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The Sexual Ritual, Maithuna, and the Path of the Left Hand

During Tantric gatherings in Kashmir, the adepts who practice the sexual ritual are placed to the left of the master, the others to his right—hence the expressions path of the left hand and path of the right hand. But because they are seated in a circle, there comes a moment when the left is no longer different from the right. By extension, those who practice the three Ms—that is, consume meat (mamsa) occasionally, ingest alcohol or hallucinatory substances (madya), and practice sexual union (maithuna)—are considered practitioners of the left hand. But more generally, it can be said that an authentic master practices with the entirety of what is; even without having received the sexual transmission, she can be considered a practitioner of the left hand once intense emotions and feelings are integrated into the path. Even the most gentle master will occasionally be a master of the left hand when the disciple must be made to confront fundamental fear.

When I was face to face with Devi, I had the constant feeling that she was overjoyed with the whole spectrum of human possibilities—and that her initiation called upon both paths, sometimes even within the space of a few seconds. This is the manner in which I strive to transmit the teachings.

Fundamentally, these divisions are the divisions of the puritan academics, who use this duality to condemn the path of the left hand. These divisions do not correspond to reality. Most Tantric masters consider themselves practitioners of the path of the left hand, even those who live in chastity.

The maithuna ritual has made a lot of ink flow, and rare are the Westerners who have received initiation into it by an authentic master. As I received it, this initiation—you may come to understand it by reading Abhinavagupta’s texts—is one of the tremoring vibration of all the senses, which return through it to their home, consciousness. For us, there is no difference between a sexual, genital relationship and the sensory relationship that we enter into with the reality that is all around us. What the masters call the Great Union sometimes refers to the sexual union, as is the case in stanzas 69, 70, and 71 of the Vijnanabhairava Tantra, but often the Great Union refers to the union of the sensory mass with the world, as is stated in the Vatulanatha Sutra: “The Great Union proceeds from the unification of the senses with their objects.”⁴⁷ For the tantrika, activity does not lead to consciousness but proceeds from it and returns to it after having united itself with the object. Nothing comes from the outside.

Consciousness flows like a spring toward the world, comes into deep contact with it, at its incandescent and tremoring core, and returns to consciousness in continuous circulation. Maithuna is the recognition that this freedom has already been attained by the aspirant and that the fruits of the yoga are ripe. In absolutely no case is it a ritual in the sense of a magic act that would allow a taste of a state of plenitude lacking in us beforehand.

In order to aspire to initiation, it is necessary to have realized that desire does not know how to, cannot, be satisfied by an object, and that incandescence is what remains when the desire for something has been consumed. To celebrate this state of abandon, the master gives (or not) the initiation or the transmission of maithuna once the disciple has joined him in completeness. If something is lacking, there is no initiation. Tremoring and continual samadhi is the narrow doorway into maithuna, because the union symbolizes the prior union of the tantrika with the universe.

Besides, many masters give it through the gaze, a lucid dream, nongenital contact, the voice, or the mind. Sexuality is not the only means of access; it is equal to all other manifestations of sensorality, one site of consciousness. What is more, out of 120 or 130 Vijnanabhairava Tantra practices, only 4 concern maithuna, which shows to what extent sexuality, in our usual sense of the word, is integrated into the whole.

Practically speaking, there is an abandon to the profound breath, which eliminates any difference between master and disciple; at this point identity is celebrated by the Great Union. Then orgasm no longer needs the release of ejaculation, because the tantrika has integrated feminine energy. Moreover, a woman who is not open to the world is considered energetically a man by the tantrikas. At the energetic level, there is therefore only woman, the presence of Shakti.

The Tantric ideal is that of integration of the male-female duality with plenitude. Shiva is often represented as a hermaphrodite. It is of utmost importance to really understand that consciousness is not unveiled by sudden fits or any use of energetic exercises, agitation, gesticulations, pseudoshamanic dances, and other popular tidbits of “doing” in what is sold in the West under the name of Tantra—but, rather, by the slow and gentle emergence of objectless love, which calmly waits for us to stop pursuing the unattainable.

Seekers, at a deep level, do not long for sexual union with the one they follow but for the unveiling of the Self. Sexual desire for the master, which I experienced intensely, is only one beautiful stage of the abandonment of attachments; this desire must be passed through skillfully without stops along the way, and moving on to the act with a disciple on the path of completeness is the most serious of all the stops. When there are neither taboos nor puritanism, nor thirst for power, nor aspirations to be a master, nor limit, there is no moving on to the act: Everything is only harmony, grace, and spontaneity. Devi allowed me to live this total incandescence, and that is the splendor of maithuna.

If most authors circle around the question of the “secret” ritual of the Great Union without succeeding in offering a very clear image of it, this is simply because they lack experience and because, without this experience, it is difficult to navigate the jungle of texts, often written in allusive or symbolic language. The Tantras themselves are not always of much help and give rise to multiple interpretations.

In the reality of initiation, once the well-established practices of the yoga of presence, and when the presence of samadhi—or “pure presence to reality,” as certain Tantric masters define it—are attained, the preparatory work toward sexual initiation can take place. It unfolds in several stages and differs for men and for women.

This fairly long training is based on awareness of the previously unconscious physical processes. It involves penetrating this unknown territory of intense enjoyment, of coming, in a series of subtle, refined methods. From the moment this consciousness finds its home in us during regular sexual relations, particular exercises are implemented in order to arrive at yogic ecstasy.