“What goes up must come down, but what points in both directions, and remains in the middle, neither dwindles, nor crashes. It just is...”

One of the downsides of Hindu Tantra is that most surviving lineages only teach how to sublimate energy upwards, not how to sustain the upward movement. When you run out of fuel, you crash. Santiago and I both had some harsh experiences with this early on. Our rapid ascensions into genuine bliss in meditation would be followed by our inability to operate heavy machinery – or our own bodies- sometimes for days.

Intermittent bliss and emotional unpredictability, energetic instability in the body – these are all hallmarks of tantric sadhus and sadhakas in India… "crazy wisdom" Using the same tools as these sadhus and sadhakas, we found out why.

I still remember the day Santiago asked me to teach instead of take his class because all he could do was sit on the bench outside, in bliss but unable to move… In a less affective state, I was barely able to conduct the class myself. I don't know who was more perplexed, me, or the students. Half overjoyed, but half concerned, not knowing if my next words would come out at all, I taught as best I could, though I may have had some unexplainably long pauses in my speech…. By the end of the class the students all had conspicuous smiles from starting to share in the state, but I don't know what they left class thinking…

We owe much to our Hindu initiations, and we have certainly encountered a few rare Hindu Tantric masters who know better, but too much information has been lost from many Hindu lineages during (and after) the Victorian occupation of India. Hindu Tantra gave us wonderful tools for absorption and awareness, but to find stability, Santiago and I had to fill in the missing pieces with information learned from esteemed Tibetan Lamas and Qi Gong masters.

By learning how to cycle and draw energy from both ends of the central channel –through rooting, breathing, and/ or orbiting energy correctly, along with being fully aware of both physical presence and higher levels of reality, higher states become much more manageable, until there is no separation between states at all…

Although the crash-and-burn approach is intoxicating for the spiritual adrenaline junkie (and Santiago and I have both been guilty of such excesses), it is neither a smart nor ultimately fulfilling means to realization… especially when in the course of modern life one routinely spends time behind the wheel of an automobile rather than on a hilltop surrounded by goats… And when, in the end you want to dissolves the techniques, the states, the experiences, and merge with the Supreme, it’s not wise to hold on to anything, no matter how pleasant, intense, or sublime the illusion...

Next issue: Some of our various masters, gurus, Lamas, and their great gifts…

Namaste,
Tao Semko

P.S. this week’s tantric gem… from Swami Sivananda, in 1944…

“Ordinary run of mankind think that the man who is established in Samadhi should not have consciousness of his surroundings and should be absolutely insensible even if a knife is thrust in his body. Such Samadhi does certainly exist.

It is Jada Samadhi induced by Hatha Yogic Kriyas sauch as Kechari Mudra, Kumbhaka Pranayama or retention of breath, etc. The Prana is taken up and fixed up in some Chakra. The man is practically dead for the time being. This is something like long deep sleep.

This Samadhi is of no value. The Samskaras and Vasana are not burnt up in toto. There is no perfect awareness during this Samadhi. The man returns from his Samadhi as the same old man with the same bundle of old Samskaras and Vasana. He has no superintuitional knowledge.

This is a kind of acrobatic feat or gymnastics. Such Samadhi cannot give Mukti or liberation. Worldly people are deceived by such feats.

The true Samadhi is something entirely different. It gives supersensual knowledge. All doubts, delusion, the three knots (Avidya, Kama, Karma) are destroyed by the fire of wisdom. This state of Samadhi is maintained even during work. This state is described in detail in the Second Chapter of the Bhagavad Ghita.”

Sri Swami Sivananda Maharaj, in Samadhi Yoga, 1944, 1961, 1983, 2003, Divine Life Society