The tantric ways generally seem extreme for social situations, because they do not fit into norms. Tantrics are willing to do just about anything for their growth or to have one inch of growth or movement within themselves.
So they have no right and wrong. They will simply do what is needed. Because of this, they created and earned a wrong type of reputation that they are doing all kinds of weird things all the time, but that is not what tantra really is.
There are three dimensions to tantra. One is mantra, or pure sound. The next is yantra, or corresponding form. If you feed sound into the oscilloscope, depending upon the frequency, amplitude and other aspects of the sound, it gives out a certain form.
So every sound has a form attached to it. Similarly, every form has a sound attached to it. So the sound is called mantra, the form is referred to as yantra; the technique of using these two things together is called tantra.
Tantra literally means 'technology'. Technology is designed to create what you want. Physical technologies are all about creating physical situations the way we want them, and when human minds try to create what they want, they will ask for many things.
If all your prayers were answered, your life could truly be a disaster. Tantra does not believe in creating what you want in terms of the physical existence around you, but is focused on what is generally considered as paranormal, in creating forms and identities which will function way beyond your own intelligence.
Tantra essentially focused on making an intelligence beyond one's present capabilities available. In yoga, it is known as tantra yoga; learning to use your body, mind and energies as instruments of life so that it becomes available to a much higher possibility.
If one wants to have this capability of being truly able to create as the Creator did, the most fundamental thing is to be able to keep your personality off your imagination.
Once you built this in your imagination, there is another step of infusing it with life energies so that it becomes
a live process by itself.
Tantric traditions acquired mastery over these things. Generally, people do not know how to act towards something that does not concern them, or they are not involved in it.
If you can cross that limitation, you can do mira-culous things if only you can take away your individual person from your thought, emotion, activity and energy.
Tantra yoga fundamentally takes away your individuality from simple things that you do. At one point in time, they were preaching, 'You must believe in God', now they are preaching, 'You must believe in yourself'.
That was bad enough, this is horrible. 'If i don't believe in myself, how can i be confident? If i do not build my self-esteem, how can i operate in the world?'
The very air that you breathe is doing such complex functions to keep you alive. Does it have any self-esteem? If it had, it would go into your lungs and tickle you and do something else with you.
Without any inhibition or fear, we can inhale and take air inside. Is there any one person whom you can take inside with total confidence; do you know what they will do once they get inside?
The individual identification has become so strong that it has completely dislocated the human being from his original nature; he has stopped operating as life.
If he operates as life alone, his capabili-ties are immense and do not need to be limited to what is contained within his physical form; because he has access to everything.
By Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev