The Tantric Sex in Avatar

by Asra Q. Nomani Info

Asra Q. Nomani is the author of Standing Alone: An American Woman's Struggle for the Soul of Islam. She is co-director of the Pearl Project, an investigation into the murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. Her activism for women's rights at her mosque in W.V. is the subject of a PBS documentary, The Mosque in Morgantown. She recently published a monograph, Milestones for a Spiritual Jihad: Toward an Islam of Grace. asra@asranomani.com

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Critics are praising the epic film's social significance, but Asra Q. Nomani, author of Tantrika: Traveling the Road of Divine Love, says its sex scene—accurate to the ancient Tantric tradition—is truly award-worthy.

When former Marine Jake Scully drapes his sinewy blue body around his Na'vi bride, Neytiri, the heroine of James Cameron's Oscar-nominated epic Avatar, his neural tendrils fuse with hers, in the script, but off camera, in one of the most unusual sex scenes ever produced on film. Critics and commentators have been dissecting the themes of the Hollywood mega-blockbuster, from its just-war doctrine and environmental ethics. But there's a philosophical dimension that this otherworldly sex scene captures that most folks have overlooked: the Tantra of Avatar.

A precursor to Hinduism and Buddhism, the ancient philosophy of Tantra dates back some 6,000 years to the Dravidian culture that flourished in the Indus Valley cities of Harappa and Mohenjo-daro in modern-day Pakistan, seeping later into the religious traditions of India, Nepal, and other parts of the region. Its tenets of goddess worship, self-discovery, and spiritual liberation resonate in Avatar, from the Neytiri's deity-like qualities to Jake's journey of self-identity. Avatar's climax is actually not the Tantric sex of their consummation, but a moment that comes later, when they do something modern-day Tantric sex experts call "soul gazing," and racier sexperts call "sex gazing."

I learned, like Jake in Avatar, that the true Tantric journey is, first, a lone struggle of self-discovery.

The Tantric theme in Avatar follows a tradition of Eastern philosophy in popular culture. Consider Star Wars' iconic line, "May the Force be with you." Writing the script for that film, director George Lucas became influenced by 20th-century thinker Joseph Campbell, whose encounter with Hindu aesthetic Jiddu Krishnamurti years earlier sparked a lifelong passion for Hindu thought.

• The Daily Beast’s Complete Oscar CoverageIn Avatar, the sex scene took me back to the erotic Tantric sandstone temples I visited almost a decade ago in the northern Indian village of Khajuraho. Built by Hindu kings of the Chandel Empire from the 10th to the 12th centuries, the most notorious of the temples have images of divine, carnal acts carved around the highest points of their exterior walls. For Tantric scholars and historians, the iconography celebrates the highest possibility of sexual union, captured in the mating ritual in Avatar. In the original script, Cameron is even steamier in his depiction of sex on Pandora on pages 90 and 91:

NEYTIRI: Kissing is very good. But we have something better.

She pulls him down until they are kneeling, facing each other on the faintly glowing moss.

Neytiri takes the end of her queue and raises it. Jake does the same, with trembling anticipation. The tendrils at the ends move with a life of their own, straining to be joined.

MACRO SHOT – The tendrils INTERWINE with gentle undulations.

JAKE rocks with the direct contact between his nervous system and hers, and ripples of light spread out around them. The ultimate intimacy.

But there is a deeper philosophical understanding of Tantra to be found in the movie, one that I learned during my reporting. To avoid the cop-a-feel swamis I met in temples and caves dedicated to Hindu gods such as Ram and Shiva, I turned inward. And I learned, like Jake, that the true Tantric journey is, first, a lone struggle of self-discovery. The philosophy of Tantra comes from the Sanskrit verbal root tan, meaning "to weave," just what Jake must first do with the Na'vi universe of Pandora, before he and Neytiri's braids literally weave together when they mate for life in the mind-blowing Tantric bliss of their mating ceremony. (Tra comes from a Sanskrit word trayate that means "to liberate.")

There is a powerful union of male and female energies in Avatar that are core teachings of Tantra, represented through a link between the goddess Shakti and the Shiva. In Tantra, the goddess Shakti is the primordial deity, her name coming from the Sanskrit word shak, meaning "power." In the Tantric model, it's Shakti who brings healing and enlightenment to the god Shiva, just as Neytiri does with Jake. Jake and Neytiri are the Shiva and Shakti of Avatar. The Sanskrit noun avatāra is derived from a verbal root that means "to cross over," just as Jake does in his journey. Most often, in Tantric philosophy, there is a goddess that guides the journey. She is represented here by Neytiri.