Margot Anand
"Absolutely not. I totally disagree with you. I
would say radically
no. The tantric path is
profoundly a spiritual
path," she stated emphatically. Had I
gone too far? I had just asked Margot Anand [formerly
Margo Anand], the
world-renowned teacher of tantric sexuality, if modern tantra may not
really
be a genuine spiritual path.
Only four hours earlier, sitting in a crowded café in Larkspur, California,
sipping a fruit smoothie colored green with spirulina, I had been testing my
tape recorder and reviewing my notes before going to meet Anand. I laughed to
myself—just when I thought I had escaped the paradisal blue skies, the reluctant-casual
displays of wealth and the sensitive New Age smiles of Marin County, California,
I found myself drawn back again. With both more BMWs
and meditation cushions
per capita than anywhere else in the United States, it is a strange land where
almost everyone has a spiritual teacher, a spiritual therapist, a spiritual
health regimen or a spiritual lifestyle. I was relieved, after having spent
five years as an ambivalent Marinite, to have finally relocated to the rural
East Coast, where you can't necessarily find smoked tofu or arugula pesto in
your corner grocery, but where things are much more—refreshingly, straightforwardly—as
they seem. Only Margot Anand could have brought me back.
Anand,
a pioneer in the movement to bring the ancient esoteric practices of tantric
sexuality to a popular Western audience, was one of the first people we considered
interviewing for this special issue of
What Is Enlightenment? Her books,
The Art of Sexual Ecstasy and
The Art of Sexual Magic, which together
have sold over 200,000 copies, present one of the clearest, most methodical
approaches to contemporary tantra in print today. She has developed a unique
system of sexual practices that she calls "SkyDancing Tantra," which
combines elements from Tibetan Buddhist, Taoist and Hindu tantric teachings
with humanistic and transpersonal psychology. Since Anand began teaching in
the 1970s, hundreds of books, workshops and videos proclaiming tantra as a path
to spiritual enlightenment
and a better sex life have sprung up to meet
burgeoning interest. All the while, Anand herself has remained one of the boldest
and most popular voices on the subject. She has established SkyDancing Tantra
Institutes in eight countries and certified close to a hundred people to teach
her "Love and Ecstasy Training" programs. And she is currently working
on a third book.
Sitting
in the café, I reflected on the two weeks I had just spent preparing
for this interview. It had been a mind-expanding experience—not only because
Anand's approach to the spiritual path is so unusual, but also because her books
describe in graphic detail some
very unconventional sexual mechanics.
For Anand, "sex and spirit are one"; sex is both the doorway to ecstatic
mystical experience and an expression of the spiritual force itself. And while
this is not a unique belief, Anand does have a particularly original approach.
In
The Art of Sexual Ecstasy she describes the pinnacle of tantric
practice as the "orgasm of the brain." This experience, she writes,
"creates a bridge between the left and right hemispheres, fusing the intellect
of the left hemisphere with the intuitive faculties of the right. It is this
fusion that creates the experience of ecstasy, in which body, mind, heart and
spirit all participate." And in
The Art of Sexual Magic she writes,
"In deep sexual embrace, the mind stops. Quite literally, you 'f__ your
brains out.' Your consciousness becomes clear, innocent, fresh." As a guide
to attaining these "ecstatic states," Anand provides an extensive
(and explicit) manual, or "menu" as she calls it, of exotic sexual
practices.
With
a high-society upbringing in Paris and a graduate degree in psychology from
the Sorbonne, Anand has traveled extensively around the world, studying and
practicing tantra with a number of different teachers. The greatest influence
on her own philosophy probably comes from the renowned "sex guru,"
the late Bhagwan Rajneesh (now known as Osho), of whom she was a disciple for
many years and who gave her the name
Margo Anand, which means "the
path to bliss." It was Osho who encouraged her to begin teaching the tantric
methods in which she was becoming adept. Anand is an extraordinary woman, someone
who has chosen throughout her life to follow a calling that led her outside
the mainstream, someone not afraid of taking risks. Confronting and harnessing
the power of sexuality has given her an unusual confidence and sense of personal
power. And she is at times bold, outrageous, even shocking in her defiance of
sexual taboos.
The
Art of Sexual Ecstasy, Anand's first book, guides the reader step by step
through a series of exercises designed to break through sexual inhibitions,
increase trust and communication between partners, and develop sexual yogic
skills. While she does introduce spiritual themes periodically throughout the
book, it is primarily a collection of therapeutic techniques for improving psychological
and sexual well-being. It was her second book,
The Art of Sexual Magic,
that raised the most questions for me. In it she combines sexual techniques
with creative visualization for the purpose of manifesting personal desires.
She has developed a unique method of projecting a visualized object of desire
into the "astral network" at the moment of orgasm. She writes, "It
is in these moments of expanded consciousness that you can project a vision
of your goal, your creation, into the harmonious fabric of the universe that
surrounds you. In ecstasy, you come very close to the universal source, the
creative womb out of which all things arise. What better moment to make magic?"
Throughout the book she includes examples of how to use this technique to acquire,
among other things, a new job, a new home, or even a new lover. According to
Anand, her system of sexual magic is a means to access higher states of consciousness
and to bring more of the spiritual dimension into her work; she often describes
it as a spiritual practice. Yet as I read her book, while I found it educational
and innovative, I couldn't help but wonder again and again, What does all this
really have to do with the spiritual path?
When
I arrived at her sunny hillside home, Anand greeted me graciously, and as we
sat down to begin the interview, I took in the decor. The walls were adorned
with
thankas (Tibetan religious art) depicting male and female deities
in tantric embrace. Crystals, softly colored cloths and pillows, bells, candles
and numerous ritual objects were carefully placed throughout the room. There
was a faint scent of incense in the air. She put on a tape of soothing New Age
music for atmosphere and told me that the previous day she had been in a "very
enlightened space," which she thought would have been good for the interview—but
which was disturbed because today she had gotten enmeshed in a number of frustrating
and difficult encounters. We proceeded to talk for several hours, and she was
charming, animated and generous throughout.