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The Shadow of the Dalai Lama – Part
I – 11. The
Manipulator
of
erotic love
© Victor & Victoria
Trimondi
11. THE MANIPULATOR OF EROTIC
LOVE
In this chapter we want to introduce
the reader to a spectacular European parallel
to the fundamental tantric idea that erotic love
and sexuality can be translated into material
and spiritual power. It concerns several until
now rarely considered theses of Giordano Bruno
(1548-1600).
At the age of fifteen, Bruno, born
in Nola, Italy, joined the Dominican order. However,
his interest in the newest scientific discoveries
and his fascination with the late Hellenistic
esotericism very soon led him to leave his order,
a for the times most courageous undertaking. From
this point on he began a hectic life on the road
which took him all over Europe. Nonetheless, the
restless and ingenious ex-monk wrote and published
numerous “revolutionary” works in which he took
a critical stance toward the dogmata of the church
on all manner of topics. The fact that Bruno championed
many ideas from the modern view of the world that
was emerging at the time, especially the Copernican
system, made him a hero of the new during his
own lifetime. After he was found guilty of heresy
by the Inquisition in 1600 and burned at the stake
at the Campo dei Fiori in Rome, the European intelligentsia
proclaimed him to be the greatest “martyr of modern
science”. This image has stayed with him up until
the present day. Yet this is not entirely justified,
then Bruno was far more interested in the esoteric
ideas of antiquity and the occultism of his day
than in modern scientific research. Nearly all
of his works concern magic/mystic/mythological
themes.
Like the Indian Tantrics, this
eccentric and dynamic Renaissance philosopher
was convinced that the entire universe was held
together by erotic love. Love in all its variations
ruled the world, from physical nature to the metaphysical
heavens, from sexuality to heartfelt love of the
mystics: it “led either to the animals [sexuality] or to the intelligible
and is then called the divine [mysticism]" (quoted by Samsonow,
1995, p. 174).
Bruno extended the term Eros (erotic love) to encompass
in the final instance all human emotions and described
it in general terms as the primal force which
bonded, or rather—as he put it—"chained”, through
affect. “The most powerful shackle of all is ...
love” (quoted by Samsonow, 1995, p. 224). The
lover is “chained” to the individual loved. But
there is no need for the reverse to apply, then
the beloved does not themselves have to love.
This definition of love as a “chain” made it possible
for Bruno to see even hate as a way of expressing
erotic love, since he or she who hates is just
as “chained” to the hated by his feelings as the
lover is to the beloved. (To more graphically
illustrate the parallels between Bruno’s philosophy
and Tantrism, we will in the following speak of
the lover as feminine rather than masculine. Bruno
used the term completely generically for both
women and men.
According to Bruno, “the ability
to enchain” is also the main chacteristic of magic,
then a magician behaves like an escapologist when
he binds his “victim” (whether human or spirit)
to him with love. “There where we have spoken
of natural magic, we have described to what extent
all chains can be related to the chain of love,
are dependent upon the chain of love or arise
in the chain of love” (quoted by Samsonow, 1995,
p. 213). More than anything else, love binds people,
and this gives it something of the demonic, especially
when it is exploited by one partner to the disadvantage
of the other. “As regards all those who are dedicated
to philosophy or magic, it is fully apparent that
the highest bond, the most important and the most
general belongs to erotic love: and that is why
the Platonists called love the Great Demon, daemon
magnus” (quoted by Couliano, 1987, p. 91).
Now how does this erotic magic
work? According to Bruno an erotic/magic involvement
arises between the lovers, a fabric of affect,
feelings, and moods. He refers to this as rete
(net or fabric). It is woven from subtle “threads
of affect”, but is thus all the more binding.
(Let us recall that the Sanskrit word “tantra”
translates as “fabric” or “net”.) The rete (the erotic net) can
be expressed in a sexual relationship (through
sexual dependency), but in the majority of cases
it is of a psychological nature which nonetheless
further strengthens its power to bind. Every form
of love chains in its own way: “This love”, Bruno
says, “is unique, and is a fetter which makes
everything one” (quoted by Samsonow, 1995, p.
180).
If they wish, a person can control
the one whom they bind to themselves with love,
since “through this chain [the] lover is enraptured,
so that they want to be transferred to the beloved”
as Bruno writes (quoted by Samsonow, 1995, p.
181). Accordingly, the real magician is the beloved,
who exploits the erotic energy of the lover in
the accumulation of his own power. He transforms
love into power, he is a manipulator of erotic
love. [1]
As we shall soon see, even if Bruno’s manipulator
is not literally a Tantric, the second part of
the definition with which we prefaced our study
still seems to fit:
The mystery of Tantric Buddhism
consists in ...
the manipulation of erotic
love
so as to attain universal
androcentric power.
The manipulator, also referred
to as a “soul hunter” by Bruno, can reach the
heart of the lover through her sense of sight,
through her hearing, through her spirit, and through
her imagination, and thus chain her to him. He
can look at her, smile at her, hold her hand,
shower her with flattering compliments, sleep
with her, or influence her through his power of
imagination. “In enchaining”, Bruno says, “there
are four movements. The first is the penetration
or insertion, the second the attachment or the
chain, the third the attraction, the fourth the
connection, which is also known as enjoyment.
... Hence [the] lover wants to completely penetrate
the beloved with his tongue, his mouth, with his
eyes, etc.” (Samsonow, 1995, pp. 171, 200). That
is, not only does the lover let herself be enchained,
she must also experience the greatest desire for
this bond. This lust has to increase to the point
that she wants to offer herself with her entire
being to the beloved manipulator and would like
to “disappear in him”. This gives the latter absolute
power over the enchained one.
The manipulator evokes all manner
of illusions in the awareness of his love victim
and arouses her emotions and desires. He opens
the heart of the lover and can take possession
of the one thus “wounded”. He is lord over foreign
emotions and “has means at his disposal to forge
all the chains he wants: hope, compassion, fear,
love, hate, indignation, anger, joy, patience,
disdain for life and death” writes Joan P. Couliano
in her book, Eros
and magic in the Renaissance (Couliano, 1987,
p. 94). Yet the magically enacted enchainment
may never occur against the manifest will of the
enchanted one. In contrast, the manipulator must
always awake the suggestion in his victim that
everything is happening in her interests alone.
He creates the total illusion that the lover is
a chosen one, an independent individual following
her own will.
Bruno also mentions an indirect
method of gaining influence, in which the lover
does not know at all that she is being manipulated.
In this case, the manipulator makes use of “powerful
invisible beings, demons and heroes”, whom he
conjures up with magic incantations (mantras) so as to achieve
the desired result with their help (Couliano,
1987, p. 88). We learn from the following quotation
how these invoked spirits work for the manipulator:
They need “neither ears nor a voice nor a whisper,
rather they penetrate the inner senses [of the
lover] as described. Thus they do not just produce
dreams and cause voices to be heard and all kinds
of things to be seen, but they also force certain
thoughts upon the waking as the truth, which they
can hardly recognize as deriving from another”
(Samsonow, 1995, p. 140). The lover thus believes
she is acting in her own interests and according
to her own will, whilst she is in fact being steered
and controlled through magic blandishments.
The manipulator himself may not
surrender to any emotional inclinations. Like
a tantric yogi he must keep his own feelings completely
under control from start to finish. For this reason
well-developed egocentricity is a necessary characteristic
for a good manipulator. He is permitted only one
love: narcissism (philautia), and according
to Bruno only a tiny elite possesses the ability
needed, because the majority of people surrender
to uncontrolled emotions. The manipulator has
to completely bridle and control his fantasy:
“Be careful,” Bruno warns him, “not to change
yourself from manipulator into the tool of phantasms”
(quoted by Couliano, 1987, p. 92). The real European
magician must, like his oriental colleague (the
Siddha), be able “to arrange,
to correct and to provide phantasy, to create
the different kinds at will” (Couliano, 1987,
p. 92).
He must not develop any reciprocal
feelings for the lover, but he has to pretend
to have these, since, as Bruno says, “the chains
of love, friendship, goodwill, favor, lust, charity,
compassion, desire, passion, avarice, craving,
and longing disappear easily if they are not based
upon mutuality. Fom this stems the saying: love
dies without love” (quoted by Samsonow, 1995,
p. 181). This statement is of thoroughly cynical
intent, then the manipulator is not interested
in reciprocating the erotic love of the lover,
but rather in simulating such a reciprocity.
But for the deception to succeed
the manipulator may not remain completely cold.
He has to know from his own experience the feelings
that he evokes in the lover, but he may never
surrender himself to these: “He is even supposed
to kindle in his phantasmic mechanism [his imagination]
formidable passions, provided these be sterile
and that he be detached from them. For there is
no way to bewitch others than by experimenting
in himself with what he wishes to produce in his
victim” (Couliano, 1987, p. 102). The evocation
of passions without falling prey to them is, as
we know, almost a tantric leitmotif.
Yet the most astonishing aspect
of Bruno’s manipulation thesis is that, as in
Vajrayana , he mentions the
retention of semen as a powerful instrument of
control which the magician should command, since
“through the expulsion of the seed the chains
[of love] are loosened, through the retention
tightened” (quoted by Samsonow, 1995, p. 175).
In a further passage we can read: “If this [the
semen virile]
is expelled by an appropriate part, the force
of the chain is reduced correspondingly (quoted
by Samsonow, 1995, p. 175). Or the reverse: a
person who reatins their semen, can thereby strengthen
the erotic bondage of the lover.
Bruno’s idea that there is a correspondence
between erotic love and power is thus in accord
with tantric dogma on the issue of sperm gnosis
as well. His theory of the manipulability of love
offers us valuable psychological insights into
the soul of the lover and the beloved manipulator.
They also help us to understand why women surrender
themselves to the Buddhist yogis and what is played
out in their emotional worlds during the rites.
As we have already indicated, this topic is completely
suppressed in the tantric discussion. But Bruno
addresses it openly and cynically — it is the
heart of the lover which is manipulated. The effect
for the manipulator (or yogi) is thus all the
greater the more his karma
mudra surrenders herself to him.
Bruno’s treatise, De vinculis in genere [On
the binding forces in general] (1591), can in
terms of its cynicism and directness only be compared
with Machialvelli’s The Prince (1513). But his
work goes further. Couliano correctly points out
that Macchiavelli examines political, Bruno however,
psychological manipulation. Then it is less the
love of a consort and rather the erotic love of
the masses which should — this she claims is Bruno’s
intention — serve the manipulator as a “chain”.
The former monk from Nola recognized manipulated
“love” as a powerful instrument of control for
the0 seduction of the masses. His theory thus
contributes much to an understanding of the ecstatic
attractiveness that dictators and pontiffs exercise
over the people who love them. This makes Bruno’s
work up to date despite its cynical content.
Bruno’s observations on “erotic
love as a chain” are essentially tantric. Like
Vajrayana, they concern the
manipulation of the erotic in order to produce
spiritual and worldly power. Bruno recognized
that love in the broadest sense is the “elixir
of life”, which first makes possible the establishment
and maintenance of institutions of power headed
by a person (such as the Pope, the Dalai Lama,
or a “beloved” dictator for example). As strong
as love may be, it is, if it remains one-sided,
manipulable in the person of the “lover”. Indeed,
the stronger it becomes, the more easily it can
be used or “misused” for the purposes of power
(by the “beloved”).
The fact that Tantrism focuses
more upon sexuality then on the more sublime forms
of erotic love, does not change anything about
this principle of “erotic exploitation”. The manipulation
of more subtle forms of love like the look (Carya
Tantra), the smile (Kriya
Tantra), and the touch (Yoga
Tantra) are also known in Vajrayana. Likewise, in Tantric
Buddhism as in every religious institution, the
“spiritual love” of its believers is a life energy
without which it could not exist. In the second
part of our study we shall have to demonstrate
how the Tibetan leader of the Buddhists, the Dalai
Lama, succeeds in binding ever more Western believers
to him with the “chains of love”.
Incidentally, in her book which
we have quoted (Eros
and Magic in the Renaissance) Couliano is
of the opinion that via the mass media the West
has already been woven into such a manipulable
“erotic net” (rete). At the end of her analysis
of Bruno’s treatise on power she concludes: “And
since the relations between individuals are controlled
by ‘erotic’ criteria in the widest sense of that
adjective, human society at all levels is itself
only magic at work. Without even being conscious
of it, all beings who, by reason of the way the
world is constructed, find themselves in an intersubjective
intermediate place, participate in a magic process.
The manipulator is the only one who, having understood
the ensemble of that mechanism, is first an observer
of intersubjective relations while simultaneously
gaining knowledge from which he means subsequently
to profit” (Couliano, 1987, p. 103).
But Couliano fails to provide an
answer to the question of who this manipulator
could be. In the second part of our analysis we
shall need to examine whether the Dalai Lama with
his worldwide message of love, his power over
the net (rete)
of Western media, and his sexual magic techniques
from the Kalachakra Tantra, fulfills
the criteria to be a magician in Giordano Bruno’s
sense.
Footnotes:
[1] The
Renaissance philosopher attempts to describe this
transformation process in his text De
vinculis in genere (1591)
Next Chapter:
12. EPILOGUE TO PART I
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