Straight Eye, Queer Times!

Each of us sees, and understands by our own light.

“I see a dark light.” - VICTOR HUGO [Last Words]

“Doubt everything. Find your own light.” - LAST WORDS of BUDDHA

The global village, our modern world, now has 195 countries. Out of these, homosexuality is illegal in 81 nations. Anti-sodomy laws were ruled unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2003, but they are still very much on the books in 13 states. As of 28 June 2014, same-sex marriage is legal in 16 countries around the world. Ireland has recently made it legal. No country in Europe now has a law against homosexuality. In the late 80's itself, Denmark was the first country ever to legalize homosexuality, and allowing same-sex marriage since then. The Netherlands, followed suit. But that is here nor there. 

For, bestiality till recently was legal in the Netherlands. And this same shameful behaviour, of sex with hapless and helpless animals, is still very much legal in the recently polled “happiest nation on earth”, Denmark. Disturbing reports of beastly behaviour of one of the so-called most “advanced’ people, the Germans, alarmingly and increasingly engaging in sex with animals, have made news very recently. Not to forget, bestiality is alive and kicking  - legally  - amongst the wonderful Swedish people! Belgium too permits bestiality, to date.

Oh, not to be left behind, in the “enlightened” US, in 17 of its “humane” states, bestiality / zoophilia is yet legal. Lest anyone still be wandering in blissful ignorance, please be informed, at the end of 2011 the American Senate voted 93–7 to approve a defence authorization bill that includes a provision which not only repeals the military law on sodomy, it also repeals the military ban on sex with animals! Of late, such similar savagery has been consistently coming to light, and shining bright, vis-a-vis sexual violation of the helpless and hapless animals  - by the “civilized” West.

Therefore, with its historical record of racial, religious and rapacious pillage of each other, specially of the indigenous people of the rest of the world  - from ancient times, and some would say, to even the modern times, by the “pale face”  - has the white man, and by implication, the West, ever been civilized enough? Could they, the Westerners, today, with a straight face dare “tell” us, any free thinker anywhere, anything  - little or much?

A famous incident is often told, of a foreign reporter asking Mahatma Gandhi, “Mr. Gandhi, what do you think of Western civilization?” The Mahatma, with the tongue very much in cheek, promptly replied, “I think it would be a very good idea.” 

“Out of clutter, find simplicity,” advised Albert Einstein.

Yet, neither letting go nor knowing well what we need must know, most of us are unable to transcend our own life long, unresolved psychical and psychological issues. Hence, people leave no stone un-turned to perforce make acceptable a personal kink, as though it’s the divine right of a king.

Such an ailing is homosexuality.

“If I were to remain silent, I’d be guilty of complicity.” ~EINSTEIN

Having said so, it must be remembered well and unconditionally so  - without queering the pitch with pre-conceived, inculcated ideas or imbibed prejudices  -  that “EACH SOUL is potentially DIVINE.” This the well-known spiritual sage of India, Vivekananda proclaimed aloud. For, it is the fundamental tenet of metaphysical reality. This spiritual giant full well knew that the out-dated and orthodox thinking, in the West as too in the East, is ever a little too quick to denounce one’s opponent an apostate than admitting that the other is an equally - right or wrong - divine being.

“The goal is to manifest this divinity within by controlling nature, external and internal. Do this either by work, or worship or psychic control or philosophy: by one or more or all of these. And, BE FREE.” Thus advised, and advocated SWAMI Vivekananda (1863-1902).

Socrates too, in a similar spiritual vein put it that “In this present life, I reckon that we make the nearest approach to knowledge when we have the least possible concern or interest in the body, and are not saturated with the bodily nature, but remain pure until the hour when God himself is pleased to release us. And then the foolishness of the body will be cleared away and we shall be pure and hold converse with other pure souls. And know of ourselves the clear light everywhere; and this is surely the LIGHT of TRUTH.”

In these queer times, only a straight eye can cross the line.

But sadly, concerned over much with our earthly rather than our ethereal entity, humankind at large remains, in one manner or another, brain dead. Some of us even soul dead. Mostly faulty, feeble, misled and mind led. Such a misguided lot expect others  - the spiritually oriented and the more metaphysically inclined people  - to accept, nay, applaud man’s bestial nature, and his catering to the debauched demands of the bodily form; its fancies and fads. Not as abnormal, but as the norm.

At the minimum, this ever so ‘physically’ inclined, the earthy swing-group amongst the humankind, much minds if the others do not fall in line with its whims and wanderings. Therefore, are not - in today’s lingo - “cool” about it. 

And, now days, some would b****-slap their mothers to be cool.

 “Now, if these men do not die well, it will be a black matter for the king that led them to it.” - SHAKESPEARE

Alas! Most of us die embracing un-truth. As our last escort.

“The application of force alone, without support based on a spiritual concept, can never bring about the destruction of an idea or arrest the propagation of it, unless one is ready and able to ruthlessly to exterminate the last upholders of that idea even to a man, and also wipe out any tradition which it may tend to leave behind.” - Adolf HITLER (Mein Kampf)

Homosexuality can be a force only on the grave of spirituality. 

“The soul is then dragged by the body into the region of the changeable, and wanders and is confused; the world spins round her, and she is like a drunkard when under their influence.” - SOCRATES

The spiritual lot are, thus, metaphorically and literally, getting badgered. 

“For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature: And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompense of their error which was meet.” (Romans 1:26–27

“I have not come into this world to make men better, but to make use of their weaknesses.” - Adolf HITLER

So, beware! An articulate untruth states no truth.

“Man is not entirely an animal. He aspires to a spiritual vision, which is the vision of the whole truth. This gives him the highest delight, because it reveals to him the deepest harmony that exists between him and his surroundings. It is our desires that limit the scope of our Self-Realization, hinder our extension of consciousness, and give rise to sin, which is the innermost barrier that keeps us apart from our God, setting up disunion and the arrogance of exclusiveness. For sin is not one mere action, but it is an attitude of life which takes for granted that our goal is finite, that our self is the ultimate truth, and that we are not all ESSENTIALLY ONE but exist each for his own separate individual existence.” - Rabindranath TAGORE (Nobel Prize in LITERATURE, 1913)

In the online free-encyclopaedia, WIKIPEDIA, it is stated that in a detailed compilation of historical and ethnographic materials of Preindustrial Cultures, “strong disapproval of homosexuality was reported for 41% of 42 cultures; it was accepted or ignored by 21%, and 12% reported no such concept. Of 70 ethnographies, 59% reported homosexuality absent or rare in frequency and 41% reported it present or not uncommon.”

By now, everybody is aware of the traditional, orthodox religious views against homosexuality in the Christian, Muslim and Jewish fold. The Baha'i and the Zoroastrian invocations on this issue are quite similar to the Abrahamic faiths. It is easy to cite well against sodomy from the religious texts of Abrahamic belief system. Thus, one need not elaborate further on this. Quite simply, it is in line with the following blunt enunciation from the ancient Islamic HADIS, which explains that ALLAH “will not look at the man who commits sodomy with a man or a woman.” 

“Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a person commits are outside the body, but whoever sins sexually, sins against their own body. Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God… Therefore honour God with your bodies.” ~ Corinthians 6:18–20

In a May 25, 1999 interview published in The Age, Dalai Lama said:

“THEY want me to condone homosexuality. But I am a Buddhist and, for a Buddhist, a RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN TWO MEN is WRONG!” He also added that “Some sexual conduct in marriage is also wrong” - speaking regarding oral sex etc. At the same time, saying that “If an individual has no faith, that is a different matter… If two men really love each other and are not religious, then that is OK by me.”

The wise let the wild grass grow on its own. 

The confirmed, un-compromising but compassionate bearing of the Eastern holy men with regard to humankind’s inane, indecent involvements with each other emanates from a deep spiritual understanding that:

“He alone sees truly who sees the Lord the same in every creature.. Seeing the same Lord everywhere, he does not harm himself or others.” - Bhagavad GITA 

It in no way makes right the wrong.

LIBERTINE theologies and free-mystical movements akin Taoism and Confucianism etc. of the Far East, similarly, like the “higher” metaphysics of India, to say the least but much  - being ‘Whole’ oriented - completely stay away from commenting or caring much for the “little” orientations of the “lower” kind. 

Arguing with a fool brings to the fold one more fool. 

The metaphysical belief in the ONENESS and WHOLENESS of ALL THAT IS, makes the free mystics reticent, if not downright reluctant, to squabble over the lowly, mind-made afflictions and affectations of the non-spiritual populace. 

“All differences in this world are of degree, and not of kind, because ONENESS is the SECRET of EVERYTHING.” - Swami VIVEKANANDA

Easterners  - seers, spiritualists and sages  - prefer to refrain themselves from straying into the thick and thin of petty matters, like homosexuality. It is a cultural thing. A hangover, if one may so say, of a refined but a restrained freethinking. As a lady of good name does not associate herself with debauched hoodlums, an enlightened individual sees no virtue in indulging buffoons. It is unfruitful, and wasteful. There are better things to do. Like seeking, finding, and then, living the Truth.

The wise from the West are not any different.

“When does the soul obtain Truth?” asked SOCRATES. 

Asking thus, thence, this ancient philosopher from the West, Socrates, postulates alike the Eastern sages of afore, that the human entity, and its soul “in attempting to consider anything in company with the body, she is obviously deceived. …Then must not existence be revealed to her in thought, if at all? … And thought is best when the mind is gathered into herself and none of these things trouble her - neither sounds nor sights nor pain nor any pleasure - when she has as little as possible to do with the body, and has no bodily sense or feeling, but is aspiring after Being?” 

YET pushed to the corner, some ancient Indian texts and scriptures do say a thing or two about the dark h***-erotic issues of the general population. Not too favourably, in fact. 

“A man who ejaculates into female animals, in men, a menstruating woman, in something other than a vagina SHOULD ATONE by consuming a drop of a purifying substance made of the five products of the cow and fasting for one night.” - Manusmriti 11 :174

 “And an unnatural offence with a man, are declared to cause the loss of (high) caste (Gatibhramsa).” - Manusmriti 11:68

Also, in the famous ancient treatise of India, Artha Shashtra (4;13-236 AD) of Kautilya, it is stated that any non-vaginal sex with either women and men is punishable by law, and the culprit must incur punitive fine. 

“A kanya [unmarried young girl or woman] who pollutes (another) kanya must be fined two hundred (annas), pay the double of her (nuptial) fee, and receive ten (lashes with a) rod. But a stree [mature woman] who pollutes a kanya (younger-immature girl) shall instantly have (her head) shaved or two fingers cut off, and be made to ride (through the town) on a donkey.” - Manusmriti 8:370-371

But it needs be noted that the ancient Indian sages and society did not declare those indulging in homosexuality or lesbianism as ungodly or heathens, and therefore, unpardonable in the eyes of God. Unlike the Abrahamic religions, the Indian spiritualists have always been “cool” about the whole issue of the aforesaid ‘un-natural acts’ – never condoning, but more or less, ever compassionate.

“BUT the soul which has been polluted, and is impure at the time of her departure, and is the companion and servant of the body always, and is in love with and fascinated by the body and by the desires and pleasures of the body, until she is led to believe that the truth exists only in bodily form, which a man may touch and see and taste and use for the purposes of his lusts—the soul, I mean, accustomed to hate and fear and avoid the intellectual principle, which to the bodily eye is dark and invisible, and can be attained only by philosophy—do you suppose that such a soul as this will depart pure and unalloyed?” - SOCRATES

SEXUAL ORIENTATION, now commonly referred to as “Homosexuality” -  till rather recently - was listed and considered a mental illness diagnosis in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). 

In mid-20th century Britain, male homosexuality was illegal until the Sexual Offences Act 1967. Then, to openly identify someone as a homosexual was considered extremely offensive. It was also a clear-cut accusation of serious criminal activity. Also, at that time in history, none of the words describing any aspect of homosexuality were considered suitable for polite society. 

So, what’s changed between now and then? Politics! And special interest group lobbying, media management, and above all, brand selling.

“THROUGH clever and constant application of propaganda, people can be made to see paradise as hell, and also the other way round, to consider the most wretched sort of life as paradise.” ~Adolf HITLER

SCHOPENHAUER, the world renowned philosopher and scholar, in The World as Will and Representation (1859), added an appendix to his chapter on the “Metaphysics of Sexual Love”. He also wrote that homosexuality did have the benefit of preventing ill-begotten children. Concerning this, he stated, “… the vice we are considering appears to work directly against the aims and ends of Nature, and that in a matter that is all important and of the greatest concern to her, it must in fact serve these very aims, although only indirectly, as a means for preventing greater evils.” 

Thus, this German sage, Schopenhauer seems to be in agreement with his contemporary, the British Naturalist, CHARLES DARWIN, who, outlined The Theory of Evolution, and, proposed that EVOLUTION could be explained through NATURAL and SEXUAL SELECTION. A Medical dictionary’s scientific definition of evolution is that it is “the continuing process of change, especially in reference to natural selection.” Hence, our much maligned modern god  - SCIENCE  -  its offshoot, the evolutionary and scientific explanation of CREATION, of self-evolution of the species, and thus surviving, must be considered dispassionately. And, on facts.

Thus, per the Evolutionary Theory the AIM and OBJECTIVE of Creation and its Nature seems to be its own survival. And its propagation. This is so in all animals, as too the human species.

But the same sex-gender copulation does not breed an offspring. It is neither geared towards nor genetically so endowed to continue the natural preservation and propagation of our human race, its lineage. Hence, continuing in similar evolutionary vein, it may be said that the same-gender copulation is a useless process. It is an utter waste - of time, and energy. It serves no purpose in existence, except decadence. Ergo, it may be scientifically promulgated and postulated that HOMOSEXUALITY is CONTRARY to NATURE’S INBUILT NATURE. 

Hence, even as per Scientific Argument vis-a-vis the EVOLUTIONARY THEORY, the concept of Homosexuality is an unfit, un-natural and an un-evolved thought process. It has neither a role in, nor any respect for the Inborn Evolutionary Design in Nature. Simply put – were one to accept the Evolutionary Theory as scientifically correct – then, as per the Natural SCIENTIFIC Laws of Evolution, of which we are so enamoured now days, it may well be said, and said so very precisely and publicly that the very concept of HOMOSEXUALITY is AGAINST NATURE.

“There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.” - Charles DARWIN

“NATURE, free at once and rid of her haughty lords, is seen to do all things spontaneously of herself, without the meddling of the gods.” - LUCRETIUS, Roman philosopher (99 BC -55 BC)

SIGMUND FREUD, the father of modern-day PSYCHOANALYSIS, had given much thought to, and, thus, used to hypothesize different psycho-developmental events possibly involved in the emergence of ADULT HOMOSEXUALITY. Drescher, 2001):

1. 1.     Homosexuality arises as a result of the Oedipus conflict and the boy’s discovery that his mother is ‘castrated’. This produces intense castration anxiety causing the boy to turn from his castrated mother to a ‘woman with a penis’.
2. 2.     In the Three Essays, Freud (1905) theorized that the future homosexual child is so over-attracted to his mother that he identifies with her and narcissistically seeks love objects like himself so he can love them like his mother loved him.
3. 3.     If a ‘negative’ or ‘inverted’ Oedipus complex occurs, a boy seeks his father’s love and masculine identification by taking on a feminine identification and reverting to anal eroticism.
4. 4.     Finally, homosexuality could result from reaction formation(2): sadistic jealousy of brothers and father is safely converted into love of other men.

 In 1952, when the American Psychiatric Association published its first Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, homosexuality was included as a disorder. 

“The highest possible stage in moral culture is when we recognize that we ought to control our thoughts.” ~CHARLES DARWIN

Along with Sigmund Freud, in the field of Psychology and Psychoanalysis, the views of Carl Gustav Jung on Homosexual Issues are interestingly as enlightening. JUNG says:

“But those women who can achieve something important for the love of a thing are most exceptional, because this does not really agree with their nature. Love for a thing is a man’s prerogative. BUT since masculine and feminine elements are united in our human nature, a man can live in the feminine part of himself, I and a woman in her masculine part. None the less the feminine element in man is only something in the background, as is the masculine element in woman. If one lives out the opposite sex in oneself one is living in one’s own background, and one’s real individuality suffers. A man should live as a man and a woman as a woman.”

The World Health Organization’s ICD-9 (1977) listed homosexuality as a mental illness.

Thus, beyond the traditional religious views  - about and against un-naturalness of licentious actions of same sex coupling  - psychology, psychoanalysis and philosophy too do not see any merit in arguing for “rightness” or “naturalness” of homosexual behaviour in human beings.

However, it must also be stated  - and put on record  - that of late, under heavy pressure from the modern-day lobbying by the lesbian-homosexual section of the Western society, somehow or the other, homosexuality has been or is being de-listed from the earlier stated position of it being a criminal act and a mental illness. Efforts are on to make it a ‘human right’ violation to discriminate against people on the basis of one being a lesbian or a homosexual. The same may well be successful too, maybe in the very near future.

“But when returning into herself she [the soul] reflects; then she passes into the Realm of Purity, and Eternity, and Immortality, and Unchangeable-ness, which are her kindred, and with them she ever lives, when she is by herself and is not let or hindered; then she ceases from her erring ways, and being in Communion with the UNCHANGING is Unchanging. And this State of the Soul is called Wisdom.” - SOCRATES

Now comes the question – what is this world?  Is it real, or do we just perceive it to be real, though in actuality it is unreal?

“As a man who has devoted his whole life to the most clear headed science, to the study of matter, I can tell you as a result of my research about atoms this much: There is no matter as such. All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particle of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together. We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent mind. This mind is the matrix of all matter.” – Max Planck (Nobel Prize PHYSICIST)

Thus, the “seen” world – which includes us, the “visible”, manifest “matter” of human entities – just does not matter as a reality. For, we are in fact nonexistent - in the Ultimate Reality! Here, nor there. This is an express fact of Quantum Physics.

“Multiplicity is only apparent, in truth, here is only One Mind.” - Erwin Schrodinger (Nobel Prize PHYSICIST)

It is in this scientific finding of the “non-existence” of the “seen world” - because this manifest existence is a chimera (Maya), and an illusion – that spiritually, Swami Vivekananda advises us to “FIRST get rid of the delusion ‘I am the body,’ THEN only will we want REAL KNOWLEDGE.”

Hence, quantum physicists as Schrodinger, Max Plank, Heisenberg, and many more scientists of similar calibre, have expressed identical views as yogis and free mystics of India - that there exists no separation in Existence. And that nothing exists independent of each other  - though seemingly they do. But when broken down to the bare essentials, scientifically and spiritually, there’s found but a Unified Wholeness at the core of everything. 

Thence it may be said that in the realms of higher spirituality and advanced science, there’s no factual difference of views about the End Reality. It is found thereof that all consciousness is, in fact, One Indivisible Universal Consciousness.

And that there’s no this or that mind, or for that matter, any separate mindfulness; but One Mind. Eventually, there’s nothing as your or my reality, but One Reality. In effect, we are not only of identical quintessence, but one essence. And were we to see beyond the apparent multiplicity, there’s no this or that entity, but Unity. All that exists is but One. We are this – the One.

 “The soul is the same in all living creatures, although the body of each is different.” - HIPPOCRATES (460-370 BC)

“There is one living spirit prevalent over this world… which assumes a multitude of forms each having acting principle according to subordinate laws.” - CHARLES DARWIN 

Therefore, though we may be experiencing ‘here’, ourselves as a feminine or a masculine ‘shakti’ (force / energy)  - in the Ultimate Reality, in truth, we’re but the One in All.

We are, thus, neither male, nor female!

As such, we are neither “this” nor “that”, but the-Thing-in-Itself. Our inner core, that which makes us alive, the ‘’I’ expressing itself as the life in you and me, is One.

We are the Unchanging in the changing.

“The flesh would shrink and go, the blood would dry, but no one believes in his mind of minds or heart of hearts that the pictures do stop.” - SAUL BELLOW

Once we realize this, through metaphysics or physics, ‘then, she (our physicality of being and soul) ceases from her erring ways” - as Socrates put it. And thereupon, our “Communion with the UNCHANGING, is Unchanging”. Thus, with a scientific temperament, a spiritually aware person reaches the eventual conclusion, like the Nobel laureate in Physics, Erwin Schrodinger, that the “Multiplicity (in this seemingly real but unreal world) is only apparent”. And in actual reality, the multiplicity of things and beings, simply, “is not”. It - “all this” - is an unreality, in the End Reality.

And therefore, as Hippocrates, the father of modern medicine, put it centuries ago, we are the “same”  - in the primordial soul essence  - “although the body of each is different.” Thence, on the deepest and the farthest reflection, be it of any scientific or a spiritual or an agnostic or even an atheist, all must reach but one eventual conclusion about What Is.

This means, that beyond the seeming “made-up” differentiation of being a man or a woman and this or that t, we are one. And all Existence is but a Single Whole. In essence, and essentially, we are the Whole. Not merely a man or a woman.

From the above fact, not hypothesis - being in quintessence the One, the Whole, the ‘I’ of Nature – we, as the manifestation of this Oneness – must behave naturally. Not un-naturally, as a mind-made this or that sexual being. For, we are more than our body, the mind or our lowly thought. We are the infinitude of ‘That’, which, is the ‘make’ of All - that multitudes refer to as God.

Therefore, and thereupon, you want to hump a tree trunk, by the road-side? By all means, go ahead. But it’s just that. Humping. And a little pecker pecking dead wood!

It’s your kink. There’s nothing “cool” about it. Neither is it unscientific, nor spiritually acceptable. No way. Not this-that, nor any which way – whether here or there; nor anywhere else; in fact, nowhere.

It is unacceptable by a sane man, and God.

Or a kafir.

“This life of yours which you are living is not merely a piece of this entire existence, but in a certain sense the Whole; only this whole is not so constituted that it can be surveyed in one single glance. This, as we know, is what the Brahmans express in that sacred, mystic formula which is yet really so simple and so clear; TAT TVUM ASI  - ‘This is You!’ Or, again, in such words as “I am in the East and the West, I am above and below, I am this entire world.” - Erwin Schrodinger (NOBEL PHYSICIST)