Hindu texts call into question our own gender conceptions; they tell us that desire for bisexual pleasure and the wish to belong to both sexes at the same time are very real, but unrealizable, except by those with magic gifts. Many myths bear witness to the existential perception of human beings as bisexual and to active bisexual transformations. Some may show the desire to be androgynous and, contrary to the dominant homophobic paradigm, present veiled images of a bisexuality fulfilled in (...) happiness and satisfaction. The episode evoking Chudala as a mistress of initiation and some variants in the magical forests of Shiva and Parvati illustrate this carefree, joyous way of crossing the gender barrier. (shrink)

Several Buddhist schools in India, China and Japan concentrate on the interrelationships between waking and dreaming consciousness. In Eastern philosophy, reality can be seen as a dream and an obscure 'reality beyond' can be considered as real. In spite of the overwhelming Platonic-Aristotelian-Freudian influence existent in Western culture, some Western thinkers and artists - Valéry, Baudelaire, and Schnitzler, for example - have been fascinated by a kind of 'simple presence' contained in dreams. I show that this has consequences for a (...) philosophy of space. According to the authors discussed, the dreamer and the player recognize that human space always means the entire cosmos. (shrink)

Jonathan Edwards identified the central act of faith as ‘the cordial consent of beings to Being in general’, which is to say to God. That equation, of Being, Truth and God, is rarely taken seriously in analytical circles. My argument will be that this is to neglect the real context of a great deal of past philosophy, particularly the very Cartesian arguments from which so many undergraduate courses begin. All too many students issue from such courses immunized against enthusiasm, in (...) the conceit that they have answers to all the old conundrums, which were in any case no more than verbal trickery. ‘By uttering the right words but failing to use them in propria persona, philosophy induces a kind of soporific amnesia bewitching us into forgetting our God-given task. That task is, of course, to do what Socrates did and to live as he lived'. Burrell's words are not wholly fair to academic philosophers, nor to the Lady Philosophy. Plenty of philosophers really mind about the truth, and want to be Socratic in pursuit of it. But the danger is a real one. If all that matters is debunking past philosophers, how does that differ from the repeated refutation of the Chaldaean Oracles or the Prophecies of Nostradamus? A pretty enough pastime for the young, but hardly serious business for adults. ‘If the history of philosophy is a process of ‘salvaging’ what you yourself have already thought, then why bother?’. (shrink)

The ninth chapter of the Haṃsavilāsa of the Gujarati Śaiva author Haṃsamiṭṭhu (born 1738 ad) argues that Pātañjalayoga, conceived of as a conflation of Aṣṭāṅgayoga and Haṭhayoga, cannot be valid soteriology. Pātañjalayoga is presented as a paradoxical and painful attempt to achieve quiescence by forcibly eliminating karma. Haṃsamiṭṭhu, conversely, views ‘euphoria’ (ullāsa) as a prerequisite for liberation, and therefore advocates a painless method of Rājayoga. This is taught as a Śaiva form of the Rāsalīlā involving transgressive substances and behaviour. A (...) frame story establishes Haṃsamiṭṭhu’s authority to teach such practices by revealing his secret identity as Haṃsa, a favored companion of Śiva who incarnates for a single life to promulgate esoteric teachings. The purity of this Rāsalīlā is defended by challenging the validity of a conventional morality that seeks to portray it as abhorrent. (shrink)