THE ARCANE ARCHIVE
	a cache of usenet and other text files pertaining to occult, mystical, and spiritual subjects.

Subject: MAITHUNA, THE ART OF SACRED SEX

[from http://www.changes.org/med/sacredsex.html ]

                    MAITHUNA, THE ART OF SACRED SEX
                                   
     You are Aphrodite and Adonis as soft flesh endlessly dances on
     flesh
       among the brilliant flowers of Mount Olympus.
         You are the roil and roll of the universe
             in the never ending movement of creation.
             You are mastodons in rut,
                but you are also a point of light beyond
                  manifestation.
                That  point explodes into a million fragments
                like fireworks in cosmic eternity.
              The two of you are one
             but even the one melts into nothingness.
            Finally, beyond thought, concept or even feeling at all
           is the indescribable ecstasy
         as your personality dies.
       There is only god-consciousness in all directions and in all
     time
      which is out of time forever.
     
                           [yabyumpadm.jpg]
                                   
                         And this is Maithuna,
                        the meditation of sex.
                                   
          Maithuna is the Sanskrit word for union. Maithuna is yogic
   sexual union.  It means  act or instance of uniting two or more
   things into one state of being or  a spiritual uniting in order
   to bring about concord.
          This is the unity of creating one from two, an escape from
   the duality system in which we live.  Surrounded by a society
   that teaches us the convoluted platitudes and attitudes of t.v.
   soap operas and of advertising in a sort of perpetual adolescence
   of spirit, we unlearn the sexual ecstasy that is our birthright.
          Sex is available to almost every adult. It cannot be made
   illegal, (although laws in different places including the United
   States have circumscribed the kind of sex that is legal and given
   bitter punishment or even death for those who  transgress the
   "law")
   
           Sexual voyaging should take us on journeys to incredible
    spaces of consciousness and union with many levels of infinite
     reality, but that takes unlearning much of what religion has
   promulgated and our parents, in their ignorance, passed on to us.
                                   
                 Making love is a way of getting high,
                   perhaps ultimately the only way.
                                   
               We make love when we walk down the street
                      and smile at an old person;
                  we make love when we pet an animal.
    In all of our daily inter-relating with people and with things,
                      we either create more love
                  or break down the love that exists.
            Sexual intercourse is one form of making love.
                                   
       (The following instructions use heterosexual terminology;
   their content, though, is valid for the coming together of yin
   and yang however it manifests.)
       Unfortunately many of us are so separated from our bodies
   that we wear uncomfortable clothing, over-eat, smoke tobacco and
   use the missionary position in sexual intercourse.  This position
   in which the man is on top of the woman, makes it very difficult
   for her to adequately respond.
   
         Since a womans body is slower to arousal than a mans  (it
     is said to take at least eighteen minutes before real union
     can start to occur), it is necessary for the woman to
     influence the timing during intercourse if the partners are to
     become one with each other.  This necessitates a real ego-loss
     from both partners since our society has taught the man to
     lead and the woman to be passive.
         Even more damaging to a spiritually conscious sex life is
     the myth that orgasm is the summit of sexual experience.
     Maithuna may lead to experiences that make orgasm seem pallid
     by comparison, to the place of original creation where the
     earth emerges, cells multiply, life evolves in its many
     facets.
         The feeling that orgasm is necessary can be an anchor
     grounding the personality.  If the man does not come to
     climax, his emotional reaction may  make it difficult for him
     to let go of his personality.  On the other hand, if the woman
     is using fantasy or play acting to stimulate her body into
     rapid  response, she loses touch with her partner.  It isnt
     bad to do any of that.  But prolonged moments of such
     separation make the most ecstatic levels of love-making
     impossible to achieve.
     
So, rule number one:  it is of primary importance that orgasm is not the
most important end to this union. Somebody, perhaps Alan Watts, said that
orgasm is a delightful punctuation in the act of making love.

The second rule:  the woman must be chiefly responsible for timing the
sexual act. She will slow things down if she feels it is too fast and
suggest the next move physically or verbally.  To do this she needs to
lose ego, to  be very aware, at least in the beginning, of her own body
and what responses it is giving.

         Telepathic communication grows through truth-telling.
                                   
 Rule three; The two partners must agree to tell the truth to each other
at all times. Truth, in this case, is what you are feeling or where your
thoughts go. Remain centered on each other.

   [sexchakra12.jpg]
       The Star of David is a diagram of the maithuna position of
   love making.  The partners are facing each other, the man sitting
   with his legs crossed, the woman sitting on him with her legs
   around him.  In this position there can be no higher or lower, no
   first and second, no beginning and no end.
       Maithuna, sometimes called Kerraza or Dianism in the West or
   Yab-Yum in Tibet, takes time; it is a true meditation.  So pick
   an unpressured day or evening. To touch the aeons takes a feeling
   of unfettered leisure.
   
         Start slowly.  Take a bath together.  Throw rose petals in
     the bath water;  light candles and incense so that the bathing
     place itself becomes an altar.
         Look each other deep in the eyes until faces shift and
     thoughts fade.  Tell each other how much you care.  Now is the
     safe time to let go of anything held back, any untruths,
     fears, equivocations. Touch softly on the face, the shoulders,
     the hair.  After your bath dry each other with soft towels and
     rub yourselves with sacred scents, perhaps with amber in pure
     oil.
         Lie down in front of a fire or on a bed with soft
     blankets, and massage each other with long, slow movements of
     hands and arm. Push your hands slowly up each others backs
     about an inch on each side of the spine, from the sacroiliac,
     sacred space of energy, to the base of the neck where we
     gather such tension during the course of our daily wanderings.
     Breathe deeply. As you massage each other, be aware of the
     moment.  Your world right now is that spot where fingers meet
     back. Concentrate on it. Where flesh touches flesh, you two
     are already coming together in a sacred space.
     
      When you are ready, sit up comfortably and face each other.  Your
  legs can be crossed if you are at ease that way, or you can prop
  yourselves against pillows or even in a very large chair.  If you use
  consciousness expanding sacraments, now is a good time to partake of
  them.
  
      Breathe deeply, look into each others eyes again, and see each other
  as divine.  Behold god and goddess existing beyond your bodies and yet
  in them, beyond your personalities and yet acting through them.  Be
  conscious.  As you gaze, your partners face will shift and change, fade
  and become brilliant.  Like a Picasso portrait, you may see simultaneous
  faces, one imprinted on the other.
  
      Deepening your meditation as you look at each other third eye to
  third eye, you may see that third eye actually manifesting on the flesh
  between and just above the eyebrows.  If you need to pull your attention
  away, stop and discuss that need, what you were thinking about and why.
  In your growing  telepathic sensitivity, there is nothing to be ashamed
  of, and  there is everything to share. The inner core of you has been
  waiting so long, lifetimes perhaps, for this very moment of intimacy.
   This eye meditation is so powerful that you may just want to practice
  this yoga for several days without having union on any other level.  The
  longer you practice it, the closer you will get, and the higher genital
  union will be when you finally come to it.
  
         Maithuna is the art of vibrational rather than frictional
     sex.  You may move in The Great Dance, but not until your
     bodies tell you that it is time.  Until then sit quietly
     looking into each others eyes.  Expect nothing.  Make no
     demands.  Just as waves of sound move together in resonance or
     discord, if the vibrations are not integrated and in harmony
     between you and your partner, true union is impossible to
     achieve yet.
         Have a soft light;  you dont want to make love in the dark
     but to enhance the senses, to dilate every avenue of sight,
     sound, smell with the wonder of each other.  This is a
     meditation in concentration.
         This is a visualization, not in the mind, but in the
     flesh.  The Goddess or God is sitting before you as vulnerable
     and open to love as you are.  It wears the face and form of
     your Loved One.  Take as much time as you need to appreciate
     and truly feel each other as Deity.  This gift and wonder is
     given those who truly yearn to find the cosmic love that
     irradiates everything on all levels of reality.
     
      After a space of time, however long or short it may be, you will
  want to touch each other, to feel the warm of flesh.  Fingers gently
  move in unison, dance together in the air in a lingering caress that
  neither leads nor is led but is a simple knowing of each other. You
  touch on shoulders,  face, on breasts.  You may lose consciousness of
  which are fingers and which is the receiving skin  as your two bodies
  slowly become one body caressing itself.
  
      Dont try to hold on to anything.  Rise and fall on the varied levels
  of awareness.   You may feel humor, happiness, sadness or even journey
  beyond any feeling, lost in the dance of sweet flesh touching flesh.
  
      Eventually you will want to be closer.  It might be hours or seem
  like days, but since you are traveling in and out of time with no
  destination in mind, it doesnt really matter.  At last the need for
  closer contact develops.  And then the shakti, divine female energy,
  sits on the mans crossed legs. Bodies come close together in a sweet
  glow of soma.  Intuitive.  Knowing almost without words where and how to
  move but using gentle words when they come.  Feeling. Becoming One as
  centuries wheel and time collapses on itself.
  
      If you separate sometimes and become two again, thats fine.  Go back
  to looking in each others eyes.  When you know that the time is right,
  your bodies will come together even more intimately.  The shakti will
  put her legs around the mans waist, and his penis will penetrate her.
  
  Keep your bodies quiet.  There is no need for for anything further to
  happen, no goals.  Just a very slow pulsation of energy.  You are secure
  together.
  
                           [maithuna34.jpg]
                                   
              Your vision becomes even more psychedelic.
           You are the Tibetan deities locked in an embrace
                          that ends duality.
 Eventually there is only the blooming of the genitals, boundary lines
                  disappearing, no penis, no vagina.
            There is only the fiery stillpoint of creation.
                There may be the history of the world,
                  the slow slide of crystalline mud,
            thunderstorms raging over desolate landscapes,
                  dinosaurs roaring in wild freedom.
              Or nebulae wheeling through great heavens.
                Or goddess stepping forth to caress you
                  with the blessing of fearlessness.
It may become the quietness before creation that builds strange planets
                         of tender sweetness.
                                   
  The movement begins;  that one magnificent energy tightens and relaxes,
  feels itself, knows ecstasy.
  Although you are merged, you are yourselves also, and the woman knows
  when to relax.  The man knows when to pull back a moment.
  
      This is a meditation of self-control that aims at losing self and
  finding it again, the cosmic game of hide and seek that we all play in
  our own ways.
      It is possible to stop and start over again many times.  You may
  want to even separate, feed each other, talk, and return yet once again
  to sexual union.
      You can sit, melded in embrace, for many hours experiencing almost
  infinite levels of being.
  
 When the time comes, there will not be two of you any more. There is
        only a  shared  awareness of the movement of molecules,
              of being yourselves in the body of Source,
                        of being Source itself.
  Sometime an explosion   permeates every atom of your consciousness
             until there is not even one of you any more.
                 You have become the universe together
                    in the very core of your being.
                                   
                  This is the summation of Maithuna,
                     sometimes called Tantric Sex.
               This is the experience that makes orgasm
            look like the little death it is often called.
 This is a Big Death, an overwhelming death, a death that vibrates in
 its aliveness, a joyous death, a wonderfilled adventure through time
                              and space.
                                   
It is a surrender of personality and individuality to that essence that
            underlies and fills every thing and non-thing.
                                   
           You rest in serenity, knowing that you are beautiful
                         and that your beloved
                             is beautiful
                       and that all of creation
                          is very beautiful.
                                   
       Dont be disappointed if all this does not happen the first
   time you try it.  Be patient with yourself and your lover.  That
   very patience and surrender to what is will help you to grow,
   understand and succeed. Familiarity with sexual self-control may
   take time. Most yogic practices do.
       In India, where reincarnation is real and the separate soul,
   which is the monad, learns and grows from one incarnation to the
   next, time is of little importance.
       To experience the truly ecstatic states of Maithuna, time
   must be your servant.
   
                           Good journeying.
     May this little meditation help you and all sentient beings.

     [no copyright attached to document; presumed site holder's]

EOF