Kaula Ethics and the Use of Life Energies

 

What really moves the five Ms out of the mainstream is the concept that these common activities—particularly the drinking and the sex—can also have a spiritual dimension. The trouble begins, in other words, when we confuse their literal meanings with their hidden meanings. The attitude of most people then is: “Drinking liquor and enjoying sex is all right. But using them for worship? No way!” That’s the problem.

And the biggest objection, of course, concerns the use of bodily secretions in ritual. Now, almost every mainstream Hindu will have used milk and honey to bathe images of the deities—icons of power, desire, nourishment or manifestation—during puja. But the ritual use of menstrual blood and semen is objected to by most. Why? Let me explain.

Milk is blood modified by the addition of calcium, which happens automatically in lactating mothers. So milk and blood are basically the same thing, and both are obtained without injury to animals. Everything we eat comes only from organic living matter, including the seeds of rice, wheat, nuts and so on. Semen is just human seed.

Both menstrual flow and semen are living substances, which can be used to give life in this world or be offered into the ritual fire to help fulfill our desire to gain control of our environment.

Notice also that both menstrual blood and semen are obtained through pleasure instead of pain, so they promote good, peace-loving energies.

In fact, even a cow’s urine and excreta—along with her milk, butter and ghee—are used in Vedic rituals, since the Mother Goddess Lakshmi is said to reside near the genital and excretory organs of the holy cow.

You see, the Vedas and the Tantras are really very similar. They overlap considerably in their positive use of life energies and their abhorrence of needless violence.

The main goals of both approaches are the same: satyam = truth, ahimsa = non-violence, and astēyam = not coveting others’ properties.

So why should these aspects of the five Ms be so abhorred by critics?

The harmless Kaulas practice non-violence to the greatest extent possible. If you’re a vegetarian, then good; remain so. If you’re not vegetarian, then try to minimize harm by dedicating your life and others’ lives to the Goddess.

Each of us can choose to discover the needs of the others and fulfill them—or to be a taker and a burden. The needs of others are manifold: education, careers, control of emotions, improving human relations, and many more. Why not help if you can?

But do not, in any case, suppress desires. They are, after all, God’s desires. Desires are also spiritual.

I believe we should move from animal to human, and then from human to divine value systems. I believe in empowering everyone, because everyone is divine.

That is the path of the Kaulas.