My heart has been sprung open, my joy for life enflamed and my desire ignited by his tale of a humble gamekeeper and his aristocratic mistress.

I speak of course of DH Lawrence and his most infamous novel , Lady Chatterley’s Lover (see left: Sean Bean and Joley Richardson from the 1993 BBC series). For those of you that don’t know the story, it goes something like this: Lady Chatterley is an upper class young woman, married to fellow young aristocrat Sir Clifford, who got paralysed from the waist down in the First World War. They had one month of married life together before his injury. The main action of the book begins two years later, when she is becoming worn out and numbed by life with her husband, who lives solely in his mind and has nothing but contempt for the working men over whom he rules (he’s the local mine owner).

Then she meets Mellors.

Mellors is her husband’s gamekeeper, who has himself been scarred by life. He has shut himself away from human connection, though is still a passionate and tender man under the surface. They begin a love affair and their desire for each other sparks the life back into them, finding not only each other but a love of life, and the guts to stand up for their own truth.

My love affair began  by a chance watching of a DVD of the BBC series, made 18 years ago, which caused a stir because of its explicit sex scenes, some of which I remembered from watching it then. What hadn’t stayed in my memory was the tender beauty of the way the love affair between Lady Chatterley and Mellors, was portrayed, which touched my heart as surely as the sex stirred my loins (I can quite see why a nation of women wanted to meet Sean Bean in the woods after this!!)

I was inspired, and so got the book. What I wasn’t prepared for was an even more touching, beautiful, life-affirming experience, as Lawrence expresses to us, through these gorgeous characters, his passionate love of life, and his disregard of the will of industrialised society, that seeks to take away all our connection to all that is natural, alive and free.

His descriptions of their love-making are surely some of the most divine in the English language, take this as one example of many:

“…all her womb was open and soft and softly clamouring like a sea-anemone under the tides, clamouring for him to come in again and make a fulfilment for her……and she felt the soft bud of him within her stirring and in strange rhythms flushing up into her, with a strange, rhythmic growing motion, swelling and swelling till it filled her cleaving consciousness. And then began again the unspeakable motion that was not really motion, but pure deepening whirlpools of sensation, swirling deeper and deeper through all her tissue and consciousness, till she was one perfect concentric fluid of feeling. And she lay there crying in unconscious, inarticulate cries, the voice out of the uttermost night, the life-exclamation. And the man heard it beneath him with a kind of awe, as his life sprang out into her….And they lay, and knew nothing, not even of each other.”

How delicious!

In some ways Lawrence was still a man of his time – there’s little in the way of foreplay in the early sexual encounters and there’s a subtle fear of women detectable in novel. But for me this doesn’t take away from the expression of sexual and human freedom which he portrayals so fervently.

Reading these words of passion stirred something deep in me, calling me to connect to my rootedness, to my flesh and bone existence, to my longing for a 100% man, to my desire to be utterly woman – dissolved and surrendered to existence – realising that I’ve never really allowed a man deep into the core of me.

Writing this book more than 80 years ago, Lawrence was dismayed by the inhumanity of the society he lived in then, which still rings very true for us today. Although he had a brilliant mind, he knew that to live only in the mind created misery, and his manifesto called for an embracing of life, sex and the body. He said:

“Doing the dirt on sex is the crime of our times, because what we need is tenderness towards the body, towards sex, we need tenderhearted fucking.”

That most people still know this book for its use of ‘obscene’ words and that it’s somehow a byword for ‘dirty sex’ shows our society still hasn’t embraced tenderness towards the body or sex, despite sexual images being everywhere.

If you want to be swept away on a tide of passion for love, life and sex, spend a few days with Lady Chatterley and her lover, still as raw and relevant now as it was back when affairs between ladies and gamekeepers truly were forbidden love.

Malika x

Over the summer and fall I have been teaching a series of Tantra groups. What follows is a peek into my world. It is almost non-stop activity, nourished by the still centre of meditation in the centre of the cyclone.

Since May, I have taught 9 groups, with my beloved friend and co-teacher Shiva and a wonderful team of apprentices. Some of the groups were 6 days, some 7 days and one lasted 11 days. (This doesn’t include the shorter, one day events, conferences and festivals, of which there were a few.) The groups were held in various countries, England, France, Greece Norway and Sweden. Some of the comments people have made about their group experience are:

“It has helped me to open more, to allow what is to be, to experience being in my body and with spirit, to open to more joy and ecstasy.”
Penny

“It has been an incredibly healing and transformative experience for me. I was able to accept myself fully despite my fears and move through it. This course has opened up many new possibilities in my life. The teachers created a space where everyone felt safe and were able to open up.”
Dharma

“Sarita is ever so present, true to herself and infinitely caring and loving. I enjoyed Shiva’s wisdom and light heartedness. I found it good that the apprentices facilitated bits and did demos.”
Fiona

“Enjoy using the energy of your own desires to transform yourself, your love relationships and your spirituality to undreamed of heights. An incredible, beautiful, sensuous journey, indescribable, incomparable!”
Fred S. Mendes M.D.

Usually, when teaching, I am fully present with the group in one way or another from 7:30am till 10:30pm for the duration. On many occasions I have several groups in a row with perhaps one or two days off in-between. Intensity and totality is the name of the game. People often ask me such questions as, “how do you do it?” or, “what keeps you going?” “Where do you get all that energy from?” “What is your secret?”

I will share with you my open secret. It is passion. I am utterly passionate about my work. I feel I am following exactly what my soul came to this earth to do. It is deeply nourishing being a witness to the many miracles which happen on a regular basis during the groups. The more I share from my fountain of bliss, the more it goes on overflowing, till it has become a river, and the river is pouring into a boundless ocean.

When I discovered my spiritual master, Osho, in India, at the age of 17, I had already lived more anguish than many are privileged to know in a lifetime. This intense suffering became a backdrop for powerful transformation. Osho gave me the name, Ma Ananda Sarita, meaning, ‘Mother of the Universe, River of Bliss.’ I heard him say, “if you continue with meditation, you will become this.” In the light of his compassion, I spent 16 years simply going in, using Tantra meditations alone and in relationship to cleanse, heal and uplift my being. Osho is such a master, that I never realised I was undergoing a training to eventually be able to support others in their transformation. I was only concerned about my own enlightenment.

Cleaning Osho’s house for 8 years functioned as a deep cleaning and purging of my ego. Working in the press office for 7 years taught me to be comfortable with public speaking and the refinement of cognitive awareness. Learning to apply meditation in action through work became the foundation for living bliss in everyday life.

As an added bonus, the hours spent simply sitting in Osho’s presence as he gave discourse or receiving his Shaktipat transmission during Energy Darshan, gave me a direct download of multifaceted spirit, in human form. Naturally, I soaked it all up like a sponge, receiving and receiving more, till I was simply drenched and dripping with grace from the master. Being a rascal master, Osho offered his spiritual transmission with a tremendous sense of humour, letting us know that spiritual awakening doesn’t have to be a serious and tortuous process, but can be a celebration of all that we are.

One night, I had a dream that I had drilled a well so deeply into my being that I had hit a crystal clear fountain of water, which began spouting up out of the earth. Osho appeared beside me and said, “You have become your name. Now people will come to drink from this source.” Soon after this dream, he gave me a certificate with a title. The whole name with title was: Mahasatvaa Ma Ananda Sarita M.M. Arihanta. The meaning of Mahasatvaa was given as, ‘one who looks after the esoteric roots of his work.’ Literally it means, ‘great wisdom.’ M.M. means ‘Master of Meditation.’ Arihanta is a particular category of enlightened being who sits on their mountain, calling out to the people in the valley below, “come, it is wonderful up here!” However, the people in the valley, may not be able to understand how to reach the mountain top. Therefore, the challenge for the Arihanta type is to find ways and means to indicate the path.

Mysteriously, after this event, a steady stream of people began coming to me asking for one on one sessions. I was taken aback since at that time I was doing press office work and had no session giving skill. People became more and more insistent, till finally I found myself offering psychic healing sessions.

As soon as I began offering sessions, methods and trainings in various healing arts came towards me as if I had become a healing magnet. I dived totally into this work, and soon found myself in a teaching role. I trained with genius healers, Peter Mandel, (inventor of Colorpuncture) Kohrogi Sensei, (Master of Ito Thermie, Japanese healing method) and David Wagner, (inventor of the Tachyonization process.)

During 7 years of total immersion in the world of healing, my Tantra experience began creeping into the foreground The more I practiced Tantra methods in love union, the more I felt compelled to offer the possibility of such divine experience to people everywhere. I had become aware during my healing work that the root cause for many physical, emotional and mental problems stems from unresolved sexual and relating issues. Tantra is the perfect antidote, since it offers transformation on all levels, accepting the human being as he or she is and using this as a door into expansion of consciousness.

The moment I began teaching Tantra, something very mysterious occurred which can best be described as a download of thousands of years of Tantra research. It is something like what happens when you click on google and a long list appears, relevant to the subject you have typed. Tapping into the Tantra experience opened me up to the Akashic Records of Tantra. The whole Tantra path became illuminated in crystal clear detail. Such an awakening is beyond the mind, and therefore I call it mysterious. It relies purely on trusting the moment. If I am in a group, and there is a discourse to be given on a subject, or there is a situation which needs attention, or a question to be answered, I simply become empty and wait. At this point, the Akashic Records takes over and a download appears on that subject. I may not know the next word out of my mouth, but rather reside in a state of deep trust, love and devotion. The words and ambiance arise through each pore of my body in response to being in atunement with source.

My love partner and I developed a Tantra training of 7 levels for couples and a series of Tantra groups for singles. After 11 years of sublime cocooning together, we separated. This was a very painful process of emerging from the crysilis of love as a relationship, into a love affair with life itself. Our creativity and individuality shifted so dramatically that we simply found ourselves moving in different directions. He left the School of Awakening we had founded together and later formed his own style of Tantra teaching. I continued teaching the School of Awakening program with the support of my beloved friend Shiva and a devoted team of apprentices, with the unwavering love and skill offered by co-director and office manager, Supragya.

My School of Awakening in the U.K. is helping to shift the popular misconceptions around Tantra. In general, people hearing the word Tantra think, “sex, orgies, nudity.” They are completely unaware that it is actually a deeply refined path to enlightenment using methods of meditation, mantras, yantras, and all encompassing wisdom in the art of life. In Tantra, all aspects of the human being are accepted as divine, from sex to spirit. People have taken the fact that Tantra includes meditations on sexuality to try and stuff it into a box labelled ‘sex.’ This is because our society as a whole tends to divide sex from spirit. Bringing them together is revolutionary, and yet when we do so, our long suffering of dividing ourselves in parts comes to an end. We become whole, discovering our true joyous nature.

Tantra has always been taught as a transmission, direct from master to disciple. This is because it is not a series of rules, or commandments, or code of ethics. It relies on methods. The teacher will create situations and the correct ambiance for the student to discover transformation through direct experience. As the student practices each method, he or she will sooner or later discover the nectar hidden there. Just as bees find the honey hidden in the flower, the practitioner of Tantra discovers ultimate wisdom through tasting deeply of the methods.

The realisation of each individual is unique, and therefore, each Tantra teacher has their own particular way of passing on what they have learned according to their deeply lived experience. This is why there are many styles of Tantra throughout the world. Each one reflects one or many facets of the vast body of wisdom offered by the Tantra path.

One of the potent teachings offered by Tantra is the union of opposites, bringing about an alchemical transformation as the two become one. This can happen with any two opposites. When such union happens it becomes an exogate through which Godliness is experienced. This can happen with a man and woman, night and day, sex and Samadhi, birth and death and also inside oneself. Since we are all made of male and female aspects, each person has the opportunity of experiencing ‘inner union.’ Such a state of being is called ‘Ardanareshvara. It is the unveiling of god as half man half woman.

My Tantra experience spans phases of personal evolution and transmutation:

1) Loving and accepting myself as a microcosm of the macrocosm.

2) The Soul Mate: diving so deeply into love with a man that my individuality disappears, and I became one with my lover.

3) Universal Love: expanding from one on one relationship into love with the whole of life.

4) Ardhanareshvara. The meeting of the right and left hemispheres of the brain, creating an androgynous experience of life, sensing my inner man inner woman to be in ecstatic union.

When I am teaching, offering conferences, giving sessions or writing, I am in ecstasy, sensing my body/mind to be a hollow flute through which the music of life is played. I am not there as a person, but simply holding the space as a presence for Tantra to manifest.

After a conference, or group, there is a subtle shift, as I come back to being my simple self. In my resting phase, I like to shift gears by watching funny movies, or shopping, or walking in nature, going to spas or swimming in the sea. I love to be in ecstatic communion with my lover, or gather with friends, cook meals together, laugh and tell jokes, and exchange sessions or receive massage. Each day, I do yoga exercises and sit in silent meditation. I eat organic vegan food and use Tachyon, Colour Light Therapy, herbs and Acupuncture to remain in a balanced physical state.

I am sharing all this so that anyone who would like to receive Tantra training with me knows from where my teaching has arisen, and can sense something about me as a person and as a teacher.

Trusting the inner flute is my way of life.

Love and Blessings,

Sarita