Tantra says yes to life. It is not a belief or a faith but a way of living and acting. On this path, pleasure, vision, and ecstasy are celebrated rather than repressed. The Tantric path encompasses beauty, sensitivity, and exhilaration through eating, drinking, tasting, smelling, touching. It embraces and enhances all forms of creative expression, such as movement and dance, massage, martial arts, the fine arts, healing, and music. Through experiencing and glorying in the delights of the body, the body becomes a temple in which you experience the sacred. It becomes a doorway to spiritual evolution.

People who practice Tantra are called Tantrikas. They view sexual energy as a divine, all-encompassing life force that sleeps within the individual, permeates the universe, and affects everything we do from birth to death. As sexual beings, we have the ability to raise that energy within ourselves and use it to directly experience alternate or mystical states of consciousness. In effect, we become "gods" and "goddesses," our bodies transformed into temples of male and female divinity.

As you follow the Tantric path, you will learn new ways to open, develop, and refine your senses. These techniques are part of the ancient science of Tantric Yoga, the spiritual discipline that works directly with sexual energy. They include awareness exercises that involve focusing attention on all the sensations that are available to you moment by moment. In the beginning, techniques are helpful because your mind, body, and past experience often interfere with your awareness and ability to love. Who you think you are and how you think you should be often hampers your freedom to change. So the structure of a discipline is useful because it helps you move out of old mental, emotional, and physical habits that restrict your aliveness. But in the end, the ultimate form is no form.The ultimate technique is spontaneity.

from the book Sacred Sex