Have you ever wondered what is the best way to raise your vibration and connect with a higher consciousness?

There are many spiritual practices around the world that focus on raising your vibration and strengthening your life energy in order to help you reach enlightenment and fulfillment. But which one is more effective? Are they all based on the same principles? Do they all work for everyone?

It can be quite overwhelming to learn all the different spiritual practices and actually practice them until you find the one that suits you best. However, we can compare the two most popular spiritual practices that have changed millions of lives around the world and created many enlightened beings.

In this article, we will explore the differences between Reiki and Tantra for you to figure out which path will most effectively connect you with a higher consciousness!

What Is Reiki?

Reiki (Rei = Universal, Ki = Life Energy) is a very popular form of energy healing that can heal your body, mind, and spirit by restoring energetic balance in your body. It was rediscovered in the late 1800s by a Buddhist called Mikao Usui who was in the quest of figuring out how Jesus healed people with his hands.

It works by having a Reiki practitioner access the universal life force energy that surrounds all living beings in the universe and channel that energy into the recipient through the laying of hands with the intention to heal the recipient’s ailments. When the universal life force energy enters your body it will unblock all your chakras and allow a proper flow of energy within your body that will in turn stimulate your body’s ability to heal itself.

What Is Tantra?

Contrary to western belief, tantra is not about sex. Tantra (Tan = expansion, Tra = liberation) is a spiritual science that expands your consciousness in order to attain liberation. 

The basic premise in Tantra is that all living beings have a consciousness that goes from crude to subtle, meaning that each consciousness is a unit and you will take your unit consciousness on a slow journey to merge with infinite consciousness. In other words, you become one with God, that is the goal of Tantra.

This spiritual science goes back over 7000 years to ancient India where a man called Sada Shiva who was commonly known as just Shiva (not the Hindu God) became the first Tantra guru who started teaching Tantra. Even though there were other yogis practicing Tantra, Shiva was the first guru to make Tantra an institution from which many lineages emerged.

The 7 Differences Between Reiki And Tantra

Both spiritual practices are very beneficial for the health of your body, mind, and spirit as they will connect your life energy with universal life force energy. But they work in very different ways and they are two very distinct paths to follow. Here are the 7 main differences you should consider when choosing your path:

1. Their Purpose And Difficulty 

The purpose of Reiki is to bring balance to your energetic body and in turn provide healing of body, mind, and spirit as a whole. It is very common to try and avoid negative emotions by suppressing them deep within us. But little do we know that these negative emotions actually get stored in our organs and start affecting those organs during time, as well as blocking the flow of our life energy in our body which allows illness to grow.

When you unblock your chakras with universal life force energy, you are releasing those negative emotions from your organs and increasing the strength of your life energy. This allows proper energy flow in your body, causing your body to stop the illness from growing and activate the body’s natural ability to heal itself. 

Learning to practice Reiki can be very easy and it can take 2 years to really master this healing technique. There are 3 levels of Reiki training you need to go through in order to learn how to access and channel the universal life force energy into a recipient. Once you finish the 3 levels of Reiki, you only need to practice a couple of times per week to improve your technique.

The purpose of Tantra is to become one with infinite consciousness otherwise known as God. Even though tantra is incorporated into some religions like Hinduism and Buddhism, it is not a religious practice. Tantra is a long spiritual journey to merge your individual consciousness into infinite consciousness.

Although the destination of reaching infinite consciousness is an incredible life goal, the process of expanding your consciousness takes a lot of work because it comes with many struggles, life obstacles, and pains. Especially when you live in a materialistic world where society pushes you to seek out money and status. 

This journey requires lifelong practice and great dedication to slowly expand your consciousness. It becomes your life’s purpose.

2. Their Principles

Reiki is about living in harmony with life itself and being grateful for this life every single day because when you are in harmony with life, you are in harmony with the universal life force energy. This helps you maintain a strong connection with the universal life force energy and allows you to channel a strong flow of energy any time you heal a recipient or provide self-healing.

To do this, Reiki practitioners live by 5 principles developed by Mikao Usui himself:

1. Just for today, I will not anger.

2. Just for today, I will not worry.

3. Just for today, I will be grateful for all my blessings.

4. Just for today, I will work with honesty and integrity.

5. Just for today, I will be kind to all living beings.

Tantra goes beyond living in harmony with the universal life force energy and beyond the psycho cosmological model of the universe. Even though this model is good because our spiritual awakening shows us that there is a whole lot more in existence besides the world perceived by our senses, it doesn’t let you see beyond Maya (the powerful force that creates the cosmic illusion that the phenomenal world is real). 

You see, in Tantra philosophy, there is a great divide between Purusha (spirit or consciousness) and Prakriti (nature or source) that we all know as our inner selves and the natural world around us. Especially nowadays with technology, we are getting farther away from nature and becoming more close to materialism.

But this great divide lies underneath 5 layers of Maya, or in other words, it lies underneath 5 layers of relative existence which is as far as we usually go in spirituality. However, in Tantra, it is believed that there are 3 pure principles of existence above these layers of Maya: Sad-Vidya (true knowledge), Ishvara (lord or God understood as a person), and Sada-Shiva (omnipotent, subtle, luminous absolute).

These 3 pure principles are the concluding reality of Shiva/Shakti (the Godhead and divine mother). Shiva is the masculine, passive and transcendent side, while Shakti is the feminine, active, and immanent side. Like two sides of one coin, Shiva/Shakti are one and the same. 

To simplify these principles, let me explain it in a different way: God is viewed as a shoemaker (for example) and his creation is the shoe. With the tantric principles, we discover that God is the shoe as he is part of his own creation, and we are also the shoe, as part of his creation – and part of God at the same time.

3. Embracing The Body Vs Healing The Body

As you already know, Reiki is all about healing your body, mind, and spirit. But most of the time, people book sessions with Reiki practitioners to heal their bodies and specific ailments. Even though Reiki does not cure the disease itself and is only used as a complementary therapy to the treatment implemented by your physician, it is well known for its ability to reduce pain in patients and speed up the healing process of your body.

This is why Reiki therapy is offered in hospitals across the United States and Canada to help patients recover faster with as little pain as possible. 

Tantra on the other hand does not focus on healing the body the same way Reiki does with energy healing, but it does embrace the body fully. You see, many of us are ashamed of our bodies one way or another. You might feel ashamed of your overweight body, your weird hair, your tiny imperfections, and anything that is not considered good-looking in society. 

But when you practice Tantra, it encourages you to take a moment and feel your body, every part of your body and get to know yourself, love yourself, and feel comfortable in your skin because you are beautiful in your own way. When you actually give attention to your body and get to know your body, you will begin making good choices that will improve the health of your body like eating more nutritious foods and exercising more. 

It is about treating your body like a temple because your body is part of your existence. You can practice physical activities like Qigong or Yoga to fortify your life energy and use your body to expand your consciousness.

4. Attunements Vs Initiation

To practice Reiki you require to get an attunement from a Reiki master for each one of the three levels of Reiki. An attunement is the direct teaching from a Reiki master to a student on how to open up your energy system and be able to channel the universal life force energy. Each attunement creates a stronger connection with the universal life force energy and raises your vibration.

To practice Tantra you require an initiation ceremony to awaken your spirituality and encourage the seed of enlightenment to grow stronger within you. This tantric initiation must be performed by an experienced Tantrika (Tantra practitioner) who will teach you the different practices used to expand your consciousness and guide you on your journey to merge with infinite consciousness because Tantra cannot be practiced without a real teacher that will help you practice it and understand it.

5. Performing A Healing Session Vs Ritual Of Deity Worship

To practice Reiki, you will either perform (if you already got your attunement) or receive a Reiki session to open up your chakras or the chakras or a recipient and stimulate healing. There are 3 forms of Reiki healing sessions that can be performed by a Reiki practitioner such as Self-Reiki sessions where you channel universal life force energy within yourself, normal Reiki sessions where you channel universal life force energy into a recipient, and distance Reiki sessions where you send distance healing to someone else across space and time.

To practice Tantra, you will perform a ritual of deity worship to the deity of your choosing every single day as part of your daily routine. There are hundreds of deities that act as symbols of different aspects of God that you can identify with and form a strong personal connection. When you worship the deity, you worship God directly and if you do this every single day, you will slowly expand your consciousness because you will spend time thinking and connecting with infinite consciousness. 

6. Sacred Symbols Vs Yantras

Reiki practitioners use sacred Reiki symbols to access different forms of energies that vibrate on different frequencies. There are many Reiki symbols that have been developed by different Reiki masters during time, but there are only 5 original Usui sacred symbols that were developed by Mikao Usui himself to help his students access stronger forms of the universal life force energy. 

By using the sacred symbols, Reiki practitioners are able to focus the energy on a specific area of the recipient or focus the energy to heal a specific issue. Each symbol has its own unique use and you can combine all the symbols together to channel the strongest form of universal life force energy. For example, when a Reiki practitioner wants to send distance healing to a recipient in another country, he/she will use the distance symbol to do so.

Tantrikas are also able to focus their energy on a specific place with the use of Yantras. There are many kinds of yantras, some in a circular pattern called mandalas, some in a pyramid shape called Maha Meru yantra, and some with numbers in them called Sankhya yantras. These yantras are used to directly worship and energize a specific deity in order to magnify the energy and have it reflected back to the Tantrika. 

Yantras vary in complexity of geometrical shapes, which have a direct physiological impact on the geometrical shapes within the human body. There are many categorizations based on where they are drawn and how they are used, but the basic principles behind the working of all these yantras are exactly the same. 

The 4 basic aspects to understand in any yantra are:

• The symbols used to create it like dots, circles, lines, and polygons.
• The drawing surface must be flat and conductive.
• The drawing materials must also be conductive
• The process of energizing and how to benefit from it. 

7. Hand Placements Vs Mudras

Reiki practitioners use specific hand placements to channel the universal life force energy correctly into a recipient in order to release chakra blockages and allow the proper flow of energy within the body. There are also specific hand placements to perform Self-Reiki and provide balance to your own body anytime you need it.

Tantrikas use mudras as seals to lock in energy and awareness. Mudras are symbolic gestures that are formed using the hands or the body, but mostly the hands to harness and lock in your life energy. This practice is a form of meditation that uses your body to expand your consciousness and helps you to actually sense the energetic effect of the symbolic gesture. 

Conclusion

After reviewing the differences between Reiki and Tantra we can conclude that both spiritual practices are very beneficial for your health. If you want to reach true enlightenment and permanently raise your vibration to the same frequency as God, then Tantra is the right path for you. However, Reiki can raise your vibration way faster with each attunement process and created a direct momentary connection with God every time you perform a healing session.

Comment below if you found this article helpful and let us know which spiritual path is going to benefit you the most!