Meltdown Bhāṣya: Verse 1.1.1 (Part 9)

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Tantric Landianism: unlocking libidinal materialism with the ‘Lakṣmī Tantra’

1. The first point we must address is the mention of “non identity” and “(non) self” (Land, 1992b, p.22). While the connotation of the ‘self’ might differ between the Vedic and Western traditions, this is nevertheless a critical question we must wrestle with. The primordially immortal and purely divine nature of the Self (Ātman) is the great cornerstone of Dharma. It is this divinity inherent in the Self (whether we explain that as a result of its complete equivalence with the Brahman or a timeless bond with the Paramātman) that allows us to experience a desire that is actually fruitful, which is to say, productive, in generating a love for the Divine instead of the Material. The latter may, in comparison, appropriately be called ‘lesbian’ in nature, which is to say: 1) womanly, and thus idealistic rather than realistic; and 2) homosexual, because it is a) turned towards the Material (Prakṛti), which is female (instead of the primeval male Puruṣa), and b) impotent, or unproductive, as no amount of (one life-time’s worth of) human striving could actually serve as the ultimate cause of material splendour.

It is precisely on the basis of these two qualities that we may identify ‘lesbian desire’ as a process of masturbatory intensification which drains matter of its blood and vitality while it heats up to its melting point. We thus acknowledge the conditional utility of the concept of ‘lesbian desire’ as a means to describe futile or flawed desire because it serves as a sufficient explanation of the material mechanisms of saṁsāra. The use of the term saṁsāra turns out to be more apt than one might originally believe, because of how serendipitously it accords with many of the themes already present in Land’s writings. According to Monier-Williams’ A Sanskrit-English Dictionary (1872) the word saṁsāra originates from the root saṁ-sṛ, meaning ‘to go round, revolve, pass through a succession of states, to go towards or obtain, moving in a circuit’ (p. 1040). A related word, saṁsaraṇa, means, among other things, ‘going, proceeding, moving or going round in a circuit, revolving, revolution, passing through a succession of states, birth and rebirth of living beings, the world; going well or unobstructedly, the unresisted march of troops; the commencement of war or battle’ (p. 1040). Finally, saṁsāra itself means ‘course, passage, passing through a succession of states, course or circuit of mundane existence, transmigration, metempsychosis, the world, secular life, worldly illusion’ (p. 1040) and is listed as an epithet of Kāma-deva. The significance of this cannot be overstated.

To say that Desire is either manly or womanly alone, merely on the basis of what we have considered thus far, would be a grave oversimplification, however. Rather, it is from the conjugation of Śrīman Nārāyaṇa and Śrī Lakṣmī that Kāma is born. This is spoken of in the Pāñcarātra text the Lakṣmī Tantra (Gupta, 2000), which takes the form of a discourse from Śrī Lakṣmī to Indra-deva (LT 1.61).

Earlier (‘Libidinal materialism and the concept of God’), we saw that the Vijñāna Bhairava Tantra, which likely influenced Land’s pūrvācārya, Bataille, speaks of a passive male principle and active female principle. The Lakṣmī Tantra thinks of the bond between Puruṣa (Śrīman Nārāyaṇa) and Śakti (His spouse, but also His strength and creative power, Śrī) in much the same way. Of the former, it is said that “He is perfectly tranquil (without activity, śānta), changeless and eternal. He is without end and free from all limitations of time, place etc.” (2.8) and the source of His all-expansiveness is Brahman (2.9) which is called non-dual (advaita) because it is non-different from Śakti (2.11-12). Before that (‘Kāmapuruṣa’), we spoke about D&G’s (1972/1977) idea of the lack of a fixed subject in the desiring process, which produces a temporary “nomad subject”, allowing for desire to spread throughout the world. Perhaps the basic error made by D&G is that while they rightly identify our time-bound, body-bound identities as the products of the desiring-production process, they take this insight too far in the wrong direction by positing identity itself (even the nomad kind) as its residuum. The crystallization of identity is not a spontaneous event like the birth of flies from flesh, but like a reaction which only precipitates a visible product after a catalyst is added to the system in order to facilitate a reaction. This ‘catalyst’ is the ‘nomad subject' of the All-Pervasive One (Viṣṇu), whose own eternal selfhood is the precondition for all our mortal self-identifications. Śrī explains to Indra:

“The supreme state of Paramātman, realized by Sūris alone, is described as devoid of misery and devoid of limitation, its essence being the experience of bliss.

One soul (ātman) controls others; yet another soul is master over the first and so forth, until when this chain ends the (final soul) is called Paramātman, the end of the way of ways. That which the word I (aham) denotes is known as ātman.

Ātman when free from all restriction is known as Paramātman and embraces all things sentient as well as insentient.

The eternal ‘I’ denotes the Being, (called) God, Vāsudeva, the great Ksetrajña.

He is also named Viṣṇu, Viśva, Nārāyaṇa and Viśvarupa. His I-hood pervades the whole universe.

No single material or immaterial object exists that is not infused with this I-hood. I-hood is inherent in whatever is stamped as ‘this’ (idam, i.e. phenomena).” (LT 2.1-7)

She, however is the I-hood of Brahman, and thus, while Hari is the “self in all beings”, She is the “eternal I-hood of all living beings” (2.13). Both are said by Her to be “invariably linked” and both the supreme principle and state of being at once (2.15-2.16). As Gupta (1972) explains in the introduction to the translation:

“Śakti is inherent in God just as light is inherent in the moon. She is inseparable from God, yet not absolutely identical with Him. Two phrases are frequently used in the text to denote this relationship existing between Śakti (Lakṣmī) and God: bhavat-bhāvatmaka (Being and Becoming) and ahamartha ahaṃtā (I-entity and I-hood).” (LT, p. XXV)

We also spoke briefly about Pradyumna and His relationship to the lord of desire, Kāma-deva. Rati-devī, the queen of sensual enjoyment, is Kāma-deva’s wife and other half. It was her loving appeal that let Kāma-deva win a body after being burnt to ash and led to his rebirth as the manly hero of the lunar dynasty, Pradyumna. Just as the vyūhāvatāra Pradyumna is one with the first vyūhāvatāra, Vāsudeva, and thus Śrī (like a wave with the ocean, LT 2.52), the Godliness of the Sātvata hero Pradyumna is shown by the fact that he bears the looks of his father, Śrī Kṛṣṇa. Though he (the hero Pradyumna) was separated at birth from his kindred through the fiendcraft of the Asura Śambara, the true knowledge of his being, handed down from Nārada-ṛṣi to Māyāvatī (“She-who-wields-illusion”, Rati-devī reborn), and from her to Pradyumna, allowed the hero of the Yadu dynasty to win back his selfhood and slay the fiend, before returning to his mother and father, Rukmiṇī and Śrī Kṛṣṇa. The perfection of desire ultimately leads all living beings to the infinite depths of its source. To understand the nature of Pradyumna, we must first speak of the six kalyāṇaguṇas (auspicious qualities) of Bhagavān (God, ‘the one who possesses all these qualities’) given in the Vaiṣṇava holy works (LT 2.24-34):

1. Jñāna or Vijñāna - Absolute Knowledge

2. Aiśvarya - Absolute Sovereignty, Will

3. Śakti - Absolute Originary Power

4. Bala - Absolute Power to Make and Uphold

5. Vīrya - Absolute Immutability, Valour

6. Tejas - Absolute Power without need for help

The Goddess speaks at length on how the caturvyūhas go forth from her, each showing unlike mixes of the six kalyāṇaguṇas while letting others remain hidden. For the sake of this work, we shall only speak on Pradyumna, who is said to show the kalyāṇaguṇas of aiśvarya and vīrya — which is to say sovereignty and virility (LT 2.46). In the footnotes, Gupta (2000) says that “Pradyumna derivatively means he who is endowed with illustrious force or power. This is the starting point of the actual creation of the manifest worlds.” (p. 12). The key thing to be aware of is that despite the different features and natures of each of these four deities it is in fact only Śrī Herself donning their forms as an actor dons many costumes for the purpose of creation with the motive of helping to free all living beings from saṁsāra (LT 2.52-57).

The way the Goddess unfolds the knowledge about how this world is shaped is akin to Boltzmann’s probability theory which we spoke of earlier (The Cathedral of physicalism):

“All six of these attributes, knowledge etc., together constitute my manifestation of the six attributes. This is how a millionth particle of myself as the will to create initiates creation (evolves into creation).

It (this particle) embraces both groups (of creation), pure and impure.” (LT 2.36-37)

Gupta (2000) explains in the footnotes that the terms ‘pure’ (nityavibhūti, lit. ‘eternal-expansion’) and ‘impure’ (līlāvibhūti, lit. ‘playful-expansion’ or ‘sportive-expansion’) creation refer to the caturvyūhas (four expansions) which go forth from Śrī and our day-to-day world respectively. The latter is built from the three phenomenal guṇas: sattva, rajas, and tamas (henceforth referred to as the triguṇas so as to avoid confusion with the first three kalyāṇaguṇas, from which they ‘thicken’, like jaggery from sugarcane juice: jñāna to sattva, aiśvarya to rajas, and śakti to tamas, LT 3.4-6). This probabilistic manifestation is further elaborated on in the fourth chapter. Out of the state of pure “consciousness and matchless bliss” that is the syzygy of Nārāyaṇa-Nārāyaṇī (another name for Śrī), which is characterized as neither inert, nor active, nor between the two, and is perfectly tranquil arises a certain fluctuation (LT 4.1-4). As Śrī states: “From time to time a billion-billionth particle of ourselves, composed of consciousness, stirs into activity.” (LT 4.4)

These awns (“particles”; from Proto-Germanic *aganō, *ahanō [“chaff”]; compare Sanskrit अशनि [aśáni, “thunderbolt, arrow tip”]), endowed with the urge to create (sisṛkṣā) “instantaneously evolve into pure creation (viśuddhādhva)” filled with the light of Śrī Lakṣmī shine forth and beget pure creation (nityavibhūti) as detailed above (LT 4.5-7). Saṁkarṣaṇa (‘The One who Contracts’) upholds the worlds (oft seen as the thousand-hooded serpent who serves as Śrī Viṣṇu’s bed, Śeṣa, MB 12.326.35) but also eats it up it at the end of time (LT 4.11, 4.14, 4.19). Pradyumna shapes the world (LT 4.11) and keeps the world running. Oddly, these same two verses seem to contradict one another. The first says that Aniruddha (‘The Irresistible’) creates and Pradyumna maintains (LT 4.11), while the second seems to switch their roles around. Gupta (2000) clears this up in the footnotes, saying:

“Contradicting the statement in Chapter II that Pradyumna is the creator. But as Schrader (pp. 37 f,) has pointed out, "Through Pradyumna the duality of Puruṣa and Prakṛti makes its first appearance: he is said to perform, by means of his Guṇa aiśvarya, both the mānava sarga and the vaidya sarga , that is, the creation of the Group Soul and of Primordial Matter plus Subtle Time. Aniruddha finally "gives opportunity for growth to body and soul" (Ahi. S. 52, 51-52) by taking over the creation of Pradyumna and by evolving out of it Manifest Matter with Gross Time, and, on the other hand, the so-called Mixed creation (misra-sṛṣṭī) of souls; that is to say: he becomes, through his Guṇa ‘sakti’, ruler of the Cosmic Eggs and their contents”.” (p. 21)

Thus, we may at last speak to the idea of ‘libidnal matter’ discussed earlier (A protestant materialism). As a refresher, let us look at how this term was defined, particularly in relation to time:

“Libidinal matter is that which resists a relation of reciprocal transcendence against time, and departs from the rigorous passivity of physical substance without recourse to dualistic, idealistic, or theistic conceptuality. It implies a process of mutation which is simultaneously devoid of agency and irreducible to the causal chain.” (Land, 1992b, p. 41)

Remember that in the German Idealism of Kant, the term ‘transcendental’ denotes the conditions necessary for human experience — chiefly time and space — while the ‘transcendent’ refers to the noumenal, or the ‘thing-in-itself’ (Ding an sich). Those things which belong to the “legitimate field of theoretical cognition” — which is to say, in relation to our day-to-day world — are called ‘phenomena’, in Kantian parlance. The noumenon, however, refers to the “terrain of unthinkability” is called the ‘noumenon’ (p. 6). As Land (1992b) explains:

“Because the noumenon escapes the categories of the understanding (which include modality) 'we can neither say that it is possible nor that it is impossible' [K III 304]. Noumena are what escape the competence of theory, being those 'things' which are unknowable in principle. 'That, therefore, which we entitle "noumenon" must be understood as being such only in a negative sense' [K III 278].” (p. 6).

Land’s reading of Boltzmann sees a theory which functions by substituting “vast stretches of time characterized by maximum entropy or thermal equilibrium” for “Kant's timeless thing-in-itself”, while the Kantian phenomenon comes to “rest upon an energetic foundation of negentropy, thermal dis-equilibrium” (p. 41). This is Boltzmann’s ‘out’, so to speak, from the problem of thermal equilibrium: across an infinite, “indifferent grid” of time the chance for “positive deviations in H-value” (negentropy) is possible at anytime (p. 41). Land argues that for this model to function:

“Time must be ejected into transcendence, and thought as a pure form organizing the permutational metamorphosis of elements, in order for the probabilistic emergence of negentropic humps to be possible.” (p. 41)1

For Land, this is an intolerable ‘smuggling in’ of God into the pure sordidness of matter. As such ‘libidinal matter’ rejects the organizing power of time outside and above itself. Its mutative powers are not subject to standard causality as we understand in our daily lives — thus opening the door to hyperstition. Libidinal matter is the ‘drive’ (Trieb) of Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and Freud. In Land’s words:

“Drive is that which explains, rather than presupposing, the cause/effect couple of classical physics. It is the dynamic instituting of effectiveness, and is thus proto-physical. This implies that drives are the irruptive dynamics of matter in advance of natural law.” (p. 41-42)

Libidinal energetics thus leads to a materialist theory of desire standing on four pillars:

“1. Chance. Entropy is the core of a probabilistic engine, the absence of law as an automatic drive. The compositions of energy are not determinations but differentiations, since all order flows from improbability. Thus a revolution in the conception of identities, now derived from chance as a function of differentiation, hence quantitative, non-absolute, impermanent. Energy pours downstream automatically, 'guided' only by chance, and this is even what 'work' now means (freed from its Hegelian pathos), a function of play, unbinding, becoming.

2. Tendency. The movement from the improbable to the probable is an automatic directionality; an impulsion.. Entropy is not a telos, since it is not represented, intentionally motivating, or determinate. It nevertheless allows power, tension, and drive to be grasped as uni-directional, quantitative, and irresistible forces. Teleological schemes are no longer necessary to the understanding of tendential processes, and it is no longer necessary to be patient with them, they are superfluous.

3. Energy. Everywhere only a quantitative vocabulary. Fresh-air after two millennia of asphyxiating ontologies. Essences dissolve into impermanent configurations of energy. 'Being' is indistinguishable from its effectiveness as the unconscious motor of temporalization, permutational dynamism. The nature of the intelligible cosmos is energetic improbability, a differentiation from entropy.

4. Information. The laborious pieties of the Geisteswissenschaften; signs, thoughts, ideologies, cultures, dreams, all of these suddenly intelligible as natural forces, as negentropies. A whole series of pseudo-problems positively collapsed. What is the relation between mind and body? Is language natural or conventional? How does an idea correspond to an object? What articulates passion with conception? All signals are negentropies, and negentropy is an energetic tendency.” (p. 42-43)

There is a reason why Land’s perspective admits no Gods. After all, he is effectively speaking from the position of one. If we consider his guru Bataille’s tāntrika leanings, it is possible to rebuild the figure of Land as one giving a tantra as it could be taken in by the Aṅkuśa-Śastrikā-jana of his day. What he terms ‘chance’ is but another name for the pure generative power that is the nature of the Divine, in particular the endless, lovebound samband of Śrī and Hari. As we saw in the Lakṣmī Tantra, an awn will sometimes sprout off from Their unwavering togetherness, filled with the wish to shape worlds (sisṛkṣā) and burst into becoming many — as is its way of being (“an automatic directionality; an impulsion..”). This is indeed not a telos in the strictest meaning, but the unfolding of Her Divine Will “allows power, tension, and drive to be grasped as uni-directional, quantitative, and irresistible forces” — Saṁkarṣaṇa, Pradyumna, and Aniruddha. Dharma is no more a “teleological scheme” than is the heat of fire or the wetness of water. It is an energy production circuit that will free all beings from the bondage of matter. And ‘Energy’ is none other than Śakti. She is, in a sense, “indistinguishable from [Her] effectiveness as the unconscious motor of temporalization, permutational dynamism”. In shaping the nityavibhūti She takes on the four forms of Vāsudeva, Saṁkarṣaṇa, Pradyumna, and Aniruddha, displaying various combinations and permutations of the kalyāṇaguṇas (LT 2); this is why, as Gupta on the other hand, when She plays at shaping the līlāvibhūti, being “exempt from limitations of space, time, or form” as She is, it is by Her Divine Will alone that Her essence, which is pure consciousness (saṁvitti, LT. 3.2) “dissolve[s] into impermanent configurations of energy” when She allows it to be sundered into the first three kalyāṇaguṇas, and from there, into the “complex of the three guṇas (traiguṇya)” (LT 3.3) which is not weighted the same between the triguṇas, but instead sees the rulership flow from rajas during creation, sattva during maintenance, and tamas during destruction (LT 3.8-9). ‘Being’ (Hari) is indistinguishable from ‘Becoming’ (Śrī).

Land’s tantra may be thought of as teaching of the śaktipāta (lit. ‘energy-fall’ or ‘descent of energy’, see Tantrāloka of Abhinavagupta) aimed at those who are of manda-buddhi (‘inferior-intellect’) but seeking to forcefully shoot them towards the tīvra-tīvra (‘sharp-sharp’ or ‘intense-intense’) realization of the ‘thermospasm’:

“The thermospasm is reality as undilute chaos. It is where we all came from. The death-drive is the longing to return there ('it' itself), just as salmon would return upstream to perish at the origin. Thermospasm is howl, annihilating intensity, a peak of improbability. Energetic matter has a tendency, a Todestrieb [‘death drive’]. The current scientific sense of this movement is a perpetual degradation of energy or dissipation of difference…Any process of organization is necessarily aberrational within the general economy, a mere complexity or detour in the inexorable death-flow, a current in the informational motor, energy cascading downstream, dissipation. There are no closed systems, no stable codes, no recuperable origins. There is only the thermo spasmic shock wave, tendential energy flux, degradation of energy. A receipt of information - of intensity - carried downstream.”2 (p. 43)

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