In this video Dr. Robert Svoboda talks about what Tantra is and isn’t, and what he learned about this transformational, non-sectarian way of experiencing Reality from his mentor, the Aghori Vimalananda.
People in the West who have heard of Tantra usually equate it with sex. People in India who have heard of Tantra usually equate it with black magic. Both have come close to what Tantra is, and both are wrong.
Tantra is an expression of personal power, which is also what sex is. Most people who are involved in sex, however, do not understand all the implications of the results they receive when they employ this powerful energy.
Black magic is all about achieving results, and most people who think about black magic do not understand that, in order to get it to work – or to get any kind of magic to work – you have to have a strong amount of focus and personal power.
According to my mentor, the Aghori Vimalananda, Tantra is the science of personality because personhood, individuality, is what is most characteristic of individuals. Maintaining your individuality is possible only if you have a strong sense of self, if you have strong energy identifying with yourself.
What that self is, of course, is not always evident to people who believe that they are individuals. All too often, we are possessed by ideas, internet memes, and emotions, and sometimes literally possessed by ancestors, dead humans, or other ethereal beings. Most people do not have the ability to focus their energy strongly toward achieving very specific results. Often, individuals experience that kind of focus only in the context of the sex act. Tantra is about understanding that we have this potential as individuals.
That potential is provided to us by the human species so that we can experiment with what it means to exist as an individual human in a particular time and place, and try to discover the best way to live in that context.
What we usually do not take advantage of as individuals is the understanding that we can gather our energy by controlling our sense organs and not letting our personal power, or śakti, flow out into the environment for no benefit. We can concentrate that energy, get rid of the things that are possessing us, and direct our attention toward achieving particular results.
My mentor, the Aghori Vimalananda, believed that by accumulating śakti and directing it in a particular way, we were able to achieve our best possible achievements as human beings. Tantra is not sectarian.
There are Hindu Tantras, Buddhist Tantras, and Jain Tantras. There is no reason why there could not be a Christian or Muslim Tantra as well. Tantra is about how to transform yourself, how to use this energy to transform yourself so that you can achieve a particular kind of result, the result that you find most important and desirable for you.
As my mentor always emphasized, the ideal result one should focus toward is an increased and enhanced alignment with the divine. That is the ultimate purpose of Tantra. Whatever method you may employ, and whatever experiments you may perform in the context of the procedures you define as your personal way of creating those experiments as part of your experience of being an individual, they should ultimately be directed toward the divine.