Episode 109: The Journey of a Tantric Teacher

Hi, I'm Suzanne Noble, and you're listening to Sex Advice for Seniors. And today I have a guest, a male guest, because I have so many female guests. Everybody knows I have so many female guests, but this time I'm actually speaking to a man all the way from a mountain in South Africa, somewhere about 200 miles outside of Cape Town. He's shown me the view outside his window. I'm Incredibly jealous. I'm in the London rain. It is literally pouring here. It is gray, it is disgusting, it is cold. Good evening, Rahasya, and welcome to Sex Advice for Seniors. And if you can't tell, we are going to be talking a bit about the world of Tantra, but also what it means to go on a spiritual journey. So, spiritual sexual journey, maybe. So Welcome!

Thank you, Suzanne Noble Noble—

delight. Yeah, so before the show you said that this was something that you started over 2 decades ago, and I'm curious to know how you entered this world of kind of sacred sexuality? Is it fair to say that's a world that you dwell in?

It was a world I was around and very involved with long before that. It was 20 years ago that I started teaching.

All right.

Okay. Yeah. As you could say, what's maybe a bit unusual about me or what a lot of students find unusual on the good end and You know, everything has its upsides and downsides. But my brag and my shame would be that I completed my journey of sexuality, my journey, the desire-driven journey, by the time I was 40. And then I taught. And in other words, my teaching was never driven by my own eroticism. Right. And that's the brag. But on the shame end, there were many years before that where I could have been of use to quite a few people, even friends of mine. I wasn't. I was focused on my own path and my own progression with this journey.

And what did that look like for you? Those years leading up to you teaching, when you say that you were on your own path, what is that? What did that mean for you?

Well, for me, it was about just following really the questions that arose with me. You know, everyone wonders or has a notion at some time or other, oh, I'd like to know what's really the truth of love, or, you know, oh, what really am I? At my ground or whatever. And some have that question on a driving level. It's something that, you know, they pursue as opposed to ramble about occasionally in a bar. Yeah, yeah. And some serious ones ramble a lot in bars too, of course. And then there's what is called the next stage of spiritual awakening. And I need a few sticks. It's a very archetypal, very standard sort of part of the journey. But awakening, even though most spiritual teaching aims at getting you towards awakening, awakening is really the beginning of what you can call a path. It will be in the archetype, in the pattern of a path, whether it's monastic or tantric, but it will have the characteristics. The awakening is when these questions and the pursuit of them and the exploration of them becomes more than a hobby. Mm-hmm. You know, at the monastic level, it's where you can make a commitment to spiritual community. Mm-hmm. You know, 7 years being a monk or something of that order.

Sure.

And on the tantric end, it's, it's where, um, you're not so much you join a spiritual community, but the quest becomes, you could say, more important than food. Truth matters more than food. You're on your own journey to discover. And Tantrika, the Tantric path, which has very much been the flavor of my movement, is you do learn from spiritual communities, but you do it always really as the interloper.

Ah, interesting.

Move in, learn what they've got, ignore what their fluff is and what their community bonding stuff is and what their financial stuff is. And take the, you know, they've got some lessons, take them, move on. And if you're polite, don't badmouth them about the other stuff. That's necessary to make a community for those who need community.

Yeah, yeah.

The tantricas always bounce from teaching to teaching to teaching. And you could say tantric people are the ones who learn best on their own motivation. Whereas at the monastic level, it's about joining the group And the group energy moves you and you move better than you would have because this is the group movement.

Yeah.

Some of us move basically like that. But the Tantra Flame people, they're worse than herding cats.

It's so interesting because my own journey was through my 40s, my own, like, more of a sexual journey. But I— and Tantra was a part of that journey, dipping into all of these different communities. But the way you've described it and the way I describe it and my friends sometimes describe it is they talk about me like an, a cultural anthropologist, like I would dip into these various cultures. I would be the interloper. I would observe. I would take part, but I would always never feel completely associated with any of them, but associated with all of them. So there was always an element where I felt completely comfortable with all these different communities, but I didn't feel I needed to necessarily align myself with any specific one. And it sounds very similar to what I'm hearing you say about your own journey, except in your vernacular, it's, it's the path of the tantrika, which is something which is a word that I've never used to describe myself, but sounds so similar to how you're describing your own journey. And I find that really kind of interesting, you know.

Yep. One of my first students had a PhD in anthropology and no coincidence. That is the mode of learning.

Yeah.

In fact, anthropology really sets you up for that because it pushes one of the first big archetypal steps. It is for Tantrika, it was very necessary is individuating. Yeah. And not, not in the— Jesus put it very harshly, you know, unless you hate your mother, your father, your brother, your sister, and your wife, you know, forget it. But it's not— and he was— he suffers through mistranslation. It's not hate, it's being under the influence of. Be ruled by. And, you know, I'm usually someone who's named in the tantric mode, in the tantric archetype.

Yeah, yeah.

Archetypes, shapes, like the shape of pets.

Yeah, yeah. And, but, you know, I've spoken to a lot of people, and, and I think that tantra really does itself— the word itself has kind of been bastardized, um, in, in modern society to the point where it almost is meaningless for a lot of people. It, it signifies like Sting and Trudy having sex for 6 hours, or people practicing, you know, alternative ways of sexual pleasure. Or I spoke to one woman who got really into cervical orgasms, you know, and, and then when you speak to people in the, what I would term kind of more pure tantra, It's more about— it feels to me more about, like you say, that element of curiosity, that spirit of learning, the way to engage with connection and intimacy in a deep— at a deeper level than just kind of— one woman I spoke to last week was talking about it versus like having a hamburger versus having like a buffet, you know, it's about— it's— it— when you— but unfortunately, when I hear the word, there's almost— it's almost a bit of a trigger word because I feel like it's not— it's not clear what it— it doesn't have a clear meaning. That's— that's how I feel about it.

Funny enough, that's one of the reasons I use the word It has an extremely clear meaning. And what you detect from that, that's all absolutely intended.

Yeah.

In the West, sure. Oh, it's some kind of sex club. Oh, it's a happy ending massage with extras or something. I'm not saying— I'm not rubbishing those practitioners. They really, really do have a place in the path. Absolutely. All the variety you could say. A lot of which we would call the essence from Tantra, a lot you could call preparation for or inspiration towards perhaps Tantra and so on. In the West, there's mainly the associations, okay, some kind of, you know, the kind of trouble Purnikul Deidon's got herself in and things like that. You know, it's scary to the culture in that way. And the culture has a little reactive edge with it. Yes. In India, it's older, deeper, and different.

Yes.

In India, Tantra is the guy that you go to for revenge.

Really?

To get poison to put in your boss's drink. Really? To give him the cardiac arrest. Or worse. So when you go to have to make a love potion, Yeah, yeah. This is on your enemies.

Yeah. Fascinating.

That's all that. Now, why did Tantra make that be, you could say, the art of service? Yes. Because that art of service is not really, it's not usually long-term. It can be. Some of the greatest, one of the greatest saints of Tantra, his mother sent him to go and learn lightning magic, how to deliver direct lightning. And she sent him to do that, to specifically to take revenge on the whole village who had disrespected her greatly when her husband died and made her poor, etc. And he did. He blasted the whole village, 30 people dead. And then he went down to the village and he saw his mama dancing in the flames, mad as a hatter, mocking people and cursing them while they burned and destroyed. And Sharokh Tipi was very cool with what he'd done. He went back to that bastard who'd taught him the lightning magic. And that guy didn't become his teacher. That guy said, listen, I wear the dark side and I helped you with those lessons, but if you want, you know, what you've done now, forget it, you know, you're on my side of the fence forever.

Yeah, yeah.

And the fella, Mela Rippa, insisted, no way. No way. Uh-uh. I can't leave this. This is too much of a burden in life. And the guy said, well, you're going to have one hell of a journey, but okay. And he gave him, you know, basically the name and address of a teacher to go to. And that guy ends up being one of the great saints of Tibetan tantra.

Yeah.

One of the biggest deals ever. He's Milarepa. So tantrikas, I mean, one bundle staying around the school is Everyone starts Tantra for all the wrong reasons.

I suspect that's very true. So you were talking before, before we started recording about, we were talking about specifically for older people, how your practice and what you do, how it can support older people and how you work with them. And I'd really like to understand a bit more about that.

Well, one picture of it, I'll just describe a couple long ago so no one can identify, because I always hesitate to talk about my students and anything, especially if they recognize themselves immediately. No, no, a lovely couple came to us and you could say, I can't really talk about a standard way of working, but they were fairly typical in some ways of the culture, but also actually strong seekers in themselves that needed to develop. And they came to us, as I say, for all the wrong reasons. Sexual issues, they hadn't been enjoying making love much for a very long time. And what we did with them me and Dakini Wendy back then decided we both spoke to them. And then what we recommended to them was a little bit of Zebrafish and maybe touchwork, but also just discussion and exploration, him with her, her with me. And Wendy and I got back to compare notes after a couple of sessions of that. And, uh, well, we knew we'd fixed one— we could really fix one little difficulty— was we'd managed to find out where their sex life turned wrong. And just, who knows, maybe someone who needs to hear this hears this, but what I gave to Betty and said, well, You know, they really were hot at the beginning of things. I mean, there was no problem with the eros, there was no problem with expression. They were moving with good strong energy up until basically just before they got married. And she said, yep, I know the same. And I said, sure. So just before they get married, they have a night together at, I think it was his parents' house. And what she told me was she had always really enjoyed in the lovemaking the feeling of just having space and freedom with him to be a bit of a screamer, which some women, you know, that's not a really easy one, screaming. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's not universal, but it's popular, and noisiness is popular. And good and helps with energy and all good things. And she'd really enjoy that with him. But then this one particular night in his parents' house, shortly before they were married, she— they started to make love. And then as she started to make sound, he just covered her mouth and gone, shh. And she was so crestfallen at that point.

Yeah.

You know, the sensitivity around sexuality can be quite extreme. Yes. Little tiny little hints can be a great rejection.

Yes, yes, yes.

And suddenly for her, he rejected all her openness, all her abandon, all those qualities that she'd been really enjoying with the lovemaking. And she made sure she never did it again.

Do you know what? That sounds like the end of my marriage. Because it was a very similar experience. Yeah, very similar experience that very, they're almost identical. Not in my parents' house, but a very, very similar experience to that. And, you know, I was quite young at the time and I felt that sense of shame around my being vocal around my ability to express pleasure in that way. And I felt like I was being rejected. And I really— that kind of shut the door. So I do, I do understand how sometimes those small moments, especially if there's no communication about intimacy in your life, can trigger quite an extreme reaction, right? And I mean, the fact that they came to you, I find quite incredible because I think often, you know, well, it certainly was in my life, but often it can be the end is the end. Like, that's just, you know, you're not, you're not coming back from that. If one person, if it's almost like it breaks a degree of trust, right?

Sure. For many, it would be the end. There was something What kept them together, what kept them hanging in, was they both still held desire. It was just not being met. And they had the normal cultural repression thing where it's remarkably easy to repress your true desire. Remarkably easy. True desire doesn't come with a big screaming, angry hunger like a dog being threatened with a raw steak. No, no, that's repression bursting forth. Forth. Very different phenomenon. Actual desires are a quiet hint that you've got to listen for, be open to, and move with if you want it to be a play at all. And of course, from his end in that story, I had exactly the same. I heard exactly the same from Wendy, you know. He'd really enjoyed her wildness, her abandon. He felt like a real man when he heard her squeak.

Yeah.

Etc. Mysteriously, at some point, he couldn't identify it. She just stopped and all the juice was gone from his sex life.

Interesting. Yeah. And you know what?

It wasn't hard to do.

To bring it back. Yeah. Interesting. What's so funny as well is that, you know, You can— the same, the exact same circumstance can occur and one's reaction to it can be totally different, right? I mean, I, subsequent to that experience, which was like over 20 years ago when that happened, I had a much more recent experience with somebody where we were somewhere and the person I was with was being noisy. And I put my hand over his mouth as he was just about to come. And because we were in a place where, you know, you could hear everything. And he laughed and we laughed our heads off, right? We just were in hysterics because we were grown adults, like making each other shh like little children to try and avoid people knowing what we were getting up to. And I reflect back on my own situation where for me that was a tremendous moment of like shame. And, and then the same circumstance 25 years later, somebody could do that to me now and I would laugh, you know, because, because my relationship with my, my sexual self is not— it recognizes what what's going on, you know, which is it's not about me. It's just about, you know, you're in a flat where the walls are thin and somebody's kid is next door and you don't want the teenage son to know that, you know, their dad's getting up to something. So, yeah, it's just, it isn't— I appreciate where that sentiment was coming from, but I think it's so It's so funny to reflect back on similar circumstances and how our attitudes can be totally different to them. But anyway, I'm glad they were able to reconnect. That sounds like a joyful moment.

Oh yes. Oh yes. And they, you could say they caught up to where they, you know, they made up for the past. They caught up in terms of their emotional life together. I mean, This had been the situation for like 30 years. Wow. You know, yeah. And it's like a dam breaking at first. But yeah, as you say, same experience, different situation, different people. This is one of the areas where I think that scary stuff around Tantra, it's important that it's there. Because people that have, that come to dabble with this kind of stuff, bad idea, bad idea. Traumatizing, disturbing, you're going to end up at a therapist thinking you've been re-traumatized. Not everybody, you know, just because something of a powerful nature happens to you doesn't mean it's something that you can live with. Necessarily. I mean, an example of a really transcendent experience with a friend of mine, a different— but he, at 9 years old, was starting to, you know, develop the questions, wonder if the priests were telling the truth, stuff like that, starting his own inquiry a little bit. And then he got very sick. And to the point where he left his body. Wow. Yeah. And got to be up in the corner of the room looking down at his body, seeing the doctor talking to his mommy and so on. And of course, then back in the body. Now, you could say, what awesome beginner's luck. Oh, wow. Any seeker will kill for such an experience. What a gift. And at 9 years old. Wow. And it brought his heart to a grinding halt. Really? Wow. Because now he knew the priests were right.

Yeah.

And so just the standard version that they gave him, okay, blah, blah, blah, continuing with that, no further exploration. The question died. Wow.

Interesting.

But, you know, meanwhile, that experience, the near-death experience, that was the reason the early Christians were so wild, so powerful, so disturbing to the culture, so spiritually brave, willing for martyrdom. All of that was the original baptism ritual was that it was a drawn-out near-death experience baptism. That was the real deal. Yeah. Now you died quite literally to the world of the flesh, and then they put you on the bank and they saw if you got born to the world of the spirit. But we've lost the true meaning of those words.

Yeah.

And, and that kind of level of intensity of practice. It's not socially comfortable or okay.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You can't have the baptizer come to town and all the rich people's kids go off there and play with what he's doing. It's— there's a reason they cut off John the Baptist's head, you know.

So when you say that delving into tantric is not for dabbling, what do you mean by that?

Well, in terms of what most of what's presented in the world, you could say lessons from teachings derived from, or things that are preparatory. Yes, a lot of that is good, healthy stuff. And good healthy part is recovering about your naturalness, getting over the cultural repressions, finding a bit of willingness for desire in a, in a, in a kind of a limited way, as is comfortable in the culture. If it turns out that no, this is really your quest, you know, that this is really your path, well then you're going to be going into experiences that are, you know, not recommended for the average person in a way. I mean, as an example, um, Oh, I'm trying to pick an example that's not too scary.

Yeah, don't pick a scary example.

All right. Yeah, how to say, the emotional side is dangerous. Just as that experience of a near-death experience brought that particular path to an absolute halt, you can— strong experiences You've got to be set up if you're going to be able to take them in the right way. In a way, you know, there is real tantra happens close with guidance, with very, very, very careful guidance. It happens also with a strong respect for the archetypes or the shapes of these things. Disrespect that and oh, you're in a world of pain and trouble. For no good reason. The oldest ways of describing it say you're aiming really high. You know, it's like you're shooting with a great degree of difficulty. You're trying for, you know, if it was Olympic high jumping, you're trying for the triple backflip with 2.5 twists and, you know, a little bit of spice on the side. You're trying for that kind of thing. And if you really make it at all, Well, wow, it's wonderful. But if you screw it up, oh baby, it's going to be so ugly.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And even if it goes well for a tantrika, a tantrika faces— and you face in your life— he faces all the risks that the monastic has, but also the worldly risks together. And that's just kind of too much for most people.

Yeah, I mean, you know, and I think that's why, you know, I see a lot of women especially who have spent a considerable period of time in the world of Tantra and within spiritual communities kind of talking about leaving them now, exiting because of their disillusionment with, with that ecosystem and how it sets people up on these tremendous pedestals to aspire to something that seems magical. But the reality is that often, especially with a word that is so often associated around sex and not so much around spirituality, that it attracts people that are not necessarily people on a spiritual path. These are just people that are dropping into this world with a dark purpose and lots of people within this community have struggled with, with that because of people, men predominantly, that they've encountered that think of it as one thing, whereas I suspect a lot of the women are more, are going into it with a far more open and, you know, looking for some form of enlightenment, as you say. And I And I know that that, that is difficult. And I also think that just generally to be— to deeply connect on a sexual level with somebody, if you're just looking at it purely as a, as a form of connection, it requires you to be incredibly vulnerable. And that can be really quite painful. You know, to, to be willing to be that vulnerable. So I think there, I really do understand what you're saying about the fact that it's not, a lot of this has been talked about in women's magazines and things as if it's sort of like a, another fun thing that you can do with your partner. You know, it's kind of like, hey, why not spend the weekend exploring the world of Tantra, see what happens. And it's not, it's about, it's not really about that. It's the relationships that I've had on that level that, you know, they have been, they have been intense. And even if we've just been friends, not, you know, we're not like lifelong partners, it's still been, it's still been quite intense. So yeah, I can, I can appreciate what you're saying there. And I think it's worth reminding people that all of these choices that we make about how we want to journey through our lives, whether it's on a spiritual path or monastic path, whatever path we happen to decide we want to go on, no path at all, just meandering through, they require a degree of commitment that is not always that comfortable for a lot of people.

So the monastic path, you know, can be a big highway if you go Buddhism or Catholic mysticism or something, you know, one of the real big ones, and long and meandering. And, you know, you can look at monks that have been on it for 20 years and see how they're doing. And, you know, that could be your kind of progress. That's fine. But in terms of getting down to the very quickest, well, the tantrical sees that if you just run straight off the cliff and keep going, It's a pretty short distance in a straight line. And all the other parts, the historical, you know, because in India things are much closer, you know, religions know about each other and that sort of thing. And they interact. There's a long history of interaction and commentary. So the other part, I'd say, because you're cheating in some ways. No one can claim that you're being respectful. And the 10 Mile Run says it's not like we're taking a shortcut, we're taking a high shit. You know, we're going straight down the mountain. We get the same bruises and blisters, you know, you get a few blisters, we get ripped to shreds. And sure, maybe we get quicker, but the big answer is do you still have anything left in you by the time you do it?

Ah, it's a very good analogy. I'm with the tantric.

Then maybe I do, maybe then you can teach. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know?

Yeah. Well, you're on the top of a mountain and I'm down on the, you know, the lower ground. So, you know, I bought, I, you could just, you could say Rahasya that I ran, I already did the run from the top of the mountain and I've got all sorts of bruises and now I'm just I'm just going to stay down here where it's, you know, where I can just walk down the street to the shops.

Well, I would answer if you want to measure, like the markers on path are pretty clear. One of the markers is when you start getting really angry for silence. Yeah, that's good.

That's definitely— that's a lovely way to end as well. And hopefully we'll be able to clip together the bit where you fell off the mountain and then, and then got climbed back on into the studio. Lovely, lovely to talk with you. Have a lovely day.

Thank you so much, Suzanne Noble Noble! Thank you very much for watching this video.