Sacred Relationship by Design
Extracted from the forthcoming book & The UltiMate Relationship Seminar
By Jeffrey Armstrong (Kavindra Rishi)
The essence of this article is taken from the teachings of India and other ancient cultures who viewed sexuality or the use of our creative ability in a sacred way. These and most all indigenous cultures had a set of sacred teachings, rituals, and very specific rites of passage for both men and women meant to inform and endow them with the knowledge, skills and responsibilities of the use of their various sexual and creative energies. This brief article will act as an introduction to some of the key issues of the sacred use of our reproductive potential. These seminal or seed ideas will be explained in depth in my forthcoming book: The Science of Sacred Sexuality.
Our modern culture or perhaps I should say our lack of culture relating to male and female matters, would amaze, confound and deeply concern any cultured resident of ancient Asia. After all, leaving something as crucial as reproduction to chance experience and providing no real training in this all-important area, is dangerous to the individual, to families and societies. For all of our technological advancement, we still provide no useful education on what it means to have a male or female body and how to care for one another in a healthy way. There is no discussion of the spiritual or religious roots of gender, extreme and unbalanced sexuality is visible in all our media, it is used to manipulate in our advertising and has reached dangerous and unprecedented availability throughout the internet, yet sexual education of any kind remains profoundly lacking.
The first sexual question is a religious or spiritual inquiry… Why do we appear as male and female and what are we supposed to do about our dual nature. The Christian Bible says, “God made man and woman in his image.” Does that mean that the Supreme Being is a He/She or a He and She or a He and the female is a lesser being, a sort of necessary after thought? If we are to believe the later story of Adam and Eve, it looks like Eve is conspiring with Satan in his suspiciously curvy serpent form, while Eve pressures poor gullible Adam to take a bite of the forbidden fruit of sex. Is the man a victim and the woman a perpetrator? Is that our societal view, our real every day experience of men and women? In India and most indigenous cultures, the Supreme Beings are usually depicted as both Male and Female, with us made in their image. Can you see that these views will each lead to a very different approach to sex, nature and family life?
If we take an equally positive view of both the male and female beings, they are both essential and beautiful, yet interestingly opposite poles of life. Sometimes the female energy is described as magnetic whereas the male as electric. She has a vacuum, he is full of himself, she has room for another and so thinks collaboratively in “we consciousness”, whereas he is one-pointed, and often he embodiment of self-hood or selfishness and “I” consciousness. Although opposites attract they equally oppose, so the ancient cultures developed a science for instructing men and women on the Arts of living together with caring affection and respect. Just as importantly, this science taught how to cultivate and care for the male and female beings energetically. In English, we might call this “The Science of Sacred Sexuality”. The goal of this science is to consciously produce life, health, creativity, and procreativity between men and women.
In this approach, instead of a battle of the sexes, we train both men and women in the arts of producing pleasure, health, well-being, culture and love, from their union. At the basis of this unique approach is the world view that each person is at their core, a joyful eternal being. In English “soul” approximates this idea. The Sanskrit word “atma” is even more accurate. In this yogic view, all living being are described as eternal, conscious, and joyful individual spiritual beings. As such, they experience many, many lifetimes within matter and are both male and female (or undecided), often alternating gender from life to life. In this view, we are all Divine Beings, here in the school of matter to learn and experience.
In this view, we are not the body but are instead eternal divine beings, encompassed by the material body, playing the role of male or female. The ancient social view of same sex union was to accept it as the natural result of a difference between one’s psyche and their body. Modern science is also now confirming this. Heterosexuality was considered the ideal but same sex unions were treated as a matter of personal choice and nature, rather than viewed as a punishable moral action. Same-sex partners did not marry but neither were they shunned or punished for their different nature. Heterosexual partners fell into two groups, one married with a view to procreate more humans, and the other partnered in order to co-create by transforming their sexual energy into art, music, painting and other forms of cultural creativity.
This scientific and artistic study of the implications of combining male and female energies is both part of a cosmological view as well as a way of maintaining well-being in the society. The Sanskrit term for this group of sciences is “tantra”. The word tantra means cosmos, Male and Female Divine, and most importantly, the weaving together of a reality within matter. Thus, the ‘ten’ of the English word ‘tension’ comes from the ‘tan’ of ‘tantra’. Intension, attention, retention, and many more states of everyday living are actually tantras. Among these, the art of combining male and female humans is a very important tantra for the peace and well-being of our planet.
To give an example of tantra, we humans are supposed to progress from one stage of life to another through rites or rituals of passage which are proceeded by sacred learning about who we are and how to live, given by wise elders in our society. Currently our societies big three rites of passage are driving, drinking alcohol and graduation from high schiool. Sex and the transistion to adulthood are often consigned to the back seat of a car and are universally unguided and without sacred meaning. Marriages are conducted with great fanfare (and expense), filled with high ideals and expectations but with no training or instruction. The result is our “till death do us part” vows result in a 60% divorce rate, single parent families and untold suffering to children, what to speak of the consequences to society. All of this because we give no training in how to please each other, care for each other, or maintain each other’s health and well-being. This ‘tantra’ of marriage and procreation is sadly entirely missing. The tension is there, but learning to maintain the right tension is not.
A second kind of sexual tantra is the unmarried artistic variety. According to their destiny, temperament or preference, some souls are not meant to marry or procreate in their current birth. Instead, they will choose a succession of intimate connections for creative and artistic purposes. In either case, humans need companionship and intimacy and need to be taught how to be intimate without causing harm to others. Our sexual energy is the greatest power in nature and must be used responsibly and without causing harm, weather it is used as an engine to make more humans or as a force to create pleasure, art and culture. We must become refined through knowledge, in order to reshape our “animal” nature and selfish “human” nature into a divine sexuality that actually “makes love” be more abundant in the world.
This is even more difficult and necessary with our modern “nuclear” family of just one man and woman or a couple and their children. The extended families of past societies provided companionship, baby-sitters, same-sex support, and a variety of necessary human contact. Whereas, our modern families are often two people constantly thrown together, which leaves little room for error or misunderstanding. Any opposition in such a tight environment becomes difficult and painful, is easily fragmented and usually spills over onto the children in a harmful way. Since the male and female energy we embody have many opposite skills and tendencies, it takes much learning to cooperate in such a close living situation, so we don’t harm each other by misunderstanding each other’s skills and needs.
One example of these fundamental gender differences is visible in the very physical structure of the male and female sexual energies. The ancients observed that both men and women are weakened by the constant loss of their sexual energies. Women loose energy during their menstrual cycle and men through orgasm with ejaculation. While women only have their moon cycle once a month, men can ejaculate as many as three times a day. This means that men can be drained and weakened by sex or masturbation and can cause great physical and psychological harm to themselves by what appears to be a “normal” process of seminal loss. This is the cause of the “roll over and go to sleep” snydrome in men. In fact, the sexual scientists of ancient cultures developed techniques for men that allow them to have an orgasm without ejaculating their sperm and thus loosing energy. After acquiring this skill, a man can make love with his partner at length, have frequent orgasms and not loose his vital energies to seminal emissions. Without this learning, a man often comes to unconsciously resent the draining of his energies from regular sexual connection with his partner, causing him to “lose interest” which eventually harms their intimate relationship.
For women the situation is different. Orgasms, even with the release of fluids are healthy and healing for women. Of course, either gender can develop unhealthy obsessions or lose themselves in the pleasures of sex and avoid the tension of consciously moving the sexual energies upward, or sublimating them into creative and spiritual pursuits. Women can also learn techniques that allow them to skip their monthly periods, preserving the energies that would otherwise be lost. Because the female body is much more complex than the male, her refinement and potential for physical pleasure is much hgher. The ancients viewed the female body as refined instrument, like a violin or sitar. In the hands of an expert and well-trained player, the pleasure potential present in a woman’s body can be fully released bringing well-being, health, and extreme ecstatic experiences for both partners, that hint at and direct us toward the pleasures of our true spiritual nature.
This is the ecstatic art of sexual healing which is the PHD program within the Sexual Science of Tantra. It is as much an art as a science and requires yogic practice, a mastering of one’s emotions, a study of energy science and a very mature and reverent attitude toward the Divine mystery at the center of human intimacy. Together, a man and woman can learn to cooperate with the Divine Beings who conduct the forces of nature and in their presence taste the nectar of a higher, a more refined intimacy than is possible in the animal or human forms of sexual expression. Just as humans are idealistically hoping to meet their “soul mate”, so that wish can be achieved through learning the “Art of SOUL mating”.
In this brief article, we can only hint at the profound subject of perfecting the creative potential of human intimacy. For those in family life, this knowledge will ensure that they understand how to live harmoniously together for generations, cooperating and setting an example for their children of living parents who mirror the male and female Divine as inspiring role models. For those in co-creative relations, it will allow them to harness their sexual energies to create beauty and inventiveness without harming themselves with undisciplined sexual expression. The sister science to this Tantra of Intimacy is the Tantra of Vedic Astrology or Jyotish. Through Vedic Astrology, it is possible to see the various inner levels of compatibility between two potential partners. Through this science, the astrologer looked within at our karmas and could combine two souls/atmas in partnership, whose journey of life and desires for growth would be compatible. Consulting a qualified Vedic Astrologer should be the prelude to all intimate partnering. All this and much more is the legacy of the ancients and the much needed science of sacred sexuality where two in one and one in two becomes a joyful reality.
Jeffrey Armstrong is an internationally known master Teacher of Eastern Wisdom, with degrees in History & Comparative Religion, Psychology and Literature who travels globally teaching the Philosophy & Lifestyle of Yoga to corporations, yoga studios, universities and ashrams around the world. He also offers a seminar called The UltiMate Relationship based on the advanced principles of yoga/tantra. Author of The Spiritual Teachings of the Avatar, Karma: The Ancient Science of Cause & Effect, and numerous other books on Eastern and Yogic philosophy.
For information on the next UltiMate Relationship Seminar go to: https://www.jeffreyarmstrong.com/event/ultimate_level-1/
