in this way liberating in the female partner the Shakta
principle of pure power? In the era of feminism and sexual
‘liberation’ inaugurated in the sixties, it was all too easy to
resolve this question by reducing the ‘left-hand’ path of
Shakta Tantrism to some mutually heightened and
supposedly spiritualised experience of sex – thus reducing
the sensuality and sexuality of the soul (heightened
awareness) to that of the body. Hence the now almost
universal identification of Tantra, in both the popular mind
and mass media, with ‘Tantric Sex’.
As ‘Tantric Sex’ the Total Americanisation of Tantra
has now become its complete ‘Californication’, both in
name and effect a new ‘Church of Tantra’ aiming at
nothing more than spreading and selling itself on the
world-wide web. Thus, as Urban remarks:
“One need only enter the word ‘tantra’ into any good
search engine to generate several hundred sites [a wild
underestimation!] bearing titles such as ‘Sacred Sex:
Karessa, Tantra and Sex Magic’, ‘Extended Orgasm: A
Sexual Training Class’, ‘Oceanic Tantra’, or ‘Ceremonial
Sensual Pleasuring’.”
The language of the example he cites is one of
orgasmic ‘doing it’ and ‘making it’ rather than Awareness
and Being. Its thought content can be compared to
premature ejaculations of the adolescent mind, fuelling