A native of France, Margot Anand received her degree from the Sorbonne in Paris and has spent decades studying with many of the world’s prominent masters  of Hindu and Buddhist tantra, including the great mystic Osho in India.  With Sounds True, Margot has released the audio program Sexual Magic Meditations and a six-session audio course on The Art of Sexual Magic: Cultivating Sexual Energy to Transform Your Life.

In this episode of Insights at the Edge, Margot and I spoke about bringing orgasmic energy up through the central channel of the body using breath and micro-movements. We also talked about multiple orgasms in both men and women and underlying cultural dynamics that can be at play in exploring multiple orgasms. We talked about the rule of the heart in tantric practice, and also the manifestation process, what Margot calls “sexual magic,” and how we can use the space of ecstasy for creation. We also talked about how meditation can create ecstasy through the whole body and beyond. Here’s my conversation with a true pioneer: Margot Anand.

Margot, you’re well-known as someone who has popularized tantra in the West. And I know that now I’m speaking to you, and you’ve been living in Bali for the last six or seven years or so. And of course, it makes sense that I would be talking to a tantric teacher who is in Bali. Bali seems like the perfect place. And I’m curious how your work has been evolving since you’ve been in Bali. How, perhaps, it’s been changing at this point in your life.

Margot Anand: Well, I decided when I moved to Bali to put the closed on sign the door of my previous life and to no longer be a teacher and to no longer practice the previous spiritual practices I was practicing—to practice nothing, to teach nothing, to say nothing. And I did that for three years.

What emerged is something simple, much more humble, more mysterious, more graceful, and more in-the-moment. So I don’t have a great new method, but I can say that what I’m now most interested in is the capacity of our brain to open up to new dimensions, which reveal themselves through what I call “bioluminescence,” which is the empowering of the pituitary, the pineal gland, and generally speaking, the brain’s capacity to bring us to ecstatic states, to expanded states, in a natural way through meditation practice.

TS: Now, it’s interesting that you’re talking right here at the beginning of our conversation about the brain, because one of the things I wanted to talk with you about is this quote that I found from your work, which is that “the pinnacle of tantric practice is the orgasm of the brain.” And I wanted to know, what do you mean by this? The brain has an orgasm?

MA:with. And then, when the energy’s channeled higher, to the next chakras, you eventually end up in the brain, in the sahaswrara, in the crown chakra. And there, the energy becomes a transcendence, beyond the boundaries of the body, into spaciousness and into a feeling of being one with all that is.

Now, that is the movement going from the root to the crown. But there is another movement—that was brought forth by Sri Aurobindo, the founder of Auroville, and by many other teachers since—which talks about the descent of the energy from the sky to the earth. Which would mean that you start with the brain and you start with the powers of the brain to connect with expanded dimensions of consciousness, and then you move that down to the rest of your being.

So after having explored sexuality in so many different ways, I became interested in that second approach. The orgasm of the brain is either the one that is the sexual orgasm transmuted and transformed into a finer and finer experience that doesn’t so much depend on the genitals anymore, but there is also another kind of orgasm, which is ecstasy. The orgasm of the brain is basically the ecstatic experience. It’s a blink into God, I would say. [Laughs]

TS: So, really, one way of putting what you’re saying is that you’re talking about an ascending current as well as a descending current. Is that accurate?

MA: Yes. That’s accurate.

TS: Let’s talk about both a little bit more. Here you are, you’re talking about this descending current as something that has lately been of great interest to you. Can you talk a little bit—how do you bring the energy down through the body? How does that work for you?

MA: Well, it’s not like there is a direction anymore. It’s more like, after doing certain meditative practices and focusing on the empowerment of various parts of the brain, you enter into a feeling that the body is kind of not really material anymore. You become one with spaciousness and with light. So the experience of light is important here, and there is then an ability to touch this deep inner joy, this deep inner source of joy and of freedom. And so you don’t direct things at the point.

Well, you do. Yes, you do. You do, you direct things down from the higher chakras through the throat, through the heart, through the belly with your mind, with your awareness. And energy follows consciousness, so little by little, you empower each of those centers in your body to be opening up to stronger and finer energies of light.

TS: And you’re saying that this exploration is something, through meditation, that you’re opening the top of your head, the top of the crown chakra, and then experiencing this stimulation in the brain that then results in this experience of space and light?

MA: Yes. I am developing an approach which is based on working with certain energy points that are called vortex points, in which there is a connection between touch and certain sounds and focus of the mind in those points. Which then open us up to receive many universal energies, if you wish, or stronger energy than we would normally perceive.

TS: Wonderful! This is so exciting, Margot! What a fabulous development of your work.

MA: Yes, thank you! Thank you. It’s in its infancy, and I feel very protective and very humble about it, because I couldn’t say that I have mastered this one as much as I have mastered the rest. I’m letting it unfold in an organic way and I have my own struggles in it.

my struggles are currently based on the fact that I’m by nature a rebel, and this is a strong pattern in me, and I’ve had to have that pattern to do what I did. But at the same time, the rebel in me has a hard time finding the discipline to have a regular meditation practice, which is really required in this phase. And when I enter into a regular meditation practice, I access amazing space of light and joy, and you would wonder why, if this is the case, I wouldn’t want to have a regular practice.

And then I get to the point where I ask myself, “Well, how much ecstasy can I hold? How much good is possible before it becomes too much?” And this is the ultimate question, even in sexuality: How much orgasmic bliss can we hold at any given time? [Laughs] There’s sort of this sense of la petite mort, or the feeling that some part of us is disappearing, and the ego is holding on for dear life. So this is my current struggle.