Interview on White Tantric Yoga

This interview of Sardarni Guru Amrit Kaur by Mahan Rishi Singh Khalsa, D.C. August 1999 appeared in the Meditation Pathways Magazine in the year 2000.

MP:  White Tantric Yoga is a unique form of meditation. It’s not one many people have heard about. When most people think of Tantra, they think of a sexual relationship between a man and woman. How would you describe White Tantric Yoga?

GAKK:  There are three Tantric paths. There is Red Tantric, which is the one that you just described.

There is also Black Tantric, known for voodoo or casting of spells, which manipulate the elements for specific results and for purposes that serve the individual.

White Tantric Yoga works on a full level. It works on cleansing the subconscious mind, using the polarity energies of the male and female. This creates the magnetic field which diagonally goes through the Tantric lines, and filters through the master. It’s unique to each person because everyone has different things that are being cleansed. The common feeling after this experience is an enhanced intuitive sense about life, along with deep subconscious changes. Those changes often come about by seeing old patterns with new insight. Often people have no real awareness of their old issues, but all of a sudden are working with a different mentality or view of life. I like to explain it as if you are doing a spring cleaning of your consciousness. Let’s say you are cleaning a window. The water is the mantra, and the mudra, which is the position that you take, is the elbow grease and the action you use to cleanse the window. When you finish, you are able to see through that window, or into your mind with more clarity, instead of it clouded with old fears or ways which compromise yourself.

Also cleansed are the facets of ourselves that have been shamed or alienated, which create separation from our own divinity and nobility.

MP:  Yogi Bhajan often talks about the longitude and latitude of the Tantric experience, along with the effects of the Z or diagonal energy. Can you discuss this?

GAKK:  He often says that if you can imagine a box and make four squares in it by creating a cross, you have positive sides pulling and negative sides pulling. He says that if you say one negative thing, that has magnitude. Being that the whole universe is one, saying one negative thing, you take on the karmas of that one negativity. When you are erasing that, there is a polarity that pulls you into another one of the diagonals, clearing that for you and bringing liberation. The Siri Singh Sahib (Yogi Bhajan) also talks about applied consciousness. He says that your attitude has to match the magnitude of what you are doing. He applies it to the attitudes of life. When you have an altitude of how far you have to go, you have a caliber of what you want to deliver. Then you need the attitude to deliver the caliber to the altitude that you want to go.

Latitude has to do with altitude. Longitude has to do with the horizon, or the depth or breadth of which you have to cover. Each person is born with a destiny to travel. They have to cover that distance. When you’re living a spiritual path, and you are living in attunement with your soul, you are surrendering to that mission on your own. You then live in happiness, peace, detachment, neutrality, and you know yourself. White Tantric is helping you become in tune with this.

“He said that your soul has a journey, and it is a predestined journey. It takes longitude and latitude to be born. It selects its geography, and its nurturing essence of the parents you select. All of this in the first seven years is there. It is all set. The events are all set. It is like you have a book, when someone has a book of 60 pages that is called life. Every page has to be turned, gone through and understood. In between there can be cross references, things you will highlight, things you will like, and dreadful things too. Every page, let us say, is a year of your life. Life proceeds like a book of life and every tomorrow will come as a today.”

MP:  In White Tantric Yoga, the steadiness and straightness of the lines is significant for the optimum flow of energy. Why is this important?

GAKK:  Take a zipper for example, with everybody representing a cog or notch in the zipper. When one of them is out of alignment, the energy doesn’t flow and gets jammed there. If you take it out altogether, it is broken. If a straight line isn’t maintained it can energetically affect the people that are down from you, or up from you.

That’s why as a facilitator, I make sure the lines are extremely straight. I can feel the discomfort within any of the lines when they’re not aligned. When the Siri Singh Sahib (Yogi Bhajan) used to travel and lead the Tantric courses, he would say how it would affect his spine. When you are facilitating, you may not be looking at an area, but when something goes out of alignment you feel it. It’s like the sound of scratching on a blackboard. You can feel it on a soul or psychic level. This often translates as a physical sensation.

MP:  Just to describe the Tantric set up a little—people are sitting in lines, about fifty yards long, with the men on one side and the women on the other. They are gazing into one another’s eyes or holding a posture with a mudra. During these meditations no one is to cut across the lines or leave a gap in the line.

GAKK:  It is like taking a pair of scissors and cutting the zipper. It’s the end of it. It really takes a long time to reconstitute the subtle, but very profound energies. We don’t want to leave an emptiness or hole in the magnetic field. Everything has a protocol, and these exist so people can have the best experience.

MP:  A person is sitting, gazing into their partner’s eyes, often holding a mudra, with a given breath, along with chanting. What is the significance of the deep gaze?

GAKK:  Each individual has numerous locks to regulate the energy flow, along with nine gates. Those gates are either open or closed during a Tantric course, depending on how the energies flow. If the eyes are open there’s an exchange in energy through the gates of the eyes. If the eyes are closed, sometimes it’s the ears that are the opening of energy, through sound. There are also gates through the third eye and top of the head. The locks and postures create certain angles to stimulate the energy flow. The body is a geometric vehicle of cosmic energy.

MP:  How would you prepare someone for a day of White Tantric knowing that it can be very challenging?

GAKK:  Most importantly, they should come prepared to experience and face themselves. They should not have preconceptions about it. Even people who have done many Tantrics shouldn’t come with preconceptions. Preconceptions don’t work. It’s not a type of yoga where you’re trying to get a specific result. Tantric isn’t in that category. In a sense, it is the yoga of an absolute. If anything, the concept of shunia, the space of the union of yourself with your soul is what you experience. You begin to work with and face those things that bury you, and keep you veiled from your soul. You just have to be aware of what is happening—not by judging it—not getting aggravated by it, but just noticing it in a detached way. Sometimes you release the experience into the Tantric field where above your head is a field of circulating energy. There are times when you really need the mantra or the breath and rely on all the supports in order to keep rolling through, facing whatever the fear or past trauma has been. But like anything you do in meditation, at some point you have to let go into the space of a Universal Self. It’s being at a place within where you want to master yourself and know all the facets of who you are, so that you can bring out your spiritual identity and divinity.

MP:  When you are in the middle of an exercise that goes on for 62 minutes, and you come to that point where it’s extremely painful, what would you suggest for a person in that moment?

GAKK:  Keep up! If I know there’s going to be an exercise where both arms are held up at 60 degrees, then I would prepare them in advance to decide that they are going to do it. The minute you hit the pain, the first instinct is always to avoid pain, so you start to move. Also, when you hit the pain, you say, “No, I don’t really want to do this. It’s like a woman when she goes through childbirth; there’s a phase when she says, “No, I don’t really want to go through this.” When she goes through it, and there’s the delivery, there’s also the great exultation. When you first hit that stage, it is a command of yourself—of spirit over your ego. You develop the mastery of having the capacity to command your body over the gravity or emotional pull. Then your spirit gets to the point where it is ruling, not the matter, or the mind. The mind then serves the spirit, and you are victorious.

MP:  In the mid 1980’s Yogi Bhajan began to lead the Tantric through his subtle body and chose various people to help in the facilitation of that process. As a facilitator, can you describe what happens with the Mahan Tantric not physically present?

GAKK:  The first time I facilitated, I wasn’t sure what I’d be experiencing. I did a lot of prayers and attunement in order to help the flow of energy. What I experienced was that when the Tantric energy was activated, the molecular speed of myself as a facilitator would amp up—the voltage magnified.

The Self-speed, is how I can most explain it, is accelerated. Even before the day of Tantric you are already starting to operate in a different orbit or field. Yogi Bhajan helps to prepare your system as a vehicle to do the job. You are like a satellite. It’s an interesting balance for facilitators because many of the people doing Tantric may have never met Yogi Bhajan. The not understand this. To be a clear facilitator you have to be present enough and also absent enough, so that you aren’t there. You are serving the group filter.

MP:  The Tantric is working deeply on an individual level, but also with everyone chanting with their heart and soul, this dynamic flow of energy moving between and around people seems to have a powerful effect on the planet as well. I often see the weather change.

GAKK:  Often times, Yogi Bhajan will talk about the different realms that are affected by the Tantric. We do experience it, and yes, rain does come. Through different mantras it comes, and through other ones it stops.

MP:  People usually wear white, and have their head covered during Tantric Yoga. What is the purpose of this?

GAKK:  It’s all a flow of energy. When the energy is flowing through, and you don’t have the head covered, the light that magnifies and glows can be too much for people. There’s a pouring of energy into them that can sometimes result in headaches or some other discomfort. The energy should be passing through and passing on.

MP:  From what I understand, it sometimes takes 40 days or longer for people to truly gain the benefits of White Tantric Yoga. Is there anything one can do to best keep the flow of energy going?

GAKK:  I always recommend that people follow up with doing meditation for the next 40 days. I think sometimes that people have found interesting dreams or changes in their waking life. I recommend at least 11-31 minutes of meditation a day to sustain the process and the benefits. It’s also important not to drink alcohol, smoke, or take drugs. They change the body’s chemistry. Tantric Yoga effects the glandular system in a powerful way. If you want the benefits of it, it’s best to eat pure, drink enough water, and keep cleansing. Through the Tantric you have received a boost. Now you can decide what you want to do with it.