each level of the physical body and the psychic body, true tantric union cannot occur. In other words, without having been trained in recognising one's own energy (shakti) and consciousness (shiva) through exploration, healing and resolution of lower desires, this higher purpose of the sexual nature cannot unfold.
   Female and male union as a meditation is the highest form of sexual activity, in fact it seems not like sexual activity at all. Through certain rituals and techniques, a state of meditation is created within each person which is simultane-ously shared between the two. During coupling, each partner realises and shares the nature of their own Shakti and Shiva components and both experience the revelation of this Goddess and God union.
   In the world today such sex or love-making between individuals, expressed in the form of worship for the purpose of transcendence, is extremely rare. In our upbringing, never are we inspired, educated nor practically instructed in such activities. For so long, sex has been such a taboo and been seen only in 

 
terms of pleasure and reproduction, that this third and highest level has remained known only to a few devotees of the Eastern esoteric sciences such as Tantra and Taoism.
   As a way of understanding and enlightening your own sexual motives, consider the following 5 permutations arising from the above 3 categories of sex or love making. Consider which categories you have usually enacted in the past. Then consider which of them you would much rather enact in the future.
·   Sex intended for pleasure only and not resulting in pregnancy
·   Sex intended for pleasure only but resulting in accidental pregnancy
·   Sex intended for reproduction (with accompanying pleasure)
·   Sex intended for transcendence and pleasure but without reproduction
·   Sex intended for transcendence and pleasure and reproduction
   Hopefully the ideas and techniques offered in this book will help you along a path from the mundane, less conscious acts, to a more fulfilling and spiritual expression of your sexuality.

	~What is Kundalini?~

   It would not be possible to teach all about Kundalini Yoga in this book since it is a complex and fairly advanced branch of yoga which is best learned after some years of preliminary yoga work and in close contact with a qualified teacher. I am just going to outline here some of the basic principles to help you understand how levels of energy and states of consciousness relate directly to a woman's and a child's development. Once you have a basic grasp of these concepts you can easily apply them to seeing how the kundalini principle works all throughout everyday life. A bit of theory and then some practise of the few kundalini techniques included will be enough to get you started and will give you some actual experiences of the kundalini energy and the chakras.
   As explained before in the introduction to tantra, all creation is nothing but the sum of energy and consciousness (shakti and shiva respectively) at varying levels and proportions. Shakti, at this level, is more accurately known as maha shakti meaning the great shakti; the totality  of

energy; energy of all kinds. Maha shakti can be divided and classified innumerably just as in physics, where energy is divided into ever smaller particles like molecules, atoms, electrons, quarks etcetera. Universal energy can manifest in an infinite number of forms (matter), and is personified in tantra as a great magician (the Goddess Maya) by whom we ordinary mortals are trapped into solely material worship. Look around - it seems to be true!
   Within humans, maha shakti is divided into kundalini shakti (spiritual energy), manas shakti (mental energy) and prana shakti (physical energy). Table 2 on page 41 shows the attributes of the two polarities of the breath, the two polarities of energy and the resulting third force created by their union. Kundalini shakti (or just kundalini as we mostly tend to call it) can be defined as the sum total of the two types of shakti circulating within the human framework.
   At any particular time, each person has a varying amount of kundalini or human energy. We each have an individual, constitutional amount, and within that we have daily fluctuating levels according to our energy levels which are known to be a