Question: Please, tell us about tantrism.

Answer: The word tantrism is of the Sanskrit origin, tantra means action. Tantrism implies active religious practice in contrast to mere faith.

Religiosity can be expressed in various forms. One of them consists in observance of rituals, reading of religious books, observance of the rules of conduct established by a certain religion. Another form implies active use of esoteric techniques of psychoenergetic development. In this sense our School is tantric.

But the term tantrism in present days is often used in another meaning. I mean some pagan schools of Hinduism, whose basic concept is as follows: there are two divine principles: male and female, and their sexual interaction on the divine level energetically ensures evolution of the whole universe (slightly different versions of this mythological picture are possible). In other words, the evolution proceeds from sexual interaction of male and female principles. And people started imitating gods, endowing sexual interaction with religious meaning. Corresponding sexual-religious ritualism was created.

On this basis, the knowledge of bioenergetics of sex has developed (like in some Chinese esoteric schools), which is useful for everyone to be familiar with.

One should not confuse these two meanings of the word tantrism to avoid awkward situations.