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 Interview Continues......


"What is Tantra?"
       an interview with Tantric Master Prem Pranama

R: You have a very understanding wife.

P: Yes. Without her I cannot imagine what would have happened to me
during this time. These experiences awoke in my mind and body such
intense unending bliss and latent neurotic traces of such force that
it was unbelievable. Feelings of every kind of distortion, rage,
anger, lust, grasping, aversion. I am sad to say that I did a fair
amount of acting out on these before any balance was restored, causing
suffering to myself and others. Needless to say, this was a very
trying time for our marriage.
One of the things that happens in spiritual practice is that the
subtle aspects of our ego, the seed essences of ego, hide within our
own practice. If you are lucky enough, at some point the bliss force
of the divine will force these out into the open.
So it wasn't all just bliss. It was an encounter with the ugliest
sides of myself and the most beautiful. The whole picture. The
visions, on a daily basis, kept arising. By and large they involved
an experiment in mixing states of bliss with my previous practice of
self inquiry and the feeling of silent emptiness. Bliss wed to
emptiness produces tremendous power and that's what was being
introduced at this point.

R: I can see the evolution of you path from Gurdjieff's very concrete
self work into the devotional relationship with a master and mystical
states and that leading into silence and inquiry. It seems kind of
like this Tantric part was finishing you off. So did this practice
lead to your realization?

P: This was all going on without any conscious volition at all. I was
continuing Advaitic non-dual self inquiry with all the force I could:
Who is the one experiencing this? And if I had actually been able to
stop these experiences I probably would have, because they were
distracting me from inquiry as well as provoking some pretty stupid
behavior in my ordinary life. Luckily, the power of the Dakini, the
wisdom woman, was so much greater than my piddling efforts to prevent
it. But as these experiences continued in the body, mind and emotions
I continued my inquiry.
The awakening came as a result of this practice mix. The mind of
bliss is capable of penetrating much more deeply into
truth. Happiness, bliss and pleasure inspire a radical kind of
courage. Without it no one would leap into that sky of deathlessness
and selflessness. Without the bliss force no one would be such an
idiot as to throw their life away on a hunch. Realization itself is
beyond any and all experience. It is, however, not exclusive of
experience or even rejecting of it; it is all-inclusive. After
awakening one is restored to absolute and endless humor.

R. So how did your teaching work begin and where did the Tantric
transmission figure in that?

P. Several months after Awakening, a friend of my wife's, feeling the
difference in me, asked if I would help her with her spiritual
practice. I agreed, and several months later more friends of our
family asked if I would work with them. My teaching began very slowly
and gradually. In the beginning, what I taught was non-dual inquiry,
because it seemed the most direct. What I realized over time was that
the practice of inquiry and also the natural practice of devotion
toward the formless divine is ineffective in most people's lives. It
doesn't carry with it the skillful means to work with the obscurations
and defilements - the gross and subtle neuroses - that prevent people
from realizing their own nature of bliss and awareness in perfect
union.
The Advaitic practice that I was doing was extremely similar to the
Dzogchen or Ati Yoga teachings of the Nyingma lineage. It was through
the Advaitic practices that I was able to reconnect.
One of the most amazing things about Padmasambhava, Yeshe
Tso-gyal's Guru, was his recognition that there were many teachings
that would need to be re-discovered at a later time. He and Yeshe
Tso-gyal wrote the practices down and hid them in the elements and in
the pure nature of awareness - in the mind stream of his
disciples. This is the true origin of my connection to Tantra.
Padmasambhava created what is called a Mind Mandate Seal and hid
teachings on Tantra's skillful means like a timed-release
capsule. When my own practice matured to the point where it was
appropriate this force of wisdom opened. The force, power and bliss
of it was released also, even though I had completely forgotten this
connection.

R: So you really didn't have any contact with Tibetan lamas, or the
Nyingma (Padmasambhava's) lineage, yet your teaching is very much
influenced by Tantra and you recognize Padmasambhava as your root
Guru. Without any contact with the lineage, you're kind of a wild card
as a teacher.

P: (Laughing uproariously) Yeah, I am a wild card as a Tantric
Master. But even wilder than this crazy connection with Tantra is that
I am free. Free of birth and death, fear, anxiety, worry. Free beyond
being and non-being. Free to do anything. And I just might - and it's
a wonderful thing!
A wild card like me who has awakened into and embodied the heart
of Tantric practice is unique in terms of the trans-cultural migration
of Tantra to the West. Padmasambhava was a wild guy because he was
the freedom and bliss of this mysterious reality. Those who awaken to
their true nature are the same one - though in their own unique
appearance. As Tantra develops in this culture, many aspects of its
form are going to have to change. At the same time this must be done
in such a way as to not damage the teachings. This is a job of great
delicacy. These changes need to be done by someone who stands outside
the traditional lineages yet respects the heart drop of the teachings
with extreme reverence..
All Tantric practice originates from Pure Vision revelation.
Tantric practices in the Buddhist form originate from the
Sambhogakaya, or the Visionary Bliss Realm of reality. An advanced
practitioner can receive teachings from this source though it is very
rare. An awakened master is this realm - it is an aspect of their
body.
It is certainly reasonable to be skeptical, and I ask my
students not to accept anyone's teachings on blind faith, but to test
them in the laboratory of their own body/mind. The faith needed to
have a Tantric relationship to a Spiritual Master has to develop over
a long period of time. You can't simply jump right into it. There
must be testing on both sides - time and deeds. I certainly am mad by
any standard. You and I don't live in even remotely similar worlds. I
know the universe to be my body, time itself to be my subtle form, and
the sky of deathless awareness to be my mind. My interest now is to
spark this awakening in others, not to have them fixate on me. That
would only destroy their growth and in the long or short run cause
them to hate me. We all hate what we are dependent on - no one likes
to be a slave.
You should take a little time before hopping into the Dharma bed
because once in it there really is no such thing as safe sex. Think
about it as carefully as you would a marriage partner. It can take
years.
There is a safety catch: You don't receive advanced
Tantric practices in the beginning anyway. You begin with the
pre-preliminary practices, which in our community are a series having
to do with developing stability in body, mind and emotion at the
ordinary psychological level. You can use the traditional meditations
on loving kindness, and exchanging oneself for others. These styles of
meditation work very deeply. At the same time, I might suggest that
somebody seek out therapy, or work in a Twelve Step program.
If you are obsessed with anxiety, fear, worry, comparison,
shame, self doubt, body doubt, sex doubt, then those things become
your center of gravity. The constant effort to compensate for the
pain of neurosis saps you of the joy of ordinary life and the energy
for spiritual evolution. In this state of being, people try to replace
the work neededto develop an authentic center of gravity with the
Master or God - as if some external could be it for you. This must be
outgrown.
Next there are the extraordinary Tantric preliminaries involving
Prostrations, Vajrasattva practice, Mandala practice and Guru
Yoga. These are fairly traditional. This is not an assembly line to
enlightenment. Each person s path is unique and possibly very
different from this description. There are people in our community who
never work with the Tantric path at all, who work along other
lines. The extraordinary preliminaries however are profound
psycho-transformational methods weaving together body, emotion, energy
and mind to awaken latent potential.
During this phase and after the preliminaries are finished students
begin to work with the energies of diety yoga and the radical
practices of Advaita and Mahasanti. Another way I work with my
students is to send them to the best of the living masters from the
traditional lineages. This broadens their view and them to test my
teaching, my style of teaching, and the authenticity of my
transmission in the context of those who are commonly acknowledged to
be Tantric Masters. Three wonderful Masters I send my disciples to are
Chagdud Tulku, Lama Tharchin, and Nkgapa Chogyam.

R: It doesn't sound like you're shy about letting your students go out
and experience other Masters.

P: Absolutely not!

R. That seems a bit unusual. Most people have a great fear of Gurus
entrapping them in dependency relationships. Sending disciples to
other masters seems like it would help cut through that.

P. It is necessary for two reasons. One is that it cross-pollinates
the lineage. This is one of the beautiful things about Tantra. You
need the foundation of more than one master. You need to receive the
special energies of transmission and empowerment from a variety of
skillful masters. This cross-pollinates, just like in gardening; it
creates a stronger plant. There is one Guru in your heart and many in
the world. It is up to each person to figure out who their heart
connection is with.
The other reason is, I am a wild card as far as Tantric teachings
go. I claim the authority to teach Tantra based on my own radical
awakening into non-dual awareness and my own Mind Mandate Transmission
from Padmasambhava. Such claims could easily be made by any idiot -
and often are. I want my students and disciples to have a strong
ground on which they can evaluate me and decide where our connection
will go. I would like my students who do Tantric practice to be able
to work with other masters so that they can come to a greater degree
of understanding of my work when evaluated in the context of the
traditional tantric practice.

R: It seems to me that there is a lot of information and books written
about sexual Tantra, and certainly more people are interested in that
than in other forms of Tantra. Perhaps they are seeking this bliss
courage that you mentioned earlier. Do you think that people
practicing sex yoga are by and large serious Tantric practitioners?

P: Well, there's no point in judging other peoples' spiritual paths.
If your path is not authentic over time that becomes clear.
Traditionally, the use of sexuality in Tantra comes at a very
developed stage of the path. There is no sexual Tantra if one has not
transcended desire. Certainly a lot of people are trying to explore
and play with sexual energy, and that is great, and they are relating
it to the word Tantra because Tantra uses sexuality as part of the
path. We live in a seemingly open and permissive culture that
actually is very uptight, prudish and provincial. We hype neurotic
sense stimulation in order to sell everything from shampoo to
cars. Underneath, there is fear of everything genital.
Tantra, however, is not about sexuality. It is about enlightenment.
Compared to the bliss force of your true nature, the pleasure of
orgasm is pretty puny. The teachings can be used to bring a certain
degree of ordinary balance to the psyche, including openness about
sexuality. That's a very good thing but let's not stop at the doorway!

R: Enjoying Tantra for the psychological help is good but no
substitute for radical absolute spiritual liberation.

P: Right.

R: You emphasize community and that is very interesting to me. I find
that many people these days want their practice to be a personal and
private part of their life. Relationships are hard and spiritual
practice is hard mixing the two seems like it could ease up the
process or complicate it.

P: For spiritual practice, community is of vital importance in our
culture. In traditional cultures the shock that broke one out of
complacent patterns came from moving out of a community that had been
the center of one s life. In our culture, we have just the opposite
senario. The shock here is brought about when people move into
community from the isolated lives that our culture creates. This was
central to the Gurdjieff system and very powerful.

 Interview Continued ....Next Page