Tantra And The Pursuit of Happiness

“That is happiness; to be dissolved into something completely great.”
-   Willa Cather (American novelist)

There is a certain something that everyone wants, consciously or unconsciously; there is a certain something that is the ultimate goal of every soul, whether they know it or not. But nobody seems to give it the kind of importance that it deserves. Few understand it, even fewer know how to go about getting it. That is what I am going to address now, in this article … in pursuit of happiness.

Whenever I ask people what happiness means to them, they hum and haw a while before telling me a number of things – more money, a bigger house, a sexy wife, an influential husband, the latest sports car, the latest Jimmy Choo, more parties, more drinking – all this and more defines happiness to the average person.

And in this pursuit of happiness, people race. They race against time to make it for that meeting, they race against the Jones to keep up a lavish lifestyle, they race against life itself, trying to make more out of it than necessary. To use a double cliché, one really must take time out from the rat race to smell the good ol’ roses. Does happiness really mean partying all night, every night and getting high and blowing up pots of money on designer clothing? No, I say.

I have and always will maintain that happiness is a state of mind – you can be happy no matter what your situation in life, if you choose to be happy. This is a secret most people do not realize: that happiness does not come to you, you can call upon it whenever you choose to. Happiness does not simply happen, you have to make it happen. Those who believe otherwise have allowed society, peer pressure or their own misgivings to delude them.

Happiness has nothing to do with what you own, which religion you follow, which community you are from, which country you are from, whether you believe in God or not, whether you believe in a higher force or not – at the end of the day you are responsible for your actions and you choose to be anything you want.

As Charles Schulz, the creator of the popular Peanuts comic strip, famously said, “My life has no purpose, no direction, no aim, no meaning, and yet I’m happy. I can’t figure it out. What am I doing right?” What most people fail to realize is that being happy is a continuous process; it does not stay with you without your effort in maintaining it. And no, you do not need to run after more money or party or have sex like a maniac.

Based on my detailed studies of the Vedic scriptures, I have come to understand and believe that sexual pleasure is the highest form of pleasure that can be achieved in the tangible, material world that we know of today. Tantra, too, categorically states that sexual pleasure is the ultimate level of happiness that the physical form can attain. It is the last bastion of happiness for the earthly body.

However, having continuous sex with multiple partners to satisfy a strong drive without the right kind of awareness and expertise will severely damage one’s psyche… maybe even to the extent that one requires psychiatric help. This is because the mind is far more expansive than the body; while the mind hungers for more, the body cannot keep up.

 This is why the mind has to have the right level of consciousness. Unfortunately, today everyone has lost sight of that fact. The promise of happiness be damned, it doesn’t seem to be the bigger of the two, or rather, most have mistakenly identified frequent sex with happiness, whether it is meaningful or not.

All over the world societies have become more permissible and people are more and more blatant about sex, picking it up and using it like a commodity without value. There is no real significance left in it anymore. It is like chasing a rainbow to find the pot of gold at the end of it, when, in reality, the rainbow is nothing more than the mind’s perception. It is not really there, so what can one get out of chasing it?

That is what sex has been turned into today – an empty promise. You have the power to see through that promise. I’m sure that you are beginning to understand that this is a matter that deserves deep thought.

Tantra states that sexual pleasure is the highest form of pleasure man in his physical state can achieve. I must add that, attraction is an inescapable fact of life. A beautiful flower, a beautiful landscape, a beautiful sunset, a beautiful man or a beautiful woman – each evokes a certain sense of attraction within one’s heart. Whatever you do, you should follow it through right to its essence, its essential core, and this action, this effort alone, is the true pursuit of real happiness.

Just as you should be able to pick the flower you like or take a picture of the sunset that holds you spellbound, the person you feel passion tinged with romance for must also reciprocate those feelings, and if you already have that special someone, you would want your relationship to grow in a positive direction.

Anyone would want their feelings to be mutual. If you like a flower, you’d want to take it home. If you like a sunset, you want to capture it on film. If you love a person, you’d want to be with that person all the time. Tantra has always advocated balance and harmony. When two people get together too, there should be a balance.

There are so-called spiritual ‘gurus’ and wannabe ‘gurus’ who propound the theory based on their own half-baked knowledge that the more sex you have, the more sexual partners you have, the more your awareness grows. I knew of such a person who liked to project himself as a fountain of true knowledge, the king-pin of such rackets, when glib talk cleverly interspersed with logic was all he had to truly offer.

I choose this moment and this platform to give him a fitting reply. If this theory were true, prostitutes and gigolos would be far more aware and far happier than the rest of us put together, right? Sex without awareness is the lot of prostitutes and gigolos because for them, sex is work, and there can be no true pleasure in the act when it is carried out in the name of work. The proponents of this theory, I believe, are doing what every other marketing agency does – using sex to promote the self in this earthly life. Awareness cannot be brought about by having meaningless sex. Only two people whose levels of consciousness are compatible can dance their way to higher levels through sex.

Tantra advocates the concept of gender as far as it goes in the concept of consciousness. There is the masculine consciousness and then there is the feminine consciousness. In the case of a couple with alternative sexuality, one partner will always have a slightly more masculine consciousness while the other, a feminine one, regardless of their gender. One balances the other and when the two come together in harmony, there can be nothing more fulfilling.

You can never achieve anything without desire. That is what I have learnt, seen, experienced, understood and known. Without desire, nothing is possible at all.

To achieve happiness, one must know some of the divine, mystical secrets Tantra has given to us and I am about to share some of then with you now. I won’t be surprised if you have heard of it, and maybe even experienced it to a certain extent, but I am sure that you hardly understood it.

Chakras – those apparently inexplicable centres in your body that you have heard can heal and empower you. I am now going to introduce you to the Chakras and their original Sanskrit names. Very few know or acknowledge that the true origin of this knowledge of the Chakras comes to us from Tantras.

Chakra is a Sanskrit word that actually means ‘energy wheel’ and Tantra is the only philosophy that has deciphered these esoteric centres of the human body, leaving them crystal clear for us to understand. To activate these Chakras without acknowledging Tantra is almost blasphemous.

Every human being has been gifted with Seven Chakras:

• Muladhara or the Root Chakra
• Swadishtana or Hara Chakra
• Manipura or Solar Plexus
• Anahata or Heart Chakra
• Vishuddha or Throat Chakra
• Agnya or Third Eye Chakra and
• Sahasara or Crown Chakra.

Each of these ‘energy chakras’ has a specific part to play in your development. Unless each of these chakras is activated one by one using special techniques and processes of Tantra, one cannot ascend to the highest level of complete consciousness. From sex to superconsciousness – these Chakras are crucial to this journey; they are absolute, the ultimate pathway to your destination.

These Chakras, when activated, will enable you will become fearless, even in the face of adversity. Even when you’re the proverbial eye of the storm, your inner strength and stability will make you the picture of calm. A true follower of Tantra never denies anything; we accept everything into our lives, and that is what I do as well. We absorb the good; the bad slips away on its own, in good time. There is no need to fight it out.

I hope that I have awakened a fresh perspective in your mind. I know the happiness I speak of is probably not the happiness that you have thought of, rather thought of consciously. I know the path I have outlined is different, unique, something you have never thought of till now. But this happiness is real, this path is true, and that’s what you shall come to realize through your own experience when you are ready for it.

You have come upon something so valuable that you are itching to know more, to learn the path instead of just reading about it. Well, it has to be learnt from an authentic source. Reading about Tantra alone does not help; one must master the path. People think that there are many ways that they can be happy but in fact there is only one way – to be conscious.

We are in the midst of the Aquarian Age and a human revolution is destined. Let me tell you that this is only the beginning; there is so much more to come that it will boggle your mind. There is a world within you that you have not tapped yet; I am here to show it to you.

So come and learn about how you can be happy without even trying; learn how to invite it into your life and make it your life-long companion. If you take one small step, you will realize that the extent to which Tantra can help you is far greater than you could have ever imagined.

Copyright (C) Subhojit Dasgupta

Subhojit Dasgupta is a teacher of Tantra

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