Tantric Traditions in the Spiritual Teaching of Guru Jára

Pavel Hlavinka

Palacky University, Olomouc,

Czechia hlavinka.pavel@post.cz

ABSTRACT: In this text, I discuss some traditional approaches to Tantra, focusing on the spiritual paths that use the physical union of a woman and a man to achieve sacred sexual unity. I then look at some key features of the Tantric doctrine of Czech esoteric master, Guru Jára. I examine in detail his views on how Tantric energies manifest and are experienced in human life and relationships. I present the sources of Guru Jára’s Tantric doctrine in the Kaula and Todala Tantra lineages, in the worship of the Dasa Mahavidya, and in his claims of direct access to ancient Egyptian mysteries. Finally, I mention some examples of Tantric exercises proposed by Guru Jára to individuals and couples.

KEYWORDS: Guru Jára, Tantric Faith Healing, Hooks, Unhooking, Tantra, Dasa Mahavidya, Sacred Yoni, Kundalini Shakti, Kaula Tantra, Todala Tantra, Guru Jára Path.

Introduction

I should start this discussion of the Tantric teachings of Czech esoteric master Jaroslav Dobeš, Guru Jára (on whom see Introvigne 2019), by disclosing that I am both an academic and a disciple of the Guru Jára Path. I present here an emic perspective, although one informed by my experience and studies as a scholar. In July 2019, I had my most recent personal meeting, or darshan, with Guru Jára behind the bars of the detention camp in Manila where he currently resides (for reasons described in Introvigne 2019, 20–5). Guru Jára has now been kept for four and a half years in what he calls himself a “heavy metal ashram,” among runnig rats, where he still managed to write eight new books. Personally, I regard him as an inexhaustible source of spiritual energy, an example of optimism and joy of life. He is experiencing the same

Pavel Hlavinka feeling as a prisoner behind his “metaphysical bars” he had already experienced in his childhood in Communist Czechoslovakia, in the gloomy atmosphere of an era in which Leonid Brežněv (1906–1982) was in power in the Soviet Union. For a child with a naturally and deeply spiritual nature, the all-pervasive militant atheism and

materialism was unacceptable. As an eleven-year-old boy, he nearly left this world through a near-death experience. As an eighteen-year-old man, he abandoned his native Czechoslovakia to experience how life can taste in a free country such as the Italy of the 1980s and 1990s. It was in this country, by a fountain in the town of Arco (Trento), where he, as a twenty-year-old man, claimed to have reached the Nirvana of the ascetic spiritual path. A few years after that, he claimed he had also reached the mahamudra of the Tantric spiritual path. Guru Jára mastered Tantric teachings through a long practice and study. He studied a Shakti form of Tantrism for several years in India in the

second half of the 1990s with a master called Guru Anahdan (?–2005). Another Indian master, Guru Nágananda (1951–2006), was an important spiritual reference as well. The fundamental pillars of Guru Jára’s Tantric doctrine are rooted in the Hindu Shakti tradition Kaula-tantra, which worships the Ten Great Goddesses of Wisdom, in Sanskrit called the Dasa Mahavidya. According to the tradition, these goddesses are not only present at the level of the macrocosmical yoni, but at the same time in the microcosm of a woman’s body, i.e. in her vagina, which is thus able—as a sacred yoni—to mirror the macrocosm. Every woman bears in her vagina her own dominant goddess, which is evoked during her

Tantric practice, as taught by the Kaula-tantra. This evocation requires not only the woman’s belief and full respect towards the particular goddess, but also a strong Tantric energization and a deep meditative state of immersion and spiritual surrender. Later in this article, I will examine these theories, their interconnection with other Tantric doctrines, and their implication for Tantric practice in more detail. My aim here is not to present a complete list of Guru Jára’s Tantric teachings, but rather to offer a

closer look at some selected aspects of what I regard as a very complex and profound doctrine. Devotees perceive the Tantric tradition as presented in the spiritual doctrine of Guru Jára as both an appeal to humanity and its celebration. Since it shows the man and the woman in their divine, transcendental, and immortal origin, to which the path of return is still open, it claims that every human is an unfading star glowing with the light of eternity. Tantric Traditions in the Spiritual Teaching of Guru Jára

Forms of Spiritual Sexuality Experienced in Relationships

Right at the very beginning of my last conversation with Guru Jára, behind the multiple bars of the detention camp in Manila, I realized that, from a philosophical perspective, his Tantric teaching distinctly combines an approach to reality focused on the physical and the material with spiritual and idealistic doctrines perceiving the material world as an illusion or a product of the mind. By “the physical and the material,” Guru Jára means the common conception of a body as a brain carrier, which is influenced by gravity, viruses, bacteria, and the passage of time, i.e. aging. The brain, which is included in the box known as skull, performs basic biological functions—eating, reproducing,

creating a “fight or flight” response—, without being able to directly affect the world and others. This is one aspect of reality. On the other hand, the body is also perceived as a prison, and a burden for the higher consciousness or a soul, as proposed by old masters such as Plato (429–347 BCE) and Buddha (5th century BCE), as well as Shankara (788–820) and other propagators of the Advaita Vedanta. Guru Jára teaches that in relationships, and indeed in the life of every human, these two contradictory streams, materialism and idealism, are fused into the single alloy of Being by moments like the following: The first love, in whose infatuation the material world surrounding young lovers is transformed into a garden of Eden or into an inessential background, where the lovers perceive the culmination of [Sigmund] Freud’s [1856–1939] libido, also known as the T

antric energy kundalini. The first orgasmic excitement. During this stage, even the most materialistically-based persons experience, together with a strong physical lust, a sequence of states of higher consciousness which were described as similar to the union with God by Spanish mystic Saint Teresa of Ávila [1515–1582], or nirvikalpa samadhi by Yogi Ramakrishna [1836–1886], or as losing yourself in the light of God’s heart (Aham) by Kaulachara Tantra (Guru Jára 2017a). The sources of these teachings include modern presentations of Tantra by Arthur Avalon (Sir John Woodroffe, 1865–1936), John R. Dupuche, and David Gordon White (Avalon 1965; Dupuche 2003; White 2000). Further, Guru Jára mentions a third crucial moment, the Tantric ritual called maithuna, during which lovers experience a kind of sexual union where the material and idealistic aspects merge together. As Guru Jára explains,

From my point of view, the journey of spiritual energy starts at the Light of Creation and is led from the divine source towards our material world. Maithuna is therefore considered a religious ritual, because the Shakti energy is strongly activated, and it enables the transformation and uplifting of the physical body (Guru Jára 2017a). In the left-hand Tantra, this religious ceremony is put into practice through the physical connection of the yoni and the lingam, in most cases in a position when a woman sits astride

on her partner to experience their love-making as a form of meditation. Shri Barbara Durga (Barbora Plášková), the closest student and now a coteacher of Guru Jára, points out that we should not try to equate the left-hand Tantra (Vámachara-marga-tantra, meaning a physical Tantric exercise, where penetration occurs) with a common sexual intercourse, because There is a fundamental difference between the coitus and the Vámachara-marga-tantra, because in the latter the energy of arousal and desire is under control, and is primarily determined to be transformed into spiritual energy that is directed at the Great Mother and not at the material world. The connection of the static principle with the

dynamic principle, when a woman is the dynamic principle and her position is on top, stands behind the origins of the whole life and Universe (Plášková 2017). According to these teachings, the direction of the spiritual energy is therefore first led from the Light of Creation, i.e. from the divine source, into our material world. Specifically, it is manifested in a way where a Tantric initiate first follows the centrifugal flow of energy (in a counter-clockwise direction). This allows the flux of energy to go from the

seventh chakra down to the first chakra. Devotees are then able to direct the spiritual energy towards the “ground,” i.e into their daily lives. The world, as well as humans, are part of the same existence at all times, but the human mind is often unable to fully perceive this whole reality. In the Tantric teachings as presented by Guru Jára, the fall into the “matter of creation” ends in the first chakra, where—in the earth element—the metamorphosis of ShaktiMaya into kundalini takes place. With this energy, humans can rise up again, “clockwise in the centripetal direction.” During the Tantric practice, Jára teaches, this energy is transformed in the first chakra, from Maya, which forms the world we and all human beings live in, into Kundalini-Shakti, i.e. the divine creative energy, which is at this moment led

via the ladder of chakras towards the highest chakra, Sahasrara. Making love is thus compared by Guru Jára to an elevator ride to Heaven. Guru Jára adds that, Tantra is about searching for the everlasting in the transient world. That is what makes our path most different from the path of dry meditations, which seeks realization in waking up from the transient (Guru Jára 2018, 291). Guru Jára asked us a very practical question during a conversation in the detention camp in Manila: “How many partners have you slept with so f

ar?” In fact, this question had deeper implications. The answer would be important for Kaulachara-tantra practitioners, in whose doctrine a woman, through the shakti energy in the so called kaula (family), connects between themselves all the people with whom she has ever made love in her life. “What was the human quality of these lovers of yours?”, Jára went on asking in Manila. This second question did not really ask what the quality of their lovemaking was, but what are or were their characters, health, life values, and karma, or how much they are or were thriving in their lives. Before I come back to this theme, which is closely related to Jára’s much debated teachings about Tantric hooks and thorns, I will conclude my preliminary overview of the Tantric moments that connect the material with the metaphysical in everyone’s body.

Sexual Tantric Energy in Long-Term Relationships

Jára teaches that in long-term relationships, where our ego learns the ascetic compromises of worshiping somebody other than ourselves, we are rewarded by experiencing high spiritual states of shared consciousness with another person, and empathy through the energetic harmony of two bodies and two brains. It means in practice that, in Tantric

yoga, we learn how to control every single essence of all the elements, and how to direct and tame the flow of the energetic fibres. These can then become a living stream of love, which—through the desire towards the partner—is not directed to a pelvic orgasmic climax, but to a constant, deeper and deeper, mutual awareness. Such mutual awareness can be expressed in the following way: “I and my partner are not only this physical body.” If a Tantric couple manages to go beyond the borders of their naked nature, they would find themselves in a supeior sexual and spiritual harmony, and come to form one undistinguished consciousness. While a common orgasm, Jára

argues, is sought for its ability to make us forget about ourselves during the flow of pleasure and under its imperative, a Tantric sexual connection is determined by a conscious and intentional control of this imperative of frictional movements. The reward is a liberating oblivion, free from compulsive sexual intercourse, and also a reminiscence of a state that we know from Plato’s mythic concept of androgyne, a sexually undistinguished soul in an harmony consecrated to God (Hlavinka and Jirasek 2010; Hlavinka 2014). This analogy is not totally unequivocal, since Plato did not transcend sensuality through Tantric yoga practices but through rational mental procedures, for which dwelling in the sensual world is related to desire and to the affective part of the soul. In his metaphysical discussion of a “good” higher reality versus a “bad” lower

bodily sensuality, Plato argued that humans are endowed with a rational soul. For the wise, this soul can free humans from the prison of earthy sensuality and move them upwards to the area of true life and the Good. This ideal of a perfect and long-lasting relationship between the partners led to the glamorization of romantic love as a model of the most perfect connection with the Deity. Ramakrishna raised this partnership relationship called madhura high above human-God relationships, and equated it with the love between God the Father and God the Mother, an image that is widespread well beyond India. In his book Atomic Amrit, Guru Jára derives from Ramakrishna a typology including four types

of divine loving relationships: The limitations of human mind allow a human to establish a relationship with God only through one of the four types that we know from the common life, because we do not have the capacity to perceive the spiritual and super-human entities in a direct way (which would be the right way): - Dásya / Dásja: “My lord,” “My lady” - Sakhya / Sakhja: “My boyfriend,” “My girlfriend” - Vátsalya / Vátsalja: “My father,” “My mother” - Madhura: “My love,” “Sweetheart”—this is the best connection we can have within, “God’s Internet.” Parakiya-Rasa, t

rasa—with yoni fluids—rati—works in marriage rather like discharged batteries. At least in comparison to the sacred mixture blended by sexual intercourse in the original battery voltage before the marital stereotype, here we are with Krishna and Radha, spiced up by the tension stemming from what would happen if they were caught during maithuna (Guru Jára 2019a, 7–11). As a unique day-to-day practice of the amorous relation with God, madhura is a natural partnership between a man and a woman. But at some point, Jára admonishes, we also have to face the sad fact that spontaneous Tantric energy disappears from our lives as quickly as it had entered there—a few days, months, or years ago

through the cycles of human experience: infatuation, love, orgasm. Unfortunately, these stages and great relationships in general are only temporary passes to enter the spiritual states that German Christian mystic Hildegard von Bingen (1098–1179) reported as a permanent fruit of her long-lasting monastic isolation: Heaven was opened and a fiery light of exceeding brilliance came and permeated my whole brain, and inflamed my whole heart and whole breast, not like a burning but like a warming flame, as the sun warms anything its rays touch (Hildegard von Bingen 1990, 59).

Living Traditional Tantric Doctrines in Relationships

While monastic cells, mountain hermitages, and other traditional spiritual loci where practicing mystics attained in seclusion their states of higher consciousness, similar or identical to Hildegard’s experience, are now rarely available to the hurried modern humans, the contact with Tantric doctrines still remains possible everywhere and is within our everyday reach. According to Guru Jára, our task is to cultivate these spontaneous Tantric manifestations of our body and convert them into the path of liberation of our

consciousness from the Matrix. Sometimes, even a little change creates an important step towards the liberation. A student of Tantra may initiate his or her lover, and deepen the love-making by experimenting various positions and extending the contemplative phases in between these positions. At other times, Jára teaches, our way towards liberation requires the reconstruction of all aspects of a Tantric daily life, including the transformation of the remnants of previous love relationships—not mentally, as psychotherapeutic sessions do, but in a healing way through energies.

Guru Jára remarked in another interview in Manila: On the spiritual level, when love hurts, and I mean, it hurts so painfully that some jump off the bridge, or when you can’t get into a former physical shape after an erotically wild period, and you feel drained and exhausted in the long term and without any motivation, etc., or in a harsh relationship you lose courage and confidence, which does not return even after a break up, we believe, since the first Kaula Tantrics, that it is due to the connection through Tantric hooks, thorns, and other forms of Tantric connections with ex-partners; whose flow of information energy is currently working to your disadvantage. You don’t always want to “disconnect” a former partner who currently needs your zest, perhaps because of an illness they are currently fighting, but everyone I have met wants to understand what

happens to his or her energy (Guru Jára 2017a). Sri Amritanandanatha Saraswati (1934–2015), the visionary guru who founded Devipuram, wrote in 2011: In God’s creation 50% are male and 50% female. Therefore, God/dess who expands in all of the creation is called Artha Nari Iswara, female (left half), male (right half). Those who worship the female Goddess (Shakti) follow the left path called Vama Achara. Those who worship the male God (Siva) follow the right path called Dakshina Achara. There are worshipping God in female, male and also combined forms follow both right and left hand paths called Kaulachara, Kaula Achara. The word Kaula is derived from Kula which means total. Separately as female and male, and also both together in union are worshipped as dieties. Thus Kaula Achara is a mix (misra) of right and left hand paths. It has been acclaimed as the

highest natural path (sahaja) since it does not debar anyone from practice on the basis of gender: female—male—neutral (rivers, hills, trees, earth, water, fire, air, space, time, health, wealth, etc. which cannot be assigned any gender) (Sri Amritanandanatha 2011). As the Tantric Kaulachara teachings, as presented by Guru Jára, argue, we deal with our kaula, “families,” where the man is connected through Tantric “thorns” with all the lovers his sexual female partners have ever made love with. Women are connected through

Tantric “hooks” only with all the men whom they have made love with, and not with the female lovers of their former male lovers. Yet, hooks are stronger than thorns. The Goddess says, in the Devī Mahatmya: “I am alone here in the world. What second is there, not being of me? Behold these, you villain, my many existences going back into me alone” (Einarsen 2011, 9). The Goddess here draws attention to the Tantric superiority of women, as the beings capable of bringing new life to the world. In some Tantric schools, such as the Chandra Maha-Roshana, a man is unable to reach higher spiritual states

without the help of a woman, whom he excites by Tantric techniques into altered states of consciousness. The rule is, the stronger the orgasm or physical manifestation of the woman’s excitement, the more the Goddess is present in her, and the more beneficial śaktipāta is received by the man through the female body (see Csoma de Körös 1836, 496). In his book Medicine Man of Nirvana, Guru Jára refers to the Chandra MahaRoshana Tantra: Women are heaven, women are the biggest sacrament, women are Buddha, women are a community

of sangha, women are the absolute wisdom prajnāparamita, and women are dharma, therefore the absolute truth, and the one who tries to suppress and devitalize one’s own desires and passions, lives a life in lies (Guru Jára 2019b, 89). He also quoted: “You’ll kiss and hug the naked body of this young widow as if you were kissing and hugging me, Bhairavi. Then she lets you suck and breathe the scent of the pollen of her lotus. And then push hundred times, thousand times, hundred thousand times,” Bhairavi takes a breath. “Just move your penis in her—i.e. in my enlarging interstice, in the flesh, until I endow you for this connection of a vajra and a lotus with Nirvana” (Guru Jára 2019b,

Another Tantric teacher Guru Jára makes reference to, both in his theory and practice, is a Vajrayana Buddhist, Machig Labdrön (1055–1149), who freed more than 5,000 people from the matrix of consciousness during her life. The phenomenal path of this Tibetan woman began when, as a young nun, she was caught, scandalously, making love with a wandering Tantric practitioner from Southern India. Machig, after her yoni was penetrated by this Tantric, called Töpa Bhadra, immediately achieved the highest knowledge of

vidya, and rays of light started exuding from her body, which attracted the villagers. Guru Jára added during one of our interviews: The young Machig Labdrön was not only caught with a Tantric lover but she got pregnant on top of that. Not only did she have to leave the monastery, but because of contempt of her chaste fellow villagers she had to leave her homeland. According to the Lakulīśa Sutra, one of the oldest Tantric doctrines, it is why she was able to bring thousands of people to enlightenment. A text attributed to one of the founders of

Pàshupata Tantra prods into seeking for scorning by mainstream society because those who offend, criticize, attack you, take away your bad karma and in exchange for it they give you their good destiny (Guru Jára 2017a). In the book Stigmata of Karma, Guru Jára mentions the teachings of Lakulīśa (the ancient master of Pàshupata Shivaism, whose biographical data are unknown) in this connection: The biggest obstacle on the path to enlightment is a social interconnection with an illusory world of collective consciousness, where we are imprisoned. Nevertheless, despite the hypotheses of some explorers, that among the gymnosophists whom Alexander’s [356–323 BCE] expedition met in

India, there were also Shivaistic sadhus worshiping Rudra, for now we do not have a proof that in this era Tantra and yoga were together present in India. Lakulīśa, the 28th incarnation of Shiva who establihed the “Pàsupata Sadhus,” the first yoga-Tantric school of a similarly extreme type, appeared on the scene no sooner than centuries later (Guru Jára 2018, 769). Guru Jára mentions several traditional Tantric schools, and despite their myriads of differences, they might have one thing in common. The students embark on a journey that takes them far away from everyday life, into the Absolute that transcends reality. A case in point is the phenomenal Abhinavagupta (950– 1016), the author of Tantrāloka, who at the end of his life disappeared into a mountain cave with his disciples to reach Nirvana and remain beyond the natural universe for eternity. Modern students

of Tantra seek practical results. They want to transform the forces of libido, kundalini, to make themselves healthier, happier, or more successful. Guru Jára combines both traditional and modern approaches to Tantra. He is not the first modern master to attempt this fusion. Sir John Woodroffe, the British judge and scholar who wrote under the pen name of Arthur Avalon, more than than 100 years ago, translated ancient texts to show that this is possible. If Avalon translated Tantric texts outrageous for the morality of his time, sexual magicians such as Aleister Crowley (1875–1947), went from theory to practice and reported success in generating powerful energies through various forms of

lovemaking. Italian esoteric teacher Julius Evola (1898–1974) combined Avalon with the will of power of Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) in his L’uomo come potenza (Man as Power), published in 1925; in the third revised edition (1949), the title was changed to Lo yoga della potenza (The Yoga of Power), to which in later editions a subtitle was added, Saggio sui Tantra (Essay on Tantra) (Evola 1949).

Avalon, Crowley, and Evola are just a few of the masters whose doctrines Guru Jára encountered at the very beginning of his life journey, when he emigrated from the materialistic Communist totalitarianism of Czechoslovakia to Rome. And there, accompanied by his new friends, he met Catholic monks as well as parish priests and bishops—and esoteric masters. As he states in his biographical book, Stigmata of Karma, they often helped him and other friends from Eastern Europe to cope with their life as refugees.

Even more often, they preached sermons to them about sin, shame, shyness, Platonic love, or celibacy. Over the years, Guru Jára concluded that all these are just different techniques through which humans deal with what he calls Tantric energy. Like a difficult breakup, the unwanted separation from a loved partner or the loss of a loved one expose the depth of the Tantric bonding of lovers in the absence of one of the two bodies. The poignancy consuming our body when we visualize our lost love in bed with someone else is one of the most powerful magical operations a human is capable of. Such a magical operation, Jára teaches, is able through Tantric techniques to turn jealousy into a positive energy that could “miraculously” heal an acute health issue, or help an athlete break a personal record, or bring a Tantric adept into a precious deep samadhi.

Valentinus (100–161) was one of the most famous teachers of Gnosticism. According to Tertullian (160–220), Valentinus abandoned the mainline Catholic Church when he failed to be chosen as a bishop, something he had expected (Tertullian, Adversus Valentinianos, IV, in Riley 1971, 28). Guru Jára believes his school taught a path similar to Tantra and even influenced the subsequent developments of Tantra in India and similar teachings in China. Scholarly sources describe how Valentinian Gnostics proposed a classical ascetic

path by refusing the sensual world and ignoring the body altogether (see e.g. Quispel 1974). According to Guru Jára, however, after reaching enlightenment and holiness through the dry path, Valentinians moved to the wet path. Their Tantric path at its highest level, Jára suggests, was similar to the motto of Aleister Crowley, “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law,” i.e. it integrated and transformed in itself all contradictions through experiencing them (Guru Jára, 2019c). But what about modern students? What attracts them to Tantric paths? Guru Jára answers:

A few come for a spiritual awakening, while others want to attain better physical and mental states or magical powers, and of course many wish to break the bondage of their Tantric links with ex-lovers. Another reason is káma, pleasure, which has a great representative in the goddess Kamakhya, who is easily remembered thanks to the famous book Kamasutra (Guru Jára, 2019c). Surprisingly, in our modern times full of pornography, sexologists, and sex shops, many people experience problems with physical pleasure. Many

tend to exhaust their sexual appetite. Within marriages, despite a daily friendly comradery and love, intimate intercourse often occurs just once, twice, or three times a year. This is a special problem in Japan, as confirmed by both scholars of sexuality and Guru Jára’s own experiences with his Japanese students. At the same time, Guru Jára believes that there is a specific Japanese Tantric tradition. He teaches that Bengali Vamachara Tantra and Tibetan Hevajra Tantra, as well as Chinese Inner Alchemy Taoism, influenced the birth of an important Japanese Tantric stream known as Tachikawa-ryu. In this teaching, Jára argues, a copulating man is invoking the microcosm, while the woman invokes the macrocosm, meaning the whole universe. The clitoris was called here hoju, the magic jewel of the dharma, and according to Jára these Japanese practitioners used 48 sexual positions from their 900 year-old textbook, the Sutra of Secret Bliss, which teaches a secret method enabling a man and a woman to experience the bliss of Buddhahood in their

bodies (Guru Jára 2017a). This Tantric ritual, Guru Jára continues, starts with a prayer where Tantric lovers pay respect to the traditional Shingon mandala. The woman, who is now the embodied Aizen Myo-o, says, “I want to receive the Diamond Realm,” and the man says, “I want to enter the Womb Realm” (Guru Jára 2017a). Guru Jára argues that there are parallels between this Japanese way and certain Indian paths: The names change, but the principle stays the same. This makes it possible to adapt these precious traditional teachings to the modern human, who has got different structures of the mind and different “idols,” but in principle they are not different from our ancestors. Similarly, then,

the wisdom of the Gnostics, Sophia, that we have in the West, whose spark is in each of us like a higher consciousness or a soul, the Kabbalistic Sephira of wisdom, Chochmah, the Tantric vidya, or the Buddhist prajnā, which in its perfect state of prajnāparamita is the emptiness that lighted up the original uncreated light in the experience of Machig Labdrön, all these across cultures, despite their differences, carry

inside the essence of the same knowledge of the highest truth about ourselves and the meaning of all what is around us (Guru Jára 2019b, 38). Among the important sources of the Tantric teachings of Guru Jára, I would like to mention also Tamil Siddhas, such as Bhogar (550–300 BCE), traditionally believed to be an accomplished alchemist who achieved the nectar of immortality, amrit, and Tirumular (whose dates are controversial: he probably lived in the 8th century CE).

Holy Yoni

Some of the Tantric texts assign Ten Great Wisdom Goddesses to ten zones of the most sacred temple, the female yoni. In certain Tantric texts, there is no higher spiritual activity than yoni puja, where the woman’s genitals receives the highest marks of respect. Guru Jára, in his meditation on celibacy included in his book Tantric Transformations, celebrates the yoni as the entry gate to real Nirvana: There is no other place in the material universe more sacred than the yoni. Not even symbols leading to

the infinite Divine Light, because to reach the state of salvation or enlightenment, you have to be born first, you have to enter the material world via the gate of yoni. It is then obvious that reasonable people regard yoni as the object of worship, meditations, prayers, the gate to highest initiation and universal transformation (Guru Jára 2017b, 48–9). A materialized emptiness is the essence of Nirvana in its attractive form, i.e. in the form that contains a potency of existence, a possibility to be born, i.e. a female vulva, a yoni. A common man realizes his existence by an utterly tenacious effort to experience a taste of a stay in a paradisiac nirvana at least for a few moments, which are

provided to him by a common physiological orgasm. However, for a male Tantric initiate, who is able to overcome his urgent animal compulsion, a yoni is not only a door to life but an altar of sainthood as well. Once he perceives a yoni in this way, he perceives even sex as a holy act (see Hlavinka forthcoming) Already a sacrificial ritual from ancient Vedas put into the holy space of the yoni (Sanskrit: upastha) of goddess Aditi the so-called sóma, which was supposed to represent a nectar of immortality—amrit. At full moon or at new moon, an incendiary offering was put on this altar in the form of ritually burnt flowers, foods, and so on (see Hlavinka 2014, 135).

In the Tantric doctrine of Guru Jára, the yoni is perceived not only in the figurative sense of a symbolic entry into Nirvana, but as a real object—a holy altar for meditation and worshipping. A yoni is, from its divine nature, endowed to gently “pull” the prepared aspirant into a higher state. According to Guru Jára, this only happens if both partners are capable of such perception of themselves, and abide by a sexual abstinence or celibacy for a specific time, e.g. one lunar cycle, or 40 days. Nevertheless, Guru

Jára maintains that a long-lasting celibacy—except within the context of specific monastic paths—, when practiced without maintainig a healthy Tantric energy in the body, does not help spiritual progress. Celibacy is effective only because of Tantra. (…) An impotent man doesn’t have to practice celibacy, because it doesn’t change him at all. Celibacy does not work because of celibacy itself, but thanks to sexual energy, which is stopped, because most people are unable to use it in a better way than to store it. This doesn’t concern initiated Tantrics. (…) Celibacy is a sexual position, which is related to a yoga asana, “dead body”— shavasana... That is why this is the hardest asana, because you lie on your back in this exercise. Therefore, as well as in the case of celibacy, only very advanced practitioners should practice it, because the others would only waste their time by purposelessly lying on the ground (Guru Jára 2011, 94). The Todala Tantra tradition is one of the main sources of Guru Jára’s Tantric teachings. Here, the

ten sovereign forms of Goddess Mahavidya are described. Listen, O Devi, I will speak concisely of the essence of yoga. The body resembles a tree, with the root above and the branches below. In the macrocosm there are tirthas (bathing places) which also exist in the body. The macrocosm is like the microcosm (Sarma 1961, II). In fact, the ten forms of Goddess Mahavidya are fundamental not only in traditional Indian paths, for example in the Kali-Kula Shaktic tradition, but also in many contemporary Tantric schools. The

origins of the worship of the ten forms of Goddess Mahavidya date back to a period between the 9th and the 12th century CE. These teachings often emphasize the connection between the Ten Tantric Goddesses and Buddhist teachings that were dominant in India at that time, but later quickly disappeared due to the Muslim invasion. Each form of the Goddess Mahavidya is also represented by her own sacred geometrical mandala, known as a yantra. These yantras stacked on top of each other also represent a sexual intercourse, in the form of a Tantric union between a man and a woman. “Every

woman should know the Goddess Mahavidya, whose temple she carries in her yoni, to be able to interconnect and identify with her” (Guru Jára 2019b, 100). DHUMAVATI’s yantra symbolizes the initial contact with a lingam (penis), but not with the inner parts of the yoni. BHAIRAVI’s yantra includes contact with the lingam and vulva, and other reversed triangles of this yantra symbolize the potential path to the heart of the yoni through Bhairavi and the eight Goddesses inside. KALI’s mandala pictures the moment in which the

lingam meets the vagina’s entrance, in a position called Tantric Kiss. The yantra of TARA pictures a shallow penetration, approximately 3 cm. of the penis, i.e. up to its head. CHINNAMASTA’s yantra is a hymen, or the invisible energy around the space where the hymen was broken. Due to the elasticity of the hymen, this is often behind the Tara mandala. However, in the virgins, Chinnamasta’s yantra is on the same level as the Kali mandala, and both remain united till the hymen is broken. The head of the goddess Chinnamasta, which is chopped off, although contented, considering her facial expression, symbolizes the loss of hymen and blood caused by such an act, which triggers the karmic activity of two of Chinnamasta’s dancers who also represent meridians—ida and pingala (Guru Jára. 2019b, 90-1). Chinnamasta is linked to life energy distribution and to the hymen. Guru

Jára emphasizes that Sri Shodashi-Tripura Sundari is the power of perfection. She is the most beautiful woman who has ever existed in the world. Her place in the female body is at the vaginal cervix. If the vaginal cervix is very gently and systematically stimulated by the male lingam, the sovereign place of this Goddess is gradually being activated. The most popular symbol of Shakti Tantrism, Sri Yantra, is also related to the Goddess Sri Shodashi-Tripura Sundari. A great goddess transformed her body, energy, and psyche of her consciousness into Shri Yantra. Through her, you can fully get to know Tripura Sundari, including all rythms of the Moon, because she is also the goddess of fifteen sounds,

the phases of time, and the secret sixteenth sound transcending an ocean of libido, káma, and of time kála, as taught in the Kámakálavilaja-Tantra. There, káma is a motion, of which kála is a side product, and without them an empty space of full vaginas become vacant into the emptiness (Guru Jára 2019b, 319–20). I have not yet mentioned the remaining

Goddesses in this series, Bagalamukhi, Matangi, and Kamala. They are discussed by Guru Jára in his books Medicine Man of Nirvana and Atomic Amrit. In my 2019 interview, he explained which specific Goddess’ awareness is being stimulated during the Tantric union: The lovemaking positions have an essential impact on the hooks and on the types of conception, through one of the stimulated and activated types of Wisdom. Technically, the uppermost pressure during the man’s ejaculation or the woman’s orgasm is the most

decisive aspect, due to the “atomic reaction” of the connection of chakras and “antichakras,” microcosm and macrocosm, during the lovemaking, when a child is conceived or a hook is created (Guru Jára 2019c).

Tantra in Practice in the Guru Jára Path: (1) Startantra

One specific area of Guru Jára’s Tantric teachings is called Startantra. It is inspired by the Todala Tantra, but Jára claims it is mostly based on knowledge and experience of ancient Egyptians teachings he gained through revelation (see Introvigne 2019, 5 and 9–10). The “Egyptian Sacrament” also revealed how souls enter the Earth from different planets, stars, and dimensions. The lovers’ position during lovemaking, Jára claims, essentially impacts the energy charge and Tantric quality of the intercourse, but also the

possibility of conceiving a child whose soul may come from the Pleiades, Sirius, and so on. Startantra includes suggestions about what lovemaking positions are most appropriate to increase the quality of a relationship, to overcome infertility, and more importantly for the ritual purposes of merging with the Deities, the Universe, and other dimensions. From a Tantric point of view, Jára insists, the power behind the conception of a new life (as well as the creation of a so-called “hook”) is comparable to the atomic breakage in physics, as contemporary scientists have also suggested. However, there are some spiritual conditions for Startantra to work. One of these fundamental conditions is described by Jára in the book Medicine Man of Nirvana, The energetic integrity of what the penis brings into a vagina would decide whether the vagina becomes a bhaga mandala or just a place for animal mating (Guru Jára 2019b, 418). Guru Jára’s Startantra is based on the well-known esoteric and alchemical doctrine of correspondences, “that which is below is like that which is above and that which is above is like that which is below.” Astrology is also connected to different sexual positions. Startantra, Jára claims, leads to spiritual growth through the use of Tantric energy, which also requires the knowledge of what positions in the couple’s lovemaking are most appropriate to support the partnership and its development.

In Startantra, the “tip of the 8th house” is the type of sexual position derived from the astrological sign where the 8th house begins in the practitioner’s horoscope. This is the immediate area of sexual transformation and, according to Guru Jára, the most suitable position in lovemaking and the most satisfying in terms of sexual ecstasy, as well as for spiritual growth and overall improvement of karma. Both partners will benefit from raising kundalini energy, through the “rose and flute exercise” that I will discuss later

in this article. To give only one example, Guru Jára offers these suggestions, very much in the style of a classical Tantric maithuna, for the sign Leo. The female partner should sit on the lap of a sitting or squatting or kneeling man face to face. (…) Some women cannot conceive because in the past life they had promised their cosmic gate, the womb, to a particular person. This karmic reservation blocks other space travelers, but because no one gives the woman advice regarding a sexual position—the Tantric seal leading to the star on which the soul mate resides—, there is unnecessary torment on both sides of the universes. Yet it is sufficient that in these cases the initiated

StarTantric gives advice, according to the horoscope, on the appropriate sexual position—the Tantric seal—, and the cosmic path through pregnancy and birth can begin. If you are in such a situation and want to help yourself, try the following: a) the position of the astrological sign in which you have your ascendant; b) the position of your astrological sign; c) the position in which the people who have the ascendant in your sign, Leo, were conceived, because this is the most spiritual and therefore, from the atomic perspective, the most effective sexual position of humanity (Guru Jára 2011, 478–83). Thus, the different sexual positions of Startantra are not primarily used to search

for káma (delight), as opposed to the current understanding of the Kamasutra, but to find the most appropriate Tantric energy. Guru Jára suggests that the twelve basic positions corresponding to each astrological sign should be extended, in what he calls the “Initiation Version for Advanced Tantrics,” to sixty-four positions corresponding to all available energy variations of the existence in the Chinese Book of Changes I Ching (which in turn have their parallels in India, including the Lila Squares). Humans are classified by Guru Jára into four categories, according to the kind of energy hook left by their fathers in the womb of their mothers during conception:

1. “Those conceived through a gate ‘hooked’ by a ‘hereditary sin’ and the energy of an incubus.” They were conceived in some variant of the missionary position by a man who was neither an initiated Tantric nor a virgin. They do not have the strength and, as a rule, the need to overcome the shackles of family or karma, and they are most disposed to live a mainstream way of life, because they are not sufficiently developed to be aware of their own uniqueness. They prefer conventional sports and entertainment, and choose studies and occupations according to social conventions without any significant personal interest.

2. “Those conceived through a gate ‘hooked’ by a ‘hereditary sin’ and the energy of a succubus.” The position of the woman on top causes these so-called “succubus hooks,” in order to give birth to people who will be either admired or marginalized and hated by mainstream, moralistic society. These beings, who suffer under the pressure of the majority, began to be born more often in an era of emancipation of women. The fact that women no longer waited patiently for what they were allowed to do or dare among men, both in their professional careers or in bed, generated this second human type. 3. “From female-virgins, or male-virgins, ideally when both are still ‘pure,’ exceptional individuals are born, but they will be a bit lost in this harsh world.”

4. “The fourth type of people are avatars, Sons of God. They are born immaculately. Either as the Bible describes in the conception of Jesus, the mother being a virgin and the father the Holy Spirit, which is the highest ideal, or as the Bible describes in the Book of Samuel, when the father, King David, was a Tantric initiate and the mother was unhooked, that is, free of incubi or succubi” (Guru Jára 2011, 178–79). However, in the last part of his most important book, Casanova Sútra, Guru Jára describes a fifth category. It includes advanced souls, not at the supreme level of the Avatars, but still very spiritually aware, who enter the womb willingly and consciously. And this could be highly influenced by the knowledge and practice of Startantra by the couple conceiving these children (Guru Jára 2011, 481). For Guru Jára, the incubus is a hook coming from the positions with man on top and woman down, a succubus is a hook coming from the opposite positions. The incubus type of hook in the woman’s womb originates when the woman was not impregnated after the ejaculation, and the man was on top. The succubus type of hook is an energetic vasana (connection between partners) that occurred in

the positions when the woman was on top and the ejaculation did not lead to pregnancy. Guru Jára maintains that for each couple relationship there is only one hook, no matter how many times they made love. The predominant type of the hooks, and of course their quality, can deeply influence the psyche, behavior, but also the fate of the woman. Jára

teaches that, Sex is the most powerful energy transformer and connects the content of “antichakras” with the content of chakras. And this triggers the atomic reaction of transforming what is in us into the karmic events of the world around us. And this is the supreme power of Tantra as the spiritual method of growth, the linking of the microcosm with the macrocosm, and their merging into one. During the sexual union of the two microcosms, a new macrocosm is formed, which is affected by the third aspect, namely the sexual position (Guru Jára 2011, 229).

(2) “Antichakras” and Un-thorning

As chakras may be seen and used as “stairways to heaven” from the crotch upwards, it is also possible to perceive and use what Guru Jára calls “antichakras” as “stairways to hell.” In the book Poetrie—Liberation of the Soul (Guru Jára 2003), in the chapter “Secret Gates of Ganga and Shiva’s Mantra” (Guru Jára 2003, 68), and in the book Casanova Sútra (Guru Jára 2011, 246), specific examples are offered: 1. Atala (somewhere under the muladhara on our hips), associated with lust and chronic fear. It can lead to

promiscuity. 2. Vitala (in the middle of the thighs)—negative anger and frustrated anger towards the whole world. 3. Sutala (in the knees)—caustic jealousy and envy deriving from psychological complexes. It often brings constant criticism and sarcastic remarks about everything. It can lead to materialism and atheism. 4. Talatala (calves), or “usurer’s chakra,” where everything—including relationships—is subject to calculation and converted into material valuables. Greed and avarice here are the basic instincts and the spiritual mottoes. 5. Rasatala (in the ankles)—animal instincts and the search for material benefits, the type of life that affirms itself “over the dead bodies” of others. The sharp elbows of the beast bring a constant fear of others. There is a fear that other beasts will get on better than us in life. 6. Mahatala (in the insteps)—the total dullness of the soul, conscience, joy of life. “The world is here for their comfort, and so they steal from the world and from others, and if they fail, they fall into blunt

depression.” 7. Patala (on soles, feet)—a killer and tyrannical instinct. Revenge, destruction of material values and harming others. Life is lived in hatred, enjoying when others are suffering. Every man is interconnected through his thorns to the wombs of his expartners. In the book Casanova Sútra, Guru Jára offers very detailed descriptions of thorns and suggestions and meditations for removing these energetic vasanas, particularly in the first chapter, “Thorny Phallus.” Jára describes thorns as energetic connections to all female lovers in whose yoni the man has ever ejaculated. It is through these thorns that the man is in contact with the corresponding hooks in the womb of his female ex-lovers. At the same time, through their wombs, he is interconnected with the hooks of all other male lovers of his former and present female lovers. The strongest (energy-wise)

man currently draws energy from other men through the hooks of their common (over time) female lovers. The strongest takes everything. If a man has difficulties in his personal life, however, he becomes an easy prey for stronger men. These are matters that an ordinary person has, of course, very little chance of influencing, unless he is practicing a wide range of Tantra exercises. Thorns cannot be removed from men in the same way as in the Tantric rituals for unhooking women. However, in the system of Guru Jára, there are techniques where women can assist their partners in removing thorns. Meditations and visualizations are essential because, when identifying and trying to remove male thorns, there is a risk that an inexperienced female partner may take them over to her energy circle. Thorns are found in men in the area of phallus, its root, on the perineum, and around the anus. If a man has too many of them, they will begin to fall into the area of the “antichakras,” which would negatively alter his personality and put a great strain on his karma. The doctrine of thorns and their dangers shows that in fact, Guru Jára does not encourage promiscuity (Hlavinka forthcoming).

A man can also get rid of thorns from his former partners by using certain Tantric instructions from Guru Jára. They are described in the already mentioned chapter “Thorny Phallus” of the book Casanova Sútra (Guru Jára 2011, 37–46), whose instructions can be summarized as follows. The man must recall the seven most important ex-lovers of his life, into whose yoni he has ejaculated. The steps are the following: 1. The first woman he ever made love to in his life. The man should think of the partner’s yoni as a red

rose blossom. His penis is the stalk of the rose with pikes and thorns. The number of thorns indicates the number of partners the ex-lover had before him. The idea is that he is sitting inside this stalk, and can see green colors everywhere, but he has a red blossom of his ex-lover’s rose over his head. Then, he should imagine the red color of his mother’s energy when he was conceived through the green stem to the rose blossom, which then turns green. The following is Guru Jára’s description of the cleansing fire: The King of Zahor set on fire the eight-year-old Padmasambhava, but when the fire was over, he was found seated on a lotus where eight female Tantrics were taking care of him. The Fire of Zahor is the best purgatory for the thorns you have from sexual connections, but if you are not ready, in the Fire of Zahor you can hurt yourself (Guru Jára 2011, 40). 2. Then, he should imagine his most repulsive ex-partner and visualize his love-making with her, just as he was watching a pornographic movie about himself. At the same time, he should remember that he is still sitting inside his green penis (stalk), which he is pushing up above himself into the repulsive partner’s red rose, which is above his head.

He will thus realize how many more thorns his stem has. 3. Then, he should imagine the lover with whom you had the strangest breakup. The lover with the most beautiful body. Then, the lover with the strongest scent. Then, the lover with the nicest voice. And the lover in whose company you had the worst experience (Guru Jára 2011, 42). He should try to calculate the number of thorns from these seven ex-partners, of whom it is most desirable to get cleansed, as his precious life energy of seven chakras is drained through their wombs and the hooks towards their other lovers, who can profit from his energy in a very dangerous way. 4. The thorns of the men who are weaker, in terms of energy, can be removed by the help of a caring girlfriend. With her tongue, she may gradually suck the

thorns in the direction of coccyx, anus, perineum, and scrotum. If there are too many thorns, it is also necessary that she licks the feet and knee pits. The thorns of the men who are stronger, in terms of energy, can be successfully mastered by the ritual related to the Fire of Zahor: Enter the red uterus with a flash of light from your father’s semen. Then turn it into a green penis, and as you sit inside it, use it to make love to your first lover again and then transform the red rose that remains after her and make

love to it in the other six chakra partners we had picked up. And then, when you are done… I will purify you through the Fire of Zahor, so that your destiny finally begins to move forward as it is supposed to (Guru Jára 2011, 46). While making love, however, not only is there an intense energy connection at the level of the chakras, but the negative karmic currents of the mentioned antichakras from the area of the lovers’ legs can also be transmitted to each other (Guru Jára 2011, 239).

(3) Tantric Meditations for Couples and Individuals

According to Guru Jára, the true Tantric union of a woman and a man in a sacred maithuna transforms our physical body of flesh and bones into a luminous body that is able to step outside our known three-dimensional reality. Before doing so, however, Guru Jára recommends practicing the “rose and flute exercise,” which is suitable both for couples

and singles. ARTantra considers the respiratory space of the central part of body, from the throat down to the lower abdomen, as the flute, and the area between the coccyx and the pubic bone as the red rose, which opens up with inhalation to the state of an unfolded bloom, and closes to the state of a bud with exhalations. The Tantric practitioner then tries to contract the individual muscle parts (buttocks, vagina, thigh muscles) at the moment of full flowering—i.e. exhalation. The rose thorns remain in the buttocks (around the rectum) and can be pulled out using nails (gentle pinching). The fallen leaves of the rose then fall into the calves, where they must be raked out (massaged out) of

the feet. The butterfly of the flower will remain in the nipples, where it must be sucked (at least 20 minutes each nipple), or rubbed out by using moist fingers (thumb-forefinger-middle finger). Finally, the scent of the rose is aspirated from the mouth or lips by either kisses (at least 20 minutes) or touches using two moist fingers (forefinger + middle finger) (Guru Jára 2003, 72). Guru Jára adds that the rose and flute exercise, when practiced by a woman, consists in inhaling the excited energy upwards from her rose region (the first chakra) through the very center of the body up to the throat. She exhales this

unique and healing energy into the space above her head, through the seventh chakra upwards, or into the aura space by exhaling through the heart chakra. In doing so, the woman continually imagines her own body as an empty space filled with a shining crystal light entering her from above her head. The exercise is similar for men, with the difference that the excited energy is inhaled either through the first chakra, using the crotch muscle contraction (mula bandha), but also directly through the lingam, leading the energy

through the central axis of the body to the heart chakra, and exhaling it towards his partner through a beam of love. Or, similarly, as with women, by exhalation men lead the energy above their heads and surrender it to the higher consciousness (buddhi) for the purpose of their spiritual growth, for the suffering beings, or for the successful completion of a certain project. By far, Jára teaches the strongest way to strengthen the first chakra is to tighten the pelvic floor muscles. This is the exercise called mula bandha in Tantric yoga. With the inhalation, the practitioners tighten their muscles, and with the exhalation, they relax the muscles in the area of yoni or lingam and rectum. This systematic daily tightening of the crotch muscles strongly activates sexual energy, and the lovers can also indulge in a stronger experience of interconnection of their first chakras. For the first two weeks of practice, both men and women learn to contract the muscles of the buttocks and the genitalia simultaneously, in cycles of ten

contractions and 30-60 seconds of rest, where one inhalation and exhalation corresponds to one contraction. After a few weeks, they can contract the muscles up to 108 times a day or more, starting with ten repetitions. Guru Jára claims that this is a sure path for the life energy to rise up. Guru Jára also describes “the mystery of hidden souls in our being” in his 2003 text “Tantric Hindsight with Casanova,” A man has his hidden female soul in his foreskin, and a woman has her hidden male soul in her clitoris. If a man needs more tenderness, he regularly cherishes his foreskin, and if a woman needs more strength, energy, vigor, she regularly reaches clitoridal orgasms. The excitation of the

foreskin and the clitoris with Tantric visualizations (e.g. the rose exercise), either with the help of another person or by masturbation (in the case of men, by masturbation without subsequent ejaculation) awakens the energy of the rainbow snake (Guru Jára 2003, 71). For women, “bodhichitta, the seed of enlightenment in us, is like exciting the clitoris of the heart” (Guru Jára 2011, 199).

(4) Hooks and Thorns—and Unhooking

Massimo Introvigne, a leading Italian scholar of new religious movements who has written extensively on sexual magic, summarizes the roots of Guru Jára’s unhooking in a way I agree with: According to Jára, several problems … are due to “hooks” and “thorns.” These concepts have not been invented by Jára. They have a venerable tradition in both Tantrism and esoteric Buddhism and Taoism, and are present in the teachings of other contemporary neo-Tantric groups. Jára mentions a quote attributed to Kūkai (Kōbō-Daishi,

774– 835), the Japanese monk who founded esoteric Shingon Buddhism: “When you visit your former mistresses, you will see white worms eating through the vagina and blue flies flying in her mouth. This scene will give you deep regret and unspeakable shame.” Jára’s interpretation is that, “in cases where new life was not conceived during sex, the ‘living’ remnants of this union of the two bodies will remain in the mistresses through a life-giving act. Only those who have attained at least a degree of samadhi through meditation can see it” (Introvigne 2019, 13; the reference is to Guru Jára 2013). According to Guru Jára (2003), with every ejaculation men lose a part of their reservoir of life energy hidden in the amrit, the elixir of life. In contrast, women can temporarily acquire this desirable energy for themselves through the man’s orgasm. But the price is

the energy vasanas (hooks) that every ejaculating partner leaves in their womb, even if he uses a condom. For clairvoyants, these “hooks” look indeed like luminous worms that take the best life energy from the woman’s womb and transfer it to her former partners. In addition to that, after every male orgasm, when she gets another dose of the male fire energy, the woman’s first and second chakras, which are already very strongly influenced by the generative water energy, are once again flooded with the spilled pleasure of orgasmic fluids. They then turn her two bottom chakras into an essence similar to a swamp, where both the woman and her partner, unaware of the Tantric principles at work,

can drown both emotionally and energetically. Taisha Abelar, a student of the American cultural anthropologist and shaman Carlos Castaneda (1925–1998), also mentions the energetic connections to former partners (hooks) in the woman’s womb: Men leave specific energy lines inside the body of women. They are like luminous tapeworms that move inside the womb, sipping up energy… Those lines of energy, established through sexual intercourse, collect and steal energy from the female body to benefit the male who left them there… The worms just die out if she can resist having sex for seven years (Abelar 1992, 52–4).

Guru Jára believes that this term of seven years can be shortened to three years of celibacy, and sometimes even less, depending on whether the woman is intensively practicing spiritual exercises, through which her fine subtle bodies are purified and the energy hooks or worms, which are stealing her most precious life energy, are removed. Guru Jára teaches that, if this practice is accompanied by a ritual Tantric ceremony, a form of faith healing also known as “unhooking,” the whole process of energetical cleansing from

former partners can be reduced to 40 days, or 21 days in less serious cases. Details are described in Jára’s book Casanova Sútra (Guru Jára 2011), and in the second chapter, “Excerpts from the Life of Guru Jára,” of my own book Evangelium Guru Járy podle Pavla (Hlavinka 2018). Based on interviews with Guru Jára, I present there an overview of certain rituals and ceremonies, including a nine-day fast from food, drink and sleep, coupled with continuous Maha Nirvana Tantra meditations. Guru Jára claims that he learned, from the Indian and Himalayan holy men (sadhus) with whom he studied, the techniques for a perfect accumulation of the substance of unadulterated primordial light into his

spine. He then became able to transfer these light healing vibrations to a Tantric partner in both spiritual and therapeutic rituals in various forms, through his body, lingam, touch, or crystal. He also claims he acquired the skill of being able to precisely diagnose the state of sexual vasanas (energy hooktype interconnections) before starting a Tantric ritual. These faith healing rituals are extremely demanding in nature, and not the slightest hint of self-indulgence is present in the therapeutic process. His

followers believe that Guru Jára first attained the holiness of the enlightened being through his dry path, and only after a few years later did he realize the mahamudra of the Tantric Nirvana. In him, according to his devotees, there is therefore by definition no residue of a human ego bound to bodily desires. He claims he went through the difficult

path of the initiation into the healing of energy vasanas and related Tantric techniques because, as he says, he wanted to know how to pass on the light of enlightenment to modern men and women, for whom the traditional ascetic spiritual paths look distant and unfamiliar. He offered therapeutic help throughout this Tantric ritual, he claims, from the place of pure compassion and with a great deal of self-sacrifice (Hlavinka 2018, 399). I would add that, although Guru Jára’s teachings are based on the spiritual traditions of Tantra, in my opinion they are not incompatible with modern science. There are scientists who believe that in sexual intercourse male DNA is transmitted to the woman, and may leave trace in her body for more than fifty years (Chan, Gurnot, Montine, Sonnen, Guthrie and Nelson 2012; Yan, Lambert, Guthrie, Porter, Loubière, Madeleine, Stevens, Hermès and Nelson 2005: these studies include additional

bibliography). During the Tantric liturgy of unhooking, erection is not triggered by a reflexive reaction to the lustful desire for an animal stimulus, but is initiated through the seventh chakra down to the first and second chakras, clearly as a manifestation of divine will and grace, not as a sign of lust. In order for this Tantric connection to be

able to occur at all, the woman in question must be fully aware and introduced into what is specifically going to happen. She must be relaxed and fully cooperative because this therapy can last for more than an hour. It is certainly not a recreational activity for the guru, because all negative energies from the former partners of the woman are being passed onto him, and he must subsequently undergo several cleansing rituals that last for many days. This is a very exhausting set of exercises, to which Guru Jára claims he submitted himself because of the vows he pronounced when he was initiated into the wet path (see Hlavinka 2018).

Conclusion

The Guru Jára Path includes both new and traditional approaches to Tantra and sacred sexual union. I have introduced here some of the key features of Guru Jára’s Tantric doctrine, including its theoretical bases and main practices. I have also investigated the sources of Guru Jára’s Tantric beliefs, which originate in the lineage of Kaula and

Todala Tantra, and in the traditions connected with the worship of the Dasa Mahavidya. Guru Jára’s teachings, on the other hand, cannot be reduced to its Eastern sources. The tradition is interpreted and transformed in order to make it relevant for modern men and women. Jára believes that the ancient teachings connected with sexuality may all be interpreted, discussed, and even rejected, and we should remain open-minded to new ideas, new explanations, new possibilities. Criticizing Guru Jára by claiming that his interpretation of ancient Tantric texts is not philologically accurate would amount to a basic misunderstanding of his whole spiritual enterprise.

French post-structuralist Michel Foucault (1926–1984) also took an interest in Tantra, which he believed can free a mature individual from one of the most hidden political-economic manipulations of European history, the one connected with the control of sexuality. Foucault distinguishes very sharply between scientia sexualis and ars erotica (Foucault 1990). The initiation to Tantra is to ars erotica and its techniques, which for the Western man and woman is a new way of approaching our sexuality. It is profoundly

revolutionary. It is perceived as provocative and controversial in the mainstream society, as evidenced by the experience of Guru Jára himself: Tantra is a faith which urges you not to let your penis be erected by the Lies of the Darkness, but always by the Light of the Truth. Only then, it can penetrate directly to the heart of the Goddess that bore our Universe (Guru Jára 2018, 388). Tantric transformations, and the techniques and explorations of traditional Tantric spiritual paths, reveal that Tantra has always been an art. Foucault notes that an artful way of exploring sexuality (ars erotica) has been cultivated in Eastern cultures since ancient times, while Western societies opted for developing a scientific approach to the study of sexual activity (scientia sexualis), as part of the expansion of modernity and capitalism. Referring to Western Christian

societies, Foucault concludes that: Our civilization possesses no ars erotica. In return, it is undoubtedly the only civilization to practice a scientia sexualis; or rather, the only civilization to have developed over the centuries procedures for telling the truth of sex which are geared to a form of knowledgepower strictly opposed to the art of initiations and the masterful secret (Foucault 1990, 140–1).

References

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[[Category:]Vajrayana]