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23 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
I love this book..., October 27, 2006
This review is from: Tantra - Discovering the Power of Pre-Orgasmic Sex (Paperback)
Making love this way is such a great way to live. It breaks your addiction to the chemical and hormonal dump which happens with orgasms, while also stimulating prana for increased health and spirituality. This book was written for yogis, yet I think it can be great for anyone!
Sometimes, in the lives of partners, sex can become a hassle. And after that, for a lot of people, their partners can seem like a pain. This brings the intimacy and care back into sex...the way it's supposed to be. It brings the love back into your relationships. This is a great thing for people who care about eachother to look into. I think it should be openly discussed and experimented with between you and your lover...that will really enhance the connection between you two. And if not...at least it's something kind of fun and exciting to explore!
For yogis, this greatly enhances their practices. Without some brahamacharya, which is the preservation of semen, yogic practices do little. But with it, your practices can really take off. The methods described in the book are groundbreaking, for their simplicity as well as their effectiveness.
This is the best of the best for practical tantra. Hands down!
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80 of 98 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
What Tantra is not., May 21, 2007
This review is from: Tantra - Discovering the Power of Pre-Orgasmic Sex (Paperback)
While I am sure that a book such as this is helpful to customers wanting to have a more satisfactory sex life and may be very inspirational on many levels, there is nothing 'Tantric' about it from the point of view of the Indian Tantric tradition. I am a Sanskrit scholar who focuses on the Tantric tradition. The very word 'Tantra' refers to a vast corpus of sacred ritually-oriented texts that governed the spiritual practices of a given sect's initiates. The texts themselves are called 'Tantras' (i.e. containing ritually oriented practices that "expand" awareness). I am aware of every single Tantra that has been translated into a Western language (About 5% of the corpus has been translated, which doesn't mean that they're understood) from their original Sanskrit.
I have not seen that a single one of these sexually-oriented 'tantra' (modern) books that cites from a single actual Tantra. This is because there is nothing to cite, with one exception that doesn't inform this modern tantra-sex thing anyway: the 29th chapter of the 'Tantraloka' (see below).
The idea that the Tantras are focused on heightened intimacy and sexual pleasure has been completely fabricated. There IS a focus on experiencing the divine in all human activities; interestingly, the great Tantric sage Abhinavagupta urges sex only with people that are found to be wholly un-attractive as to dispel the illusion that they are not also a perfect beautiful expression of the Divine. This kind of sex is engaged in a wholly ritual setting, as depicted in chapter 29 (the 'kula yaga' chapter) of Abhinava's famous 'Light on Tantra.' (Tantra Loka). Otherwise the Tantra Loka is focused on the means to awakening to the heart of Universal Consciousness (Shiva) through spiritual disciplines. These include sacred initiation and aligning subtle body energies with the Divine through yoga and visualization. NONE of these practices, with the very very minor exception of the above named ritual (the kula yaga), have a sexual component.
Also, the Kama Sutra is absolutely NOT a Tantra, nor is it in anyway related to any Tantric sect or lineage. It is a 'shastra,' a treatise on attaining perfect sexual fullfillment written mainly for the medieval wealthy elite. It is categorized with other 'shastras' that teach various arts, such as the 'artha shastra,' the treatise on how to attain power, the 'dharma shastra,' a treatise on ethical laws and precepts, and the 'kama shastra,' the treatise that focuses on attaining sexual pleasure. Its core text is, of course, the Kama Sutra (the 'Aphorisms on Pleasure.').
-Christopher Tompkins, M.A. Comparative Religion, M.A. Sanskrit, PhD Candidate
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12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Informative, November 12, 2008
This review is from: Tantra - Discovering the Power of Pre-Orgasmic Sex (Paperback)
Firstly, the only kind of tantra about which I am knowledgeable is the Tibetan Buddhist variety, as I am a practitioner of that tradition, which tends to be very conservative.
I have only recently started to study a bit about this kind of tantra, which could probably be more accurately defined as neo-tantra. The basics of it seem pretty harmless, and this book makes clear that it explains sexual practices which will only get you anywhere if used in tandem with "right-handed" yoga practices, i.e. asanas and such. This seems to me like a sober enough approach. The book doesn't make promises, but merely shows a way to incorporating sex into the spiritual path.
Whether or not you are a yogi, I think anyone can benefit from bringing mindfulness into sex. I honestly think all men should learn how to use their breathing and PC muscles to achieve multiple orgasms, lofty purposes or no. The general confusion and pervasive influence of strange characters like Osho makes me less enthusiastic about this particular path and I think I will probably look more deeply into the Qigong approach to this sort of thing. I would recommend this book to the curious, however, as I find it level-headed and informative.
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