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“The nature and power of Ars Erotica itself is rooted in a lifelong ‘perineum-to-pineal’ spinal puberty of ‘profound pleasures’, tied to a sacred inner development, as seen in the ‘liberations’ noted in the Dharma traditions of Indian Kundalini-Tantra and in charismatic ‘being moved’ spiritual traditions.

“These two terms were coined by Michel Foucault in his Vol.1, The History of Sexuality as will be further discussed on Dr Sovatsky’s article.

“Creating Joyful Families and Grace-bestowing Saints in The Grand Unfolding Yogavere Reverberations in the body and the soul…the elixir of life

Dedicated to Michel Foucault (1926-1984)

“[There are]…the societies–and they are numerous: China, Japan, India, Rome, the Arabo-Moslem societies—which endowed themselves with an ars erotica [in contrast to scientia sexualis, as Foucault called both The Church’s moral-confessional approach to right and wrong ‘erotic truth’ and modern sexological research ‘truths’, sexual liberation encouragement-truths and practices, all based in psychoanalytic theory and its many offshoots]….

In the [secret] erotic art, truth is drawn from pleasure itself, understood as a practice and accumulated as experience; pleasure is not considered in relation to an absolute law of the permitted and the forbidden, nor by reference to a criterion of utility, but first and foremost in relation to itself, it is experienced as pleasure, evaluated in terms of its intensity, its specific quality, its duration, its reverberations in the body and the soul.

Moreover, this knowledge must be deflected back into the sexual practice itself, in order to shape it as though from within and amplify its effects. In this way, there is formed a knowledge that must remain secret, not because of an element of infamy that might attach to its object, but because of the need to hold it in the greatest reserve, since according to the tradition, it would lose its effectiveness and its virtue by being divulged. [Though unknown to Foucault, ‘secret’ or esoteric energetic ‘initiation-knowledge’, such as via shaktipat, Kundalini, Holy Ghost, baraka and other charismatic bodily awakenings, should be included here.]

.… The effects of this masterful art, which are considerably more generous than the spareness of its prescriptions would lead one to imagine, are said to transfigure the one fortunate enough to receive its privileges: an absolute mastery of the body, a singular bliss, obliviousness to time and limits, the elixir of life [my emphasis] the exile of death and its threats.”

(Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, V. 1. pp. 57-58)

Scientia sexualis

From Scientia Sexualis to the Ars Eroticas of Kundalini and Pariyanga Tantras

Scientia Sexualis

Scientia sexualis

Ars Erotica

Ars erotica (Julianne Reynolds)

On the left is a scientia sexualis image meant to activate what the sexually-adventurous and preeminent social historian, Michel Foucault called its “most imaginary element, the desire for sex.” From this alluring and singularly-attuned center, a world of sexuality represents itself to us in hundreds of millions of images, numerous psychosexual theories and myriad consequent personal interactions and hopes, as if sex-desire is anything but an imaginary construct, as if this desire, shaped by Freud, Reich and all who followed, is, in all actuality, the final and unquestionable truth and ‘liberation’ of Eros. Indeed, the expansion of Eros into ‘spiritual realms’ by Carl Jung resulted in his expulsion from the Freudian circle while Freud, in his understandably naïve times, mischaracterized yoga as a suppression of ‘the instincts’ that only sex can satisfy.

Lajja Gauri Even including Liberal critiques from Feminism (objectification), Marcuse (commodification) and Lasch (narcissism), the pull of desire draws nearly everyone back into its scientia sexualis precincts. Such images and their arousing desires still capture the one and only ideal aesthetic of erotic life, desired pleasures and erotic exchange or self-stimulations. And, in looking at the exquisite, air-brushed image, even for just a few moments, is there any doubt why it is so powerful?

Thus, gay, straight, teenager, elder, weighty-bodied—all are drawn to their own iconic images within this now-ubiquitous theory of gender, pleasures and bodies that presents itself as a timeless, universal fact of human nature, rather than as a provisional theory devised within the conditions of a specific ‘modern’ cultural-historical context.

While psychoanalysis made sex-desire into a first-ever ‘scientific discovery’ of the fundamental meaning of human existence hidden everywhere, effective and easily available contraceptives and safe, legal abortion technologies (and widespread, “Use protection!” Teen Sex Education) fostered its practical expansion far beyond the intrusive power of fertility and unintended conceptions, to the greatest degree in all human history. Indeed, the far-seeing anthropologist, Ashley Montagu ranked the evolutionary impact of legalization of The Pill in 1960 with the primeval discovery of fire.

This sequestering of the Foucauldian ‘elixirs of life seed-creativities’ in order to free sex-desire from unwanted fertility also thoroughly screened out the fundamental consciousness-seed connection ubiquitously present for seven millennia in Indic ars erotica (yoga, Buddhism, advaita and tantra) as they began, unavoidably piecemeal, to enter the West since The Sixties’ peak era of the scientia sexualis’s ‘Final Truth Sexual Liberation’ influences. Indeed, many mature, ars erotica visiting gurus were swept into the currents of scientia sexualis culture or their ars erotica teachings were misconstrued within the scientia spell.

Khajurarho

Further, powerful, synthetic entheogens of the times (lsd, mescaline, psilocybin) could bypass in a ‘mad’, Kerouac-flash any yogic-scriptural claims for the long-developing role of yogic or Buddhist seed forces in spiritual development, or so it seemed to scientia spell-bound spiritual seekers, whether regarding ‘tantric sex’, yoga or in meditative enlightenment.

Sounding like an lsd cosmic orgasm of consciousness, Gopi Krishna’s 1971 description of the surges of Kundalini awakening captured the attention of clinically-minded Transpersonalists, such as my predecessor at the Kundalini Spiritual Emergence Center, Lee Sannella, M.D. (author of the meme-setting book, Kundalini: Transcendence or Psychosis?)

“Suddenly, with a roar like that of a waterfall, I felt a stream of liquid light entering my brain through the spinal cord. . . . The illumination grew brighter and brighter, the roaring louder, I experienced a rocking sensation and then felt myself slipping out of my body, entirely enveloped in a halo of light. . . . It grew wider and wider, spreading outward while the body, normally the immediate object of its perception, appeared to have receded into the distance until I became entirely unconscious of it. I was now all consciousness without any outline, without any idea of corporeal appendage, without any feeling or sensation coming from the senses, immersed in a sea of light simultaneously conscious and aware at every point, spread out, as it were, in all directions without any barrier or material obstruction. I was no longer myself, or to be more accurate, no longer as I knew myself to be… but instead was a vast circle of consciousness in which the body was but a point, bathed in light and in a state of exultation and happiness impossible to describe.”

Krishna, Kundalini: Path to Higher Consciousness (New Delhi: Orient Paperback, 1992, pp. 6-7)

In complete congruence with those frothy scientia sexualis times, Krishna’s emphatic inclusion of the role of the seed-forces in Kundalini processes would be ignored. Instead of being understood as a spiritual blessing in the flesh, similar to the birth of a baby, Kundalini, the Mother of Creation for thousands of years, was now a kind of light-show of odd-sensation distractions in the awakening process, as troubled persons and under-informed clinicians made use of the term to try to make sense of a wide range of unrelated ‘symptoms’.

Yet, we shouldn’t be surprised. The East-West exchange is just beginning. Indeed, little more than five percent of the Indo-Tibetan archive is translated, and almost entirely from the perspective of the scientia sexualis.

Yet, as early as 1932 and without much of an alternative in mind, Huxley wondered if the scientia sexualis liberation might be a darkly fraught, “brave new world” of pleasure that masked a quiet narrowing of human possibilities for life and intimacy. Likewise, Marcuse saw the scientia sexualis as a “repressive de-sublimation” of eros embedded in an unsustainably rapacious capitalism. His 1955 proffered but vague response in Eros and Civilization, too, was a “spiritualization of the [elixir] instincts.”

Khajurarho Echoing both writers in 1976 (French original date) and armed with only rudimentary knowledge of the ars erotica, Foucault closed his critique of the scientia sexualis with this prediction:

“…in a different economy of bodies and pleasures, people will no longer quite understand how the ruses of [scientia] sexuality, and the power that sustains its organization, were able to subject us to that austere monarchy of sex, so that we became dedicated to the endless task of forcing its secret, of exacting the truest confessions from its shadow…having us believe that our ‘liberation’ is in the balance.”

(The History of Sexuality, v. 1, p. 159)

In his reversed characterization of our modern era of “sexual liberation” as the “austere monarchy of sex,” Foucault (who later contracted and died of HIV) goads us toward somewhere else, outside this ironic, compelled “austerity.” And, if modern sexuality is an “austerity,” a “brave new world” of sexually free, but deeply limited human bonding, compared to the ars erotica , what must the latter be like?

What must the ars erotica include that it renders ‘sexuality’ an over-worked, nearly barren sector of some greater realm of Eros? Succinctly, it includes a profound link of the activated Mother Kundalini Seed force (but not the de-seeded, medico-scientia sexualis bowdlerized version of ‘Kundalini’ of the transpersonal spiritual emergence discourse, au courant) with the deepest creativities of the Body and Consciousness.

As a first step toward the ars erotica, hipper sectors of the scientia sexualis now speak of “the spirituality of sacred sex” and even the prolonged, nonejaculatory and passionate “…fucking one’s partner to God” of David Deida that borrows from Osho, Margot Anand and the men’s movement, who, along with Adi Da, countered Reich’s centralized “function of the orgasm” with an endless karezza eroticism.

Thus, too, Pulitzer-winner, William Broad chose “thinking-off” (touchless fantasy masturbation) as his (half-a-step backwards) hint-of-a-step toward the ‘deeper’ aspects of yoga and tantra in his New York Times front-page featured scientia yoga book, The Science of Yoga (2012).

For, in the shift from monarchical scientia sexualis ubiquity to ars erotica transpersonal (consciousness-enhancing) ubiquity, all that goes on in this ‘thinking’ and its radically different ‘off ‘ must be re-considered:

the re-centering with ‘the pleasures of profundity’ where ‘sex-desire pleasures’ once reigned

where, and in what moods, might partners focus their attentions upon genitals, mouths, anuses, feet, tongues, breasts, heart

‘happy-ending’, simply disposable ‘cum’ and vaginal ‘lubrication’ become the hermetically-prized alchemical male and female elixirs of life itself: entheogenic retas, ojas, auras, madhu, amrita, soma-rasa; the hormonal basis of unbreakable love and matured enlightenment

the new (perhaps only in Sanskrit) vocabulary used to re-name the then-occurring sensations (e.g., Shakti chalani, brahmacharya urdhvaretas, khecari mudra pariyanga, ‘moving the divine feminine’, ‘uplifted inner marriage seed-juices’, and ‘lingual-pineal delight gesture lovemaking’, respectively)

indeed, the spine, forehead, throat and pineal will also become primary realms of erotic rapport and arousal, not as scientia arousals of desire, but within the ars erotica’s ‘new economy of bodies and pleasures’.

Likewise, past-president of the Society for the Scientific Study of Sex and a chief architect of the scientia sexualis for forty years, Marty Klein also writes in Sexual Intelligence (HarperOne, 2012) that the narratives, theories and stories we create about ‘sex’ are more powerful than ‘sex’ itself in determining how ‘sexuality’ unfolds in people’s lives—not the mere freeing-up of an obvious desire.

Khajurarho

From loftier heights, Wittgenstein noted how theories create self-enclosed “forms of life, language-behavior games”, Heidegger lyricized how language “conceals, as it reveals” and Kuhn’s paradigm analysis showed how dominant theories, such as the mega-dominant, scientia sexualis ignore and even squelch any contradictory information.

For, should modern yoga and tantra of the current eighteen million enthusiasts be re-understood as seed-elixir infused ars erotica, a massive truing and disorienting paradigm shift in all East-West spirituality will be triggered.

Further, the tantric ars erotica embodies gender in the universal, hermaphroditic mystery of the perineum trikona (hermaphroditic “triangle”) where the catalytic powers that contain every sort of male or female heterosexual, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual, devotee/demigod/demi-goddess, femme, dyke, she-male, et al possibility, as ars erotica entheogenic power spots. The ground under scientia sexualis theories of gender will also shake.

Below are two images of the perineal trikona, in utero and in the matured, inner-marriage yogi and a third image of the yogi in his/her full body ardha-nari (all-gendered, cosmic union) matured state:

vagina-penis androgynous in empbryo

The vagina-penis androgynous perineum of all humans in utero during early gestation…

pashupati seal

…that forms the basis of the heel to androgynous perineum Siddha Asana (Cosmic Power Asana) that awakens Kundalini at the base of the spine, as seen in ancient Pashupati Seal.

Editor’s Note:

In this and the next issue of Sutra Journal, Dr. Stuart Sovatsky continues a discussion on the nature and the impact of the Scientia Sexualis, the sex-desire-centric ‘liberated sexuality’ based in Freudian theories and supported by modern birth control methods, which has also appropriated Indic Ars Eroticas of Kundalini-Tantra and Hatha Yoga in Scientia modes of ‘neo-tantra’ and ‘neo-yoga’.

The nature and power of Ars Erotica itself is rooted in a lifelong ‘perineum-to-pineal’ spinal puberty of ‘profound pleasures’, tied to a sacred inner development, as seen in the ‘liberations’ noted in the Dharma traditions of Indian Kundalini-Tantra and in charismatic ‘being moved’ spiritual traditions.

These two terms were coined by Michel Foucault in his Vol.1, The History of Sexuality as will be further discussed on Dr Sovatsky’s article.

A Brief Point On: ‘All Now’ Ultimacy” and the “Lifelong Ars Erotica Maturation of Seed-forces as Family Lineages, as Inner-Marriage Saints

Numerous spiritual teachers are calling Now-consciousness the ‘ultimate enlightenment’ based in ‘the giving up of all seeking’ and finding Wholeness right here, right Now. Yet, this fully-attentive, being ‘present’, unchanging or ‘always in the Now’ awareness seems to fit the ars erotica definition of pratyahara or dharana or, possibly, some glimmers of dhyana – de-sticking one’s ‘bare attention’ from inner and outer objects, worries or thoughts for longer and longer periods of time; and santosha, acceptance of pain and pleasure equally – but not the long-esteemed, nir-bija samadhi that involves complete energetic maturation or, literally, ‘full exhaustion’ (nir-) of bija, ‘the seed-forces-of-incarnation’.

For, Awakening to Presence is just the beginning of ars erotica maturations that deepen the physical and energetic complexity of one’s awakening within the hormones and neurotransmitters (the elixirs) of the body.

Thus, Adi Shankara (788-820 A.D.), the modern Indian founder of Advaita modified his teachings by adding the bhakti of devotional longing to his life – known as Dvaita-Advaita, dual-toward-nondual path – indicating that there is More (God, Siddhi-Power of Love), beyond one’s current santosha equanimity. And, not to be ignored, he was an ars erotica, inner-marriage saint.

For, the Indian standard for ‘enlightenment’ has always included a resolution of gender duality expressed as a transcendence of scientia sexualis desires. But, the modern neo-advaita teachers are, typically, within the scientia spell and skip over the profound limitations within scientia sexualis realm of sex-desire. They teach transcendence of all other ‘seeking and desiring’ – except sex-desire. Celibacy, for a while, might be recommended as a means to getting some freedom, but not as an ars erotica inner marriage. Indeed, the vast ars erotica, on its own terms, remains thoroughly hidden from (or by) these ‘neo’ teachings.

My brief review of esteemed Eastern yogic, tantric, Jain, Buddhist, advaitic, bhakti, et al, spiritual figures over the past 5000 years, yielded a ratio of 515:0 ars erotica lifestyles to scientia sexualis lifestyles. Based upon, arguably, millions of unnamed participants in thousands of various Kumbha melas (Great Gatherings of saints) over the millenniums, I estimate a ratio of over one-million to zero.

That this numerically overwhelming historical fact is typically considered inconsequential, psychoanalytically pathological, or not at all, by contemporary nondual teachers, all levels of yoga teachers and neo-tantra teachers in the contemporary scientia sexualis Transpersonal yogic and tantric discourses is an indication of the profound power of the spell of the scientia sexualis.

Also, for the first time in the history of spirituality, fertility and its consequence of family and the esteemed centrality of lifelong marriage have become a tangential concern in the contemporary enlightenment discourse. For example, Nisargadatta’s ‘No Self’ teaching is lauded while his lifelong marriage has, so far, received no inquiry – even among Nondual Marriage and Family Therapists – as to how he accomplished such loving loyalty. He even renounced all traveling to be at home with his wife and children, something no current spiritual teacher has, so far, done. Priorities may seem like mere relativities of ‘familial roles’, but existentially as real life choices, they are absolute.

Thus, too, it was only in 2009, after nearly forty years of teaching that family life is a kind of ‘melodrama’ to test one’s actual spiritual growth that Ram Dass, the coiner in 1970 of the current Be Here Now super-meme, awoke to an error in his teachings on soul love and familial relationships. Via his suddenly discovered paternity and grand-paternity, he “developed a deeper understanding of the love parents feel for their children and began to see [for the first time in his adult life?] that personal and soul love are not mutually exclusive but can coexist in nourishing ways”1. click to view article: ram-dass-has-a-son

Family life is not merely a ‘melodrama’. It is Life Itself. It has always engendered in all spiritual traditions a ‘meditation on Life Itself’ of lovers or spouses beholding and delighting one another and solving life issues together as helpmates; parents beholding the birth and nurtured, daily maturation of their children (all of whom are ‘intended conceptions’, based in the ars erotica matured bodies of their parents) and of the latter looking with love and respect upon their aging parents; and, decades later, the meditation upon the marriages of one’s children; and the glow of newborn grandchildren and even great-grandchildren and the caring for elder parents, unto their often incontinent, gaunt and overwhelming deaths by their now-adult and ever-aging children (that legend holds awakened the young Buddha) tracing forward and back in time, ad infinitum.

In this ars erotica universe, lifelong, creative marriage becomes the natural order of the universe, for the vast majority. Indian, Tibetan and Navajo divorce rates of 1.1%, 3.8% and 4.8% respectively, speak of an ars erotica bonding that rarely breaks, in contrast to US and all major scientia sexualis cultures worldwide, 50% rates for first marriages and70% for second marriages and non-married breakups with rates so high, we normalize them, in scientia sexualis fashion, as a lifestyle of ‘serial monogamy’. Even allowing for a tripling of these low divorce rates to accommodate troubled, intact marriages in ars erotica cultures, the rates are a fraction of the scientia sexualis cultural rates.

While the scientia sexualis heterosexual body is a techno-controlled-nonfertility body, the Catholic Church’s scientia sexualis body is ‘natural-rhythm’ mentally-controlled-nonfertility body. Both depend upon a strategic separation of fertility from the ‘Augustinian burning’ powers of ‘sex-desire’.

The ars erotica body, however, is totally permeated by maturations of the fluids and energies of fertility – its ‘elixirs of immortality’ in two forms (and within the spectrum that connects them):

Grihastha Dharma of eternal lineages of Life via male-female external conceptions (wherein mature pariyanga, described below, replaces the scientia sexualis need for either sexology’s techno-control or Catholicism’s mental-rhythm contraceptives and most abortions, and also outgrows the stepping stones of ‘nonejaculatory’ scientia neo-tantras

Sannyasa Dharma, internal union of male-female creativity that infuses profound ars erotica bliss (ananda), creativity and passion (bhakti bhava) within one’s own body.

Likewise, no matter how wild or meditative and ‘goal-less’, Westernized ‘neo’ tantra barely ever goes beyond sex-desire and scientia sexualis understandings of ‘the body’ into the so-different ars erotica body of Kundalini maturation. In perfect linguistic consistency, the Sanskrit tantric term specific most closely to non-ritualized ‘sex’, pariyanga, based in the pineal/oral tumescence and orgasm of khecari mudra, is largely unknown to the neo-tantra popularizers.

Kechari Mudra

Khecari mudra tumescence of tongue

Toward pineal orgasm of amrita ‘nectar’ secretion

As stated in one of the definitive Indic texts on Kundalini:

“Old age gets reversed (260)

She…dissolves the five [bodily] elements (291)

…[then] the yogi is known as Khecar [tumescent tongued]

Attaining this state is a miracle (296)

Shakti [feminine power] and Shiva [masculine power] become one and in their union, everything…gets dissolved [into the primordial glowing matrix] (306)

Further, there is nothing more to experience beyond [this]

Hence, let me stop speaking of it

For it is useless to talk (318)”

Numbered couplets related to pineal-oral soul identity puberty of khecari mudra in Dnyaneshwari (Jnaneshvari), Chapter 6 (1210/2002)

And, as South Indian Tantra Saint, Thirumoolar also noted regarding the centrality of khecari (mudra) in erotic pariyanga tantra:

834. “Only Those Who Have Practiced [Attained] Khecari Can Resort to Pariyanga [erotic tantra].”

(Thirumandiram, 1993, Volume 1, Tantra 3)

Khecari is a prerequisite maturational basis for ars erotica tantra of pariyanga, just as genital puberty is the maturational basis for adult sexuality, of any sort. This is because the perineum to pineal maturation is itself an ego-identity transforming puberty that has yet to be mapped by modern (or even Transpersonal) developmental Physiology and Psychology. Yet, it is the embodied, full maturation that Kundalini awakening aims toward.

This puberty of the perineum-spine-pineal ‘mountainous ascent’ (as inwardly married, St. John of the Cross called his mystical path, the ‘tunnel of light’ of near-death experiences, the spinal sushumna channel of yoga, the partial opening of which in the suicidally-depressed, Eckhart Tolle underlies his ‘Eternal Now’ sudden awakening) is the natural and embodied basis of ars erotica that renders scientia sexualis an ‘austere monarchy’ of ‘sex-desire’.

I further theorize that this natural, adult puberty is the physiological basis of all ‘post-egoic soul identities’ and ‘post-linguistic/charismatic’ (charism, spiritual power-gifts, akin to tantric siddhis) spiritual utterance: the ecstatic voice-quaverings of Islamic qwaali, Judaic nigune, Yogic anahata-nad, African sangoma crying-out, Holy Ghost glossolalia and even of sexual “Ah, ah, ah” ecstatic moaning. Of course, these topics are worthy of thousands of pages of ‘unpacking’ from my dense and succinct overview. And, such an encyclopedic and detailed treatment would make the scientia sexualis look dramatically more ‘austere’ and more of a handicapping of a fully-matured erotic life.

We must include the Church’s scientia rule-based moralistically constrained ‘sexuality’ and ‘fallen procreativity here, too. Thus, when Thomas Aquinas, the author of the Church’s own foundational scientia sexualis text, the Summa Theologica, had an ars erotica inner marriage experience late in life (as did the papacy-jolting, St. Francis, early in life), he said all his previous [“Science of the Divine” moralism] was like “straw”.

On the other hand is the ars erotica, on its own terms: A brief quote from Kripalvanand’s commentary on a central, ars erotica yogic text, the 15th century Hathayogapradipika, gives us a glimpse into the radically different ‘eroticism’ of the Kundalini body2.

“Anatomically, there are three uvulas in the body. Each stands at the entrance of a three-path convergence, where two gross physical side paths and one (dorsal, back) subtle energy central path meet to form a lower path. ‘The first uvula is, in a female body, the external os, the part of the cervix of the uterus projecting into the vagina. The two longer sides of the uterus lead up to the uterine tubes and the ovaries. In a male body, the first uvula is a small eminence projecting into the urethral orifice, just above the prostatic utricle, where the two ductus deferens branch upward on their way to the testes. The second uvula is the part of the soft palate that hangs down at the back of the mouth at the back entrance to the nasal cavity, with its two internal nasal openings, which is of the same tissue type as the anterior (front) lobe of the pituitary gland. This uvula can be elevated, by swallowing or by the throat lock, to block the nasal cavity. The third uvula is situated between the two hemispheres (tonsils) of the cerebellum near the choroid plexus of the fourth ventricle. From it, two main nerve pathways from the dorsal part of the central canal of the spinal cord pass to the higher centers of the brain, including the posterior (rear) lobe of the pituitary, the hypothalamus, the pineal gland, the choroid plexus of the third ventricle, and the cerebrum.

Tantra Goddess

Editor’s Note:

In this and the next issue of Sutra Journal, Dr. Stuart Sovatsky continues a discussion on the nature and the impact of the Scientia Sexualis, the sex-desire-centric ‘liberated sexuality’ based in Freudian theories and supported by modern birth control methods, which has also appropriated Indic Ars Eroticas of Kundalini-Tantra and Hatha Yoga in Scientia modes of ‘neo-tantra’ and ‘neo-yoga’.

The nature and power of Ars Erotica itself is rooted in a lifelong ‘perineum-to-pineal’ spinal puberty of ‘profound pleasures’, tied to a sacred inner development, as seen in the ‘liberations’ noted in the Dharma traditions of Indian Kundalini-Tantra and in charismatic ‘being moved’ spiritual traditions.

These two terms were coined by Michel Foucault in his Vol.1, The History of Sexuality as will be further discussed on Dr Sovatsky’s article.

A Brief Point On: ‘All Now’ Ultimacy” and the “Lifelong Ars Erotica Maturation of Seed-forces as Family Lineages, as Inner-Marriage Saints

Numerous spiritual teachers are calling Now-consciousness the ‘ultimate enlightenment’ based in ‘the giving up of all seeking’ and finding Wholeness right here, right Now. Yet, this fully-attentive, being ‘present’, unchanging or ‘always in the Now’ awareness seems to fit the ars erotica definition of pratyahara or dharana or, possibly, some glimmers of dhyana – de-sticking one’s ‘bare attention’ from inner and outer objects, worries or thoughts for longer and longer periods of time; and santosha, acceptance of pain and pleasure equally – but not the long-esteemed, nir-bija samadhi that involves complete energetic maturation or, literally, ‘full exhaustion’ (nir-) of bija, ‘the seed-forces-of-incarnation’.

For, Awakening to Presence is just the beginning of ars erotica maturations that deepen the physical and energetic complexity of one’s awakening within the hormones and neurotransmitters (the elixirs) of the body.

Thus, Adi Shankara (788-820 A.D.), the modern Indian founder of Advaita modified his teachings by adding the bhakti of devotional longing to his life – known as Dvaita-Advaita, dual-toward-nondual path – indicating that there is More (God, Siddhi-Power of Love), beyond one’s current santosha equanimity. And, not to be ignored, he was an ars erotica, inner-marriage saint.

For, the Indian standard for ‘enlightenment’ has always included a resolution of gender duality expressed as a transcendence of scientia sexualis desires. But, the modern neo-advaita teachers are, typically, within the scientia spell and skip over the profound limitations within scientia sexualis realm of sex-desire. They teach transcendence of all other ‘seeking and desiring’ – except sex-desire. Celibacy, for a while, might be recommended as a means to getting some freedom, but not as an ars erotica inner marriage. Indeed, the vast ars erotica, on its own terms, remains thoroughly hidden from (or by) these ‘neo’ teachings.

My brief review of esteemed Eastern yogic, tantric, Jain, Buddhist, advaitic, bhakti, et al, spiritual figures over the past 5000 years, yielded a ratio of 515:0 ars erotica lifestyles to scientia sexualis lifestyles. Based upon, arguably, millions of unnamed participants in thousands of various Kumbha melas (Great Gatherings of saints) over the millenniums, I estimate a ratio of over one-million to zero.

That this numerically overwhelming historical fact is typically considered inconsequential, psychoanalytically pathological, or not at all, by contemporary nondual teachers, all levels of yoga teachers and neo-tantra teachers in the contemporary scientia sexualis Transpersonal yogic and tantric discourses is an indication of the profound power of the spell of the scientia sexualis.

Also, for the first time in the history of spirituality, fertility and its consequence of family and the esteemed centrality of lifelong marriage have become a tangential concern in the contemporary enlightenment discourse. For example, Nisargadatta’s ‘No Self’ teaching is lauded while his lifelong marriage has, so far, received no inquiry – even among Nondual Marriage and Family Therapists – as to how he accomplished such loving loyalty. He even renounced all traveling to be at home with his wife and children, something no current spiritual teacher has, so far, done. Priorities may seem like mere relativities of ‘familial roles’, but existentially as real life choices, they are absolute.

Thus, too, it was only in 2009, after nearly forty years of teaching that family life is a kind of ‘melodrama’ to test one’s actual spiritual growth that Ram Dass, the coiner in 1970 of the current Be Here Now super-meme, awoke to an error in his teachings on soul love and familial relationships. Via his suddenly discovered paternity and grand-paternity, he “developed a deeper understanding of the love parents feel for their children and began to see [for the first time in his adult life?] that personal and soul love are not mutually exclusive but can coexist in nourishing ways”1. click to view article: ram-dass-has-a-son

Family life is not merely a ‘melodrama’. It is Life Itself. It has always engendered in all spiritual traditions a ‘meditation on Life Itself’ of lovers or spouses beholding and delighting one another and solving life issues together as helpmates; parents beholding the birth and nurtured, daily maturation of their children (all of whom are ‘intended conceptions’, based in the ars erotica matured bodies of their parents) and of the latter looking with love and respect upon their aging parents; and, decades later, the meditation upon the marriages of one’s children; and the glow of newborn grandchildren and even great-grandchildren and the caring for elder parents, unto their often incontinent, gaunt and overwhelming deaths by their now-adult and ever-aging children (that legend holds awakened the young Buddha) tracing forward and back in time, ad infinitum.

In this ars erotica universe, lifelong, creative marriage becomes the natural order of the universe, for the vast majority. Indian, Tibetan and Navajo divorce rates of 1.1%, 3.8% and 4.8% respectively, speak of an ars erotica bonding that rarely breaks, in contrast to US and all major scientia sexualis cultures worldwide, 50% rates for first marriages and70% for second marriages and non-married breakups with rates so high, we normalize them, in scientia sexualis fashion, as a lifestyle of ‘serial monogamy’. Even allowing for a tripling of these low divorce rates to accommodate troubled, intact marriages in ars erotica cultures, the rates are a fraction of the scientia sexualis cultural rates.

While the scientia sexualis heterosexual body is a techno-controlled-nonfertility body, the Catholic Church’s scientia sexualis body is ‘natural-rhythm’ mentally-controlled-nonfertility body. Both depend upon a strategic separation of fertility from the ‘Augustinian burning’ powers of ‘sex-desire’.

The ars erotica body, however, is totally permeated by maturations of the fluids and energies of fertility – its ‘elixirs of immortality’ in two forms (and within the spectrum that connects them):

Grihastha Dharma of eternal lineages of Life via male-female external conceptions (wherein mature pariyanga, described below, replaces the scientia sexualis need for either sexology’s techno-control or Catholicism’s mental-rhythm contraceptives and most abortions, and also outgrows the stepping stones of ‘nonejaculatory’ scientia neo-tantras

Sannyasa Dharma, internal union of male-female creativity that infuses profound ars erotica bliss (ananda), creativity and passion (bhakti bhava) within one’s own body.

Likewise, no matter how wild or meditative and ‘goal-less’, Westernized ‘neo’ tantra barely ever goes beyond sex-desire and scientia sexualis understandings of ‘the body’ into the so-different ars erotica body of Kundalini maturation. In perfect linguistic consistency, the Sanskrit tantric term specific most closely to non-ritualized ‘sex’, pariyanga, based in the pineal/oral tumescence and orgasm of khecari mudra, is largely unknown to the neo-tantra popularizers.

Kechari Mudra

Khecari mudra tumescence of tongue

Toward pineal orgasm of amrita ‘nectar’ secretion

As stated in one of the definitive Indic texts on Kundalini:

“Old age gets reversed (260)

She…dissolves the five [bodily] elements (291)

…[then] the yogi is known as Khecar [tumescent tongued]

Attaining this state is a miracle (296)

Shakti [feminine power] and Shiva [masculine power] become one and in their union, everything…gets dissolved [into the primordial glowing matrix] (306)

Further, there is nothing more to experience beyond [this]

Hence, let me stop speaking of it

For it is useless to talk (318)”

Numbered couplets related to pineal-oral soul identity puberty of khecari mudra in Dnyaneshwari (Jnaneshvari), Chapter 6 (1210/2002)

And, as South Indian Tantra Saint, Thirumoolar also noted regarding the centrality of khecari (mudra) in erotic pariyanga tantra:

834. “Only Those Who Have Practiced [Attained] Khecari Can Resort to Pariyanga [erotic tantra].”

(Thirumandiram, 1993, Volume 1, Tantra 3)

Khecari is a prerequisite maturational basis for ars erotica tantra of pariyanga, just as genital puberty is the maturational basis for adult sexuality, of any sort. This is because the perineum to pineal maturation is itself an ego-identity transforming puberty that has yet to be mapped by modern (or even Transpersonal) developmental Physiology and Psychology. Yet, it is the embodied, full maturation that Kundalini awakening aims toward.

This puberty of the perineum-spine-pineal ‘mountainous ascent’ (as inwardly married, St. John of the Cross called his mystical path, the ‘tunnel of light’ of near-death experiences, the spinal sushumna channel of yoga, the partial opening of which in the suicidally-depressed, Eckhart Tolle underlies his ‘Eternal Now’ sudden awakening) is the natural and embodied basis of ars erotica that renders scientia sexualis an ‘austere monarchy’ of ‘sex-desire’.

I further theorize that this natural, adult puberty is the physiological basis of all ‘post-egoic soul identities’ and ‘post-linguistic/charismatic’ (charism, spiritual power-gifts, akin to tantric siddhis) spiritual utterance: the ecstatic voice-quaverings of Islamic qwaali, Judaic nigune, Yogic anahata-nad, African sangoma crying-out, Holy Ghost glossolalia and even of sexual “Ah, ah, ah” ecstatic moaning. Of course, these topics are worthy of thousands of pages of ‘unpacking’ from my dense and succinct overview. And, such an encyclopedic and detailed treatment would make the scientia sexualis look dramatically more ‘austere’ and more of a handicapping of a fully-matured erotic life.

We must include the Church’s scientia rule-based moralistically constrained ‘sexuality’ and ‘fallen procreativity here, too. Thus, when Thomas Aquinas, the author of the Church’s own foundational scientia sexualis text, the Summa Theologica, had an ars erotica inner marriage experience late in life (as did the papacy-jolting, St. Francis, early in life), he said all his previous [“Science of the Divine” moralism] was like “straw”.

On the other hand is the ars erotica, on its own terms: A brief quote from Kripalvanand’s commentary on a central, ars erotica yogic text, the 15th century Hathayogapradipika, gives us a glimpse into the radically different ‘eroticism’ of the Kundalini body2.

“Anatomically, there are three uvulas in the body. Each stands at the entrance of a three-path convergence, where two gross physical side paths and one (dorsal, back) subtle energy central path meet to form a lower path. ‘The first uvula is, in a female body, the external os, the part of the cervix of the uterus projecting into the vagina. The two longer sides of the uterus lead up to the uterine tubes and the ovaries. In a male body, the first uvula is a small eminence projecting into the urethral orifice, just above the prostatic utricle, where the two ductus deferens branch upward on their way to the testes. The second uvula is the part of the soft palate that hangs down at the back of the mouth at the back entrance to the nasal cavity, with its two internal nasal openings, which is of the same tissue type as the anterior (front) lobe of the pituitary gland. This uvula can be elevated, by swallowing or by the throat lock, to block the nasal cavity. The third uvula is situated between the two hemispheres (tonsils) of the cerebellum near the choroid plexus of the fourth ventricle. From it, two main nerve pathways from the dorsal part of the central canal of the spinal cord pass to the higher centers of the brain, including the posterior (rear) lobe of the pituitary, the hypothalamus, the pineal gland, the choroid plexus of the third ventricle, and the cerebrum.

Reaching Up

If, by abandonment of attachment, and openness to divinity, the sexual seed and the life energy are prevented at that point from falling down into the lower path , the seed is absorbed into the blood and the energy goes up the central path [past the first, second and third uvuli]. The greater the degree of detachment and surrender to God, the higher up the seed and the energy are held, the more the seed evolves and the more subtle the energy grows, and the more stable both become. In the end, both the physical body and the life energy are absorbed into divinity, and the yogi is in his natural [fully matured of all potentials] state.” (Kripalvanand, Revealing the Secret , 2002, H. C. Berner, 1/34 Imlay Street, Merimbula, N.S.W. 2548, Australia, p. 163)

Instead of this vast and highly-detailed space of ars erotica tantra, in the popularized neo- terminology, ‘tantric’ stands merely as an adjective qualifying merely an ‘Eastern-sounding’ or ‘spiritual’ or ‘shadow-inclusive’ or ‘non-ejaculatory’ or meditative kind of sex.

Indeed, all the scientia anatomical terminology and its hormonal-emotional-erotic functioning must be opened toward ars erotica transformation via the nearly-untranslatable Sanskrit terminology of rasayana, the yogic maturation of the hormones, neurotransmitters and sexual fluids (rasas, the Foucauldian “elixirs of life”) of the body and their corresponding emotions (also known as rasas) and states of consciousness.

As a ‘rasa-alchemy’ (rasa-yana), these secretions – estrogen, testosterone, serotonin, noradrenalin, melatonin, dopamine, oxytocin, saliva, ptyalin, lactate, FSH, tears, sweat, lysomes, semen, vaginal secretions – ‘transmute” or, more accurately, mature from their ordinary status into self-generated (evermore powerful) functional aphrodisiacs, growth hormones and innate entheogens.

Within the yoga traditions, rasayana is orchestrated by ‘Mother’Kundalini (Grand-Maturing Nurturer). As a coiled energy, she further resembles DNA, and all that that might imply, as Gopi Krishna, Jeremy Narby and others maintained.

As internally-absorbed (‘uroboric’) bodily secretions, these entheogenic rasas uplift one’s own state of consciousness.

Thus, Shiva-consciousness is not some ‘final Reality or Absolute’, but is interdependent upon Shakti’s nurturing, over-time, bodily juices and ever-maturing energies from the Dark Womb (Yoni) that is described by Shakta, Laya-Yoga and numerous other yoga traditions as giving birth to the ‘light’ of consciousness, itself.

When erotic partners lovingly imbibe one another’s externally-secreted rasas while in devotional bhavas (moods), they serve as both aphrodisiacs and entheogenic ‘spiritual foods’ to further nourish a lifelong puberty far beyond that of the fertility puberty of adolescence, known as shamanica medhra, ‘maturation beyond the genital awakening’.

Kisses become, literally, ‘sweeter than wine’, via salivary ptyalin that opens up the sweetness of all food, further enriched with salivary immunoglobin A (the glandular chemistry corresponding to feelings of love and compassion), makes each other both delicious and ars erotically intoxicating.

Lovers

Lovers entwined become hermetically uroboric, creating higher states via a Marcusian spiritualization of the instincts that matures anna-maya, prana-maya, mano-maya and vijnana-maya koshas (body-sheaths of flesh, of bio-energies, of the ego-emotional mind and of the objectively-wise mind, respectively).

One could say, the spinal cord and efferent/afferent nerves, from heated perineum to heavenly cerebrum, have become a throbbing, erogenous organ of energy-streaming, tumescent flesh, soaking in an elixired ocean of bliss, light and appreciation that permeates into the mouth, throat, and every cell of the body, making them all dance to an inner ‘jangling, tambourine’, as Bob Dylan lyricized about the psychedelic entheogenic state.

Khajuraho Temple Carvings

Yet, so far, ‘neo-tantra’ (so-called ‘tantric sex’) of the West has not included entheogenic rasayana that, like puberty, involves decades of yogic maturation, based in the nurturing, lifelong developmental power of Mother Kundalini to fully emerge, far beyond the scientia sexualis termini of (1) egoic genital primacy; (2) reproductive adult fertility; (3) the resulting norms of a personal ‘adult’ gender-identity. In rare instances, as with the 10th-13th century, Khajuraho Temple culture, a sacred communal ars erotica can blossom.3

Indeed, this lifelong puberty of the soul identity beyond the psychoanalytic ‘genital-primacy ego’ has its spiritual-bodily manifestations worldwide, throughout all history, and is not some esoteric oddity.

Pre-eminent world historian, William H. McNeill gives evidence in his, Keeping Together in Time (Harvard, 1997) of ‘group rhythmic practices’ (group log-tapping) among our prehominid ancestors as fostering and evolving bodies that could enjoy group solidarity (the first transpersonal moods of Oneness) millions of years ago.

Intra-tribal anger was dissipated via drumming as the hormones of ‘alpha’ or other types of prehominid aggression transmuted or matured (or ‘evolved’) into rasas of nascent collective devotional feelings. Bestowing great, Darwinian ‘survival value’, these tribes grew, while others that did not engage in shared ‘rhythmic practices’ fragmented as aggression led to tribal breakdowns and divisions and lowered rates of individual and genotypic group survival. Ah, the power of Om, Om, Om…

Likewise, since then, we have: fifty-thousand years of Bushman entranced shaking-dancing, the Grecian Dionysian dance-revel, the Shaking of Shakers, the spinal rocking of Islamic zikr and davvening Jews and Orthodox hesychasts, the spontaneous undulations of esoteric belly-dance and the inflamed trance-dance of the Vodou shaman and the natural upward ars erotica tumescence of the spine, uju kaya, of all Buddhist meditative sitting paths and of moral “backbone” uprightness of all exoteric Judeo-Christian-Hindu-Islamic ethical religious paths. Even the teen-puberty provocations of ‘Elvis the Pelvis’ must also be included, movements that have engendered a massive, adolescent ‘rock and roll’ sexo-rhythmic youth culture, worldwide.

Yes, we must start somewhere. It’s all good. But, the first full-step onto ars erotica terra firma will startle and stun before it might allure us even further into its, as-yet, hidden interiors—interiors hidden in the exciting glow of scientia sexualis ’ (feigned) omnipotence.

I wince to reconsider the work of a beautiful man who has inspired millions. Yet, I wonder, if Ram Dass (from his spiritually awake state) and Mom had actually raised this son on a daily, real-life basis, he would have – for two generations, by this time, been teaching how ‘soul love’ and personal and parental love are ‘not mutually exclusive’ of one another, instead of the converse. Having children often profoundly expands one’s concerned attention to ‘the future’ in ways childless people do not (need to) feel. Such would surely have greatly affected the field of Transpersonal Marriage and Family Therapy (see my “Clinical forms of love inspired by Meher Baba’s mast work and the awe of infinite conscious-ness,” Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, 2004, 36(2):138-42.) Instead, he, (along with childless Ken Wilber and others whose work focused on ‘[solo] spiritual heroes’) unwittingly garbled into Western lives the specialized family-less, ‘no ties’ life of the tiny minority –‘the sadhu trip’ – as his one-time sadhu-yoga mentor, Baba Hari Dass, warned all Western seekers not to mix up (B. H. Dass, Silence Speaks, Santa Cruz: Sri Rama Publishing, 1997). In this revised history, ‘spiritual emergence’ might include exactly such spiritually challenging moments as those following a positive (or negative) pregnancy test as the one that profoundly revised Ram Dass’s understanding of ‘soul love’. Indeed, the emotional upheaval of possible divorces involving young children might also be viewed as ‘spiritual emergencies’, not just the LSD-like mystical ones of TP’s concern thus far. Such has been the concern of all spiritual traditions wherein the fertility of Life Itself has remained paramount, for millenniums. Perhaps grihastha-trained TP MFTs could have significantly decreased our alarming 50% divorce rate and the broken-home, bonding/separation/abandonment anxieties of two generations of children that have been a main psychopathology in psychotherapy practices.

“The Summa Theologiae, his last and, unfortunately, uncompleted work, deals with the whole of Catholic theology. He stopped work on it after celebrating Mass on December 6, 1273. When asked why he stopped writing, he replied, “I cannot go on…. All that I have written seems to me like so much straw compared to what I have seen and what has been revealed to me.” He died March 7, 1274.

Still-sitting meditative paths suppress efferent stimulation and the maturational information therein of Mother Kundalini that dwells in the ‘darkness’ beneath, and as the matrix of, consciousness. These paths may open sushumna and bestow many profound meditative states, yet the many potentials of the body, including tantric pariyanga, the mysteries of sahaja spontaneous asanas and the siddhis of healing, genius, musicality, longevity and other ‘charisms’ (gifts of the spirit) etc., remain dormant.

Editor’s Note:

In this and the next two issues of lSutra Journal, Dr. Stuart Sovatsky discusses the nature and the impact of the Scientia Sexualis, the sex-desire-centric ‘liberated sexuality’ based in Freudian theories and supported by modern birth control methods, which has also appropriated Indic Ars Eroticas of Kundalini-Tantra and Hatha Yoga in Scientia modes of ‘neo-tantra’ and ‘neo-yoga’.