by Hans Hvass

My alarm clock rings at 0345 and in a state of bewilderment I wake up reaching out to stop the alarm. This is the fourth day of the Tantric festival and I have yet to get used to getting up at this hour.
A few seconds after my alarm clock goes off the sound of a gong can be heard in the distance.
This is the summoning of the men to morning meditation.

I am sleeping in a room with 7 other men who, like me, roll out of their beds in a state of bewilderment.
It is an amazing feeling that the body can feel tired and completely broken after just 2 and a half hours of sleep but that the soul can feel invigorated and alive. Putting the physical body in unusual situations can at times make you more aware of the more refined layers of the being. This is a state that I have come to know a lot of since I started my spiritual practice 5 years ago.

Slowly and in a zombie like state we proceed to the big yoga hall. Here we will do one hour of what are called “sublimation techniques” in yoga. This consists of yogic exercises which can raise unrefined levels of energy in our being to higher more refined forms of energy. This is very necessary for men who aim to achieve what is called “sexual continence”. Sexual continence starts with the preservation of the vital sexual energy (sperm) in the case of men. This vital sexual energy which when “un-sublimated” expresses itself as “heavy balls” on the physical level or emotional frustration, lust, desire or stress on the emotional level, can through these exercises be transformed to the more refined feelings of valour, love, intuition, aspiration etc.
Initially I am very tired and my inner dialogue is continually prompting me to return to bed. By ignoring this inner dialogue and focusing in the heart where the soul resides I slowly begin to feel fresh and invigorated as I roll my stomach in circles (a very effective yogic exercise to sublimate the energies). The yoga hall is filled with the sound of huffing and puffing of the other men making the same exercise.
Other men are making the “sun salutation” technique as the sun rises a bit after 0400. I am filled with a quite sense of humbleness and awe looking at my fellow men saluting the sun. I stand for a moment with the palms of my hands pressed towards each other in a yogic prayer position called prathanasana. This is my way of welcoming the sun as I never myself learned the sun salutation.

At 0500 we proceed to the dining hall to pick up our chairs which we carry out with us to the “shiva lingham” statue located in the southern garden.
A shiva lingham statue is a phallic symbol of shiva or the “universal masculine”. The universe is divided into masculine and feminine essence. The masculine essence relates to terms such as consciousness and transcendence and the feminine relates to terms such as energy, immanence and life. By meditating together around a shiva lingham statue men are reminded of their masculine essence and thereby get in touch with their deepest nature.
The men place themselves in a circle around the shiva lingham. The ground is very soft and some of the men’s chairs sink halfway into the ground. A very humorous sight indeed!
After a lot of scraping and moving around we are finally still and await the arrival of our teacher Mihai, who arrives at 0510. We make a short consecration and start the meditation. Meditation is much facilitated by the presence of one who is experienced in meditation such as Mihai. In the course of the two hours of meditation he sits perfectly still and straight, exactly like the shiva lingham statue itself. Many of us (myself included) periodically fall asleep. It is easy to see when somebody falls asleep in meditation. The back may remain straight but the chin falls to the chest. A person who is half asleep makes sudden jerks as he falls asleep but awakens before he gets too far out of equilibrium. It was certainly an amusing sight the first day to see all these men wrapped in many layers of clothes jerking back and forth half asleep in their meditations while Mihai remains completely straight but today the concentration was much better. We were much more awake and there was a strong field in the meditation. It is an ecstatic feeling to see people improve and to feel how we day by day through simple techniques become more and more masculine.
After the meditation I make a round to inspect the premises. The participants have different tasks assigned to them as the running of a camp with so many people needs a lot of work. My tasks are to coordinate the “handymen” to fix things that are broken, to do administration and to update the internet. Our biggest task of the day is to finish the outdoor showers for the men. I drive to Copenhagen with a fellow yogi Martin to pick up all sorts of materials needed at a specialized plumbing store. Up till now the showers for men consisted of two garden hoses connected to the cold water but today we will upgrade them to warm water showers. Cold showers are good for men working on continence but now it is time to give them more luxury up to the pending meeting with women in one of the days to come. Here they need to be well rested and vital.
 
We come home in time for lunch. Our meals are fascinating experiences due to the special atmosphere created by the splitting up of the sexes. The men eat on one half of the dining hall and the women eat on the other half. They are separated by a long table upon which the food is placed.
The men are in silence, not allowed to say a word, but the women may speak and giggle with each other as much and as lively as they feel inspired to. It is a huge contrast, the giggling laughing women on one side and the stern silent men on the other side. As the women go up to take the food the men gaze at them, some with lust others with longing and others with deep transfiguration. The women are fully aware of this and send teasing glances back at the men. Some make extra gestures as flinging back the hair and blinking their long eyelashes. Just after a few days separation the game of the sexes has become very intense.
In the afternoon there is yet another meditation for men around the shiva lingham statue. This time I have an awesome meditation. I was introduced to a special type of strap on device which goes around the knees and the lower back. When the strap is tightened the back becomes straighter enabling a better and more focused meditation. A straight back is absolutely necessary in meditation. A straight back is a physical suggestion of being awake, being masculine and being alert. If the back is not kept straight, drowsy states appear after a few moments.
The sound of the leaves in the wind of the big trees surrounding the garden is an incredible sound which facilitates to deep states of meditation. Nature loves the adept who meditates and sometimes in incredible ways the meditator joins into a subtle communion with nature. When he breathes, nature breaths, when his mind becomes restless the wind picks up, the leaves make more noise and the meditator returns to the meditation. A kind of communication appears where mother nature is reminding the meditator to focus on his meditation. Often states of Samadhi in the meditator appears simultaneously with sudden changes in the weather. My deepest states in meditation have often been accompanied by the sudden starting of rainfall, as if nature itself starts crying with the catharsis that accompanies the entering of the state of deep communion with God the father.
In this case though, I was very happy that it remained dry!

The weather forecasts promised really bad weather with strong wind and lots of rain, but each time us men made the meditation the rain stopped and at the end of each of the shiva lingham meditations the weather was lighter and more fair.

In the evening we have yet another incredible lecture with Mihai. Again the men were sitting in the eastern half of the yoga hall and the women in the western half.
Mihai expanded more on the roles of men and women.  The gist of the lecture was that women provide the choices to men but it is men who must make the decision. As an archetypical symbol of never ending creativity a wise woman offers a series of wise choices for the man to choose from. A woman continuously throws apples (meaning choices or energy) at the man and it is the man who must pull out his sword of discernment to cut the apples, meaning to cut the bad parts out and leave what is good.
A biblical example is when Eve offers the apple to Adam. Adam should have cut of the bad part of the apple and given it back to her. This is what a woman wants, the wise discernment and the generosity of the man. Instead Adam ignorantly and greedily takes the apple and eats it for himself. Adam shows that he has not understood the basic fundaments of polarity and in this way begins the whole misery of separation. They are expelled from the Garden of Eden and we as human beings will remain separated from wholeness until we begin to understand and apply the principles of polarity.
As Mihai gets warmed up offering more and more examples of how polarity applies in daily life, examples that all of us can relate to, the atmosphere lifts and people laugh more and more.

The lecture ends quite late and I make my way to bed. I know I have to get up in a couple of hours for the men’s morning meditation but it feels like more than enough when the soul feels nourished.

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