By Kerry and Diane Riley, directors of ASOT. Copyright Spectra 2000 P/L 2005 Lovemaking as a spiritual experience. It is written in the ancient texts of China and India that it was common for emperors, kings and noblemen trained in the art of lovemaking to be passionately making love in their nineties, with up to twenty consorts or lovers, all of whom they were keeping sexually satisfied. In the ruling class a man’s power and respect were judged by the number of consorts he could keep satisfied. A husband was respected more for keeping his wife sexually satisfied than for anything else. In the ancient cultures of Egypt, Arabia, India, Nepal, Tibet, China and Japan polygamy was common, so it was essential for a man to know the art of lovemaking. The ancient sexual secrets of India are revealed in Sanskrit texts, where it is written that the emperor should make love to nine chosen consorts every night, progressing from the lower ranks to the higher. With retaining his semen by proficiency in the Art of Love, the Emperor concentrates powers within. Then, at the full moon, he bestows his seed on the Queen of Heaven. A child born from such a ritual was supposed to have magical powers. Most men these days ejaculate within the first fifteen minutes. They wouldn’t have commanded much respect in ancient China. This shows us how much our education and proficiency in the art of lovemaking is lacking. Yet every man has the ability to master these sexual skills. Ancient texts from the East taught that sex was sacred, and this was one of the reasons I was attracted to these studies. I liked the idea of my lovemaking being sacred. I don’t use the term sacred here in the conventional religious sense of something existing above us somewhere. Such a view tends to split reality into two parts, a degraded earth below and a pure holy heaven on high. Things on this earthly plane can be sacred if we have the eyes to see the sacredness in them the sacred order of the earth and the sky, of life and death, of the mind and the heart and the body. We can view human existence itself as sacred and, if we choose, we can see lovemaking as sacred. Many people today are seeking spiritual growth. When I tell them that Diane and I use our sexual love as a way of becoming more spiritual they are quite shocked. This probably stems from the fact that many religions proclaim that if we want to become spiritual, we must deny ourselves any earthly pleasures. In Eastern and Western cultures, celibacy was often a requirement for those who sought a spiritual life. As a child, I was taught, as I’m sure many people were, that the way to God was through prayer and going to church. However, these things never really gave me any profound experience of God. About twenty years ago I travelled through India where I was introduced to meditation as a practice for spiritual growth. When I practised meditation, it did give me an experience which I felt was spiritual. In the East this was called a mystical experience. A mystical or spiritual experience is foreign to most Westerners. A mystical state itself is not easy to describe and yet anyone who has had the experience can recognise it. People describe certain common elements in such an experience things like a sense of tranquillity, of timelessness, of intense awareness that everything you see is vivid and everything you touch is very alive; a transcendence from the thoughts of daily life; an expansion of consciousness; a feeling of being connected with the cosmos or at unity with all things. Some say they have a tangible experience of God or actually experience the bliss of union with the divine. Some of these experiences can happen during lovemaking, and when they do, it is important to acknowledge this as a spiritual experience. When you are in heightened orgasmic states, this is a spiritual experience. Ancient spiritual systems such as Taoism and Tantra readily acknowledged this. TANTRA AND TAOISM Tantra is a spiritual science from ancient India and in its basic essence is very similar to Taoism from China. Both involve balancing the male and female energies to create harmony and both have an ultimate goal of spiritual unity with the universe or the source or God, (the God within, as opposed to God being separate from us). The Tantric interplay of the male and female energies was represented in Hindu mythology with Shakti and Shiva, and represented in Taoism with yin and yang. Both Tantra and Taoism aimed to create union of body, mind and spirit. And in both, sexuality was seen and practised in a spiritual context. One of the differences between Tantra and Taoism is that Tantra is filled with rituals and religious deities, gods and goddesses, whereas Taoism is more scientific in its approach. People who are more ‘right-brain’ oriented, (more intuitive), would probably be more attracted to Tantra, while those who are more ‘left-brain’ oriented, (more into the rational and logical), would be attracted to Taoism, although this is certainly not a rule. In the seminars which Diane and I conduct, we find that women are more attracted to the Tantric approach and men more to the Taoist approach, at least initially. However, as the men open their heart centres more and become deeply connected with their women, they move forwards into the Tantric approach to sexuality. It is said that Tantra is the oldest single source of knowledge concerning the energies of the mind, body and spirit. It is the origin and essence of today’s popular studies and practices of Eastern philosophies, including yoga, martial arts, tai chi and the grand philosophies of the Buddha, Confucius and Lau Tzu. Tantra means to expand, to be free, to be liberated. If we are to be really free, our sexuality should not be … Continue reading Extract from “Sexual Secrets for Men, what every woman would want her man to know’