This is the table of contents and preface from the book,
Love Goddesses of the Tantra
in print & as ebook
Preface -- What's in this book
Preface especially for men
Part 1 - Four Love Goddesses
Introduction
Many goddesses within One Goddess
Major Goddesses
Qualities relevant to love
Four Love Goddesses
Active and receptive approaches
Subjective experience
Parvati
Durga
Lakshmi
Different kinds of beauty
Saraswati
Playfulness and exploration
Love-flow
Four kinds of love experience
Love and sex
Goddess qualities in men
Synthesis and balance
The Great Mandala
Unity in polarity
Polarity in oneself
Our conscious and unconscious
Part 2 – The Sacredness in each other
Our Journey into Love Divine
Perceiving the Divine in each other
Practicing deep perception
Seeing the Goddess
The Sacred in each other
Respect for the individual
The Light in each other
Freeing the light within
Recognizing love and being loved
Being loved by the Divine
Part 3 - Shakti and Shiva
Shakti – many meanings
Shakti in both man and woman
Consumed in the fire of Kali
Kali and male orgasm
Kali and female orgasm
The Divine Yoni
Unity in Polarity
Divine Intercourse of mind & body
Shiva as Transcendence
Light awakens Her enjoyment
Man's hymn to the Love Goddess
Maya – indefinable & everchanging
Shiva plays in Maya
Desire
Our Earth Mother Goddess
This book is about spiritual tantric love. It is not a tantric sex how-to-do-it manual, though it does show new ideas and ways to experience the love relationship and the love ritual. This book does not contain any sexual images, though it does contain tantric metaphor and figurative language.
This book is more about unique kinds of experience – different perspectives, attitudes, and ways of being in the love ritual. It is about different ways of loving and different kinds of lovers. Moreover, it's about understanding oneself and the other.
The emphasis is mostly on increasing one's understanding of the spiritual powers and energies potentially involved in the love-sex experience, and also having an attitude of spontaneity and exploration, so that we are always in wonder and discovery in the magic of love.
Yet any real learning about this whole subject, as well as any increase of one's love powers, will have to come from personal experience – from exploration and discovery. So all that this teaching can provide are ideas and suggestions to explore.
This book is primarily about the powers and qualities of Goddesses – in relation to sexual love and the love ritual. Our main focus here is on four love Goddesses, their unique powers and qualities, as well as their unique attitudes and approaches in the love-sex relationship, as manifested through a woman. These goddesses can also be understood as love archetypes; each with a distinctly unique power and quality, attitude and approach. Each woman will recognize at least one of these goddesses in her self-experience, perhaps even a few, or maybe all four goddesses in varying degrees.
Therefore, this book will give woman a better understanding of herself in relation to love and sex. For a man, he will recognize these qualities, attitudes and ways in different women, and this study will help him better understand the potential powers and qualities of woman in the love dynamic. And he might also recognize these different qualities in himself, because essentially these are universal spiritual potentials in each of us, woman and man.
The overall perspective in these teachings is from Indian tantra; yet the understanding derived from these teachings is universal and of practical significance to anyone, no matter what beliefs or religion or spirituality one has. But this is not an academic nor sociological study of tantra, nor of Indian goddesses. This is not a review of Indian mythology. In fact, most devotees of these goddesses will probably not have ever thought of most ideas in this book.
For this particular study of goddesses is from the tantric perspective, in relation to love and the love ritual. It's about how their unique qualities enter into love-sex relationships. It's about the four universal-spiritual qualities of love, or ways of love, or kinds of love. It's about the four kinds of lovers within the love ritual. It's a study in the psychology of lovers. The theme of balance is also considered, the potential balance of all these goddess qualities in oneself, leading to a realized and actualized wholeness of being. And in this study, more of the tantra will be revealed – which is universally significant and usefully practical.
Part Two focuses on the spiritual sacredness of each other, in love and in love-making, and how to spiritually experience one another as manifestations and expressions of the Great Divine. In this are ideas and ways to greatly enhance and spiritualize the love experience for both lovers, woman and man. The man will begin to see his woman lover as the expression of one of the Love Goddesses, or even as the Goddess Herself. He will experience the woman as the Goddess loving him, and he will be worshiping and devoting himself to Her. Likewise, the woman will begin to see her man lover as the expression of the Divine Love God. She will be the Divine Attraction and he the Divine Force. He will be the Divine loving her, and she will be the Divine loving him. Then both will come back into Union as One.
Part Three focuses on the Great Goddess Shakti and her spiritual love relationship with the Great God Shiva. Tantric love, at its heights of realization, is the love play and enjoyment between Shiva and Shakti, and their eventual re-union as being really One Being. Here we find juicy love metaphors at its erotic depths. The goddesses, Kali and Maya, also come into this love play.
In summary, the intention of this book is to
enlighten the reader with more depth about tantric ideas and goddess
powers, and how all of this is relevant to spiritual love and
relationship. Yet this will not be an easy-simple book to read. These
teachings are not simply laid out, to be consumed without a required
thinking and understanding. These are esoteric teachings of tantra,
not meant to be popularized or dogmatized. The reader will be
challenged to think about these ideas, to understand beneath the
words and penetrate beneath the surface. Enjoy!