Sotantar Simrat Singh – Sun Gong

I listened to this all morning. Love it. (Not laying down for the proper “gong bath” experience, but lovely none the less.)

(via Arthur)

“Tantra is the original ‘holistic’ way of life, yoking body, mind and spirit into living life as a whole. Polarities of good and evil, pure and impure, matter and spirit are done away with as unnecessary barriers to a direct experience of cosmic consciousness. With great finesse, tantra uses material reality for spiritual unfoldment. Lets play an associative game. What is the first thing that comes to your mind when you hear the word ‘Tantra’? If you aren’t a practitioner or scholar or one who has delved into Tantra, chances are you will think ‘black magic’, ‘human sacrifice’, ‘skulls and bones’. You will also probably experience an adrenaline rush that screams, “Danger ahead. Run!”

This ‘fight or flight’ response to Tantra among most of us in urban India is not surprising. Ghastly news reports of criminal activities like murder and rape by so-called ‘tantriks’ are frequent, as are old wives’ tales of black magic where the villain is invariably an evil ‘tantrik’. Bollywood films and TV serials that portray tantriks as bizarre, crazy and villainous have reinforced this negative image. So that to a lot of us, Tantra feels like a cross between voodoo, the occult, and sorcery—bad stuff done by evil people.

For our counterparts in the West, the association is slightly different. Westerners who are ‘into’ eastern forms of spirituality have at some point or another heard of Tantra, and nine times out of ten, it has been in the context of sex. If one Google searches for ‘tantra’ on the internet, an overwhelming majority of websites that turn up on the computer screen promise ‘sacred sex’ and offer steamy pictures of acrobatic sexual positions. So what is Tantra, really? What best describes its practices—sex or sorcery? Since reality is never black or white but most often a synthesis of the two, there are several layers and shades to Tantra that belie a narrow either/or view.”

(via Heyoka Magazine)

A strange new war has broken out in the remote Himalayan statelet of Nagapur, pitting ancient Serpent Deities against the global bureaucrats of the World Bank.

Not to be confused with Nagaland, Nagapur is a small ‘princely state’ in the Himalayan foothills between Uttar Pradesh and Nepal. Its highest peaks get winter snow, its lowest plains join the heatchoked tiger-and-orchid jungles of the Terai, but all within a hundred-odd square miles.

Nagapur was mentioned in the ancient Indian epic Mahabharata as one of the ‘cities’ of the Nagas or semi-divine were-snakes. Nagapur is still noted for its tantrik snake temples, some of them decorated in medieval Nepalese style with ‘obscene’ carved wood sculpture. The former ruling family claimed descent from an ancestral cobra, the Sheesh Nang. [...]

In the past few years however one clan of the family has achieved some degree of notoriety thanks to its connections with an emerging ‘Fourth World’ resistance movement in Nagapur. Poor peasants and ‘tribals’ who depend in part on the forest for economic sustenance have struggled against various ‘Green Revolution’ agricultural policies, dams, and development projects, some launched by the Indian Government and others by Global institutions such as the IMF and World Bank. [...]

In 1997 a great-grandson of the Begum was born and named Nagarjuna, and proclaimed Crown Prince. The infant’s horoscope was said to be unusually auspicious, and rumors began to spread amongst the adherents of the Naga Goddess. As Hindu-Moslem syncretists they came to believe that the young prince was both the Kalki Avatar (the savior incarnation of Vishnu) and the Mahdi or Hidden Imam revered by Nagapur’s Shiites and sufi mystics.

Full Story: Hungry Ghost

Very interesting. Worth reading the whole thing.

(Thanks Nova!)

Tantric masturbation – how to do it and why. Plus advocacy for group tantric masturbation. Not at all safe for work.

Tantric Masturbation

(via Chaoflux)

Full Image: ModBlog.

(via Notes From Somewhere Bizarre).

It could be the weirdest and most embarrassing prediction in the history of cosmology, if not science.

If true, it would mean that you yourself reading this article are more likely to be some momentary fluctuation in a field of matter and energy out in space than a person with a real past born through billions of years of evolution in an orderly star-spangled cosmos. Your memories and the world you think you see around you are illusions.

Full Story: New York Times

(via Hit and Run, who point out the similarities to Hindu cosmology).

If I read this correctly, this theory is seen more as a problem in the same vein as Schrodinger’s Cat – ie, not a “proof” that this is the way the universe is, but as evidence that current theories are insufficient. None the less, I’m sure it, like Schrodinger’s Cat, will be used “scientific evidence” of all sorts of nonsense.

“What’s the difference between paying a crack whore for a handjob, and shelling out big bucks for a tantric sex teacher who’s got one hand on your groin and the other up your ass? Not much, some may say – both are considered prostitution because you’re paying for a sexual favor. Others would disagree and say tantric sex is healing, not sex, and therefore not prostitution at all.”

(via The Naughty American)

The group also embraced serious neo-tantic sex ritual, which they called “Dionysm.” Besides treating sex as an expression of sacred sensuality, YaHoWha and his sons all committed to the rigorous practice of withholding their seed except for procreation or esoteric monthly rites. Restraining the typical male climax can ultimately produce intense full-body orgasms, charging the circuit between partners, but activating the kundalini is no “easy lay” in practice. Interestingly, the nineteenth-century Oneida Community, led by the bearded visionary John Humphrey Noyes, also practiced “plural marriage” and what they called “Male Continence.” The words may change, but the song remains the same.

Full Story: Techngnosis.

Buy The Source: The Untold Story of Father Yod, Ya Ho Wa 13, and The Source Family.

PDF.

Over the last 25 years thousands of people worldwide have been initiated into the highest levels of Buddhism by the 14th Dalai Lama. Fundamental to this initiation is a holy text (tantra), namely the Kalachakra-Tantra, part of which is the Shambhala Myth.

Kalachakra is Sanskrit and means ‘wheel of time’. In recent times the Kalachakra-Tantra has been increasingly critically scrutinised. In our western debate-oriented society it stands to reason that the Dalai Lama himself answers some of these critical questions in order to ensure that any misinterpretations are corrected.

Full Story: In the Shadow of the Dalai Lama.

Advanced Yoga Practices is a huge collection of articles on yoga, meditation, and tantra.

Link.

Yesterday I bought a few old issues of High Times at my local comic book store, and I must say that I’m impressed. The very first issue has an article on space migration that Timothy Leary wrote from prison and an article on tantric yoga… with pictures. A later issue has an article on coffee that claims that Guatemalan Antigua coffee is “almost psychedelic” and is “the DMT of coffee.” Hmm…

Here’s a guide to Tantric masturbation. “The most important thing to know about being with a partner is knowing how to be with yourself. The secret of being with a partner is the same as the secret of being with oneself: to raise the energy in your body to the point of orgasm and then, instead of coming, relaxing and letting the energy go up to your heart.” Anyone out there have any experience with these methods?
Link.