appraoch to the sacred
The sexual rites of tantra yoga and its Western counterparts form the basis
for orthodox religious worship services and are at the core of the personal
spiritual paths of countless individuals. This has been true for millennia
and continues to be the case to this day, despite the persecution of sexuality
in most modern civilizations. In my opinion, the reason that such strikingly
similar sexual rituals have arisen spontaneously in different eras and places
-- and the reason they so easily cross socio-cultural boundaries -- is that
sex worship itself is rooted in the neurological hard-wiring of the human
body; because it is something which, when practiced correctly, allows the
participants to experience what seems to be -- what IS, for all intents
and purposes -- the presence of deity in the person of the sex partner.