Introduction To The Word Of Wisdom

Unconventional Wisdom

ON THE EVENING of June 24, as lawmakers legalized same-sex marriage in New York, a group of artists and activists on the opposite coast were instigating a less normative (though perhaps no less traditional) celebration of sexuality: the opening night of “Queering Sex,” a weeklong performance and video series at the downtown Los Angeles nonprofit Human Resources. While the event- cum -exhibition didn’t start any fires with the boilerplate press-release “positing” that “queer exists on multiple planes of non-linearity and is beyond hetero and homo-normative distinctions,” the line-up itself comprised a group of folk whose varying practices demonstrate a happily nuanced take on sex (as a critical and aesthetic tool), with special emphasis on historical constructions of queerness, the hyperbolic performance of “outness,” and our (hopefully) evolving relationships to genders and identities. True to form, the sizeable crowd that spilled out of the gallery (a former movie theater in Chinatown) resembled the young, aggressively polysexual (trans)demographic that curators (and Vice magazine “power couple”) Kathryn Garcia and Sarvia Jasso aimed to represent: women in tailored blazers and work boots; men in girdles and Fluevogs; dads with babies; babes with daddies; femmes, womyn, twinks, dykes, beards, “straights,” a lady in a vagina costume—but mostly typical arty Eastsiders. People comfortable with quotation marks.

The exhibition commenced (after a successful Kickstarter campaign) with a screening to set the feel: works by Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, Orlan, Skip Arnold, Nadja Verena Marcin , Marnie Weber , and Lovett/Codagnone among many others. But I missed all that. So I jumped into the fray via a performance by the Norwegian collaborative Fine Art Union (artists Synnøve G. Wetten and Annette Stav Johanssen ). The masked, bald-capped glamazons crooned, screamed, toppled a cardboard monolith, simulated fighting and fucking, hurled turd-like rubber wads at the audience, and smeared “menstrual-y” crimson paint onto each other’s faces. Against the backdrop of Freudian projections (a black hole, a snake), Fine Art Union performed what could be considered a “girling” of femininity, or Id-like primitivism, or the resignification of sexual subjectivity... but maybe it was all just a drag? After the performance, artist Brian Getnick —the only viewer to throw turds back at the performers—whispered, “I wish it was as cathartic for us as it was for them.

AN INTRODUCTION TO THE MANTRA SASTRA | Wisdom Blow

AN INTRODUCTION TO THE MANTRA SASTRA

D.K. SATSANGI

Mantra Sastra is one of the Departments of Occult Science It has for its objects all kinds ()I’ Siddhis or acquirements of powers for securing the object aimed at by means of securing the gods presiding them by repeating such Mantras as are intendent for the purpose with Me necessary ceremonies attending thereto. The whole of lour Vedas consist of nothing but Mantras, and as they proceed from the Pranava (The word Aum), the Pranava, consequently is the Adi or Mula Mantra or the Mantra of all Mantras, and it is acceptable to both the followers of Nigamas (the Vedas) and Agamas (the Tantras) For this reason no Mantra can become effective or powerful without uttering the Pranava in the Commencement of it.

For the acquirement of the successful study and practice of this Sastra, the purity of body, speech, and mind is the first condition attending it; otherwise, they would lead to Black magic and to its disastrous results: that is to utter destruction of the soul or the higher Manas. Strong will power and undaunted courage are also the condition required for this purpose.

Though the Mantra and Yoga Sastra belong to the Occult Science, yet the difference between them is very great. The former is an objective science and the latter is a subjective one. The Mantra Sastra develops the powers by appealing to the external objects, such as gods and goddesses (the forces in nature), while the Yogin develops them by self-culture or by unifying or identifying himself with the manifested universe as part and parcel of the Isvara or the Creator. The Yogin by the virtue of his. Culture, gets all the powers of the Siddhis without effort while the Mantrika has to evoke them by the Mantras and the ceremonies attending them. It is impossible for a single individual to master the information treated of in 37,00,000 verses containing the original writings on mantras and occultism, known as the Agamas, besides several other works now supposed to have been lost, for occultism is treated in these writings in all. SCRIPTURE, MANTRA AND SANSKRIT

T ito great scriptures of the world, particularly the Sanskrit Vedas, are written iii languages that have a strong connection between sound and sense. In fact, the more we take language back in time, the more it moves towards mantra, ocripture, or the Word of God as the possible origin, or at least prime inspiration behind human speech. This reflects the ancient Hindu or Vedic view iii which human language was first envisioned by the seers in meditation from their union with the cosmic sound and Divine Mind. If we examine the beauty and subtlety of language, it is easier to speak of the development of human civilization as a progressive fall, not as a positive development. Mantra is a more developed usage of language than poetry, where sounds take on and direct spiritual energies, and the word becomes a channel for the powers of consciousness. The Sanskrit language, which is a language of mantra, is hosed upon the right relationship between sound and sense. The entire language is poetic and spiritual in nature. It does not have to be artificially worked on in become so. As such, Sanskrit can provide a foundation for reintegrating sound and sense and re-establishing a spiritual language, a language of truth consciousness in the world. Sanskrit best preserves the ancient spiritual language (hat is intimated in the unity of all ancient languages. its phases, and a theoretical knowledge of them presupposes a great deal of practical knowledge in one of them at least.

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