Many people are familiar with the concept of the body and the soul, it’s a common feature of many mainline religions. According to this tradition there is a clear separation between the two. Often the body is little more than a fleshy cage for the entrapped spirit and, if anything, is a source of temptation or potential corruption for the pure untainted soul.
There is a significant appeal in maintaining this delineation – death is not final. Indeed, death is a liberation. Once the body dies, the soul is set free and, providing you didn’t surrender to the temptations of the flesh, the soul can go on to enjoy an idyllic afterlife. Obviously, different religions have different ideas about what an idyllic afterlife may be, but most promise some kind of advancement for those who have maintained the purity of their soul – and threaten some form of regression for those who have failed.
This dualistic concept is so embedded that even non-religious scientists, fiction writers and tech entrepreneurs promulgate the idea. For them, rather than the soul transcending to a spiritual afterlife, it can be transformed into binary data and transferred into an artificial body, immortalising the individual in the form of individualised computer code.
But Tantra has a different idea of the relationship between body and soul. Within tantra, there is no separation. The body and the soul are intertwined. Indeed, according to many tantric folk stories, the body and the soul interact, so that one influences the other. This is why the body becomes so important within tantric practice – it is a means of exploring the soul and of gaining enlightenment. That’s why, within tantra, there is the possibility of “liberation in your lifetime”; there is no need to wait for death to experience spiritual transcendence.
Death does present one potential problem though. If the soul and the body are intertwined, what happens to the soul when the body withers and dies? Does the soul die too? Is death therefore something to be feared? Not at all. Because tantra understands that there is only ever one soul; one eternal consciousness that imbues everything. Within this concept, the body is more like a mask, or a costume donned by an actor to help them take on the role of a particular character.
The body (all matter in fact) is simply a condensed form of energy – the exact same energy that makes up the soul. So, rather than the body withering away it simply transforms, back into energy and the originating, universal consciousness, the eternal all-encompassing soul that forms and unifies everything. An analogy might be to imagine an ice cube – a solidified version of water which, when exposed to heat, can melt and evaporate, becoming vapour that can re-solidify and re-form as a different ice-cube in a different place at a different time. The purpose of tantra – or at least, of tantric practice – is to recognise and experience our soul as this universal vapour (energy/consciousness) that is present in all matter, including our very own bodies.
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