Yoga, Sex, and the
Magic Mushroom

In "Island" Aldous Huxley wrote about an exotic utopian island-community called Pala. Given what we know about eugenics, biology, basic human needs, sex and drugs, all his ideas can be realized now. That is his main point. And Tantra Yoga is central to his theme.

Magic Sex

The Palanese withstand the temptations of the Game/Time world, not because they are a self-denying people, sticking to some puritan conspiracy against the body. They can resist because they have something much sexier: they practice Tantra Yoga-in Rita's phrase, Cool Sex. Maithuna. Tantra, cool sex. Norman Brown sees "normal" sex, that is, genitally organized sexuality (hot sex), as a neurosis. The alternative to the old genital neurosis? Maithuna, in Tibetan called yabyum. Why are we only now hearing about it? Why was Tantra long underground- called the forbidden left-hand path?

The Maithune position of making love makes you each aware of the other's body in a strangely responsible way. (Responsible meaning the ability to respond.) You want to take care of her body. You bring her things to eat, you massage her, you grok one another. And her body is somehow yours. You groom it, perfume it, bathe it as you would hers. You have become one sex. The other body is not just another body you can't get inside of; now it is a body whose eyes you are looking out of. All energy is sexual energy. Therefore, when we use the word sex we should mean all energy. The Divine lust that created the world is a sexual attraction between all forms; sex is electro-magnetism. In Tantra Yoga we are liberated through sex into Eros: All Energy.

Magic Mushrooms

The Palanese use Moksha or "liberation" medicine, a magic mushroom in order to meditate better. In particular they practice a form of sexual meditation called "Maithuna." Consequently, the Palanese are happy and immune to most of the afflictions of the world in Game/Time. The perfection of the Palanese may sound like the rewriting of human nature. However, they do show a different human nature: Our own potential nature, more deeply realized. Thus the Palanese can make a success of Utopia. Pala is the first hip commune.

The yogis lost the integrity of their sensuality when Hindus adopted British moral values. The British condemned the great Tantric Temple of Konorak by calling it the Obscene Pagoda. The statuary at Konorak depicts the variety of voluptuousness erupting into flowing rock, shows courtship (as among birds) practiced as a dance. The inventors of new sexual positions were choreographing sex-play. The sculpture, watched through a fast shutter, are balling and "eating" each other, but, at the same time, dancing with fluid religious aesthetic grace. The 19th century Puritan sublimated sex (all erotic energy) into culture. The contemporary Puritan discharges energy (tension) whenever any arises. Allowing sex to grow and blossom like an exotic perfumed bloom takes more time than Game/Time people have. So our (Western man's) sex life is anxious. We dissolve the ego of Western civilization during that one moment of body rapture: orgasm. After orgasm, angst. We alleviate our tension, as do addicts, temporarily, by concentrating pleasure very locally, very genitally. The more we do it the more we perpetuate our sexual hang-ups. After orgasm we tend to lose our sense of generating an exchange of energy (synergy). Perhaps, like a circuit grounded, we dissipate our energy- we cannot contain the charge for long- we lose the magnetic moment of fusion. If sex isn't fully soul-satisfying we afterword feel frustrated and then guilty. If Western man "hates himself in the morning," he is not alone; his woman also hates him. She feels used, not for a great religious purpose that subtly explores her multi-dimensions of ultra purple...of silken fire- but used as a means of relieving but not releasing his neurotic tension.

Today, Watts, Brown, Marcuse, Von Urban, McLuhan, and Leary are engaged in a restoration of the integrity of sensuality. Consciously or unconsciously they all use a more-or-less Tantric approach.

The thing the makes Tantra distinct and unique is that the Tantrics do not believe in making love metaphorically.- in psychiatric terms, they believe that transference means physical touch. The word Tantra literally means "touch." Being anxious our Western orgasm shows a crescendo profile- starting slowly, it builds rapidly to a fast final brief banging of gongs. Tantrics think the only way to, say, tame a kitten or a wild animal such as a human being, is to touch her, stroke her, pet her.

The Orgasm

In Maithuna, the man does nothing (no motion) to bring an orgasm. Most often, he delays it, at least until the end of the ceremony. Ordinarily the woman sits astride the man, facing him upright, her legs not in lotus but wrapped around his waist; the man puts his hands on her back; she hangs her hands over his shoulders. She is always the active partner. In Tantra, the man becomes receptive, letting her call the tune. Whether or not his erection continues isn't important; in this position it can't slip out.

After an hour or two of this long sweet communion (the actual duration depends on how high you are: the higher you are the less time it takes), you begin to create somehow the feeling of a third presence. This presence is made up of the two separate selves overlapping, melting down and "bleshing." When this bleshing occurs a field is created- it pours out your pores like shoots of light opening our way "whence the imprisoned splendor escapes."

Author Unknown