Tantra • an integrated definition
Most of what you read about Tantra written by Tantra masters, Tantrikas, and other Tantric master teachers, usually found on web sites may be very misleading. Some may be quite accurate but quite confusing as presented. The words of the masters such as Osho and Tilopa are to be read and understood with a certain Tantric perspective. That perspective is a total openness and receptivity, gratefulness and unconditionality.
The basic truth of Tantra is that it is a practice of being sensitive to the flow of sentient life through you as an organism. This is experienced much the same way as any specific pleasure, however it is a generalized sense of well being, health, confident expression, and beauty. It is often referred to as the relationship between being, consciousness, and bliss. You are an expression of beingness, you are conscious of that through a variety of sensory systems, and the feeling of this flowing through you is blissful.
Most believe the sense of touch to be a sense that orients and individual and enables them to interact with the outside world. The tactile sense is thought to be necessary to experience the world an individual lives in. Life is relationship, our relationship to other beings and the objects in our world. The sense of touch is highly sensitive to internal states as well. When the sense of touch is awakened through Tantric techniques such as the long light, integrating strokes of human touch, the skin sense can experie3nce the very flow of life through the organism. There is no better feeling in the world, the feeling of just being alive.
Tantra concepts have been introduced into and through every religion and philosophy known. Both religion and philosophy are based on illusions and delusions of belief and superstition. An integrated definition of Tantra that ignores religious rites, rituals, and doctrines offers a far more realistic perspective. The perspective is that we all possess an essential nature that survives programming and conditioning. This essential nature, when expressed throught he individual in language, appearance, and behavior, is true virtue. This expression is the essence and nature of virtue. The programmed ego is conditioned to react to the environment in a fearful and anxious manner. The ego, being an illusory entity (as it is a program not the core expression), is vulnerable, easily threatened, and quickly provoked to defensiveness and anger. The conditioned ego self is always in conflict with the environment and the resolution of the conflict is always less than peaceful.
Tantra engages the body and ignores the conditioned mind/ego that confounds with judgment, argument, commentary, and categorization. The practice of integrated Tantra awakens the cells of the body to the flow of life from within.