If Truth Be Told: A Monk's Memoir

by Om Swami

Marriage was not a part of my plan or my dreams either. I knew I would renounce one day and, therefore, I thought it would be unethical to consummate the relationship. Once again, I was rather naive in my thinking. I had always seen life in black and white, believing in absolute definitions—this was good and that was bad, this was moral and that was immoral, this was right and that was wrong. How tantra used sexuality to transform and transcend the self was not something I really grasped until I experienced it first-hand when I did my first tantric sadhana of Goddess Kali. And I learnt that life was really a huge, grey sea. Doing this particular tantric sadhana was supposed to give the practitioner a vision of Kali in a vivid dream. A process of three nights, it required invoking a mantra along with the energy of Kali in one’s partner. Honestly, I wasn’t sure if a short sadhana would result in anything significant but how wrong I was. Not only did I get a vision of Kali but, at the time of consummation, I felt like the only entity that existed in the entire Universe, why, I felt I was the Universe.