Margot Anand:

Truth Is Erotic

T
he very first time I made love, I was thrown into a remark-
able encounter with the truth of my being, as consciousness
expanded beyond my body, beyond my mind, and beyond the
normal boundaries of time. I connected with the eternal Self—with
what existed before I was born and will continue to exist after I die.
I had never heard the word tantra, and yet I knew that sexuality was
my path to awakening, for I had realized the light of spirit in my first
lover’s arms.
Orgasm brings us closer to the divine than any other experience.
In the moment of orgasm, a bonding happens between the right and
left hemispheres of the brain. When the artistic, feeling, intuitive right
side of the brain fuses with the center of thinking and logic on the left
side, a zero point of total connection can be touched. The ego disap-
pears, time and space cease to exist, and you become one with energy
and consciousness. This is the sacred dimension of sex.
Sex lies at the root of life, and it is crucial that we learn reverence
for it. We need training in the art of love. Sexuality is a very natural
instinct, and a powerfully creative force. Each of us can put that force
to work in the service of healing, transformation, and the realization
of our dreams. And yet many ideas we have about sex keep us con-
fused. Either we view sexuality as a natural impulse that ought not be
interfered with, or we perceive it as something hidden, dirty, and for-
bidden. Of course, the latter is what makes it so interesting and brings

Margot Anand is an internationally acclaimed seminar leader and public speak-

er. Her best-selling books The Art of Sexual Ecstasy (Tarcher, 1989), The Art of
Sexual Magic (Putnam, 1995), and Sexual Ecstasy: The Art of Orgasm (Tarcher,
2000), and her latest book, The Sexual Ecstasy Workbook (Tarcher, 2005), have
each sold over a million copies. She has extensive training in Gestalt Therapy,
Hindu and Buddhist Tantra, bioenergetics, massage, meditation, Arica, and
Integral Yoga. Anand developed the Love and Ecstasy Training, a method of
healing and enhancing sexuality to its ultimate potential. She is the founder of
SkyDancing Tantra Institutes.
 violence and exploitation into sex. In this country it is difficult to talk
about sex and maintain a sense of dignity. We have to fight through
all the cultural taboos to have a good time.
The damage to human society caused by the condemnation of
sex is incalculable. Instead of celebrating sex as a creative force, we
turn it into a furtive, guilt-ridden affair. Religion has always tried to
control human sexuality—because when people become ecstatic, they
are free. People are led to believe that a priest is necessary in order to
have a relationship with the divine. They do not believe it is possible
to go direct and have an experience of God on their own. I call this
the Anti-Ecstatic Conspiracy. The system does not want us to wake
up to our natural ecstasy. The moment a person does wake up, they
become a free thinker. For the power elite, that is considered danger-
ous. Tantra arose in rebellion against the repressive orthodoxy of the
Brahmins, the Hindu priesthood, and against the idea that one had to
be celibate to gain enlightenment.
Tantra, in essence, is the path of acceptance, of including the high-
er and the lower, the earthly and the spiritual. It allows God and the
Devil to hold hands, as two poles, or two aspects of a single energy.
Tantra is the art of choosing with awareness what brings you joy, and
-§- it is the art of weaving contradictory aspects of
I knew that sexual- your personality into one whole for the purpose
ity was my path to of expanding your consciousness.
awakening, for I had For example, let’s say you’re on a date.
realized the light Your heart says, “I want to open up…this could
of spirit in my first
be the one.” But your mind says, “Absolutely
lover’s arms.
-§- not…remember what happened last time.” And
your body says, “I’m turned on. I want sex.” All
the different aspects of you are contradicting one another. You are
out of harmony and you’re in pain. Tantra works with the chakras to
harmonize your energy and your consciousness into one entity. This
is the marriage of Shakti—pure energy—and Shiva—pure conscious-
ness. When these two marry, the world is born. That is the cosmology
of tantra. The goddess Shakti and the god Shiva are the two aspects of
the divine. When they are joined as one, their fusion gives birth to the
cosmos. From the tantric perspective, the cosmos is born out of erotic
union between the essences of male and female.
Tantra acknowledges that sex is the basis of all life. To make
human sexuality and erotic union a form of worship and meditation
is to practice reverence for life. When pleasure is taken up as a spiri-
tual discipline, it leads to liberation. I have come to believe that all
suffering is rooted in the loss of access to our natural ecstasy, and that
reclaiming our natural ecstasy holds the key to our liberation. This is
Truth Is Erotic Margot Anand
where SkyDancing Tantra and high sex comes in. Sex is a practice that
releases endorphins, that expands our brain, and releases natural opi-
ates that relieve pain. I’ve discovered that if you have one long orgasm
a day, your whole life will change. Creativity increases, as does mag-
netism, your ability to handle crisis—even your finances improve. Sex
is the shortest and best way to access a naturally high state of being.
Ordinary sex is a matter of instinctual impulse, conditioned by
family values, by what we learn in school, and by what the culture
teaches us. Often, that conditioning gets in the way of our ability to
be totally natural and allow our real responses to emerge. A whole
crowd is in the bedroom with us—mother, father, aunts, uncles,
grandmother, and grandfather—all with their
-§-
opinions about how it should go, what is honor- Religion has always
able, and what is not. As a result, ordinary sex is tried to control
rather limited. human sexuality—
High sex allows us to move into sex with full because when people
awareness, responding moment to moment with become ecstatic, they
are free.
the rising energy, being in the present without
-§-
dragging in the past or projecting into the future.
You cannot have good sex unless you drop the past and the future,
and become totally present. Often, when lovers get excited, they have
to have a quarrel first because they are about to drop their defenses.
When those defenses drop, all the little demons of frustration and
resentment they have been avoiding suddenly emerge. The quarrel
is a catharsis to release all the charged energy. When lovers are able
to navigate this negative energy, to forgive, surrender, and refocus on
having a good orgasm together, they arrive at a new place and are
healed.
The word surrender includes the root verb render, which means,
among other things, to melt. In terms of SkyDancing tantra, surren-
der means seeing and feeling the highest potential of the divine in
your lover and melting into that energy. This is the consciousness of
namaste in yoga. When you open to that reality, all differences between
you disappear. You are both divine. If you approach sex in that way,
miracles take place.
Historically speaking, SkyDancers were the wild, free, ecstatic
dakinis—also called female awakeners. The word dakini means
“woman who revels in the freedom of emptiness.” SkyDancers were,
and are, women of passion who were profoundly devoted to spiritual
awakening. The path of the SkyDancer is a path of spiritual partner-
ship that teaches the complete reciprocity of male and female practi-
tioners as they learn the art of integrating ecstatic states into everyday
life. In traditional yoga, you control and purify yourself in order to
 realize enlightenment, but the tantric perspective says that you are
already divine exactly as you are. Tantra tells you to completely let go
and dive deeply into your nature as it is. Tantra is the yoga of love.
Tantric philosophy teaches that we all have aspects of both the
masculine and the feminine within us. Jung called these two aspects
-§- the animus and the anima. We all have the hor-
Tantra is the yoga mones of both, which allow us to experience the
of love. polarity. It is culture that imposes designated
-§- male and female attitudes and roles. Of course,
there are differences between men and women, physiologically
speaking. There is a different psychology and timing in the way a
woman’s body responds as compared to a man’s. When the man is
excited, when he sees the beauty of a certain type of woman, his penis
responds automatically. It is a brain/sex reflex that he has very little
control over, and it can happen in seconds. Once he is inside a woman,
then he can relax—that is when he opens his heart. This may take all
of ten minutes. The erect penis just wants to be in the garden.
The woman is very different. Where the man starts with his sex
and then moves to the heart, for the woman it is the other way around.
She needs more time. Her heart must warm to him first, and she needs
to feel safe and protected. Then she can open and trust her man. When
all of that is given, she relaxes, her juices flow, and then her sex opens.
This may take half an hour, or half a year—so he is ready long before
she is. Confusion results if she lets him have his way and he lands
before she has time to take off. She may be unable to have an orgasm
and become frustrated. If she doesn’t talk about it, the whole situation
can escalate. This is why, as I always say, truth is erotic. When you tell
the truth you take a risk. If love is there and you are willing to grow
together, there is plenty to explore. The only wrong way to have sex is
without awareness and communication. The most beautiful way is to
have sex in a sacred space, as I explain in my book, The Art of Sexual
Ecstasy, and now in my extraordinary DVD series, Margot Anand’s
Secret Keys to the Ultimate Love Life.
We seek comfort, pleasure, and ecstasy from the moment we are
born. Comfort is a natural state of wellbeing and absence of pain.
Pleasure comes from gratification of our physical needs and emo-
tional desires. Sexual ecstasy is an experience of intense fulfillment,
contentment, and inner joy. In most cases, ecstasy is discontinuous—it
happens, it peaks, and then it’s gone. Back in our ordinary conscious-
ness, we are left with the intuitive insight of an expanded wholeness.
Such moments motivate us to grow. Patient inner work is needed to
recognize and transform the behaviors that sabotage our ability to
live in joy and be “self-actualized.” As we become increasingly aware
Truth Is Erotic Margot Anand
and stable in this potential, we discover ecstasy as an intense state of
contentment that allows us to freely choose what is pleasing—both
for us and for others.
I had the very good fortune to work quite intensively for several
years with a tantra teacher who taught me sex magic. He would visit
me unexpectedly in the secret hours of the night, and we’d engage in
intense breathing exercises that would generate -§-
a fiery energy in my body. Then, making love in I became aware that
a very slow, conscious way, he would direct me my Buddha-being
to focus this fiery energy into my heart. After was sitting inside
a while, I had powerful visions. In one I was a the cave of my own
Buddha, a spirit being, sitting blissfully in a cave. heart.
As I watched, the cave became red in color and -§-
started to pulsate. Soon, I became aware that my Buddha-being was
sitting inside the cave of my own heart. My bliss began to expand
with the size of the cave, growing bigger until it filled the entire uni-
verse. From there, I was able to radiate unconditional love to all living
beings. My teacher later described the transmission as the “wisdom
of the heart.”
The emphasis in transmitted tantric teachings such as this tends
to be mystical rather than magical, but the same approach is used in
both arts. The adept has a choice: to reside in a state of mystical union
with the universe, or to harness the universal powers derived from
that union and channel them into manifesting on the physical plane.
In the tantric tradition of Tibet, mysticism and magic flourished side
by side. It was left to the initiate to decide how to use such powers as a
matter of personal integrity and responsibility—as it is for us today.
Recently, upon my return from a twenty-one-day enlightenment
process at the Oneness University near Chennai in India, where I
received energy transference (deeksha) from Bhagwan Kalki and his
wife, Amma, a friend asked, “So, are you enlightened?”
I laughed, and said, “Enlightenment is a process that begins and
never ends.”
In my work over the years, I have moved more and more in the
direction of meditation, focusing on the ecstasy of emptiness, which I
find can sometimes be a better orgasm than sex. Ideally, of course, we
want to connect the two. To go to your lover and remain desireless at
the height of desire is the ultimate.
Let me explain. To be desireless in any action means being fully
present in one given moment, accepting that I don’t know what the
next moment will bring, staying present to emptiness without bring-
ing in the past or projecting into the future, and deeply accepting that
I am in the mystery and God is guiding the wheel. Now, imagine
bringing this frame of mind into the arms of the beloved, making
love in a space of emptiness and presence. Desire is present, you feel
it, you feel in love, and yet you do not want anything. You have no
expectations that your lover has to love you this way, move that way,
keep his erection for this amount of time, etc. No. You accept what is,
not knowing what the next moment will bring because you are only
conscious now, and now, and now…and you desire nothing more
than what is in the moment. That aspect of detachment and witness-
ing generates emptiness in sex, emptiness in love—living ecstasy with
detachment—this is sexual enlightenment.
You were conceived in the act of pleasure. Ecstasy was pro-
grammed into you the moment the sperm met the egg in your
mother’s womb. It exists inside you right now. It is possible to live
from that joy, to live a life cut like a precious jewel. Who you truly are
radiates an energy that is healing and enchanting. And every step you
take carries the possibility of that awakening.