Great-Bliss-Tantric-Sex-and-the-Path-to-Inner-Awakening

The Creation and Completion Stages
Tantric practice comprises two stages, the Creation Stage (Utpatti Krama) and the Completion
Stage (Niṣpanna Krama). The first prepares you for enlightenment, and the second achieves it.
The Creation Stage
The Creation Stage (Utpatti Krama) practices begin your transformation from an ordinary human
being into a buddha. In these practices, called deity yoga (deva yoga; also called jñānamudrā, lit.
wisdom consort), the principle practice is to meditate on a visualized image of a deity created by
your mind, invoke the actual deity who arises from primordial wisdom, and merge to become the
deity. Deity yoga employs two principal techniques, visualization (bhāvanā) and mantra
repetition (mantra japa). Kṛiṣṇācārya, in The Yoga of the Jewel Garland, stresses the essential
importance of generating a visualized form of the deity, writing, “It is impossible to realize the
Innate without the perfection of generation.” Visualization lays the blueprint in your mind for
buddhahood. Mantra repetition establishes the power of the deity within your mindstream.
Through the Creation Stage, your physical body is purified to prepare you for your eventual
emanation as a nirmāṇakāya, the physical body of a buddha. It removes the coarse karmic
obscurations of your physical body, purifies your afflictive desires and pacifies your mind. Your
physical body becomes perfected, you are able to experience higher states of bliss, and you attain
worldly magical powers. Your effort in the Creation Stage lays the groundwork, “ripening” you
for actually attaining enlightenment in the Completion Stage. On its own the Creation Stage
cannot acheive enlightenment, but it provides the essential purification, skill in meditative
absorption, and empowerment needed for the Completion Stage.
The Completion Stage
The Completion Stage (Niṣpanna Krama) comprises the highest practices of Tantra. Kriṣṇācārya
regards the Completion Stage as the yogas of direct meditation on ultimate reality, and its result
is “the attainment of the intrinsic nature itself.” The Completion Stage completes the work you
began in the Creation Stage, transforming you into a buddha. Because its practices work on
subtle levels, without attaining skill in the Creation Stage, the Completion Stage practices can
bring you little benefit, like sanding down a block of wood before you first cut it into shape. The
Completion Stage clears out subtle karmic obscurations that cannot be released through the
Creation Stage practices alone. These include your subtle karmic obscurations of speech and
mind, and karmic seeds from past lives that you cannot ordinarily consciously access.
While there are many Completion Stage practices found in the Tantras, Kriṣṇācārya explains that
the core practice of all of them is “the generating of bliss.” As you progressively intensify your
bliss, you release the bonds of craving, aversion and ignorance. The higher Tantras are
unanimous in declaring that of all Tantric practices, only sexual yoga (Karmamudrā) is capable
of creating the intense and prolonged states of bliss that are necessary to attain liberation. The
other yogas are mainly supports for it.
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