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Guilt and consciousness cannot co-exist in the same body at the same time.

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The Monthly Aspectarian: Bodhi, you’re primarily known as a tantra teacher although you do other things. Tell us about tantra. What’s your take on it and how did you get involved?

Bodhi Avinasha: I’ve spent the last thirty years being involved, twelve years as a student explorer and eighteen years teaching. Sunyata Saraswati was my mentor, husband, co-teacher and co-author. That’s where it began. We worked together for seven years and at the end of that time we decided to go our separate ways.

Working with these powerful methods that are geared to activate the Kundalini energy, the highest vibration the physical body is capable of holding ... it is consciousness, ultimately, and it does awaken in these practices ... I’m surrounded by people that are just running their kundalini like crazy — it’s wonderful. But if you haven’t cleared your emotions before opening that energy up, it can be devastating physically and mentally. So I feel a real responsibility to people in uncovering their buried issues and bringing them into the light, so the subconscious disappears into the conscious. The repressed becomes integrated. That’s an important part of what needs to be done.

But even before that happens, the first thing I think needs to happen is that the third eye, the vision, needs to be very clear. For that we use a technique called the Cosmic Cobra Breath. This is the basis for the work we do. The technique is used to move orgasmic energy up into the higher chakras in the brain, particularly the third eye, so that you become a very clear witness. Your vision of who you are expands dramatically and then you are able to go back and revisit old issues without getting swamped by them, without the emotional energy carrying you away. That’s the first step. It’s very efficient and very safe. The energies can open quickly because people have been properly prepared. There are a number of irresponsible ways to access that same energy but the results are less than ideal.

TMA: Would the tantra you teach and work with be recognizable to a Tibetan?

BA: We do access Tibetan tradition for some of our methods, but they have quite a different orientation. They use different channels in the body. I’m not an expert on Tibetan tantra. What I know is only hearsay, but my sense is that they’re very committed to finding the void, to leaving the body. It’s how to do conscious dying. It’s how to get off of the wheel of life and death, and seems to be very important in that system. Whereas in the tantra, we know we are very committed to being in the body, being present and finding the ultimate experience as a physical being. As long as you’re here, why not see where you can take that? We can go into the void later.

TMA: Yeah, I have the same problem with Buddhism. As sublime as the teachings are, you have a system where the ultimate goal is to completely lose the self and merge into the void. In my 20s, I was getting off the wheel this time. In my 50s, I’m not the least bit interested.

BA: I see that as real progress. In fact I think that as long as you don’t want to be here you have to stay. It’s one of those little paradoxes, one of God’s little jokes. So we’re very much interested in the body and the joys it has to offer.

TMA: For the whole past 2000 years, we’ve pretty much been taught in all the major religions that the body is a bad thing. That has met with very mixed results. (Laughter.) The whole earthly plane has been viewed as a negative place.

BA: And suffering has been worshipped and rejoiced, whereas pleasure has been totally denigrated.

TMA: What’s that been about?!

BA: I think there are some control issues going on there. If you manage to convince people that their basic instincts are evil, then you’ve got them.

TMA: We’ve been given these magnificent instruments, our bodies, and told not to play them.

BA: Once you truly tap into your sexual energy, you are in your divinity. The need for the various offerings of the church as an intermediary between you and God isn’t there anymore. So it’s a matter of survival. But that’s how it is. I think the teachings were meant to keep people subjugated to domination by the church.

TMA: There’s no question about it, and it’s not just the western church. It’s the Piscean age religions across the board.

BA: We needed that structure for a while, but I like to think that we’ve outgrown that. We’re ready now for people to connect directly with their divine essence. They’re so quick in doing it, it’s just amazing.

TMA: It’s been fascinating to watch over the past thirty years, the information that’s become available in that short time span. It’s just unbelievable. Books like yours were inconceivable in 1970.

BA: We’re blessed to be here at a time when consciousness is absolutely shifting.

TMA: As I look through Tantra Bliss and Jewel in the Lotus, they look pretty explicit, not in a negative sense. You seem to be really showing people how.

BA: It was intended to be so. There are a lot of tantra books that are a bit abstract, that give you some good ideas but don’t tell you what to do. I am absolutely about giving people the step by step, and if you put them in this sequence, they’ll work magically. If you take them out of sequence, they won’t work as well. It’s taken me a long time to figure these things out.

TMA: It’s time for this information, and indeed all of the secret and hidden information, to come out, and it is. What a toy store of a lifetime.

BA: Indeed there are many ways to play. It all becomes a wonderful game. You get to the point where you really know who you are, the whole life drama is really just a game, like a big computer game, and you play. You can really get off on playing and enjoy every minute, but never lose sight of the fact that it’s just a game.

TMA: Let’s take a hypothetical individual or couple, relatively green newbies. They come into the practice as you teach it. What kind of steps do they go through, how does it work?

BA: It has to do with starting to feel their own bodies’ energies, the subtle energies. The first evening, taken through the Ipsalu formula, is activating those energies to tap into the subtle body. Once you’ve done that, then you can easily access the next level. Stilling the mind is the next form. The third part is, within that stillness, activating the sexual energy. If you just get turned on without the stillness, then it’s just another sex ride. It doesn’t really take you anywhere. But if you have quieted the mind, that means that consciousness is present, which it hasn’t been for most people. Most people’s sex life is outside of people’s consciousness because there’s so much guilt involved. Guilt and consciousness cannot co-exist in the same body at the same time.

Then you consciously use muscle contractions and body movements. It is not about another person or just your own activity generating sexual energy. Then that energy is transmuted up into the higher consciousness. Shakti energy, the orgasmic energy is feminine, comes up to meet Shiva and you’re in a great space.

TMA: By what mechanism is the energy pulled upwards?

BA: With the breath, the intention, visualization, the use of Yogic techniques, contractions and mudras that divert energy streams. The whole science of yoga is employed here, though not in a way that the yogis are using it. It’s very simple and it’s something people learn the first weekend.

TMA: People talk about the male orgasm without emission. But if the semen is just going to go into the bladder and come out in the urine anyway, what’s the advantage?

BA: Our system has a “have your cake and eat it too quality.” Many men find that they can go into full-on orgasm without ejaculation, and find themselves already in that amazing and profound experience; in that way they get a full body orgasm rather than a very localized genital experience. For many, they just lose interest in ejaculation. It seems after the fact. But if you want to do it, and once you’ve drawn the energy out, then you can release and you haven’t lost any energy.

The energy either moves up the spine or it moves down the penis. One of the two, you have a choice. If you choose to pull out the energy that way, then that is what your experience is and it’s very limited. If you choose to draw the energy up the spine, then it impacts higher consciousness centers and you have a very expansive experience. But you can have it both ways.

TMA: It’s not that the semen itself is being pulled up.

BA: No, the energy; it’s called Ojas in the tradition.

TMA: This needs to be made clear.

BA: There are traditions that simply say you’re not supposed to ejaculate, and that really hinders people’s sexual activity.

TMA: That’s not quite enough information is it?

BA: But once the energy is withdrawn then it doesn’t matter. You’re recycling the energy, you’re not losing it. Otherwise, as every man knows, once you’ve blown it out, your energy is depleted for a while. You’ve definitely lost something in the process and it takes a while to get it back. That’s not necessary.

Our couple will have gone through the formula find themselves in a place where their hearts are very open, they’re feeling very balanced in their bodies, grounded. For some people that is a new experience because they live in their minds and have very little experience being in their body. They may come down to make love once in awhile and then quickly leave as soon as that’s accomplished.

So they meet each other in this new space and it’s just sweet. There’s an innocence that comes in that’s quite lovely. So while they’re told a few things they can do to make their sexual life work better, that’s not really the main focus. It’s more about finding that balanced, blissful space where consciousness expands and you get to see the truth, instead of your own illusions about what’s going on.

TMA: I was struck by your second step, the silencing of the mind. To me that is the bedrock of all practice.

BA: But there are a lot of people trying to do tantra without doing that first. If you go straight to the arousal ... you can’t get to an ecstatic state from sexuality unless you’ve got the stillness. The mind has to get out of the way for it to work.

TMA: All of sport is about getting the mind out of the way. People talk about being in “the zone.”

BA: It’s another way of saying the same thing. You tap into that infinite wisdom, you know exactly where to go, you are moved by your inner guidance, your inner wisdom. The mind is a useful tool, but most of the time, it’s what you have to get past.

TMA: You also do a training using the voice?

BA: The first thirty years of my life I was totally involved with music — studying, performing and teaching. The next thirty years I spent with the yogic practice. But it began to dawn on me that what I was doing to accomplish the yogic goals were the same things that my singing teachers had been telling me to do to get a good tone. It’s another pathway to access the same situation. People who don’t want to jump in at the sexual level, but love to sing, find that it takes them to the same place. It’s the place where you lose your boundaries, where your voice disappears into the sound of the choir. It’s the same losing of separateness and isolation. It’s a very sweet moment. It’s totally the yogic experience. I use many of the same tools in the Power of Voice weekend as I do in the Yoga training.

TMA: Some people would think of it as a loss of self, but really it’s a discovery of self.

BA: Discovery of a larger self. The ego, the part of you that is made up, a series of beliefs that you constructed and decisions you made, has no reality, but that’s who we think that we are. Your authentic, divine eternal self is a very sweet discovery once you find it. It’s like coming back home. Most people know at a deep level that they are not connected to their real selves and that’s why there’s so much misery in the world. We long for that connection.

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