Integrity in Tantra & Sexual Healing

Sarita addresses the sensitive subject of integrity for the practitioner of Tantra and Healing. This is the second extract transcribed from her discourse on Tantra and sacred sexual healing. “The most important thing in teaching or giving sessions is an aware preparation of the students.
Where is your focus? Why are you doing this? Are you doing it to make money? Are you doing it to help the student become enlightened? Are you doing it to gratify your sexual urges because you don’t have enough girlfriends??

On my travels I’ve seen several male Tantra teachers who were using the fact of being a Tantra teacher to seduce women. And they were doing this with great abandon and had good luck doing it. But were they helping people? Were they helping those women? This is the very delicate issue!
I have heard Osho say, that if you are working as a teacher or healer and if there’s a sexual attraction between the teacher and the student, or client with their practitioner, it is necessary to wait two weeks until after the session or group is done. At that point, if there’s still an attraction then it’s okay to act on it, but only if the following condition is met; the teacher or practitioner needs to state very clearly, that, “I am no longer your teacher or session giver, we’re just two ordinary human beings.” In other words, you take off your practitioner’s hat very consciously. If a therapist is not able to wait those two weeks, and is not able to remove their therapist hat and just be an ordinary person, then there is bound to be a very murky situation in terms of this sexual dynamic.
I also heard Osho say that men should never teach Tantra alone, but only together with a woman. It should be the woman that’s holding the group and who has the main responsibility, because sexually, it’s too tempting for the man. Something in the male psyche can’t bear the tantalizing presence of so many vulnerable women.
The abuse of power is very easy when you come to the issue of sexuality, especially when its men teaching to women, because the women get very vulnerable; they open themselves and they have a tendency not to put out what they want or need. They slip into a submissive role and it’s very easy to take advantage of the woman. That’s extremely common, it happens all the time.  I am very wary around male sexual healers for that reason. I’ve spoken to some men who do this work about my reservations, just trying to inform them how women are wired! Because it can appear that the woman really wants it, but if he gives it to her sexually, she can feel completely abused, because of the story that’s underneath. It’s extremely delicate.
In terms of women doing sexual healing for men, I’ve seen some women who were not affected by it, but most women I’ve seen have been very affected, to the point that it destroyed their relationships with men in general. When the man emits semen, the woman takes on his karma, and that happens during penetration when he’s inside her, but it also happens energetically even if he ejaculates in her hand. There’s something being transmitted there, there’s an energy release. And because she is the receptive polarity, she’s taking it in.
I met one woman on a group who was a sex worker, and she was borderline suicidal. She liked the money but it was hurting her really badly. That’s an extreme case, but I’ve met many women over the years who do such work and I would say that 99.9% of them are really hurt by it. Maybe it’s possible not to be hurt if they go through a proper training, but energetically it’s extremely delicate.
In my opinion, why go into explicit sexual contact with a client, if you can do something else that can have positive healing or therapeutic effects? I know I can bring about the healing needed by a client, through other means, (such as Colour Light Therapy for example) And if they need actual hands on sexual healing then I may advise them on techniques they can do with a lover or friend, but I don’t get involved with them physically myself. But that’s my story!
Perhaps thee are some people who would feel comfortable doing hands on sexual healing, including genital contact. I think that sexual initiation, for example, does have a really important place in society. It should be re-instated in a carefully monitored way, by a body of wise people who understand and know the sexual arts, and appreciate how vulnerable the person being initiated is. The practitioner, whether they be male or female, who is to give the initiation, would have to be chosen very carefully based on their wisdom, sensitivity, talent and integrity. I think that if initiation happens as people are coming of age, then there will be a lot less sexual confusion and wounding in the world. In a golden future, people would be so well educated in the sexual arts when they reach sexual maturity, that they would not need to go for sexual healing later in life. The art and science of sexual union should be taught in each school in my opinion, if we are to have a balanced and joyous society.”