© Victor & Victoria Trimondi
The
Shadow of the Dalai Lama – Part I – 11. The
Manipulator of erotic love
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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