Open Integral

Andy asked me to comment on the recent controversy over a report on child abuse in Aborginal communities. I had been thinking of posting something on the issue, but perhaps not from an ‘expected’ pov.

First let me describe the problem for those who may not be aware of the issue. Basically there is serious child abuse in many Aboriginal communities throughout Australia. There has been for a long time. The current controversy concerns a report on communities in the Northern Territory and it found that therte is abuse in every Aboriginal community in the NT. But the problem exists in other states, particularly WA, QLD, NSW and SA, and particularly so in remote communities. The detail of the abuse is quite disturbing. Essentially Aboriginal society has broken down and in some communities there is a state of lawlessness. Under this chaos children suffer from all sorts of neglect and abuse, physical, emotional and mental, and of course sexual, although this is only part of the larger problem. It is not unusual for children to be used for sex by adults, but it is also true that there are no rules amongst children and so children abuse each other. STI’s are rife amongst Aboriginal children. There is exposure to X-rated pornography, alcohol, cannabis and an epidemic of petrol sniffing. Children do not attend school and parents spend money on alcohol. This leads to malnourishment and health problems. It is not unusual to hear of boys and girls at age 10-11 with syphillis and brain damage from petrol sniffing. The child abuse is part of a larger problem of extreme violence against women and high alcohol abuse.

I’ll write more on this on the weekend but what I will say now is that I disagree with the approaches taken by both the right and left on this issue. I think they are both wrong. This is because all sides of the debate refuse to recognise the root cause of the problem. Aboriginal culture is effectively a dead mother and modern Aborigines are still attached to a breast that can give no nourishment. Aboriginal culture, in SD terms, was at purple/red. Colonization disturbed the balance and Aboriginal society has collapsed back to beige. However, many Aborigines indulge in a false hope that they can hang onto their ‘culture’. I believe it is not a culture worth hanging onto, but no one will admit it.

The solution is to recreate an Aboriginality that can engage the postmodern world.

Following on from something Edward said – I agree that Tantra needs to be transcended and included. I also think that much of our sexual morality should likewise be either included or transcended. As far as I’m concerned a great deal of our sexual morality is based on mythic thinking. When you examine sexual mores from a rational/integral perspective you realise that many of them are irrational.

The best way to sort out the irrationality is to examine specific instances. For example, imagine it’s Spring. It’s a beautiful sunny day so you decide to take your family for a walk in the park. You notice that the season has encouraged young lovers to cuddle and kiss. It gives you a wistful feeling and your partner comments on how romantic it is. Your daughter notices one couple lying on the grass in a close embrace and a passionate kiss. She says ‘yuck’ as many kids might and you shrug your shoulders and think how nice it would be to experience the first bloom of new love.

Now transplant that scene to India or any Muslim country. Instead of having wistful thoughts you are outraged at the display of public indecency. The police are called and the young lovers are arrested and charged with public obscenity. The local governor mkaes a public statement about the decline in public morals and hints at the dire consequences of allowing degenerate Western morality to affect the youth of India/Muslim country.

Of course as Westerners we know that kissing and cuddling in public is not a sign of the decline of public morals. We regard kissing as a perfectly acceptable thing. But not so of course, in India or Muslim countries, where unmarried couples holding hands is scandalous. I don’t think it is arrogant of us to think that Hindu/Muslim concerns are somewhat silly and overwrought. Society will survive quite well if couples can hold hands and kiss in public.

So let us return to our first scenario, but this time the couple kissing passionately have gone a step further. They are having sex. It’s not secretive. They are naked and in the throws of passion. Your daughter says ‘yuck’ as many kids might and you shrug your shoulders and think how nice it would be to experience such passion again. But this is never going to happen is it? Our own moral guardians will be shouting about the decline in public morals. You may even feel that this scenario is a step too far. But is it? What actual harm is being done? I can’t think of the name of the city, it’s German, I think it’s Hamburg, but there is a public park where nude sun bathing is permitted. There seems to be no harm in this, but it would be considered outrageous in New York.

I’ve encountered a couple having sex. We were walking on a beach when we saw them engrossed in the act. We had two girls with us. They weren’t shocked, just fascinated and even excited they had seen ’someone doing it’. We turned back of course, but behind us was a group of four Tibetan monks (this is true) who continued on. We turned to see one taking a photo of three of them with the couple in the background. They thought it was hilarious and we found the whole scene rather surreal. Then another group of people walked on. I do have one regret, that we didn’t stay to see the reaction of the couple when they realised all these people, including monks, had arrived. No one was shocked and everyone was smiling about it.

It seems to me that there is nothing wrong with having sex in public. There is no harm to society. It will not collapse because of a decline of public morality. Nor will children be harmed if they see people having sex. My brother encountered a couple on a school excursion. They threw stones at the couple for a laugh. My parents didn’t go into moral shock on hearing that he had been exposed to public sex and the story is sometimes repeated with amusement.

It’s the attitude that matters. We do not teach children that kissing in public is highly immoral, even sinful, so they learn to think nothing of it. The same can apply with sex, in fact in many tribal societies children do witness all sorts of sexual activity and some tribal groups treat this with humour. We would say that these tribal children have become sexualised, but wouldn’t a Hindu/Muslim say that about our children witnessing (shock, horror) kissing?

In other words, aren’t our sexual mores every bit as irrational as Hindus/Muslims? Wouldn’t a rational/integral society get rid of irrational morality? Do you have a line you think shouldn’t be crossed? Do you think couples should have sex in public places? Why not? Does that line exist for rational reasons or do you hold irrational moral beliefs?

On the theme of Aryan India versus indigenous India – there are several stories that subvert the Aryan moral order. The story of Yellama is one such story. It concerns Renuka, the dutiful wife of the Aryan Brahmin Jamadagni. One day she was performing her usual task of fetching water from the river when she heard laughter. She went to investigate and saw the god Chitraratha ’sporting’ in the water with apsaras, celestial nymphs. Now I emphasised ’sporting’ because this is a prudish way to say that he was engaged in erotic play with naked nymphs. To digress – this description invokes the well-known story of Krishna and the Gopis. One day Krishna hears laughter and he climbs a tree where he spies cow maids, Gopis ’sporting’ in the river. He speaks to them and they are embarrassed and try to cover themselves, but he seduces them and asks them to reveal their beauty. According to some traditions the Gopis are married and are all 14 years of age. There are more erotic depictions of this story with Krishna seducing them. There is the story that Krishna has the sexual prowess to satisfy a thousand apsara. Anyway, to return to Renuka. She becomes aroused at the sight of this open erotic play and strips and joins Chitraratha and the apsara. Unfortunately for her, her husband Jamadagni has the power to read her mind and he sees her naked in the river. He becomes enraged that his wife has broken the dharma of an obediant and subservient Aryan wife and summons his five sons. He tells them of their mother’s shame and orders them to go and kill her immediately. Of course, Muslims would understand this as an honour killing and let’s not pretend that Aryan men do not also perform honour killings. But to continue…four of the sons refuse to obey their father’s order, but the youngest, Parashurama obeys his father. First he kills his brothers for cowardice and disobediance and then he runs to the river. Luckily for Renuka the goddess Kali, in the form of Yellama, finds out about this and so she takes the form of Renuka to fool Parashurama. The ploy works and Parashurama decapitates the goddess Yellama. When his mother hears all the commotion and appears naked before Parashurama, her head intact, he is confused. The goddess speaks and tells him of his crime and he immediately repents. Jamadagni is killed and the four brothers are brought back to life, but in a strange twist they come back as eunuchs as punishment for the unmanly cowardice.

The story is clearly about Renuka following her own eros and deliberately turning her back on Aryan dharma. The brutality of the Aryan system is portrayed by Jamadagni who demands a cruel response. It is a goddess who does not have a male consort, Yellama, who intervenes.

The goddess Yellama is still worshipped today. She is the patron goddess of prostitutes, is worshipped by hijra, and is particularly venerated in parts of Karnataka. She is particularly known as the goddess of the devidasi in Karnataka. Part of the Yellama cult involved the nagna puja, or naked puja. On auspicious nights the women of the cult would worship naked to honour Renuka’s decision. There was also a ceremony where young girls who were to be dedicated to Yellama as devidasi would walk naked from a river to the temple during daylight. These ceremonies were banned in 92. As the region became more accessible and the ceremony more well known, men would gather to leer at the girls. To prevent this the girls would attempt to cover themselves with neem branches, but there was also condemnation from puritannical Aryans and Hinayana Ambedkarites Buddhists (an anti-caste reform movement noted for converting untouchables to Buddhism to escape the cruelties of the caste system, their concern in this case was that untouchable girls were being sold into prostitution – the trouble with this is that conservative Aryans used this as an excuse to suppress the Yellama cult, but it still survives underground).

The Yellama cult was a revival of an earlier goddess religion. The Aryans have tried to suppress the goddess, but she has a habit of popping up. The goddess religion of India is notable for its acceptance of nudity and sex as a religious sacrament. There are remnants of goddess worship all over India. Tantra has its roots in pre-Aryan goddess religion.

Next – the story of the goddess Bahuchara Mata, the patron deity of the hijra.

The comment about ‘jailbait’ reminded me that I was going to write something that expanded on the theme of Tantra. The main point is that Tantra arose in a culture that had quite a radically different understanding of sex to that of the Judeo-Christians and colonial and post-colonial Aryans of India.

Even though modern Aryans are rather prudish they do understand that ‘kama’ is one of the four aims (purusharthas) of life they are somewhat squeamish about sex. This is not the way it used to be at all and it’s hard to understand how this attitude arose. In Tantra the aim of spiritual practice is both bhoga and yoga, pleasure and discipline.

Indigenous India seems to have been predominantly sex positive. One of the consequences of this is that there is no shame or sin attached to choosing sex as a trade or skill. In India this is called a jati and some jatis have become sub-castes. This means that in times past women chose to become consorts or devidasi. They were trained in dance, music, poetry, conversation and the erotic arts. They did not marry and were free to have lovers. As the profession became established the daughters of devidasi wouyld themselves become devidasi. In times past the devidasi was an honoured jati and some devidasi became famous and were able to sit alongside the Rani. It became a way for lower caste women to increase their status. Some devidasi were valued for their diplomatic skills.

Of course the Judeo-Christian tradition condemns any type of sex outside church approved marriage. The Old Testament is quite scathing about what they called Qadishtu. The modern term is the decidely pejorative ‘prostitute’ or even worse, whore. But the reality is that the goddess religions of the time included forms of sacred prostitution. In Egypt young female devotees of Hathor would travel around Egypt and sing and dance and offer their bodies to ensure later fertility. Similar practices occured in the religions of Astarte/Ishtar. At the temple to Artemis in Ephestus young menstruating females (of whatever age) would offer themselves to men who came to the temple. The men would toss a coin into their laps and then go off to have sex. This rite was performed as a sacrifice to ensure fertility.

Of course there has been considerable speculation that Mary Magdalene may have been a Qadishtu, but there is no such speculation about Helene, the companion of Simon Magus. There is a very direct suggestion she was a sacred prostitute and Simon Magus even claimed she was the reincarnation of Helen of Troy. This is actually an important clue because Helen came from Sparta, which worshipped her as a form of Artemis. Of course we all know the story of how the Catholic Church and Pope Gregory declared that Mary Magdalene was a common prostitute, a slur that has now been officially retracted.

But to return to India – a similar slur had been aimed at the devidasi by a coalition of conservative Aryans and the British. Under the anti-nautch laws of the late 19th century the jati of the devidasi was banned as common prostitution. The word nautch is a derivation of naccha, a northern word for devidasi, particularly as a dancing girl. One of the ironies and hypocrisies of this morally driven repression is that the much celebrated national dance, the Bharatanatyam, is derived from the arts of the devidasi. Of course the modern, nationalist Aryan is proud of the traditional arts, but they are embarrassed about its origins. The anti-nautch laws nearly saw the other devidasi arts disappear, but a few struggled to preserve them, particularly (and perhaps oddly) the Theosophical society.

But here I want to stress that modern Bharatanatyam is a much modified and sanitised version of the original. To begin with sculptures and artwork of precolonial India show that dancers wore very little and often performed topless. Today’s dancers are well covered. The other thing is that some of the original dances were very erotic and the dancer would and could work herself to the point of orgasm. When we go into the theory of Indian aesthetics first expounded by Bharata (whose work the Bharatanatyam is named after) and expanded on by Abhinavagupta we note that the erotic sentiment (shringara rasa) was particularly connected to dance.

Now what is interesting about the hypocrisy is that in the West we have no trouble in understanding that female dancers, singers and actors should be paid for their skills. The difference between the East and the West is that in the East these dancers has also amstered the erotic arts and were highly valued as a result. In the West any suggestion of accepting money for sexual skill is condemned. A side note to this is that the Japanese Geisha may very well have been a form of devidasi, a tradition that travelled to Japan through Buddhism (although I would need to verify this). The modern Geisha does not give sexual favours but the traditional Geisha certainly did.

Sadly the modern prostitute in India is a greatly abused and degraded figure. The traditional consort and devidasi might choose just a few clients and act more like a high class escort. But the common prostitute is often part of the endentured labor/sex slave trade run by criminal networks. She has no choice over customers and is forced to service many in the one night. Naturally this is highly destructive to body, mind and soul and many girls become HIV positive by the time they are in their early twenties. The devidasi system has also been corrupted by the Aryans, both priests and high caste landowners. They are not taught the traditional arts but instead are used by corrupt priests to raise revenues for temples.

What has this to do with Tantra? The devidasi would also function as consorts to Tantric adepts and some became quite famous as adepts in their own right.

Now I don’t want to suggest that this was a role that only women can perform, there were male devadasa and we cannot forget the famous third sex, the hijra.

What I wanted to say is this – Tantra arose in a culture that valued the erotic as a legitimate art form, as ‘kama’ and ‘bhoga’. Tantra represents perhaps the highest expression of sex as an art and skill and I don’t believe that true Tantra can be achieved in the West, not whilst it denigrates the erotic sentiment and the erotic arts.

As a side note, the dance forms of Flamenco, ME Belly Dancing, etc, all derive from Gypsy or Roma culture. The Roma are descended from Indians who were forced into slavery with the Muslim invasions. Both Flamenco and Belly Dancing are notable for their passion and eroticism – but then there has always been an assumed connection between dancing, acting, Gypsies and immorality (and we could take a diversion into burlesque and Gypsy Rose Lee).

What I favour is a reintroduction of the erotic as an art and a skill. It’s not going to happen anytime soon but I’d like to see Bharatanatyam performed as it was originally intended (with the musicians being women as well – there is a fresco that shows a group of women musicians and scantilly clad dancers in one of Giti Thadani’s books).

This is by no means a scholarly attempt, it’s in informal blog entry, a summary of my current understanding of Tantra in the context of Indian history and religious politics. It is informed by scholarly research. Over the very many years I’ve studied Tantra I’ve read many serious scholarly works and I’m on also on an ‘academic’ email list that has a number of scholars who contribute, so what I’m about to say is reasonably well informed and up to date.

There were two intriguing artefacts found in the ruins of the Mohenjo-Daro civilization, a statue of a naked dancing girls (there are other versions) and an amulet that shows a man with an erection sitting in a cross-legged position. The old theory was that the Mohenjo-Daro (or Harappan) civilization fell due to invasion from Aryan tribes that migrated from the plains of Central Europe (possibly Turkey/Armenia). They probably didn’t call themselves Aryans, although the name has stuck and modern day Iran derives its name from the same root. The current theory is that rather than invade the Aryans gradually infiltrated India, a process that actually took thousands of years and is still not complete (although it nearly is). The Aryans have given us two significant religions, Zoroastrianism and Orthodox Hinduism (which I will call Aryanism). Many scholars have remarked on the similarities between Zoroastrianism and early Aryanism.

It is also clear that early Aryanism was influenced by the indigenous beliefs of India and over a period of hundreds, even thousands, of years Aryanism adapted and adopted some traditional beliefs. It is here we encounter our first major problem in understanding this process. The Aryans had a caste system. The highest caste was that of the Brahmin, a priest/scholar whose task it was to maintain Aryan ideological dominance. As scholars they were the ones who recorded history. The indigenous religions of India seem to have been largely oral and there is not much of a written record. Instead what we have is what the Aryans have written and the major texts are the Vedas, which seem to have been compiled somewhere between 1500-1000 BCE. The Vedas describe the Aryan religion after it had encountered the mysticism of indigenous North India. Orthodox Hinduism is further divided into six Vedic darshanas, or schools of inquiry that are based on the Vedas.

Unfortunately many people assume that Hinduism is Aryanism, but this is far from the truth. India was never a unified country. Over thousands of years kingdoms and empires have risen and fallen, with the various rajas favouring this or that sect. Aryanism was one amongst many religions, including the unorthodox Buddhists, Jains, Shaktas, Tantrics and indigenous shamans. Often the rajas would allow competing religions to co-exist, sometimes he would favour one and suppress another. But here we face another important point. The rajas did not have absolute control and sects survived in remote areas untouched. India is the second largest tribal based culture (after Africa) and many of these adivasi (first people) maintain their own customs and languages even today.

Tantricism is indigenous to North India and it developed out of local shamanism. There are tribes in Northern India that still practice traditional shamanism and some of the iconography of Tantricism can be seen in shamanistic practices, particularly sex magic. A good example of the fusion of shamanism with Tantricism (in this case Buddhist) is the cult of Drukpa Kinley in Bhutan. Drukpa is depicted as a drunk and lewd womaniser who practised left-hand Tantra. Bhutan is full of phallic symbols, on doors, hanging in houses and as charms. It is believed such symbols stop evil spirits.

It is my feeling that some form of Tantra has always been practiced in Northern India, however, it seems there was something of a Tantric revolution around 500-1400 ACE. We can’t be certain about the dates at all and it seems much of Tantra was passed down orally from master to disciple. What we do know is that around this time Tantrics started to write things down. But there is something else we also know. Tantra was radically opposed to Aryanism. In fact Tantra is a radical critique of Aryanism. This was a political struggle with both sides trying to compete. Tantra refused to accept the authority of the Vedas, it rejected the caste system and deliberately flouted Aryan prohibitions, most notably the five prohibited substances.

The other thing we also know is that the Tantric revolution had an enormous impact on Indian society and whilst the Aryan Brahmin scholars tried to suppress it they ended up having to accomodate it, albeit in a modified form. The orthodox darshana of Yoga is a Vedic response to the Tantric revolution. This revolution had a profound effect. The disciplines of jyotish, ayurveda, the chakra system, hatha yoga, vastu shastra (Indian Feng Shui), etc, were all transformed by Tantric thought. We also know that Jainism and Mahayana Buddhism were heavily influenced and the founder of Tibetan Buddhism, Padmasambhava, was born in modern day Kashmir (on the Muslim side of the disputed territory) (and for a frank understanding of Padmasabhava’s left-hand practices read the biography of his chief consort, Lady Tsogyal, herself an enlightened adept who became his consort at the age of 16).

In fact most of what the West understands as Hinduism, ie Yoga, is in fact a watered down form of Tantra. The Aryan religion is largely a series of injunctions and rituals performed by Brahmin priests. Dr Giti Thadani has explained how many of these priests are corrupt – she wanted to perform darshan at a famous goddess temple, but the local Brahmins had appropriated it, covered the statue of the naked goddess and charged pilgrims to perform darshan on their behalf. When she complained and insisted on performing darshan herself the Brahmin priest yelled for the guards and told them she was a Muslim. In temples all over India you must pay the Aryan priest to perform darshan on your behalf. In contrast Tantra has always been an egalitarian system with an emphasis on inner transformation.

There is no question about which side I’m on. The Aryans are responsible for perpetuating the caste system and the Brahmin priest/scholars are guilty of creating a self-serving system of privilege. One only has to read the various smrtis (Aryan books of law) to see how venal and ridiculous the system is. The so-called ‘untouchbles’ were once the adivasi and indigenous Indians who would not be a part of the Aryan caste system so the scholars invented a new caste of untouchable, people who could not dare touch a Brahmin or cause a shadow to fall on their ‘twice-born’ and ‘pure’ bodies for fear of a terrible punishment in this life and the next (after torture in a hell loka). Of course its all self-serving bullshit. I particularly like the law that a Brahmin is permitted to have sex with any lower caste woman and that she will be blessed in a future life for fucking such a lofty being.

I don’t want to get sidetracked because the point of this post is to say that for centuries the Brahmin scholars have been trying to control and subvert the Tantric revolution. What they seek is simple. Aryan dominance and hence, Brahmin dominance. Sadly they have nearly succeeded. The almost final nail in the Tantric coffin came under the British. Naturally they were shocked at the permissive sexuality of the non-Aryan Indians and they formed an alliance with the Aryan upper-castes. They gave legitimacy to the Aryan Manu Smrti, a vicious set of laws that was not widely accepted – and then they set about suppressing non-orthodox sects. By the time of Independance the Aryans had gained control of most of India, a task they could not have accomplished under indigenous rajas or the Muslims. The modern Aryan is puritanical, patriarchal authoritarian who uses a distorted Indian history to justify right-wing nationalism. The upper castes have a grip on political, legal and academic power and they are quite shameless in their attempt to Aryanise Indian history. Giti Thadani tells another story where a male high caste academic is standing in front of a statue of a goddess insisting it is in fact a male god. She also describes how statues have been altered by Aryan priests, how academics refuse to translate and study Tantric texts, particularly the Shakta Tantra (goddess tradition) and how male museum curators hide goddess statues in basements. She knows because her book ‘Meobius Trip’ is about her travels all over India to uncover the goddess tradition.

I’ll write more, but I want to end with an anecdote (have I repeated this?). An Indian academic on an email list shared that many high-caste women do not know that the shivalingam is Shiva’s phallus. This is how much the Aryans have suppressed the truth about Indian religion. How could they not know? Well, they were never told about it. Apparently male Brahmins think that such information is not suitable for delicate female sensibilities. Mind you, I’m not sure who treats women worse, Muslim men or Aryan men.

What’s the moral of this story? Many Indians have simply been lied to about their own religious history and the importance of Tantra. There was (and still is) a major attempt to Aryanise Yoga – and it would seem to me that several modern Indian thinkers were and are part of that project, including Aurobindo (and Shankara).

Btw, I don’t want to suggest that there is nothing of value in Aryan philosophy. It has made some important contributions. What I am saying is that they are often prejudiced against Tantra and often give a distorted picture of what it is.

Oh, and the naked dancing girl and yogi with an erection? An intriguing suggestion that indigenous Indian religions were sex positive and that all of this puritannical bullshit in modern India is Aryan prudishness. What I’d like to see is a movie that accurately portrays a Northern Indian kingdom under the influence of genuine indigenous Tantric traditions, with none of this puritannical Bollywood revisionism.