The Rocky Horror Tantra Book PDF

The Rocky Horror Tantra Book
Copyright © Sw. A. Rahasya 2012
This file and copies of it may be distributed free of charge.
This book is a work of creative non-fiction.
Category: Religious texts – Tantra
Recommended reading age:

This book is not intended to be read by children of any age.
Published by the Advait Tantra School

www.advaittantra.com
International print edition ISBN: 978-1478205159
This electronic edition available at:

rockyhorrortantra.com
ADVAIT Tantra SCHOOL

advaittantra.com
Contents
The Rocky Horror Tantra Book

Introduction
Swami at work 8
Tantra is … 18
Commentary 25
Chapter 1
Candles and incense 28
Sex: the lowest form of love 31
Seven sessions 36
Chapter 2
The ironmonger 42
Eroticism, the light in the darkness of everybody’s life 47
Heavy metal 50
Chapter 3
An infidelity 52
The tantric attitude of totality 57
Hot monogamy 60
Chapter 4
Little girl’s panties 74
The tantric time warp 76
The revirginised sacrifice 79
Chapter 5
The pervert 86
Ancient and modern approaches to taboo and initiation 90
The pervert revisited 97
Chapter 6
Orders from the dakini 104
Dakinis and dakas 116
A cup of tea 120
Chapter 7
The shaman 126
The first patriarch 132
Inferior men 158
Modern times 167
Chapter 8
Old School 172
Don’t dream it … be it 177
Inner temple 180
Chapter 9
Dark night 184
Notes on the enlightened condition 189
Dawn 192
Swami’s notes
Note 1
Tantric sex basics 199
Note 2
Preparation of the body and mind for Tantra 219
Note 3
Beyond premature ejaculation 241
Note 4
Touch, breath and timing 249
Note 5
Therapy to truth in three easy steps 259
Note 6
Kissing 267
Note 7
The dark and the dangerous 271
Note 8
Meditation 291
Note 9
Chakras and kundalini 301
Thanks and acknowledgements 314

Rocky Horror Tantra online 315
The Advait Tantra School 316
Formal greeting between participants
on an intensive residential retreat:
I give you permission to explore in your life even that

which I am too fearful to explore in my own.
Introduction
The purpose and intent of Tantra
I would like, if I may, to take you on a strange journey.

ADVAIT TANTRA SCHOOL
Swami at work
The mobile phone buzzed on the bedside table.
I seemed to float up softly, drifting up and through where my

dreams had happened. I felt them tugging at me, some with
insistence. I resisted at first, then relaxed and looked them over.
None of them seemed so interesting or important that I wanted
to drag them all the way up to my waking memory. I shrugged free
of them and continued my ascent.
The phone buzzed again.
I felt the softness of old cotton and the deep relaxation of my

body. I pulled my head under the duvet and sank into the soft,
comforting warmth.
The phone buzzed. That was three times now. After the sixth, it
would go quiet and record a message.
I had slept enough … more than enough. This was the third
time this morning that I had dozed my way back to the depths
of sleep.
I admitted to myself that I was now awake and could answer it.
The phone buzzed again. I reached for it and opened my eyes.
Squinting in the bright light to read what was probably the last
monochrome cellphone screen in history, I saw who was calling
and pushed the green button.
“Hi Wendy,” I said, as brightly as I could manage. The little screen

had informed me that it was a little after ten.
“Did I wake you up, Swami?” she asked. “You sound like you are
trying not to sound sleepy.”
8
THE ROCKY HORROR TANTRA BOOK
“Yes, plenty of sleep. I am happy to be up.” My bladder informed

me that it too was happy I was awake. “You want to visit?” I asked,
straightening my legs.
“Yes.”
“Where are you? How long will it take you to get here?” My feet
found resistance and pushed.
“At home. Not long.”
“Um …” I shook sleepiness from my head and pushed harder

with my feet. The cat meowed a filthy insult and my toes retreated
hastily from the claw tips they felt through the thin duvet. “Have
you eaten? I can do omelettes.”
“I have eaten already, so not for me. Is there anything I can bring
you?”
I thought a moment while my feet searched for a way around the

cat, found the edge of the futon and headed for the floor.
“I am out of green tea.”
“I will buy some. Anything else?”
“A Red Bull?”
She paused, just very briefly. “Very funny.”
My feet found the floor. “And I think the milk may be a little
old.” I looked suspiciously at the cat. It looked back, inscrutable.
“Nothing else.”
“OK Swami. See you in half an hour.” The phone made its end-
of-call bleep.
Standing now, I dropped the phone on the bed and got on with
my usual morning routine. By the time Wendy arrived, the pan
was warming for my omelette and the kettle had just boiled.
She drank a cup of green tea while I enjoyed chilli beans and fiercely
strong cheddar cheese wrapped in three eggs from celibate, but
9
otherwise allegedly happy chickens. The cat lapped contentedly at

a saucer of fresh milk.
I washed my plate. The cat moved outside and sprawled in the

sun. Wendy did likewise.
I poured myself a glass of orange juice, grabbed a cushion and

joined them.
“Late night?” Wendy asked.
“Yes. Writing. Not very late though.”
“You look …” She elbowed herself up to look at me. “Well … not

too bad.”
“Thank you.”
“You are welcome, Swami.” She smiled. “And anyway, all you have
to do this afternoon is the dummy thing.”
“Training Yogini Janet again?”
“Yes. She is coming along well. I think you may be surprised.”
“We have had quite a few …”
“Yes. She has had six sessions with you and another five with
me.”
“Well, she has the moves down. Improv not bad.”
“But not good yet.”
“Well, you can’t expect …”
“Yes, Swami, but she is not going to do an internship. She is having

extra training to get a better grounding.”
“I was hoping she would change her mind.”
10
“She is too wild for that kind of close guidance. She is finding her
power and will probably need to be a bit irresponsible with it for
a while.”
“Scary thought.” I chuckled. “What are you working on with

her?”
“Jade egg exercises, general life stuff and some strategy.”
“Strategy, not exterior and self-honesty?” I said, a little surprised.
“She likes strategy, and she has talent for it. Without even having
heard of Machiavelli or Miamoto, she has done quite well in her
career.”
“With their teachings then, she could make considerable

trouble.”
Wendy grinned. “Not that much, and I will keep a close watch.
Anyway, you always say that it is OK for a yogini to ruin a few men
in the course of her learning.”
“I said it was regrettable …”
“But acceptable. I remember, from when I was still ruining them.”
“You didn’t ruin anyone. You were a sweetie-darling.”
“Oh come on, Swami. I ruined at least two for sure.”
I grinned. “K and L certainly had a lot of trouble but they are

better citizens for the experience – well-spanked – and I hear they
are much better behaved now. That is what you get for fucking
around with tantrikas.”
She laughed, then looked serious. “I regressed them years, Swami.

K especially.”
“No, Wendy. You forced them to reveal and be what they actually
are. They thought they were transcendent yogis but they had
layered that learning on a dodgy foundation of unexamined crap.
Like sugar …”
11
She completed the phrase for me. “… on shit.”
“Yes. And when they proved incapable of meeting the challenge

that you are, you were kind.”
“I’m not sure I really see the kindness in what happened. It had to
happen, of course, but …”
I interrupted her. She tolerates a little of that, sometimes. “Your

kindness was that you gave them the option of retreat. You
didn’t let them feel your full energy or use addictive or mistimed
techniques.”
“Well, I may have actually, a bit …”
I interrupted her again. “Not enough to damage them. Your agenda

was not to use your power for your comfort and convenience.”
“My agenda, no … but I did take some conveniences, and some

comforts.” She smiled.
“No matter,” I persisted. “Certainly they were in trouble with you

but it was trouble that they chose, consciously and willingly. There
were always plenty of perfectly normal girlfriends out there for
them, if that is what they had wanted. There is an ocean full of
fish available.”
“I suppose.” The smile seemed to be fading.
“You let them go, catch and release style, as cleanly, as

compassionately as possible.”
“That is definitely pushing it, Swami.”
“You even gave them the option of slipping the hook.”
“I am getting tired of these fishing analogies. Only a car story

would be worse.”
“Er … no cars?” Naturally, a good one had sprung to mind.
She looked at me and there was almost a quality of reprimand to

her answer. “No.”
12
“Ok. Martial arts.”
“I know your condensed, bastardised version of all the lovely old

stories.” There was a glint in her eye. I knew I had her.
“Well, you know the story of Uchidachi and Shidachi?”
“Of course. Uchidachi is itchy with his power, his youth, his
impetuosity and his zanshin. He attacks. Shidachi, older, wiser,
steadier, sometimes sneakier, absorbs the attack and kills or holds
the threat of death over Uchidachi, who either dies or backs off
very carefully, sheathing his sword.”
“You were a merciful Shidachi.”
She considered this for a moment. “Maybe.”
“You, very kindly, left them the option of accommodating their

fear when they found they couldn’t face it. Their minds weren’t
torn between incompatible imperatives – they were just stressed
a bit.
If they can get into what they overlooked, all their higher learning
could still come into play.”
“Not likely.” She frowned. “But I suppose they do have the option,
if not the spirit.”
“I always found your attitude towards them compassionate. That

is what made me comfortable with you exercising your power.
What do you think of Janet, in that area?”
“Nothing to worry about, and anyway, she isn’t that powerful

yet.”
“From your perspective as a dakini, sure.”
“Meaning?”
“Compared to regular people of the culture, hell, compared even

to the most sexually aware and capable …”
13
“I see what you mean. Yes. She does have a predatory capacity but
she looks more playful than nasty to me.” She shrugged. “Maybe
there is some risk but she is worth it, I think.”
“Do you see a Devya in her?”
“Every now and then.” She smiled. “Her urge for the transcendent
is weak at present but it is developing.”
“Her feminine?”
“Still lurking in the subconscious, but it has been seen. It is shy

and resentful of course, but not immovably so. In avoidance, she
tends towards hyper-sensitivity rather than numbness.”
“Yes. Ticklish and jumpy as popcorn at her second session.”
“Just so, and it goes with a good sense of humour.”
“OK, then. I will try to be a good dummy for her. Let’s turn her on
and see how she lights up.”
Wendy winced, as she does when I say something particularly

inelegant or inappropriate.
“What?” I challenged. “You called it the ‘dummy thing’.”
“Not that, Swami.” With exaggerated patience and disapproving

tone. “Turn her on and see how she lights up? Really! You can do
better than that.”
I laughed and then stopped when it looked as if she was not joining
in. “Sure I could do better. That was just between us, Wendy.”
She frowned. “And what is all this worry about possibly creating a
wild dakini? You love wild dakinis.”
“I do, and I love free ones at least as much.” I hit her with a smile
that was, despite my years, still devastatingly charming. It was
spectacular in its complete failure to have any noticeable effect.
“So why?”
14
“Because I wanted your discernment. I pitched it in the negative

because …”
“You wanted to see if I was being incom …”
“No, no. Of course not,” I re-interrupted.
“I just wanted to make space for raising even little concerns, if you
had any. I like her, but my intuition is not in your class. I wanted
your most uncensored opinion.”
She looked at me with (I hoped) feigned disappointment. I

tried the smile again, with similarly outstandingly disappointing
results.
“Really, Swami.” I was amazed at how many layers of expression

her subtle use of tone managed to convey in those two words. A
crème brûlée of mixed feeling: rich amusement delicately blended
with wholesome exasperation and warm fondness, covered with a
topping of sugar-crisp authority. She continued, her tone no less
nuanced. “Do you think I would have taught her thus far without
having considered these things?”
“Um … I suppose not. But it was good to hear where you think
she is at. Thank you.”
She grinned at my (perhaps) feigned chagrin.
Making herself another cup of tea, she asked, “How is the book
coming along?”
“The chapter I started last night on the masculine/feminine thing

completes the book, I think. I got quite far with it. Some bits of
that story were really hard to tell.”
“What was hard?”
“Writing nasty things about women, particularly how they treated

men in the time before patriarchy.”
“Not nasty. Natural.”
15
“Yes”. I pointed at the cat. “In much the same way as that godless
killing machine is natural.”
“You leave Kitty Kali out of this,” she said as the godless killing
machine purred in agreement. “It had to be told, though. Those
realisations were seriously important to me.”
“Of course, and I think the masculine/feminine thing is a

mandatory topic in any book about Tantra, even though my
perspective is maybe not going to be very popular.”
“Oh … you are not just mentioning the matriarchal era …”
“No. I am telling the story of the first patriarch.”
“Ooh …” Her gaze and her eyelids lowered. She smiled. “I look
forward to reading it.”
“I will email the first draft when I have finished It. It will be
soon.”
“And then your book will be done?”
“Apart from editing, yes, and one more story.”
“One more?”
“For the introduction. I have the lecture part, but I would like a
somewhat fictionalised story, as I do for the chapters.”
“Yes. Your sutras wrapped in parables.” She grinned as I blushed,

ever so slightly.
“I think of it as stories framing lectures,” I tried to explain.
“Your introduction …” She paused and frowned. “I am sure I have

read it. About Tantra being the toughest bitch of a path, how it is
just troublesome and disturbing for most and why it is only useful
to a vanishingly small minority?”
“Um … not quite like that.”
16
“But you do make a solid attempt to scare your beloved readers

off.”
“It is pretty much always the first thing I tell a student …” I started
to protest.
She nodded and interrupted. “I get it, Swami, but I do think the
book as a whole will manage that just fine. There is no particular
reason to scare your beloved readers off right at the beginning.”
“Well, how about we take a look at what I have so far? It is a while

since you last read it. Maybe reading it again will prompt an
idea.”
17
Tantra is …
Tantra is the roughest, rockiest and unquestionably the most

horrible of spiritual paths. It is not a journey for the faint-hearted,
the weak-minded or the emotionally troubled. It presents serious
difficulties even to the heroic. It is as harsh as the Truths of Life
themselves.
This is because Tantra challenges, uncompromisingly, any and all

avoidance of truth.
This word “truth” maybe needs a little clarification, some

disambiguation. The word has a few common usages these days.
So, not political truth: that which is left after plausible deniability
has been deducted,
or social truth: what ‘everyone’ knows, i.e. a belief system
or even intellectual truth: that which can be understood and

explained.
The truth that Tantra is concerned with is truth that is directly

known, through one’s own experience.
This truth is not a static thing. Nor is it identical on all scales of

perception and at all levels of awareness.
There is no way to describe this truth directly with any

usefulness, but analogy and metaphor can be used. Stories about
the experiences of others can be encouraging or cautionary.
Suggestions of methods and approaches can be useful.
One way of describing characteristics of spiritual truths is to

personify them as deities.
The most popular deities in the tantric realm tend to be Goddesses

with fierce, destructive and chaotic dispositions. Cunning,
resourceful and skilfully strategic. Ruthless and powerful. Really
tough to negotiate with. They have to be loved, adored and
18
worshipped with an absolutely unreserved and deeply responsive

devotion.
This does not protect their devotees. It makes them close

enough and vulnerable enough for the Goddess to trample them
underfoot and decapitate them. Kali wears a garland made of the
skulls of her victims. The skulls are analogous to the mind-egos of
her devotees, which have been removed by the blade of her truth.
Tantra, in just its preliminary work, directly confronts the mind-

ego with unaccepted and even unacceptable truths. Enduring the
psychologically shattering consequences of this is not everybody’s
idea of fun but it is necessary – like clearing the weeds before
planting a garden, or erasing a computer hard drive before
installing a new operating system. False associations, trained in
by culture, schooling, parents and religion, have to be confronted,
uprooted and removed from one’s decision-making if the truth is
ever to be approached.
The word Tantra means ‘to weave’. Tantrikas weave the spiritual
teachings of the enlightened, known as “threads” (sutras) into a
coherent, personal and practical philosophy. Passive acceptance of
a point of view, of a belief system, is not at all useful.
Tantra requires that you make intense and deliberate effort and
that you strongly support your own progression of awareness.
The practices and methods of authentic Tantra are designed to
facilitate the discovery and acceptance of truth as it is, however
uncomfortable it may appear.
The first task of any teacher of Tantra is to scare you off the idea
altogether. This is a compassionate measure designed to spare
those without the calling, saving them considerable effort, pain
and time.
Tantra is also known as the Path of Bliss, the Lightning Path and
the Royal Road.
19
Bliss, because pleasures and pains are embraced, not avoided. Bliss
is the integration, the encompassing acceptance, of life’s pleasure
and suffering as one suchness.
Lightning, because the path is notable for its extreme speed.
The Royal Road, because it is a path originally designed (at least

the Buddhist version) for the elite of a culture, whose worldly
involvement and responsibilities make monastic life impractical.
The personal characteristics that produce achievers in any area of

human endeavour are essential to Tantra: ambition, determination,
responsiveness and, especially, hubris.
Humanity can be classified into three major categories of

inclination and potential. These categories are not absolute, and
their boundaries can be crossed by individuals in the course of
their lives. That said, they are a good general guide to who should
and who should probably not dabble with things tantric.
Pasha (those in a noose) are the good citizens: the 90% of people
that believe “what everyone knows” and follow their leaders. It is
automatic for them to accept the guidelines and restrictions they
are given.
They have always been exploited by each other and the other
classes of humanity. They are the predated upon: the sheep.
They are not seeking for spiritual truths. If they manage an

incarnation of some sobriety, and not to beat their wives, browbeat
their husbands or traumatise their children into dysfunctionality,
their incarnations are successful: worthy of sincere respect.
They should on no account have anything to do with Tantra. At

most, good sex guides are useful to them: the Kama Sutra and
modern equivalents. Pillow books.
Even Neo-Tantra can be bad for them. Gains in terms of the sexual
pleasure they experience and their awareness of (and reactivity
to) cultural restraint are not necessarily a good thing. The nooses
of sexual addiction and of alternative, fringe and revolutionary
20
subcultures are not necessarily preferable to the standard ones,

and are so easy to slip into.
The anarchist objective of freeing pasha from their nooses looks

noble. It is not. It is intrinsically stupid. The pasha need their
nooses and will manufacture nooses themselves if none are
provided. Their evolution is the culture’s evolution which takes
time.
Virya are those of heroic inclination making up perhaps 8% or

so of the population. They excel in intellectual, financial, political
and criminal endeavours. They are the predators: the wolves.
Some are lone wolves. Most prefer the protection and herding
capabilities of the pack. They form packs – gangs of all kinds:
professional associations, corporations, governments, armies,
mafias and fraternities.
Their major strength is their willingness to risk failure.
Virya (related to the root of the word ‘virile’) are sometimes

attracted to Tantra – particularly to its promises of increased
sexual power and the siddhis (magical capabilities) which are
inescapably part of Tantra’s repertoire and reputation.
It is hard for virya to give, love or share when they cannot see an
immediate advantage in it. Many choose to stay in the shallows
of their experience when they find that the depths have costs that
money cannot meet.
The biggest danger of Tantra to a virya-type person is that their

heroic hubris and conquering ego can develop desires beyond
mere worldly achievement and ambition, turning them into a
devya.
Devya, those oriented to the Divine, making up around 2% of

the population, are those with seriously well-developed ego
structures.
They find the cultural laws and limitations which constrain

the excesses of pasha and virya to be unnecessary and silly.
21
Unnecessary because true happiness is not a matter of worldly

power and wealth. Silly because they are intelligent enough to find
a loophole or a way around virtually any law or restriction they
find inconvenient.
Their hubris is extreme. Not content with the pursuit of worldly

pleasures and the satisfaction of material desires, they desire
the highest states of consciousness and delights beyond the
mundanely physical.
Most of them are content with making spiritual progress, with

developing and evolving as their path unfolds. Some try to live
by the Buddhist guidelines of merit and karma, striving to gain
the one to avoid the other. Many find a traditional teaching, a
respectable guru, a spiritual lifestyle or a reading list.
Some are wilder, more exploratory. They explore ideas from Tolle
to the Tirthankaras, practices from Mantak Chia to Caroline Myss,
attitudes from science to shamanism and drugs, from alcohol to
ayahuasca.
When things go well, they find their way through a few mazes,
get over being amazed, and develop a more insistent approach to
things. They develop the willingness to face their shadow aspects
in more than theory. They develop the courage and willingness to
face their own depths.
Tantrikas are a subset of these seekers of truth. They are the

most insistent, the most committed and the most total in their
approach. This is why they want the fastest, most effective
teachings. Right now. Even if the lessons are delivered harder and
faster and therefore hurt more in the short term.
Tantrikas are well-equipped for the path if they have had a

decent immersion in all three predominant states of being: pasha,
virya and devya. Each of these states holds valuable lessons and
understanding.
Without a taste of pasha, one has no capacity for committing to

any discipline: no endurance when submission to hard lessons
22
is required and no stubbornness when it is necessary to resist

stupidity.
Without something of the heroic virya, the will to gamble is weak

and the insistence on success, no matter what is lacking. Tantra
requires a great personal capacity to risk and, when moving
through hard lessons, great persistence of intent.
The insistence of Tantra is: enlightenment this lifetime or bust. A

tantrika is not interested in incremental improvements, personal
development or finding ways to get her ‘needs’ met and be happy. A
tantrika is interested in going beyond all self-imposed limitations
and seeking truth wherever it is to be found. When necessary,
tantrikas worthy of the name have the capacity and willingness to
learn the way the cat learnt to swim.
It is specifically for those few that this book is written: the

most insistent of the seekers of truth. The special forces among
spiritual warriors. Those with unusual capabilities, capacities and
courage.
This is just a book, and I have gone to the necessary trouble to

publish it, so it seems silly to warn you off reading it. Silly, but
necessary – and silly that it is necessary. If you think that reading
a book with a cover like this could risk your soul’s long-term
damnation, it probably does.
I recommend you give it to your worst enemy.
The tantric path starts at the edge of a cliff. This book should not
be able to push you over that edge but there is an edge, and this
book is designed to tempt you towards it.
Once over that edge, however rough, rocky and horrible the
truth of your experience may seem to you, however dark and
disillusioning it may become, it is basically impossible to ever
again retreat into unawareness.
Tantra is the most disillusioning of paths. The first illusions to go

are often your expectations.
23
So do be a little careful with this book and its unorthodox and

strange ideas, beloved reader. The path of Tantra can thrill, chill
and occasionally fulfil – don’t get too strung out if you find it
sometimes makes you shiver, just a little.
24
Commentary
Wendy sat back from the screen. “Actually, I quite like it, Swami,
although it is not exactly a conventional introduction.”
“Conventional?”
“Well, I was expecting something about the range of things called

Tantra these days, and what we mean by the word.”
“I don’t want to trouble my beloved readers with that. I think it is

pretty clear in the world that there are a wide range of things that
are called ‘Tantra’. Part of their journey is their development of
good discernment.”
“Or the glimpses of the Divine that can happen in orgasmic

states?”
“Every Tantra book I have come across belabours that to the point
of boringness. I am not writing specifically for beginners, and I
don’t like to repeat what is more or less common knowledge.”
“I suppose, but what about people reading yours as their first?”
“I think they will be fine. If they don’t like it, I hope it won’t turn
them off the topic entirely. I think it is those who have some
experience and are widely read that will have a tougher time.”
“The full cup thing – because they are full of ideas beyond their
own experience?”
“Yes, but also because they have encountered a wide range of

beginner teachings. I do try to give some idea of the depths …
where Tantra goes …”
“But you give more emphasis to beginner work than describing

our highest understandings and practices.”
“I do. My focus is on what tantrikas need to learn, particularly

what I find lacking in the books that are currently out there. I
25
am not very interested in trying to impress anyone. I want to

emphasise strong basics, especially being thorough with erotic
work. High philosophies, deity manifestation and delightful tricks
… aren’t really my thing.”
She laughed, but I failed to get the joke. She chuckled her way
through her explanation. “Swami, your whole teaching is rooted
in Advaita which is the highest philosophy. You are a teacher of
yoginis and dakinis who are Goddesses incarnate and you are
delightfully tricky in the extreme. ‘Not your thing’ indeed.”
After she laughed a bit more, I tried again. “This is a book, and I’m
not trying to give anything like a full exposition of our ways, and
wouldn’t want to, even if I could.”
The laughter had stopped. “I just want to encourage a good

attitude with the basics – taking things step by step.”
“More like quantum leap by quantum leap.” She grinned.
“Thanks, Wendy” I smiled. “I like that line … and I think I know

how to introduce us now.”
26
Chapter 1
Tantric touch work
So, come up to the lab and see what’s on the slab.

Candles and incense
I parked outside of what looked like a normal Johannesburg

suburban home, ten minutes early, and exhaled.
Traffic in Johannesburg was, in the normal course of things, far

more exciting than a sensible person would enjoy. Today, it had
been particularly intense.
I sat and left the engine idling to keep the air conditioner going. I
wondered what I was doing here.
I had accompanied Belinda more or less willingly to lectures

on aliens, channellings of ancient magicians, Vedic astrology,
cabalistic chanting, family constellating, satsangs, Indonesian
cooking classes and other things we can do together. My habit was
to endure these silly things with good humour, in the service of
good girlfriend relations.
This Tantra fellow had been different. Clearly wigged out, but,
weirdly, he had seemed to make sense every now and then.
As the flow of cool air soothed me, I recalled the conversation I

had had with Belinda on the drive back home.
“So what would you rather start with?” she had asked. “Top-down,
or bottom-up?”
“Uh …” I was disconnected in reverie, thinking of his description

of an exercise they did on their retreats: hot kinky stuff described
as if he had been talking about woodwork.
“You know. The two ways he said they work with beginners.”
“Are we beginners?” I asked, slightly alarmed.
“Well,” my beloved replied, “would you rather do your Advanced

Usui Reiki Attunements?
“Err … no …”
28
“Rolando Toro is visiting. Perhaps his Minotaur group thing?”
“Very tempting … I like him, you know.”
“Seriously?”
“OK … no … sure … OK, Belinda beloved, I am a Tantra beginner.

What do you suggest?”
“Well, the top-down …” she wrinkled her nose disapprovingly.

“I don’t like that phrase. He should call it ‘erotic inquiry’ or
something … but I guess it can do for now. The top-down
following-the-thread-of-eroticism thing, I think we can mostly
work on at home.”
“He did suggest that,” I agreed.
“Yes,” she said, “except when there are things that are erotic but
not mutually … interesting.”
We were silent for a while after that. Belinda seemed lost in her
thoughts. Or in wondering what I was thinking.
And, I was thinking. Could there be anything I was hot for, but
not yet aware of? Could there be … something that she would not
be into at all?
Nothing specific came to mind – but I felt a kind of mental vertigo

at just the idea of such … work being available.
Valiantly attempting to raise an eyebrow, I joked, “So, what sick

shit are you into that I would want to avoid?”
She looked at me, startled, frowned, then said “What are you
doing with your face?”
I stopped working on keeping the eyebrow up.
She spoke slowly: “There could be things, darling. Not so much

things that you or I would not be willing to play with. There could
be things we might not want to explore with each other, at first,
perhaps.”
29
“Well, I can’t think of anything …”
She interrupted me then. “Neither can I, right now, but stuff in

us will be stirred up. That much is pretty clear. We may … we
probably will … find things in ourselves that we may not know
about yet. If we play with this stuff, it is going to be scary, maybe,
and maybe a bit weird.”
“Second thoughts?”
“No.” She frowned again. “I think that trying to avoid awareness is

silly. Like Shrek says: Rather out than in.”
“Crude, perhaps, but true,” I agreed.
“Try this for crude,” she said, putting her hand on my crotch
and squeezing insistently. The car lurched for a moment before I
regained control over it but not over my erection. I moaned, and
risked closing my eyes for a moment as lust swept over me.
We drove the rest of the way home with no words. She kept
squeezing and stroking me with one hand, and touched herself
with the other. I did my best to get us home alive, really fast.
We did not even make it into the bedroom and when she came, just
after me, she shook with such an intensity that I wondered for a
moment if she had perhaps been faking it on previous occasions.
Afterwards, as she headed, still naked, to the shower, she turned

and smiled at me over her still glistening shoulder. In that moment,
I felt her beauty as an almost physical impact. My breath choked
in my throat.
“Next week,” she had reminded me then, “I fly to London. It would

probably be good for you to start while I am away.”
So, I was here for ‘bottom up’ work. Challenging the mind’s views
of love, intimacy and so on with direct, intimate, loving touch.
My question thus answered, I got out of the car into the hot
Johannesburg summer air and crossed the road.
30
Sex: the lowest form of

love
Almost everything we know of love is in the territory of mind.

Some of it is conscious, and much of it lurks in subconscious
realms. Working from that end, following eroticism and removing
its illusions layer by layer is the top-down approach.
The bottom-up approach works, quite literally, from the other

end.
Sex is the lowest form of love. Being the lowest, most fundamental
form of love, it is the easiest to start with. Having gained awareness
of what love is, at this admittedly low level, we can then aspire to
its higher expressions.
Osho said:
Sex is the seed,

Love is the flower,
Compassion is the fragrance.
Being touched lovingly is probably the nearest we can get to an

unambiguous direct experience of love.
This area of tantric work is the most widely known and it is

practised in many forms.
Settings vary from white-tile clinical with latex gloves and

lubricants, to handspun cotton futons, draped saris and aromatic
oils.
There are many practitioners at every level of skill, intent, attitude,

sexual orientation and lifestyle preference.
There are always candles and incense. There is even an in-joke

about that:
31
Q: What is the difference between a Tantra massage and a regular

massage?
Don’t know … or starts on some explanation …
A: Candles and incense.
Q2: What is the difference between tantric sex and regular sex?
Tends to just ask for the answer this time.
A2: Candles and incense.
Most practitioners are healers. In modern Western culture, which

now is pretty much the global culture, this work is compassionate
and very necessary. The techniques of tantrikas and taoists
are hugely effective as treatments for the unfortunate effects of
current cultural attitudes to sexuality.
With their help, women suffering from vaginismus, an involuntary

(sub-conscious, culturally induced) clenching of vaginal muscles,
find their capacity to open. They find this capacity by revisiting the
reasons why they once felt they had to be so very closed. This will
not, of course, guarantee that they will then want to be penetrated
by their husbands.
They can do wonderful things for men too. I have heard of a paper
which documented research on a tantric technique by an accepted,
highly qualified academic. She had explored its use as a cure for
premature ejaculation and erectile dysfunction. On average, it
took just two sessions to heal these conditions. The paper was
rejected as unacceptable on account of pleasure being involved in
the treatment process.
For male troubles, the medics have blue pills. For vaginismus,
they inject toxins of botulism into the vaginal muscles. This
kills the nerves to the muscles of the yoni. The circumvention
of the woman’s natural defence mechanism is then regarded as a
successful cure. She can now be entered at will.
32
For both sexes, the medics have ‘cosmetic’ (that word really needs
to be in quotes) interventions.
Most men who have a penis ‘enhancement’ (that word too!), do so

because of how they want to look when in changing rooms with
other men. It is strange that no one told them that penis size, even
in the locker room, generally has to do with the degree of arousal
experienced.
For women, the surgery-sellers have defined the standards of what

something truly unique should look like, and trim off sensitive
and responsive bits to make things neater.
The tantrikas of the healer persuasion may be facing tough

times. The medical profession has a strategy of ‘owning’ medical
conditions, even lobbying for laws to make alternatives to their
profitable treatments illegal. Medical marketing efforts have now
become very focussed on establishing their treatment regimens
for any conditions they manage to define as a sexual dysfunction.
Some practitioners of these tantric arts are therapists. Similar

to healers, they cure the medically defined conditions but place
more emphasis on coaching their clients/students in relationship
dynamics and sexual performance.
Many are multi-disciplinary, coming to the work via psychology

and other branches of mental, physical and sexual therapy.
There are magicians, shamans and sorcerers, some of whom are

adept in the resolution of spiritual and psychological dilemmas.
Others boost intentions and activate their clients’ creativity
around issues of health, wealth, success, sexual power, lovers and
so on.
Practitioners of these arts from all persuasions and inclinations

are remarkably effective, even with minimal training, minimal
awareness of what they are working with and even when their
intent is questionable.
Deliberate awareness brought to these practices is the key to

unlocking their gifts.
33
This awareness can be the practitioner’s or the client’s.
Some people have experienced deep healing and profound insights

while working with practitioners of no great awareness. Some
practitioners only discover the intrinsic compassion in their work
through the responses and feedback they get from their clients.
The whole being – body, nerves, mind and essence – is powerfully

affected by touch. Babies can even die without it. The sense of
touch speaks to our most primitive and fundamental aspects of
being.
We have a natural sense which detects the energies that accompany

touch. These are usually referred to as subtle energies. However,
given the way we currently raise children, these senses seldom
convey more than a subconscious discomfort.
We feel the genuine friendliness in some hugs, the respectful

politeness in others, and the reserve and fear in the reserved and
fearful (who fortunately do not go in for a lot of hugging). We
feel a delightful tickle right through our bodies at the touch of a
hand on one occasion and flinch in revulsion at precisely the same
physical sensation on another.
Our sense of touch and touching is richer, more evocative and

more deeply remembered than mere data about skin pressure can
account for. Although we hint at this extra-sensory information
in language, especially in poetry, we do not really have a language
to describe it.
When a sense is under-developed, and is then enhanced and made

noticeable, the brain takes some time to adjust the mapping of
the new sense and to layer it into the world it renders. Before this
adjustment is complete, the incoming data is mapped to other
senses. This phenomenon is called synesthesia.
This is why the chakras and other subtle and etheric phenomena
are often described as having particular colours and notes.
Conscious touch techniques activate and enable this sense of what

in English we are pretty much stuck with calling energy, meaning
34
the subtle energy of the body and its interconnections, know to

other cultures as prana and chi.
The techniques of this ancient art derive their power from

their naturalness. They are not a form of training. They are an
untraining, a deconditioning.
For seekers, they are a key to vistas of self-awareness. For many,

surfing the shores of bliss is the whole of Tantra, and it is very nice
indeed. For tantrikas worthy of the name though, the awareness
and capacity gained from touch work is just a beginning. A
prelude to the path.
If there is, at minimum, the awareness that these practices are

about something deeper than conventional, culturally ‘normal’ sex
… there is probably sufficient awareness to benefit from them.
These techniques are extremely powerful even when they are

poorly understood and misapplied.
When a skilled and experienced practitioner uses them, they

become transcendent.
35
Seven sessions
In just seven days …
Belinda had been gone for three weeks now, much longer than
either of us had expected.
What was supposed to have been a simple family visit had become
complicated. The day after she visited her great aunt, the old bat
promptly left this world for wherever people go when they die.
They had never been very close but her last contact with the old
woman had touched Belinda deeply. She had extended her stay so
that she could attend the funeral.
Over these three weeks, at considerable expense, I had been for

seven sessions with Yogini Leela, obviously a nom de l’amour,
titled a Yogini Adept according to the Tantra school’s website.
This lovely woman, twenty-something, blond, and for most of

our sessions clad in a kimono-cut white robe, changed my life.
She managed this in a total of just fourteen hours.
At my first session, I was nervous. All jumps and twitches. She kept
reminding me to breathe, to feel into the sensations and not to shy
away from them. Unrelentingly, she kept touching and caressing,
pressing my increasingly frazzled nerves to accept an overload of
delicious but screamingly intense, and sometimes, I had to admit,
frightening sensations.
Eventually, I succumbed as one does to intense pain. I yielded and

managed to welcome the flood of sensation, enjoying it for a brief
moment.
Suddenly, I convulsed, gasping as if drowning. Feelings

overwhelmed me and tears flooded my eyes. The yogini cradled
me in her arms while I howled and sobbed for the rest of the two-
hour session.
36
Later, with 20/20 hindsight I understood, sort of, what had

happened to me. My body had been reminded of love without
expectations, conditions, implications and consequences. Just
love. The last time I had felt that, unambiguous in its purity, I
must have been about three. Partly, I was in shock from finding
myself (temporarily) regressed to childhood helplessness. Mostly,
my tears were for the years during which my being had been
starved of this basic root form of love.
I am still surprised that I managed to go back for the second session.

I was scared. Scared of having more emotional embarrassments.
Scared of the sheer intensity of sensation. Scared of what Leela
thought of me, so cramped and stunted in myself when compared
to her glowing openness. Most of all though, I was scared of falling
in love.
At the end of the second session, I shared that fear with her. She
laughed, and said “Of course. Completely natural. Sweet of you to
mention it. Don’t worry.”
“Don’t worry!” I squealed in protest. She was clearly not taking me

seriously. “What do you mean, don’t worry?”
She took my hand then and, after a moment of silence in which

my levels of panic subsided almost against my will, spoke slowly
with solid emphasis. “Don’t worry. This too shall pass.”
I continued to worry throughout the next few sessions, in between

feeling more than I had in years. Yogini Leela was relentless, urging
me to consciousness in the midst of extreme arousal, insisting that
I not only tolerate but actively welcome the waves of loving nerve
fire she sent sweeping though me. She seemed to be constantly
challenging me with the unspoken question: How much bliss can
you stand?
Driving home after session six, I suddenly noticed the sensation

of my hand on the steering wheel. I know that sounds silly, and it
did to me too. It still does, actually, just … my hand on the wheel
felt so … close, so real, so … loving. I realised that this was not
conducive to responsible driving, so I pulled off to the side of the
37
road, parked and sat there, feeling this wonderful new intensity of
sensation and loving it.
The sensation expanded. I felt the embrace of gravity, the love

with which it held my body firmly in the hug of the car seat.
Everything before my eyes showed itself as being suffused with a
… a presence. A presence loving of and in everything. Molecules
of air kissed me all over, millions of times a second. I was not
having this experience, I was this experience. In that moment, I
was the lover of all and the beloved of all.
That was the end of my worry. I walked into my seventh session

fearless and looking forward to the yummy things that Leela was
going to do to me.
It was only at the end of that session that I realised she had not
touched me at all. For the first hour or so, we had done a naked
gazing, in which I had slipped again into the all-lovingness I had
first felt a few days before, with the steering wheel.
In the second hour, she introduced me to self-loving.
It had never occurred to me that loving oneself could be taken

so literally. I was surprised to find that I could evoke degrees of
sensation by myself that I had only previously experienced at her
hands.
This was nothing at all like my usual basic and functional habit
of masturbation. I found that I could play my body’s energy like
a musical instrument.
At some point in that dance of sensual fire, I laughed, finding

myself thinking in terms of chakras and energy without needing
quotes or italics. Almost as if I knew what these things were, and
then I realised … I did.
She showed me how to gather the energy of approaching orgasm

at my root chakra, then squeeze it there to a delightfully explosive
intensity as I breathed in. As per the directions she gave, I held
my PC muscles tight, holding energy and breath until the need to
breathe became strong.
38
At this point, when the urge to breathe became a bit demanding,

she encouraged ‘explosive relaxation’ by which she meant suddenly
relaxing the PC contraction and exhaling. This sent a cascade of
orgasmic bliss rushing from my root chakra upward/outward
through every cell in my body.
After repeating this three times, my hot lusty energy abated and
was replaced by a suffusion of contentment. I noticed too that my
lingam was contentedly semi-flaccid and I had not ejaculated. I
felt deeply at peace.
“That is called the draw,” she had informed me. “Sharing your
orgasms into your whole body instead having just a genital
sneeze.”
I realised that when Belinda got back, she was going to be more
than a little surprised. Fortunately, she already liked candles and
incense.
39
Chapter 2
Exploring eroticism
Erotic nightmares beyond any measure

and sensual daydreams to treasure forever.
The ironmonger
I was rubbing down the faux-aged copper finish of an ornate

outdoor table when the freaky, pretty-looking couple walked into
my workshop, a small concrete box in an industrial park on the
city outskirts. Last Saturday’s roadside market had been good for
me and now, just moderately hung over, I was here at work on
Monday, getting stock made for next Saturday.
Just like most weeks, except when the hangover was bad, or
postponed altogether by staying drunk.
“Hi.” Pointy black boots, very loose pants with no pockets, a

leather pouch at the waist, skin tight vest, strongly defined but
skinny muscle, no tits, long, long loose blond hair, tall, sounded
male.
I looked at them and tried to remember back past the hangover.

Vaguely … “Just this Saturday?” I asked. “Yes,” the other one
replied. This one, less tall but not short, was wearing tight jeans
and a black velvet jacket. Hair cut shoulder length. The jacket
hung open, revealing a wisp of cotton half-shirt which tried,
unsuccessfully, to cover small but definite tits.
Now that they thought I remembered them, I guessed. “You want

me to make you a …”
“bed,” she supplied, “a strong bed”.
Grinning broadly, she held her hand out to me. “Leigh.”
We shook, and she held onto my hand while she spoke. “We have a
design we would like you to make for us.” She let my hand go and
continued without pause. “My husband …” I waved in the guy’s
direction who returned a “Hi” and a friendly smile but no name,
“… has drawn something up.”
This was all happening just a little too fast for my recovering
brain. Is she on caffeine or cocaine? I wondered, a little resentful
42
of her perky cheerfulness and all-business attitude. I reached out,

slowly and deliberately, for the A3 sheet she offered and retreated
behind it.
The design was a bit strange but not bad if one was making the
thing out of wood. I work in iron. There was a double rail all
around, when a single one would provide all the strength that
could be wished for. The angled bracing of the legs was excessive
and the two extra legs at the sides were completely redundant.
Maybe they were looking for a carpenter. I said so.
The one with the name … Leigh, looked at me seriously and said
“We saw a bed you made at the roadside market. It would not last
us a week. Last month we broke a bed which was custom-made
for us from old teak railway sleepers.” Her features flashed into
an angry glare and her voice was fierce. “I have had enough of
sleeping on a mattress on the floor.”
“Ok, ok.” I looked away from the pretty–angry face and turned the
drawing towards the guy. His nervousness at the moment of her
anger had been palpable, but he recovered quicker than I did and
stepped closer.
I put the diagram down on the table I had been rubbing, where
we could both look at it. “Let me show you what I mean. You want
two box-section beams running all around, and they are each
what, like …”
“5cm,” he supplied. “I drew it to 1/10 scale.”
“Serious overkill,” I asserted. “Even just one is overkill. Even if you

are very athletic. Three-quarter-inch tube, just one, legs just at
the corners and forget that bracing at the head and foot. Iron is
strong, you know, and rigid.”
“Tube for the second rail, maybe.” He was all seriousness. She had
wandered off and was looking around the workshop. “But the
box section frame, a cross underneath, a central leg and the legs
on the centre of the sides are essential, otherwise any board we
43
use will sag. Bracing just the head and foot underneath would be
insufficient …”
I was losing patience. So maybe she liked to brag, or maybe they

did fuck like demons, but they did not need to park a car on the
thing.
I interrupted him. “Maybe a 5cm angle iron for the base, if you
need serious strength.” I paused, and glanced back but she was
apparently no longer listening. “But it would be very heavy. The
rail is totally unnecessary and so is the bracing.”
Now she was looking at my only decoration, a trade calendar on

the wall featuring a full-figured blond- straddling a huge I-beam.
He was watching her too. She turned, as if cued by our glance,

swept her jacket back, put her hands on her (now revealed to be
gorgeously formed) hips and mimicked the calendar pose. In the
smoky light that streaked from the fibreglass panels in the roof, she
looked very sexy indeed. She wiggled a little in the pose, obviously
enjoying being the distraction, then, while pouting most prettily,
she addressed us.
“Nothing but nothing is going to be allowed to sag anytime soon.

And I insist …” She turned dramatically and stalked towards me.
“I absolutely insist on inflexible rigidity.”
Leigh beamed a smile which seemed to gather momentum as she

advanced on us. I became aware that my mouth hung open and
snapped it shut. She came to the table and waved a finger in the air
until we looked at it. The finger descended and our eyes followed
it down to the page. It stopped, pointing at the contentious
bracing.
She spoke. “This is necessary because, if I hold on here, and move,

or am moved with some, let us call it passion, this …” she indicated
the head of the bed, “will flex back and forth, and the legs, which
are all one piece with it, will dig holes in my gorgeous pine floor.
Worse, they will squeak. The same will happen at the foot.”
44
She tapped her short, clean, sharp fingernail on the paper to keep
our attention there and continued. “The rail is useful bracing
for forces in all directions but it is more necessary than that for
…” She peered closer in the tricky light, studying the diagram,
bending further over the table.
I studied her tits which were completely revealed as the loose

cotton under her jacket fell open. No cleavage as such but perky
and cute as puppies. If she held onto the bed head, and was ‘moved
by passion’, they would move like … This happy chain of thought
was rudely interrupted by her suddenly slapping the paper.
I broadened my view. Fortunately, she was focussed on the guy.

He looked nervous. She looked stern – as stern as a school teacher
confronting dog-chewed homework.
“Where are my hooks?”
Between her brash directness, seductive asides, and him blushing,

occasionally stuttering something intelligible, I gathered that
the rail was for ropes, and the hooks were to enable their easy
repositioning.
Her ideas on the look and finish were not my kind of thing at all.
Her view, firmly expressed was: “I am buying an iron bed, and I

want it to look like an iron bed that is made out of iron.”
No, she did not want me to give it a bit of colour, a glow or some
sparkle. Ugly leaden grey with industrial black grime was specified.
Even my suggestion of antique twists of wrought iron work was
rebuffed. “That would compromise on rigidity, which you know
is important to me.”
Facetiously, I suggested a spider web design for the head and

to my horror she gave the idea serious consideration before
announcing:
“No. I like it but it is too specific. I have a greater range than

that, and so does he. We need clean functional lines with no bias
inherent in the design. Bauhaus. A blank canvas for living on.”
45
She looked at me with a quirky half-smile. “That was an …”

Slowly, steadily, she pronounced the word. “… analogy.” Teasingly,
she added, “You understand big words?”
“Sure.” I pointed at the now much scribbled-on plans.

“Redundancy”.
She leaned close to me and winked, then turned away and headed
for my desk. Looking back at me over her shoulder, her hair backlit
and aglow, angelic, she said “Good. I hope you understand this big
word then: Negotiability.”
46
Eroticism, the light

in the darkness
of everybody’s life
The first and most important thing to realise about your eroticism
is that there is no sense at all in avoiding it. It is driven by whatever
part of your mind is subconscious in that moment. Many of the
body’s controls and responses are managed by subconscious
aspects, especially sexual arousal.
This means that we are sometimes in disagreement with our

bodies. We try to force it to be aroused when it is nervous or
bored. We try to suppress arousal when it seems inappropriate or
inconvenient.
This lesson urges you to correct a bias, an automatic tendency

you are likely to have, a habit, of being in favour of restraint and
suppression.
It is unlikely that you will find your true and natural urges and
inclinations by simply dropping the trained-in cultural bias. It’s
the same as when steering a sliding car, it is necessary to apply
counter-steering. Not as a permanent attitude but for just as long
as it works, meaning that your experience brings you deeper
awareness and dispels illusion. After that, your desires and
inclinations will have less to do with what your mind borrowed
from the culture, and will have more to do with you and your
flowering.
To give a logical and mechanistic description of how this works, I

must refer to Pavlov. Pavlov has been banned in the Tantra School
as a subject for my talks on account of a very particular dakini
having heard it “far too often”. I take a moment here to ask that
dakini to please skip the following few paragraphs, and I ask her
to please note: I am writing it, not saying it.
47
Pavlov’s fame has much to do with his experiments on dogs,

particularly the mental associations they make with being fed.
When a bell had been rung at feeding time, ringing the bell at
other times would produce a measurable physiological response
from the dogs: salivation.
Even after discontinuing the bell ringing at meal times, the

dogs would still reliably salivate when the bell was rung at any
time. More startlingly, when Pavlov provided something else to
associate with the bell ringing (note: not with feeding) the dog
would respond to this second layer of association, e.g. a blue light
flashing, as if it was the real thing – the food.
The blue light has never flashed when food was actually delivered
but the dog responds to the blue light by salivating. Pavlov
experimented to discover how many layers of false associations a
dog’s brain takes to be ‘real’. His answer: Seven.
A major difference between a human and a dog is that we humans

have a far more complex and powerful brain which is far more
capable in this game of association than a dog’s brain is. We do
not stop at just seven layers of falsehood. We layer associations on
top of our experience to a depth which significantly disassociates
us from our actual reality.
We can chat with a therapist or use mind-training techniques to

explore our psychopathology around love and sex. Some insight
can be gained; some understanding can be had.
If we want to explore deeply into the truth of sex and love, we

need a more direct and powerful approach. We need to directly
explore that which we find erotic.
Exploring one’s erotic urges in strong awareness is the fastest

and most thorough method for dispelling the layers of trained
associations we have around sex. Much has to be uncovered before
we can experience sex in its pure form.
Perhaps the most important thing to remember is that your

eroticism will change as each layer of it is exposed as false. When
48
this happens, that particular flavour of eroticism becomes just

part of your range and capacity. It no longer rules you from
subconscious depths. You can play with it and enjoy it, but you no
longer hunger for it.
Step by step, a tantrika follows his or her eroticism, testing it in the

ultimate laboratory of personal experience, continually discarding
the false and approaching the real.
There is of course a true and completely natural sexual impulse

within you. There is a natural pattern with a natural beauty to the
flowering and expression of that energy in your life. Finding this
truth, this naturalness, is intrinsic to the tantric quest. Taking the
light of awareness through the dark and unknown subconscious
realms of the erotic is the method.
This transition from eroticism to the naturalness of sex is the

start of true Tantra. The erotic sculptures on the temple walls
at Khajuraho were on the outside of the temple. Only when one
could walk around the temple without being attracted or repelled
by any of the statues was one ready to enter the temple.
If one got stuck, if one found a statue that had an allure, one could
meditate on it, and perhaps get through that particular scenario. If
not, perhaps someone gorgeous would come along and meditate
on the same statue …
49
Heavy metal
She was a tough negotiator indeed. Eventually, I agreed to make

their over-engineered king-size extra-long bed for the price of a
regular double. He was drifting around the workshop, smoking
a small cigar, overhearing but not getting at all involved in our
dealing.
I said it would take the rest of the week to make the monstrosity. I
stuck by that, somehow, agreeing to deliver it on Friday afternoon.
Clearly, for this alluring but scary young woman, instant
gratification was just never fast enough.
She beamed a smile at me and gentled her voice. “Thanks so

much, Joe. I know you will make me the perfect bed which will
not squeak or rattle, no matter what I do to him.”
“No,” I managed, my tongue feeling clumsy and heavy in my

mouth. “No, it will not squeak.”
“But you will, darling,” she said, turning to her pretty companion.
He was suddenly at her side, attentive.
“You will most definitely squeak.” She paused, enjoying his

blushing discomfort. “I promise.”
50
Chapter 3
Totality in relationships
I’ll put up no resistance,

I want to stay the distance.
An infidelity
“But, darling, I am not angry with you. Well, not furious, anyway,
not anymore. Whatever you did with J is really between you two.
None of my business.”
“But I lied to you.” She was sobbing in my arms, the stress of her
confession being a lot harder for her than for me. I had already
had a night out with a bottle of tequila and the supportive
companionship of a good friend.
“Yes. I was angry about that.” I was still, let us say, somewhat angry
about that.
“Is that why you called me a nasty two-timing whore?”
“Yes. That would have been why,” I answered. The cheating, lying,
sneaky …
“And an evil, lying, conniving bitch?” She sobbed, inconsolable.
“Yes. I thought your lying to me about that was quite cruel.”
“Not what I did with J?”
“No.”
Her tears miraculously ceased to flow, her eyes shone bright and
alert. She sat up and set her face into the mask I had come to know
as strategic.
“You mean it doesn’t bother you that I got so intimate with J?”
She paused. I waited. I figured there was more of the question to
come. There was. “We did things that you and I have not done …”
I possibly did not want to hear too much detail, so I interrupted.
“Yes, sure it bothers me. Mostly, it bothers me that if that is what

you wanted, you could have mentioned it. We have been married
six years now. Is there really anything you would like that you feel
uncomfortable to ask me for?”
52
She knew all about answering a question with a question, so she

politely ignored mine and asked a question of her own: “But not
the basic fact that I fucked him?”
“No. I might, if I felt threatened, if I felt I was being replaced. I just

cannot seem to take J seriously as a threat. He is cute, I suppose,
and he writes bad poetry …”
“Gorgeous poetry.”
“But am I wrong? Could you replace me with him and be

happy?”
We played the steady gaze game. Usually, I lost, but not this time.
Just a few seconds, and she glanced down.
“No. I suppose not. No stamina. Great build-up, wonderful

anticipation, gorgeous words, but … ultimately … more whimper
than bang.”
I manfully refrained from comment as my ego gently swelled, but

not for long. This fine woman seldom slipped up in the detection
and destruction of ego department.
“On the other hand, J is more adventurous than you and is more
exciting, more excited and more interested …”
I started to protest but was silenced with a glance as she continued,

“… in more than athletic accomplishment. Interested in deeper
intimacy, greater exposure, richer emotions.”
She gave this time to sink in. It did sink in. Somewhat painfully.
Life with me had been rough for her, these last few years. Mostly,
she had been at home with her mother, her mother’s maid and
our young children for company. A far cry from her previous life,
surrounded by the fawning admirers any sexy young actress has to
tolerate as part of her job.
“Ok.” A good start. I continued in a slightly forced spirit of

acceptance and tolerance … “I know you had your reasons. For
being a sucker for poetry, for fucking him and for lying to me about
53
it all.” The acceptance and tolerance faded a bit as I continued.

“Fucked up reasons I think, of course.” Acceptance and tolerance
managed a belated comeback. “But then, they are your reasons.”
“And you think my reasons are?” she inquired, as if from high

ground.
“Well …” I hesitated, considering, as every husband often must, the

appropriate depth and degree of truth which should be brought
to the situation. The bitch-beloved did an impatience thing with
her eyebrows. I had not got far with calculating what response
would be politic. Nothing for it but the truth.
“Your life, I have heard, is unexciting and dull. You miss the
attention. You miss having to fall in love with a new leading man
on each production.”
“About half right.” Her voice was silky soft. “It is not so much that
attention that I miss though. I miss your attention.”
Sweet, but puzzling. While I thought about this my mouth

happened to be open, so my thoughts came out. “But I live here.
We are married …”
She interrupted my rambling.
“Bullshit. You never get home before sunset. You eat and then you
drink beer and watch TV. Then you fall asleep. In the morning,
you vanish.”
“I work hard. That is why my salary has doubled each year for the
last four years. We do have weekends and holidays. We do have
time together. We have money. Maybe even enough money …”
“Well, it is just not enough for me. I want you more than that.
I think you want me more than that too.” She looked at me,
pleadingly, hungrily. She dug her fingernails deep into my inner
thigh. An explosion of pain and erotic heat rushed through me.
I looked at her in surprise. She looked deep into my eyes and
inquired “Is it enough for you?”
54
“Well, no. But what can we do?”
As I replied, her nails moved steadily up my thigh. Her other hand

unfastened my belt and took firm hold of my sudden erection. “I
have some ideas,” she said, “but we can talk about that later. For
now, lie still and don’t fight me.”
I did not fight. At the first touch of her mouth, I shuddered my

way through an intense and completely involuntary orgasm. She
tightened her hand firmly around my penis with a focus on its
underside, clamping the urethra. She pressed the knuckles of her
other hand into my perineum. She held firm against the pressure
of my ejaculation and gently withdrew her mouth’s caress.
In the third or fourth gap between the pulses of my ejaculation,

she slid her hand down my penis and rolled her knuckles over
my perineum, forcing my ejaculate back to where it was trying
to come from. She followed the next pulses perfectly, rolling the
knuckles and sliding her hand to keep the reflex going. After a
long time, my orgasm passed and the contractions of my prostate
subsided. My urethra tingled with the pressure it was under and
the damage it had probably suffered.
“When one is dealing with limited resources, one learns ways of

making the most of them,” she announced in a sweet tone. “Of
course, with you, more is possible.”
She released the pressure on my perineum and cupped the tip of

my penis with her palm. She released her grip. I shuddered and
twitched all over again as my body realised that my ejaculation
had not finished. She massaged my now very well-lubricated
penis between her palms. Twisting and swirling strokes around
the head of my penis delivered sensations of extreme intensity. A
short while later, I realised that not only was another ejaculation
going to happen … it was going to happen soon.
“But what about you?” I gasped. “Don’t fight me,” she said.
I accepted my situation. I did not fight.
55
“So,” she said, as I basked, somewhat dazed, in a deeply delicious

afterglow, “what you must do first is choose. Choose me … or
that fucking job. If you choose the job, I will just have to make
do with J.”
56
The tantric attitude of

totality
I have come across teachers with all sorts of views on how tantrikas
should practice and what their sexual lifestyles should look like.
Some advocate communality and others, celibacy. Some teach
Tantra for couples while others insist that Tantra for couples is like
flower arranging for rottweilers.
Non-monogamy seems to suit tantric practitioners best. This

approach to relating and loving takes considerable bravery and
brings awareness at a serious pace. It is a direct challenge to the
illusions of ownership, need, dependence and control.
On the downside, non-monogamy can be used to avoid strong

emotions and the closeness that is necessary to evoke them. Most
of us need to experience a ‘conventional relationship’ or two, or
three before we can manage deep intimacy without the illusions
of safety and permanence.
I have known tantrikas who suffered guilt on account of having

a special beloved, a first-choice lover. I have known child-rearing
seekers who judge themselves harshly for their attachment to
family and their lack of lovers outside of their marriage. I have
done that myself. Such nonsense. What matters is not how your
life is structured but the sincerity and intensity you bring to living
it.
Practise with what life presents you with. Your current eroticism is
your primary guide. Where you are is where your journey begins.
Repression means driving something from awareness and

removing it from consciousness. Restraint intensifies experience
and brings awareness. Repression results in ignorance. Restraint
can dispel ignorance.
57
Polyandry, polygamy, swinging, monogamy, celibacy, chastity

and all other lifestyle options are just choices between differing
degrees and styles of restraint.
Most people who experiment with alternative relationship

structures do so out of a desire to make life more loving, more
supportive and more emotionally satisfying. Tantrikas do so in
order to discover the truth of love. We explore with a willingness
to encounter the difficulties of the alternatives and to learn from
them.
Taking an attitude against jealousy and sexual ownership, for

example, may lead to some interesting sexual encounters. It
will definitely lead to an immersion in jealousy, complete with
opportunities to pass through the jealousy and discover the truth
of it.
If you feel constrained by a choice you made, either make a fresh

choice or commit with a will to the choice you made and the
restraint it implies.
Some years ago, I was at a braai (South African barbecue) with

some friends. One of them, a married man, was complaining
about his lack of a sex life. With the help of alcohol, his references
to this became crude and ugly.
I took him for a little walk, so that we could talk in private. I urged
him to take some responsibility for his feelings in the matter. If his
sex life was inadequate, I suggested, he should rather make use of
the local brothel. I helped him explore this notion, unpleasant to
him though it was.
He did concede that the necessary deception would surely be less

damaging to his marriage than his increasingly ugly behaviour.
I then suggested an alternative: that he take the constraint of

his marriage vows with an attitude of sincerity and accept the
(in)frequency of sex in his life for what it was, without any
avoidance, objection or intention to escape. I pointed out that
this involved trust and responsibility. Trust in the process of life
58
and responsibility for maintaining his awareness. His marriage, I

suggested, could then become something he chooses as a spiritual
discipline, instead of an unconscious unhappiness, suppressed
until alcohol is imbibed.
Finally, I told him that I had no preference between these choices

and was not particularly interested in which one he made.
Perhaps a year later, he shared with me that he had made the

second choice. He had made a discipline of not whinging about
sex. Instead of blaming his wife for failing to fulfil him, he had
been taking responsibility for his own feelings and desires. He had
even learnt to take himself in hand from time to time. He had
found that when desire is suppressed, it turns into hungry craving.
He had learnt that there is pleasure in just desiring … that desire
as such is a delight in itself and does not require release.
If, for whatever reason, you choose, for now, to be involved in a

relationship which adheres more or less to the standard guidelines
of the culture, do not despair. Even if monogamy is involved,
things can be intensified. Totality can be approached. Awareness
can be gained.
59
Hot monogamy
I resigned from my yuppie job the next day, to my employer’s

great annoyance. The home industry we had started some years
ago now supplied a few hundred shops. Financially speaking, my
salary was nice to have but not necessary. It was also likely that I
could match it or even improve on it by working as a freelancer,
with much easier hours.
A major incentive too, was the possibility of getting to know my

young children on a more than casual basis.
Nonetheless, I was far from pleased. Even though, in truth, these

changes suited me perfectly, I was resentful at being, as I judged it,
forced to make such extreme changes.
I decided, in the interests of harmonious marital relations, to

discuss the matter further with my beloved.
“You insist on the monogamy rules for me, break them for
yourself, and then get me to sacrifice a career that was, by the
way, looking very respectable. In exchange, I get to live with you
and our children. Is that the extent of your demands, terrorist?”
Perhaps that is a little harsh, I thought to myself. No matter. She
appeared completely unruffled by my accusation.
“Oh no, dear. It is just the beginning. We are taking a week away
together at Oom B’s, so I can explain.” She smiled at me warmly,
her beautiful features unmarred by her villainy. “I am sorry if you
are upset.”
“What do you mean by sorry and what do you mean by a week

away? I have things to do … a computer to buy and a business
to launch, just for a start.” I was sounding a bit loud, and not
entirely coherent. Nonetheless, I continued manfully, protesting
my pussy-whipped reality: “Not to mention the kids. And … just
… without even discussing it. Well?”
“I am sorry. Was that a question?”
60
“I … I … I …” I gave up.
After giving me a look that seemed to question my sanity, she

explained the arrangements. In essence, they amounted to our
first week alone together in five years. I maintained my dignity by
not getting excited. Or grateful.
It had taken serious negotiations with her extensive Afrikaans

family to arrange this.
Oom B’s bush retreat, a four-bedroom house in a private estate

with fences open to the beasts of Kruger Park was in great demand
with his multitudinous offspring.
Settling into the place, turning on water and gas, stocking the
fridge and the other little chores went smoothly and quickly. This
time there was no need to continually prevent two young children
from returning to the wild, where they thought they belonged and
probably did. There was even time for a shower and change of
clothes before nightfall, although it was hardly necessary after the
easy four-hour drive.
During the half hour it takes night to fall in Africa, we gorged on

fat Machadodorp trout that we had bought en route. The stars
came out as if they really meant it.
We lit paraffin and gas lamps, sat on the stoep, shared a joint of the
local veldtwak and enjoyed the sounds of the wild. It was hard to
stay resentful in that setting. I relaxed a bit.
“I am glad you arranged this break. Thank you. It really is very

special out here, especially without the kids.”
She gave me a look that conveyed indulgent loving tolerance, got

up and went into the house. I heard sounds of ice and glasses.
Soon, two beer shandies glowed in the gaslight along with two
much smaller glasses from which came a strong aroma of peaches.
I raised a suspicious eyebrow.
“I found his mampoer.”
61
I feigned shock. “Have you no limits, woman?”
“Funny you should mention it. That is kind of what I brought you
out here to discuss.”
She raised her small glass. I did likewise. She proposed: “To the
heat, the passion and the lust that is the symptom of our love.”
Our eyes locked. We drank.
We witnessed the shock in each other’s eyes. “Did I pour drain

cleaner by mistake?” she gasped.
“No,” I croaked, my throat afire. “Drain cleaner is a lot smoother

but less tasty. Also, drain cleaner can be bought legally.”
“And this can’t?”
“No. On account of its strength.”
“That is probably a good thing.”
We took time to drink greedily at our shandies. This soothed the

worst of our internal burns.
“It was fancy and a bit dramatic, I know, but I do mean it,” she
said.
“What … you want to take up drinking mampoer?” I inquired,

alarmed.
“No.” She chuckled. “My toast.” She gave me time to remember.
“Oh. Yes. Lovely sentiment. Thank you.” I meant it.
“Glad you liked it.” She kept eye contact and smoothly transitioned
her features from lovingly open to seriously intent. “I do hope you
are going to like what I brought you out here for. Before I suggest
our solution, let me outline our problem.”
“Ok.” I felt very set up but happy to be set up. Happy to shut up
for a while, too.
62
“Good.” She sat back, took a swig of her shandy and, as we used to
say in the sixties, laid it on me.
“Basically, you are polygamously inclined and I am monogamously

inclined. You can be attracted to more than one woman at a time,
and you can’t act on it because, as you well know, I am insanely
jealous.”
No kidding, I thought. I was being careful to close my mouth when

not drinking, in order to prevent my thoughts from automatically
becoming words.
“I, on the other hand, can’t, at present anyway, enjoy more than
one man at a time. I have your permission, blessing and even your
encouragement to explore other loves if I so wish, but … I have to
fall out of love with you to be open to anyone else. Then I have to
fall out of love with them to get back with you.”
She paused and lit a cigarette, inhaled deeply. She looked

appealingly vulnerable. I managed to keep quiet. Soon, her
composure restored, she continued.
“I did not enjoy having to get grumpy with you so that I could
enjoy J, or A, or W … or … well, you get the idea. The emotional
strain of doing that every time takes all the fun out of the game.”
I had time to consider this while she fetched more cans of beer and
lemonade from the gas-powered fridge. Topping up our glasses,
she continued her description of our predicament.
“We have explored stretching the definitions of our marriage.

You have explored falling in love with your work. I have explored
falling in love with other … things. I think our answer lies, if
anywhere, in the opposite direction.”
We sipped in silence for a while. I could have argued with her

statement, but it would have been a petty and pointless exercise.
Basically, she had expressed our situation accurately. Also, I was
becoming intrigued, now that my grumpiness was receding.
“Opposite direction?” I inquired.
63
“Yes. What if we took our marriage and the monogamy seriously?

What if we accepted it with all its implications?”
“Um …” I interrupted, then realised that I probably did not

understand. I changed my protest to a question. “Implications?”
“Well I suppose, for example, that if I were to take our monogamy

really, really seriously, I would regard myself as responsible for
your sexual satisfaction. Solely responsible. I would be on the spot,
committed, to making at least a wholehearted effort to attempt
anything you would want to do, whenever you wanted to do it.
You could be motivated by passion, lust, the sweetest love, or even
just curiosity. Your motivation would not really be my concern.
Just my willing participation.”
I discovered that I was not breathing, and gasped for air. She
looked at me, expecting comment. I choked on the air and
coughed. Realising that I was currently incapable of speech, she
smiled warmly, took a sip of her shandy and continued.
“We will have a lot more time together from now on. There are
several hours each day with no children in the house.”
I considered this. She was right, there would be time. Lots of time
for … whatever I wanted?
She looked deeply into my eyes. My thoughts flickered from the

sublimely sexy to the outrageously perverse. It seemed as if her
eyes gathered all my imaginings, my visions.
She said “Yes. To everything. To all of it. Think about it … If I am

the only outlet you are allowed, it is only fair, surely.” I nodded in
agreement, there being insufficient blood in my brain for a more
complex response.
“But,” she continued, “it would have to be reciprocal. Monogamy

is supposed to be a fair and balanced deal. You would have to do
the same for me.”
In the absence of a response from me, even though my mouth

hung open, she supplied one for me. “And that would mean?” And
64
proceeded to answer it without giving my poor reeling brain any

time at all for recovery.
“It would mean that you do your honest best for my satisfaction,
within your abilities. Even if you think something I want you to
do is childish, silly or indulgent. Even if you find it difficult or
judge it strange. The way I see it is that I am responsible for asking
for what I want, and I must take the risk of wanting things you
might judge …”
“Or, more likely perhaps, things that you might judge yourself for
wanting,” I managed.
“Just so.” She paused, looking at me thoughtfully. Implications of

what she was saying were starting to sink in. Another one of them
found its way to my brain’s speech centres.
“I find that aspect, of perhaps exposing myself to you as a terrible

pervert or worse, a little daunting. It is seriously exciting though,
to have the opportunity.”
She beamed, and exclaimed delightedly “Yes. You get it! You do
raise a bit of an issue though …” She frowned in concentration
for a moment then brightened once again. “Well, if we agree that
anything at all may be worth exploring, we could try things just
to see. We need to give each other permission without judgement.
Freedom to try things even just to check that they are indeed
wrong, perverse or horrible.”
I said, “That sounds maybe just a bit scary.”
“More scary than what we have been living lately?”
“Well … no …”
“How about we give it a try and see how things go?” she
suggested.
“Yes. Ok. Sure. How do you suggest we start?”
65
“I was thinking that we would probably just go with things as they

come up. But I have changed my mind. I think we should give
things some structure, at least at first.”
I raised my inquiring eyebrow. She swallowed the last of her

shandy.
“We have six days here. I suggest that for three days, your wish is
my command, and then we switch for the next three days.” She
grinned wickedly. “My three days.”
“Why me first?” I asked
“Because, if what I see in your jeans is anything to go by, you won’t

argue.”
I thought about this for a while. A very short while. “OK. And,
yes, beloved, I definitely have a lot of good use I would like to put
you to.” What I had said was true, but not at all expressive of what
I wanted of her, if her offer was honestly meant … I decided to
start over.
“Sorry. I would like to express myself a bit more clearly. Right now,
tonight, I want to fuck you with no regard or concern for your
pleasure or preference. I want to come in you or on you as many
times as I like … and then have you suck me gently to sleep.”
I had never expressed myself that directly, that crudely, that …

honestly ever before. To her, or for that matter, to any woman.
She grinned. “Fuck me! He can be taught.” She gave me a long,

steady, level look. “I do so very much like being wanted.”
I had half expected a renegotiation, a redefinition of her terms.

I studied her features for any sign of reserve, any indication of
insincerity. There was none. She was raising the stakes of the
game, it seemed, and challenging me to play.
Lust pounded in my loins.
66
“I know you are angry with me, and I want to make things up to
you. I want you to make me yours again, after where … where I
have been.”
She dipped her eyes shyly, sipped at her shandy, then dazzled me
with her most radiant smile.
“Would you like me ashamed and very, very sorry, perhaps with
protested innocence, yet utterly yielding,
… or … would you prefer me to be a cock-hungry slut?”
I reached for my drink and felt my hand start to shake. I decided

not to attempt to lift the glass.
“Let me help you make up your mind.”
She formed her face into a picture of hurt innocence. With wide
eyes and a slight tremble to her lower lip, she said “I did some
bad things, but … it is not fair to blame me.” My heart melted. I
fell in love. She leaned closer to me and touched my cheek with
a delicate, yielding softness and said, “I had to … I couldn’t help
it and couldn’t stop it. I want to make it up to you. I will try and
do anything you want, but please, please … don’t hurt me too
much.”
The sweet, contrite darling. Of course I would never hurt her. I felt
another surge of lust, and was a little shocked at my eagerness to
take advantage of this vulnerability. Suddenly, I wanted to order
that beautiful, sweet, delicate mouth to open wide, and as for
those protectively crossed legs …
The sweet contrite darling snapped out of her performance as if

a director had yelled, “Cut!” She closed her eyes, her expression
thoughtful, then opened them and inspected my hopeless at poker
face at her leisure.
“Or.”
She ran her hands through her hair, dragging strands of it forward,
over her face. She gave her head a quick shake, which threw most
67
but not all of her hair back. A few untidy wisps curled in towards
the corners of her mouth.
Her mouth no longer looked innocent. Her lower lip hung in an

indolent pout. Her teeth were slightly parted. Gaslight reflected
off a hint of pink tongue. Her eyes moved slowly, heavily. She
spoke, slowly and clearly, with just the slightest touch of alcohol
in her pronunciation.
“Darling, I never meant to hurt you. Whatever J and W and the

others were, they were not you. They were just … there … then.”
As she spoke, she touched a finger to her lower lip. Pulling it
slightly downward, she revealed its soft, moist inner surface.
“I would very much like to do whatever it takes to make it up to

you. Whatever it takes.” She closed her lips lusciously around her
fingertip.
Lust overwhelmed me. I wanted to shove my cock deep into that

hungry, pouting mouth. I wanted to throw her face down on the
table and fuck her until … logic intruded. Or perhaps it was fear,
masquerading as logic.
“But …” I stammered, logic fighting lust, “you do them so

believably … they seem so different, and so different from you
…” I wondered why I was talking. Lust was insisting that I shut
up. Now.
“And what, then, would be the real me, I suppose?”
I nodded. With a stage-dramatic sigh, she deigned to explain.

“Every role I ever played was me while I played it. Everything you
have just seen is me.” Another sigh. “Leave the existential angst of
the quest for identity to the professional.”
I hurriedly agreed to do so.
“When do you suggest we begin?”
“As soon as you make up your mind.”
68
“Well, to start, I think, for tonight at least, I would like the hungry
slut.”
She stood up in front of me, legs spread, and took my hand. She
guided it under her skirt and pressed it between her legs and said,
“There is something I would like you to notice, just in case you
have any doubts about what is real for me. Only a really hungry
slut could be this wet. Only a desperate one would bring it to your
attention.” She curled her hand over mine, pushing my fingers
inside her and leaned back, closing her eyes. “Mmm … more
please,” she sighed. She pulled my hand hard against her, grinding
and driving my fingers into her depths.
I withdrew my fingers gently but decisively and looked her in the

eyes. I sucked at my fingers and smiled at her. “Well, you do taste
good enough to fuck. Would you like that?”
“Yes,” she replied, dropping to her knees, pulling my belt buckle

loose. “Very much … please.”
“You seem so sincere, and you do taste good. I wonder how deep
you will go in this performance. Stand up.” She did. “Turn around.”
She did. “Spread your legs.” They trembled. “Hands on the floor
please … legs further apart. Walk your hands a little back. Tilt
your arse up. Higher … higher … good. Hold that pose now. No
moving.”
I leaned forward in my chair, and traced a finger up each of her

inner thighs. When I reached wetness, I pressed harder into her
thighs and slid my fingers along them more slowly. Her legs
trembled and I chuckled. I wiped the two fingertips and then my
hand up and down the slippery upper half of her thigh.
She moaned, loudly, and her legs shuddered. “Stop that

immediately,” I demanded. “It’s your own fault for being such a
slut. I haven’t even touched your cunt, and it is dripping halfway
down your legs.”
She moaned again. Deeper this time. More despairingly. She

arched her back, her buttocks parted even further. She never
69
wore panties. I flipped her skirt over her back, revealing the cutest
pink dot of an anus and a wonderfully engorged, pouting cunt.
I pressed my right hand into the centre of her slipperiness and
fanned my fingertips, sliding them slowly and steadily back and
forth from her clitoris to her anus. Light at the clit, through the
softest wetness, then heavier over her little button of an anus,
which contracted reflexively as each fingertip went over it. Her
legs shook violently and almost buckled. I stopped the stroking.
She gasped an apology. I slapped her bum lightly a few times,
adding emphasis to my words.
“You want to be fucked but you wobble all over the place before
I have even felt inside you. And what a sight you are. Dripping
wet and your cunt is actually gaping. Be still a moment. Very still
… yes. I can put a finger inside you without even touching the
sides.”
I curled my finger until it touched the wall of her vagina. She held
firm but panted heavily. I circled my fingertip slowly around the
hollow cavity, commenting as I went.
“This is pretty impressive. Your cunt has pulled itself completely

open. It is really gaping. Shameful … but close up, it is really quite
appealing. It does feel good, you know. Maybe even good enough
to fuck.”
“Please,” she pleaded, “please fuck me. Please fuck my hungry

gaping slutty cunt … please.” She sounded sincere. How on earth
did she deliver such porno lines with such feeling, I wondered. I
believed her. It seemed her body believed her too. My finger felt
her vagina contract powerfully. She was clearly on the edge of
orgasm.
“I think I will fuck you, beloved. To convince me, just keep still
and do not come for the next minute or so.”
Three fingers slid easily into her. I curled them in turn over her G
spot and the ridges surrounding it, keeping an intense rhythm.
70
I leaned forward and rested my cheek on her bum. I reached

under her with my free hand and scraped my fingernails over her
belly, from groin to nipples. I pinched around her clit, and pulled
on her nipples.
When her orgasm had clearly started, I withdrew my fingers, and

watched. She cried out, “God no. Fuck me, you bastard!”
“I am watching you come, darling. It really is quite beautiful. Be

still now, yes, I can see it … I see contractions moving through
your cunt. Your arsehole is pulsing in time with the contractions.
Very pretty, that.”
She moaned deeply and tried to stand up. I pushed her back down.
“No. Stay in this pose.” I had my hands on her buttocks, spreading
her to better see the agitation of her orifices.
“You are magnificent! That is so unbelievably gorgeous. Stop

shaking.” I watched until the fluttering had completely subsided.
She whimpered, raised her bum higher, pivoted her heels outward,
straining herself wide open. “Please fuck me. Please …”
“I am sure that wasn’t satisfying, and it is your own fault. If you

had not come, you would be getting all the cock you could handle
by now. Stand up and come inside.”
I stood up, arranged my somewhat painful erection more

comfortably in my pants, gathered our empty glasses onto a tray
and took them inside. I left the tray on the kitchen table, stripped
my clothes off, reclined on a couch in the lounge, and asked her
to kneel beside me.
I played with her nipples while I told her that I was enjoying her
very much indeed, that her heat was truly delicious, and that I had
never wanted to fuck her as much as I did at this moment.
“But,” I said, stroking from her nipples to her throat, “to do that
right now would be a waste. I want to be able to fuck you deep and
long, without such urgency.” I stroked my fingers past her throat,
to her mouth. I pressed her lips apart with the pad of my thumb.
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While I spoke, she caressed it with a gently stroking tongue and

satin lips.
“Use your hands and your mouth. Don’t hold back or try to pace
me. Get me to come as soon as reasonably possible and …” I
hesitated and nearly chickened out, then firmed my resolve, and
demanded, “… and make sure you swallow every drop.”
And so the evening went. By the time I fell asleep, my penis

softening in the tender gentleness of her deliciously delicate
mouth, I was deeply exhausted and my anger was completely
purged.
In the morning, I gently tongued around her clitoris until it

swelled and she stirred. She woke and reached for me. I penetrated
her immediately. She came to orgasm with me in just a few
minutes. Afterwards, she held me tight and shuddered while her
tears flowed. It took a while before I could make out that she was
saying thank you.
Later, over breakfast, she chattered happily. “It is an unusual

medium, to be sure. Deeper, more demanding and far more
satisfying than any other. Only one person gets to experience a
particular performance, but, in the nature of the art, only one
could. Great connection with that audience of one though …
and a whole new level of audience participation. Very hot. Steamy
hot.”
Six days later, we returned home very much married, very much in
love, very interested in our future together, and very, very tired.
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Chapter 4
Trauma and sexual healing
Thrill me, chill me, fulfil me.

Little girl’s panties
It was an unusual fantasy in that it did not come complete with a

back story and a climactic conclusion. It had no plotline and no
apparent connection to her reality. This fantasy consisted of just
momentary flashes of imagery and imagined sensation.
It was strange for her to have images of young girls and particularly
their plain cotton panties coming to mind when she was making
love or masturbating. The most disturbing thing was how
absolutely, fabulously hot she felt at those moments, how intense
and, well, thorough her orgasms had become since these troubling
images came along.
What followed these overwhelming moments was a feeling of

deep shame, although that was, if the truth be told, nothing new.
Because she was a powerful, rebellious and brave young woman,

she ignored her feeling of shame. She was not going to start
yielding to her parents’ conservative Christian guilt-trip any time
soon. That would be shameful indeed.
Because her lover was adventurous, she mentioned it to him one

lazy, cosy winter afternoon.
“I would love to see you in innocent white schoolgirl panties …

with the little skirt … yummy.” He nuzzled her neck and stroked
a hand up her leg. “Have you been a good little girl?” he asked as
he grabbed and firmly squeezed a handful of her inner thigh. He
stopped nuzzling and looked her in the eyes, the large grin on his
face expanding.
“You sick man,” she chided. “Paedophile!” He moved his hand to

her crotch, and pressed his palm gently against her pubic bone. He
curled his fingers. They reached almost to her anus. He squeezed
gently and gazed deep into her eyes, which told him the truth.
She confirmed it with her words. “I love you, you wicked, bad, bad
man.” She melted into her horniness.
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They made love for the second time that afternoon. She had used
the bidet after their earlier bout, so she was a little surprised at how
wet and open she was. Unusually, there was no pain or discomfort.
Her orgasm happened easily with no bruising pounding required.
It was also disturbingly intense.
Afterwards, they cuddled until the sun went down and his taxi
arrived to take him to the airport. Shortly after he had left, she felt
the familiar shame and despised herself for feeling it. It was harder
to ignore than usual. She despised herself for that too.
In the middle of the week, she received an email from him. As

planned, he was going to fly back to her in a few days’ time.
He asked her to fetch him at the airport, so that they could go
shopping. He also asked her to get her pubic hair waxed.
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The tantric time warp
Time is not truly a linear progression, say the quantum and more
modern physicists. They also say that each moment has parallel
moments in which everything that can happen does happen. All
possibilities happen – a branching of realities like the endless
budding of coral. Looking backward in time, there is a branching
of the multiple probable pasts which could have given rise to this
moment. Looking forward, there is a branching of futures which
could follow from this moment.
The past can be revisited. Whatever was resisted at the time can be
accepted. Acceptance removes the effect of the resistance between
the time it happened and the present. The effect on the body and
mind of the intervening period of pain, hurt and resistance is
retroactively removed.
The potential pasts and futures of any moment all have varying
degrees of probability.
It is possible to find something to be strongly probable looking

from now to a time 30 years ago, that was not at all a strong
probability when you viewed your past at a moment 20 years ago,
looking ten years back.
Psychologists glimpse these truths occasionally when their patients

revisit and face troublesome past events. In the BDSM (Bondage,
Domination, Sadism & Masochism) sub-culture, the revisiting of
a traumatic experience to find psychological release is known as
‘sexual healing’.
The eroticism we have as adults draws us to face, revisit and accept

our past traumas – that which we found impossible to accept
when it happened. We do not have to have had abusive parents,
Uncle Pervies or religious schooling in our childhood for us to
have experienced psychological trauma. Even a childhood without
spanking and other obvious abuse has moments and events that
76
cannot be faced and accepted with the nascent psychological

resources of a young child.
The boarding schools which were fashionable among the British

elite until a few decades ago provide a sterling example of this
relationship between childhood trauma and eroticism. Boys
as young as four were sent far from home to an environment
where the rules were enforced through liberal use of the cane.
Their resulting penchant for being called a naughty boy, being
humiliated and spanked, flogged or caned is well known.
In most of our lives, things are not so neatly presented. Most,

or at least many of us, have not been directly, deliberately or
systematically brutalised in such obvious ways. We have been
brutalised and abused too but in a less uniform range of ways.
What we find to be brutal and abusive in our early lives depends

largely on our personal calibration. Basically, whatever was too
intense and strong an experience for us to handle, in terms of
the physical sensations and emotional intensity, is our ‘trauma’.
It is what we are later unconscious of, but which keeps trying,
through our body and its erotic responses, to get itself noticed
and resolved.
My daughter came to visit me one day when she was thirteen or

so. She had been busy with some introspection and had found a
deep memory. A childhood memory of abuse … by me. I accepted
and welcomed her blame, acknowledged her anger and waited for
her tears to ease. When she was more coherent, I got the story, and
learnt what I had done that she felt so hard about.
When she was around four years old, I would return from work
in winter, park my motorcycle and take off my helmet and gloves.
My hands would be cold, but not unpleasantly so, to me. When my
daughter ran to me squealing delightedly that “daddy is home”, I
would pick her up, hands encircling her waist and say, “What have
I got?” She would wriggle in my hands, shiver, gasp at the sudden
chill and stutter “c-c- (gasp) c-c-cold hands.” I would put her
down, not wanting to hug her to my cold hard bike leathers. She
77
would run away, squealing (to my ears) delightedly. I would then

get on with greeting the rest of my family.
My daughter was not pleased when I suggested that this was,

perhaps, not a really serious incident of child abuse. She supported
her point of view by fetching ice from the freezer and dumping it
down my shirt back. This helped my understanding. I apologised
manfully and completely concealed any signs of mirth.
Abuse is a personal standard and it is set by the things we found

toughest to accept. It is that which was beyond our capacity to
fully experience at the time and had to be put away for later.
Anything overwhelming will do, even tickling! I have heard that
tickling is now regarded as child abuse by therapists in some
countries. Tickling even has its own internet fetish community at
tickleabuse.com.
If you work consciously with your eroticism, it is likely that your

memories will reveal several incidents in your childhood that
have this abusive quality. This can be unpleasant, confronting and
frightening but it is also liberating. It is far, far better to face past
abuse consciously than to have it interfere with your life and your
body from the subconscious.
Consider it likely that you will discover things you would rather
not know. Things that you once needed to forget.
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The revirginised sacrifice
The next morning, she called her salon and made an appointment
for a waxing on Tuesday afternoon. “First time?” inquired
beautician Marcie. “Yes, and I am scared. It is time to do the legs
again anyway and I’m not sure I can handle this as well, all at
once.”
Marcie heard her impending panic and intervened swiftly.

“Darling, we can do a sunburn treatment on your legs before we
wax. It numbs the skin, so it hardly hurts at all. For your Brazilian
and beyond, I will make an appointment for you at the dentist. Do
you know Dr. Malan? His rooms are in the office suites, just one
floor above us.”
“Yes, I know him. He does my teeth … but how, what does a

dentist have to do with this?”
“Anaesthetic, dearie. The same stuff he injects so your teeth don’t

hurt. It works really well.”
“Clever … but, he is my dentist! I don’t think I would be

comfortable …”
Marcie cut her short. “Not him. His nurse does the needling. Just
a few little pricks. Then you pop down in the lift, and we wax you
while everything is comfortably numb. How does that sound?”
Marcie was as good as her word. The waxing was painless, and
the few little pricks were no trouble either. The bill was a little
frightening though, with the extras costing much more than the
actual waxing. On Tuesday evening she was home, relaxing with a
hot chocolate, flipping DSTV channels while she caught up with
some work on her laptop.
By Thursday, the slight rash had cleared up and her pubes (yes, that
is what she called them to herself) were smooth and interestingly
sensitive. Inspection in her hand mirror was at first a shock. She
had not seen herself like this since she was … eleven or so. For a
79
moment, the image in the mirror seemed to be of someone else.

Someone … very young.
A virgin, she thought, and blushed deeply, feeling the heat of it,
and hearing the beat of her heart.
In the bath on Thursday evening, she used the hand shower

instead of her high-tech sex toy. The powerful jets pressed deeply
into her very naked skin. She directed their intense hammering to
her very engorged clitoris. A wave went splashing over the side of
the bath when her orgasm convulsed her body. She lay there for
a while, panting in exhaustion. “God, there isn’t a man alive that
could do that,” she said aloud.
Suddenly, she felt herself and the bath water to be dirty, got out
and mopped up the spilled water with spare towels. She stepped
into the shower cubicle and rinsed off the water but not the dirty
feeling.
She got into bed, curled up tight, hugged her legs and cried herself
to sleep.
The next morning, she was up and about, full of energy, and
feeling happy. She explained the happiness to herself as being on
account of her lover coming to town for another weekend. She
remembered his grin, the way he had grabbed and squeezed her
crotch. She considered getting her high-tech vibrator out, but
somehow she felt too good, too much aglow to masturbate.
His flight landed on time. She popped the boot, he swung his bag
and briefcase in. He slid himself into the car and they kissed. The
kiss lasted until they became aware of the hooting behind them.
Laughing, she squealed the tyres on the smooth concrete and,

breaking only slightly for the speed bumps, raced her placid fellow
motorists to the freeway. He laughed too but less confidently.
“So where do we shop?” she asked as they approached the

complicated tangle of the interchange.
80
“Is that what has your motor running so hot?” he asked, then
without a pause for her reply, “Barry & Long, I think, the main
branch in the city.”
They left the shop all smiles and chuckles. “I think we disturbed
those poor people a bit,” she said, faux-serious. “The manager
nearly popped when you asked for a student discount.”
He got into the car saying, “I think it was on account of your

behaviour that that nice mommy hustled her daughters out.”
“It may have been because they saw you just about raping me in
the dressing room.”
They kissed and fondled at every traffic light on the way out of
the city, causing much hooting and even a little road rage in their
wake. Half an hour on the freeway passed in a blur of speed and
erotic tension.
She was softly stroking the swollen front of his pants, driving one-
handed, and managing the conversation with nothing more than
the occasional grunt from him. He kept his hand on her thigh
but was fearful of turning her on any more than she so obviously
already was.
Back at her apartment the door slammed closed behind them, bags
hit the floor and clothing followed. She ran naked into the lounge
and threw herself backwards onto the large Chesterfield couch.
His eyes glazed over, mesmerised by her extreme nakedness. He
came close, cupped her buttocks, and knelt over her, to inspect
this wonder more closely. “No,” she insisted. “Fuck me now.”
He entered her, and she felt her vaginal muscles sucking at

him, pulling him into her, demanding and soon receiving his
ejaculation. He remained hard after coming, and started to fuck
her again, slowly and steadily. She sat up and pushed him back,
ejecting him neatly. “I am going to bath now. Please take the sushi
out of the fridge, and warm up the sake. Then you may want a
shower.” She picked up the bag with her new clothes and left the
room saying, “I am going to dress for dinner”.
81
He was smoking a cigarette and enjoying the view of the reflection

of a fat moon dancing in the breakers. “Excuse me, Sir?” a polite
little girl’s voice asked. “Is this the class on under-age seduction
techniques?”
“My God!” Anticipation, long anticipation, had not prepared him.

It was nearly an hour since he had put the sake in a vacuum flask
to prevent loss of heat and spirit. He nearly said, “So very worth
the wait”, but stopped himself, realising that he did not want to
deliver even the lightest rebuke, even disguised as a compliment.
“Um, er, yes, young lady,” he managed while he looked her over.
“Quite right. Just stand there, just where you are for a bit, if you
please.”
Amazing, this transformation – the straw boater, hair pinned up

making her neck exquisitely vulnerable. She was wearing glasses
and no makeup, just clean glowing skin. A white wonderbra
presented a cleavage that had no business at all being behind a
simple short-sleeved schoolgirl’s blouse. Her skirt was far too
short for whatever the school regulations were. Gorgeous legs,
perfectly smooth, flowed into little white socks and shiny patent
leather black shoes with rounded toes.
She tapped twice with one foot, conveying impatience and waited
for his eyes to reach hers. She looked at him seriously from behind
her glasses. “Is there a problem, Sir?”
“No, just a moment. Please turn around.” She complied, and,

feeling his gaze acutely, leaned forward slightly, put her hands on
her hips, angled her pelvis back and up, and wiggled slowly. She
leaned further forward, bowing at the waist, dropped her head
lower, and looked back through her open legs at him, upside
down in her view.
He had dropped to a squat, and was staring, slack-jawed at her

posterior. She giggled, and spun around to face him directly. He
looked at her, his eyes heavy, almost droopy with lust. She smiled
and held out her hands to him. “Come. Dinner time. Let me help
you up.”
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He reached for her hands and started to stand. As his fingers

touched hers, he gasped in pain, dropped back into a squat and
overbalanced forward onto hands and knees. He reached into his
pants and manoeuvred his erection from its painful restriction
inside his pants leg.
“Oh, you poor man. Have you broken something?” she inquired,
her voice still high and sweet in pitch.
“No, but it was a close thing. The Minister of Safety should look
into trouser design.” He struggled to his feet, rearranged his pants
and hugged her to him, lifting her off the floor.
“You gorgeous, gorgeous goddess. I was smitten by your beauty

and compelled to kneel at your feet.”
The sushi was particularly delicious. They immersed themselves

in the flavours and textures he inelegantly called pussy on rice.
When the last strips of sashimi (pussy without rice) had yielded
all their juicy deliciousness, they sat together in silence, saturated
in their pleasure.
After what seemed an eternity of bliss, he remembered the sake.

She didn’t want any but offered to pour. He moved to the large
couch. She sat on his lap and poured him a small porcelain cup
of the hot alcohol. He held her close to him and she snuggled in
close, peacefully content. After a while, she poured him another.
She smelled the volatile fumes as his fingertips found the edge of
her white cotton panties and slipped under them, softly stroking
her wetness.
A spasm of shock shot through her body, her spine stiffened into
complete rigidity. The flask and cup clattered to the polished
wooden floor. “No Grandpa!” she squealed, in a voice pitched
high with stress.
They both froze in silence, not even drawing breath while time
passed, and then, while more time passed. His fingers still rested
on her tenderness. He started to take them away. She said “No.
Don’t stop. Please touch me.”
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She curled up tight on his lap, and sobbed pitifully while he gently
continued to stroke her increasingly slippery clitoris and labia. As
her orgasm overwhelmed her she noticed that he was crying too.
84
Chapter 5
Taboo and initiation
I know … but isn’t it nice?

The pervert
A few years ago, I visited my friend the pervert. I call him a friend,
because he is friendly. I call him a pervert, because that is how
he regarded himself at the time of this story. His name is not
important. I will call him “G”.
He was indeed an unusual fellow. Not many people get expelled

from nursery school. From that startling beginning – his crime
was teaching the other children to masturbate the school dog – he
went on to a life of fascination with all things sexual, excretory
and forbidden.
Now, he was approaching middle age and had been married for
around fifteen years to a lovely woman I will call “S”. He was
wildly flirtatious but nonetheless more monogamous than most.
Nothing much had come of his promising beginnings as a pervert,
it seemed. After catching up on the ten or more years since we had
last seen each other, I asked him about that.
“G, you puzzle me. Forgive me for saying so, but I know you to be
more edgy, dare I say perverse, than most people. Not to criticise,
just, I find myself wondering what became of all that?”
He laughed a little strained laugh and said: “I was never all that
much into doing most of the stuff that I talked about. It was
interesting, even fascinating sometimes, but not very erotic.” He
paused, and I noticed a severe tension in him.
Words squeezed out quietly from behind his tense lips. “Most of it,
all of it really. Only the one thing.” I waited for further comment,
or grammatical clarification.
“For me, there is just one thing that I have always wanted, and
never done. Everything else was just a side issue. Only one thing.”
G paused, and looked a little embarrassed.
The pause lengthened. “Which is …”, I prompted. Clearly, this was

actually a bit difficult for him. I could not prevent a slight smile.
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“This is not funny!” he squealed. “This is serious. It’s driving me

up the wall, around the twist.”
“Relax, G. This is me.”
He took a breath, making an obviously considerable effort of will.

His words came out hesitantly, each separate, each bitten back.
“OK. Anal sex.”
He froze like a rabbit caught in headlights. Paralysed. Transfixed.

He blinked and then squirmed uncomfortably, eyes held low.
I suppressed an urge to laugh, and managed to speak. “G, is that

it? Mild, man. Anal sex is just about mainstream fashionable these
days, especially with the kids. Certainly, it is a bit of a kink, but it
is hardly like … you know … taboo.”
He hung his head in shame. “It isn’t like that for me. It is torture.
Whenever me and S get it on, I am usually thinking, What if I now
put it in her bum instead …” He trailed off into an embarrassed
silence, gave me a soulfully pleading look, and then just sat there.
I was busy keeping all signs of mirth off my features. I did well
but could not keep the warmth of humour out of my voice. “You
think that it is bad? … You have never done it?” He nodded, or
more accurately, he shrugged his head down deeper between his
shoulders. He looked pitiful. Miserable.
That was too much for my self-control. I laughed, and enjoyed the
laughing. His face reddened as he retreated from discomfort into
anger. “I couldn’t care less what the youngsters are up to. And I
don’t get how this is funny. What I feel is not normal, and it is not
a road I want to go down.”
Enough laughing, I thought. This really seemed serious to the poor

fellow. “Sorry, G. Just, what really surprises me is that, you know,
anal sex is not really all that weird. How is it that you haven’t gone
there?”
“Bull. It is not normal. And it is dangerous. It’s dirty and it is

abhorrent, unnatural …” His face had changed completely. I
87
could see his mother’s face revealed on his, pinched up in disgust,

as I heard him using her words, expressing her judgement.
“Some strange ideas you have picked up somewhere, G.” I

interrupted. “I see it is actually a full blown taboo for you. You
need a bit of a lecture, so here it comes: goats, dogs, chimpanzees,
baboons and many other mammals do it. There’s nothing
unnatural in it. At least one Pope wrote a treatise in favour of it,
for sexual release without defiling virginity.”
“You’re kidding!” he exclaimed, eyes wide.
“No. Leo X, I think it was. As to dirty – well sure there are some
aesthetic and dietary guidelines that are good to follow, but a
healthy anus is, bacterially speaking, a lot less dangerous than a
healthy mouth. Medical fact.”
He spoke slowly, his brain struggling between disgust and

fascination. The glittery eyes were back but the set of his mouth
was still severe. “So what do you think I should do?”
He looked surprised for a moment, and pre-empted my reply

with, “You mean you and … sorry, I don’t remember her name
…”
“Yes, a few times. Sure. It really is not that big a deal.” His mouth
had relaxed now, his jaw hung loose. “Really, G,” I persisted. “Talk
to S about it. You have been married a while. Maybe she would
welcome a little variety.”
“But she would think …”
“G, she knows.”
“You think …”
“Yes. It isn’t likely that S chose you without noticing your somewhat
extreme interests. I don’t even want to ask what kind of porn you
are into these days, now that there is the internet.”
“Live toilet webcams.”
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“Too much information, G, but on your theme, it sounds. It is

not about the crapping and such, I am sure. It is because there is
mostly going to be an anus involved?”
He nodded and I continued. “It just isn’t likely that S chose you,
out of her considerable range of choice, and has had a more or less
happy time with you for this long and isn’t actually compatible
with you.”
He grinned. “You are so right. She can be very kinky sometimes.

The other day, she found a condom we had used and …”
“I don’t need to know that, G. TMI again. I am just saying that

it is pretty likely that, if something tickles your fancy with such
intensity, she would find it, at the very least, a bit interesting.”
“You think … but what about, you know, pain and … shit?” His
features flickered between disgust and a hungry look.
“There are ways to do things right, and condoms, but from what
I hear few people even bother to find out and it works out mostly
all right for them.”
“I’m not interested in mostly all right. So tell me.”
“Well, one way to give her a preview of how anal sex will feel and
check that the passage is clear, without entering the anus with
anything at all, is you …” I proceeded to give him more or less the
suggestions you will find in note 7 of this book and which would,
at this point, be a diversion.
An hour or so later I left him still considering the risk of destroying

S’s (no doubt already interesting) opinion of him.
It was a few months later that I next saw G. His first words to me
were, “You bastard. You fucked up my life.”
89
Ancient and modern

approaches to taboo and
initiation
When Westerners went looking for the secrets of Tantra in India,

they were sometimes allowed to attend, or hear a description of,
a temple initiation ritual. Very seldom, if ever, did they get access
to any further teachings of the schools they approached, so that
when they returned home, they had nothing much to describe
apart from that one ritual. They therefore described it in great
detail, fleshing out their scanty information with interpolations
and guesses.
Some wrong ideas persist, particularly around left hand and right
hand paths (there is no such thing) and debates over whether
tantric texts should be taken literally or allegorically when they
describe sexual techniques. Until Osho, Barry Long and Margot
Anand, most Western writing on Tantra was severely limited in
its understanding of the intent, method and approach involved in
worthwhile practice.
Indian tantric initiation has been much misunderstood. When

one appreciates the psychological severity of the ritual for a mind
from the culture in which the ritual originated, things get perhaps
a little clearer.
The basic technique was the systematic breaking of several major

Hindu religious taboos around diet and sexual conduct. The
particular foods eaten were increasingly taboo, especially the
piece of cow flesh.
The cow, being a manifestation of feminine divinity, was sacred to

the initiates. To allow or even just to benefit from her slaughter is
unconscionable. To eat of her flesh is flat out evil.
90
Likewise, the extremely strong and well-observed taboo against

the consumption of alcohol would be offended. Willingly drinking
the forbidden poison was no easy thing for the initiate to face.
To complete this uprooting of the cultural mind, ritualised sex

with a woman followed. Not just any woman either. A woman of
a forbidden caste.
Initiates had a really tough time of this. Some would vomit up the
meat and wine.
This approach was obviously more effective and reliable in the

past than it has been in recent times. For the most part, the rituals
of Tantra were kept secret. They were rumoured and suspected
but seldom openly admitted. Initiates had only their fears and
suspicions to go on when facing initiation.
They had little or nothing on which to base their preparation. The

totality of the ritual and its solidly uncompromising confrontation
of their cultural mindset were reliably shattering. Everything of
the ritual’s setup and management was designed to maximise this
shattering – not out of cruelty but out of compassion – so that
this would need to happen only once to be complete as a lesson.
It is hard to appreciate the severity of the original ritual. For a

sincere Christian a few hundred years ago, the equivalent would
be more or less what the Knights Templar were accused of doing
in their initiation rituals. For a modern person, things are a lot
more tricky. Defilement of a cross or a book is no big deal if these
things are not taken all that seriously in the first place.
Even though the surface diversity of our culture dooms a one-

size-fits-all approach to this important area of work, some
understanding of the intent and mechanism can be very helpful
when choosing a taboo to break.
Perhaps the greatest limitation of our perception of truth is the

trained-in mind of culture. The extent to which we are governed,
blinkered and generally restrained from true knowledge by our
cultural mindset is considerable. For a tantric initiate, gaining
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freedom from the internalised culture-mind is a major point of

passage. It is an advance to a level of awareness that takes most
seekers a lifetime to approach.
In most people’s minds the structure of interlocking cultural

notions is taken to be more real than the direct experience. What
an experience “means” becomes more weighted in the mind’s
processes than the savour and nuance of the experience itself. The
river of the flow of consciousness becomes blocked, pressured and
restricted by a log jam of inter-linking yet generally meaningless
mental associations.
When clearing a log jam, one first looks for and identifies the most
obstructive logs, those that are key to the interlocking. Dynamite
is then placed and detonated to loosen things up.
The results are often dramatic.
One cannot, using one’s mind as it is before breaking a taboo,

theorise usefully about how the mind will be after breaking the
taboo. What you think breaking a taboo will do to you is almost
certainly wrong.
The mind as it is before breaking a taboo can be used to define

and break the taboo. Guidance from someone who is familiar
with the territory is helpful but not essential.
Ultimately, all that a teacher can really do is to support you as you

go through what you will have to go through. You still have to go
through it.
There are many valid reasons to avoid breaking a taboo. It is

psychologically hard. It can also be dangerous in a social or
legal context. It may have to involve secrecy, and you may have
a problem with that. Basically, any reason not to break a taboo is
a good reason. Healthy respect for cultural taboos is a generally
useful and necessary thing in any culture.
By all means learn from Tantra, pursue awareness and meditate.

Much useful work can be done before the breaking of taboos has
to be faced, if ever.
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There is no need to take on such an extreme and possibly

dangerous practice unless, of course, there is an insistence in you.
An insistence that you feel strongly about.
Choosing a taboo, even attempting to discern one’s taboos, is not

necessarily an easy thing. Taboos and the lesser forms of mental
restraint are a mostly internalised and subconscious phenomenon.
Good mind training (see note 2) is a prerequisite.
There are few, if any, universal taboos. Pretty much everything

that is forbidden in some context in a culture is permitted in
other contexts in the same culture, and in a variety of ways in
other cultures. Look at your culture, at those around you and
their (your) automatic assumptions and behaviours. You may
find useful clues.
Guidance, intuition and intelligence can all be helpful. For

example, if your culture has a long established habit of avoiding
lions, it is not tantric taboo breaking to offer one a bite of your
arm.
Breaking all kinds of habits, including the culturally imposed ones

is a valuable spiritual exercise which reveals much that has been
hidden from you.
Start small.
Just masturbating or brushing your teeth with the other hand,

changing your eating or sleeping patterns and other minor
confrontations of habitual thought and action are useful.
Confronting deeper levels of assumption, exploring into a taboo
area you think of as dark or dangerous, is scary but thrilling. It can
also be deeply liberating.
It is of course desirable and advisable to have the guidance and

support of someone familiar with this area of tantric work. With
the application of a little intelligence, however, taboo breaking can
be experienced in reasonable physiological, if not psychological,
safety.
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When choosing a taboo to break, avoid unnecessary embellishment.

If, for example, you wish to break the common Christian taboo
of unauthorised sex, it is probably not necessary to bugger your
grandmother in the confessionals at Notre Dame. Perhaps the
taboo could be broken quite sufficiently by getting only slightly
drunk, and making love or even masturbating with wild abandon
and a lot of noise. The core of the Christian taboo is the enjoyment
and naturalness of sex.
More than a technique, taboo-breaking amounts to a private

declaration of personal independence and directly enhances your
ability to experience the truth.
Use your intelligence and respect the intent of the exercise. Keep
your taboo-breaking private and secret. The point is to free your
own mind, not to shock anyone else’s. Confronting the culture by
breaking its taboos is not useful to you or to the culture.
The forbidden dietary, narcotic, stimulant and psychedelic

substances of modern culture are generally not that useful or
fruitful in this regard. Many seekers notice and fully understand
the financial and political agendas of things that are forbidden
and things that are aggressively marketed. These things are not
usually worth calling taboo. At best, they are an exploration, at
worst, an indulgence.
Nonetheless, the rules around social and shamanistic drugs are

taken to the point of taboo by some and for them, they are worth
breaking. Strong personal taboos can be formed in reaction to
a close family member having a tough time with addictions to
recreational drugs, or worse, alcohol.
I am not recommending that you do anything illegal in this regard.

Rather than breaking any laws, just do some travelling. Most
consciousness-altering substances that are illegal somewhere are
legal, or at least less illegal, somewhere else.
Sexual taboos, thanks to the Christian suppression-obsession

with all things sexual, are generally far more useful in the quest for
awareness. The only difficulty is that there is now a huge variety
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of sexual taboos which get mixed and matched based on lifestyle

and fashion. It is possible that you will try a few things before you
find the real dynamite.
In the straight culture, having a gay encounter is pretty much

universally a taboo, generally more so for men than for women.
In the gay lifestyle, having a hetero encounter is generally taboo.
For a monogamous relationship, gay or straight, inviting a

friend or another couple to play can be a strong taboo-breaking
experience, whether they accept your kind offer or not. The action
of just making such an offer can break the taboo.
Another way to break the taboo of monogamy is to make love

with your partner blindfolded. This hides the key facial features
and makes it easy to pretend that this is someone else. Calling them
by their best friend’s name (or the name of whoever else would fit)
is helpful. The partner should maintain silence for the duration
of the exercise, using the opportunity to explore, inwardly, the
feelings and judgements that this may evoke for them.
Pretending or acting, dressing up the setting and suspending

disbelief are all useful ways to confront really scary, harmful
and otherwise dangerous taboos. As long as the mind-body can
believe and participate, the exercise can be fruitful. Nothing really
dangerous needs to happen.
The range of things that people consider to be taboo is extensive,

hence the impossibility of using a one-size-fits-all approach. For
some people, even, masturbation is taboo.
The effects of breaking them, too, varies from person to person

and taboo to taboo. Sometimes it has the desired effect of the
original ritual: the complete shattering of the culturally induced
mindset. Sometimes the clearing proceeds a few logs at a time,
many minor taboos being confronted along the way instead of a
major few.
The cultural mind is an illusion. More than that, it is an illusion

that is widely accepted and is taken by many to be a self-evident
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truth. The immediate gain of taboo-breaking is a loss of illusion.

Disillusion. Discarding the false is an unavoidable necessity, if the
truth is to be gained.
G’s annoyance with me was just his reaction to a severely

disillusioning experience.
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The pervert revisited
“You bastard. You fucked up my life.” And he did indeed look

annoyed. Remembering our previous meeting, I said, “It is not
the end of the world, I promise,” and suggested that we take our
drinks outside to get some privacy.
Once outside I said, “Are you angry, G? Do you want to hit me?”
“No, and I guess it’s not really you. It is … worrying is not the right
word. Broken, maybe …” He looked remarkably alive to me. The
only trouble was that his eyes held a great tension, or rather, did
not manage to hold the tension and kept flickering about. I sensed
a storm of confusion in the depths of his brain.
“Shattered?” I suggested. “Or perhaps disillusioned?”
“Yes,” and after a pause, “both.”
“Tell me about it.”
“Well, I took all your suggestions. S thought it could be fun …” He

paused and smiled dreamily. “She really is a special woman, you
know.” I nodded for him to continue. “We even did the brown rice
thing, and everything went just as you had said.”
“Fun?” I inquired, raising an eyebrow at him, looking faux-

serious.
“Aah, shit.” With this ineloquent start to his reply, he had the grace
to blush, very red indeed. I was impressed. Never had I known
or thought that this fellow could blush. “Something has seriously
changed. I am thinking the weirdest thoughts, and feeling the
strangest things. Everything I have based my life on keeps coming
into question … and I don’t have any answers for myself.”
“You didn’t like it?”
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“It’s not that. Or maybe it was that. I had the most intense, almost
painfully swollen erection of my life. My crash helmet was so
stretched that …”
“TMI, G,” I chided gently, “it was intense, I gather. Continue.”
He grinned, the pervert in him still in evidence, pleased now at

my squeamishness. “Well, we did it all exactly like you told me …
Pheew! It was something seriously intense.”
He paused, looked at me seriously and interrupted himself. “You,”

he said with full emphasis, “are quite a pervert to suggest that
shit.”
He resumed his story. “When it came time to enter her bum, I was
shaking and sweating. In the hottest lust I have ever felt. Intense,
man. It was really hard to be steady enough to be gentle.”
“How was S with things?” I felt to inquire.
“She laughed a lot. She said some of it was really strange, but really
nice. But that is not what I am trying to tell you.”
“Sorry.”
“So, all that horniness, all that build-up, and then I did it. And that
is when everything went strange on me.”
“Like how, strange?”
“Well, the first thing that happened is that I didn’t come straight
away. I was sure I was going to be exploding on entry. I told you I
was really horny and so on the edge …”
“Yes, yes G, you did. So the sensations, the experience itself was a
bit different from what you had imagined?”
“Yes. Way, way different. I had thought there would be a great

tightness and strong, intense sensation, but it was like fucking
a cloud, or a flower.” He paused, frowned for a moment in
concentration. “Like, very gentle, very subtle sensations. Nothing
for the crash helmet to, you know … crash. Nothing to, you know,
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fuck! After a while, I even tried fucking her hard. It did nothing
for me, and S said to go easier. Like fucking a cloud, man …” his
voice trailed off, lost in reverie.
“That doesn’t sound too terrible. It sounds like you found more or
less the real of it,” I commented cheerfully. That earned me a glare
and a meaningful pause.
“I have tried to work this out. It was nothing like what I expected,
but now I’m not even so sure what it was that I expected. And
now, there seem to be consequences. Nasty consequences.”
He paused, looked steadily at me and continued. “I think you

knew this would happen. Maybe not exactly but I am sure you
had a pretty good idea. That is why I said it, and I still mean it
man. You fucked up my life!”
“Ok, G, I hear you, and yes, I was pretty sure that this would rock
your world a bit. You knew that too, I think. It seems to have hit
you a bit harder than I expected.”
“Do you know how hard?” he asked.
“No. Not in any detail. In general terms, I suspect you have just
found out more about your life than you really wanted to know.”
“That sounds about fucking right. Do you know how much of my

life has been based on this anal sex fascination thing?”
“Really?” I was impressed. I am always impressed by people taking

unexpected leaps of awareness. “You found some life decisions
that were motivated by this desire you had been resisting?”
“Yes. Like that. Nasty. Do you know why I got married? Never
mind that. Do you know why I worked at getting good school
marks, attended Mass, cut my hair, owned a dog … all of it? So
much of my life arranged just so I would look respectable, so no
one would suspect. I got married to maybe get intimate enough
to … one day …”
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He did look unhappy. I waited. He offered me a smoke. I declined

the filtered fairy-fart. He took a hungry drag on his cigarette, and
had more to say.
“It doesn’t stop with that. It’s just about every area of my life that
I look at. Even some pretty sick shit I have done here and there …
to rather be known as some kind of pervert, as long as my central
secret was kept.” He slumped and muttered, “What an arsehole.”
I did not laugh. I did not want to laugh. I was awed, and maybe
a little jealous. The awareness G had come to was something I
had been through some years before. It had taken a couple of
intensively introspective years for me to get the depth of insight,
the clarity of perception that G had reached, in just a few … how
long had it been?
“G, so how long ago did you do the thing?”
“About two weeks ago”. Before I could consider this further, he

had more to say. “All of that is rough, but I can handle it. I am sure
that it is better I know it, though I don’t know how to fix, replace,
or if I should or could replace it … but that is not the point. The
point, the thing that is just too much, is that my libido has gone all
unreliable, and sex has lost something … but I don’t know exactly
what.”
“You don’t know what you have lost?” I felt to inquire.
His brow got deeply furrowed. “Of course I know what. Doing
the bum thing, obviously. Just … how the hell did that cause all
this?”
“Do you remember how you learnt to keep a really secret secret,
how to really cover something up? Something that you could
never let slip?”
“Umm …” Clearly an effort was being made. I helped him out.
“G, like any child, you learnt that the only way to really keep a
secret is to make like it was never heard, or never happened. All
children of decent intelligence can come up with a good cover
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story for really serious stuff, or,” I looked at him, and risked a
smile and half a wink, “what they consider really serious. Things
get covered up. You did some uncovering.”
“Ok, I think I get it. But what happened to my libido, my

hormones?”
“Well, there is the truth of attraction, lust, love and affection,

and there is the false. The ideas, the stories, the movies and other
forms of illusion we have about what is happening. You have
recently exploded an illusion you had about anal sex. You are
disillusioned.”
“You can say that again,” he moaned.
“OK, I will. You are disillusioned.”
“Funny man.”
It was a good time to laugh. Then it was good to be quiet for a

while. Then it was a good time to wait for him to speak.
“I think I get it, or some of it. If ever I felt, like, my erection easing
off when I was with S, or if I wasn’t really horny but I wanted to
perform strongly, all I ever had to do was just think for a moment:
What if I put it in her bum? I would then immediately be hot,
horny, sweaty …”
He paused. “Shit. What a run-around.” He looked at me with an

openness I had not seen in him before and asked, “What to do?”
Time to preach.
“You have dispelled much illusion. You are unfamiliar with the
real. The real is available to you, to be experienced as it actually is,
for maybe the first time … is this too heavy for you?”
“No,” he responded, urging me on.
I nodded. “So you need to develop your senses a bit, just learning
to pay attention to how things really are. Before you find the rasa,
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the juice of the real, you will hunger for the juice of the false that
has become unavailable. That is the good news.”
“I fucking shudder to ask.”
“I would have settled for just a shiver,” I stated, archly. “The bad
news is that you may find a few more things that have a similar
quality. You will find that other areas of your erotic patterning are
mini versions of your bum thing.” He looked alarmed. “I think
this first big one was probably the biggest. A big bomb. What is
left now are a lot of little bombs, a few minefields with those little
British bomblets. It goes easier as you gain awareness.”
“You mean, like, shit, everything else that turns me on will vanish
too … this is very bad news.”
“No, not everything. Firstly, starting on this at your age, it would

be a serious race, I think.” Though, he had recently moved
through, in days, realisations that had taken me years … “And
there is something that will always remain, that will not vanish.”
“And that is?”
“The genuinely natural delights. Real intimacy and love. What love
and closeness are supposed to be, naturally. That can be revealed
in your quest and cannot be destroyed by it. It is what you are. It
lies on the far shore of the ocean of your eroticism.”
“Stop right there,” he said. “Now you are getting too heavy.”
“It takes a long swim in the warm waters of the sins of the flesh
to get there.”
“Enough!”
“For today, OK.”
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Chapter 6
Dakinis
God bless Lili St. Cyr.

Orders from the dakini
Deva Premal’s exquisite rendition of the Gayatri Mantra,

hopelessly distorted by the cell phone’s tiny speaker, reached his
ears and stirred him to a semblance of sentience.
He reached for it, slowly opening sticky, tired eyes. Next to him,
his beloved of seven years grumbled, “What does that bitch …”
then rolled over, indicating the rhetorical nature of the question
she had almost asked. His thumb found the button.
Loud and clear from the tiny speaker came a warm and cheerful
voice. “Good morning sweet man. Busy today?” He slowly gathered
himself into the more insistent reality. A dream of penguins, of all
things, faded. He rubbed at his eyes with his knuckles.
Testing his voice, he found it available and said, slowly, “Um …”

He paused, thinking. “Um. No. Not busy at all today.”
“Well, you are now. Breakfast at my favourite café in half an hour

to discuss a session you are doing this afternoon.” The dakini’s
voice cut through his morning fogginess. It was clearly audible
across the room. He looked at the bundle of duvet.
A hand waved out of it, dismissively. A muffled voice said, “Go. I

am too sleepy to get annoyed now. Maybe later.”
“Sure,” he replied into the phone. “Half an hour. OK.”
The muttering from within the duvet roll became audible again
“… have to sound so fucking happy about it …” and faded below
threshold.
On the short walk back home from breakfast, his mind was
unusually quiet. Even a seagull squawking inches from his face in
a dive bomber swoop failed to cause any agitation.
The duvet roll was snoring. It sounded warm and happy. Purring.
He eased himself around the bed and into the bathroom, closed
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the door softly, and then, for the first time since he had left the
café it seemed, he exhaled.
Thoughts returned. Many thoughts. This was probably what

Rahasya meant when he talked about the mixed feelings of the
path. The mix was rich. Feelings ranging from wonder to dread.
Thoughts ranging from the judgemental to the sublime. All at
once.
He shaved. Trimming and filing his fingernails, he remembered

those moments from his conversation that continued to provoke
feelings and their strange mixing.
By the time he climbed into the shower cubicle, he was considering

the dakini’s last point on her list. “You will probably have intense
and confused feelings as the session time approaches. You should
probably ejaculate once a couple of hours before the session, just
to take the edge off.”
“Take the edge off indeed,” he thought while he washed, “like it

would be a turn-on to lend my body, particularly my favourite
part, to a mad woman for her to use as a prop for real live
encounter therapy.” His cock, his lingam, he reminded himself,
stirred, semi-erect. He glared at it and said aloud, “… and you are
no help whatsoever.”
“Talking to your dick again?” His beloved had sneaked into the
bathroom and was watching him. “What’s he doing wrong now?”
She opened the door, letting water spray out while she stepped in.
She cuddled close into him, shivering as the hot water awakened
her skin, which was still cool from sleep.
“Nothing new,” he replied, running hot soapy hands over her

buttocks, parting them to the shower jets. She wriggled and sighed
as he continued. “Just disagreeing with me. Damn thing really
seems to have a mind of its own sometimes.”
“Maybe that is why he and I are such good friends,” she murmured,
pressing his lingam between their bellies. “Who is my man-whore
boyfriend doing this afternoon?”
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He winced. “Not doing. Anyway, I thought you only wanted to

know, you know … like if …”. She cut him off mid-fumble. “Relax.
I am just interested. She said you’re doing a session?”
“What changed?” He asked, genuinely puzzled. She sighed. “Do I

have to get into this? Well … OK. I decided to try something that
eldritch guru of yours suggested. Or not so much suggested, more
just one of his weird statements I heard.”
“About non-monogamy?” he queried.
“No. Not directly, anyway.” She moved a little away from him and
soaped herself while she talked.
“Some crude observation he made about horniness accompanying

jealousy. Anyway, the point was that jealousy creates great sexual
heat, and the denial of that is flaming anger.” She paused a moment
and considered. “I think I said it better than he did. Not that I
necessarily agree. I am just experimenting a bit with the idea.”
He questioned his memory, and found no reference. “I never heard

that. I remember something he said about envy. That it …”
“… indicates something you want for yourself,” she completed for

him and continued, “yes, that applies too.”
“So you want to hear about the session?”
“Yes. First though, there is something else.”
She moved away from him and his penis flopped down between
them. She caught it.
“You may be having your ups and downs.” She looked pointedly at
his fallen phallus. She enjoyed his blush, then the quick, gratifying
response of his erection bouncing back to fullness as she fondled
him with one hand, saying, “I, however, have just being getting
hotter and hotter.”
She reached for a towel and headed back to their bedroom.
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He dried himself, hung his towel and followed her wet footprints.
She draped her towel over the foot of the bed, turned to him and
hugged him, naked skin still damp. She held him close and turned
their bodies until the bed was behind him.
She felt his erection stir. She pressed her fingertips into his
buttocks and then more firmly into his sacrum. His erection tried
to rise but was trapped, her belly holding it down.
She pushed him back onto the bed, planted her knees at his sides
and mounted him in one fluid movement.
She tensed her vaginal muscles and leaned back, threatening to

break his penis clean off. She came, grinding herself down onto
him. He gasped in surprise at the sudden intensity of his almost-
orgasm and the pain of his severely stretched ligaments. She
collapsed, panting on his chest.
After a few delicious moments of afterglow for her, and continued

rising interest from him, she pushed herself up, hands on his
shoulders. She wriggled her hips gently, feeling the intensity of his
erection, then relaxed deeply and held still, enjoying the sensation
of him pulsing gently, deep inside her.
“I think I just used you,” she said, smiling and sliding off him
as easily and smoothly as she had slid on. She sat on his thighs,
and held his abused erection between her palms. “I think I liked
it … but, for now, tell me what that woman wants you to do this
afternoon.”
“Using. That seems to be the theme of the day,” he gasped, then

remembered the importance of conscious breath, emptied his
lungs deliberately a couple of times before continuing, breathing
between short sentences.
“She has a student. The student has issues with the lingam. Deep
issues, apparently. Anger and the rest. Probably a history of abuse.
She gets to borrow my dick to work on those issues.”
She stroked his lingam, gently, encouragingly. “Like how?”
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“I lie down naked. She sits beside me and gets to feel and do what
she feels like doing. I am basically a prop, a dummy, to help her
through her feelings about men and dicks. Hard-core Gestalt
therapy.”
He stopped, gasping as she swirled her hands around and up his

lingam in a slippery-intense caress. She laughed, gripped his penis
at the base with one hand, slid her legs back, knelt forward and
looked sternly at it.
She watched it swell and change colour as she gripped tighter.
“You have been a very bad cock, haven’t you?” She waggled it side
to side. He blushed, and moaned. “You,” she snapped, now looking
into his eyes, “shut up. I am addressing the lingam.”
She turned her eyes back to the object of her feigned displeasure.
“Tell the truth now.” She waggled it back and forth now, giggling.
With her other hand, she slapped it gently side to side. “Bad cock.
(slap) Naughty cock. Very (slap) wicked (slap) lingam.”
He had been holding his breath. It burst from him in a part moan,
part wail. She stopped the interrogation routine and relaxed
her grip. She leaned forward and bestowed soft lip caresses,
murmuring, “I suppose it is called Cock Loathing Issue Therapy.
CLIT for short.”
“No. It is called Lingam Worship.”
She chuckled.
“You may not be all that comfortable right now, under such
pressure, but you do look impressive. Are you supposed to be
impressive? Are you supposed to be rigid and durable?”
“No.” He repeated the dakini’s instructions. “I should be of neutral

attitude. Whatever the body does, whatever the lingam does, it just
does it. I am not to encourage or discourage the response of my
body. I am to offer to lend her my body, specify that she can touch,
look, whatever she feels she needs to do to go through whatever
she has to go through.”
108
He paused, and she nodded for him to continue.
“I am to be blindfolded so that she can easier project whatever

face she needs to see and so that she doesn’t get concerned about
me seeing her. The idea is that she is as free as she will allow herself
to be to do whatever she feels she needs to do to get through her
issues with … dick.”
“Sounds more like sacrifice than worship. What if she wants to do

some actual damage? I might be annoyed if you were borrowed
and returned in bad condition.”
“I am supposed to be pretty safe. When I give her the rap about

borrowing my body, I can ask her not to do anything actually
damaging. I can … but the advice is to not mention it.”
“Why not?” she asked, gently tracing the seam behind his scrotum
with her fingernail. Reflexive twitches made his lingam bob up
and down.
He was speaking in short sentences again. “To free her from

concern. Reduce self-censorship. Also to not give her …” he
gasped as she sucked hard and wiggled the tip of her tongue into
the tip of his penis,
“… the idea of doing damage in the first place.”
She pulled her lips off his tip with a smacking sound. A shock
passed up his spine. He twitched.
“A scary thing for sure,” she said, “but it may have some truth in
it.”
“Really?” he gasped. “You think she wouldn’t already …”
“Not that,” she snapped, clearly impatient with his ability to keep
up. “The raw sexual heat in jealousy. I am jealous right now. Hot
jealous.” She pulled him onto her. “Right now please. No foreplay
and no Tantra required. Fuck me hard.”
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A few hours later he lay, more or less still on his back, while his
session-student clearly brought her best efforts to bear in a heroic
attempt to stimulate and please him.
He reviewed the guidelines he had given her.
Had he forgotten … ?
No. He had clearly told her to drop her usual ways of relating to
the lingam. Yes. He had specifically mentioned that she was not
supposed to engage with the intent to cause and satisfy arousal.
She was supposed to find her deeper, unexamined feelings about
the lingam and express them.
He was a little rattled by her wilful disregard for the exercise

guidelines but remembered the rule amidst those guidelines. No
talking, no sign language or communication from him once the
exercise started until it ended. He resigned himself happily to
allowing her attentions, which were, after all, delicious.
Or, rather, they should have been. Her touch was measured,
skilful and loaded with intent to inflame. It was also proving to be
completely ineffective.
His penis was not responding. He felt for the anticipated build-up
of sexual tension in his body, and found it absent.
Her hands were gentle yet insistent, giving the most delightful of
caresses, stroking all the right places. He should be blowing steam
out of his ears by now, but it was just not happening. Tension was
rising but not the good kind.
He forced himself to relax and feel her touch, allowing his body’s
uncensored response as directed.
Horrified, he realised that his body was cringing from her touch.
His scrotum had tightened, not in anticipation of ejaculation but
in withdrawal, as if his balls had been plunged into cold water. His
penis felt like it was actually shrinking from her ministrations.
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And … what ministrations! As instructed, she had arranged his

body to her liking. Pillows supported his neck and raised his
ankles. Now, she alternated long flowing caresses from the back of
his knees to his belly with stroking his scrotum and massaging his
penis. He felt an arising within but not the good kind. An arising
of embarrassment with a kernel of shame.
According to his instructions, his body was supposed to respond.

It was supposed to respond naturally, as per its organic inclination.
It was, however, not responding. It was not being a good Daka’s
Lingam. It was being a bad cock.
He recalled his beloved’s earlier amusement and his response to

her feigned (he hoped) displeasure. Something was going wrong
here. His body was failing to give this woman the required honest
feedback, the necessary honest response. Clearly this situation was
not covered in his instructions.
Having found the loophole, he danced through it past the guidelines

and brought his erotic imagination directly and deliberately into
play. He recalled the attractive, purposeful thirty-ish yoga-toned
corporate over-achiever that he had invited to borrow his body. If
he could see her now …
In his imagination, her perfectly buffed nails glistened as she

scraped them lightly over his scrotum. Her lips parted adorably as
she blew the warm breath he felt every now and then. Things were
going well … except … no wood.
In direct defiance of the guidelines he pulsed his PC muscles with

a long deep breath, deliberately, strongly. Raising Vajra by main
force. This gold-standard technique managed, for the first time
ever in his experience, to fail miserably.
She stopped touching him and he could hear clothes being

discarded. Her breathing was shallow and irregular, sometimes
stopping for a few seconds. Indicative, he knew, of agitated
thought.
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Dry satin panties slid around his thigh, just above his knee and
ground down on it. Her naked belly pressed into his crotch. She
wiggled her tummy to no effect and then curved her back and
stroked from his belly to his nipples with her nipples. His penis
remained perfectly flaccid.
He felt embarrassed for her and ashamed of himself. Perhaps he

was not, after all his training, yet daka material. To not respond
to this completely gorgeous woman, doing these most totally
gorgeous …
He froze, startled as she licked his penis. As his astonishment and

shock subsided, he wondered if this was covered by the guidelines.
Nothing had specifically been said about sex as such. The only
guideline – actually a rule – said that neither of them should slip
into their automatic or learned sexual behaviours. This exercise
was about exploring the depths of emotion. It was not supposed
to be about gratification.
Silently, he cursed himself for not thinking this through. Then

he cursed the dakini for not warning him of this possibility, and
giving him some suggestion of how to cope with it. Admittedly, he
had not asked, but this scenario had not occurred to him.
An argument exploded in his mind. He should have been warned!

There had to be procedures. Who had designed this stupid exercise
anyway? Probably Rahasya. An ancient traditional temple practice
which the tricky bastard had no doubt invented just last year.
Maybe this was a kind of practical joke … a rookie ride … and if

so, what to do? A crowd of dark and suspicious thoughts shuffled
through his mind. A few of them liked the place, and applied for
permanent residence.
Slippery sensations intruded on his thinking processes. She was

holding his penis in the palms of her hands, massaging it with
her saliva. It felt like it should feel wonderful. It should have had
his ejaculation out of him within a minute against any defence. It
completely failed to evoke even a hint of arousal. The sharp, edgy
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tingling coming in from his genital nerve endings was bearable

but not pleasant.
With an exasperated sigh, she sucked his penis into her mouth
and swirled it with her tongue. He twitched involuntarily as his
nerves squealed in overload. This encouraged her and, forcing
and supporting a kind of semi-erection by squeezing his penis
from the base, she got into showing off in earnest. To absolutely
no discernible positive effect.
She resorted to main force – erecting him hydraulically by sheer

suction. It worked but not for long. She loosened her grip and
tried to swallow his almost-lingam down her throat. It collapsed
and folded in her mouth, deflating quicker than she had inflated
it.
He felt a great intensity of shame. His mind reeled and memories

arose.
He recalled being thirteen, racked with guilt following periods of

deeply compulsive, concealed and copious masturbation.
He remembered feeling disgust, even loathing for his penis. He

remembered his mother’s complaints about his father’s filthy
animal nature.
The deep beliefs and attitudes he had imposed on penises in

general and his own penis in specific overwhelmed him. He
choked on his own shame.
She spat him out. His penis hung straight down. He felt it sticking
wetly to his balls.
She ignored the guidelines again. Words poured forth from her.
She expressed a low opinion of his craft and his suitability as a
daka.
According to the instructions for the exercise, she was supposed to

express herself in sounds without words. She was to relate to the
lingam, not to the person who had lent it to her.
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He felt a brief moment of humour as he thought of suggesting she

play the ball, not the man.
She accused him of canine ancestry and sat back on his thigh.
He felt her body trembling … but not in a good way.
Bending forward suddenly, she slammed her fists into the futon
either side of his body. A shock wave passed through the thick
cotton and his body.
He felt her hair brushing his belly as she hung her head low.
She sobbed, then wailed loudly.
Tears flowed. His few were concealed, mopped up by the blindfold.

Hers dripped copiously on his belly, trickled through his pubic
hair and dripped from his scrotum. A puddle formed, wetting his
buttocks.
Her tears ceased abruptly, and her sobbing changed to a growl.

She went very still for a while. He wondered what had happened.
An erection had happened, or was at any rate, happening. He felt

a blush redden his face at this inappropriate timing.
He felt damp hair unsticking itself from him as she lifted her head.
She sat up, no longer resting on her arms and grabbed his lingam
very deliberately, firmly and un-worshipfully. She snarled curses
at it for getting interested now, and for refusing to respond when
she did everything right.
She strangled the rapidly growing lingam with both hands, her
fingers half-interlaced. Perfect nails dug in and she snarled at it.
“Try to get harder now, cockbastard.”
His cockbastard obliged promptly. He wondered frantically if this

qualified as a genuine physical emergency.
She softened her grip. He gasped as her nails ceased to prick him
and the squashed nerves caught up on their email. The expected
warm gush of blood did not occur.
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She let go and for a long while, she did not touch him. He noticed
his breathing and hers calming and deepening.
She touched him then. Tentatively, curiously. Feather light soft

caresses with her fingertips, one hand lovingly, gently, cupping his
balls. She pressed the lingam to her breasts, then her cheek. She
kissed it and pressed her lips to its softest parts.
She curled up around the lingam, hands pressing it to her throat

under her chin. Her breathing was deep and even. They lay like
that until a soft gong sounded the end of the Hour of Silence CD.
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Dakinis and dakas
Guru Rinpoche to King Trisong Detsen:
“Without such a one, the maturation and liberation practices are

obstructed; the result, the achievement of the secret teachings does
not occur.”
If you have devotional tendencies, dakinis make the Divine,

in whichever aspect of God or Goddess is needed, physically
available.
If your path is the path of the lover, dakinis teach you what love is
and how to open to it.
If you are a student of Advaita, dakinis can reveal your polarities

to you and support your integration.
If you are a Tantric or Taoist practitioner, dakinis can show you

the truth beyond your techniques.
I have appropriated this Tibetan word dakini and, for males, daka,
and use it as a title in my school. I also use it to describe those who
do closely related work in the world.
A dakini is a student who has reached a point of understanding,

capability and compassion from which she can and does teach the
mysteries of Tantra.
Their learning before finding me was as varied as their teaching

styles are now. Each of them works from her own experience.
They are not communicating something I have given them – they
are teaching what they are here to teach, from their own authority.
It has been my privilege and delight to have been instrumental in
encouraging them to their work.
Dakinis teach Tantra directly, personally and experientially. They

are the most rare and valuable spiritual resource on this harsh
path. Tantra in the patriarchal world owes its very existence to
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dakinis. Saraha and all the great tantrikas, gurus and teachers of
every age were taught and raised to their greatness by dakinis.
Traditionally and historically, dakinis were available to only the

most intelligent, persistent and courageous of seekers. Dakinis
had to be tracked down by following rumours.
When a seeker did find one, he could expect to be greeted with

curses and well-aimed rocks. If he could convince her of his
sincerity and offer what she found to be appropriate gifts, he
might get to hear the non-negotiable terms of her unconditional
loving.
Many dakinis were not even that accessible. They worked like
stage hands, facilitating the learning of the Masters of the day
from behind the scenes of public life.
They were the sisters, wives, mothers, lovers, grandmothers and

consorts of gurus and rishees. They influenced and supported
promising teachers with little or no regard for the patriarchal
divisions of religions, cults and sects.
They managed lineage-successions by training, empowering

and declaring the enlightenment of their male students, as did
their spiritual sisters, the Hetaeras of Greece and the Kingmakers
of Egypt. They supervised theological development by hiding
scriptures in memory and oral transmission for generations, only
revealing them to the male spiritual leaders in the right timing.
They managed the spread of spiritual practice, encouraging and
even ordering the dakas, gurus and masters they created to take
their teachings to distant lands.
They were believed to be the most lovingly supportive gateway to

spiritual evolution. They were also believed to be difficult to find,
impossible to evaluate, fierce, uncompromising and dangerous,
even deadly.
Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.
There are some differences in the way they do things these days.
Most noticeably they do not live hidden in caves anymore, their
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secret known only to a few devotees. They live in suburban

enclaves, more or less anonymously, and appear to fit in, more or
less, with modern cultural ways.
Patriarchy and its values are on the decline. Feminism, Oprah

and other cultural phenomena have made it possible for them to
practice without the constraints of secrecy.
The core of this school’s teaching is our individual session work.

Naturally, a popular question is: What exactly happens … what do
dakinis actually do … in sessions?
The answer: Whatever is required.
Perhaps she will create immediate and difficult conditions: that

you take some martial arts classes or yoga. Perhaps she will evoke
the re-experience of a traumatic incident from your childhood.
Perhaps she will introduce you to your own body and its capacity
for bliss. Perhaps she will initiate you into sexual practices that
you never dreamt possible.
Perhaps it makes more sense to ask: What are the limitations, the
boundaries of your method and approach … what can’t happen in
sessions?
The answer: No limitations, no boundaries … and absolutely

anything at all can happen.
A dakini works with her natural authority, using the methods and
techniques of her choice. She works with individual human beings,
regardless of their relationship status. She is not particularly
interested in a student’s happiness, pleasure, social adjustment or
sexual fulfilment. She is interested in enabling, encouraging and
supporting a student’s awareness, no matter what it takes and no
matter how it may look.
Some students relate to dakinis as doctors of sexuality. They want

a cure for a problem. Usually PE or ED. Some look to them for
help with relationship issues and to revitalise their sex lives. Some
simply adore a dakini and delight in the awareness they find
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through her lessons. Some endure their sessions, constantly on

the edge of their capacity and willingness. Some just fall in love.
Dakinis are selective but remarkably open and forgiving in their

selection. A dakini will usually accept a student if she feels an
openness to her guidance and a willingness to take her direction.
The student’s motivation is otherwise of surprisingly little

concern to a dakini, at the beginning. They tolerate sexual athletes
looking for technique. They help women wanting advice and tips
to improve their sex lives. They have even been willing, at least
once, it is rumoured, to teach a pick-up artist what to do when he
lands his prey. This is because they know, more or less, what the
student’s motivation will change to as his practice deepens.
Dakinis teach in a variety of modalities. They advise and bring

clarity to the student’s issues and strategies in all areas of life. They
guide a student’s search with close individual attention. They use
their bodies to teach men the truths of conscious sexuality. They
teach women, using their bodies as example and catalyst. They
facilitate the meeting and relating of students that can be useful to
each other’s awareness.
Compassionate though they are, the centre of their usefulness to a

seeker is their authority. Their students have to face hard lessons –
lessons which have probably been avoided precisely because they
are hard.
Dakinis are deeply aware of the compassion in their indifference,

the freedom in their authority and the love in their orders.
To their students, devotees, lovers and friends, they seem to be

fallen angels, or maybe compassionate demons.
For students of great potential, they reserve great challenges.
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A cup of tea
After the student had left, the dakini offered the daka a cup of
tea. While she prepared it, his mind reviewed the last hour. More
mixed feelings. Embarrassment and elation. Shame and sensuality.
Guilt and heat.
He looked up from his reverie. The dakini was standing in front of

him, offering him a cup. As he took it she said, “Special tea,” and,
smiling, “Virgin tea.”
“Thank you.” There was one small leaf in his cup and just a hint
of colour. He sipped and was surprised, first at the sweetness and
then at the subtle but exquisite flavour.
“Very special,” he noted, “delicious.” He sipped again and tried

to analyse the sweetness. “Not honey, not sugar, not fructose or
glucose either … dextrose?”
“No sugar or sweetening,” she said. “Just the flavour of that single
leaf in your cup. Nothing else at all.”
He sipped again. “Well, this is exquisite. What is it called, and how

come I don’t recognise it?”
“Virgin tea,” she repeated patiently. “Very unlikely indeed that

you would have come across it, even if you were a professional
tea taster.”
“Very new? Richard Branson …”
“Oh no! Too special for him by far, though he probably could
afford it. It is very specially cultivated at an extremely high altitude
and hand-picked at perfect ripeness by young girls, traditionally
virgins.”
He sipped again, thoughtfully. “Very special tea. I am honoured.”
“Glad you worked that out.” The dakini smiled at him warmly
over her cup. “Congratulations on your first session.”
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“Thank you.”
They enjoyed the tea for a while in silence before he said “I was
worried … everything I thought it would be, what I had planned
…”
She laughed. He sat upright, nearly spilling his tea. She laughed
more and he became infected by it and joined her. He felt the
tensions in his body and mind releasing into the laughter.
He felt the whole session as a single complete moment, a gestalt,

rich with existential humour. He felt the poignancy of that
moment and the deep sadness in it too. Tears came and his
laughter changed to a deep sobbing.
The dakini had moved close to him and relieved him of his cup
without him noticing. She knelt in front of him now and pressed
her hand, edge on like a weapon, hard into the centre of his chest.
Her voice, not loud but absolutely insistent, said: “All of it. Take in
all of this feeling. Right now.”
He was overwhelmed by the intensity and scale of his sensation.

Somehow he managed to stay open to the experience, not shying
away into numbness or dislocation. He felt all the despair, suffering
and hopelessness he had touched in himself and somehow allowed
himself to feel the whole of it, unreservedly.
Her hand kept pressing inward, driving his breath out, and driving
him deeper into his experience. When his lungs were completely
emptied, she said, “You have found the extent of it. Now hold your
experience for a moment.”
The scale of things seemed to change. He was no longer

overwhelmed. These feelings were within his capacity. He held
them.
She eased the pressure on his chest and said, “Breathe all of it in
now. Into your heart.” She released the pressure on his sternum.
He recognised the technique now but had never before experienced

it used so directly and with such … substantial feelings. He
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inhaled through his mouth, opening his heart to the feelings he

held, drawing them in, welcoming them into his heart centre. It
hurt. He allowed and welcomed that too.
“All of it,” she commanded.
He managed it all, surprised that he could. His exhalation was

calm and gentle. Rich with the energy of a well-fed heart chakra.
She stood up slowly and went back to her chair, saying, “So it was
a good exercise for you too.”
“Very weird. Quite tough. It seemed to end peacefully enough

though,” he replied, and took a while to consider. “I have no idea
what use it was to her, though.”
“I had a chat with her while you were in the shower. You did very
well. She learnt at least one very valuable lesson.”
“Which was?” he inquired, retrieving his cup. The tea had cooled
a little and was still exquisitely delicious.
“She discovered that the lingam responds far more eagerly to her
honest tears and rage than to what she has been used to thinking
of as her sexual powers … her ability to tease and please.”
He pondered this for a while. A notion occurred and promptly

sprouted into a suspicion. The suspicion took root, then developed
a firm proposition which budded and flowered into an impressive
display of definite certainty.
“You knew how it would go?!” Half question, half accusation. “It
could have helped me a bit if …” His voice trailed off as his mouth
closed. The thinking continued.
He reviewed his experience. He considered mentioning his lingam’s

insistence on choosing its own response, no matter how he had
tried to alter it, in defiance of his instructions. He considered it
some more, and decided not to mention it. He wondered what
to say.
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He looked at the dakini over his cup. She was watching him,
Gioconda smile in place.
He drained the last of his tea and replaced the cup. She interrupted
his attempt to delay, indicating by her question that a new topic
was now under discussion.
“How is your relationship doing under the burden of non-

monogamy?”
“Very well, today at least. So far.” His reply met the enigmatic smile
again. She waited. He continued.
“Well … we have an agreement that I am available for sessions

work.” He gulped. “Like this.” He paused. The dakini raised an
eyebrow in unmistakable inquiry. He continued, a little nervously.
“The sessions are confidential of course. She doesn’t want to know
the who’s and what’s … just if I have sex in a session.”
“Sex?” The dakini looked at him sternly. “That session you just did
was not pure sex by any reasonable standard?”
“No. Not by her reasonableness. She uses the Bill Clinton

definition.”
“You mean genital penetrative sex?”
“To ejaculation,” he confirmed.
“It sounds as if your agreement with her could prevent totality in

your work. Does your agreement to tell her about it reduce your
willingness?”
He considered this. “I might be a little worried if that had to

happen in a session, but not unwilling.”
She studied him in silence. Her gaze penetrated to his core. He

exercised his self-control and hoped he appeared calmer than
he felt. She relaxed, shrugged, smiled and took a few steps to her
laptop. It opened on a calendar.
After a few taps on the track-pad, she turned to him.
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“Time now for you to go. I have to get ready for my next session.”
He stood and she hugged him. “Today, you are a daka in fact, as
well as title.”
As he finished gathering his things, she opened the door, holding

it firm against the wind which heralded another of the Cape’s
famous storms.
“One more thing,” she said as he came to the door, car keys in
hand, “according to your Google calendar, you are clear next
Tuesday afternoon.”
“Another session?”
“Yes.”
“What?”
“Do you really want to know?”
“Sure. It can only help.”
She put her hand on his shoulder as if to steady him before

replying. “Penetration to ejaculation, of course. With me, most
likely.”
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Chapter 7
Feminine and masculine
What a perfect specimen of manhood.

So dominant.
You must be awfully proud of him, Janet.
The shaman
Through the heavy pebble lenses which rested on his fat cheeks,
the old man watched the door, a hole really, which raggedly framed
a bright afternoon sky.
The silhouette of a woman’s formal headgear appeared at

the bottom of the hole and grew as its wearer approached.
Occasionally, he glimpsed a second head behind her, and focussed
on it intently.
Soon, the hut interior dimmed as his youngest but most senior
wife knelt at the entrance and announced herself and the visitor.
This took a while because the visitor’s name had to be given with
full titles and an extensive account of his lineage.
The greetings and formalities went smoothly, drinks and snacks

were served, and soon he was alone with the young man.
“Tradition says we should use my language in this place, but I

think English may be easier for you?”
“Thank you, Baba.” The young man was obviously relieved.

“Most of my schooling and studies were in English, and I am
not that good anymore with my own language. With yours, I am
embarrassed to say, I struggle.”
“Good. English then. What have you studied?”
“History, mainly European of course. A few languages,

international law and anthropology. I was schooled in England,
then I studied at universities in Germany and Sweden.”
“Your parents were in exile?”
“Yes. We left here when I was nine years old. We returned when I
was nearly thirty.”
“And now you have a position in government. Your father is very

proud.”
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“Well, my father died too soon after our return to see it happen
but my mother still brags about me at her tea parties.”
The old man looked stern and his voice boomed in the small hut.
“Your father is proud of you, young man – and he most certainly
did see it happen.”
“I am sorry. I did not mean …”
The old man sighed. “Sorry. I just wanted to assure you. I have
been very busy with the ancestors lately and it is your father that
persuaded me that you were the right one.”
“But how can that …” The youngster hesitated. He had studied

shamanistic attitudes to elders and ancestors extensively, but
encountering someone who spoke of these things literally instead
of academically was a bit strange.
“You mean how can I talk in the spirit realm with an ancestor who
is not of my tribe?” The old man looked amused and no trace of
his previous seriousness was discernable on his chubby features.
“… err, yes.” And to himself the young man thought: Never mind
how you shamans claim to speak with the dead in the first place.
“Our tribes have not always been separate, you know. Thirteen
generations ago, they were one. We have elders in common, and
anyway, the elders do not necessarily respect the tribal divisions as
much as we usually do.”
The young man decided that it was probably safest to suspend

disbelief and play along. “So the connection is that you have
ancestors in common with my father … and with me?”
“Well, yes. You and I do at …” The old man’s eyes rolled halfway
back into his head for a few seconds. “Nineteen … no. Twenty-one
generations back from you and seventeen back from me.”
He grinned broadly, waved a hand dismissively and continued.

“But I don’t have to go by that long route. The connection is that I
have an ancestor who knows your father. Much more direct.”
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“Um … Ok. Thank you, Baba.” Like Facebook, he thought.
The old man roared with laughter, his cheeks jiggled and his belly
wobbled hugely. The bamboo couch creaked alarmingly. The
young man watched in amazement. After what seemed to be a
very long time, this almost seismic activity subsided.
The old man grinned at him, chuckled some more, then spoke in
a conspiratorial tone. “You do not believe a word of this nonsense,
do you?” And before a reply could be considered, he burst out
laughing again.
The young man cringed. He was painfully aware that just a century
or so ago, shamans of his culture had wielded unconscionable
power. Nowadays, some of them, like this old man, still did.
Wiping away mirthful tears, the old man gradually chuckled to a

stop. Noticing the young man’s tension, he waved a chubby hand
and said, “Relax. That was the old days. Things, you might have
noticed, have changed.”
“I feel I must apologise anyway. My scepticism is just my training.

I have great respect and much pride in our traditions.”
The old man smiled warmly at him. “Things have changed much,
but of course the fundamentals always remain. Do you know what,
traditionally speaking, I am supposed to do with young men who
suffer such doubts?”
He racked his brains, searching through the few stories he had

heard from his grandmother, and his more recent university
studies. “No.”
“I am supposed to take them with me on a spirit journey.”
The young man’s eyes opened wide in surprise. He had come

here hoping to add a few traditional stories to the archives he was
creating. Of course, against his expectations, he had nonetheless
hoped …
128
The old man studied the younger one carefully. It was, of course,
no accident that their conversation had led so quickly to this
suggestion, but he had some doubts.
Could the young man, untrained as he was, take the vision more
seriously than a dream? Could he bring back anything worthwhile
from such a journey?
“Would you like to accompany me on such a journey?” he asked

eventually, knowing the answer.
“It would be a great privilege.” the young man answered seriously,

his composure almost fully restored.
Still irked by his doubts but showing no sign of it, the old man
clapped his hands loudly twice.
His senior wife appeared shortly. “It is as you thought,” the old
man told her.
“I have arranged everything, Baba.” She kept her head low, politely
avoiding eye contact, but the young man noticed her throw a
quick glance in his direction, and a hint of a smile.
The old man grinned at the young man, conveying confidence he

did not feel. “It seems the women are one step ahead of us, as is
usually the case.”
Turning to the wife who looked more like a granddaughter, he

raised an eyebrow beyond the heavy lens. “Everything?”
She smiled and gestured towards the doorway. Two other wives of
the old man came in and removed the low table. They returned,
unrolled a mattress of animal skins next to the old man’s couch
and sat at either end of it, silent and expectant.
In their tribal dialect, he asked the women to continue the ritual.

The wife who was nearest to the door clapped her hands once and
a light but insistent drumming started up outside the hut.
The shaman’s granddaughter-wife, in bare-breasted tribal regalia

stood before the young man and held out her hand with an
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incongruently European elegance. “Shall we dance?” her posture

seemed to ask.
He stood up and took her hand. It led him to the mattress of skins
and gestured for him to sit. He sat, facing the old man.
The women at each end of the mattress had produced bowls in

which they were kindling small fires.
The old man spoke. “The women will get you to breathe a little
smoke from their bowls. Then you lie down, with your head in the
same direction as mine.”
Crushing herbs between their fingers over the small flames, the
women produced clouds of surprisingly thick smoke. The young
man watched the smoke ascend to the thatch and form a wobbly
white ceiling. Scents which reminded the young man of an
afternoon of sex in front of a fire in Scandinavia filled the hut.
Noticing that it was now much darker, the young man glanced
over his shoulder. Bales of thatching grass had been piled up
against the doorway from outside, sealing them in.
Alarmed, he looked back at the old man. “What happens now?”
“I will tell you a story. Try not to over-analyse it with your modern
education. Just listen to it. The story will be your guide to where
we are going.”
“And where is that?”
The old man smiled, then looked at his favourite wife who sat
behind the young man. He signalled to her with a half-wink.
The young man felt her warm body close behind him. Her arms
came around him and wrapped his gently to his sides. “Be quiet
and relax into me,” she told him in his own tribal dialect. He
yielded to her firm, soft warmth.
The women with the fire bowls approached and held them before
him. “Close your mouth and let me be your breath,” said the voice
at his ear. He felt her squeezing him and realised that the squeeze
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was synchronised with his breath, helping him to exhale. He

relaxed and let her breathe him.
At a signal from her, the two women sprinkled more herbs into
their smouldering bowls. From each one, a pencil thin stream of
dense, opaque smoke emerged. Cupping the stream with their
free hands, they contained it and guided it towards him. The
arms around him wrapped him tightly, emptying his lungs. As
they relaxed, he inhaled deeply and twin streams of dense smoke
poured into separate nostrils.
“Good,” said the warm feminine voice. “Again.” They repeated the
exacting performance twice more.
The women with the bowls then held them out to the old man
and guided the smoke for him as he leaned forward and inhaled
deeply, just once.
The warm body behind the young man tipped him gently sideways,
laying him down on the skins. Soft hands gently held his head and
feet. Another soft hand gently closed his eyes.
The drumming seemed now to be softer, deeper and very far away.
The old man started his story.
He described a world before the time of men, when women had

ruled for thousands of years. Slowly, the unbelievable world he
described became less strange and more familiar. The young
man realised that he was no longer listening to the narrative but
seemed to be immersed in it, as if in a dream. Then the dream
became real.
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The first patriarch
He reached the avocado grove at the forest edge, still walking

carefully. Carrying a basket, he had not raised any suspicions
when he had left the households. It was taboo, but not all that
unusual for a lone male to be sent to fetch food.
The distance he had covered, though, was greater than such a

task permitted. If he was stopped and questioned, he would be
regarded as a stray, or worse, feral.
He shuddered. If that happened, he would look a fool indeed. The

terrors of being staked out or caged, a toy for girl children and
food for their pets, was what he risked. He risked this to escape
the luxury of life in his Mother’s household. All the older men he
knew had endured what he was running from. They said it did not
hurt much if it was done properly.
It would normally have been done when his male parts had grown
enough to be noticed. When his had, Mother had intervened. She
needed a hunter of unusual prowess to supply her full moon
banquets, she had said. A hunter with balls was the expression she
had used.
He left the path, circling back to his left, stopping when he could
no longer see household fields beyond the avocado trees. He sat on
a flat mossy rock, put the basket down beside him and anxiously
surveyed the ground he had covered. Soon, he knew, a pack of
hunters and dogs, perhaps even women on horseback, would be
tracking him down.
He took his warthog-skin hunting bag from the basket and stocked
it with the dried food, tools and other things that he had thrown
together in his earlier state of panic.
Reaching into the basket with both hands, he struggled for a while,
then took a small sharp blade from a pocket of his bag and cut at
the tough rattan around the middle of the basket.
132
With a loud crack that made his heart start pounding again, the
basket ripped almost all the way around its middle and his bow
sprang free. It felt good and comforting in his hand even though
his arrows had proved too brittle to coil into the basket and too
long to conceal anywhere else.
Shouldering his bag and slinging the bow onto the bag, he ran
at an easy pace along the tree line. He stopped a few times to rub
his hands in his armpits or crotch, then wiped his scent on low
bushes, tree trunks, rocks and his feet.
After laying a few hundred metres of scent trail, he doubled back

and returned to the rock, re-crossing his path often, and careful
not to leave directional footprints when he did so.
Back at the rock, he took two fresh jackal skins from his bag and
tied them over his bare feet. He walked away from the path and
then parallel to it as he set himself a sustainable pace, running
deeper into the forest.
After a few hours he came to the hide he used in the rare times
when game became scarce. It overlooked a grassy river bank where
a variety of meat animals came to drink each evening.
He dined on nuts and dried meat shavings while he considered

his next step. This hide was the furthest he had ever been from his
birthplace. Tomorrow, he would go … well, further into the forest.
He realised that he had no idea how big the forest was, or what, if
anything, lay beyond it.
He had no idea where the wild men were to be found. He fell

asleep wondering if he would survive meeting them if they could
be found.
That night, he dreamt his memory of the only wild man he had
ever seen.
The creature’s deeply wrinkled face had been almost covered in

matted hair. It had glared at him fiercely from eyes that had the
same intent and clarity as those of a wolf. It had growled and
133
made harsh, rough noises at them until its trainer threatened it

with a barbed pole.
“Are those words?” he asked his Mother.
“Probably,” she answered, glaring at the beast. “They have about as

much language as a gorilla.”
“Seriously ugly …”
“That is what people become if their breeding is unsupervised.”
“Do their … Mothers look like this too?” The question had earned
him a solid slap on the cheek.
“What a horrible idea.” Another slap. His eyes stung. “Actually,”

she continued after a thoughtful pause, “their females are less
hairy but otherwise, much the same.”
Her face hardened as she continued. “They tend to be uglier,

though. Almost all of them have severely deformed faces and
other serious injuries.”
“Because they fight hard when caught?”
“No.” She glared at the monster angrily. “The males beat the
females, breed on a whim and kill most of the offspring. It is a
miracle that the species persists in the wild at all.”
He had studied the captive more carefully then. Apart from some
obviously fresh wounds it looked strong and healthy. The muscles
looked hard and the skin looked like cured leather. Thick black
hair sprouted everywhere. He knew his own smoothness was on
account of his regular plucking, but he could not believe that it
could ever grow into anything comparable to this beast’s pelt.
He thought aloud. “Some of the creatures that live with us have

wild cousins. Our dogs can breed with jackals; and our pigs, with
boars.”
“Just so. To keep them dogs and pigs, we supervise their breeding
as we do our own.”
134
“Our Mothers could breed with that?”
She raised her hand to slap him again, then sighed and lowered
it. “Yes. Like dogs with jackals, or pigs with boars for that matter.
That is why he is still alive and they have taken care not to damage
his male bits. They hope to make him safe enough to breed with.”
He looked at her in shock and she laughed.
“It is good to breed a little wildness back into some lines every
now and then. We do it when we want a male for some particular
purpose.” She had smiled then, teeth glinting sharply in the
speckled light as she looked at him expectantly.
She clearly wanted him to be clever again, he realised. No one else,

male or female, ever appreciated any sign of cleverness in a male –
but she did, in him. In public, she would punish it of course but
not heavily and she never punished him for cleverness when they
were alone.
He tried. “Like when you breed fierce males, for sport, for guards
and for …”
“… hunting,” she completed for him.
“I am a hunter.” The words were out before he considered their

implications. He winced.
“Yes you are. I bred you from a hunter.” While he reeled, trying
to digest this somewhat disgusting news, she studied the creature
more carefully.
“A better built one, though. This one has the small, skinny penis
typical of the wild ones.”
She looked at the monster almost fondly, but it was clear that she
spoke to him, not to the beast. “Your sire was a fine specimen.
Stronger and more dangerous than this one.
“He was quite difficult to restrain and an incurable biter, even

gagged and with most of his teeth knocked out.”
135
She touched her left breast absent-mindedly. So that is how you got
that scar, he thought.
She continued, her voice soft in fond reverie. “He was so resistant
that I could not get him to squirt,” she sighed.
“I enjoyed him for hours, but eventually it was enough and I

was getting sore. I told the trainer to poke him in the arse with
a discipline dildo. His ejaculation was so copious that I quite
overflowed. I knew immediately that I had conceived.”
“So that is why you brought me here?” he had asked, wincing at

the thought of what his conception had looked like. “To see what
I would have been, if I had been born wild?”
“No.” She had looked at him sternly. “I brought you here to see
what you truly are.”
He awoke from the dream sweating and shook his head to clear
the troubling vision of the wild man’s hairy face from his eyes.
He stumbled down from the hide to the river, splashed himself,

then drank deeply from it and finally, he urinated into it.
Life flowed through him. He stood proud and felt the sun warming
his face. For the first time since his escape, he felt the elation of
freedom. Throwing his arms above his head, he shouted, “I am a
wild man!”
“Come and have breakfast then, wild man,” his Mother’s voice
shouted back. She and another woman sat in the shade, slightly
further up the game trail. Their horses grazed calmly behind
them.
He looked around in panic, trying to work out where the dogs and
his once fellow hunters were.
“If you still have clothes or skins, wild man, you may want to get
dressed,” shouted his Mother. “It is cool here in the shade.”
136
She wanted him to go back to the hide. Presumably the hunters

were waiting there, their noises covered by the babble of the river.
He looked in the only clear direction – down river.
It did not look good. A hundred metres of boulders, slippery with

constant splashing lay ahead.
After that, he knew, were soft muddy banks where crocodiles

basked.
“Wild man,” shouted his Mother again, “please join us. I have
brought gifts.”
He stumbled to the hide, his legs leaden with fear. The dogs and
men he had expected were not there.
No alternative occurring to him, he dressed himself in the sweaty

and crumpled woven garments he had worn during his apparently
abortive bid for freedom.
He packed the skin bag and slung it over his shoulder. Carrying
the bow, he left the hide and headed down the game trail. The trees
met overhead and the air cooled as he approached the women
who were seated on cushions, on top of a large grass mat.
His Mother indicated towards an unoccupied cushion in front of

them.
He sat and tried to keep his composure. His Mother smiled

warmly and offered him a bowl. Her companion, too young to be
a Mother herself, was studying him intently.
The bowl held a mash of grain and fruit. “Please eat,” she said, “we
ate ours while we were waiting for you to wake up.”
Ignoring her repeated use of what surely was sarcastically

respectful language, he tucked in hungrily.
“I must admit, I am impressed,” said his Mother’s companion,

“how did you know where to find it?”
“I birthed this one and I shaped its mind as it grew.”
137
“I would not have expected any male to go feral over the minor
discomfort of castration. I would never have predicted that he
could make his scent trail vanish. I would certainly never have
been able to find him once he had vanished.”
“He is bred three fourths wild and knows more about the ways of
animals than the ways of people. He has never been disciplined
with anything more severe than a whip and has not been castrated
or imprinted. He is what we need. An almost wild man.”
“Wooh.” The young woman regarded her with wide eyes.

“Amazing. How did you get away with all that?”
His Mother shrugged. “Some of it was easy. I lied about his

breeding, and my Mother had already lied about mine.”
“She, your Mother, Eva of the Valley Households … our plan

started with her?”
“Oops, there goes her pristine reputation. No. The plan was
started long before her time. It may even be as old as the First
Household.”
The young woman raised an eyebrow. “You are full of surprises.”
His Mother took his empty bowl and handed him a slab of
smoke-cured ham while she addressed the youngster. “Avoiding
his imprinting was a bit tricky. I wrapped his penis with a thin
strip of copper. This made it turn a very unappetising shade of
green. The imprinter decided to give it a season to clear up.”
“And then she forgot all about it?”
“After drinking a very specially spiced tea, yes.”
“Impressive indeed. How did you avoid his castration?”
“I sulked, argued, bullied and bribed for as long as I could.”
“So when the order came from our favourite Matriarch, you told
him to run here?”
138
“No. He worked that out for himself. He chose to save his own
balls.”
His adrenaline shock had eased as his stomach had filled. He

tried to remember what they had said while he was satisfying his
hunger.
“You gobbled that up like a hungry dog,” his Mother observed.

“Are you sure you want freedom from the good food and warmth
of my household?”
“I was trying to escape so that I could make my own choices.

Maybe even … my own household.”
“And you see taking to the wild unarmed and unequipped and,
by the way, heading in the worst possible direction, as a workable
start on that objective?”
“It was a start,” he muttered, sullen, hating them for toying with
him.
She smiled. “It was.” She looked at him, very seriously and said, “It
was the proof I was looking for.”
“The proof of what?” He scanned their faces for signs of guile. His
Mother, of course, was inscrutable, but the young woman looked
open, curious and interested in his response.
“The proof that you, of your own free will, reject the rule and
power of women. The proof that you are not just a male but are,
in fact, a man. A patriarch.”
He looked at Mother, his eyes wide in fright at her use of the

taboo word. Was that what he had done? He frantically tried not
to remember the kinds of things they did to males after they used
words like that. He closed his eyes tight, expecting to feel the whip
across his face, nipples or genitals.
Time passed, and the women said nothing. He opened his eyes.
They were obviously going to do their terrifying worst. They may
as well start by cutting my tongue out, he thought.
139
“Yes,” he said, with a defiant strength in his voice that he did

not feel, “I have had enough of you viscious, domineering,
unpredictable bitches.”
The women looked at each other and grinned.
“Oh my!” exclaimed the younger one.
“I told you. A free man.”
“I thought it impossible.” The young woman looked at him.
He looked back and saw a face that was clearly a woman’s face,
but … it bore the strangest look. An expression he had never seen
directed at a man before.
It was like the look he got from boys when he returned from
a successful hunt. A look of eagerness that promised total
willingness. Pure adoration.
He looked at her mouth. Her lower lip hung slack. Her head bobbed
back and forth a little in time with her fast, deep breathing.
He felt a surge of heat and his penis hardened. He was surprised at

the sudden erection because he did not feel humiliated.
Looking into her eyes, he marvelled at the expression he saw.

Almost immediately, her eyes lowered. When they reached his lap
her face reddened.
She leaned forward, studying the shape beneath the thin cloth.
“He is perfect! Thank you, Mother of Our Households.”
“Do you think the others will approve?”
“They trust me to assess him. Anyway, they are, all of them, already
sopping wet at just the idea of competing for the attentions of an
un-imprinted male with balls.”
Their conversation dissolved into giggles and a long embrace.
140
Confused, but suspecting that a torturous death was perhaps not

in his immediate future, he risked a question.
“If you’re not going to stuff chilli pips up my arse and have me
fucked by the dogs, please tell me what you are up to.”
They looked at each other and then back at him. “Well,” his Mother
said, “we came to give you a good start in your new life.”
“Meaning?” he asked.
“I want you to go out into new land, properly supported and

equipped to found a household. A new kind of household.”
“For her?” he inquired, gesturing to the young woman.
“No. For yourself and for your sons.” She gave this a little time to
sink in. “There are six more women who will be meeting us soon.
This woman and those six are yours. So are their horses and the
goods they carry.” She smiled. “My gift to you.”
“Women … mine …” he spluttered, not managing to form the

nonsensical phrase into a question.
“Yes. Yours. You think the way things are is unfair. You think men
could own and manage households, given the chance. I am giving
you that chance, on a few conditions.”
He had often disliked the way women treated men but had never
imagined a reversal of the situation. He looked at the young
woman. She reddened, and looked back, trying but failing to meet
his gaze. He turned back to his Mother in puzzlement.
“You want me to continue escaping but with a household of

women that I own, as you owned me and the other men?”
She turned to the young woman. “You see, dear, he can be

taught.”
“Not as a breeder with a pioneering Mother’s household?” he

persisted.
141
“No, they will be your breeders. You will decide if and when to
impregnate them. They will be your women.”
His brain hurt. All his assumptions about the world seemed to
be suddenly wrong. It seemed that either he must be mad, or his
Mother was. He looked at her companion. No help there. She had
reddened further, and was panting, mouth hanging open.
“Why?” he managed.
“Because we women will one day need stronger, more capable

men than we can produce with our present methods.”
He looked at her in confusion. “What do you mean?”
“One day, the world will be full. All available land will be covered
by households. There are lessons that women must learn and
abilities that males … men … must gain if our form of life is to
prosper. I want you to give women those lessons and I want you
to drive men to develop those abilities.”
“What are these abilities that men must develop?”
“They have to show what they can do under their own guidance. I
can’t say what they will learn or what they will do with the world
with any certainty. All that I know is that their abilities will have
to rival the powers of the Earth Mother Herself by the time the
world is filled.”
“What is it that women have to learn?”
“That men have a far greater purpose than the mere provision of
comfort and pleasure.”
“And how are we to learn these things?”
“Men will take on the responsibilities that women currently

manage. They will, with their one-line way of thinking, make,
from the female perspective, a horrible mess of things. In the
course of making this mess, they will show the true scale of their
abilities.
142
Women will be beneath men. They will be raised in male ways.

They will, for a very long time, have no overt power at all.
When they eventually do, it will be because they have personally
immersed themselves in and mastered the masculine way.”
He pondered this. It sounded rather unlikely. “What is this

supposed to achieve?” he asked.
“The male mind at work. Always more interested in the destination

than in the journey.” She sighed deeply. “Oh well. It is what it is.”
“Sorry, but what you talk about seems a much larger performance
than just me going feral, or even starting a weird power-reversed
household.”
“Yes. Much larger. You are the seed, quite literally, of an arising
that will in time come to dominate the whole world. I am trying
to get that seed planted in such a way that its growth will not be
deformed.”
“So what is this supposed to achieve?” he repeated.
She did not look even moderately annoyed at his rudeness. In fact,
she looked almost pleased.
“It will eventually bring another moment like this, when the way
power is managed will become obviously unsustainable.”
“And that means?” he prompted.
“It means there will be a return to rule by women, or perhaps, just

perhaps, a co-operative, integrated way may evolve.”
“You say that I am the seed of this change.” He saw that she was
still showing uncharacteristic patience. “How am I, even with a
team of women, supposed to change anything? I mean … I mean
… when they give birth to a few males and imprint them, things
will be just like here.”
“Hence my conditions.”
“Your conditions?”
143
“Yes. It will happen one day that women will be so tame and men
will be so comfortable with power that the natural superiority of
the feminine will rarely be seen. Until then, however, measures
must be taken to establish and maintain the reversal of power.”
“These … measures are your conditions?”
“Yes.” She looked at him seriously. “With some minor surgery, the
natural power relations of our sexuality can be reversed.”
“Surgery?”
“Yes. You have no idea how the notion offends my personal

aesthetic, but with some minor adjustments, the power of a
woman can be reduced and a male can be rendered almost
completely insensitive to it.”
He looked at her in firm disbelief. “Nonsense. When a woman

enfolds a man, even an unimprinted man, he becomes
overwhelmed and automatically follows her lead.”
“Not if he is circumcised.”
“Cut, like breeders?”
“Yes. With breeders, it is done so that ejaculation happens as soon

after penetration as possible. They ejaculate reliably when a yoni
squeezes them to take it, or contracts to resist entry. It usually
takes no more than ten thrusts to get their squirt.”
He had heard of the practice, but not its purpose. She paused,
noticed his grim expression, shrugged and continued.
“Not you … that would be just a little too cruel to the women
who must accompany you, but your sons and all succeeding
generations of men must be circumcised, and must do another
thing that makes the procedure far more effective.”
“Another thing?”
“They must be taken to a river bank at puberty, and taught to

masturbate by fucking holes in soft clay.”
144
He considered this. Clay felt quite sensual, squishing between toes.

It would be possible … but … He winced. “Sounds painful. Even
the smoothest clay is abrasive.”
“You would be surprised how much tougher than your penis a

circumcised one is. Fucking clay, even just once a week or so turns
it to leather.”
“And why would I want to do that to my …” he pondered the

novel notion, “… sons?”
“When they fuck a willing, open, wet woman, they will find it
unsatisfactory. If they manage to ejaculate, it will be by fucking
very hard, deep and fast. With a woman that is dry or tight from
revulsion or fear, they will find penetration to be much more
enjoyable and the whole experience more satisfactory. If the
woman is both tight and dry, their leathery penises will be able to
tear soft tissues and use the blood for lubrication.”
Next to his Mother, the young woman gasped. This must be as

hard for her to hear as it is for me … no, harder, he thought. He
looked at her, and was surprised to see lust, not disgust on the
young face.
“And why would a woman want them to do that?” he asked,

puzzled.
“What women want, in your household, will be irrelevant. Women

will not have men on the basis of just wanting them. They will
serve, fuck and bear children at the whim, the orders, of the man
who owns them.”
He tried to digest this. He was starting to think that she believed

this weird story, that it was not just an elaborate preparation for
something feminine-cruel.
“Is that all?”
“For the men, yes. The women will need a complementary

adjustment though, to reduce their power. It will also increase
their dependence on men for their orgasm.”
145
“Also a cutting?”
“Yes.” She smiled. “I only insisted on this from the next generation
on, but all of … your women already volunteered to be cut, to
better honour you.”
His head spun. The word honour usually referred to a man’s

erection, the absence of which was generally regarded as
disrespectful.
He looked at his Mother’s companion again. A sheen of sweat

glossed her forehead, and a stray lock of hair had become stuck,
curling cutely on her cheekbone.
“My final condition is that, as a woman is owned, so are her

children. Your women and your children will bear your name,
and if you wish it, your brand. This is why I haven’t introduced
you to my …” she studied the young woman for a moment, “…
lust-sodden companion. She doesn’t have a name. Perhaps you
should give her one.”
He looked at the young woman. She looked at him as men did

at women. Hungry for attention and fearful of it. “Is that so?” he
asked her.
“My name was taken from me. I would now be a toy for the
Western Mother of Households’ pet baboons if Aeva had not
saved me for the plan.”
“Why?”
“I killed my Mother.”
“It happens.” He shrugged.
“It was the way I killed her, and why.”
He looked at her and raised an eyebrow.
“I bound her hand and foot and invited the males of the household
to take revenge for her treatment of them.”
146
He whistled. “That would piss the bitches off. And get all the males
of your household killed in painful ways, of course.”
“Yes.” A tear fell from her eye, but she kept her composure. “It was
done quickly, at least. The Western Mother was very concerned
that news should not spread. There was no public display of the
bodies either.”
“That makes sense. And why did you do it?”
“Our cook was close to me. He used to comfort me after Mother

beat me. When she realised that I was fond of him, she would
humiliate and torture him when I misbehaved.”
She sniffled, and only her nose was red now. She glared fiercely
and settled her breathing before she continued.
“One day she threatened to trade him to the mines. I told her
that I no longer cared what she did with him,” she sobbed, then
gathered herself, and continued bitterly, fiercely. “She burned his
eyes, cut out his tongue and served his liver at her next banquet,
my banquet, celebrating my first blood-of-life.” She produced a
small cloth and dabbed her eyes with it.
“All your women have such histories,” his Mother interrupted. “It
is because of either their anger at their fellow women, or their
guilt at being one that they have agreed to help with the plan.”
He looked at his Mother. “You said I should give her a name?”
“Yes, but you will need one yourself first. Hunter to the Mother of
Households does not sound right for the First Patriarch.”
“What would?” he asked, rhetorically, finding the notion

exceedingly strange and the taboo word disturbing.
“I suggest Adamos. The oldest word we have for man. It seems

appropriate for the first masculine ruler of men.”
He felt light-headed in the wake of headache and confusion. “Fine

with me.” He grinned and tried it out.
147
“I am Adamos. Owner of women.”
Feeling a sudden chill of fear at saying such a thing, he looked

nervously at the women. They were looking at each other.
“Are you sure, dear?” his Mother asked the young woman.
“Yes, very … if he will have me,” replied the youngster.
“Will you belong to this man, serve him to the best of your abilities,
obey him in all things and bear his children?”
“I will.”
“And …” She looked at him. “Do you, Adamos, claim this woman
and whatever children she will bear as yours?”
He looked at the young woman. Very young, he realised. Even

though she was female, he saw vulnerability in her eyes. “Yes,” he
answered.
“What will you call her?” his Mother asked.
He thought a moment. “Eva,” he decided. His Mother smiled at

him for choosing the name of one of her famous predecessors.
“My blessings, and the blessings of all the Goddesses on your

household.”
The three of them sat in silence while the horses chomped noisily
on the lush grass.
His Mother stood. “I am going to check on your other women.

They should be nearby by now.” She mounted her horse. “Perhaps
you should use the time to better acquaint yourself with … Eva.”
Without waiting for a reply, she kicked her horse into motion and
was gone.
He looked at … his woman. She bowed her head respectfully.

Remembering his Mother’s earlier words, he asked, “So, how were
you cut?”
148
The red colour returned to her face. “It was really just a trimming.
It healed weeks ago.”
“And you consider yourself … mine now?”
Her eyes flicked up to his, and then to his crotch, which was still
semi-tumescent under the thin fabric. “Yes. Yours.” Her blush
deepened. “I will try to be obedient.”
He laughed. “After a lifetime of ordering men to satisfy your every

whim that might not be easy for you.”
She grimaced briefly. “I know. I will need your help and so will
your other women. We expect and we will willingly receive
whatever treatment you feel will help us become obedient.”
“Why?”
“As your Mother mentioned, we all have as much reason to hate

the bitches as any man does. More than that, we reject our own
feminine chaos, distraction and impulsiveness, and want to atone,
as far as we can, for the excesses of our sisters.”
He considered this for a moment. “So, things are truly reversed?”
“Yes.” Her forehead was wet with sweat again. Her lower lip
trembled. He studied her for any sign of deception and found
none.
He stood up, and walked to a spot just behind her. “Stand up,” he
commanded, his voice edged with threat.
She stood. He noticed that her legs shook slightly. “When I first
sat down,” he reminded her, “you called me an it … not very
respectful.”
Her legs shivered harder and she hung her head. “Yes. I did. I am
sorry, Adamos, but your Mother …”
“Was treating me in the familiar way women treat men,” he

completed the sentence for her.
149
“Yes.”
He wondered what he should do now. He had never, of his own

accord, given orders. The nearest thing he had experienced was
relaying orders on behalf of a woman.
“What would a woman do, in my position?” he asked, thinking

aloud.
The shivering of her legs increased. “We have complex motivations,

but in general a woman tends to follow the inclination of her
clitoris.”
True enough, he thought, then asked, “And what does your clitoris
suggest?”
“My clitoris no longer makes suggestions.”
“Why not?”
Her legs were hardly shivering now. She was holding them rigid.
Her voice trembled as she answered. “When I had my yoni made
neater for you … the cutting.”
“Your clitoris!”
Her legs were trembling again. “Yes. I confess that I missed it more
than I thought I would, but after a lot of practice with dildos, all
of us managed to relocate the source of our heat.”
He considered this strange news for a while before asking for

clarification. “To your yonis?”
“Yes. The centre of life. Except for two of us.”
“But those two still managed, as you put it, to relocate their
heat?”
“Yes.”
“To where?”
“The anus, both of them. The centre of vulnerability.”
150
“As every man is acutely aware,” he said, grimly.
“Yes,” she hissed through clenched teeth.
He walked round to the front of her. She was trembling all over.
Several curls of hair stuck to her wet brow. Through her robe, her
nipples looked almost as hard as his penis.
“Show me,” he ordered.
For a moment, her eyes flashed anger at his use of imperative

tones, then her mouth relaxed, her lips parted, and she smiled at
him as coyly as any male had ever smiled at a woman.
“A pleasure.” She stood upright. Her wraps of fine fabric fell to her
feet and heaped around them on the grass mat.
“How old are you?” Her breasts were beautifully formed.

The nipples were smooth with engorgement and shiny with
perspiration.
“Sixteen seasons, and I have been bleeding for three …”
“Have you bred?”
“Not yet … but I hope to,” she said, wistfully.
He looked at her yoni and was surprised to see no hair. No labia

either. None at all, like a baby girl. By the age of eight, most girls
had labia that protruded at least a finger width. By puberty,
significantly more.
The mons though, was erect, just as impressively as her nipples

were. It lifted the sides of her yoni apart. He knelt and looked
closer.
The scars were almost invisible. The labia and clitoral hood had
been smoothly cut away. He touched the apex of her slit with
his finger and pressed. The stiff little rod was entirely absent. He
looked closer and saw the fine scar. He traced it with his finger and
noticed the copious flow of her juices. She gasped and her knees
buckled briefly.
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“Sore?” he asked.
“No,” she replied through clenched teeth.
He looked up at her face. She was biting her lower lip, and tears
coursed down her cheeks.
He felt the truth of her vulnerability and a warm fondness, which

seemed to add to the insistent pressure of his own arousal.
“This is harder than you thought?” he asked.
“A lot,” she sobbed.
“Do you want to change your mind, maybe imprint me so that I

can’t find release without your permission?”
“No. I am yours.”
“And what if I do not want to give you what your wet hole desires?”
he teased.
“I am yours. Treat me as you wish,” she sobbed. “Please.”
He stood up and looked into her eyes. “Please what?”
“Please fuck me!” She looked at him with no trace of defiance or

guile. “Please use me for your release.” She looked at his erection,
and her lips pouted open.
His penis pulsed insistently, but he was far more used to sexual
stress than she was. Realising his power, he smiled and decided to
tease her a little more.
“Something was said about atonement.” He moved closer to her

and slid his forefinger into her yoni. Her muscles contracted on it
and chewed at it. “Atonement for what?”
“For what we have done to men.” She moaned as he curled his

fingertip over her interior ridges.
“Personally, or what women have done to men generally?”
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“Both,” she gasped, as he withdrew his finger.
“What do you have to atone for, personally?”
She sobbed. “I used boys and men as all women do. I was often
cruel. Sometimes to avoid the displeasure of other women, but
sometimes …”
He watched her carefully and pushed the wet finger steadily into
her anus and his thumb into her yoni. She trembled all over and
tears gushed as her eyelids squeezed shut.
“Sometimes …” he prompted.
“Sometimes I teased them, humiliated them and hurt them of my

own accord.”
Rubbing his finger and thumb slowly but insistently against the
soft flesh between them, he asked, “Why?”
She sobbed again. “Because I despised their dependence, their

weakness. I wanted to punish them for not being worthy of being
… men.” He took a breast in his other hand and grasped the nipple
with thumb and forefinger. He pinched it hard. Her eyes flew wide
open and she gasped.
He looked into her eyes and said, “And why are men so dependent,
so weak?”
“Because the bitches breed docile strains, raise them in constant

terror, imprint them and castrate most of them.”
He squeezed harder with his right hand, compressing the slippery

flesh between thumb and forefinger, then pinched her nipple
again with his left. For a while, he watched her gasp and twitch as
he alternated the location and the severity with which he pinched
her. Her breathing became ragged, her hair clumped wetly all
over her face. She alternated between pleading with her eyes and
shutting them tight. More tears flowed.
“So you helped the bitches and you took advantage of the situation
they created?”
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“Yes,” she moaned.
He removed his thumb and finger from her orifices and released
her breast. He removed his clothes. Her eyes fixed on his penis as
it sprung free.
“Kneel,” he instructed and she obeyed.
“Is this what you want?” he asked, taking his penis in his left
hand.
She nodded and looked up at him.
He held her chin in his right hand and rubbed his penis on her
face. When it came near her mouth, she licked at it hungrily.
He let go of his bursting manhood and her chin. She opened her
mouth and swallowed him. A thrill of fear shot through him and
then he relaxed. She did not suck at the head roughly, nor did
she bite. Her mouth was soft and felt delicious. He paid careful
attention for a moment and detected no sensation of teeth at all.
She moved her head closer and he felt enfolded by her throat. His
knees shook.
He pulled out of her mouth and gasped, then stepped back and
looked at her.
“You are my woman,” he said.
“Yes,” she said softly, looking up at him with the adoration that
had so confused him earlier.
“And you are a bitch,” he said, his voice soft and his feelings hard.
“You are guilty of making men feel worse than I made you feel.”
He slapped her firmly on her cheek.
“Yes,” she said, sitting back on her heels, smiling as her eyes
watered, “your bitch.”
“I could relieve myself in your mouth, and order you not to satisfy
yourself.”
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“I could not satisfy myself anyway,” she said quietly. “Not without
a dildo, and those are only to be used after asking your permission
in any case.”
He considered this for a moment.
“You really are more or less in the position of an imprinted male

then,” he said, moving behind her.
She looked at him over her shoulder. “Yes.”
“Except that I don’t know the commands that block or cause your
orgasm.”
“There are none,” she said quietly.
He squatted behind her and pushed her forward on to all fours.

“Only a lingam or a dildo?”
“With great difficulty and short nails I can almost manage with
my fingers.”
“Almost?”
“Right to the edge, but not enough for satisfaction.”
“But with a dildo, you can gain release?”
“A dildo is workable, but it is hard and difficult to move it right. A

lingam is definitely best.”
“And is it the same as orgasm was before you were … made neater
and plucked your hair?”
“No. It is deeper than what I felt from my clit. More satisfying in

one way, but much less reliable … and the hunger for more of it
returns sooner.”
“Less reliable?”
“Even if the fucking is hard and long, it takes concentration.” She

arched her back, parting her buttocks slightly.
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He looked at the inverted exclamation mark of anus and vagina.

Mine, he thought.
He reached out and dipped his fingertips in her wetness. Her back
arched further and her buttocks parted completely. He laughed
and she gave a low, plaintive moan.
He pressed his wet fingertips to her yoni and teased it gently open,
asking, “And there are seven of you?”
“You own seven of us bitches,” she confirmed. She moaned

louder and dropped from hands to elbows, further exposing her
enveloping parts. He realised that he was looking upon a woman’s
lust without feeling fear.
“So, if you are lucky, and I find you worthwhile, you can expect
to be fucked only occasionally at best, and be satisfied by it only
if you manage good concentration.” He grabbed her buttocks
and pulled them wide apart. “These holes are your only route to
pleasure, and I could leave them forever unfulfilled.”
“Yes.”
He released his grip on her buttocks. They stayed spread almost as

wide as he had been holding them. She was, he noticed, plucked
completely clean of all hair. He ran his hands over her body. All of
it was perfectly smooth. Plucked as smooth as any male.
“It seems that you are committed to your atonement.”
“Yes,” she sniffed.
He slid three fingers into her. His little finger scissored over where
her clitoris had once been as his thumb reached her anus. She
gasped and fell forward half twisted, chin and shoulder on the
grass mat. He withdrew his hand, grabbed her gorgeous soft
buttocks again and positioned the head of his lingam just inside
the wet entrance of her yoni.
She pushed back onto him and moaned deeply. He thrust into
her and held her buttocks tight against him. She cried out and her
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interior muscles grabbed and sucked at him. He reared back and

plunged into her again, then again.
Her panting breath became words as his fucking settled into a

rhythm. “Please yes. Please yes. Fill me … with your … seed.”
He froze. Her yoni clenched around him. “Put a baby in me,” she
pleaded.
He pulled against the clenching and his penis came free. “Oh God,
no, please no!” she exclaimed and pushed back, trying to envelop
him again. He panted and waited for steadiness to return.
Gradually, his panting subsided and he could speak.
“I haven’t even met the others, and here I am about to impregnate

you.”
“Please.” Her voice was soft. “We all want to bear your babies.”
“I think I should decide whom I impregnate, and when,” he said.
“Please let me be first.”
He looked at his penis. It bobbed up and down in time with his

heartbeat, pointing at her yoni and her anus at each end of its
swing.
“Perhaps,” he said, “but not this time,” and plunged deep into the
centre of her vulnerability.
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Inferior men
Aristotle, it is said, regarded love between men as superior to love

between man and woman, his reason being that woman is an
inferior form of man.
Within the patriarchal structures that we inherit from ancient

Greece, this is more or less true.
Patriarchy is a reaction to matriarchy. It has been a time of (over-)

correction and learning for humanity. At its dawn, of which few
legends remain, the suppression of feminine power was extreme.
Social and legal attitudes were rigid.
Now, long comfortable in its power, patriarchy has discarded all

but the most essential brutalities of its management style.
In much of the world, people of previously frowned-upon gender,

sexual orientation, race, cultural background and so on are now
free to participate in the patriarchal structures, and enjoy some
patriarchal political rights.
When feminists rebelled against the ownership system of

marriage, they did not abolish ownership of women by men. They
legitimised ownership by making it more mutual, more equal.
They gained the right to participate as equivalents of men in the
political system.
Within patriarchy, the true feminine is almost invisible. The

general situation is that everyone has, or is struggling to acquire,
the rights of a male citizen of the culture.
Women in this system are a form of man. Many of them are such
powerful, refined and well-developed forms of men that they
hold power, prestige and fame within the culture. Some disprove
Aristotle’s assertion of their inferiority by being such outstanding
forms of men.
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Paris Hilton has shown the world that a woman can be every bit
as much the rake as any man; Heidi Fleiss, that a woman can be a
better pimp; and Angelina Jolie is a better action hero than Tom
Cruise and his Hollywood peers.
Margaret Thatcher, a.k.a. Attila The Hen, and more recently the
aggressive American female politicians have matched men in
gaining and wielding political power.
Within patriarchy, we are all men. This has consequences for

the relationships between men and women. Relationships in a
patriarchal culture happen in patriarchal ways and are contained
by patriarchal archetypes.
Within patriarchy the most common archetype of relationship is

apprenticeship. Between males, the sexual relationship is, in the
main, pederasty. Whatever the genders involved, one is senior and
dominant, the other is junior and submissive.
Look at almost any couple. They can be a straight couple, gay men
or lesbians, it makes no difference. One is senior and one is junior
and that defines their relationship.
They may have a reversal of that power dynamic in some areas,

but the archetypal pattern will rule – one will still be the senior
and one the junior. Master and apprentice.
The structure of patriarchal relationship does not require the male

partner in a straight relationship to be the senior. It just requires
that one follows and the other leads, in linear, masculine style.
A major point of stress in any relationship comes when the junior

partner matches the senior one, when the apprentice matches the
skill of the master. When the junior’s skill grows to exceed that of
the senior, the relationship seldom survives, and never without an
extensive re-negotiation of its terms.
A relationship that lasts is usually one in which the apprentice

never attains the capabilities of the master. It is perhaps a positive
sign that so few relationships last long these days.
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Women have had multi-generational training in the masculine

way of power. Collectively they now know the uses, strengths and
limitations of masculine linear, penetrative power.
Having mastered that, some of them then aspire to real power.

Serious power. The power of direction and command, which is
intrinsically feminine.
Men, too have had multi-generational training. Theirs has been in

the use of power and discovering their need for deeper guidance
than blinkered masculine hubris.
True power is inherently feminine. A good general is far more

feminine in his thinking than his soldiers.
The soldier follows a simple male linear program which does

not require much more information than that required to rape,
pillage and burn targets in a specified order.
The general has to consider far more than just his forces’
moves and the enemy’s countermeasures. He has to consider
supply chains, food quality, medical care and morale as well as
the political consequences of his strategic actions. This level of
complexity cannot be managed in a linear, one-pointed manner.
This level of management requires a broadly receptive and
intuitive perception.
The love of soldiers for exceptional generals is legendary. When

doing things in the masculine, linear way, it is a delight to unleash
one’s vajra – one’s penetrative energy – with totality. This is easiest
when one feels responsively and responsibly directed.
It is the breadth of understanding and the deep consideration

of all factors in every strategic decision that soldiers respect in a
general.
Each of us has masculine and feminine qualities. We have a

feminine mind that holds the overview and assesses chaotic
and random factors which cannot be handled with linear logic.
It processes this massive complexity in the form of feelings and
intuition. Our masculine mind follows sequential steps to a goal.
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In most of us these aspects are subconscious in turns. We switch

between them. When one of them is the currently conscious mind,
it knows little or nothing of the other.
Our feminine overview gets mired in feelings of hopelessness or

despair because it knows nothing of linear action.
Our masculine directed intensity gets trapped in circular pursuits

or suffers unintended consequences that only a responsive
overview could have avoided.
Our logical, linear, masculine mind develops a dislike for the

confusing, nebulous and chaotic emotions that leak across from
the deep, expansive feminine mind.
Our feelings and intuition are repeatedly frustrated and disregarded

in our one-pointed pursuit of money, stuff and experiences.
Awareness of these inner aspects often starts when we meet them

in another person. When we fall in love, it is usually with someone
who resembles our inner masculine or feminine.
Deeper awareness of these inner aspects can be a bit of a surprise,

sometimes an unpleasant one.
A friend of mine realised that her male aspect was a pimp. He

would select a man, befriend the fellow, dazzle him with the body
and negotiate the cost, be it cash, goods, goodies, maintenance
or connections. In bed, her masculine aspect would then force
the feminine aspect to comply with the deal, demanding her
compliance and an outstanding sexual performance, no matter
what her feelings and intuition had to say about it.
When she realised this, her predominantly male mode of doing

things stopped, and she spent several months in the pure feminine,
immersed in emotion and chocolate.
After much introspection and exploration, she found a memory

of when her masculine aspect had originally taken over her life.
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She had been financially destitute and stranded in a foreign

country. An appeal for help to her family had failed. She collapsed
inwardly. Suddenly, it had seemed as if a man sat down next to
her. Later known to her as her own masculine aspect, he had said
that he could help if she could follow his direction. In relief and
gratitude, she had agreed.
Later that evening she had a large bundle of cash in her bag and
a smile on her face. Following her inner male’s direction, reaping
the financial rewards and creating her lifestyle had became a
lot of fun. It took some time before her inner relating became
conflicting, her masculine eventually forcing her to unwilling
compliance.
She realised that her masculine aspect had become ugly, bullying
and overbearing as a natural continuation of the action she had
once needed and requested of him. Her feminine aspect had at
first enjoyed, later tolerated and finally come to hate her masculine
aspect.
It took a while before her feminine aspect could admit that she
had not given any correction, redirection or clear objection to
what her masculine had continued and come to excel at. Hence
she had to share the responsibility for what had happened.
This brought peace closer, but a strong fear remained in her

feminine that her masculine would once again take charge of her
whole life if she allowed him any presence at all.
Starting with small steps and carefully limited objectives, she

experimented with wanting something with her feminine aspect
and asking her masculine aspect to do the necessary.
She found out that he was really good at many things, just … one
thing at a time.
Her feminine aspect rose to the challenge of command: Being

willing to select one objective for action at a time. Being willing
to keep wanting the objective all the way through to completion.
162
Remembering to express gratitude to the masculine once an

objective is achieved.
In this way, step by step, friendliness and a workable relating were

created.
Developing strong awareness of your masculine and feminine

aspects is essential to this work. One main difficulty with this is
that our cultural division of boy and girl stuff is not a good match
for the polarities of the masculine and feminine within us.
The cultural division between the functions, clothing, social

standing and occupations of men and women is the division
between senior and junior. It is not a very accurate parallel to the
true polarities of masculine and feminine.
Dressing showily and expensively is intrinsically masculine,

although culturally, men have learned to put the fancy stuff on a
woman and then wear the woman.
Managing the resources of a household is intrinsically feminine.

The French and Japanese excepted, most cultures regard this as a
male prerogative.
The capacity for long-term resentment and explosive emotion are

part of our feminine. The guidance of intuition is the feminine
mind gleaning meaning from chaos.
Men are generally less responsive to their feminine intuition. This

gives rise to the phenomenon known as male intuition, which
many women suffer from as well.
Male intuition is almost always expressed in the form: I knew,

damn it, I knew I should (or should not) have ~ taken that job,
married that woman, drank that whisky, smoked that joint, got on
that aeroplane …
The most common male failing is the tendency to power ahead on a

course of action while paying no attention whatsoever to changing
circumstances. The male mind also has difficulty committing to
actions that he does not, in a linear manner, understand.
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The most common feminine difficulty is forming the will to make

choices. It is challenging to select from the huge range perceived.
The feminine loves the range, the broad scope of possibility and is
prone to endless distraction and indecision.
Looking at your life, your modes of operation, you can become

more aware of the politics and tensions between your inner
aspects.
To explore them, notice yourself in typical male or female mode

as you do everyday things.
For example, if you are driving with the intent to get ahead,
tracking down the road to your destination and find yourself
handling obstacles as they present themselves, your masculine
mind is in the driving seat.
If, however, you find yourself enjoying the countryside, the other
motorists and perhaps a conversation with a friend sitting next
to you or on the mobile phone, while you fix your makeup and
wonder what your lover is doing right now … your feminine
mind is doing the driving.
The masculine mind can win a race. The feminine mind is better
at remaining sane in traffic jams and noticing extraneous factors
like police, pedestrians and pets … but not potholes.
Sensual moments, sucking on a cigar, tasting wine, soaking in a

rose-scented bath and so on are good times to become aware of
your feminine mind. In a happy condition, it opens to and enjoys
the incoming sensations and feelings. In an unhappy state, it sees
trouble in a myriad of simultaneous directions, and death as the
inevitable outcome of all endeavour.
The masculine mind is especially available for the completion

of linear tasks. If you drive home, not necessarily fast, but with
intent, then fetch yourself a beer and sit on a couch, you may find
your masculine mind at home.
164
If you get good at noticing these aspects of yourself, you will

become aware of a third. Your witness. The aspect of mind that
notices what another aspect of mind is currently up to.
When you have a good awareness of this interior trinity, it is

possible to experience yourself in each aspect for a while and
then switch deliberately to another aspect. It can feel like you are
forcing a split in yourself, but really, you are revealing it.
The next step is to get them into conversation. Make three sitting
places. Put something symbolic of your masculine near one,
something that evokes your feminine by another and leave the
third place neutral.
Pick a place to start. Sit there and feel into your male, female or
witness mind. Say something to one or both of the others. Sit
silently for a few seconds and then switch to another seat.
In that mind, hear what has been said, then take enough time to
feel it in fullness before responding.
Be willing to have an argument or two with yourself if that turns

out to be necessary. The agenda is to work for a good co-operative
fit, a harmony. On the way to that worthy goal, you may have to
break through a few layers of your inner righteousness, on both
sides of your mind’s gender divide.
Although harmonious co-operation is a worthy goal, it is just a

beginning.
Through co-operation, mutual respect can develop. Through the

achievement of shared objectives, a friendship can be formed.
When one’s inner masculine and feminine dance very close

together, in great awareness and friendliness, love becomes a
possibility.
The rare and beautiful phenomenon of inner lovemaking between

our own masculine and feminine aspects is called Sacred Union,
the Inner Marriage or Mahamudra.
165
In this lovemaking, it is possible for one’s inner masculine/

feminine polarity to become integrated. One then engages life as a
being that is simply human rather than as a male or a female.
This step of integration brings a being very close indeed, very

available, to the condition called enlightenment. For some, it
is their final step. Many historical schools classified it as their
highest, or even their only objective.
166
Modern times
The shaman’s wife woke him the next afternoon and offered him
a lift to the airport. It took him a little while to recognise her, clad
as she was now in black jeans and a jacket that looked as if it was
made of liquid silver.
“If it is possible, I would rather come with you to change my ticket.

I would like to spend a few more days here, if that is possible.”
“It is not. Baba is unwell.”
“I am sorry to hear it. Is he unwell because of …”
“Your spirit journey?” she interrupted. “A bit, yes. He has been

unwell for the last ten years. He hides it well, but now he needs
some serious rest.”
“Will I see him before we leave?”
“No, but he has asked me to tell you a few things on our drive.”
“Well … that sounds pretty settled … thank you.”
She grinned. “You are welcome.” She waved her car keys. “We had
better get going. It takes over two hours to reach the airport if one
respects the speed limits. I will be back for you in half an hour.”
She sparkled out of the hut.
An hour later, they were blasting along the coast road, a great
ocean on their left and, it seemed, all of the thousand lush green
hills of the tribal lands on their right.
Their conversation turned to their upbringing. She had also had

some years of exile, but on return had responded to the traditional
calling and immersed herself deeply in traditional ways for several
years.
167
She did not tell the story of her traditional marriage to the wisdom
holder of an entire continent, except to say that it was the only way
for her to be in a position to gather and preserve that wisdom.
They exchanged email addresses, and made tentative arrangements

for her to present a paper at a conference he was planning.
“Seeing you now,” he said, “it is hard to find a trace of the

traditional healer. No grass skirt, no bones …”
He paused for a while, absorbed in memory, then asked, “It was

you that held me?”
She smiled at him, in a completely western and familiar way,

making no attempt to avoid his eyes. “Yes.”
“Thank you.”
Her smile became positively impish. “What do you remember?”
“I … am still sorting it out, I think.” He frowned. “Some things

are a bit mixed up. I remember him talking, and you … but in the
dreamlike space, I seem to remember him … and you.”
“I am glad you remember at least something. Baba said that you

might be too westernised and you might let it fade like a dream.”
“No … That is not what is happening. More, in a way, the opposite.

The more I remember, the more I examine my memories, the
more real everything seems to have been.”
“In what way more real?”
“Well, it seems like a dream memory until I focus on something.

The memory gets clearer then, and it seems to be … kind of
personal. Almost as if it was my memory, from my life. As if I was
…” His voice faded and he turned to her.
She was gripping the wheel a little more firmly than necessary.
Her gaze was fixed on the road ahead. Without turning to him, she
asked, her voice tightly stressed. “As if you were … who?”
168
He considered this. Memory blurred over reality. He remembered

his terror, his chilling fear of castration, the elation of his escape.
He shook his head in confusion. “I was … it seemed, I felt … I

was …”
He looked at her. She continued to stare down the road ahead.
“But it was a vision. A dream … not real. Like a movie.” His voice
faded away.
He saw the curve of her cheek, the vulnerability of her throat. He

remembered his lust.
He saw a tear trembling on her lower eyelid, sparkling in the

afternoon sunlight.
“Not like a movie,” he muttered. “You were … you really were

…”
He closed his eyes. “Too real. Not like a movie.” He gasped as

adrenaline reached his heart and shock slid icily through his body.
His mind reeled with the impact of discovering that it had avoided
knowing something.
“No,” she said, breaking her silence and dabbing at her eye with
the back of her hand. “Not like a movie. More like a staged
performance.”
The shock found its way to his lower belly where it settled and
strongly resisted his efforts to evict it.
Some words crawled out of his mouth. “You mean I, you, we …”
She was staring straight ahead again, an amused but somewhat

tight smile on her previously luscious, soft lips. He recalled their
tenderness, their yielding …
After several minutes of silence, she glanced at him. He sat rigid,

hands clenched in fists, eyes shut tight, and forehead too deeply
lined for someone in their early thirties.
169
“Not all of it, you know,” she said, her voice only slightly tight.
“Just a few key moments, to … assist … the vision.” She returned
her attention to the road.
The interior of the powerful air-conditioned vehicle was quiet

enough that she could hear him draw breath a minute or so later.
His breathing took a while to settle.
He looked at her. She glanced at him in that moment. The

friendliness in her eyes was more unsettling than what he had
expected to see, but he still managed to speak. “I think I may owe
you a very big apology.”
“Baba said he hoped you would be able to recall the vision with
at least some accuracy. He hoped that a little more time with me
would evoke some deja vu to save it from fading like a dream.”
She was quiet for a little while before adding, “Baba will be
impressed, and very pleased that your recall is so good. It was a
scary but wonderful experience for me and I volunteered freely.
You do not owe me any apology.”
“Well, my thanks then. I feel … indebted.”
She smiled. “Baba will like that. He wants you to record and preserve
that history as best you can. He would also like the awareness you
now carry to be of influence in shaping this country. He hopes
you will be able to share it with those who are in a position to
make a difference.”
“I … I will try, but I have no idea how, as yet.”
Pointing to the dashboard clock, she said, “That is why we still

have some time together.”
170
Chapter 8
Tantric sex
Reality is here.
Old school
The yogi walked into the river until the water reached his waist.
He leaned forward, cupped water in his hands and splashed his
face.
Looking up, he noticed the sky outlining the far bank of the
river. “Always brightest just before the dawn,” he muttered, then
smiled.
He washed thoroughly then stood naked on the river bank

watching the sun rise while a warm morning breeze dried him.
The river bank was getting busy while he fetched his robe and
sandals from the rock he had left them on and dressed. He touched
his palm to his head. It did not need a shave.
Looking around, he noticed a fruit seller amidst the washing and

worshipping. He strolled over to the fellow and exchanged a small
coin for two bananas, an avocado and a juice coconut.
“Big day?” the fellow asked, commenting on the extravagant

breakfast.
“Yes.” The yogi grinned and almost shared a hint of his secret
before remembering that it was a secret.
The fruit seller looked at him quizzically. The yogi’s smile

broadened as he thanked the man, but he declined the invitation
to share any more of his news.
After a half hour’s walk, he came to his accustomed breakfast spot,

a clearing next to the cart tracks, with a view of the temple.
As he ate his breakfast the sun cleared the hill behind him and lit
the temple’s eastern wall, revealing the intricate carvings of Gods,
Goddesses, people, imps, demons and animals arranged in almost
every combination of erotic possibility.
172
Even at this distance he could make them out, not that he needed
to. After a year as an initiate, meditating on them daily, he knew
their every line, every curve, every suggestion of breath, bated or
flowing, every hint of ecstasy and every nuance of intent.
He marvelled for the first time not at the carvings themselves, but
at the mastery of the hands that had cut these images with such
artistic sensitivity.
Initiates, yogis as he once had been, started arriving. Their dyed

robes and shaved heads contrasted sharply with the white robes
and mostly long hair of the dakas and dakinis that they approached
at the entrance to be given their work or meditation assignments
for the day.
He remembered his fear when he had first encountered the white-

robed ones. They had seemed so forbidding in their strangeness.
Their robes – white in conscious imitation of a death-shroud –
had been part of it, but their attitude, conveyed in the confidence
of their movement, the wildness of their hair and the directness of
their gaze had been very unsettling.
At first, their directives had seemed imperious and arbitrary. Over

time though, their instructions had seemed, more and more, to
make a strange kind of sense. He had gradually come to willingly
accept their guidance.
Yesterday he had been invited, in a traditional secretive whisper, to

enter their temple and become one of them.
As he approached the temple, he remembered his whispered

instructions: Find a moment when no Initiates can see you, then
push open the temple door and enter.
It turned out that this was harder than he expected. Even though
he had arrived deliberately late, stragglers kept arriving. He took
as long as possible over his ritual washing, and then found a brush,
with which he pretended to sweep the immaculately clean slab of
marble in front of the door.
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After the stragglers, Initiates kept returning for clarification on

confusing assignments. Each seemed to arrive shortly before
another had left.
He waited until almost midday when a rare lone one turned to

leave. He leaped to push the door before another could arrive.
It was already open, and closed behind him as he stumbled
through.
He recovered his balance, looked around and realised he would

have to wait for his eyes to adjust. Gradually, they did.
Standing in front of the now closed door was the dakini who had
whispered the invitation to him.
“Well, that took long enough,” she said, smiling. “It was a tricky
morning for it, to be sure. This was only the third time that I could
open the door.”
Surprised, he looked at her, and then all around. They were

alone in a huge, high-vaulted space. His surprise deepened into
confusion.
“Not what you expected?”
“Well.” He looked around some more, and then at her. “The

temple looks very different inside. No statues, and not even any
decoration.”
“And what were you expecting?” she asked.
“I had not paid much attention to the rumours, but when you
whispered to me yesterday, I knew that at least one of them was
true: The invitation is made in secret.”
He noticed that she seemed to be waiting for him. Realising that

he had not answered her question, he tried again.
“I thought that a statue of the Goddess of this Temple was most

likely. One far more finely carved, more detailed, more lifelike
than the statues outside.”
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“And what had you heard about what would happen?”
“A ritual of some kind. There were many theories, but no one

really claimed to know.”
He looked at her. She looked back, expectantly. He continued.
“The most popular idea was that it would be some very intense,
very sexual ritual, perhaps an orgy. I considered that fairly likely,
especially considering our initiation and our year of meditation
with the statues.”
“So what do you think now?”
The yogi looked around again. Smooth marble cut in simple lines.
No statues. The only human forms in the large space were his and
hers.
He looked at her, seeing for the first time beyond her white robe
and the status it indicated. She stood completely still and appeared
at once very relaxed and very alive.
“I think …” He paused, took a deliberate breath and met her level

gaze before continuing, “I think that the rumours about the statue
are true. I think you are that statue.”
She remained unmoving for a few seconds more, then smiled

slowly. “Do you know what happens now?”
“Nothing I have heard makes sense now. I have no idea.”
“Excellent.”
She swept past him, her robe brushing his ankle, and headed
diagonally across the polished floor.
His feet flapped loudly in contrast to her barefoot silence as he

stumbled in his haste to catch up.
He noticed that the scale of the space had been an illusion. What
had appeared to be a distant wall came closer. The angle of their
approach revealed a gap in the wall.
175
The gap widened as they approached and became a passage. The

passage ended at a door which opened into a small room with
high walls, well lit because it was open to the sky.
The room had two other doors. The dakini went to one, and
pointed to the other. “That one is yours. Go inside and develop
as powerful an energy in your body as you can manage. Vajra
(thunderbolt, diamond) energy. Not just the root. All chakras to
your full capacity.”
She studied his features briefly, saw his mouth hanging open and
seemed satisfied. She continued. “Stay in there, building your
energy, until I open the door at the far end of your room.”
He looked at her, wanting to ask what would happen then, but

thought better of it, pushed ‘his’ door open and stepped through.
176
Don’t dream it … be it
Touch work lovingly confronts and removes reflexive barriers to

awareness – to the wonders and challenges of actual feeling and
sensation.
Erotic work drills down through the mind’s versions of power,

love, bliss and surrender to reveal the truth of these things.
Tantric sexual meditation is a deep immersion in the dharma (the

truth) of the highest natural form of sex. The intense energies
involved also make the participants into attractors, lightning rods,
for earth, spirit and divine energies.
In this book, I try most of all to encourage a good attitude and

approach to the middle area of Tantra – the erotic. I find it to
be largely misunderstood, ignored or unknown in the current
literature – and it is what most tantrikas of any sincerity will be
busy with, for most of their path.
Mostly though, I give it emphasis because it is the area that many

tantrikas like to ignore or gloss over. The strong egos that are
essential to Tantra are very prone to taking on a practice because
it is advanced or impressive, hence they are often in too much of
a hurry for high sex, tantric sex, mahamudra, sacred union and
so on.
Only when the process of erotic disillusionment is complete, or

very well advanced, can sex be experienced as what it actually is,
sans dream.
Eroticism is a kind of dream. What is mentally associated with

what is happening seems more ‘real’ than what is actually being
experienced.
Sex beyond the erotic, sex as it is, natural and free of any repression,
is only attainable once one leaves the dream and becomes that
which is happening.
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This transition is often not very smooth. There is often a time

between the losing of the dream and the gaining of the real. A time
when one has lost the false heat of the mind’s erotic agenda, and
not yet found the true heat. This can be unpleasant, frustrating
and lonely. Death meditation (in note 8) is recommended.
Tantric sex can take many forms, and, weirdly, can even happen
without the shedding of clothes and at a considerable distance …
It can, but apart from a few schools where egos made a fetish of
this capacity, most tantrikas tend to prefer skin-to-skin.
The essence of tantric sex is naturalness: the true response of

a body to another body. Perceiving and supporting the large
energies involved, one brings them to their most blissful and
complete expression.
But … strange as it may seem, it is not always that easy.
Like racing driving, martial arts, legal argument, computer

programming, window cleaning and theoretical physics, specialised
training and skills are involved. Capacities and capabilities beyond
the range of ‘normal human’ have to be developed. This generally
takes a few years.
Logically, it is easy to assume that a truly conscious sexual

encounter, uncluttered by the eros of the mind would be a fairly
easy thing to manage. An easy assumption, but generally wrong.
One of the exercises we do on intensive retreats exposes men to

an unambiguously delicious sensory experience. Although, when
hearing about the exercise and imagining it, or remembering it
afterwards, they may become very aroused, during the actual
exercise though, erections are vanishingly rare.
A responsive dance with the energies of sexuality as they are, and

not as they are imagined, is only possible when one responds
more strongly to the real than the fantasy. When internet porn is
just a pattern of light on a screen, and only the beloved’s touch is
the beloved’s touch.
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The positions of traditional tantric sexual meditations (described

at the end of note 1) do not define tantric sex. They are just a
framework within which the participants meet. It is the participants
who define the energies involved and the level of meditation, not
the technique.
Tantrikas need to share and receive energy on a different scale

from ‘normal’ people, just as free divers need to hold their breath
longer than the rest of us. We also learn to be careful with those
energies.
A while ago, a dakini in a particularly generous mood touched a

man and happened to not have any restraint on her energy. To her,
it was just a friendly gesture, but the impact of that touch to his
nervous system, caused a reflexive ejaculation.
On another occasion, a dakini lay down on her own plinth in a

session to invite her student’s touch. She does this sometimes as a
way of finding out what the student has learnt. She felt a ‘taking’
touch, and usually would have pointed this out and helped him
to bring some energy to his touch. This time, she instead opened
herself to the ‘taking’ unreservedly, just to see what he would do
with it. He passed out, fortunately falling comfortably and safely
across her body.
Personal mastery of tantric sexual meditations and the ability

to teach them is part of what defines a dakini. Patience is also
necessary: to select and guide the few that have sufficient capacity,
emotional resilience, awareness and desire for this work.
Compassion is essential.
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Inner temple
The dakini backed out of the door to the woman’s preparation

room as the door the yogi had gone through clanked shut. She
took a small stone from the sleeve pocket of her robe and wedged
her door slightly open with it.
A few minutes later, she was in her personal chamber. She grabbed
a fresh robe from the rail behind the door, threw it over her
shoulder and hurried to the kitchen.
She entered the kitchen through a trick back door and wandered
through as if supervising the place, eating opportunistically as she
went. A handful of berries, a chunk of creamy buffalo milk cheese
and a steamy cake of nuts and grain …
As she dipped a bowl she had found into a pot of spiced tea, a yogi
on cooking duty looked at her in horrified confusion.
She looked back at him sternly. He scuttled away.
She walked out of the kitchen, through the covered alcove

where students were beginning to gather and sat on a bench in
the sunlight. The chai was good. Fiercely spiced but nonetheless
nuanced and delicate, right down to a luxurious hint of saffron.
“Ah, here you are.” The voice came from a fellow white-robe who
had managed to sit on her bench without her noticing.
Drawing a steadying breath, she turned to face the old daka whose
lessons had formed so much of her path. “Are you … supervising
me?” she asked.
His face creased up in mirth, his wrinkles revealing that they had
wrinkles of their own. Laughter exploded simultaneously from
her and her old friend. The nearby initiates were startled by this
and moved away from them.
180
“Do you feel a need for supervision?” he asked in a conspiratorial

whisper.
“Not at all, although I am deviating slightly from a procedure that

I was taught.”
“Deviating?” he prompted.
“Well, I am welcoming a tantrika into the inner temple, and I am

not in the Woman’s Room. I am here drinking chai.”
He grinned. “I am sure you are gathering your energy every bit as

effectively as you would in the Woman’s Room.”
“Definitely.” she agreed. “Actually more effectively because I would

have been hungry there. Candles and incense are not edible.”
“What are you going to do with him?”
She looked at her old friend with surprise. “You know.”
“Well, not really. I know the rules of the ritual, but, as you are
currently demonstrating, rules are always subject to the creative
interpretations of the wise.”
She laughed, and his wrinkles danced as his laughter joined hers.
As their laughter subsided, her attention turned to his question.

She smiled, appreciating the sharp cunning of the old man’s mind,
knowing that he already knew what she would find.
“What a tempting suggestion.” She considered the temptation,

enjoying its intrinsic hubris while humbly admitting her need
to consider it. She reviewed the rituals and considered the likely
effects of altering the order and timing. She considered which
of the prescribed practices were essential and which could be
replaced.
She considered what was expected of her. She considered how

changing the parameters of the ritual could support that agenda.
She considered her own aesthetic, her own feelings about how she
would like the ritual to look.
181
She remembered her own first ritual in the temple. The fear/
excitement, the desire/dread and the reality she had met. She
looked fondly at the old man.
“Just as you did for me …” She took a deep breath, overwhelmed

for a moment by the intensity of her gratitude, and then another
breath to steady her voice before she continued, “I will help him
become what he is.”
182
Chapter 9
Death and Enlightenment
It don’t seem the same since cosmic light came into my life.
Dark night
I was still struggling to breathe at midday when my host and

benefactor, whose guest cottage I had occupied for around a year
now, came by.
“I’m worried about you. I want to take you to the hospital.” He

really did look worried. It was an uncomfortable expression on his
usually cheery face. It did not suit him.
I strained to take a useful breath. My lungs were solid with

thickening phlegm and the slight oxygenation I felt was hardly
worth the bother. I settled for just forcing the body to animate, sat
up a bit, and shuffled back to lean against the headboard.
“Charles, dear friend, I know you are worried and I am very sorry
to be causing you this concern. It is pretty bad, and it looks worse,
I am sure.”
Painfully, and trying not to show the pain, I forced more breath
into my lungs and gathered some strength.
I lifted my head, locked eyes with him, and hit him with it, firmly.
“No hospital.”
He flushed, reddening to the tips of his smallish ears. I regretted

my harshness but was determined that this discussion go my
way.
“I will get a doctor here for you then,” he said, working hard to
restrain the snap his anger wanted to lend his voice. His body
language indicated a decision made, and he turned to leave the
small room.
“I am sorry Charles, but no doctors either. Please. Come, sit down

and let me try to explain.”
He stopped at the door, wanting to leave now and enforce his

obviously correct solution to the situation. Prevented by my
184
request, he turned and looked at me. I saw his anger choke up into
exasperation.
The Basil Fawlty quality of it brought me a smile, but I held back

on the chuckle. He sat down on the corner of the bed and tried,
unsuccessfully, to look stern. His voice was firm enough though.
“OK, you stubborn bastard. Tell me why you’re being so bloody
impossible.”
I reached over to the side table and dragged the heavy glass ashtray
onto the bed between us. Taking the hint, he offered a cigarette
and lit one himself. I tore the filter off mine, sucked hard at the
light he offered, inhaled as quickly as I could manage and grabbed
a handful of tissues. I got them in front of my mouth in time to
catch the coughing which followed. It hurt, but I welcomed the
oxygen and the easier breathing which followed. “Enough for me.”
I forced a smile, and stubbed the tasteless thing out.
“Rahasya, I am not kidding,” he said. “You are clearly in very, very

bad shape indeed.”
“I know. And I know the centre of your concern. The last couple
of nights have been very bad for me, and you are worried I could
die, maybe even tonight.”
Now that it was out there between us, his anger receded completely.
His eyes brightened with a hint of tears withheld, and his voice
softened. “Yes. I did not want to say it, but it looks like that to me.
Really does.”
“After the last two nights, I can’t disagree with you,” I said, and
then gave him time to realise I was not disagreeing. It took a little
while. Now he looked shocked. “If I did die tonight, it would be
horrible and very inconvenient for you. I know. It is a lot to ask
you to risk that.”
“Indeed,” he retorted, “it would be one hell of an inconvenience,

to be sure, but that is hardly the point. The point is that you could
die!”
185
“Yes, Charles, and I know it is a hell of a thing to ask, and it is

weird to ask, and it is not fair to ask, and it is not fair to presume
so much of our friendship … any friendship … but I am asking.”
He was listening, with obvious impatience, but he was listening.

I was feeling very weak, and hoped I was managing not to let it
show. I continued, “If I do die tonight, I apologise in advance for
the trouble. I would like to be burned here on your farm, but my
parents will have other ideas …” Oops … too far …
Now he looked unhappy indeed, and was probably seeing me as

not having the full rational quota in the fear of death department.
He was probably right too.
“But, Charles, I can’t back this up with logic or anything like it. I
just don’t think I will die. I have no explanation why I think this,
but I do. I am just pretty sure that, although this really looks like
that, it is not really quite like that.”
His expression shifted from concern again, moved a little into

anger, then into familiar resignation.
“You sure?” he inquired hopefully.
“No,” I replied. “The logic of it looks just as bad to me as it does to

you. I just feel the only way for me right now is to face this directly.
I can’t explain it adequately, even to myself … but … I really want
this, Charles. Please.”
That was the end of the discussion. The heat was gone from his
argument and the decision was made. I would not be bothered
by doctors. A little later, he left with my assurances that, yes, I
would take care of my own feeding in the unlikely event that I got
hungry, and no, I would not object to a doctor tomorrow if I did
not have some improvement by then.
After he left, my mind turned for a while, reviewing my fresh guilt

over this manipulation of a good friend and my feelings about
this apparent suicide attempt of mine, which I liked even less.
186
I had no particular objection to my life ending tonight, though.

There was no list of incompletions making that awkward for me.
Even the desire to repair or recreate my life had faded in me. I
had no desire to repeat what I had already lived, or even to have a
second attempt to try to improve on it. I also had no urge to die.
I had not been lying when I had told Charles that I expected,
against all logic, to survive the coming night. Dying now would
just be far too convenient and far too appropriate.
On account of my experiences in this life so far, I knew with

considerable certainty that it was not going to be that easy.
The rest of the day passed in silent meditation. Mostly, I stayed

immersed in the now familiar formlessness at the far/near edge/
centre of consciousness. Occasionally I drifted up/down to the
region of thoughts, and reviewed the relics of loss, disappointment
and defeat that listlessly swirled around my mind. The old urges
to rescue, repair or revenge had been quiet for some months now.
Time passed. I hardly noticed my body and its suffering until
evening came.
I had made it through the last two nights by thumping my lungs,

hanging over the side of the bed and clearing the drowning
phlegm by main force. That, once every half hour or so, had kept
me mostly conscious and minimally alive.
This night, I had no more willingness for that fight.
I let myself relax as deeply as I could. In spite of my relaxation,

my lungs strained with effort as each breath yielded less and less
satisfaction.
My body went into panic. My diaphragm felt as if it was about to

tear as it pumped pitifully little air through lungs that bubbled
and squeaked. Its efforts seemed to yield no oxygen at all.
I watched and felt this happening, but I was not driving it. My
body was doing this all by itself.
187
It hurt. The panicky feeling of breath-hunger increased powerfully.

The effort of trying to breathe was costing energy that I did not
have.
I considered beating my lungs, and decided not to. There seemed

to be no way I could manage it for long anyway.
The breath-hunger intensified for a few breaths and then eased.

My chest stopped heaving pointlessly and I relaxed deeply,
stopping all fighting.
I accepted, in totality and unreservedly, my entire life. I dropped,

or felt dropping from me, every desire I had ever had to make my
life in any way different from how it was. I noticed my attachment
to places and spaces that I had glimpsed in my meditations. Some
tears flowed as I felt, in fullness, all my feelings around my spiritual
desires going the way of the rest.
The body lay still. No more straining for breath happened. The
blood pressure in my face and throat eased. I felt as if a calming,
cooling hand stroked me, removing all tension and activity.
I heard my blood flowing, rushing in my ears … and then the
rushing ceased and I marvelled at the silence.
My vision swirled and went grey. I felt my consciousness fading.

Do you want to fight for this? The question came, it seemed, from
one part of my being to another. I replied. “My consciousness? …
No. That too can stop.”
And it stopped.
188
Notes on the enlightened

condition
I agree with …
Many teachers: It is the goal of a quest, perhaps the only quest,

that is truly worthy of a human incarnation and is to be sought
at any cost.
J Krishnamurti: No teacher, teaching or lineage is of much use.

Enlightenment is the natural state of a mind – sans culture and
teachers.
G Krishnamurti: There is no such thing as enlightenment as the

word is generally understood. Anyone selling it is a huge fraud.
Other Great Masters: It can only be described in the negative. Not

God, Not self, Not meditation, Not practice.
The Taoists: It is not spoken of by those who know It and It is not

known by those who speak of It.
The Bhodisattvas: The only noble motivation on completion of

the path is the desire to help all other beings to awareness. The
only worthwhile thing to do in the enlightened condition is to
help others as best you can with the skill set you have.
The Arhats: What happened is completely ordinary. I have no way

and no method to teach. Some arhats express the same sentiment
with more energy: Go get your own fucking insights.
I also agree with the first Zen Patriarch: It is not a sin to kill an
Arhat.
Enlightenment is The Pearl Beyond Price. To most, it looks like

an ostentatious piece of obviously fake jewellery. Only Master
Jewellers are qualified to appraise it. To them, it is priceless.
189
It is not a matter of understanding, memory, mental capacity or

even wisdom.
It is not a thought form that can be integrated with other thought

forms to give completion to a world view. It is not a paradigm. It
is not a tangible thing, or an intangible thing.
It cannot be acquired, traded or shared. It does not, in any useful

sense of the word, exist.
Moments of great insight, deep perception and overwhelming

awe that occur in our life have a similar flavour, and can be said to
be glimpses of the enlightened condition.
Enlightenment may be natural but it is nonetheless rare. One

could take the view that it is an aberration. One could, so I will,
temporarily at least:
The enlightened claim that their actions, thoughts, sensations and

every other discernible characteristic of their being arise without
cause. They claim that this is so for all beings. They say that
unenlightened beings are under the illusion that they are the doer,
the source, or the active principle of their lives.
Although this is clearly the biggest cop out and the most egregious
buck-passing that a mind could come up with, the enlightened
(contradictorily) claim total responsibility for – get this –
Everything!
When this contradiction is brought to their attention, they say

that they are that which arises, and that which it arises in. If asked
to clarify that, they say it is the same for the breath in a body, the
growth of a crystal and the movement of the tides.
Although most religious visions are culturally sourced, or at least,

influenced – a Catholic sees Mary, a Jain sees a Tirathankar and a
Buddhist sees, well, Buddha – the enlightened show a remarkable
degree of similarity in their delusions. This similarity of authentic
mystical expression across cultures is beautifully described in
Aldous Huxley’s excellent book The Perennial Philosophy.
190
The bodhisattva is characterised by compassion. Some claim that

the urge to be compassionate just arose in them. Others insist that
their compassion required deliberate cultivation.
Their compassion, their leadership positions or some other factor

of their condition leads them to suggest all sorts of things for
people to do to improve the world or themselves. Between them,
they have recommended a bewildering array of often contradictory
ways and methods.
Some of the big names have insisted on vegetarianism. Others,

on clean and efficient butcheries. One attacked financial services
providers, another banned his disciples from getting involved with
usury. Some taught non-violence while others founded schools of
martial arts. Almost all of them suggest a withdrawal from normal
life and an immersion in a spiritually styled one. As regards sex,
chastity, celibacy, sexual continence and celebrating with wild
abandon have variously been recommended and prohibited by
the enlightened.
Arhats are perhaps easier to understand. Most of them do not

even have to be understood because they do nothing to bring
attention to their condition. Many deliberately avoid the proto-
disciples whom they nonetheless attract.
Some of them annoy bodhisattvas by messing with people’s

minds. Presumably, this is on account of the spontaneous arising
of a desire in arhats to amuse themselves.
In mature spiritual cultures, where the condition is not such a

big deal, it is recognised that there are still things to learn after
all seeking has ceased. The conventional wisdom is that it takes
around ten years to get used to it, and to discern what one’s
approach to teaching and helping others should be.
191
Dawn
Waking up happened, in a body which felt no trace of sickness.

The breath was smooth, even and unrestricted. Aliveness danced
through blood vessels, spreading its excitement to delighted
muscles and organs. The soft warm feeling of fresh cotton
permeated the skin. The soft sound of the body’s breathing
blended with the muted distant chaos of a farm waking. The crisp
scent of ripening clementines complemented the sugary sweetness
of the sun-warmed thatch.
The mind generated a thought: Satori. And soon thereafter,

another thought. Almost.
Between these thoughts, lightning threaded through the brain,

comparing and referencing all previous experiences with a tight
degree of relationship to satori.
First consciously noticed, but not at all understood when

attempting Zsa-Zen for the first time at age 14. Next, at 17, in a
brawl. Another at 20, with a scary-powerful lover. A few over the
next ten years, most seeming to be evoked or enabled by fevers,
sexual intensity and moments of extreme emotion.
Over the last ten years, they had become frequent in silent
standing or sitting meditations. In the last year, they had become
very numerous indeed. Often several in a day.
Satori: moments of deep insight. Direct perception of some

generally occluded aspect of truth. A flash of lightning within
consciousness, briefly revealing a view on the all.
Briefly. This satori was not being brief. That was one point of
difference. Another point of difference was that thoughts were
happening. In satori, thoughts never happened. That is, after
all, the defining characteristic of satori – no thoughts happen in
them.
192
Yet, here was satori and these were definitely thoughts which were
happening …
Or was this really satori? All previous ones had been a glimpse
from what seemed now to be a very limited perspective. Each had
been true but partial. This satori was a clear perception, a flowing
of knowing that encompassed and superseded all previous
experiences in this category or … or in any other, for that matter.
Extended satori. The brain created a new category and linked it to

satori. It then leaped into activity, probing the second-hand data
dump of things read and heard for anything that seemed to fit.
There was a little data. Nothing definitive. There were a few

spiritual teachers who had announced their enlightenment and
taught for a few years before their high ended. Usually they went
back to being students. Maybe this was something like that.
The brain’s processing of information was happening, apparently,

all by itself. Just the same as the breath happening in the body. Its
activity arose from the same source as the rushing of the blood,
the pulsing of the organs and the peristalsis of the guts.
Eyes opened, legs swung to the floor. Walking to the bathroom for
a crap happened.
A while later, Charles took the short walk from his house around
the pool to his guest cottage. He carried two large glasses of carrot
juice. Sun filtered through the vines which shaded a large wooden
table.
Wearing shorts, the body sat on the huge outdoor table, feet on
the long bench. There was delight in the skin as the cool kiss of
the breeze contrasted the spots of hot sunlight which streamed
through the overhanging vine.
This satori was definitely extended. The brain assessed that

something pretty serious seemed to have happened. Perhaps it
was stuck. In satori, there is no I as well as no thought. In this
strange extended satori there were thoughts, but there was no I in
the way there had been, yesterday, for instance.
193
That I had just been the brain, thinking that it was doing what
was happening. If anything could be said to be I now, it was this
dancing energy of liveliness that rushed through this body.
Existence was, as always, just happening, and the magic of satori

was the noticing of it. To call the object of satori me would be a
huge lie in one sense, and also, ultimately, it was, it now seemed,
inescapably, the truth.
As Charles approached, it became clear that the fiction of an I

expressed was useful and perhaps even necessary. I looked for and
found the set of constraints that was my last remembered persona.
I examined it and compared it to possible alternatives.
I made some modifications which should keep the body – me –

out of mental institutions, at least for a while. Then I got behind
the mask (which is what a personality is) and tried it on.
I looked out and was surprised to find that, clearly, here was I – me,
as surely as in any dream. The illusion of individuated presence
produced by self-maintained constraints was unmistakable.
I expected that the satori was now over, except … except it was
clearly not over. No reduction in the power, the presence of that.
The flow/field/flux of that which is truly beyond names was as
before. Just some of it had shaped itself into a mask, taking on
the constraints of a mental structure, being my personality. Being
me.
Charles sauntered into earshot and tried his voice out. “Good to
see you are alive and up, if not dressed. Have some carrot juice.”
I took the cup he offered. I smelled the creamy freshness of the
head of minced carrot and bubbles, popped by the sun, conveying
a delicately sweet fragrance.
“Just drink up the poison. This is not a wine tasting.” Charles

encouraged. He did not like carrot juice. That he was drinking it
today meant he was starting his annual carrot juice fast.
I inhaled the subtle aromas theatrically, took a mouthful, circulated

it and drank it down. My eyes closed as I followed the flavours and
194
textures of its love affair with my throat. I looked at him over the
glass and declaimed:
“Fine clays and uncovered bedrock giving grace and gravitas to the
bass notes, lifted by mid-tones of a generally sunny disposition.
Full-grown, giving a strong basic sweetness. Very direct tannins
and acids. A delicate citrus top note imparts a disarming sense of
frivolity, but …” I peeked, to check if he was drawn into my act.
He was.
“… but enough about me.”
End of The Rocky Horror Tantra Book.
195
Swami’s notes
Suggestions and techniques
I’ve tasted blood and I want more.

Note 1
Tantric sex basics

Loving yourself
This is essential. Make love to yourself with some intent,

some sincerity. Aim to please, or to discover something
new about yourself. Love your own body and let it know
you mean it.
Logically speaking, you should know your body and its

erotic responses better than anyone. Your greatest heights
of intensity and your greatest depths of immersion in
sensuality should be available to you first.
When you have developed some worthwhile presence in

your body, and can maintain a semblance of sanity in
states of extreme arousal, you have something worth
sharing, if you then care to do that.
Teach your hands to develop a sensitivity to your own

body’s feedback. Feel the qualities of your own touch and
explore variations of pace, pressure and so on. As your
senses develop, explore more subtle energies of touch
– masculine and feminine, giving and taking, controlling
and yielding.
Find areas of your body that have a heightened sensitivity

or a numbness. Gently coax them to accept sensation or
to feel it, as needed.
Learn about your body’s responses. Pay attention to your

changing heart rate, pace and sound of your breath,
your sensitivity to touch and your degrees and flavours
of arousal.
Explore states of high intensity, opening to the intensity

while staying conscious as far as you can.
Love your body as it truly wants to be loved. Let it feel

your passion, your intensity and your delight.
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Q: What is the height of egotism?

A: Masturbating in front of a mirror, and shouting out
your own name as you come.
… like that.
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PC muscles and breathwork
Kegel exercises focus on this muscle group. The PC

(pubococcygeal) muscle group extends from the anal ring
forward to the genitalia. When you first try exercising them,
the various muscles in the group are indistinguishable.
Most people only know them as the muscles that can
prevent or interrupt urination. With practice, they can be
distinguished, and can be contracted sequentially, back
to front, and the reverse.
The PC muscles do not include the buttocks. Avoid

tension in the gluteus maximus. In the wise words of Sw.
Rasada, the most important thing to remember in tantric
sex is to relax your bum.
As you contract these muscles, breathe in. Hold the breath

and the muscle tension for a few seconds to a minute
or so. Release the breath and PC tension suddenly and
simultaneously. Follow and enjoy the burst of sensation
(sexual energy) that moves upward through your body
from the root chakra.
While making love, play with pulsing this muscle group.

If the partner does the same, a conversation, an interplay
can develop between the genitalia.
A suggestion for men to delay ejaculation and to give

yourself more time to experience higher energies:
Contract your PC muscles on the inhalation while moving
deeper into her (slow and steady). Hold the breath in
(and the PC muscles tight) for a while. Then release the
PC tension and breath simultaneously while relaxing
and moving out (not completely out) of her. Let the
energy which then flows wash over you, deepening your
relaxation and sensation.
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The PC muscles can be exercised (contracted, then

relaxed) at any time. Arousal is of course nice but not
essential.
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Tantric greeting
Pre-arrange who greets the other first.
Kneel opposite each other, knees almost, or slightly

touching, your hands resting on your thighs.
Take a minute or so to just look at the beloved. Do not get

locked into eye-gazing. Notice the eyes just as another
part of the face and body.
Be aware of your breath, and gather energy at your root

chakra. Contracting your PC muscles helps.
Whoever is doing the greeting first: Cup your hands in

your lap, then, as if lifting water, rise up slowly and move
the hands up over the partner’s head.
Gently, as if pouring water, touch the partner’s head

lightly, and let your hands gently flow over the shoulders
and down the sides of the beloved’s arms to their
hands.
Repeat seven times, then sit still. Now it is the partner’s

turn.
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Naked gazing
Sit naked and silent opposite each other, about a body

length apart.
It is good to have an agreed time period. Not less than

half an hour. More than two hours is certainly possible,
but is only recommended for obsessive-compulsive over-
achievers.
Notice the eyes just as part of the face and body. Do

not avoid, but do not emphasise eye contact. After a few
seconds of eye contact let your eyes move on over the
beloved’s body.
This practice can evoke a range of feeling and emotion.

Keep your eyes open through it all, and keep your
awareness on this beloved person exactly as they are,
here and now.
The truth, the fact of this person’s presence, shared with

you in the vulnerability and intimacy of nakedness is
what you will come to appreciate. If a fantasy comes up
though, do not avoid it.
Keep your eyes open and looking at the beloved’s body.

If there is heat, a horniness, do not bother about whether
it is from fantasy or the real. Take it as real. It is after all,
real in your body, whatever the source of it.
What to do with arousal? … Enjoy and celebrate! Allow

yourself to feel your arousal in the presence and the view
of the beloved. Allow it to express in the sound of your
breath.
Sit still, but not rigidly. Sometimes stillness moves.

Sometimes it even dances a little.
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In your stillness, gazing at the beloved, there is one muscle

group you can move and enjoy without restriction, your
PC muscles. An erect male exercising his PC muscles
can appear quite comical. Laugh as much as necessary …
laugh as much as you enjoy. Do not talk, though. Silence
can include laughter and tears but not conversation or
commentary.
Enjoy and engage in the interplay of your bodies. Even at

a distance, without touch, there are energies, exchanges
and intensities to be enjoyed and explored.
Strong pulsation of your PC muscles can result in

orgasm and/or ejaculation. Orgasm can also happen
quite spontaneously just in the gazing, with no attention
directed specifically at the root chakra.
Other strong feelings and emotions are likely to come

and go. Never using words in the exercise, these feelings
may find expression in the sound of your breath and
subtle movements or changes in your body’s appearance
and facial expression. Just let this happen, and trust that
your appearance will be whatever the beloved needs to
see, just as the beloved is available to your gaze.
All thought and all imagining is allowed. Do not stop to

judge or review any part of your experience during the
timeframe of the exercise. Stay with the current moment,
open your eyes, and look.
Sometimes no arousal happens for a while, or at all.

Sometimes feelings of dislike, even revulsion arise. Most
likely, several strong experiences come and go over the
course of an hour or so.
Whatever happens, whatever you feel, remember that the

discipline of this practice is to stay present, sitting and
silent.
Feel deeply into all that arises. Explore your true

responses to the intimacy, exposure and vulnerability.
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Explore them no matter how they look to you in terms of

reasonableness or even in terms of acceptability.
After the meditation, try not to do a post-mortem of

the experience with the beloved partner. Try not to get
distracted in conversation either. Take some time by
yourself, preferably in silence, after the meditation. What
you feel, discover and reveal through this practice is for
you alone. Your awareness will be shared with others
when it is expressed in your living.
In general, as a guideline, when you do a naked gazing

meditation, make it the only practice of that evening. If
you both really want to make love later, make it two or
more hours later.
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Yoni and lingam gazing
One partner sits back into some cushions, legs spread

apart. The other kneels between the outstretched legs,
not touching.
The kneeling partner looks at the genital area of the

beloved’s body.
The reclining partner closes their eyes or wears a

blindfold.
Instruction for the gazer: Let your attention and

awareness be confined and directed only at the genitals
of the beloved. Go deeply into the feelings evoked in
the meditation. Explore what your true responses and
resistances are.
Instruction for the gazed upon: Feel your exposure and

the gaze of the beloved. Allow your body to relax and
drop any attempt to control your appearance. Notice and
allow whatever the body feels, which can vary from fear
and shivering to intense arousal.
This exercise should be practised for half an hour to

an hour. After the meditation, it is good to take some
time alone to reflect on and integrate what you have
discovered.
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Shared self-loving
Taking turns of around half an hour each way, one

partner lies, sits or kneels in whatever position(s) they
find comfortable while making love to their own body.
The other sits or kneels close by and observes.
When showing your body and its responses: Share

your self-loving with your partner. No words. Show by
demonstrating your touch on your body. Express the
feelings in your body by letting them move your body
and through the sound of your breath.
Do not hold back! Use your knowledge of your body

and its responses to show the beloved your sexual
possibilities and how to work with them.
Accept and move through any inhibitory feelings, views

or judgements you may have about what you are doing.
Try to be as uncensored as possible when touching
yourself. Touch as your body wants to be touched, with
no regard for how that may look.
It may be more comfortable to use a blindfold. In any

case, do not be distracted by your observer. You may
laugh, your tears may flow. However your observer feels
about anything they see is for their learning. How you
feel, be it delight or difficulty, is your learning.
When being the observer in this meditation: Do not speak

or comment. Look, learn and move through whatever
feelings arise in you. Notice the qualities of touch the
beloved uses. Notice the movement of energy, the flow
of arousal and the signs of high intensity and deep
emotion.
Notice the range of styles of touch the beloved uses, the

range of emotion they move through and the variance in
depth, pace and intensity of breath.
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Open your perception to what is happening in front of

you. Notice the range of your responses to what you see.
Notice what emotions and feelings move through you,
and those which feel obstructed in you.
This practice is particularly useful as preparation for the

Yab Yum and for Sky Dancing.
It is also recommended as preparation for yoni or lingam

worship.
A variation for lovers or meditation partners who are well-

practised and comfortable in this meditation: Tell your
partner verbally how to touch you, instead of touching
yourself.
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Following fantasies
Go deeply into your fantasies. Give yourself permission

to know your fantasies completely. To know them is not
to indulge them. Knowing your fantasies makes them
conscious. It is when things are subconscious (and
therefore not known) that they are troublesome.
Layers of fantasy can be dispelled. The spell they have

on you can be removed. To do this, choose a current or
favourite fantasy with which to work.
Do what you can with your setting. Anything from your

clothing to the lighting may help. With some fantasies,
just a piece of music or a particular type of incense is
all that is required. The idea is that you make it as easy
as possible to immerse yourself as deeply as possible in
your imagination, augmented by props, the setting and
perhaps a helper.
Pay particular attention as you approach and pass

through orgasm. Particularly, look out for any significant
change in the events of your fantasy or a particular
intensification of focus.
When you find the shift, even if it looks a little extreme

or scary, be willing to know it. The next time you work
with that fantasy, try to get to and through the change or
intensification before orgasm, thus tracking the fantasy
more deeply.
When completely explored, a fantasy will reveal a truth.

This can happen surprisingly quickly.
A lot of this work can be done by yourself, in self-loving.

Some things work better with a lover.
Do remember that these layers of eroticism are quite

literally all in the mind. There is seldom a need to enact a
211
fantasy precisely. Usually things just need to be dressed

up a little, and belief suspended, as when watching a
movie that almost makes you forget it is a movie.
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Yoni and lingam worship
One partner, the worshipped, takes an attitude of

temporarily lending their body to the beloved for an
arranged time period (half an hour to an hour). The
worshipped partner gets comfortable on some cushions
and the exercise starts with a few minutes of yoni/lingam
gazing.
The worshipper then touches the beloved’s body, in a

direction mainly from the back of the knees to the throat
via the genitals and nipples. The attention, energy and
focus of the touch should be brought increasingly to the
genitals.
Instruction for the worshipper/borrower: Get close to the

lingam or yoni of the beloved. Let your touch make you
open and vulnerable to how you truly feel about what
this part of the body is for you.
This can involve facing feelings of anger and resentment.

It is important to allow yourself the full intensity of
whatever you feel. It is good to allow your touch to
express what you feel, even if it involves the tension of
anger or the clutching of craving.
Do not damage or hurt the body you are borrowing.

If you speak, curse and so on, address yourself to the
lingam or yoni and not to the person whose body you
are borrowing.
Instruction for the worshipped/lender: Respect your

own safety. Even though you are lending your body,
you presumably want it back after this in an undamaged
condition. Do not desert your body by going numb
and unfeeling. Your meditation is to feel, acutely and
completely, the touch of the beloved, following and
exploring whatever it stirs up in your body and mind.
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If the beloved does something painful (and not in a good

way) tell them efficiently and directly to stop and lubricate,
take a break or do whatever you feel is necessary.
This is not a beginner’s exercise. It requires great

sensitivity. If it feels edgy and risky to you, rather do
gazing and shared self-loving for a few sessions first.
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Yab Yum
This most famous of tantric meditations is extensively

immortalised in sculpture and art.
The male sits in a lotus or half lotus position, or his

nearest approximation of it. The woman sits in his lap,
facing him, her legs wrapping around his waist.
She arranges penetration and draws herself onto the

lingam in a comfortable self-regulating way.
It is good to co-ordinate your breathing at first into an

alternating breath, one breathing in as the other breathes
out. It is good to breathe near the other’s ear, and allow
excitements, tensions and pleasurable sensations to be
conveyed by the sound of the breath.
On the inhalation, optionally tension the PC (genital and

anal) muscles, relaxing them on the exhalation. This can
be done with great or minimal tension. Vary your rhythm
and play with different counts of PC contractions per
breath or per heartbeat. Experiment.
A cycle of energy naturally develops, from his lingam to

her yoni, up through her body to her heart, from her
heart to his, and down through his body to the lingam.
This energy can be guided and manipulated through the
breath. The direction of the cycle can even be reversed.
Experiment.
After a while, you are each in your own breathing rhythms.

Keep letting the breath produce sound, expressing your
feelings and sensations. Follow the inclinations of your
body as regards tension and relaxation.
If the male wants to prevent ejaculation and has not yet

developed steadiness through breath and PC-muscle
work, he can cheat. This does not do much for him and
215
may be damaging to his prostate if overdone, but it can

be very good for the woman. He cheats by placing his
heel under his perineum. It compresses the urethra and
the lingam’s blood vessels. This maintains erection while
preventing ejaculation.
The Yab Yum is a useful practice to help develop

steadiness and attention to sensation. This is in part
because it is good for depth but not for thrusting.
At a deeper level, it is an extremely intimate and loving

practice, enhancing the interplay of masculine and
feminine energies.
At its deepest level, this practice connects each participant

with their own inner masculine and feminine aspects and
facilitates their inner lovemaking.
Experienced tantrikas use the Yab Yum for a while,

cycling energy between them. After some time, each is
moving their own energy strongly. The energy no longer
follows a cyclical pattern between them. They are then
each a source, complete unto themselves.
When this energy shift occurs, they can move into

Skydancing.
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Skydancing
From the Yab Yum position, the man straightens his legs
and lies back.
Simultaneously, the woman uncrosses her legs from

behind his back, and moves them to a kneeling position
each side of the man. She leans forward if the penetration
feels uncomfortably intense.
As in the Yab Yum, intensity can be enhanced and energy

can be moved by tensioning and releasing the PC muscles
coordinated with deep, full inhalation and exhalation.
As the deeper penetration feels comfortable, the woman

straightens up. When this is comfortable, she moves
her legs, one at a time, into a squatting position, again
leaning forward at first, until she is comfortable with the
degree of penetration.
She straddles the man in a squat when she is comfortable

fully upright. Her meditation is to allow the energy of
the penetration to move upward and through her body.
She is likely to cover a range of movements from subtle
to intense, dancing this energy as it is experienced.
Her meditation is to open as much as possible to the
penetration and her experience of it. She dances with
this energy, letting it carry her as far and as powerfully
as it can.
The male’s meditation is to gather all his energy, all his

focus, to his lingam. He should let it become the centre
of his awareness and presence. All thoughts, feelings,
sensations are centred in one hot point of focus.
As with the Yab Yum, the male and female sexual energies
can be adjusted, manipulated and even reversed. The
male can move into explosive expansiveness, and the
woman into one-pointed focus.
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Note 2
Preparation of the body and mind for Tantra

An eastern approach to
personal hygiene
Historically, traditionally, an Englishman’s house has an

immaculately kept pavement, a recently painted gate and
a polished brass doorknob. The entrance hall is almost
as clean, almost as presentable. The kitchen, a little less
so. The bedroom, less so still. The bed sheets may not
have been changed for a week or more. One wonders
when the fellow last bathed.
An Indian’s home has a filthy street in front of it, filled

with heaps of uncollected rubbish. The exterior of the
building he lives in has an unpainted concrete finish.
Steel rods from the concrete reinforcement stick out at
ugly angles. The lift has obviously never been cleaned
nor have the stairwells ever been swept. Just outside
the door of his apartment is a pile of dirt, swept from
inside his apartment. Shoes and the dirt they carry are
left outside. Once inside, however, everything is clean.
The further in one goes, the cleaner it gets. The kitchen
gleams. The bed is covered in fresh clean cotton. The
occupant’s body is immaculately clean.
Naturally, in Tantra, if it has to be a choice, we prefer the

oriental approach.
Various schools of Tantra have come up with extreme

approaches to cleanliness. Some of these practices are
occasionally useful, most of them are harmless, some
are a little silly, others are dangerous and a few involve
mutilation.
Clearing your sinuses by pouring salt water through

them is fine, and perhaps necessary if you live far from
the sea and seldom get tumbled by a wave. Snorting
and sucking strings from your mouth through to your
220
nostrils, or from nostril to nostril may be of use in cases

of extreme congestion, but it can introduce infection to
normally well-protected areas of the body.
Creating a prolapse of the anus, so you can turn yourself

inside out and get REALLY clean every morning is, at least
for most of us, probably not a good idea at all.
221
Movement, dance and fitness
Gymnastics, martial arts, long-distance running,

mountain climbing, yoga and most dance forms support
a basic level of health and fitness. Find what suits you,
and do it. Twice a week or so.
If yoga is your choice, please exercise caution with one

category of asana (pose), the upside-down ones.
Be aware of the pressure in your head, and do not let it

get very high. Do not do these asanas for long periods
(more than a minute). It is true that these asanas can
speed up transcendence, but at a cost.
Slightly weakening the mind by doing a small amount

of damage to the brain does make transcendence of the
mind easier. It does make enlightenment more likely,
sooner.
The downside is that after enlightenment, you will

nonetheless have to use your body and mind to
communicate with people. You will then be stuck with
a sub-optimal brain, although, of course, there will not
really be a you to be upset about it.
222
10 days of brown rice
To reset the taste buds and digestive system try a ten-

day brown rice fast. After ten days, gradually, in self-
regulation, introduce other foods. Eat mostly rice and try
to keep all changes to your diet gradual.
Pay attention to your digestive system as you re-introduce

other foods after the fast. It may need to encounter
something in small quantities a few times to get used to
it. It may not want to get used to some things at all. Be
guided by your sense of taste which should by now be far
more helpful as a guide to truly good eating.
Cook the rice with salt and a teaspoon of cold-pressed

olive oil. For a little variety during the rice fast, short-
grain, long-grain and Basmati varieties of brown rice are
widely available.
223
Scents, perfumes, cosmetics
Generally, these are a bad idea.
When the body is sick or fearful, it smells repellent, and

so it should. Covering up with chemistry is not a solution.
Sickness should be healed, fear should be faced.
The body has a refined and elegant scent-based

communication system which should not be interfered
with if at all possible. Be clean, but not antiseptic.
Try not to get a nose job. According to Lyall Watson,

this common mutilation usually destroys the detector
(Jacobson’s organ) for pheromone signalling.
If you really need an antiperspirant during the day, try a

tiny dab of cedarwood oil in the armpits.
If a man wishes to enhance and complement his natural

musks, a little patchouli or sandalwood (West Indian or
Mysore) oil can be good. Very little!
Women’s musks are better complemented by florals such

as ylang ylang, rose, jasmine and orange blossom. Not
every floral suits every woman. Use pure essential oils
only. Synthetics, fixatives and emulsifiers are often nasty
to skin and most of them taste terrible.
When buying essential oils, check the brand. Smell their

neroli (orange blossom) and compare it to a petitgrain
(orange leaves). Any trace at all, any hint, of petitgrain in
their neroli indicates a brand unconcerned with quality.
Before using them, test their purity by evaporating them.

They should leave absolutely no residue at all.
If you really need a moisturiser, wet the skin well and,

while it is still damp, lightly coat it with a single drop of
224
olive oil, or any cold-pressed vegetable oil that your skin

likes. Dab off with a tissue to kill the gloss if that is a
cosmetic issue. This method of moisturising holds more
moisture in the skin more effectively than commercial
products, with far less disturbance of the skin’s natural
functioning.
If you do not like (love) your own body scent, adjust your
diet. If your scent tends to be, for example, permanently
sour, reduce your intake of milk and increase yogurt.
Onions, garlic, asparagus, meats and fish oils all affect

body scent dramatically. Fresh sushi is fine, but old oils,
as in dietary supplements, come through strongly.
We have a very effective disease detection and prevention

system. It is based largely on the senses of smell and
taste. Minimising interference with the senses of your
lovers is a politeness.
225
Mind training
Tantrikas require a certain degree of cynicism. They need

to be immune to the Emperor’s New Clothes syndrome.
They need to look and see beyond the zone of that which
everyone knows. They need a precise and well-calibrated
bullshit detector.
Various practices and disciplines help. They include, but

are not at all limited to: A serious study of philosophy.
Learning other languages. Playing Go (Japanese board
game). Programming computers. A few years of Jungian,
Freudian or even Dr Phil-style therapy. EST-style Large
Group Awareness Trainings (LGATs). A study of the
Kabbalah and the early Hasidic Masters. Aikido and other
evolved martial arts.
All of these and many more can lead you to approach the
mystery of life with awareness and openness. They can
lead you to pay more attention to what is, and insist less
on what you think should be.
The first steps of mind training bring a seeker to the

point of deeply questioning data that has been absorbed
from parents, culture, peers and other sources of second-
hand learning.
The initial satori that mind training provides may seem

to be the end of the quest. More truly, they are a great
start. They are transformative. They can transform you
into a seeker. They are initiatory.
The lessons of mind training can be started in a weekend

workshop. For the seed to bear fruit, nurturing is helpful.
Once you have made a start, do continue the work. Find
the depths of it. Some regular technique for processing,
reviewing and exploring your mind’s reactiveness is
226
useful, and probably worth working on for at least a

couple of years.
More advanced work requires the bravery to regard your

mind’s automatic and reactive routines as the enemy.
You need to have a fight, a good wrestle with your mind.
Do not expect to come through unscathed. Wrestling
makes bruises. This fight can involve mood swings, even
perhaps an existential crisis or two.
Very advanced work involves taking an attitude

somewhere between training your mind, and learning to
work around its resistance.
This can include: Exploring the extent to which you

create your experience. Experimenting with getting what
you want vs. wanting what you get. Disassembling, in
detail, some of your mind’s standard routines. Exploring
your self-limiting decisions and attitudes. Inquiring into
what you really know of truth, love and being.
Seekers who have worked with their mind training to the

point at which nothing new is being revealed may be
ready for what is known as the secret teachings. Although
these teachings are mostly not that secret anymore,
they are often misunderstood and misapplied. Personal
guidance in this area is more or less essential.
Traditionally, only after extensive mind training did a

seeker get introduced to higher philosophies – Advaita
and all that. These days, thanks to R. Bach, W. Erhard, K.
Gibran, E. Tolle and others, most of the data involved in
higher philosophy is out there. Ironically, for many modern
seekers, these teachings are the first they encounter, not
the last. Kind of backwards, but workable.
These authors use the higher understandings as an

inducement, an encouragement, a lure to the path. Do
revisit their teachings from time to time. The truths they
227
express will come more and more into focus as your path
progresses.
Chanting mantras is not mind training, and is not

very good for the mind. Certain chants and repetitive
visualisations numb or temporarily silence some aspects
of the mind. This can be useful to get a sense of the
mind’s functioning. Like working out how a machine
works by making things go wrong with it. As with the
use of drugs for the same purpose, one can learn a lot in
the short term. Although drugs, yantras and mantras can
provide a glimpse, an inducement, they do not help you
to approach truth as such.
The most generally useful approach to investigating your

own mind’s processes is to live differently. Masturbate,
for a week, with the other hand. For a day, greet everyone
you meet. Put an In Silence badge on yourself during
breaks at work. Laugh as much as you can get away with,
every opportunity you get, for a day. Cry for an hour
or so in private every day for a week, not because you
have so much to cry about (though we all do) but as a
discipline … Have fun with it and avoid stupidity. Driving
on the other side of the road, for example, involves more
than you watching your mind’s reaction to something
unusual.
228
Brainwashing
Many varieties of mind training, especially the LGATs,

come under criticism from anti-cult organisations.
Some are accused from time to time of brainwashing.
Brainwashing is not a bad thing. Most minds could do
with a good scrubbing. These weekend group things
often have good technique, and some are very elegant in
their setup and delivery of insights. Perhaps the greatest
contribution they make to seekers is the discipline,
common to most of them, of developing interior
honesty.
The best thing about them is their speed and efficiency.
The worst thing about them is their evangelism and

business-like eagerness to train everyone, seeker or
not. Or maybe the worst is that they sometimes present
the transformation they induce as being enlightenment
itself.
Dr Phil, the coaching phenomenon, teambuilding

workshops, sales and motivational programmes and
even some pyramid-marketing scams use the methods
and philosophy of Werner Erhard’s (arguably) original
brain cleansing seminars.
The cultural penetration of the LGAT teachings is very

deep, even pervasive. In the entertainment zone, so
many movie executives took the training that Warner
Brothers was known by some as Werner Brothers. Partly
thanks to films produced during those years, the core
lessons and understandings of this work are no longer
even considered strange.
Should you take one of these trainings/seminars?
Maybe. We do recommend them to students who seem

short of mind training – with a couple of reservations:
229
Bear in mind that they were originally designed for the

1970s mindset. A mind of the current culture does
not require the intense confrontation and emotional
hammering that a 70s mind did. Some LGATs have
updated their approach, one even cutting the first two
days of their original five-day training. This helps. So does
updating the John Denver and Neil Diamond music.
The other reservation I have concerns their evangelism.

Do not get over-extended in your willingness to help the
organisation, unless, of course, you are a compulsive
over-achiever and need lessons about over-extension.
230
Processing techniques
Some seekers gather and use a huge range of processing

techniques. Some find just one or two are all they need.
Most anything that erases the sub in subconscious is a
good idea. The following two methods are generally the
most useful that we know.
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Verification
Consider an event you find psychologically troublesome.

Write down, in short direct statements, what your mind
has to say about the event, the consequences, the causes,
the blame, the implications … be thorough. Give your
mind a good honest opportunity to make its case.
When you feel you have expressed the bulk of it, or when
you run out of paper, stop.
Take a few minutes to settle yourself. Maybe make

yourself a cup of tea.
Go through what you have written, making one

dispassionate assessment of each statement. What you
assess is:
Is this statement true? With certainty.
Is it false? Just clearly not true.
Is it unknown? Do I simply not know?
If the statement is anything other than true, definitely

true … put a line through it. Be ruthless and honest. If
you do not know a thing, you do not know it. It has no
useful place in your thinking. Information is even less
valuable when it is clearly not true.
This stage can be difficult to get right without the

guidance of someone experienced in this technique. Be
as sincerely in favour of getting to the truth as you can
manage. Do not get into probabilities and percentages.
The mind deals in absolutes. If you managed to write
out something of your mind’s contents, reasonably
uncensored, this fact will be obvious.
232
It is of course pointless to bother with fine distinctions

between something being false or unknown. Either way,
it is sub-standard information. Put a line through it.
The final step is to go carefully through what remains.

Create a statement, for yourself, of the truth.
It can seem a little artificial, this ruthless division into

True, False and Unknown. We know life exhibits grey
areas, probabilities, tendencies and so on. The mind,
however, does not know this, particularly in areas that
have been unconscious. The mind does not say, for
example, that if you do not have a lover at present you
might occasionally feel a bit lonely. The mind is far more
likely to insist that you are now condemned to dying
alone and unloved.
233
Squares
Taught by Leslie Temple-Thurston, detailed in her book

The Marriage of Spirit, Chapter 11.
Consider a desire, want or craving in your life. Some

examples: To be in control, to be guided, to live more
totally, to avoid trouble, to know truth deeply, to commit
to a relationship, to disengage from or change the
parameters of a relationship, to gain wealth, to have
particular experiences, to be more liked.
Take a sheet of paper, and bisect it horizontally and

vertically, dividing it into quarters.
Headline the top left with the desire and expand on it.
The example used is kindly provided by my daughter.
Desire for a relationship:
Someone to talk to and depend on.
More jolling (local slang for partying).
Regular sex.
Someone to make me laugh.
Someone to hold me when I am sad.
Someone to distract me from thoughts of someone else

(that I’m basically still in love with).
Someone I can be myself around.
Someone for me to support.
234
The next quarter, in the top right, gets headlined with

the fear of what is desired.
Fear of relationship:
Breaking someone else’s heart.
Just using him as a distraction.
Feeling I am not worthy.
Not getting to live freely.
Being dishonest.
Discovering that he has been dishonest with me.
Being dumped.
Dumping him.
Getting tied down.
Move on to the bottom left, which is headlined with the

desire for the opposite.
Desire to be single:
Free to fool around and flirt.
No jealous partner.
I would not be judged as harshly if I did something

questionable.
Time to myself.
No need to consider someone else in my decisions.
More time to myself.
235
The last quadrant, bottom right, is logically enough

headlined with the fear of the opposite.
Fear of being single:
I die alone.
No one to look out for me.
No regular sex partner.
Minimal jolling.
Not having anyone to rely on.
Being viewed as an outcast.
No one to cheer me up when I am down.
Becoming a spinster and only having cats to talk to.
Cold, lonely bed for the rest of my life.
When you have completed each quadrant, look around

all four to see if anything is missing.
Then, take a few minutes to allow your eyes to look over

what you have expressed. All of it.
Allow all four quadrants, together, into your awareness.
Consider that whatever you strive for here, whatever

your outcome looks like, you will have feelings in each
quadrant, all the way along.
Give up. If you have any notion of the Divine, a God or

Goddess, or just the mystery of existence as it is, delegate
the issue to the Divine. Be available and responsive to
what happens in your life, be open to what existence
236
presents you with, but do not make, in this case, getting

a boyfriend, your objective, or your measure of success.
Leslie Temple-Thurston says, “Make all the squares

conscious, then give it all over to Spirit.”
Naturally, this is a private and personal exercise. There

is generally nothing helpful in a father getting to look
at his daughter’s processing work, as has inadvertently
happened here. It exposes the poor father to too much
information.
Both Squares and Verification are of great use in mind

training. Both are worth deep exploration, probably a
couple of times a week for a couple of years. It is likely
that you will find them useful every now and then for
many years after their main work is done.
237
External honesty and keeping

your agreements
This particular aspect of honesty, making a discipline of

doing what you say you will, is hugely revealing of your
mind’s workings. Do not be a fascist with yourself. If/
when you break an agreement, just recommit to it and
carry on. If you wish to change an agreement, change it.
If all goes well, you will discover or become more

aware of your self-deception. Making agreements with
yourself that are not going to be kept. Keeping the more
interesting version of your history alive in preference to
remembering what really was. That kind of thing.
To discover one’s own inner deception and sabotage can

be shocking, but it is far better known than not known.
Let yourself off whatever hooks you find yourself on.
Self-recrimination is not justified.
The awareness you have found is not usual. Few ever

discover this part of the human condition. Most live an
unconscious lie. Congratulations are in order. You are
now in a position to work on the centre of true honesty,
your honesty with yourself.
A particularly deep and pervasive form of lie is well

described in Harriet Lerner’s book The Dance of Deception
which focuses on a primarily (but not at all exclusively)
female approach to untruthfulness: Taking on a role, or
putting on an appearance as if. These generalised cover-
up lies can be more difficult to become aware of but are
well worth exploring.
238
Practising strategy
This form of mind training seems counter-intuitive.

The lessons of strategy derive mostly from conflict.
Appropriate for a warrior, perhaps, but of no obvious
use to a seeker, surely?
Not so. The phrase, the title Spiritual Warrior is no

accident. A significant reason for learning about strategy
is to be able to divine your own mind’s strategies. This is
necessary if you are to give your mind a good fight.
Many start the study of strategy with the intention of

gaining power. The awareness gained in this pursuit can,
paradoxically, bring peace and acceptance.
Strategy teaching requires practical application. For

some this means training in a martial art, playing Go,
or trading derivatives. For most, it means learning by
applying the teachings of strategy to personal, business
and career issues.
Learning strategy has a similar effect to that of practising

exterior honesty. It makes you more and more aware of
your own mind’s strategies.
239
Note 3
Beyond premature ejaculation

Ejaculation issues
A Dakini of this school once suggested a Tantra T-shirt

slogan: Ejaculation is premature. She did soften in
attitude, later on, and asked me to stop attributing this
saying to her. The attribution has ceased, but the saying
goes on …
It is unfair and politically incorrect to make sweeping

generalisations about gender characteristics, so here
goes:
Boys learn to masturbate from other boys, unless the

priests or teachers get to them first. They know, being
boys, that quickest is best. Some of them get competitive
with this, until it becomes too gay for them.
Heavy rapid jerking on the penis, combined with tense

buttocks, squishes the prostate gland and produces a
fast, reliable, forced ejaculation.
Because self-love is a forbidden activity, it is generally

fast and furtive. Speed is important when discovery
would be a problem.
Because a man’s first sexual experiences with women

are likely to be illicit, immoral or illegal by the culture’s
reckoning, speed is required and high adrenaline is an
inevitable accompaniment. By this time in a man’s life,
speed and roughness are already deeply established
habits.
Because women’s first sexual experiences, particularly

with young men, are rough and fast, their bodies and
minds respond as if raped.
Organically, a woman raped becomes submissive, as a

more or less instinctual survival strategy.
242
The usual explanation her mind will provide for this state
of affairs is that, somehow, even though there was no
pleasure in it, she is in love, or at any rate, has a strong
needing of this man.
Another part of the body’s response to rape is to tighten

the vaginal muscles. Some women do this so well that
penetration becomes impossible. Many do it enough to
cause themselves considerable pain.
The organic/instinctive survival strategy of the woman’s

body is effective. It pressures the penis back into the
male’s prostate gland, inducing ejaculation. This is
why rape takes on average just fifteen seconds from
penetration to ejaculation.
Circumcision is sold as a disease prevention measure.

When sex and genitals are regarded by a culture as filthy,
people ignore them and they do indeed get filthy.
When a penis is kept clean, the foreskin captures and

localises infection, keeping the body safe until an
immune response is mobilised. This also reduces the risk
of passing an infection on, as the penis will be sore, and
lovers will easily detect the signs of infection.
A circumcised penis can hide infection and nonetheless

spread it very effectively. It requires closer inspection for
safety than an uncircumcised one does.
For some, the reduction in sensation that can happen

with circumcision is a torture.
As a (circumcised) fuck-monster of my acquaintance

once put it: I know that the most marvellous things are
happening in her mouth when she goes down on me.
Exquisite and delicately delicious sensations … I know
all that is happening, and I know I am feeling hardly a
hint of it.
243
The cultural damage may be a diabolical plot to enslave

human energies and sell expensive motor cars … or it
may just be a natural step in planetary social evolution.
Either way, it is something tantrikas need to heal from.
Re-sensitising yourself through gentle self-loving is very

helpful. Practising awareness in arousal is vital.
244
Suggestions for men:
The more you can allow sensation, the more you can
open to it without tensing your buttocks and making like
a woodpecker, the better.
Give up fighting for an ejaculation, and do not get into

judging it as bad when it happens anyway.
Do not bother with counting backwards in base sixteen,

or evoking the image of a dead cat in order to prolong
sex. Rather, if you need distraction, distract yourself by
paying close attention to your own sensation. Open to
it, and allow the sound of your breath to express what
you find.
Open as much as you can to what you are feeling. Take

a brave attitude towards enduring strong sensations.
Those of you who have played rugby have a head start
in this area.
When ejaculation happens after a lot of energy has been

built up, it becomes much stronger, much more orgasmic
than the usual genital sneeze. Explore this scientifically
in your self-loving. Less than twenty minutes of self-
loving is hurried self-abuse. Show yourself some respect,
and take enough time to enjoy your experience.
Make the (hopefully) sensitive, thin skin of the penis tip,

the glans, an important focus of your attention. Open to
the sensations which come from this sensitivity. Relax
your bum and do PC muscle contractions when you feel
the urge to thrust. In this way, you can discover the male
equivalent of a woman’s clitoral orgasm – an energising,
refreshing energy peak.
Drop the idea that ejaculation happens automatically at

a particular intensity of arousal. Even if this seems to
be true, strive to build up to greater levels of intensity
245
anyway. If it feels like you may pass out from sheer nerve
overload, be willing to pass out. That did happen to me a
few times. It may happen to you. It is not unpleasant.
246
Suggestions for women:
If helping your lover with this does not look like a lot of
fun, forget it.
If you have sufficient interest, willingness and awareness

to help, read on …
Make it clear that you are in charge. Your T-shirt slogan

is: I have the pussy, so I make the rules. You need to
tell him what to do and how to do it. You need to be in
charge in order to guide and support him.
You need his trust. Not his trust that you will not hurt/
damage/abuse him, or trust that you will make things
nice. He needs to trust that whatever he feels, whatever
he has to go through, is worth facing and learning from.
Take a very long time – as long as you can manage, with

foreplay. If you do the going out on a date thing, be a
little merciless, turning him on at every opportunity.
Take a shawl to movies, to cover your hands and his lap.
Choose restaurants where you can sit close together,
where you can hear each other speak.
When you get home, share a bath. Follow your inclinations

about what to do. Stay in charge!
Perhaps share some self-loving or naked gazing. Maybe

yoni and/or lingam worship seems to be a good idea.
Follow your inclinations. Pay attention to his breath as
feedback. Stop him every time you see him slip into his
automatic rush to ejaculation. Remind him to relax his
buttocks and breathe.
If it happens (and it probably will) that a more or less

involuntary ejaculation occurs, let it be perfectly OK. It
can even be fun to push him over his threshold once
or twice deliberately, if he is young and/or strong. If
247
ejaculation happens when he has been strongly aroused

for some time, it will not dissipate all of his energy. It is
also likely that he will be intensely sensitive for a little
while. Be gentle at first and listen to what his breath tells
you about the intensity of his experience.
Refuse penetration until your yoni demands it. You

should be very lubricated when penetration is attempted.
Help the fellow stay conscious by reminding him to
breathe. He should also be aroused, as indicated by his
lubrication – the clear Cowper’s gland fluid, sometimes
called pre-cum.
Favour positions where you are on top, or can easily eject

him. Pay attention to his breath and movement. Keep
him conscious!
Allow and open to penetration and how it feels. If you

feel your yoni tightening, tighten it deliberately with your
PC muscles, then deliberately relax. Repeat as required.
Do the opposite of faking your orgasm. Try to keep it a

secret. Stay aware right into and through your orgasm(s)
and relax into them, allowing the sensation to wash over
you.
If (eventually) there comes a time when you want the

energy of his ejaculation, let your yoni grab him and take
it. If he is very aroused, and you are sitting astride him,
you can probably manage this with slight movement and
one set of PC muscle contractions.
248
Note 4
Touch, breath and timing

The flavours of touch
Touch, being so deeply repressed in our culture, is not

generally felt at all by most people. A layer of fantasy and
craving obscures awareness.
Developing some skill in receiving and giving touch is

essential for tantrikas. It is necessary to make a deliberate
effort to correct the inherited cultural distortion before
the truth can be approached.
Experiment with all flavours of touch. Experiment with

ways of transitioning between them and using different
sensations simultaneously on different parts of the
body.
The hand can feel and deliver a wide range of sensation:

grasping, sliding, pinching, stroking, pressing, scratching,
stretching, squeezing, slapping and so on. Teeth extend
this range, though care is advised. The mouth manages
deeper, richer sensations particularly suited to the more
sensitive parts of the body. Paradoxically, the softness
and gentle warmth of tongue and lips can evoke exquisite
sensation in relatively insensitive areas of the body too.
On the receiving side of touch, open yourself to sensation.

Give great attention to the sensations of being touched.
Find the subtleties of the experience. Breathe, and let
your breath express in sound what you are feeling.
Sensitivity can be recovered and enhanced to a sometimes

astonishing degree. Some tantrikas can taste with their
fingertips. Some can taste with their lingams. Some can
discern, then adjust their blood pressure at will. Some
have developed sensitivity inside their veins and arteries
and can detect increasing levels of salts, sugars and oils
in their blood when digesting food. Some women can
feel their moment of ovulation. Explore.
250
Let breath synchronise with touch. There is a natural

movement and flow beyond technique and training. Use
techniques to correct the culture’s way, then find the
natural way.
When one truly touches and when one truly allows

the experience of being touched, a paradox becomes
apparent. That which is touching, is itself feeling touch.
That which is being touched, touches.
Give and take honest feedback. If someone has, for

example, a hungry, grabbing or taking flavour to their
touch, they need to know it if they are ever to improve
on it.
251
Touching from the heart
When some people touch you it can feel warm, friendly

and even loving. When others touch you, it can feel
unpleasant, depleting and even invasive.
The difference lies in the energy, or more accurately the

lack of energy, that they are touching you with.
Focus your awareness at your root chakra. As you inhale,

contract your PC muscles and draw your heat upward
from your root to your heart. As you exhale, let the
energy flow outward from your heart. When you feel your
energy flowing strongly to your heart, let it flow along
your arms to your hands.
Then touch the beloved, with something aware, something

present and something truly worth calling touch.
252
Conscious breath
Breath is usually restricted by the subconscious. The

belly does not rise and fall in a natural rhythm but is held
tight. When making love, restrained breathing seriously
affects the body’s flow of energy.
To correct this, most forms of yoga, Jeru Kabbal’s

Quantum Light Breath, Stanislav Grof’s Holotropic
Breathwork, Mantak Chia’s energy cultivation practices
and other teachings which involve conscious breathing
are useful.
Variations of pace, intensity, depth and even nostril order

are worth exploring. Some breathing patterns enable
altered states of consciousness. Others work as a time
machine, opening areas of suppressed awareness and
memory. A deep, relaxed breath allows sensations to be
experienced to greater depths.
Bear in mind that the objective is not to master these

practices. Use them to find your natural, unrestricted,
responsive breath.
When fucking, drop the jackhammering and slow down.

Slow right down, until your stroke pace is compatible with
an easy breathing rate (no panting). On the in-stroke,
the penetrator breathes in, optionally contracting the PC
muscles. The penetrated partner breathes out, relaxing
the PC muscles, opening to the penetration. On the out-
stroke, the penetrator relaxes the PC muscles, breathes
out and relaxes deeply into sensation. The penetrated
breathes in, optionally contracting the PC muscles.
When touching, massaging, being massaged or making

love, let your breath be responsive to and expressive
of what you feel. Breathe in when feeling tension and
253
intense sensation, then release the tension and open

completely to sensation on the exhalation.
The sound of the breath should not be restrained or

concealed. Let the voice box become involved, giving
the exhalation a tone, a note. If the voice box is deeply
relaxed, the breath flowing over it will produce a tone on
both directions of breath. Be guided by the expression
of sensation conveyed by the sounds of the beloved’s
breath.
254
Sevens and changing gear
This simple count can be used in many situations. Its

main use is for moving from one level of sexual intensity
to another.
It works with and is applicable to almost anything you

do in relation to your sexual energy or your partner’s
energy. It can be used for changing the intensity of
breath, changing the feeling of a caress, increasing the
depth of penetration or changing speed of movement.
It works with two states of something, e.g. shallow

penetration as the first level of intensity, and deeper
penetration as the second. The change is not
necessarily from a milder sensation to a stronger one.
It is the transition that creates the intensity, not what is
transitioned between.
The count works in units of seven. The first time through

the count, all seven are of the first intensity.
The second time through the count, the first six are at the
first level of intensity, and the seventh is at the second.
In the next cycle, the first five are in the first level, and
the sixth and seventh are the second.
Continue like this, switching to the second level of

intensity earlier each time as per the following table. 1 is
the first intensity, 2 the second.
1 1 1 1 1 1 1
1 1 1 1 1 1 2
1 1 1 1 1 2 2
1 1 1 1 2 2 2
255
1 1 1 2 2 2 2
1 1 2 2 2 2 2
1 2 2 2 2 2 2
2 2 2 2 2 2 2
Do not be concerned about accuracy. The basic intent

is to move from one intensity to another by switching
between them, while increasing the frequency of the new
intensity. It is fine to use the numbers just as a rough
guide.
This is as far as you need to follow the count. You can

keep things as they are for a while, and then use the
count to change things again.
Sexual athletes may enjoy the full count, especially when

applied to penetration intensity. When used this way, the
pattern continues thus, with 3 indicating a third level of
intensity:
2 2 2 2 2 2 2
2 2 2 2 2 2 2
2 2 2 2 2 2 2
2 2 2 2 2 2 2
2 2 2 2 2 2 2
2 2 2 2 2 2 2
2 2 2 2 2 2 3
2 2 2 2 2 3 3
2 2 2 2 3 3 3
2 2 2 3 3 3 3
256
2 2 3 3 3 3 3
2 3 3 3 3 3 3
3 3 3 3 3 3 3
The second level moves to the third in the same

gradually increasing pattern. Seven lines at the third,
then increasing by the same steps to the fourth, and so
on. Classically, each phase of increase moves energy up
one chakra, so the full count is quite a performance.
In the Yab Yum and Sky Dancing positions, this rhythm

count can be used with PC muscle contractions.
257
Note 5
Therapy to truth in three easy steps

Psychological suffering
Priests, pastors, rabbis, lamas, gurus, psychologists,

ESTies, scientologists, personal coaches, encounter
therapists, western buddhists and even the occasional
mormon have models for understanding human
psychopathology. Where they diverge in their
understanding, it is not so much a matter of a true
difference as their need to distinguish themselves
from each other in the self-improvement marketplace.
Other variations in their understanding arise as their
approaches have different intentions and areas of
appropriate application.
Here is my view. Simple and practical enough, I hope, to

be useful:
When something is emotionally too intense or too large

for us, we put something of the experience away. We
suppress the experience, or part of it.
Resisting the fullness of our experience hurts. The hurt

needs a focus of blame. A layer of anger is laid down over
the hurt. The anger is resisted and denied. Numbness,
hypersensitivity and emotional confusion are the usual
results.
This ability to suppress difficult feelings is valuable and

positive for survival. It enables us to pass through the
horror of a difficult moment and to address the feelings
around it later on.
It is important for our own mental stability that we revisit

the problematic moment and face our feelings. We
generally do not do this. Mostly, we prefer to suppress
them even more.
This hurts. Avoidance of truth always hurts.
260
We then look for something to blame for this hurt. We

cover the hurt with anger.
After that, we suppress the anger. We become numbed,

desensitised.
261
An example:
It is true that a child is a serious inconvenience to the

adults who raise it. No matter how much love, adoration
and tolerance the sainted parents may have, the ankle-
biters and rug-rats will get underfoot. There is nothing
preventable about this. Small children are inconvenient.
They even interfere with adult technology. A bathroom
sink becomes a midnight Niagara Falls. A candle becomes
an inferno in minutes. A mobile phone becomes a deep-
level sewerage explorer. If you doubt any of this, talk to
parents, perhaps even your own.
At two to three years of age a child is likely be confronted

with the fact of their inconvenience. It is not a fact that
most young children can allow themselves to know in
fullness, or even anything approaching fullness. The
feelings that a child has about being an inconvenience
and a nuisance to its parents are far too scary to feel. To
cover the feelings, the truth has to be denied. This makes
a wound in the psyche, a no-go area in the mind. To
prevent the mind from inadvertently going into the no-go
area, pain surrounds it. The pain is a sentry, a guard. It is
an alarm which is triggered by any approach.
To protect the hurt, the mind blames. It makes the

perceived source of the pain an external one. It claims
that the pain which arises is an unfair suffering which
should be balanced by vengeance. Anger arises.
The child rapidly discovers that anger is not an acceptable

feeling to express and learns to suppress it more or less
successfully most of the time.
Later, when the person is an adult, if the feelings are

faced and the truth discovered, the original suppressed
truth is understood in context and is hardly frightening.
262
It can even be amusing. There are few things as funny

in this world as the trouble children cause their parents.
The children should be laughing …
263
The three steps
Conventional talk-therapy can be useful for the first

stage of this work, but probably no more so than basic
mind training or deep personal inquiry. Attention can be
brought to unconscious assumptions, behaviour patterns
and resistance. Awareness of the underlying anger can
be evoked. This is about as far as modern Western
psychological understanding and practice is useful.
To clear the past influence completely, to free oneself

from the nuisance of these mostly subconscious angers
and frustrations, further work is required.
The first thing is to shake off any residual numbness and

to address the layer of anger.
This takes some energy, intent and commitment. It

requires you to allow the anger into your body and to
express it with an attitude of totality by running, punching
a bag, strangling a pillow and so on.
Techniques from encounter therapy, primal therapy and

other cathartic methods are very useful in this area.
Osho’s Dynamic Meditation is a particularly powerful,
fast, effective, safe and thorough method.
When anger around a past event has become conscious,

the layer of hurt is discovered. As with the anger, the
more thoroughly this is allowed to be felt, the quicker it
will pass.
Just feeling the hurt, without resistance, is the basic

method for getting through this. Atisha’s Heart Meditation
facilitates this work very effectively.
Under the hurt lies the truth. The truth can be guessed
at all along, but is only experienced once the hurt has
been more or less completely experienced. The truth can
264
be quite a surprise and is sometimes not at all what one

would have guessed.
Experiencing the truth in its fullness sets you free of the

need to suppress it. More importantly, it frees you from
the consequences of that suppression.
265
So, in three easy steps:
1. Express the anger.
2. Feel the hurt.
3. Discover the truth.
No matter how complex and compelling your story is, no

matter how unfair, nasty or tragic it may be … it can, with
sufficient courage, be resolved in these three steps.
All that stands between us and the truth is our own fear
and stubbornness.
266
Note 6
Kissing
Start at the bottom and work

your way up
This may come as a surprise, but tantrikas kiss less than

most people. However, when tantrikas do kiss, something
quite special is happening.
Often, in our culture, kissing happens in a way that is,

shall we say, sub-optimal.
A couple sit opposite each other at a table in inadequate

light. They are clothed, and only their hands and faces are
exposed to each other. They drink some alcohol, and the
urges and cravings which they generally suppress arise.
An introvert becomes an extrovert. A shy and reserved
fellow becomes Casanova.
In the dim light, they can project almost any emotion

upon the beloved’s features. They can make huge
unjustified and even unjustifiable assumptions about
the depth of connection and the richness of the meaning
involved in their interaction. They kiss and touch mainly
the exposed parts of their bodies, from ear lobes and
mouth down the throat, almost to the nipples. They fall,
for now, in love, kind of.
Human sexual energy, when naturally expressed, rises

chakra by chakra, from the bottom up. The fire is lit at
the root, and should have built some significant heat
by the time it reaches the heart. To focus the energy in
the upper chakras at the beginning denies it a base, a
foundation … and the energy will inevitably drop to the
root at some point.
This drop from heart to root marks the point at which

some men describe becoming inflamed and possessed
by an insistent urge to fuck – with not much awareness
available for anything else.
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Some women describe the experience as a boundary

between romantic love and sex. They may assume it to
be a natural boundary, and some struggle considerably
with this division.
The shift from love mode to sex mode happens when

the couple gets to a place of privacy and does what we
humans laughably call making love.
When genitals get involved, many women in our culture

feel numb and disconnected from what is happening.
They see the lights of romance go out of their partner’s

eyes and they see the blank hazy stare of lust which
replaces it. Just a shallow lust though, insubstantial and
easily depleted.
The little rush of energy from a man’s forced and hurried

ejaculation is typically just enough to show the woman
involved that this could have been enjoyable – if it had
somehow gone differently.
With Tantra, as with many things, the best approach is to

start at the bottom and work your way up.
Start as low as possible, if not from the feet, then from

the backs of the knees. Draw energy into the root, the
junction of the legs. From there, two lines ascend, curving
through the nipples and on to the throat.
In general, if your touches, kissing and caressing start

low on the body and move upward, the sexual energy
you build will be substantial and sustainable. When you
feel the arising energy reach your heart and then your
throat, kissing feels quite different.
It feels different because the kiss is fuelled by a worthwhile

energy. Something that can be felt by the beloved.
Something that communicates the energy of love.
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Without a good fire, without the energy to give it real

heat, kissing has no real energy in and of itself – nothing
to connect with, nothing to communicate. Such a kiss
creates a little erotic-imagination thought bubble. The
dream of what a kiss could be like.
This dream is what inspires most poetry, much song-

writing and many soapie scripts. Many people settle for
it because they mistakenly believe there is some sharing,
some connection happening in their kissing. The reality
is a little different. Each is sealed within their own little
imaginary kissy-place thought bubble, which includes an
imaginary version of their beloved.
Whenever you kiss, at the very least, pay a little attention

to your root chakra first. Do some PC muscle contractions
to get in touch with it. Draw the heat to your heart and
if it feels substantial, then by all means, let that energy
flow into your kiss.
It may happen one day that you are joined with a beloved
in coition, and an especially powerful orgasm comes
along. Open to it and be vulnerable to it. Let it rush up
through the body. If it reaches your throat, you may feel
a sudden and sweet salivation. Then, beloved, is the best
time of all to kiss.
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Note 7
The dark and the dangerous

Extreme techniques
Sometimes an eroticism is so deeply rooted that it has to

be explored more or less in actuality. Sometimes this can
be scary. Sometimes it can be physically dangerous.
Always maintain your awareness and your intelligent self-

regulation. That said, play nice and have fun.
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BDSM
This genre of eroticism is no longer a shameful secret

and nowadays more of a lifestyle choice. At some times
and in some places it was and is even fashionable.
The lifestyle, as it is often called, has its own language.

BDSM is an acronym for bondage, domination, sadism
and masochism. It is a world in which those of a dominant
and/or sadistic inclination are called Tops, Doms,
Mistresses and Masters and do all sorts of things to and
demand all sorts of service and obedience from those of
a submissive or masochistic inclination: their bottoms,
submissives, slaves, subbies and even house-puppies.
Relationship styles vary. Polyamory is popular and so

is the old-school marriage contract which still contains
the words “To Love and Obey”. Some people are lifetime
Doms, some are lifetime submissives or slaves. Many are
a switch, which means that they have an eroticism which
likes a bit of both sides of things.
Doms hold overt power, but the covert power of the subbie
sometimes results in a phenomenon called topping from
below. A variant of this phenomenon, the SAM, meaning
Smart Ass Masochist, is pretty much universally disliked
and apparently quite common.
If elements of power (over or under someone else),

ownership, control, and/or giving or receiving pain feature
strongly in your fantasies or show up noticeably in your
erotic response, this area is worth some exploration. If
you hardly have fantasies without these features, the
area is worth some serious exploration.
Much of the range of kinks and practices of the BDSM

community quite obviously have their origins in
parenting and schoolyard traumas. Some sectors of the
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BDSM community are aware of this, and there are sexual

healing practitioners who are adept at evoking and
resolving childhood traumas using these techniques.
Considering our culture’s tendency to rule by force, it

is remarkable that bondage, domination, sadism and
masochism are not even more popular than they are.
The literature is extensive, and most of it is accessible

online. Google “purity test” as a start, and take it from
there.
Do not take whichever version of the purity test you

encounter as a list of challenges. This is not stamp
collecting or merit-badge earning. It is an exploration
of your personal eroticism. Only play with what you,
personally, find particularly hot.
I recommend concentrating on one fantasy area at a time

and completing it before looking at the kinky urge that
next presents its perverted little head.
Completing it means that you have found totality in the

eroticism, kink or perversity that you chose to explore
and that you have been disillusioned by it. It may well
remain within your range of sexual expression, but it
loses the quality of need, of hunger.
If playing with this yourself is insufficient and exploring

it with a lover is not an option for you, do be careful if
you go looking for help. As a wise friend told me, “There
really are some nasty people out there.” I recommend
that you research anyone you want to work with by first
meeting their students.
If you seem to have primarily Dom inclinations, I strongly

recommend that you explore whatever sub inclinations
you may have first. Every eroticism with a Dom quality
can be explored with roles reversed.
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The reason I suggest this is because it is essential

preparation for a Dom. If you do not know the sensations
you are evoking, you will be a bad Dom. If you have not
explored the depths of what you would be helping a
subbie to experience, you will be a weak Dom. If you
have not found the treasure in those depths yourself, you
will be prone to uncertainty – bad for a Dom. If you do
not know the sweetness of submission as such, you will
probably end up judging yourself as nasty, dangerous or
evil, and you may by then be right.
Couples who play with BDSM often reverse the roles

they take up in the rest of life. For those who are good
upstanding family people of the culture, and unlikely to
read this book, this is perfectly good. Their marriages are
likely to last longer on account of it. They may become
pillars of strength in the BDSM community, fighting for
every masochist’s right to a fair crack of the whip.
I encourage tantrikas with a strong BDSM eroticism to

take the same roles in the bedroom as they do in life. This
prevents sexuality from being used as a balancing force
or counterweight to the rest of life. It brings honesty into
the boudoir and facilitates an exchange of energy that is
relationship instead of preventing it. The stability of the
relationship has to be risked if the relating is to move
from a wrestle to a dance.
The BDSM community is very keen on rules, boundaries,

agreements and guidelines. Some of these are well worth
following.
Perhaps the most useful and important of these are the

petition and the safeword.
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Safewords
A safeword enables a sub to squeak, beg, struggle and

so on without the Dom having to worry about them being
in serious distress.
A safeword (or safe-gesture if gagged) should be

unambiguous and should not sound similar to some
other common phrase. The rule when it is used is: The
scene is over. Done. Pack up and clean up over.
A safeword is a measure of last resort. It should never

need to be used. When it is used, something has gone
wrong or someone is in distress.
This rule also prevents a subbie from using the safeword

to manipulate the Dom.
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Writing a petition
The petition is a great aid to awareness. For some, just

the process of writing it brings much insight and clarity
to an otherwise murky eroticism. The petition is a letter
from the sub to the Dom requesting the scene.
Express your willingness as specifically and as totally

as you can.
Make your best effort and then some, to expose the core
of your eroticism and what you want to experience in the
scene.
Part of the freedom and delight in being a sub in a BDSM

scene is that you “aren’t responsible” for what happens,
what you enjoy, don’t enjoy, or anything else after you
have committed to your petition.
Your petition therefore is an opportunity to “participate

in your downfall” by revealing particular things which you
(shamefully) delight in, and things you (excitedly) fear.
Of course, it is not as if your petition is a wish list for an

M (Mistress or Master) to fulfill.
An M worth calling an M will surely do a few things to you

that you have not thought of. They will almost certainly
get you to do some things you would “absolutely never”
do, to test your submission, to explore your erotic
capacities, to punish you for bad behaviour or just on a
whim.
Work on giving yourself away as much as possible.

Expose your vulnerabilities so that your M can make the
best use of you.
Brag about your capabilities.
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What is enjoyable about you? How deep is your devotion?

How good a slave can you be? How instantly, how
unquestioningly can you respond to any request, and
how total, how good are you willing to be, no matter
what is required of you?
How willingly will you accept punishment, deserved or

not. Tell M why s/he will be delighted to use you rather
than just selling you or ignoring you.
Confess your failings.
Where is your willingness less than total? Which sexual

techniques are you not good at? In which ways are you
sexually inexperienced? Which aspects or parts of your
body are you ashamed of? Which other failings do you
expect M should be stern about?
Expose your strategies.
Presumably you want this scene to be as deep, as total

and as complete as possible. Your basic position, your
true alignment, is “for” it. Disarm yourself completely of
your defences before the scene by being honest in your
petition.
Describe your habits of avoidance and protection. Do

you distract yourself or M with acting, with performance?
Do you become stupid, sulky or otherwise uncooperative
when pressured by authority? Do you numb out under
pressure and go to your happy place?
What does your misbehaviour look like? Tell M how you

might be uncooperative, and which kinds of punishment
or threat will work quickly and efficiently with you.
Use the opportunity for confession, penance and

atonement.
Confess the lusts and desires in yourself that you judge

as shameful and humiliating. Comment on which parts
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of your body deserve, crave or fear which kinds of

treatment.
If there is a quality of sin, in the Catholic sense of the word,

to your eroticism, make your petition an opportunity for
confession and your scene an exercise in opening to and
fully feeling every nuance of your atonement.
Have fun.
Beloved slave, it can look a little strange, but this

exploration into the truth of sex, love and power can be
a lot of fun. State as clearly as possible what will make it
as bad (good!) for you as it can be.
You should (have to) masturbate several times in the

course of writing your petition.
If writing your petition is not that hot for you, consider

rather exploring an area of eroticism that is more
immediate for you.
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Anal sex
This is not on everybody’s erotic agenda, but for many

of us, it is (even outside of hip hop circles) an important
area of interest.
If your own, or another’s anus is not fascinating and

alluring to you, just skip this section … really.
Anal penetration in some form or other is very often at

the centre of fantasies of being forced to submission.
The anus is where anxieties and tensions at survival level
are held. It is, quite literally, the centre of vulnerability.
All satoris of deep submission are valuable for a seeker.

One day, we will all have to submit to death.
In the process of dying, we will have to feel the loss of

everything we are attached to, the hurt of everything
we have left unexpressed and the sadness of every
opportunity we have missed.
Tantrikas aim to manage this completion before the

physical death of the body.
Being penetrated anally can take you into and through

to the other side of feelings like hopelessness, despair,
abandonment, worthlessness and defeat.
If it so happens that you find yourself the penetrator,

be ready for the beloved to move through some intense
and perhaps even unpleasant and fearful feelings and
memories. Tears should be expected and welcomed if
they flow.
Do not stop penetration unless the beloved asks you to

stop. Do hold the beloved close and comfortingly. Do let
your tears flow in empathy, if that happens. Do let your
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breath be heard and do remind the beloved to breathe

with sound if they forget.
It is often not even necessary to actually penetrate the

anus to give it sufficient sensation to have these dramatic
effects.
A unisex technique for anal non-penetration
Place the dry pad of the thumb flat and firmly on the
anus, covering it. Apply a little pressure and twist it a few
degrees each way. Set a slow rhythm. Gradually increase
the angle of the twist by the sevens count. When your
thumb slips slightly, take that as maximum intensity. Go
back then to twisting by a small angle and increase it
gradually – repeat.
Use gentle and subtle movement to encourage relaxation

and openness. If you feel the anus relax and open, press
slightly into it with the pad of your thumb and slowly
massage around the inside of the outer ring muscle.
This method can produce a very strong sensation of
penetration.
A technique specifically for a woman’s body
Gently enter the lower (towards the anus) area of the

yoni with the right thumb, pad down. Settle the thumb,
well lubricated, as deep as it goes on the lower wall of the
yoni with very light pressure. Curl the forefinger until it
touches her anus, and gently pinch and squeeze around
the ring muscle which you should be able to feel quite
clearly between finger and thumb. By varying the pressure
(sevens count) encourage relaxation and opening.
When you feel the anus relax and open, straighten your
forefinger so that it lies over and past the anus. Starting
at the junction of thumb and palm, squeeze her perineum
(the line between yoni and anus) very gently from inside
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and outside. Squeeze the lower wall of the yoni and the
anus between the base of the thumb and the base of the
forefinger. Bring thumb and finger closer, so that the
direction of the squeezing is into her body. You should
be able to feel the walls of the anal passage pressed flat
between your finger and thumb. Massage it gently but
steadily, keeping the waves of pressure moving in an
inward direction.
Some will find these techniques sufficient and actual

penetration unnecessary. If someone does not know
what you are doing they will probably not believe that
you did not actually penetrate their anus.
Penetration
If there is a lot of eroticism connected to the anus, if it is a

really strong feature in the fantasy, these techniques may
be insufficient. Buy some condoms, perhaps disposable
examination gloves and some glycerine-based (oil-free)
lubricant.
Feelings like revulsion, squeamishness, disgust and fear

may be mixed with the erotic feelings. Do not ignore or
resist them. Whatever is associated with the erotic is best
accepted and explored.
You may have judgements about the naturalness of it.

Stop that nonsense right away. Nature is not only wilder
and kinkier than you imagine, it is wilder and kinkier
than you can imagine.
Meat eaters should consider going vegetarian … no eggs

or dairy vegetarian, for a week or two before attempting
anal sex in the passive role. Lots of fruit and vegetables.
Either that or the highly recommended ten-day brown
rice fast.
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If your last crap was sludge, not well-formed and basically

in one piece, forget anal sex for right now. Sorry, but it
had to be said.
Good health and excellent personal hygiene are of course

essential.
Be a bit intelligent about what you use for penetration.

Nothing at all sharp, ever. Cut flower stems, for example
are a very bad idea indeed, no matter how pretty your
beloved might look with a rose in his bum. Wooden
implements might have or develop splinters. Anything
with a rough surface is not suitable either.
Even if you are pretty sure an object is harmless, consider

putting it into a condom for safety and easy cleaning.
Putting a condom on a sharp or rough thing does not
make it safe.
Always be slow and steady with anal stimulation. The

anus is very sensitive and is wired with a seemingly
disproportionate profusion of nerves. A feeling of really
massive penetration can generally be induced by just a
slight stretching with two fingertips.
The anus is likely to be tight and resistant at first, no

matter how erotic is it for the beloved. Work with it gently
and teasingly until you feel it relax and open before
carefully and gently attempting any penetration.
Use the natural lubricants of your bodies in preference

to oils or glycerine lubricants. I have heard of a disease
transmission study in a prison that confirms this
wisdom.
If a woman is lying on her back, her yoni naturally shares

its lubrication with her anus. It is also easy to collect
lubricant from the yoni on the fingers for use elsewhere.
Saliva is also a fine lubricant. Using the tongue to insert
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saliva into the anus before penetration is the historically,

traditionally, classically correct method.
This venerable technique has other advantages. At the

level of sensation and response, it is very effective at
getting the anus to relax and open. At the level of fantasy
and eroticism, it is extremely powerful and evocative.
If anilingus seems to be scary, or too much of a challenge

to your immune system, please consider this: If your
mouth is repelled or endangered, surely your lingam, or
even your fingers should not get involved either.
A general good health guideline: If anything is not

delicious to your mouth, it should on no account be
allowed anywhere near your genitals.
Remember that anything that has been used to penetrate

an anus should not be used to penetrate a yoni until it
has been thoroughly washed.
Even with a long-term partner and perfect hygiene, a

condom is probably a good idea, preferably one without
silicone lubricant. Silicone lubricant can cause lesions in
the mucous membranes, weakening their resistance to
infection.
Always, always, always be guided by your eroticism in

your choices of what you do and how you do it. If it is not
a significant turn-on for you … rather explore whatever
is!
If you have not explored anal penetration with yourself,

you probably should do that before trying it with someone
else. If you haven’t done this, and penetrate another
– you will not have developed an awareness of what is
safe, how to proceed, or even what feels good. If you
have not explored this with yourself, and get penetrated
by someone else, you may not know when it is time to
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relax and open, and when it is time to scream for better

lubrication.
Pleasure is important. Often, the key to revisiting and

releasing old trauma is to encourage the beloved to
become aware of an intrinsically pleasurable aspect of
what they found traumatic.
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Erotic asphyxia
Probably less popular than anal sex and certainly more

dangerous, this practice has killed a lot of people,
including some of our favourite Hollywood personalities
and rock stars. Officially, the deadly accident associated
with it is called Fatal Autoerotic Asphyxia.
Around this particular kink, psychologists and other

medical professionals can get quite unreasonably
alarmist. They sometimes exhibit a tendency to over-
react and look to heavy chemical intervention or even
(no, I am not kidding) forms of castration as a cure.
This is because the only cases they encounter are solo

players for whom things have gone horribly wrong.
Fatally wrong. It is hard for medical professionals to be
rational around this topic. Be patient with them – rather
than being their patient.
There is now greater awareness that this is not such an

unusual practice. There is a perception too, also probably
on account of celebrity deaths, that it is hideously kinky
… right out there, on the fringe.
And it really is dangerous, the way many do it.
By messing with your air supply and your carotid arteries

you are risking a few seconds, even a few minutes, of
unconsciousness.
The most important thing to consider is: What will happen

to your body if you pass out?
If passing out means you will be strangled to death … you

clearly have not thought things through with sufficient
rigour.
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Slipknots that you can pull loose, or a knife to cut the

plastic bag might seem to offer safety, but for many, it
turns out that they do not.
The reason is that you can lose consciousness suddenly

from pressure on your carotid arteries. Suddenly. Without
any warning. Without first running at all short of air.
Without the build-up of carbon dioxide first triggering
strong urges to breathe. Suddenly.
Here is a safety hint which includes the bonus side-effect

of giving your abdominal muscles an enviable six-pack
look: Tie the rope, silken cord, chain or whatever you are
using across the bed. Make it slack, but by all means,
secure the ends firmly.
If you lie on your back, on top of the bed, you should

be able to fit your head comfortably under the rope.
Do a partial sit-up (tummy crunch) to press your throat
against the rope. Play with that pressure while enjoying
yourself.
Passing out, falling back and landing on a soft bed is

fairly safe.
Mixing social drugs, particularly alcohol, with this

practice is a very bad idea indeed.
If you find this practice highly erotic, the best way to play
with it is of course with a partner. Have the beloved sit
astride you and place their hands on your throat without
squeezing. Press your throat up against your lover’s
hands in self-regulation.
When this eroticism is explored with awareness, expect

memories of abuse, struggle, even of your birth. It can
also be associated with power, domination and control.
Parents do occasionally find it necessary or useful to
grab or hold a child by the neck.
287
If your urge to experience this practice is more about

exploring the experience of unconsciousness, and not
actually erotic for you to a greatly significant degree,
consider googling local practitioners of rebirthing,
holotropic breathwork or something similar.
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Golden showers
Many regard this as extreme because they believe it is

dangerous. It is not. The urine of a healthy person is
more or less filtered blood, and fairly harmless. Many
cultures have used urine (though usually babies’ urine)
as a medication for a range of ailments.
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Massive penetration and

fisting
These scary-to-behold practices are not as dangerous or

as painful as they can appear, and do not, of course,
approach the stress to the body of, for example, giving
birth.
Like most anal eroticism, submission is usually the

key element. Very often the dildo or hand is more a
psychologically important element than a physical
challenge to capacity.
If strong sensation, stretching and perhaps a little pain

is what your eroticism seems to demand, this can be felt
without risking damage.
Go slowly. Very slowly. The sensation of penetration

is enhanced if increased gradually. Many small, slow
increases in penetration are far more evocative than a
few faster and more painful ones.
Take care of your body and pay special attention to

lubrication.
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Note 8
Meditation
Four essential meditations
Osho’s Dynamic Meditation challenges and purges

seriousness, rigidity, numbness, and the anger
beneath.
Atisha’s Heart Meditation has at some point been

absolutely essential for all students of this school. It
addresses the fear and pain that is revealed when anger
has been purged.
Osho’s Kundalini Meditation enlivens the body and

encourages fluidity and acceptance of life’s raw power.
It raises the libido (for a few days) and helps sleep to be
restful and deep.
Siddhartha Gautama’s Death Meditation can evoke deep

satori, revealing essential truths about the nature of
existence and being. It is especially helpful in times of
loneliness.
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Osho’s Dynamic Meditation
The best way to learn this valuable technique is with

other people. Seek out an Osho centre, or sanyassins
doing this meditation near you. Osho.com has links to
meditation centres worldwide. It also has instructions
and video demonstrations of the five stages. The music
is readily available online.
The five stages are timed with the music and total one
hour.
Stage 1: Chaotically timed breathing, fast, through the

nostrils, using the movement of the arms and body as
a bellows. It is important to do this stage with as much
intensity as you can manage.
Stage 2: Catharsis. Madness. Whatever form it takes,

just collapse into the chaos of your mind, throwing out
its current state of chaos, whatever that looks like. If it
happens that you are purging anger, hit pillows rather
than the floor. Anything goes, except hurting yourself.
Stage 3: Jumping, not necessarily high. Just enough to

feel a bump from your heels, up your spine. Throw your
arms up and make the sound “Hoo” on impact. Let the
impact of your heels drive the sound through your throat,
which is opened upward. The “Hoo” (an energising chant/
mantra) will sound something like the first part of an
American military hooah.
Stage 4: Stop and stand as you are. Enjoy the silence.

Stand in more or less the position you stopped in, but
not frozen, not stressing the body.
Stage 5: Dance gently back to life and into your world.
I recommend that you close your eyes throughout.
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In stage 2, there are no rules, apart from not interacting

with others. Do not hold any constraint on yourself beyond
that and not harming your body. Sometimes clothes get
thrown off, and it can be very noisy. It is polite to warn
the neighbours that you are, for example, going to be
watching a horror movie at high volume.
When doing the Dynamic Meditation in a group: If you

find in the second stage that you are unable or unwilling
to let go into your catharsis, do make sure that you throw
out some energy you are feeling, whatever it may be.
Remind yourself that you are a mammal living a tame

life. Try at least to growl and roar. It is very important
that you purge something because everyone in the space
is purging the resentments, tensions and the madness of
their civilised lives.
You do not want to be receiving any of that, and your

protection from it is to purge too.
If, after a few minutes, you do not seem to have anything

to work with, get out of the room. Come back in when
stage 3 starts.
Dynamic Meditation is far easier if the first stage is

done with great strength and intensity. I will repeat that.
Dynamic Meditation is far easier if the first stage is done
with great strength and intensity.
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The Heart Meditation of

Master Atisha (Bless you.)
This practice is most accessible when you are hurting,

especially when you are hurting with emotional pain.
When your pain has been intense enough for long enough
that you feel sharp pain in the centre of your sternum,
this practice is essential.
Sit comfortably, or lie down. It can help to touch the

centre of the chest to draw your attention to that area of
the body and the sensation of pain.
Close your eyes, get in touch with the pain, open to it

and submit to the fact that you feel it.
Breathe in, drawing the sensation of hurt directly into the

heart centre. Accept it. Be willing to be wounded by it, to
suffer its full effects right now. Welcome it.
Breathing in through an open mouth can help the breath

to be felt at the heart.
It can take a few inhalations, a lot of feeling and perhaps

some tears before you feel you have managed to take
the hurt in.
When an inhalation has a feeling of completeness – that

that particular hurt has been accepted and felt in its
fullness – breathe out from your heart centre.
Repeat this cycle, with the emphasis on the inhalation

on accepting and allowing whatever hurts to just hurt,
as much as it needs to. Alternate this with exhaling from
the heart, which you will most likely feel as warm, loving
and giving.
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It can happen that each inhalation brings in pain and hurt

and each exhalation returns love, or it may take a few
inhalations and a few exhalations in turn.
When breathing pain in, draw it into your heart from

your heart at first. When that pain seems to have eased,
draw pain into your heart from your whole body. If you
continue for long enough and take the feelings in willingly
enough, you may come to feel that all current hurt in the
body has been felt and released as love.
At this point, seldom before half an hour into the practice

for a beginner, draw in all hurt, all pain, all forms of
suffering that your awareness can reach. Just the general
mass vibe of suffering from any cause or none. Breathe
it into your heart centre and breathe back love and
compassion.
An hour to two is usually the ideal amount of time for

this meditation. Marathon sessions, even through an
entire night may be suitable too, especially at times of
intense suffering and distress for you personally, or for
the planet at large.
The development of this practice is attributed to Master

Atisha who said:
“As you breathe in, take in and accept all the sadness,
pain, and negativity of the whole world, including
yourself, and absorb it into your heart. As you breathe
out, pour out all your joy and bliss; bless the whole of
existence.”
This is a powerful practice. Once you get comfortable

in the technique, by all means adapt it to suit yourself.
Some practice it while walking, for example. Just do
respect two rules:
Rule 1: Start with your own hurt. Start with the pain in
your heart, then gradually reach outward through your
296
body, accepting and feeling all current suffering. First

you, thoroughly, before reaching out.
Rule 2: You may find the movement of energy in this

meditation very palpable, easy to direct and guide,
particularly if you have experience in martial arts,
intuitive massage, reiki, magick, chi-gung, Taoist or
other practices which can activate/enable perception of
subtle-body energies. Do not direct the energy. Do not
personalise it – do not direct where you draw hurt and
suffering from and do not direct where it goes either.
Just let the love return to existence, unconditionally.
If you break the rules, intense pain in the sternum is the

usual physical consequence. There is one medicine for
this pain: this practice. When I broke this rule, it took
a lot of Heart Meditation, practiced with sincerity and
honesty, pretty much daily, for a month or so before I
felt an improvement. It was several months before I felt
fully recovered.
297
Osho’s Kundalini Meditation
As with Dynamic Meditation, the best way to learn this

valuable technique is with other people. Find detailed
information and the music at www.osho.com.
The four stages are timed with the music and total one
hour.
Stage 1: Stand with your legs shoulder-width apart,

bend the knees slightly. Let your legs shake. Let the
shaking spread through your relaxed body. Sometimes,
the shaking can become very intense, sometimes you
can relax into it and sometimes it may feel orgasmic.
However it is, accept it and keep the shaking going.
Stage 2: Dance. With your eyes closed or open. Let your

dance be an expression of the (probably considerable)
energy within you. Dance for yourself, and not with
anyone else. Celebrate your own experience.
Stage 3: Stand or sit, eyes closed.
Stage 4: Lie down flat on your back and relax completely

in silence. Yoga practitioners know this as the Corpse
Asana.
298
Siddhartha Gautama’s Death

Meditation
Like Atisha’s Heart Meditation, this technique is simple

but extremely powerful.
Start by sitting with your eyes open. Watch your breath

and let it become slower and deeper.
When your breath is comfortably deep and slow, close

your eyes as you breathe out and open them as you
breathe in.
Establish this as a rhythm. Look outward as the inhalation

fills your body. Look inward as you exhale.
While you inhale, let the feeling of the body becoming

full give a little pressure, a little support to your outward
gaze. As you exhale, let the feeling of increasing
emptiness in the body draw you inward.
After a while, opening your eyes will become a limitation

on your outward gaze. Keep your eyes closed, and let
your outward (inhaling) gaze become as far-feeling as it
can.
Lie back, flat on your back.
Keep this pendulum swinging, this feeling of outward

and inward motion going. Increase it as you can.
If you need an agenda, let it be to work the technique

strongly enough to discover the final point of in and the
maximum extent of out.
A half hour is the minimum time I suggest. Like Heart

Meditation, this is a practice that you will probably use
a lot.
299
It is good for bedtime, and pleasant to fall asleep in.

By all means use it or Heart Meditation when suffering
insomnia.
300
Note 9
Chakras and kundalini

Chakras
The energy that is felt at the chakras, and the sense with
which we detect it is completely natural, but latent or
underdeveloped in most of us.
The nearest most people come to being aware of this

sense is when someone hugs or touches them – more is
felt and more is experienced than changes in heat and
pressure can account for.
The sensory mechanism that responds to the subtle

energies of the body awakens quite naturally when
obstacles to its perception are removed.
At first, the newly perceived sense information maps

into some combination of visual, auditory and touch
experience. As the sense becomes more familiar, the
brain learns to map and render it as a sense in its own
right.
This is why chakras are usually described and illustrated

as having colours, shapes and sounds.
The chakras are the first feature detected, in much the

same way that water is seen by its ripples. They are the
places in the body where the energy of life is most easily
noticed.
The experience of energy flowing or being constricted

at the chakras is remembered in our language. This
knowledge is just not acknowledged or studied much in
our culture.
When the need to communicate ‘something difficult’

occurs, we may feel a tension or obstruction in the throat.
We say that it takes guts to face our enemies. We know
there are things we cannot stomach. We open our hearts
in love and harden them in rejection.
302
Our nervous system is electrical and chakras are

transformers. They balance flow volume (analogous to
amperes) with pressure (analogous to voltage).
Energy moves upward through the body. Each chakra

modifies the energy, expresses it and passes it on to the
next one. If more energy passes through a chakra than it
can cope with, it is discharged in self-protection.
Tantrikas pay attention to the condition of their chakras

and are interested in having them flow as freely as
possible. Allowing the energy of life as such to flow and
express through one’s body makes one more available to
being lived by existence.
303
Root chakra
Felt more or less in the area of the PC (Kegel) muscles.

Centred in the perineum.
It opens and closes on the basis of survival.
Pair bonding is felt most acutely at the root chakra. We

find our reason for living in the other. We say we would
die without them. Some of us die for love, some of us
kill for it.
When we have resistance in this chakra, it most usually

has to do with fears around survival which we have
suppressed. When it is seriously blocked or constricted,
very little energy can build before the release of orgasm
becomes imperative.
It can be a very minimal orgasm – a genital sneeze. Men

almost always notice it because it is usually ejaculatory.
Women sometimes notice it as a momentary deep tremor
and a sudden end to arousal.
The root chakra is in its happiest condition when one’s

fears of death have been faced and accepted.
The root chakra is the generator, the engine room, of our

energy system. When it runs strongly, it builds energy
that reaches upward to the other chakras or finds wild
and explosive release.
To allow energy through your root chakra is to accept all

your feelings about your physical vulnerability and the
inevitability of your death.
304
Belly chakra
Located above the genitals, a couple of inches below the

navel.
This chakra is noticed around tribal issues, particularly

status-advancement and belonging.
It can become constricted by a judgement of the lover’s

inappropriateness and is obstructed by fears of damage
to one’s reputation.
It can be fuelled by striving to impress a lover, especially

with the hope of making a strong impression, and being
quietly talked about. Rating one’s lovers, or one’s own
performance as a lover, on a score chart of orgasmic
intensity and frequency is typical of second-chakra sex.
The belly chakra challenges us to claim our autonomy,

to claim our individual path, free of tribal constraints.
When we declare ourselves to be a ‘tribe of one’ and take
personal responsibility for our own preferences, habits,
secrets and beliefs, it opens.
When it is open, lovemaking feels more co-operative and

more sharing than root chakra sex. Orgasms are less
depleting, and much higher intensities of energy can be
experienced.
Strong energies at this chakra can evoke satori of one’s

deep connection and empathy with all of existence.
305
Stomach chakra
This nerve cluster is known in the West as the solar

plexus. It is the soft spot just below and slightly under
the sternum.
It is the centre at which we feel aesthetic issues:

beauty and ugliness, wonder and horror, attraction and
revulsion.
It opens or closes depending on the aesthetic judgements

we make about our own body, the lover’s body, the lover’s
artistry, eloquence, elegance, refined taste in decor, the
story of the lovemaking occasion and the clothing and
fashion accessories involved.
When energy is obstructed at this third chakra, sex may

be motivated by need or compulsion, but not by delight.
The challenge of the stomach chakra is to expand one’s

range of aesthetic appreciation. Breaking the confines
of culturally defined aesthetics and looking deeper for
beauty itself is recommended.
When orgasmic energies reach to the stomach, feelings

of fondness and an urge to deep intimacy arise. Satori
revealing the intrinsic beauty of existence can occur.
306
Heart chakra
In the centre of the chest.
The heart is the centre at which we feel love. Love that

is undisturbed by a fart (aesthetic), forgetting a birthday
(tribal) or risk (survival). Love that is direct, honest, real
and, in full expression, unconditional.
When the heart chakra is closed, life is felt to lack rasa

(juiciness). It hurts when energy reaches it.
The heart chakra challenges us to accept the hurts of

life without reservation. It is the gateway to bliss, the
synthesis of existential agony and ecstasy.
When the energy of life flows through the heart,

unobstructed by our aesthetic, tribal or survival concerns,
we become capable of truly loving and being loved.
307
Chakras above the heart
When strong energy reaches the heart, it fuels the higher

chakras. They are not usually obstructed because very
little energy has ever reached them from below.
Until energy reaches them from below, they are supplied

with and express the far less substantial energy generated
by the surface level of mind: the ego.
When substantial energy reaches them they open quite

naturally and become the flowering of a fully-human
being.
308
Throat chakra
The throat expresses through word, song and sound.

When powered by the brain, it may exhibit skill, even
masterful skill, but a contrived, trained quality is usually
apparent.
When energy reaches it from the heart, the expression

is authentic.
309
Third eye
Located at the bindi spot on the forehead between the

eyes.
Running on its own energy, it is a focus of concentration

and a source of imagination.
When the energy of life flows up and through it, it enables

unusual degrees of perception.
310
Crown chakra
The crown chakra is almost outside the body at the top

of the head.
It connects us to existence-as-consciousness, commonly

called God.
Usually in the second year of life the fontanelle closes.

This physical change is concurrent with the start of our
ego development and individuation.
Becoming clear enough so that energy can reach the

crown is the most a tantrika can do. It is the nearest we
can come to the condition called divine by what seems to
be our own effort.
When our energy flows unobstructed to the crown, we

become available to being lived by existence itself.
311
Kundalini
Kundalini energy is also known as the shakes and the

tremors. Its name refers to the kund (a vessel or yoni),
from which the English word ‘cunt’ derives. It refers to
energy which originates in the bowl, the vessel, of our
hips and sacrum.
As we clear the obstacles of our ego and learn to open

our chakras, the current of energy in our body gains
momentum and increases. This brings greater pressure
to bear on any obstructions that remain.
A partially blocked pipe, or one too narrow for the

pressure applied to it, will often develop an alarming
vibration, creaking, groaning or shuddering when a tap
is opened.
Almost-open chakras can create severe turbulence in the

flow of strong energy through the nerves of the body.
This can feel like electric shocks in the lower spine
and manifest as a physical shaking that is difficult or
impossible to control.
It seldom lasts long or does any damage. The quickest

way to move through it is to allow the shaking to happen
without restriction.
When all the chakras are unrestricted, the flow of energy

moves towards the spine. A second shaking phase takes
place as the energy settles into the spinal channel, which
is called the shushumna or column of light in some
traditions. This phase of shaking is less startling, less
physically severe and has a smoother, more regular
frequency.
Afterward, energy is no longer cultivated at the root

chakra but flows smoothly through the spinal channel.
312
Energy from this channel can be drawn to and then

expressed from any chakra.
The ability to access and use this core energy is more or

less a defining characteristic of a dakini or an enlightened
person.
End of Swami’s notes.
313
Thanks and
acknowledgements
Carl Sagan once said that to make apple pie from scratch, one
would first have to create the entire universe.
I thank the whole of existence for making this book possible, and
for the wonderful people who have been involved, especially:
Dakinis of the Advait Tantra School: Crystal, Shakti, Shekina,

Shima and Wendy, who requested its creation and endured many
rough drafts of the early work.
My daughter Alia, who contributed an example of her mind-

processing work to the book and a lot of artwork, almost none of
which was eventually used.
The forty or so people who read the book in the rough and
provided many good suggestions and much encouragement.
Richard O’Brien and everyone involved in the production of any

Rocky Horror Show or screening of the movie. You have kept a
light of awareness going for many who might otherwise have lost
their way.
Rocky Horror Tantra
online
Visit www.rockyhorrortantra.com to find discussions about the

book, the audio book and ongoing additions to Swami’s Notes.
The Advait Tantra School
The Advait Tantra School was founded by Rahasya and his first
students in 2002.
Based in South Africa, half-way between Europe and India by

the old trade routes, teachers of the school have travelled widely
eastward and westward, making the deepest experiential lessons
of Tantra available to many.
The teaching modalities of the school include individual sessions,

group work, intensive residential retreats and tantric practitioner
training.
Other projects of the school include the highly acclaimed tantric

workbook Sexual Awakening for Women by Dakini Shakti Mari
Malan and Dakini Shima’s film project, Lalla the Buddha.
Further information can be found at the school’s website:
www.advaittantra.com
Sexual Awakening for
Women
Dakini Shakti Mari Malan, who holds a doctorate in anthropology,

has written and produced a truly exceptional book. It is a deep and
thorough experiential guide for women on or wanting to benefit
from the lessons of the tantric path.
Available from bookshops, amazon.com and shakti.co.za.

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ADVAIT Tantra SCHOOL

The Rocky Horror Tantra Book

Thanks and acknowledgements 314

I give you permission to explore in your life even that

The purpose and intent of Tantra

I would like, if I may, to take you on a strange journey.

The mobile phone buzzed on the bedside table.

I seemed to float up softly, drifting up and through where my

The phone buzzed again.

I felt the softness of old cotton and the deep relaxation of my

The phone buzzed again. I reached for it and opened my eyes.

“Hi Wendy,” I said, as brightly as I could manage. The little screen

“Yes, plenty of sleep. I am happy to be up.” My bladder informed

“At home. Not long.”

“Um …” I shook sleepiness from my head and pushed harder

I thought a moment while my feet searched for a way around the

“I am out of green tea.”

“I will buy some. Anything else?”

She paused, just very briefly. “Very funny.”

otherwise allegedly happy chickens. The cat lapped contentedly at

I washed my plate. The cat moved outside and sprawled in the

I poured myself a glass of orange juice, grabbed a cushion and

“Late night?” Wendy asked.

“Yes. Writing. Not very late though.”

“You look …” She elbowed herself up to look at me. “Well … not

“Training Yogini Janet again?”

“Yes. She is coming along well. I think you may be surprised.”

“We have had quite a few …”

“Well, she has the moves down. Improv not bad.”

“But not good yet.”

“Well, you can’t expect …”

“Yes, Swami, but she is not going to do an internship. She is having

“I was hoping she would change her mind.”

“Scary thought.” I chuckled. “What are you working on with

“Jade egg exercises, general life stuff and some strategy.”

“Strategy, not exterior and self-honesty?” I said, a little surprised.

“With their teachings then, she could make considerable

“I said it was regrettable …”

“But acceptable. I remember, from when I was still ruining them.”

“You didn’t ruin anyone. You were a sweetie-darling.”

“Oh come on, Swami. I ruined at least two for sure.”

I grinned. “K and L certainly had a lot of trouble but they are

She laughed, then looked serious. “I regressed them years, Swami.

She completed the phrase for me. “… on shit.”

“Yes. And when they proved incapable of meeting the challenge

I interrupted her. She tolerates a little of that, sometimes. “Your

“Well, I may have actually, a bit …”

I interrupted her again. “Not enough to damage them. Your agenda

“My agenda, no … but I did take some conveniences, and some

“No matter,” I persisted. “Certainly they were in trouble with you

“I suppose.” The smile seemed to be fading.

“You let them go, catch and release style, as cleanly, as

“That is definitely pushing it, Swami.”

“You even gave them the option of slipping the hook.”