James Hughes Reho Ph.D. - Tantric Jesus: The Erotic Heart of Early Christianity

To my wife, Carolanne
My strength and my compassion,
Beautiful face of Shakti-Christ

To my godfather, Robert
My teacher and soul friend,
Channel of the Uncreated Light

TANTRIC JESUS

James Reho is truly on to something here. Please read this book. You will understand the great Christ yogi in a new and powerful way. You will make real use of the peace and power Jesus brought to human life.

MARK WHITWELL, AUTHOR OF YOGA OF HEART AND THE PROMISE

James Reho calls us into the marriage of East and West, the conjoining of Heaven and Earth, the pregnancy of spirit and matter. Tantric Jesus is a courageous call into the frightening and freeing world of oneness.

JOHN PHILIP NEWELL, AUTHOR OF THE REBIRTHING OF GOD

I welcome Tantric Jesus for its potential deep implications for the future of Christianity in dialog with Eastern spirituality.... James Reho helps point us in the right direction, one in which our consciousness can be raised higher, richer, and fuller as a result of a conscious and knowledgeable dialogue between the Mystery of Christ and the living tradition of Tantra through the erotic spiritual process of holy longing.

RUSSILL PAUL, AUTHOR OF JESUS IN THE LOTUS: THE MYSTICAL DOORWAY BETWEEN CHRISTIANITY AND YOGIC SPIRITUALITY

As an Episcopal priest and a yogi, James Reho is a bridge between cultures and spiritual traditions. Tantric Jesus, his insightful and skillful first book, likewise bridges mind and spirit, theory and practice, erudition and accessibility, passion and rationality, the sacred masculine and the sacred feminine. The book is revolutionary without losing heart.

CHRISTIAN DE LA HUERTA, TEACHER, SPEAKER, AND AUTHOR OF COMING OUT SPIRITUALLY

A brilliantly written and tremendously inspiring treatise on Tantra. A complete revelation!

DIANA RICHARDSON, AUTHOR OF THE HEART OF TANTRIC SEX, TANTRIC ORGASM FOR WOMEN, AND TANTRIC SEX FOR MEN

For anyone who is longing to be transformed by the divine energies present in all of creation and the cosmos, Tantric Jesus is required reading, a sound and reliable guide for all who are traveling along the perilous but grace-filled path to the Heart of the Divine.

THE REV. PETER SAVASTANO, PH.D., ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF THE ANTHROPOLOGY OF RELIGION, CONSCIOUSNESS, SEXUALITY AND GENDER AT SETON HALL UNIVERSITY

With scholarship as thorough as its topic is controversial, Tantric Jesus infuses the traditions of Christianity with the embodied practices of Hindu Tantra.... Do the practices in this book, and your understanding of the historical Jesus and the path of Christianity will never be the same.

WILL JOHNSON, AUTHOR OF BREATHING THROUGH THE WHOLE BODY, EYES WIDE OPEN, AND THE SPIRITUAL PRACTICES OF RUMI

James Reho brings out hitherto unrealized parallels between the tantric mode of the East and Christian practice in the West. The heavenly and the earthly come together in this fascinating book. As a Christian, I am richer for having read it.

THE REV. ROBERT CORIN MORRIS, D.D., EPISCOPAL PRIEST AND FOUNDER OF INTERWEAVE, INC

This is a book for our times. Deeply feminist in nature, it offers the hope of freeing Western men and women from the limitations of a sterile understanding of Christ and Christianity. This freedom is essential if we are going to heal the divisions in humanity and heal our planet from the ravages of dualistic exploitation. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in exploring their personal experience of Christ.

MARY ANN WHALEN, LCSW, PSYCHOTHERAPIST

Acknowledgments

Much like prayer, the writing of a book is a deeply personal endeavor but never a private one. Many people have been helpful in bringing this book to its final form. I offer my gratitude to those who have contributed their insights to various versions of this manuscript, particularly the Rev. Dr. John Dupue, the Rev. Dr. James Farwell, Ana Hernndez, the Rev. Dr. Robert Corin Morris, Dr. Edwin Olson, and the Rev. Dr. Peter Savastano. I offer special thanks to the Rev. Dr. Robert Corin Morris, who has been mentor, spiritual director, and soul friend for many years, and to my wife, Carolanne, for her wise and kind heart and for her long-time loving encouragement; both have made many helpful suggestions to this manuscript. I am also deeply thankful for my agent, Estella Arias of New Chapter Editions, who believed in this work from its raw beginnings.

I thank all the good people at Inner Traditions Bear & Company, including Blythe Bates, Aaron Davis, Jon Graham, and Jeanie Levitan, who each brought their special talents to bear on this book. I am especially grateful to my project manager, Laura Schlivek, whose kindness, patience, wisdom, and precision are likely unmatchable, and for the editing skill of Kate Mueller. Finally, I am thankful for the many other good friends and associates who have contributed to Tantric Jesus in various ways, especially Dr. Ram Giri (Andreas) Braun; the Rev. Dr. John T. Brinkman, MM; Dr. Santosh N. Desai; Dr. Randall Giles; Christian de la Huerta; the Rev. Ali Newell and the Rev. Dr. John Philip Newell; and the Rev. Dr. Matthew Fox, who has graciously written the foreword to this book.

Foreword

By the Reverend Dr. Matthew Fox

I welcome this book with open arms, and I am pleased to be invited to pen a foreword for it. As an elder, now living my seventy-fifth year on this planet, one looks to the upcoming generations for hope and for leadership that will make a difference in our world where strife and self-centeredness, the reptilian brain and mindlessness, so often dominate. One looks for signs that rigid religion need not perpetuate itself and space is made for justice and compassion to assert themselves in all our relations, whether that be with one another or with Earth and her marvelous creatures.

This book offers such a vision in both a theological and a practical way, for it presents many insightful breakthroughs in the Western grasp of the person of Jesus while it brings the wisdom of the East and West together, enlivens body and spirit, and moves us beyond a world of dualisms and antimatter philosophies to a consciousness that opts for a sacred marriage of the divine feminine and sacred masculine. It also offers concrete practices to get there from here. It warms this creation spirituality theologians heart to know that a new generation is coming along, not just to carry on the tradition but to offer genuinely fresh rapprochements in all these important areas. Let me elaborate a bit more.

Back in 1988 I wrote my book The Coming of the Cosmic Christ, and in it I coined a new term, deep ecumenism, which I derived from my Buddhist friend Joanna Macy, who was actively involved in the work of deep ecology. Deep ecology was that movement for environmental rights that operated not out of a mere secular political context of we are right and you are wrong and we are going to defeat you polluters but included the dimension of the sacred: that there is