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Questions: Love, Sexuality, Fidelity

How do I reconcile this sphere of spontaneity—which really speaks to me and appeals to me—with the life of a woman who lives in society, has a relationship, wants children; who out of necessity must have plans and carry them out; who feels happy with a man she loves; and for whom fidelity is important? Can I live this sphere of immense openness you talk about and be a “normal” woman, so to speak? How does a Tantric master or an aspiring tantrika live? How do I live out the sexual desire that I can feel for other women and men?

This is a very interesting question, because it troubles a lot of people. We often think—and I admit that I was the first to do so—this path is too absolute to be lived in the usual social setting. I thought that in order to realize his practice, a tantrika had to live alone, to be completely available. As Abhinavagupta says, “In Tantrism, nothing is advised, nothing is forbidden.” The ideal of the Tantric masters is precisely to blend themselves into society, not to be obvious. No marks, no disguises, no isolation. Most Kashmiri masters are married and lead family lives. This is their usual situation and is also the meaning of the word Kula, the name of a school of Kashmiri Shaivism. Kula means “Tantric family.” Yoginis and yogis live in a more isolated way, as was the case with my master Devi, who taught only one person at a time. The personal relationship is so important to the Kashmiri masters that they do not even have ashrams. They teach in the familial setting. Disciples live in the master’s and her family’s house, and the family takes them under their wing. Sometimes disciples live next door in a village house. Tantrikas are women and men who fill a role in society. They work, they plan, they meet their objectives. Their quest is completely inner. No one suspects they are tantrikas. They are indistinguishable from anyone else. The masters follow the same line of conduct. There are some great Tantric masters who are known by only a few people, so discreet are their lives. One of them spent his life as a beggar in front of the central post office in Bombay. That was his role. At night he received a few disciples. Nisargadatha Maharaj sold “beedies”—little Indian cigarettes made from rolled eucalyptus leaves—and taught while serving his customers, who sometimes became his disciples. It is interesting to see that, often, yoginis and yogis live with a partner. We have many examples of historic masters who followed the teachings of a yogini. They lived and practiced together, sometimes for their whole life, like Naropa and Nigouma, or like Saraha with the arrow-making yogini. Abhinavagupta, in the first stanza of the Tantraloka, pays homage to the family:

Immortal family, unequaled, made from the lightning-flash emission of a couple’s union, formed by the father whose body is plenitude and whose five faces house all the splendor, and by the mother whose radiance, in ever-renewing emissions, is founded on the pure creative power of energy, how completely my heart blazes!

A little farther on, he pays homage to one of his numerous masters: “Glory to Sambhunatha, unique being, accompanied by his beloved. . . .” A few stanzas later:

Abhinavagupta teaches this doctrine, he who is made to blaze with the veneration . . . that he gives to the successive masters and to start at Bhattanatha’s lotus feet and those of the Bhattarika, the venerable lady, his partner.³⁶

In the texts, perfected Shaktis who share their life with another master are not passed over in silence.

It should be understood that to live as a tantrika has nothing to do with a rejection of society or a rejection of the ties that exist between men and women. Everything happens at a more subtle, refined level. Obviously, life in society does not happen without planning and without meeting necessary objectives. What Tantric “work” will lead you to discover is a growing intimacy with what you are in reality, how the society of cells and organs is organized within you, how this society is animated by movements and actions, by corporality, by thoughts, desires, and emotions.

Remember, all we do is observe and understand what is. Therefore, if you have a family life, you observe yourself and understand yourself in this setting. If you live alone, you gain an intimacy with that setting. The spontaneity that will slowly make its home in you will lead you to discover life as it is. From your own reality everything will unfold, spreading spherically around you. Presence will change your relationships with those you are close to, as well as those you work with. How much more you listen to others will increase in proportion to how much more you listen to yourself.

Presence generates harmony, which is what a family needs. By being present, you will offer freedom to those you are close to as well as to yourself. When we talk about naked awareness, void of intentionality, this does not mean we make no plans; it means we let things establish themselves in their true space, without diverting them by intentionality, which closes off both ourselves and other people. We are present and, in this presence, we allow others to live out their own fundamental freedom to be present themselves. To live as a couple in this way is a never-ending and marvelous practice.

Fidelity, which worries many people, is not a problem. The more fully you live, the more desire will find itself in constant tremoring vibration, with or without an object. This tremoring will come from you, from your consciousness, from your heart, and will shower down both on those close to you and on those you meet. Even those sitting near you on the bus will benefit from it.

And as you drink more and more from your own fountain-source, dissatisfaction will cease to exist, as will outer demands, because it is the whole of life that brings you this loving tremoring. There is no longer something missing to make up for; it is the unrestrained intensity of your desire that fulfills you now, and no longer the ideas of possessing, of seducing, of filling a void, of feeding your dissatisfaction.

Curiously, you will see that the more incandescent your desire, the less it will turn toward objects of desire, because it no longer needs them to mask incompletion. This is what the tantrikas experience and know, and this is what is so misunderstood by those who see Tantrism as a quest for ego-tied sexual satisfaction.

The fact of becoming free by finding completeness will enable you to have unusual relationships with other people—that is to say, truly warm and sensual relationships that involve the whole body-mind and that escape all classification. These relationships will lead you to discover that with each true look, with each profound contact of your relaxed and easeful body, you will receive and transmit the teaching: a peaceful, sensually nourishing, authentic human presence.

Your desire will therefore pour out in a new, continuous way. There will no longer exist an accumulation of energy that can find calm only in orgasmic release. You will enter into a sphere in which you will be unceasingly in the process of making love, and enjoying immense pleasure, coming, with the whole world—which leaves hardly any room for what we call “affairs.” You will live the Great Affair, the one that never ends. That is the life of an aspirant, of a tantrika, of a yogini, of a master.