The Eight Yoga of Naropa: Sexual Yoga with a Consort

There is a saying in the mahamudra system of meditation, based on the Six Yogas of Naropa, which goes, "There can be no mahamudra or nirvana without karmamudra or sexual yoga.” According to Himalayan meditation theory, sexual yoga is the central completion stage practice that results in nirvana, or the union of the Three Bodies. Both the Chinese and Tibetan civilizations have been heavily influenced by individuals who achieved whole-brain activation through the use of sexual yoga practices. These individuals include the Yellow Emperor, Lao Tzu, and Padmasambhava. Padmasambhava studied with Sri Simha on Wu Tai Shan in China, as well as with Indian masters.

According to the great historian of religion, Mircea Eliade, tantric theory was originally described in India as the “Chinese method.” Thomas Cleary felt that the descriptions of Padmasambhava practicing sexual yoga for longevity in caves throughout scholars have ignored the emphasis on sexual yoga as the completion stage of meditation in Himalayan yoga lineages. Jung pointed out that the majority of Asian and hermetic art points to the union of opposites, resulting in non-duality. He called this "the actualization of the self after the conscious and unconscious minds have united." However, he had no idea that the goal of sexual yoga is to activate the kundalini through the union of gross, subtle, and void levels of consciousness. This is the basis of both Western alchemy and Eastern medical science. Chinese Internal Alchemy is based on the idea that the lifespan of an individual can be greatly extended through the successful practice of sexual yoga.

As Joseph Campbell tells us:
In the Buddhists lamaseries of Tibet...the holy images and banners show the various Buddhas and Bodhisattvas joined with their Shaktis in embrace, in the yogic posture known as Yab-Yum, "Father-Mother." And the great prayer of the old prayer wheels of Tibet, OM mani padme HUM, "the jewel (mani) in the lotus (padme)," signifies, on one level: the immanence of nirvana (the jewel) in (samsara the lotus); another: the arrival of the mind (the jewel) in nirvana (the lotus); but also, as in the icon of the male and female joined: the lingam in the yoni. “Buddhatvam yosidyonisamsritam,” states a late Buddhist aphorism: "Buddhahood abides in the female organ."
Joseph Campbell, Oriental Mythology: The Masks of God

The Second Yoga of Naropa: Dream Yoga

The goal of this practice is to have lucid dreams. Many Tibetan texts have been created by Tibetans dreaming and communicating with deities. Tibetan literature is believed to be a creation between the tantric deities and the Tibetan masters.

Dream yoga is an ancient practice based on the idea that gaining lucidity or awareness that one is dreaming while one is dreaming provides a quantum leap of awareness. The practitioner uses self-suggestion until lucidity occurs and success is said to provide great spiritual and health benefits to the practitioner. Like all Asian arts, dream yogic practices are transmitted in a teacher to student lineage, usually with an initiation ceremony of some kind.

In Tibet, it could be argued that dreams within dreams are from other dimensions. Skilled practitioners can communicate with enlightened deities, ancestors, etc. and bring this information back as powerful teachings.

Many Western scholars ignore the influence of dreams and their consequences within shamanic cultures. Western society has lost the ability to use dreaming as a survival tool. Hunter-gatherer cultures are essentially based on the visions or dreams of the shamans who function as intermediaries between the world of the living and the world of the dead. It is normal for example, within a hunter-gatherer culture, for individuals to be guided by dreams with either ancestors or animal guardians. Similarly, in China, many of the meditation lineages in both Buddhism and Taoism consider consciousness projection to be one of the results of successful energy cultivation. The founder of the water-boxing martial arts system, Chen Tuan, was known to leave his body for 100-day periods. Here once again we have the primordial archetype of a shaman who can hibernate like a bear while he travels out of body for three months intervals; during this time fellow practitioners were guarding his body.

Understanding the Yin and Yang

The ancient Taoists, those natural philosophers of change and balance, used the concepts of yin and yang to symbolize the polarity of existence. Everything that exists can be assigned either to yin or yang, thus identifying its polar aspects. In this way, all elements are paired and balanced with each other—night and day, sun and moon, moist and dry, dark and light, fire and water, male and female. It is through this interdependence and interrelationship that the universe, and we humans within it, remains in balance and harmony.

The principle of yin/yang is fundamental to any understanding of Taoist philosophy or sexual yoga. As do so many Taoist ideas, this concept of yin and yang comes from nature. Originally yang stood for the light side of a hill, the side facing the sun. Yin stood for the shady side, away from the sun.

The qualities of yang are brightness, heat, activity, upward and outward direction, aggressiveness, expansion and what we might think of as maleness. The qualities of yin are darkness, water, cold, rest, inward and downward direction, stillness, receptivity, and what we might think of as femaleness.

It is very important to understand that when we talk about yin and yang we are not talking of gender or sex. We all have both yin and yang qualities, whether we are male or female. The balance of these two qualities is not static and concrete, but ever moving and shifting. At times our yin side may assert itself, at other times our yang side.

By being aware and sensitive to the balance and subtle shifts of our own yin and yang qualities we are better able to make proper decisions and conduct ourselves with greater integrity and foresight in our dealings with others.

Yin and yang are not two completely separate forces. They are, instead, different facets of one unifying principle.