Indecent Practices and Erotic Trance:
                           Making Sense of Tantra

                            by John Ryan Haule
                             Copyright © 1999
                            All Rights Reserved
                     http://www.jrhaule.net/ipet.html


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                                   Seven

                            Beyond Good and Evil



                       * Fluids of Immortality
                       * Ramakrishna
                       * The Hero's Erotic Trance
                       * The Dragon of Soul-Energy
                       * Heroic Assimilation
                       * Non-Attachment
                       * Dangers on the Path of Scandal
                       * That All May Be One



     The image of Trighantika, grotesque, feces-smeared, and exalting,
     thrusts itself upon us, archetypal in its primitive power,
     uncannily disturbing if not outright horrifying, an apparent
     contradiction of psychotic form wedded to claims of superior
     achievement. Mark Dyczkowski (1987) cites this alarming story from
     the eleventh century in Kashmir in which the genial founder of the
     "Doctrine of Vibration" (Spanda), Abhinavagupta (born, ca. 950
     c.e.), presents a "biting satire" concerning the primitive form of
     Shaivism which he wishes to systematize and elevate. His reforming
     vision takes sex seriously as the engine of
     consciousness-changing. But he seeks to give it a serious tone and
     avoid the corruption and rank primitivity that had been long
     associated with the devotees of Shiva. In doing so, he reveals the
     depths of his earnest concern. The whole project of going beyond
     good and evil is constantly in danger of succumbing to the lowest
     of instinctual compulsions.

     Trighantika is a problem for us as much as he was for
     Abhinavagupta. Our horror of deviance is probably much greater
     than his. When we contemplate going "beyond good and evil," we
     cannot help but remember the pitiful end of Nietzsche, who
     preached so vigorously and eloquently against the leash of our
     traditional notions of religion and morality and urged us to go
     "beyond" them with that disturbing prophet, Zarathustra[1] -- or
     perhaps Dostoyevsky's anti-hero from Crime and Punishment,
     Raskolnikov, who axed two old women to death in hopes of proving
     to himself that, like the Napoleon of his disturbed ideology, he
     had reached a point beyond and outside of conventional morality.

     The portrait of Trighantika, although reportedly satirical, by no
     means suggests a one-sided tract. For the Trighantika of
     Abhinavagupta's portrait has his wits about him sufficiently to
     have mastered "the Mantras" as well as "alchemy, magic, and ritual
     intercourse." Furthermore, he observes silence, composes hymns,
     and "knows the nature of lust." Despite his hideous appearance and
     primitivity, he has not neglected his intellect. He has embraced
     every impurity deliberately and exalts. He has not lost his senses
     but cultivated them. Even if his portrait is exaggerated, he
     presents us with the problem of understanding how such disgusting
     activities can be undertaken by one who is clearly superior in his
     discipline and mental accomplishments.

     His foul and demented appearance is evidence of an altered state
     of consciousness wherein he views everything on the subtle plane,
     where the feel and smell of feces takes on the holiness of costly
     oil running down the beard of Aaron, a divine blessing redolent of
     everlasting life.[2] We can obtain a preliminary hint of what
     this change in consciousness must be that makes feces an unguent
     suitable for ritual anointing if we think for a moment about that
     wet spot in the bed, the result of our lovemaking. In profane
     consciousness, it is a disgusting and uncomfortable distraction
     which we do our best to avoid as we compose ourselves for sleep.
     In erotic trance, however, it takes on a numinous quality. It is
     the mingled fluids which miraculously well out of us, their
     quantity in direct proportion to the state of our arousal,
     glistening and slippery with the magic of eros itself, a testimony
     to the brink of oneness we have shared, a sacred substance,
     disappointing only in the fact that it is not copious enough. The
     wet spot is too small. It will dry too soon. We cannot anoint
     ourselves head to foot. To lie upon it is small but gratifying
     compensation.

     Just as the eternal Vrindavana, the forest where Krishna plays
     eternally with Radha, can be seen only with the eyes of divine
     love (prema) (Dimock, 1989: 169), so the eyes of erotic trance
     "transubstantiate" our partner and the fluids of our bodies.
     Although this possibility was seen as natural and indisputable for
     the ancients, it has become an illusion for us, "a psychological
     phenomenon devoid of reality" (Evola, 1983: 186). In the ancient
     India of the Vedas, for example, the gods were worshipped at a
     ritually constructed fire pit which represented the cosmos, and
     clarified butter (ghee) was poured into it as an oblation. Hatha
     Yoga (the discipline of bodily postures) internalized this process
     so that, "One's bodily fluids, and semen in particular, became
     identified with the oblation, the heat of inner austerities with
     fire, and breath with the dynamic element of wind" (D. G. White,
     1996: 13). By the time of Trighantika, the tradition of employing
     the body as the organ for erotic consciousness-changing through a
     discipline of postures was perhaps 3000 years old.[3] As a master
     of alchemy, Trighantika was disciplined in the confluence of Hatha
     Yoga with sexual practices and laboratory exercises involving
     sulfur and mercury in which each detail of the operation was
     perceived as effected by sexual fluids produced naturally by the
     body and represented symbolically in the minerals of the
     laboratory.

          In tandem with his work in the laboratory, the Hindu
          alchemist also engages in the practice of hatha yoga, as
          well as a certain number of eroto-mystical tantric
          operations involving sexual fluids that he and his
          female laboratory assistant generate in order to
          catalyze reactions between divine sexual fluids in their
          mineral forms. In the end all is a continuity of sexual
          fluids (D. G. White, 1996: 6).


                           Fluids of Immortality

     Thus the modern, eros-filled lover who finds it a privilege to
     fall asleep on the wet spot has been introduced to a mythic form
     of consciousness which is not only very old but universally
     inspires imaginal perceptions of a divine character. Evola derives
     the term for the "heavenly courtesans" that inspired Nanda, the
     Buddha's half-brother, Apsarases, from "running water" (ap,
     "water"; sara from sri, "to run"). Water is traditionally
     represented by a downward-pointing triangle which likewise
     suggests the shape of female pubic hair, and therefore
     characterizes woman in general. Mythologically, woman is water,
     and water is woman. "We should also remember the ancient
     licentious Syrian festival of the Waters, Maitumas, where women
     showed themselves naked in the water, thus provoking rapture in
     the participants" (Evola, 1983: 104). All of these traditions
     evoke the wateriness of the aroused woman's genitals. The
     Apsarases and other female apparitions that manifest before the
     eyes of the erotically entranced meditator are usually described
     as having "dripping genitals." Thus vaginal fluid is not merely a
     profane lubricant but a substance of sacred power that gives
     bodily and sacramental evidence of what Eliade calls a "rupture in
     plane," where the empirical cosmos suddenly is transformed into
     the sacred cosmos.

     Semen is, if possible, even more important. Shiva's semen,
     identified with mercury in the alchemical tradition, is the
     ultimate force of creation and transformation. When retained
     during powerful sexual arousal and made to "flow upward" from the
     genitals to the brain, semen is converted into nectar, the
     medicine of immortality, in the crown chakra. Such a practice (the
     foundation of Vimalananda's vajroli contest) makes the yogin
     divine by transforming his mortal body into a superhuman immortal
     body.

          Divine semen transmutes base metals into gold and
          transforms human semen into nectar by which the mortal
          practitioner is rendered an immortal superman, a second
          Siva, whose bodily secretions, like Siva's own,
          transmute base metals into gold (D. G. White, 1996:
          188).

     Such claims cannot be understood if we take them to be mere
     theological propositions. They are rather conclusions drawn from
     direct experience during the arousal of kundalini, where the
     "involuntary belief" of the trance state reveals a sacred meaning
     residing in ordinary appearances. Indeed, the vajroli mudra
     (vajroli practiced not as a "contest" but as a co-operative act of
     worship on the part of the yogin and yogini) involves the mingling
     of prostatic fluid and semen with vaginal secretions -- the same
     liquids that produce the wet spot in the bed. If both parties then
     absorb these mingled fluids through vajroli back into their own
     bodies, it is not mere biological secretions that are drawn up. It
     is rather a fluid of immortality that opens our eyes to the
     heavenly plane:

          The way to becoming a "second Siva" -- for this has
          always been the goal of tantric practice in its various
          forms -- was, in early tantrism, realized through the
          conduit of a hoard of wild goddesses (which the
          tantrikas identified with their human consorts),
          generally known as yoginis. These "bliss-starved"
          goddesses, attracted by offerings of mingled sexual
          fluids, would converge into the consciousness of the
          practitioner, to transform him, through their limitless
          libido, into a god on earth (D. G. White, 1996: 4).

     Thus the difference between the wet spot as a disgusting source of
     discomfort or as a potential unguent of holy anointing -- now
     unfortunately lost to the absorbency of cotton sheets -- describes
     the opposition between the outer appearance upon which profane
     consciousness focuses and the inner meaning available to enhanced
     consciousness. In Islam, the "outer," with which the
     literal-minded puritanism of the orthodox concern themselves, is
     called zahir; and the "inner," which is opened up by the intensely
     erotic consciousness of the mystic, is called batin. Based on a
     verse from the Qur'an (57:3), "[God] is the First and the Last,
     the Outward [az-Zahir] and the Inward [al-Batin], and He is
     All-knowing of all things," the Sufis have made a point of paying
     attention to the inner (Glassˇ, 1989). The outer and the inner
     reflect two styles of religious consciousness: the outer form
     (exoterism) is leashed to a codified law of moral conduct and
     definitions that can be labeled "orthodox" or "heretical"; the
     inner form (esoterism) can be appreciated only by those with a
     heightened state of consciousness whereby the inner meaning of
     ordinary objects and actions can be directly perceived by an
     individual in erotic, religious trance.

          The keynote . . . in esoteric propaganda . . . [is] the
          cultivation of taste both as working-on-the-self and as
          a propaganda for the esoteric "cause." To awaken in
          others the desire for that which can scarcely be spoken
          of at all except in booming clichˇs or divine names --
          the desire for Eros son of Chaos -- the taste for life
          itself and none of its cheap representations or lying
          substitutes: the desire to be art, spontaneously and
          absolutely (Wilson, 1993: 78).

     In Hinduism, "taste" is also rasa, the fluid that animates the
     cosmos, and the esoteric meaning of vaginal secretions. To have a
     "taste" for God and not merely to have heard of Him, not merely to
     believe in Him, is a universal expression, as well, of the
     Christian mystics. Those who are erotically aroused to the point
     that their vaginal and prostatic fluids begin to well out of the
     body, sanctifying everything they wet -- those who remain in that
     arousal without vanishing into tension-releasing spasms -- enter
     into an erotic trance wherein the outer form reveals its esoteric
     meaning. Only a change in consciousness like this is able to
     explain to us how the grotesque and obscene Shiva-worshipper,
     Trighantika, has been able to combine discipline and mental
     achievement with disgusting impurity. Impurity is the exoteric
     form of an esoteric reality which those who are leashed to profane
     appearances will never guess.

     The impurity of genital secretions or even saliva and urine is one
     thing. But feces is surely something different. The esoterist
     would admit the difference, but tells us it is a difference in
     degree not in kind. In fact, the quantity and degree of the
     impurities we can contemplate while seeing through them to their
     esoteric meaning actually constitute a yardstick to measure the
     level of our erotic trance. Vimalananda is uncompromising on this
     point:

          A good test for an Aghori is this: When you can eat your
          own feces with real love for it, you have achieved a
          tiny bit. . . . Feces is just as much a part of Atma
          [Atman] as your body and your consciousness are; who is
          feeding what to whom? The Atma is feeding the Atma to
          Atma: It is all the play of Atma. When an Aghori reaches
          this stage, he eats whatever he finds: dead dogs, offal,
          slops from the gutter, his own flesh. He finds whatever
          he eats equivalent to the tastiest dishes, all because
          he doesn't falsely discriminate. He sees everything as
          One; no attraction or repulsion (Svoboda, 1986: 183).


                                Ramakrishna

     Not forgetting that Vimalananda is the "Sun among exaggerators,"
     we might be skeptical of this flagrant claim. Very possibly he
     himself has not eaten his own feces. But the principle he
     articulates stands. As long as feces is disgusting and to be
     avoided, all is not yet "One" for us. Furthermore, the historical
     record is clear. Not a few of the antinomian heroes of India have
     tested the sublimity of their awareness with feces. Ramakrishna
     (1836-1886, Bengal) is one:

          One day I saw that consciousness is one -- nondifferent.
          At first it was shown to me that there were many people
          and animals -- within that there were babus,[4]
          Englishmen, Muslims, myself, a cremator, and dogs.
          Moreover, a bearded Muslim man was standing there with a
          plate of rice in his hand. He gave the mouths of
          everyone a little of this rice from the plate. I also
          tasted a little. [Food from Muslims is impure for a
          Brahmin.]

          And another day it was shown to me -- feces, pee, food,
          and cooked dishes -- all sorts of food. All were lying
          there. Suddenly from within [me] the personal soul came
          out and tasted all of these things as if it were a
          tongue of flame. It was as if a lolling tongue were
          tasting everything! Feces, pee -- it tasted everything!
          It was shown to me that all things are one --
          nondifferent (Kripal, 1995: 268).

     Kripal explains that Ramakrishna had held sandal-paste in one hand
     and his own feces in the other, "pondered their two natures,"
     realized they were the same, and then proved it to himself by
     touching both handfuls to his tongue. But because only Aghoris
     were known to use feces in their spiritual practice (sadhana),
     Ramakrishna's feces experience became controversial among his
     followers. At one point, someone who is not named in the
     biographies came forward with an challenge: "I have heard that you
     took your own shit in sadhana. Everyone can be called this kind of
     knower of brahman. Who does not touch his own shit? Unless you are
     able to touch another person's feces, you cannot be called a true
     knower of brahman" (Ibid., 269). Ramakrishna took the challenge to
     his beloved goddess Kali, who possessed him with her lolling
     tongue,[5] and he went to the latrine by the river bank and took
     some clay smeared with a stranger's feces and touched it to his
     tongue without feeling disgust (Ibid., 270).

     No doubt seeing "all things are one" was profoundly important for
     Ramakrishna. But Kripal's discussion of the Bengali holy man gives
     us no sense of the heroic vigor regarding feces and its flavor
     that cannot be missed in Trighantika and Vimalananda. Furthermore,
     Ramakrishna stands as one of three paradigmatic illustrations of
     the madness of Bengali saints (McDaniel, 1989). In Kripal's
     account, Kali's Child (1995), Ramakrishna comes across as a
     sharply divided individual whose conflict is reflected in his
     name, Ramakrishna Paramahamsa. The first name (Lord Krishna)
     reflects the madness-loving and Tantric-inspired devotional
     religion (bhakti) of his Bengali village. Paramahamsa, by
     contrast, means "highest swan," and refers to the loftiest state
     attainable by one who has renounced the world according to the
     orthodox tradition of Vedanta.

     In his conscious mind, Ramakrishna was a heterosexual Brahmin
     whose renunciation of the world took the form of strict observance
     of dietary restrictions. The sorts of food and styles of
     preparation that he could tolerate eating were clearly defined in
     the purity code. Meanwhile, in his unconscious mind, he was a
     homosexual Tantrika. There was a strong dissociation between the
     two halves of Ramakrishna. His ego did not know and did not want
     to know what his antinomian half was up to. He heard reports that
     when he went into samadhi,[6] one of his feet would shoot out and
     come to rest in the lap of one of his boy disciples. But he had no
     explanation for it, claimed not to remember it, and did not want
     to discuss it.

     It is the split in Ramakrishna that makes him a "mad saint."
     Although wholly out of his mind during one six-year stretch,
     Ramakrishna had his wits about him most of the time. Furthermore,
     some of his Tantric experiences did percolate through the barrier
     between the two Ramakrishnas. Otherwise he would not have
     remembered his lolling tongue and the feces and Islamic rice it
     had lapped. His rational mind observed only what it was capable of
     tolerating from the scandalous world of his Tantric half. The
     story of his prissiness in touching tongue to feces contrasts so
     strongly with those of Vimalananda and Trighantika because he
     lacks their psychic integrity. Ramakrishna may be the best example
     of a severely divided man attaining a level of spirituality that
     seems to have been self-evident to most of those who met him.
     Vimalananda calls him the model of a holy man, "Everyone who came
     into contact with him became truly spiritual."[7]

     Vimalananda and Trighantika have no such barriers of dissociation
     in their psyches. They seem to go into everything consciously and
     deliberately, aware of their every move, their emotional reactions
     fully accepted and well understood. Erotic, religious trance, for
     them, involves no split in consciousness. It is not a dissociative
     state. The mad saints and the antinomian heroes are alike in that
     they enter another domain of experience, radically distinct from
     the persona field, in which numinous realities alter their view of
     the world and of themselves. In the mad saints, this activity is
     cut off from the ego, "dissociated," and they have no idea what
     they are doing or saying in the public world. They have lost their
     senses. By contrast, the antinomian heroes stay sufficiently
     oriented in the public world and know exactly what they are up to
     on the subtle plane. Ramakrishna appears to be a hybrid of these
     two types.


                          The Hero's Erotic Trance

     Clearly dissociative trance is a valuable adjunct to sexual and
     religious attainment as far as the rung of longing. Beginning with
     the heroic rung, dissociation becomes a liability. From the heroic
     rung onward, vertical progress requires psychological integration
     in which the experiences had in the altered state are available to
     the conscious ego. Furthermore, there must be a degree of
     voluntary control while in the altered state. The ego continues to
     be an observer while wandering the subtle plane and also serves as
     a deliberate investigator who rises to the challenge of numinous
     figures and events, meeting them as worthy opponents rather than
     simply being carried away by them.

     Thus we can say that religious trance for antinomian heroes,
     although it includes utter conviction regarding the reality of
     what is encountered on the numinous plane, is characterized by
     four distinctive elements. First, such trance is distinguished
     from ordinary consciousness by its imaginal quality. Whether one
     has entered entirely into an imaginal world and interacts with
     enchanted beings and gods or whether one views the empirical world
     with esoteric eyes, the imaginal component of the experience
     overwhelms and re-organizes whatever remains of empirical
     perceptions. Second, eroto-religious trance is marked by powerful
     emotional elements: divine love (prema), possibly terror in the
     face of uncanny beings and events, exaltation that one has
     embarked upon a "superhuman" career, and the like. Third, the
     altered state involves the body of the mystic being charged with
     energy; the mobilization of sexual arousal with engorgement of the
     sexual organs and the production of fluids, often in copious
     quantities; and sensations of bodily ecstasy leading, as we shall
     see in the chapters immediately following this one, to the
     recognition and discriminative investigation of a "subtle body," a
     physio-imaginal body related to but strangely different from the
     physical body. Fourth, a significant component of voluntary
     control remains available to the ego during the period when
     consciousness is shifted to the numinous domain.

     The difference between the mad saints who remain on the rung of
     longing and the antinomian heroes, who experience longing well
     enough but press beyond it to achieve a more conscious integration
     of their erotic trance, is often described by the mystics and
     their interpreters as assimilation.[8] The antinomian hero
     proceeds boldly into a domain of psychological experience that
     would be too much for the ordinary individual. Powerful emotional
     and imaginal forces are evoked that would disorient and corrupt
     the average person, leading to fragmentation, dissociation,
     obsession, compulsion, even psychotic interludes. Heroes use these
     potentially overwhelming forces to strengthen their own will.
     Whatever fails to overwhelm the mystic becomes a force to be used.
     Thus the employment of feces as a holy ointment or a food requires
     a greater assimilation of "power" than a similar usage of mingled
     sexual fluids. Vimalananda tells us Aghoris use intoxicants freely
     -- not to lose their senses in a euphoric haze of irresponsibility
     -- but to master them, to contain their potentially disorienting
     effects so as to be better prepared for the emotional, imaginal,
     and physiological forces unleashed within themselves when they
     embark upon adventures on the subtle plane. "The purpose of
     intoxicants is to stimulate your nerves to be able to withstand
     the force of Kundalini Shakti" (Svoboda, 1994: 121).

     The vira also uses scandalous practices to weed out disciples
     unprepared for the dangers of heroic mysticism:

          The ordinary seeker feels revulsion when he hears about
          using wine in rituals or seating a naked girl on the
          left thigh with a hand on her left breast and her hand
          on his penis. That is how Dattatreya[9] got rid of all
          his so-called disciples except one, who became the Adi
          Nath.[10] Dattatreya was the guru of Lord Shiva
          himself, the Lord of Aghoris (Svoboda, 1986: 158)

     What sets heroes (viras) apart from ordinary seekers and mad
     saints is that distinctive aspect of kundalini, called virya -- a
     disciplined energy that keeps them stable amidst forces that would
     upset, confuse, and lead astray all lesser individuals. Evola
     (1992: 72) is clear on this point: "Virya [is] strength in an
     eminent sense, which is capable of establishing a continuity in
     one's behavior and action. The texts say that two factors
     seriously undermine virya: fear and desire (including hope)." What
     leaves us unstable is our very reasonable and well-grounded
     feelings of inferiority in the face of intoxicants, sexual beings
     of formidable power, and objects of overwhelming disgust. We
     either fear them and accept our inferiority immediately and
     without question, or else we think that we need them so badly that
     we place ourselves at their mercy.


                         The Dragon of Soul-Energy

     Vimalananda's reflections on the use of intoxicants by an Aghori
     articulates the viewpoint of one who is filled with the heroic
     energy and sober confidence of virya. He says Aghoris are
     "exhilarated" by the dual between their own will and the power of
     the intoxicant to undermine their conscious control. When they
     find that they are able to stand up to the intoxicant's
     debilitating power, they find that it "magnifies the force of
     their consciousness" (Svoboda, 1986: 175). No doubt the same could
     be said of any disturbing influence: that which our persona field
     defines as evil, impure, or disgusting, and above all that which
     would unhinge us by exposing us to a sexual arousal that could
     easily get out of control.

     Antinomian heroes test and cultivate their virya by exposing
     themselves gradually to substances and individuals of stronger and
     stronger disturbing power. If they should overreach and find
     themselves in a situation they cannot handle, they require an
     escape hatch, as Vimalananda indicates when he outlines a ritual
     for attracting an imaginary Bhairavi filled with wild sexual power
     and nearly irresistible seductiveness. He urges Svoboda to spurn
     the advances of such an enchanted woman and stand firm so as to
     attract the attention of a sexually aroused goddess. Then, if you
     sincerely believe you are competent to tangle with the goddess,
     take her for your Bhairavi -- otherwise steer clear of sex and
     treat her as a mother (Svoboda, 1994: 168). "You must work at your
     own rate of speed toward your own goal; no one is required to do
     anything" (Svoboda, 1986: 168).

     Each time we are able to stand firm against a powerful challenger,
     we have risen to the level of the corresponding threat to our
     stability and converted a potential enemy into a worthy opponent.
     To know when to rise to the challenge and when to gracefully
     retreat requires self-knowledge. This is the meaning of
     Trighantika's knowing the nature of lust. He knows lust as a power
     in himself, surging up out of the depths of his unconscious. He
     knows what he can take on and meet with the stability of his virya
     and what he cannot. He is by no means a young man. His grotesque
     appearance (disfigured like the root of an elephant's ear, throat
     swollen with goitre, nose severed, face withered and distorted as
     a vulva) suggests a history of formidable struggles that were very
     nearly lost. His growth in stability has required decades of
     discipline, no doubt cultivated through a series of encounters
     with potential worthy opponents of ever greater power -- each
     testing his ability to stand firm against a more powerful stirring
     of lust. Each victory in this stepwise process is understood as
     having "absorbed" or "assimilated" the power of the opponent, for
     we can only stand firm when the level of our own power is equal to
     that of the challenger. In Vimalananda's terms, the goal is to
     acquire enough power that one can take on a fierce and destructive
     goddess as a worthy opponent. He says Aghoris want to
     "self-identify with Shiva, the Lord of the Aghoris" (Svoboda,
     1986: 175). For only a god can successfully tangle with a god.

     Rumi makes this point with characteristic poetic economy and
     force:

          To change,
          a person must face the dragon of his appetites
          with another dragon, the life energy
          of the soul.
                                (Barks & Green, 1997: 74)

     These lines make it clear that what faces the opponent and
     assimilates its disturbing power is not at all the conscious ego.
     Rather the ego must call onto the field of battle "another
     dragon," one that has a fierceness and strength by no means
     identical with one's own conscious identity. From all that we have
     seen, it is clear that Rumi is referring to what Indian culture
     calls kundalini. The hero's virya has the alien and enchanted
     quality of kundalini and belongs as much to the domain of the
     unconscious as the appetites stirred up by the seductive Bhairavi
     and threatening to get out of control. The only force able to
     stand up against the formidable power of our own concupiscence is
     kundalini, "the life energy of the soul," the power of atman or
     brahman sensed physiologically, felt emotionally, and seen
     imaginally.

     We do not possess and dispose of our soul's energy as we do the
     ego-centered will-power which turns down dessert at the end of a
     meal. The appetites mobilized by an enchanted seducer are too much
     for our conscious will alone. We have to call up forces that are
     not wholly ours but which constitute that "greater being," the
     self or soul. Standing alone, the ego is no match for Apsarases
     with wild eyes and dripping genitals. To the isolated ego, the
     fierce and seductive gods are dragons too powerful to oppose. But
     virya, kundalini in its heroic aspect, is something else. It can
     be equally fierce and ruthless, a dragon itself.

     Therefore, when the mystics say that we must "assimilate" that
     which would disturb us, they are referring to our growing
     knowledge and familiarity with our own dragon, kundalini. Before
     setting out on the heroic path, we know ourselves only as our ego.
     But when we find, through carezza, that we can invoke the power of
     eros to hold our spasm reflex stable, we have had our first
     acquaintance with the life energy of the soul. It may, in fact,
     become too powerful for us. The erotic force that Rumi calls the
     life energy of the soul and that India calls kundalini can
     overwhelm us, driving us into symptoms of pathological insanity,
     immobilizing our ego for perhaps decades while the self learns to
     re-organize itself with no input from us. Such is the path of
     longing.

     To rise to the rung of scandal, we have to establish a conscious
     relationship with kundalini. Instead of retiring into madness or
     the comforting banality of the persona field, we acquaint
     ourselves with that life energy gradually. We observe, for
     example, that kundalini has the power to move us into an altered
     state of consciousness, lending emotional, imaginal, and
     physiological power to our arousal. Our genitals begin to flow
     with substances that are no longer messy and distasteful but
     numinous with mythic power. The wet spot in the bed becomes
     sacramental in its significance. Here is perhaps our second piece
     of evidence that we can be in touch with a life energy belonging
     to our soul and that it is capable of meeting the dragon of
     disgust on equal terms. To reach the point that feces has this
     significance requires a nearly unimaginable gain in familiarity
     with the dragon of kundalini.


                            Heroic Assimilation

     Evola says, only the assimilation of what disturbs us can bring
     about "the collapse of the illusory world," i.e., the world
     constructed by ego-consciousness in co-operation with the persona
     field. When the illusion collapses, we are moved to a point beyond
     good and evil. What we find disturbing is not merely "out there."
     It engages with our own unconscious, calling forth the dragon of
     concupiscence and disgust. Ultimately, it is our own psyche which
     disturbs us and is disturbed. Therefore, the cultivation of virya
     amounts to "becoming conscious of the supernatural forces taking
     place in our own soul" (Evola, 1992: 62-3).

     When Evola uses the expression "supernatural forces," he is trying
     to stick close to our subjective experience. The dragon of the
     self appears "supernatural" from the viewpoint of the ego -- just
     as "supernatural" as the seductive demon before our entranced
     eyes. But kundalini is not at all "supernatural"; it belongs to
     the wholeness of our body-mind and appears to be based in
     "entrained oscillators," beginning with a standing wave generated
     in our aorta. The difference between antinomian heroes and the
     rest of us is that heroes have become acquainted with that in
     themselves which most people shun. In striving to surmount the
     conventional dichotomy between good and evil, heroes come to know
     themselves. To learn the nature of lust is a formidable
     accomplishment in self-knowledge.

     Rumi and Evola have given us two alternate ways of viewing the
     process of heroic assimilation. Evola, although a European who
     writes in a philosophical language accessible to the West, has
     steeped himself in Tantric texts and is doing his best to
     represent for us the Indian perspective on heroic assimilation.
     His Hindu-influenced approach focuses our attention on the fierce
     and seductive being who faces us. We cannot deny that our
     challenger has far more power than we have ever thought ourselves
     able to command. But if we engage with that enchanted or divine
     being and arrive at the point of worthy opposition, we can say
     that we have "assimilated" the power of the challenger. What
     formerly intimidated us as belonging to another has become "ours."
     The Hindu approach says that by standing up to a threatening
     seducer who confronts us on the subtle plane, we absorb its power.
     We need a graded set of such imaginal "enemies" -- each time
     taking enough power from the last to stand a chance against the
     next. The source of the power we assimilate seems to be outside of
     us.

     Rumi, by contrast, speaks out of a Middle Eastern sensibility and
     focuses on that "other dragon," the life energy of our soul. In
     this case, when we are faced with a being of seemingly
     overwhelming power, it is not we (in the sense of our ego) that
     stands up to the challenger. Rather our ego "stands aside," as it
     were, and allows the dragon of our soul's life energy to rise to
     the challenge. An inner dragon meets an outer dragon, and we are
     inclined to say that we have assimilated nothing from our
     opponent. Rather, opposition has enabled us to became familiar
     with a power in ourselves that we had not known we had. We have
     "assimilated" some of the power of kundalini. Our ego has become
     familiar with unconscious resources it had not known existed.

     These contrasting positions of Evola and Rumi can be reconciled
     when we realize that our opponent's power is derived from
     ourselves, "the dragon of our appetites." The imaginal Bhairavi,
     or the enchanted woman we see with the eyes of erotic trance,
     disturbs us because she stirs up an instinctual response from the
     depths of our own unconscious. Even though we cannot doubt her
     reality, she has power over us because she unleashes energies in
     ourselves which we do not know how to control. From this
     perspective, everything belongs to psyche. The seductive demon is
     our own "projection," and the life energy of the soul is the
     integrative power of the self. An encounter with a demon of
     "superhuman power" reveals a dissociation in our psyche between
     the "good" that belongs to our ego and the unconscious "evil"
     (projection) that threatens it. Calling forth kundalini so as to
     convert the wild sexuality of the Bhairavi into worthy opposition,
     no longer stronger than my resources can handle, amounts to
     healing the dissociation. It is the hallmark of psychological
     integration to familiarize ourselves with the containing and
     balancing function of the self. In doing so we discover that we
     are a more powerful personality than we had thought, as we
     overcome the splits that had weakened us. This process of
     realizing that the Bhairavi's power is actually my own, and that I
     had been projecting it, is what C. G. Jung calls "withdrawing the
     projection":

          "Through this process the anima [read "Bhairavi"]
          forfeits the daemonic power of an autonomous complex;
          she can no longer exercise the power of possession,
          since she is depotentiated. She is no longer the
          guardian of treasures unknown; no longer Kundry,
          daemonic messenger of the Grail, half divine and half
          animal; no longer is the soul to be called "Mistress,"
          but a psychological function of an intuitive nature,
          akin to what the primitives mean when they say, `He has
          gone into the forest to talk with the spirits' or `My
          snake spoke with me' or, in the mythological language of
          infancy, `A little bird told me'" (Jung, CW 7: ¦374).

     This same process of assimilation is to be found in myth. For
     example, the god Shiva is a mountain ascetic who destroys Kama,
     the God of Lust and Concupiscence, with a single glance from his
     "third eye," the opening of his brow chakra which is the locus of
     divine vision, the ability to see the realities of the subtle
     plane. A single ray of light blasts forth from the brow of the God
     of Yoga, Sex, Destruction, and Death, and reduces Kama to cinders.
     Psychologically this means that when our erotic trance opens our
     eyes to the realities of the subtle plane, mere lust can no longer
     exist. Lust is the outer form of an esoteric reality: namely an
     emotional and physiological force that belongs to the life energy
     of the soul. Opening our eyes to the subtle plane enables us to
     see that physical-emotional force in its imaginal form, as an
     enchanted or divine component of our soul's life. To see lust with
     the eyes of imagination reveals its potential divinity, its
     spiritual possibilities.

     The pashus among Shiva's followers, those who are leashed to
     conventional definitions of good and evil, may pray to Shiva to
     intervene on their behalf and incinerate for them the demon of
     lust that would lead them astray into dereliction of their marital
     duties and beast-like slavery to their appetites. They hope to
     remain unconscious of the whole process. The Shiva they pray to is
     an exteriorized ("projected") manifestation of kundalini; and the
     Bhairavi who strirs their lust is another. They want the
     integrating power of kundalini to destroy the disturbing power of
     kundalini without ever knowing how it happened.

     The viras who follow Shiva, however, perform vajroli mudra, ritual
     intercourse involving the absorption of mingled sexual fluids
     through their genital organs, and with a partner to whom they are
     not married. Calling forth kundalini through physiological arousal
     and the subtle plane through japa (the recitation of mantras that
     brings the words to life), they self-identify with kundalini and
     effectively become a "Second Shiva," destroying Kama with the
     light of their own erotic trance. What the vira does is impure and
     evil in the eyes of the pashu; but as an earthly slayer of the God
     of Lust, the vira is familiar with a loftier form of holiness that
     can only be seen with esoteric eyes.


                               Non-Attachment

     Vimalananda says: "Aghora teaches you to embrace the world,
     embrace impurity, embrace darkness, and push through forcibly into
     light. You must catch Shakti [i.e., kundalini] by the hair and
     drag her to you" (Svoboda, 1986: 169). Hundreds of miles away from
     Bombay's Banganga Smashan, where Svoboda cremated his guru, and
     about a hundred years earlier, Alexandra David-Neel's journeys
     through Tibet brought her into conversation with a naljorpa ("one
     who has attained perfect serenity"). She asked him if he was,
     indeed, "free from all defilement." His answer could have been
     given by Vimalananda: "He who tries to get out [of defilement]
     only sinks in deeper. I roll in it like a pig. I digest it and
     turn it into gold dust, into a brook of pure water. To fashion
     stars out of dog dung, that is the Great Work" (David-Neel, 1971:
     7).

     Paradoxically, what the antinomian hero achieves by "rolling in
     impurity like a pig" is ultimately no different from what the
     orthodox mystic strives for: "non-attachment." "Non-attachment" or
     "detachment" is a universal precondition for mystical attainment,
     as much fundamental to Christianity as to Hinduism, Buddhism, or
     Islam, as Richard P. O'Brien indicates in his massive compendium
     of Roman Catholic theology:

          Such union [of the soul with God] is impossible,
          however, apart from complete abandonment of, and
          detachment from, all creatures and worldly realities.
          This orientation was most pronounced in The Cloud of
          Unknowing (O'Brien, 1981: 1065).

     Orthodox mystics attempt to achieve non-attachment by conscious
     disciplines that emphasize self-denial: penance, fasting,
     observing silence, and the like. They hope to directly remove
     themselves from the impure and evil forces that would corrupt
     their spiritual intentions by engaging their natural propensity
     for instinctual gratification. The antinomian heroes, by contrast,
     roll in those impurities "like a pig." Instead of shunning the
     sources of disturbance, they seek to familiarize themselves with
     them as thoroughly as they can. They seek not to avoid their lust
     but to learn its nature.

     By calling up the dragon of kundalini to meet the dragon of their
     appetites, they neutralize the effects of the challenger. The
     dragon of their concupiscence becomes incapable of disturbing
     them. In this way they become non-attached. For it is always our
     attachments that disturb us. We are attached to our safety and
     therefore disturbed by our terror, attached to our chastity and
     therefore disturbed by our lust, attached to our goodness and
     purity and therefore disturbed by evil and impurity. These
     disturbances are conquered and turned into non-attachment when the
     antinomian hero confronts the challenger with the dragon of the
     soul's life energy. Kundalini under the aspect of virya does the
     work of facing down the disturber, and the ego is "detached" from
     what disturbed it.

     Achieving non-attachment through antinomian confrontation,
     however, provides an additional benefit. The energy-level or
     arousal of unconscious forces is raised to very high levels,
     fueling an erotic trance which transforms the profane world of
     exoterism into the mythic world of esoterism. Antinomian heroes
     acquaint themselves with the forces of a greater cosmos which they
     feel in their own bodies as participants in the Oneness of all
     that is. In doing so, they detach themselves from the profane
     outer form and familiarize themselves with the sacred inner
     substance which they feel as an "energy" that floods their
     body-mind. They perceive that the impure harbors the pure and evil
     harbors the good. They avoid the defilements of lust, desire,
     hope, and repugnance by a non-attachment which "works through" the
     disturbance and does not merely avoid it.

     In India there are traditionally five sorts of defilement:[11]
     wine, meat, fish, parched grain, and ritual intercourse. All five
     are considered "impure" by orthodox Hindus. If Westerners wish to
     practice such a religious heroism, they might need to substitute
     something far more disturbing than meat, fish, and parched grain.
     But we ought to be suspicious of all attempts to slavishly imitate
     the practices of those whose consciousness was formed in a foreign
     cultural environment. The most natural form of heroic sainthood
     would avoid such artificial constructions. It is enough -- indeed
     quite a lot -- to face up to those substances, forces, situations,
     and individuals that are a danger to me. If we look into our
     hearts, we will see that our most disturbing opponents are those
     that cause "uncertainty, dilemma, scruple, and doubt"; for the
     most fundamental form of impurity is our inner division (Silburn,
     1988: 163). Wilson (1988: 213) says, "Anything -- even including
     religion -- can act as a poison against perception, or as a
     support for contemplation of the Reality."

     These observers have recognized the essential point, namely that
     an advance beyond conventional prejudices on the one hand or
     divine madness on the other can only be made by those with genuine
     psychological integrity. We all have a sufficiently intimidating
     array of uncertainties, doubts, and confusions to provide us a
     lifetime of material for heroic struggle. The true religious
     heroes work with what their fate has provided them. They meet the
     splits in their psyche head-on and call up psychic energy that has
     been cut off and alienated from ordinary consciousness. Their own
     psyche sets them the challenges and provides just the right worthy
     opponents in optimal sequence to guarantee a spiritual practice
     (sadhana) precisely designed for their own soul.


                       Dangers on the Path of Scandal

     I do not mean to suggest that the average individual should set
     off on her own without any guidance or supervision. The heroic
     path of the antinomian saints is always a dangerous undertaking.
     All spokesmen for the path of the vira insist that it must not be
     pursued without the guidance of a guru who knows both the nature
     of the path and the strengths and weakness of the disciple.
     "Without the guru, the sadhaka[12] is apt to slip, and when he
     slips he falls all the way to hell" (Dimock, 1989: 196).

     According to legend, even the great Matsyendra fell. Matsyendra
     (ninth century, c.e.) is the founder of the Natha sect, a
     Shiva-oriented Tantric system which strives for the
     "transubstantiation of the body." According to the legend,
     Matsyendra failed a test set for him by an enraged goddess. When
     she unveiled her sexual charms, he lost his yogic consciousness
     and became aroused with lust. The outer object of lustful desire
     caused him to forget the resource of kundalini, and he saw the
     goddess as a potential sexual partner in the profane sense. The
     erotic trance of yogic consciousness was destroyed by the dragon
     of his lust. The terrible goddess seized her opportunity and she
     cursed Matsyendra to fall asleep in the Kingdom of the Women, also
     called the Kingdom of the Plantain Forest.

     He had been unconscious for some time and was only three days away
     from death at the hands of sixteen hundred women, when his
     disciple, Gorakh, learned of his plight and disguised himself as a
     woman, a drummer with a female musical troop, to gain entrance
     into the Plantain Kingdom. When the music began, Gorakh's drum
     sang out, "Awaken Matsyendra, Gorakh has come!" This brought
     Matsyendra to ordinary consciousness. But Gorakh had to restore
     his guru to yogic consciousness, i.e., awareness of his kundalini,
     before they both could escape. D. G. White, who relays several
     versions of this legend, comments on its psychological meaning:

          Matsyendra's Kadali[13] [Plantain] Kingdom was
          undoubtedly a forest of women's thighs [cf. the
          banana-like shape of plantains, growing close together
          in bunches], in the midst of which he nearly lost his
          life -- albeit through a form of tantric practice -- but
          where he in the end realized yogic immortality through
          Gorakh's intervention. . . . A woman's thighs can lead
          to the death of a yogin, but they can also constitute a
          "boat to immortality" (D. G. White, 1997: 239).

     The great danger along the path of the antinomian hero is always
     losing consciousness. Matsyendra falls into sexual lethargy when
     he meets the sexually endowed goddess whose charms overwhelm his
     own power to "step aside" and allow kundalini to surge forth and
     meet her as a worthy opponent. Furthermore, he falls not only to
     the level of ordinary consciousness in which he might have turned
     aside his gaze or perhaps summoned his powers so as to view her as
     a mother rather than as a sexual challenger. He has fallen all the
     way to a life-endangering sleep. Lost in a forest of women's
     thighs, he has fallen victim to his lust and can regain the
     psychic integrity that Toomer calls "the seed that outgrows its
     pod" only with help. Gorakh, we are led to believe, although only
     a disciple and not yet the Nath Siddha[14] he is destined to
     become, is prepared for the Plantain Forest. He never loses his
     yogic consciousness and therefore has his lust under control.
     Because he is Matsyendra's disciple, we are encouraged to believe
     his attainments are not greater than those of his guru. He simply
     has the advantage that he was not caught unawares by a hostile
     goddess. Those who remember this tale are thereby forewarned that
     no degree of attainment on the heroic path leaves the vira
     invulnerable to surprise. The antinomian path is dangerous for
     everyone.

     The "yogic consciousness" the legend speaks of is what we have
     called non-dissociative erotic trance, a state of kundalini
     arousal which is more than physiological and emotional. It is an
     imaginal state as well, in which the eyes are opened to subtle
     realities which reveal the esoteric meaning in such mundane but
     disturbing objects of desire as the thighs of a potential partner.
     Vimalananda has given us a hint of what this form of consciousness
     must be when he speaks of the Aghori's ability to eat his own
     feces "with real love for it": "Feces is just as much a part of
     Atma as your body and your consciousness are; who is feeding what
     to whom? The Atma is feeding the Atma to Atma: It is all the play
     of Atma" (Svoboda, 1986: 183).

     What is true of the object of our disgust must also be true of the
     object of our desire. Muktananda discovered this truth during a
     period of his training when his guru had ordered him to spend an
     indefinite length of time continuing his practice in an isolated
     location. In the beginning all went well, but eventually
     Muktananda was seriously disturbed by sexual arousal and an
     uncontrollable erection whenever he sat down to meditate. His
     whole body "boiled with lust," and "the agony of [his] sexual
     organ" was beyond description (Muktananda, 1978: 92). Then, while
     trying to meditate despite his arousal, he began to see a red
     circle. Finally -- and worst of all to Muktananda's way of
     thinking -- a naked woman appeared in the circle and began dancing
     with sexual abandon. Muktananda examined his life from every
     perspective without determining the source of the lust that had so
     disturbed his yogic consciousness. He tried to control it with
     meditation and fasting but found that, like Gopi Krishna, he could
     not sleep. Images of the naked woman plagued him day and night. He
     thought the dragon of his sexual desire was the fruit of his sins.
     "Tearing my loincloth, my generative organ dug forcibly into my
     navel, where it remained for some time. Who was raping me like
     this?" (Ibid., 95).

     In the end, he required the guidance of others. The third one, a
     rather disreputable-looking holy man, the avadhuta[15] Zipruanna,
     interpreted the experience for him and explained that sexual
     arousal during the practice of meditation portends a very high
     level of attainment. As for the Bhairavi of his visions, Zipruanna
     said:

          Why do you worry about whether a woman is naked or
          clothed? The Goddess takes all forms. When you saw that
          woman, you should have remembered the Goddess Chit
          Shakti [the Goddess of the Power of Consciousness] and
          looked at Her. . . . It is your attitude that bears
          fruit according to your conviction. From now on, you
          should understand whatever forms you see, good or bad,
          to be forms of Chiti [Consciousness] (Muktananda, 1978:
          106).

     Muktananda, not being an antinomian saint, a follower of the
     so-called "left-hand path" (vama-marga), was completely unprepared
     for the shadowy dimension of sex. Evidently he had thought that
     meditating on his "Sadguru," the esoterically divine Nityananda,
     would be sufficient in his quest for enlightenment. He thought he
     could eschew "impurities." But clearly his exposure to the greater
     cosmos of the subtle plane could not be so conveniently limited.
     Whether we say that the goddess of cosmic consciousness
     (Chit-Shakti) had other ideas or whether we take a more
     psychological approach and say that when his ego was exposed to
     kundalini the disturbing shadow-dimension of his psychic wholeness
     had to be confronted, in either case he had to contend with the
     same dangers that the antinomian saints have accepted as their
     starting point.

     He had to apprentice himself to an antinomian saint in order to
     convert the obstacle of his autonomous lust into the spiritual
     strength that would make him a great guru. Zipruanna was a sort of
     modern version of Trighantika:

          The first time I visited him, he was defecating in a
          corner; as I approached, he began to rub his faeces all
          over his body. I sat down quite close to him and found
          that he emitted a sweet fragrance -- he didn't smell bad
          at all. The next time I went to see him, he was sitting
          on a rubbish dump. Even then the filth would not touch
          him. I didn't have the courage to go up close; so I
          stood at a distance. After a little while, he came down
          off the rubbish heap. I washed his feet. A fragrance
          like the ashtagandha (a fragrant herb) was coming from
          his body. Zipruanna had a great love for me. Even now I
          still wonder at the attainments of that great soul. I
          once asked him, "Anna, why are you sitting in that
          filth?" He replied, "Muktananda, the filth that's inside
          is far worse than this. Think about it. Man's body is
          just a bag of shit and piss. Isn't it?" I fell silent.
          Zipruanna was a great avadhuta, the crown jewel among
          saints (Muktananda, 1978: 104-5).

     Obviously, Zipruanna had, like Trighantika a thousand years
     earlier, mastered lust and feces. Although great yogins are
     sometimes said to have sweet-smelling feces, it seems more likely
     that Muktananda's nose found the feces-smeared avadhuta to be
     "sweet-smelling" because it was under the influence of
     Muktananda's "attitude": "It is your attitude that bears fruit
     according to your conviction." Muktananda's conviction included
     the view that Zipruanna was a "jewel among saints." He approached
     Zipruanna with esoteric eyes and nose; and the fact that feces can
     smell as sweet as costly ointment is closely linked to the central
     message Zipruanna had to impart: namely that the lascivious maiden
     of Muktananda's visions was the outer form of the goddess of
     cosmic consciousness who is none other than kundalini.


                            That All May Be One

     The perception that good and evil are the same, that it is "Atma
     feeding Atma to Atma," is based on the very high-level
     subtle-plane recognition that every entity, situation, action, and
     relationship of the empirical world is a disguise behind which
     vibrates the ultimate reality which is sometimes called atman,
     sometimes brahman, and sometimes chit (consciousness). The divine
     lurks behind and within every profane reality. Feuerstein
     (1989:117) places this realization at least 3000 years ago, at the
     writing of the Brihad-Aranyaka ("Great-Forest")-Upanishad, where
     the sage Yajnavalkya says: "He who breathes with your inhalation
     (prana) is your Self (atman), which is in everything. He who
     breathes with your exhalation (apana) is your Self, which is in
     everything" (III.4.1). Attending to the Middle Eastern tradition
     of Sufism, Wilson (1988: 71) has reached the same conclusion, "In
     effect the mystic sees God in all things, but is told by Law that
     some of these things are prohibited: their `inner' is divine, but
     their `outer' is forbidden."

          What is the criterion of purity? asks Abhinavagupta [the
          Kashmiri Tantric reformer who told us the story of
          Trighantika]. That alone is pure which is identical to
          Consciousness, everything else is impure. No distinction
          between pure and impure exists for him who regards the
          entire universe as identical with Consciousness
          (Silburn, 1988: 164-5).

     It is still a stretch for us to realize how it is that
     "consciousness" may be identical with God -- and how it is that
     this mysterious no-thing of consciousness can describe the
     esoteric substance of feces, a plantain, or a woman's thigh.
     Whatever experience we may have had concerning the slimy mess of
     mingled genital fluids momentarily taking on sacramental
     significance, however, does give us a hint as to how things are
     "transubstantiated" through an erotic trance. What is important at
     the rung of scandal is to see how it is that antinomian practices
     strengthen and integrate the psyche through "assimilation" or
     "familiarization" with the power of kundalini that is alien to the
     ego. And that when this integration process has proceeded far
     enough, one steps beyond good and evil by recognizing that at
     bottom good and evil are equally the play of a cosmic energy that
     some call consciousness and some God.

     At the level of the rung of scandal, the central experience is
     "assimilation." Antinomian heroes experience thereby an increase
     in "power" or "energy," the life energy of the soul. Kundalini
     surges forth in them -- not to destroy the ego and bring them
     madness, but to face down the opponent that disturbs them. Their
     observing ego remains conscious throughout and observes the
     integrating dragon of kundalini as it confronts the disturbing
     dragon of their appetites. Precisely what it is that they have
     realized remains unconscious to them. For those standing on the
     heroic rung of the diamond ladder, the force that has taken them
     beyond good and evil is still unexamined. Claims that it is
     consciousness, kundalini, God, or "the Reality" are still lost in
     the mists of theological speculation -- something to be taken on
     faith. Explicating the stages by which that mysterious energy
     surges forth will be the task encountered on the rung of the
     subtle-body.



     ----------------------

       1. Although the madness that marked the end of Nietzsche's life
          has been attributed to syphilis, the presence of the
          infectious disease that has been our foremost symbol of
          sexual indiscretion before the arrival of AIDS, has never
          been enough to silence those, like Jung, who have found the
          form of the philosopher-poet's madness to lie in his overly
          intellectual denial of the body and instinctuality, a kind of
          wishful-thinking that the shadowy demons of our psyche have
          ultimately no reality. For Jung this is symbolized in a dream
          Neitzsche reports in which he has to overcome his repugnance
          and swallow a toad (Jung, CW 5: ¦47n, ¦585n). Trighantika is
          our "toad."

       2. Ps. 133: "How good it is and how pleasant for brothers to
          live together! It is fragrant as oil poured upon the head and
          falling over the beard, Aaron's beard, when the oil runs down
          over the collar of his vestments. It is like the dew of
          Hermon falling upon the hills of Zion. There the Lord bestows
          his blessing, life for evermore."

       3. The earliest teacher of the tradition known as Hatha Yoga,
          Goraksha, lived perhaps a century and a half before
          Trighantika. The earliest written reference to yoga as a
          spiritual discipline of mind and body dates from the
          Taittiriya-Upanishad in the sixth or seventh century, b.c.e.
          (Feuerstein, 1990). But a figurine of a Shiva-like god,
          sitting in apparent yogic meditation with erect phallus,
          wearing animal masks and surrounded by animals (Pashupati,
          the Lord of the Beasts) shows that the tradition of yogic
          bodily discipline and sexual arousal reaches back as far as
          the Harappan Age (2700-1900 b.c.e.) (Feuerstein, Kak, &
          Frawley, 1995: 61-76).

       4. Babu: Hindi for "lord," also a country squire or
          distinguished man; a title of respect (Fischer-Schreiber,
          1989).

       5. Kali, the black goddess, resembles the Smashan Tara whom
          Vimalananda designed for the cover of Svoboda's Aghora
          (1986). She is naked, usually standing on a corpse, dressed
          in a necklace of human skulls and a skirt of human forearms,
          and has a tongue lolling far out of her mouth, sometimes even
          to her knees. Kripal's thesis is that the lolling tongue of
          Kali is an erotic non-discriminator between the pure and the
          impure and that Ramakrishna is internally identified with
          Kali. The title of his book on Ramakrishna is Kali's Child.

       6. Samadhi: "a state of consciousness that lies beyond waking,
          dreaming, and deep sleep, and in which mental activity
          ceases. It is a total absorption in the object of meditation"
          (Fischer-Schreiber, 1989).

       7. Vimalananda's model of an unspiritual man was Ghandi,
          "Everyone became truly materialistic, greedy, for fame or
          money or both" (Svoboda, 1997: 302).

       8. The parallel construct in Jung's psychology is the rather
          vaguely described process of "withdrawing the projection,"
          which refers to recognizing that the imaginal forces that
          confront me are not, in the final analysis, "out there," but
          are a function of my own unconscious. Withdrawing the
          projection means consciously to "make them mine" and
          integrate them into a psyche centered in the "self," within
          which the ego is a crucial participant but by no means the
          center of activity.

       9. Dattatreya, an historical individual (fifth century c.e.?),
          the teacher of "post-classical yoga," involving the
          confluence of the teachings of the Upanishads, Tantra, and
          Hatha Yoga. Legends celebrate him as a "crazy-wisdom adept."
          He is claimed by both Shaivites and Vaishnavites as an
          incarnation of their favorite god (Feuerstein, 1990).

      10. Adinatha or Adi Nath, the original teacher of the Kaula
          tradition (possibly as early as the fifth century c.e.) which
          teaches enlightenment as a bodily event. The agent for
          transformation is the kundalini-shakti which is also known as
          kula, hence the name "Kaula" for the sect (Feuerstein, 1990).

      11. Pancha-tattva, "the five elements"; or pancha-ma-kara, "the
          ritual of the five ms," as each of the forbidden substances
          begins with the letter m (Evola, 1992: 118).

      12. Sadhaka: one who follows a sadhana, or spiritual practice.

      13. White points out that Kadali or Kajjali, is the alchemical
          name for the black substance, mercuric sulfide, which is "a
          poison for the uninitiated [but] an elixir of immortality for
          the consummate alchemist."

      14. Nath Siddha: an adept of the Natha lineage. Traditionally,
          there are nine Nath Siddhas, legendary founders of the sect.
          Their names are given variously; but the two historical
          figures, Matsyendra and Gorakh, are nearly always among them
          (Feuerstein, 1990).

      15. Avadhuta: one who has "cast off" all worldly things and
          concerns and bows to no social convention (Feuerstein, 1990).