Millions of people like me have absolutely no direct interface with Tantra

Tusar N. Mohapatra Says: June 13th, 2007 at 6:12 am I am not sure of the model of ontology that you have in mind by which you harmonize both Preya and Shreya, but in the scheme of The Mother and Sri Aurobindo, sex doesn’t gel with Sadhana. Absolutely no elbowroom there. Even the Vaishnavic/Platonic love and emotion is also disallowed.

You are one of the rare Westerners in the blogosphere who have some awareness of and inclination towards the Indian tradition. But the glorified notion of Tantra celebrating sex is a little bit misplaced. Millions of people like me have absolutely no direct interface with Tantra as it operates in the margin in dubious manner. So, the legitimacy that you are proposing linking it with a politically correct/libertarian view of sex doesn’t match with the ground situation obtaining in India.

Further, the idea of sex has already been stretched from “The Pleasure of the Text” to “History of Sexuality.” An astute investigator like Foucault, who embarked upon an ambitious adventure to unravel the mystery of sex (in Vol. I), subsequently backed out and wrote just commentaries on the theme of sex as available in the Classical literature (in Vol. II & III). So, the way you venture to tackle a complex phenomenon like sex across cultures is too hazardous.

May I clarify that I am not objecting on moral grounds; rather my concerns are of method and informed debate so that unbiased scholarship emerges. Open Integral