Interview with Synchronicity's Master Charles from the 1990's by Tashi

I fumbled the flowers I brought as a gift to Master Charles.   Nothing new for me, I seem to always be fumbling towards ecstasy.  Which was the state in which I discovered Master Charles, upon entering his house.  I paused to see if the peace in the room was visible, perhaps as light particles or dancing angels, little winds, or anything I could pin a label on.  But it was simple. The pure peaceful, ecstatic essence of a being who lives in a state of expanded awareness has its own presence, and the room was saturated by it.  As I sat with Master Charles, over the course of this interview, I too become peaceful, then blissful, then towards the end of the interview I had to suppress the joy and laughter I felt as every word Master Charles and I spoke cascaded around the room, dancing and mocking the attempts of the mind to dare to intellectualize what was essentially a mystical experience.  In this interview Master Charles speaks on the significance of Tantra for Western society.  According to his viewpoint as a contemporary mystic, we are, as a culture, a left-brain in search of a right... renounciants on a quest for the pleasure principle.  The dynamic of a Master of Meditation is one of bliss, pleasure, joy and peace, and these are surely the moods of the Man and his reception room where this interview took place, on a moonlit night, starry filled night in May.  I asked a lot of questions about women and spirituality, because for the most part, the last few centuries have been dedicated to the male perspective on spiritual practices.  As a woman, I sought out a Contemporary Mystic's viewpoint on how to deliver to the feminine, equal mastery of  mystical states.  Master Charles offers many profound insights into how women can maximize a dynamic expression of  enlightening human mastery.  I think both men and women can learn from Master Charles's  contemporary mystical viewpoint as we are still on the cutting edge of realigning our gender biases. Master Charles's energy dynamic is proof  of his mastery of the meditative art.  His loving presence blows you away and his words describe a contemporary understanding of Tantra.   Master Charles's is an enlightening being whose ecstatic presence leaves you inspired to meditate, to love and to enjoy life to its fullest.

Master Charles:  The easiest way to understand what Tantra is all about is essentially conveyed in one word:  and that word is "acceptance." 

The Tantra is a path of acceptance.  If you understand the history of how Tantra and the Tantric tradition emerged in the world you can see very clearly how it is all about acceptance.  At the time that the Tantra first appeared, as a series of revelations  upon which the Tantric tradition evolved, the world spiritual path was essentially one of the opposite of acceptance, or negation.  It  reduced everything to its basics in an understanding of renunciation, which is essentially negation, saying this is not God, this is not God, and in this negative path you arrive at the zero point which is God. 

So up until the time of the Tantra the path of the Veda was essentially a path of reduction to basics, renunciation or negation.  This limited it as an experience for many human beings and it became a organized religious experience in which there were very set dogmas and rules to follow which required that people had to become renounciants to find God, to experience truth, to have an enlightening experience of the true nature of reality.  As time progressed, it became a more limited experience in terms of the average human being whose lifestyle was such, with their family, their spouse, their relationships, their jobs, their situation in the world, that they could not be a renounciant.  Therefore they could not actualize the existing spirituality of the day which was the Vedic path of renunciation and negation. 

So, the Tantra appeared as a revelation, which means the collective consciousness of the time manifested for itself the way out of it's dilemma which was to manifest its opposite.  The opposite of negation is affirmation and that becomes acceptance.  Rather than saying nothing is God, it is equally appropriate to say that everything is God.  Where one is a principle of negation the other is a principle of affirmation.  Both take you to the zero point. 

So the Tantra was evolved to assist the average human being, who was at this time outside of the confines of organized religion, to be included in some sort of a spirituality that they could actualize.  Rather than saying I should be a other than I am, rather say, this situation embodies the full possibility of God if I open myself with acceptance to the experience of this moment which is my reality.  Therefore the world is God, I am God, the moment is full of God, the air that I breathe is God, the thoughts that I think are God.  Everything is - as opposed to everything isn't. 

A shift from negation to affirmation.  So Tantra is essentially based on the principle of accepting everything in your observation, in your manifested situation as the deity that it is, as the consciousness that it is.  As the reality that it is - expressing itself in that form, in that moment.  Opening yourself in a life-affirmative way through the principle of acceptance.  Thus Deity, God, spirituality was made available to the masses of the day.  No matter what their situation was now people now had a context of experiencing deity, of experiencing Spirituality. 

Tashi:  Do you think a Contemporary Western mind can relate to this

Master Charles:  Tantra as a princi­ple of acceptance is what the West­ern mind is seeking.  It is its challenge.  It is not easy for a West­ern mind to be affirmative.  To be accepting.  It is natural for a Western mind to be the opposite, to be re­nounciant, to be life-negative.  The principle involved here can easily be seen in the brain.  The Western culture is a left-brained culture and the left-brained polarity is negation.  Therefore it is very easy and natural for the Western mind to embrace the renounciants path, the path of negation.  The basic Western response to all stimuli is negative, yet the principle of human journey is a balance of the bi-polar brain, of the bi-polar, bi-cameral human being.  One polarity is always seeking its opposite to find the balance of the two,  In that balance there is the fullness of human expression, the fullness of brain function, the fullness of the potential of what it is to be human, which is a stress free, equilibrated experience. 

Tashi:  Can you explain how these notions of Tantra are relevant to the emergence of the new Contemporary Mysticism that we talk about so much in the ET. 

 Master Charles:  It is essentially taking the same thing a little further.  Contemporary Mysticism is a departure from what is comfortable, what is known, what is secure, and challenging it with what you don't know.  Going beyond your bound­aries of what is secure.  So Contemporary Mysticism is about finding the opposite, it is about embracing the challenge of everything that is beyond your boundaries of complacency.  Therefore the Westerner in the new Contemporary Mysticism is moving beyond its left brain.  It is bored with the left brain. It is imbalanced extremely to the left brain.  The left brain is not only the negative polarity, it is the objective polarity, so the Westerner is bored with the imbalance, with objectified negative, digitalized experience.  That is the Western culture.  It is technology.  It is an imbalanced objective focus void of a subjective focus.  Its religions have become objectified, conceptual, dogmatic traditions of repetitive ritual which is comfortable to a left brain, but in the extreme it is boring.  We are looking for the more subjective, life-affirmative, spatial, abstract, infinite experience, the opposite of what we are comfortable with and therefore it is a challenge to us.  Every time we actualize that challenge we balance ourselves, and in that balance we become whole again.  Whereas in our imbal­ance, we are lost in the parts and we lose the experience of the whole.  When we find the opposite and bring balance, we expand into the fullness of our function, and the fullness of our expression and potential as human beings.  And what is that experience?  If you understand what the experience is, you see the entrainment into this new Western Mysticism.  The experience is simply one of  pleasure.

Whenever you are balanced and equilibrated as a human being you are without stress, and whenever you are without stress the human apparatus comes to the fullness of its function and that is a very pleasurable experience.  Even if we only understand it neuro­chemically it is an experi­ence of opiation, of pleasure, of the high of life.  It is life lived without stress.  It is happy, it is peaceful, it is blissful.  So it is a natural entrain­ment to seek the opposite where­in you balance and experience the fullness of life as a human being which is a very pleasurable experience. That pleasurable experience is missing when you are in the extremes of one polarity or another and Western experience for the most part has remained imbalanced and therefore void of the fullness of the pleasure of what it is to be human.  That is the basis of what is beneath this new emergent Western Mysticism.  It is just the natural process of opposites seeking their balance and when that happens the journey human approaches its mastery. That is why Tantra as a path is being embraced by the Western culture, because Tantra is all about affirmation, acceptance and the positive emphasis as a response to all stimuli.                     

Tashi:  If you realize you are wanting to further your awareness by practicing Tantra in some way is it helpful to find a teacher?

Tashi:  Any clues about finding the right one for yourself?

Master Charles:  When it comes to Masters of meditation, the only Master that is right for you is the one who lives the experience.  And how do you know when a meditation Master is authentic?  How do you know when they are living the experience?  Is it just that they can talk well about meditation?  Is it that they are intellectually informed about all the details of meditation?  Or is there something more that conveys to you experientially that they have mastered what meditation is?  So the question becomes what is the experience of the mastery of meditation? 

Is it  the experience of a constant equilibration in being that delivers an experience void of stress and full of peace, bliss and pleasure, which are the opposites of stress?  So a meditation Master would have to be one in whose environment you experience those qualities.  You experience peace.  You experience bliss.  You experience the absence of stress.  You experience the pleasure, the joy, the high of being human.  They are living what they are teaching.  So if you are looking for a Meditation Master, go by the experience, not so much they say, but what they are.  Not so much by the conversation you have with them, but what you experience when being with them.  The best test for a Meditation Master is to sit and meditate with them.  Not to indulge them in conversation, but to sit quietly and to see if you can feel their meditative mastery  If you feel that energetic presence that peaceful, blissful expansive meditative presence then you have found a Meditation Master who is likely to be able to assist you to become the same.

Tashi:  Here's a different kind of a question.  Why are there so few enlightening women?

Master Charles:  Your observation that there seem to be fewer women actualizing meditative mastery is a truthful observation.  Why is it so?  For a woman to journey what meditation is, what Tantra is, which is life-affirmation, life-acceptance, the positive polarity is more challenging than it is for a man.  Why?    Within a human body, male and female is another polarity within a polarity.  T

he female polarity is a left-brained polarity in so far as the feminine expression is left brain, for the left brain is that negative, objectified, dynamic creative expression that is feminine.  The whole of creation is a principle of negation in manifestation.  It is contraction from the infinite to the finite.  From the formless into the form.  So the whole feminine principle is one of negating itself to itself, contracting itself and limiting itself into the density of form and manifestation.  Western woman has then a double left brain polarity. 

She has the left brain polarity of her culture and she has the left brain of her sexuality.  She has a double negative.  Therefore when she seeks her opposite which is the right-brain, she is more extremely imbalanced in the left than the man is.  Why?  The male polarity is a right-brain polarity, therefore it is a right-brain for the Western male within a left brain polarity.    It is not as extreme in its imbalance.  So your observation of it being more challenging for a woman in the Western world is absolutely correct. 

Therefore it is more imperative for women to seek their opposite, to cultivate the right-brain, than it is for the men.  Therefore women  need to meditate, and with application, they can experience just as profound and full a mastery of equilibration as men can.  They just must be more fo­cused in the equilibration process on a daily basis than men need to be. 
Tashi:  One of the things that I have  noticed in all the years that I have been around the New Age movement is that there are certainly more women going to meditation seminars, to astrology classes, yoga classes.  Why?

Master Charles:  Because it is the natural opposite for women who are extreme in the left-brain and have to seek the right-brain.  They have to actualize, they have to do something  to bring it into manifestation.  Whereas the man is basically in that balanced polarity by virtue of the fact that he is living in a cultural polarity that is his opposite.  Women have to apply themselves more and that is what they do, therefore they appear in greater numbers and proportion in the classes of meditative equilibrating techniques.

Tashi:  What about when women have their period.  My understanding is that this is when women equilibrate.   Can you comment? 

Master Charles: Tantra is based on a revelation of God as mother.  The Veda was based on a principle of God as father.  God the male is the Veda.  God the female is the Tantra.  Why is it a principle of feminine expression?  Because it is the opposite that must be found by the feminine to fulfill itself.  So when you ask about the cycle of a woman and the possibility for equilibration, that is what the principle of various aspects of the Tantra are all about.  It is not that a woman is balanced in the midst of her cycle.  It is that the possibility for the actualization of her opposite is most pronounced at that time.  She is really the most ex­tremely feminine at that time.  She would be the most ex­treme in her object­ified, creative dynamic feminine, left brain expression, at the fullness of her cycle.  And there is thus the possibility at that time to experience the opposite, for everything in its extreme becomes its opposite.  That's a natural law of duality.  So in the extremes of feminism you would manifest the opposite, the extremes of masculinity, the right brain.  So the whole principle of a woman's cycle is mating, is pro-creation, is copulation,  bringing in the male, bringing in the opposite.  So during the cycle is the time for that possibility of absolute equil­ibration in which stress is relinquished, balance happens, and there is transcendence, or the fullness of human expression.  When we take this beyond mere the physical, the cycle of  a woman who is seeking to actualize equilibration within herself in a more mystical, subtler, non-physical experience, then this is where the woman becomes the most medi­tative,  because meditation is the masculine principle of the right brain.  At that time in a woman's cycle there should be an increased, isolated, subjective focus through meditation for at that time the possibility  for transcendence is the most radical.  That is when a woman should be in isolation, meditating, subjective in her focus.

 Tashi:  How about for women who are in sexual relationships?

Master Charles:  For women who are in sexual relationships, it is accepting the right brain within the sexual experience, making it not merely masculine and feminine bodies balancing, but making the data base that goes with that one of balancing of polarities.  The acceptance that compliments the life-affirmation, the positive focus, that compliments the negative feminine expression.  So the Tantra is experiencing Source in the sexual act.  It is taking the sexual experience and using it as a technique of equilibration, of awareness expansion, of balancing the right and the left brain, the masculine and the feminine, and through that doorway of acceptance and affirmation and balancing, taking yourself to transcendental states of expanded awareness in which you experience the radical pleasure of what it is to be fully human.

Tashi:  I've heard it said it New-Age circles that this is the time of the Goddess. 

Master Charles:  Anytime is the time of the Goddess but what you are talking about is what is being expressed here and now in the Western culture.  It has always been here in the Western culture that the feminine is extremely fem­inine.  It is doubled up on the female polarity and it is always seeking its opposite, which is the masculine.  It does this in many ways.  If you look at the feminist movement throughout the history of  the United States on just a pure material physical dimension, what do you have?  You have the feminine trying to become masculine, you have women trying to become men.  Parts of the feminist movement have been very much like that, the emergence of women into what traditionally were men's roles in the work place, in the home, in many situations.  If you take that to subtler levels of expression beyond the material, beyond the physical and you look for that same balance, more subtly, then you find the whole area of awareness expansion as the extremes, the extreme feminine manifests the extreme masculine, which is a meditative subject­ifying balance to her extreme objectivity in which she becomes equil­ibrated and becomes the Goddess herself.  The full creative non-stressed, Sourceful expression of life lived for the bliss of it, for the fun of it, for the joy of it as dynamic creatrix.  The actualization of this is the ultimate challenge for a women in the Western world.  The culmination of the expression of that kind of extreme balancing itself would be a radical equilibration and a most radical expression of enlightening human mastery.  So the challenge is there and the potential is there, but can women expand their awareness enough?  Can they elevate themselves beyond the one-dimension of the material physical dense plane of experience and actualize the subtler dimensions of their equil­ibrating polarizing process so that they become fully illumined through all the dimensions of their experience.

Tashi:  You keep saying one thing: “seeking it's opposite.”  Do men and women need each other?

Master Charles:  Men and women don't need each other, and men and women do need each other! First, they don't need each other in terms of physical bodies to be constantly revolving their lives around each other, one limited dimension of what it is to be human.  A physical, sensual, sexual, masculine feminine polarity.  They do need masculine and feminine polarity.  How do they actualize it?  Every woman is also a man.  Every man is also a woman.  Within everyone there is their opposite.  Just because you have a physical body that is masculine does not mean that you don't have your feminine side, your feminine polarity.  And you first need to become whole in yourself.  You first need to balance the male and the female within yourself as a woman and as a man.  When you have balanced that through all the dimensions of your multi-dimensionality and are a fully alive blissful human being in the mastery of yourself, then to delight with all the other forms of manifestation that are dancing in this creation is absolutely appropriate and is for the fun of it, for the delight of it, for the play of it, for the joy of it.  Otherwise if you are not in that state of experience you are not whole within yourself, you are fragmented and playing with somebody else who is also fragmented, what kind of experience will you have?  Do two fragmented beings make a whole one?  No, fragmentation breeds fragmentation. Fragmentation is stress.  Stress is limitation, it is the minimum experience in being human, the least pleasurable possible.  So if human beings would move beyond their addiction to fragmentation and make themselves whole, address the challenge of what it is to be human, which is their own mastery and then create the celebration of that mastery with everyone that they meet then you are talking about the real Tantra.

Tashi:  Anytime you open a new age magazine you see  ads for a Tantric workshops, Tantric videos.  What's going on?

Master Charles:  The physical is always a very powerful gateway because it is such a major focus in the  experience of what it is to be human.  Within the physical sexual experience there is such a tangible pleasure that it is an entrainment to everyone who is physical.  So the gateway of sexual experience as a means of equilibration is very normal and very natural.  Most human beings explore the physical sexual experience through which they find a tangible equilibration in their being, a masculine and feminine balance and it is a meditative experience.  By prolonging or extending the duration of pre-orgasmic experience, there is an  experience of maximum awareness expansion in which the subtler dimensions of your multi-dimensionality express themselves fully.  So the physical in sexual Tantra is used as a gateway to the subtler dimensions of your multi-dimensionality so that your equilibration is more complete and your experience of human fulfillment and pleasure is also more whole and more complete.  So yes, through the gateway of the physical sensual, sexual experience many human beings find their way to the full mastery  of what it is to be human.   The real Tantra, the real life celebration, the real equilibration in being that is the fullness of human mastery and its playful, joyful, blissful, ecstatic delight.   [