"This subject of practice with a consort is open to great misinterpretation, especially by people who have made only superficial contact with Buddhist tantra. Many Westerners, for instance, because they have seen Tibetan paintings and statues showing deities in embrace, have the mistaken notion that Tibetan Buddhism is mainly concerned with sexual contact between men and women. As was pointed out earlier, what this art is actually representing is the experience of total unity—of method and wisdom, bliss and emptiness—characteristic of the fully enlightened state. But now with the mention of the completion stage practices there is a further opportunity for confusion to arise. Therefore it should be emphasized that until we have gained mastery over our subtle body and have “embraced” the blissful kundalini energy dormant within, we are not at all qualified to embrace an external consort.

There are vast differences between tantric embrace and ordinary sexual contact. How different these two are becomes clear when we remember that at the time of the completion stage the practitioner has dissolved the energy winds into his or her central channel, thereby experiencing the same mental and physical absorptions occurring at the time of death. Unless these death-like experiences have been entered into with full consciousness and control, it is a farce to talk about tantric embrace. Moreover, while in ordinary sex it is the man who enters the woman’s body, in true tantric embrace it is the woman’s energy that penetrates the man!"

Lama Yeshe