Tantra Love

As is the case with many "new age" videos, there's not enough concrete in Tantra Love to put a hotdog stand on. Presented by David A. and Ellen J. Ramsdale, the authors of Sexual Energy Ecstasy, the video is divided into two parts. Part 1 offers a few words of actual advice about practicing tantric love and a whole lot of verbal effluvia about "cosmic orgasms" and "union with the universe." The filmmakers believe it is important to share their knowledge of tantric love principles because of AIDS, which is "the result of too much ignorance about sex--about the higher purpose of sex." Needless to say, this is a profoundly ignorant and offensive remark. This non-sexually explicit tape draws on a variety of visual sources to accompany the ozone narration of Part 1: paintings depicting tantric love are mixed with film clips of Popeye and Olive Oyl, Valentino and a bevy of starlets, and a guy at the beach with his head carefully framed by a sunset. There are some drawings of sexual positions, and some "instruction" as to the performance of tantric love--but viewers would learn more about the subject reading John Updike's sappy novel S. Part II is an interview with a tantric couple conducted by David A. Ramsdale. Diane and Cary are an Australian couple who have emigrated to California in search of higher knowledge (is that a contradiction in terms or what?). Diane and Cary sit together on a couch and fairly gush over one another for what seems like an interminable time, while saying key words like "space" and "awareness" in every other sentence. Cary, who is so blown over by the whole experience of tantric love that he finds it difficult to speak in comprehensible terms on the subject, blithely accepts the fact that he has "universal knowledge." This from a man who, by his own admission, has "read only three books in the last eight years." Eventually, all of this cosmic sex energy is too much for interviewer David to bear and, to the apparent confusion of the camera person who is no longer sure where to point the camcorder, David enters into the conversation with his own personal stud muffin tales about bringing his mate to the peaks of sexual and cosmic (of course) bliss. (Frankly, I haven't heard this kind of braggadocio since my high school days in the locker room.) In closing, David tells Cary that Cary has spoke his own (that is, David's) "tantric mind." At that moment, I saw a vision of Jack Webb from Dragnet saying: "There are a million wavelengths in the naked city, but this one is clean off the dial." Not recommended. (Available from: Peak Skill Publishing, Inc., 4345 Mentone St., Ste. A, San Diego, CA 92107.)