from an article by Antonella Malaguti on Yoga Journal (extract)

“You cannot make love, love happens. Like meditation. In this sense, the sexual act can be the ideal moment to expand our perceptions. The orgasm, in fact, is a moment in which it’s easier to experience that sensation of losing self boundaries, erasing time and space’. With these words, Radha Luglio, Osho’s direct disciple and international Tantra teacher for more than twenty years, defines Tantra experience, the ‘whispered transmission’, transmitted for thousands of years as a secret from master to disciple.
Today this word has wrecked, like many sacred words, in a confusion that has debased the essence: ‘We denaturalize the sexual act transforming it in a performance, making it losing its freshness, naturalness and spontaneity… We need to give back to the sexual act its dignity, depth and mystery, to discover what sex is: a love experience, a bridge toward sacredness’.

A FEMININE WAY
The etymology comes from Sanskrit: it’s composed by TAN, which means –expansion, and TRA that’s translated – method-. A method to expand consciousness and energetic and vital potential…
Radha clarifies: ‘In Tantra (and in meditation NDR) we learn not doing, letting go: we get in touch with our senses and we understand we are good as we are. Tantra not only is understood as sexual energy but also as a conscious acceptance of everything life proposes’. For this reason, it’s a way that gives great importance to the transformational feminine power; not only in the physiological meaning but also as a mental attitude. ‘If, in fact, Hatha Yoga, in the way Patanjali has transmitted it through his Yoga Sutra, has a male approach to life (it’s the way of will power, that teaches to contain and control with awareness thanks to an absolute discipline), Tantra is the way of surrendering: it’s indulging with awareness. In modern psychological terms, one could say that Hata Yoga is extrovert while Tantra is introvert. In Tantra each wish is allowed and should be satisfied as a vehicle to go beyond, each energy becomes a help to evolve. ‘That’s why it is dangerous: it’s easy to get lost in sexual energy, it’s an instinctive and innate wish in each one of us’, Radha advises us.

SEX METAPHYSICS
The purpose of Tantra is the same as Yoga: to enter in contact with our own inner void, a void ‘full of richness and space’. Like Yoga, Tantra invites us to witness our actions, contemplating (from Latin cum+templum, i.e. – observe the object putting it in a temple- with respect). This contemplation can be trained in every daily action: when we walk, when we eat, and, above all, when we make love. ‘But is fundamental to understand that the capacity of feeling our energy is not up to the partner: the partner is only the spark that can turn on our fire’. Working with sexuality we go closer to our own center: it’s a trip back to ourselves through the other, thanks to which we can learn to humbly love ourselves… […]”