Tantra Yoga

By Christopher Gladwell
In the beginning she rested as Shakti, the formless unmanifest,
floating like a golden egg on the ocean of the silent, still and
eternal Void.
Endless and awesome power spontaneously flickered within her as
she as both latent and undifferentiated continued to rest,
containing within herself the power seeds of all universes and all
time.
Spontaneously she explodes into manifestation as she flowers into
the evolved cosmos of separate vibrant dancing parts, then slowly
reaching the completion of full blossoming withdraws herself back
into her centre in the process of dissolution or pralaya.
Throughout all of eternity, like cosmic day and night the
multiverses alternately expand into energy and matter and resolve
back into herself as primal energy, the hiryanagharba.
Within her great heart rest her glorious forms of Maha Lakshmi, Ma
Kali and Ma Saraswati. These radiant energies seen and worshipped
as goddess also represent the flow and stages of energetic
transformation.
Maha Lakshmi the great goddess of abundance and life’s flow
represents matter, form and the energy of inertia (tamas); Ma Kali
the dark destroyer represents movement and absolute
transformation, this dynamism is also called rajas; The serene
grace, creativity and absolute knowledge of Ma Saraswati
represents the subtle and refined energy of sattva, all three
weaving in a balance of harmony that is life, with the Sattvic
energy of Ma Saraswati being the closest to the awesome energy of
the divine Shakti that life can manifest as.
In manifestation Shakti’s three forms both create, sustain and
destroy as they permeate the whole cosmos, woven through the
heart of all energy, all matter and all of life.
This universe as we know it rests in, unfolds from, is and returns to
her awesome heart.
From the Sabdabrahman or soundless sound reflected in the human
heart chakra as anahata, the un-struck sound, arises the causal
sound or Nada as the vibration of undifferentiated wisdom and
intelligence that sparks into evolution this cosmic unfolding.
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From this vibration of OM arises a deep primal shudder running
through the resting equanimity of Shakti and rajas magnificently
arises and the process of manifestation begins.
Out of this cosmic vibration and consequent movement Shakti splits
into two fields of force that are ‘being’. These two fields of force are
Nada and Bindu.
Bindu is the male pole and is represented by Shiva, the God of
Love, Transformation, Death, Lord of the animals and Lord of Yogis.
This centrifugal ground of being as pure consciousness is the centre
from which Nada operates.
Nada is feminine, Prana Shakti, and as vibration expands outward
in centripetal flow, in her feminity she is nature, flowing and
changing, unfolding the manifest million forms of this universe, all
dancing their dances of life and death.
This polar duality within unity provides the forces of magnetism,
gravity and levity that holds together the phenomenal worlds in
their states of vibrating molecules.
Cosmic evolution flowing from the Super-conscious, un-moving,
beyond knowing and un-manifest, into the unconsciousness and
consciousness of the moving, knowable, sensorial and manifest
universe that we call reality.
The journey of the individual in Tantra Yoga is a stepping into
greater awareness and through this greater consciousness.
From greater consciousness moving into the subtlety of Sattva
where one can begin to sense, perceive and begin to know the
beyond the beyond, touching into the truth of our own existence as
original super-consciousness.
This deep inward journey, this inward mountain to climb is always a
return from perceived separation to that source which is in our
hearts, reflected as a balance of Shiva and Shakti with the upward
and downward triangles in Anahata (heart) chakra of the six
pointed star.
In Tantra Yoga, since all is a facet of the divine there can be no real
impurity. Impurity is only relative to the perceiver, what is impurity
for one is food to another, all is originated in super-consciousness,
all is super-consciousness, all returns to super-consciousness.
Since impurity is relative, we use this relativity to explore our
attitudes and tendencies to split the universe into good and bad,
right and wrong. Whilst resting in this exploration we also move
into greater awareness and resting in the subtle energies of
Sattvas.

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This apparent paradox is a journey that involves the horizontal
expansion and inclusion of everything as divine, such that every
event, every experience can then become grist to the mill, an
opportunity for greater and endless awakening into eternal super-
consciousness.
At the same time moving into greater refinement of energy we rise,
rising is then both transcending and including. Inner vertical lift
does not distance us from the earth, from nature, from life in all its
manifestations, it allows us to continue our horizontal expansion of
inclusion, our expansion into resolution of our pathological splitting
of the world until we more deeply experience everything as divinity,
until we more deeply accept our historical dualistic distortions and
rise, through expansion and inclusion into the freedom of our true
nature as super-consciousness.
The meanings of the word Tantra include weaving, liberation
through expansion and technique.
The weaving is that of recognising and knowing the strands of
tamas, rajas and sattva and choosing to be the weaver and the
woven not merely the woven.
Liberation through expansion is the expansion and inclusion and
transcendence that is said to be so dangerous. Dangerous because
engaging in the processes of the world, of the market place, of
sexuality can easily lead us astray into mere hedonism and greed if
not balanced with refinement and Sattva. This is often likened to
licking honey off a razors edge.
The techniques are those that create parameters within which we
can then experience greater subtlety, greater energetic experience,
greater expansion and ultimately a greater experience of both
unconditional love and divine wisdom.
All Tantric Yoga ultimately enhances and expands our experience of
Love.

The first practices of Tantra Yoga include Yoga asana practice as

initiated by the Lord of Yogis Shiva (consciousness) and re-initiated
through his re-incarnation as the great Tantric master Adinath.
Adinath taught Matsyendranath who taught Gorakshanath. These
famous Tantric masters of the Nath lineage formulated many
practices and techniques to assist the knower to step into greater
wisdom and love.

Yoga asana and breath development are the first of these.

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Remembering Tantra can mean weaving and technique, the deeper
experiences of being body-mind as life, and both understanding
experientially the weaving of muscle and bone; breath, emotion
and mind; sinew and sensation give us an opportunity for
awakening through literal and metaphorical expansion as we work
in our asana and breath practices.
Tantra as liberation or awakening through expansion is different to
the ascetic practices of denial of body and body function, abstention
from bodily function and denigrating these functions through belief
in purity and impurity.
Tantra as technique, is the way teachers outline parameters within
which the students as ‘knowers’ then engage with and explore,
experiences in their own mind and body as both the process and
products of their exploration.

Tantra also uses Mantra as a prime tool.

Mantra meaning both mind-expansion and mind-protection is a
means of both sonic and vibratory practice that can assist us to
focus, concentrate upon and free ourselves from our own limited
neurological patterns, patterns that are our conditioning.
The expansion is into greater recognition of miraculous unified
reality and possibility. The protection is from our own mundane
small mindedness, our capacity to split our awareness and project
our difficulty onto others, our refusal to take personal responsibility
and our denial of the total awesomeness of life.
Mantra is the use of very specific vibratory patterns to free the
limited small-mind into the greater and more expansive awareness
of Big-Mind. Traditionally a teacher will empower a mantra and
then initiate the student into its use, this personal transmission
being considered as highly important in terms of enabling the
effectiveness of the vibratory pattern in its appropriateness for that
individual.

Tantra also uses Yantra as its tool. Yantras are geometric, often
colourful, diagrams that represent the sacred geometric movement
from the source through the bindu or seed into manifestation. This
representation through symmetrical centred patterns using circles,
triangles and squares is a map of the movement of Shakti in
creation flowing from one-point (bindu) into the first possible
enclosure of space the triangle and from there into the wide circles
of possibility before manifestation in the square of the earth
element.

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Different Yantras represent different feminine and masculine
energies, many of the various forms of the Yantra are actualisations
of very specific energies and are used as powerful tools with which
to affect the environmental space of the practitioner.
Yantra used as a tool for concentration also deeply affects the inner
space of the practitioner as those energies within are engaged by
this symbolism, explored and liberated.
Tantra Yoga also uses visualisation practices as a means to
cultivate awareness and concentration. Visualisations focused on
development are therapeutic tools to free the practitioner int
greater potential. Visualisations such as some of those of
Martsyendranath are highly erotic and serve to initiate the
practitioner into awareness and experience of their energetic
experience helping to embody and actualise this experience. Of
course ultimately all these techniques serve to remind us of our
existence as divinity, as super-consciousness playing itself as us, as
a means to more deeply experience the unconditional love and
awesome wisdom of our true nature .

Tantra Yoga uses the focus of one pointed concentrated mind

(dharana) to deepen the capacity to pay attention and from here to
step beyond limiting conceptual frames into greater freedom of
awareness.

Tantra Yoga uses massage as a means of connecting to our

energetic experience and that of others, as a means of exploring
loving relationship, listening, sharing and the giving and receiving
of love and pleasure and .

Tantra Yoga recognises the eternal dance of all of life, of form and
emptiness and uses the practices of spontaneous movement, dance
or asana to deeply know this and play in this experience of being
and becoming.
The dance is also the counterpoint of the linear Yoga asana practice
and unfolds the tensions of perceived or felt separation into greater
spaciousness, greater expansion and greater love and acceptance.
It also allows us to deeply trust the innate wisdom manifesting as
body-mind as it unfolds itself in the dance.

Experiencing oneself as spaciousness and possibility, knowing one

self as empty of mental concept, as empty of separate inherent

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existence, the whole of life becomes the play of practice and
presence with no outcome and no goal.

Sitting in sacred silence, one just sits, there is nothing to be

attained that is not already here, sitting merely rests us more and
more deeply in this spacious presence.
Awakening or enlightenment cannot have a beginning, if it did it
would not exist as such, it would be a temporary state like sadness
or conditioned joy. Also it cannot have form, it is no-thing so it
does not exist as anything with intrinsic nature, it just is. Since ti
just is, it is also the ground of nature, the ground of who we are.
Awakening or enlightenment is who we are; it is always present.
Sometimes experienced through dualistic distortion we know it as
suffering and dissatisfaction, as struggling with change, sometimes
we know it as boundless joy, love, wisdom and ease. As we practice
we experience more and more fully the boundless joy, love, wisdom
and ease as we unfold into who we already and always were.

Sacred sexuality may also be used as a playfulness and tool to rest

in deeper presence, yet like licking honey off the razors edge, such
practices can easily drop beings into greater egoic belief in their
own power, their own magic, their own strength. It can lead to
greater form addiction and bliss addiction rather than recognising
from as emptiness and emptiness as form and recognising bliss and
struggle as the same illusion.
In truth, from a place of ‘realised emptiness’, power, strength and
magic are all possible manifestations of love and wisdom and
merely flow as functions of the all pervading divinity. They rest
exclusively in no-one and belong exclusively to no-one. So as no-
one we may freely play with licking honey off the razors edge.
Tantra Yoga is a means to bring into everyday presence, into the
marketplace, into the home, into the whole world the super-
conscious.

Christopher Gladwell
Christopher teaches the various aspects of Tantra Yoga on his
retreats, the foundations are asana, breath, free dance, massage
and silent sitting.

www.radikalfreedom.com