43: Pondside Talk & Debate: Eros and Spirit with Marianne Costa, Jorge Ferrer, Santoshi Amor and Raffaello Manacorda

Marianne Costa
Jorge Ferrer
Santoshi Amor
Raffaello Manacorda

Eros
Spirit
Tarot of Marseilles
Tarot of Marseilles – The Lover
Hinduism – God Kama
Hinduism – God Rati
The Lady and the Unicorn
The Mayas – Kama Sutra
Kalu Rinpoche
Carlos Castaneda
Participation and the Mystery
Love and Freedom
Santa Teresa
Mythical story: Eros and Psyche
ISTA
Carl Juny – Eros Theory
Buddha – Great Renunciation
The Red Book – Jung
Erich Neumann
Ibiza Tantra Festival
Tantra Woman
Spanda

Giancarlo: [00:00:00] Hello, welcome to the first episode of the Pondside talk and debate. So this is both offline and online event. Uh, the format is, um, we have four speakers. The theme today is, um, Eros and Spirit from a tantric and non tantric perspective. So already this name has created some confusion. Is it classic tantra?

Is it neo tantra? I will let the speakers clarify. [00:01:00] Um, the format will be two hours. So we’re going to start with a 15 minutes monologue each. Santoshi might cut the talk a little bit shorter and do something else. Um, then, half an hour debate. So, I don’t want to polarize in already super polarized world, but the little bit of disagreement It’s always interesting, right?

A little bit of, uh, different point of view, and so I’m not gonna say the red team against the black team, but, uh, okay, so I will now, we will, uh, start with, um, I will introduce the speakers for their 15 minutes monologue, uh, we will start with Marianne. Marianne Costa holds an MA in comparative literature and is a renowned expert in the fields of symbolism, tarot, and transgenerational psychology.

Together with Alejandro Jodorowsky, she authored the international bestseller The Way [00:02:00] of Tarot and Meta Genealogy. She has written several books, translated in various languages, and collaborates with various institutions and museums. Most recently with Centro Cultural Canducue in Madrid, Guggenheim Collection in Venice, and Academia di Belle Arte in Palermo.

I could pronounce the last one better. Her poly faceted career includes being a professional actress and singer, writing and translating poetry, novels and essays, working with theatre and dance companies as a dramaturg, and teaching worldwide. She has been a passionate tango dancer and singer for the last decade.

Welcome, Marianne. 

Marianne: So, um, I just spent a week in agony. because having 15 minutes to talk about a subject that has been, I mean, um, a complete mystery for the last 30 centuries for the greatest sages and saints and who no one [00:03:00] has been able to resolve is a very interesting challenge. Um, and so I’ve decided to lean upon the, um, When I don’t know where to turn, I turn to the tarot.

I’m talking about the Tarot of Marseille, which is basically, I mean, these cards that I brought, I brought only two, don’t worry. Uh, they come from, um, uh, from a game from the very early 18th century, so they were actually playing cards. But the tarot is, for those of you who don’t know it, it’s kind of a visual summary of the wisdom.

Wisdom of the West. So I was reflecting on the dynamics and relationship between Eros and Spirit, and we would have to define Eros and define Spirit, which is already quite a task, and I realized that there’s actually two cards in the tarot that kind of show us. the perspective. The first is card number six called the lover, which I will describe for the podcast.

It shows three people on the ground. I mean, [00:04:00] standing, but on the ground level who are kind of ugly in traditional Tahoe. They’re not supposed to be pretty. One of them is apparently a young woman. And the person in the center is a man. The third person is more ambiguous. And upon them shines a very big sun, in front of which a small angel, Eros, Cupid, who is very beautiful, like, compared to the human beings, is preparing to shoot an arrow.

So this card has, like, a lot of different meanings, and usually it’s about a choice to be made. It’s about our love, or You know, emotional or, um, uh, like not, not directly sexual life, but about the world of attraction. But for me, the question that is asked by this card, which no one can really figure out. I mean, when people draw these cards, they’re sometimes happy, sometimes unhappy, um, It doesn’t give a very clear message, and I think it’s a [00:05:00] very interesting summary of what our intimate life is.

It does give clear messages when we’re under the spell of hormones and neurotransmitters, recently falling in love or lust. The message seems really, really clear. And then as we deepen the connection with whatever our situations are, whether they’re sexualized or not. But in our intimate life in general, uh, there’s always a lot of confusion.

So this card also, you know, represents community at large and our family life and the way our, um, experience with our brothers and sisters and parents have shaped our sense of intimacy. But for me, the question that is really crucial and that probably most of the speakers will try to address in a way or another is to know whether, why this angel is a child, why is Eros a child?

In the, in the Hinduism, Kama is not a child and Rati is not a child. They’re two grown ups. Kama is love, Rati is desire or sexuality, basically, and they’re [00:06:00] represented as, you know, fully grown gods. But in our culture, in the West, I think most of us can consider themselves as products of the Western culture, Eros is a child.

So that’s the first question. Why is Eros in our heritage? Uh, something that is connected with childishness or, or child likeness. And then the other question that’s, that’s very deep is, does the angel hide the sun or does the angel reveal the sun? In other terms, if we look at this sun as whatever we call spirit, Like, the cosmic dimension, the whole, the essential light, the source of love, warmth, and unconditional light that shines equally upon everybody.

Is the Little Heroes a mockery or a, like, applied shadow on this sun? Or is it actually the one step through [00:07:00] which we can access the sun? Another interesting fact in the traditional Tahoe. I mean, we could pass the drawing if you’re interested. Is that the, the, the bow of the little angel gives the son the shape of a skull.

So maybe we can pass it around. And then the next card, which is, which has, um, very clear relevance, like iconographic relevance with, uh, with card number six with the lovers, the card of judgment, of course, which is supposed to describe the last judge, last judgment, but which usually stands for irresistible desire.

I would like to make a parenthesis here and, uh, go into the question of Tantra. I think we’re all more or less tantric here, even if, well, you, you were, you got drunk yesterday night. So if Tantra is something, like I said to Jorge, it’s about digesting poisons. So he’s the most tantric of us all today, you know.

Being hungover, what is more tantric [00:08:00] than being hungover? So I’m committed to a spiritual path that, that is tantric in essence, not in, um, rituals. You know that basically in traditional spirituality you have paths where you have like a very limited amount of instructions that you need to chew on and practice forever and ever, like Zen, for instance.

And you have paths like in Buddhism or in some branches of Hinduism, where there’s so many, you know, text to studies and mantras to remember, etc. That’s not the kind of tantra I’m talking about. And if we, if I would want to summarize what I under, what I understand as Tantra, and I’m not pretending to be right about that, I would say that Tantra is about the path in the world, so we don’t remove ourselves from From the delusions and temptations where we don’t go into monasteries, we don’t choose a path of renunciation and we don’t even necessarily choose to be householders in a [00:09:00] monogamous way and, you know, accumulate riches and whatever.

But we go through whatever the five senses have to offer with a very deep, uh, commitment we will take both Shiva and Shakti, both the masculine, quote unquote, and the feminine, uh, uh, in love and and in union together. And that means the concave. So that means love and loss. That means happy emotions and unhappy emotions.

That means praise and blame. And that means to basically, um, Be able eventually to, um, stand witness to the energy that is at the base of any experience in a way that this energy enjoys and, and, and feeds and, and nurtures itself from whatever is there. So there’s a beautiful [00:10:00] tapestry at the Musée de Cluny called The Lady and the Unicorn that some of you might have seen, uh, live or online in which this incredibly beautiful lady and her, uh, lady in waiting experiment the joys of the five senses and the last, the sixth tapestry is called To My One and Only Desire and she’s giving everything back in a casket.

To To that one and only desire. So when we talk about irresistible desire. about the judgment, which is the desire to be able to dare say I am, which is the desire to finally disengage from the illusion of being the separate entity. We’re also also talking about what the monogamous, yeah, monotheist and monogamous religions.

are, um, are describing as the final judgment, the, the rising from the dead. It’s not [00:11:00] necessarily that we will be born again in whichever way it’s how do we rise? You know, like in, in the, in the Sanskrit prayer, which means lead immortality. So that is the meaning of the judgment, which is also the card of the one desire.

Of course, when you do a reading with me, it’s going to be about your, you know, your call in life and, or maybe your relationship with your loved one or, but it’s really essentially about the nature of desire in terms of. We have so many different desires that are so many branches of the one desire, which is what?

I mean, the, the, the proverbial question that the spiritual teacher asks. The person who comes to them for the first time is what do you want? What do we want? So this card is about the moment when the angel and the emanation in the sky become one. The angel has grown, he’s [00:12:00] become a grown up. Oddly enough, the angel is dressed, which means that somehow we have chosen the same way that the characters were dressed in the former card.

Now the characters are naked and the angel was naked and now the angel is dressed. So in the former card, we are, you know, our weight, our fortune, our beauty, how many hours we’ve spent in the gym to look good on the beach, whatever, whatever we put on. And now the human beings down there are naked, but the angel is dressed because you have to choose one way of answering the one desire.

So that was a long introduction for whatever I’m going to say next. I think, um, I would like to talk about two things, the way that the angel can hide about the, the way the angel can hide the sun. Um, because I think the people who are, here are going to, um, talk much better than I would about everything that has to do with, [00:13:00] um, walking into intimacy and ecstasy with others and with oneself and, um, all the delightful aspects of what we could, um, describe in terms of how Eros brings us to the spirit.

So, you know, if I had an hour to myself, I would do that, but I think we have some wonderful specials of that. But what I, one of the things I would like to remind us is that if Eros is a child, that means we have to look at trauma, we have to look at wounds, and we have to look at whatever intimacy, love, and sexuality mean in our family tree.

So I think one of the first ways that we could look at Eros and Spirit is think about, okay, if I’m going to go through all the nuances of life, if I’m going to embrace my sexual energy with whether manifested or, you know, spiritualized in some way, whether genitalized or [00:14:00] not, just lived in. communion with the whole, am I even able to imagine the myth of my own conception?

What was that moment when a man and a woman, for our generations it was still a man and a woman, now there’s so many different interesting ways, came together? What happened? Was there desire? Or just, you know, uh, reactive lust? Uh, how did the endless Cosmic creativity turn into that moment where that specific shape and being that I have become happened So literally, where were my parents?

How old were they? How were their bodies, their hearts? Um, can I even dare to imagine what position I was conceived in? I mean, it’s one of the [00:15:00] things that the Mayas would do. They had like, a specific Kama Sutra for, um, and gendering, breeding children on specific days of the year. And can I face the fact that maybe I wasn’t a child of love, or maybe I wasn’t a child of pleasure?

And can I then think about how my grandparents conceived my parents? I mean, generally with the family tree, we don’t go beyond four generations. So, could you imagine all the four couples of your great grandparents having sex? is that really crazy? And how is it important? Because we have to look at the lack of information in our history, in our family, in our current circumstances.

Otherwise, the risk is that when we hear Eros and Spirit, we start to idealize whatever we’re actually able to do. And I think what’s [00:16:00] wonderful is to go step by step and also face, um, our limitations. And on the other hand, um, whenever a sperm meets an ovum, There is an orgasmic quality in that encounter.

I think, um, it’s still available online. There was a beautiful imagery where, at the moment when the ovum finally accepts the one sperm that is chosen, because you know, of course, that it’s not a rape. You know the Darwinian idea that the guys are like running for the fortress and they’re like kind of like attacking it and one gets the prize.

That’s not true. There is like a call from the ovum to, to make you happen. Is that Eros in spirit Giancarlo? That’s the way I look at it. That we all begin in a space of ecstasy, but that is cellular ecstasy. So, [00:17:00] from that cellular ecstasy, we can start to gradually rebuild our capacity to welcome ecstasy and to welcome the shadow.

Which I think The reason why, so that would be my second point, the reason why, um, Eros and Spirit is a very complex subject, and the reason why many paths and many religions have chosen to kind of like, you know, shut the doors and advocate for limitations, and also the reason why we have a lot of examples recently in the Tibetan tradition that the secret sexual tantras had been actually performed By teachers who claimed to be renunciates, and then, you know, lured some of their young female students into becoming their Dakinis.

And ending up in situations where under the pretense of, of the deepest and most hidden and most sacred tantras, we are basically facing [00:18:00] patriarchal abuse, trauma, and then women who speak for years and years and years and are not heard. Yeah. So Gal Rinpoche, Kaloo Rinpoche, anyone. So why is it that the religions and the past have been so cautious about?

Um, letting the sexual energy be what it is. That means a part of, you know, we have. Divine intelligence coming to us and we do whatever we can with it. We have divine or cosmic love coming to us and we do whatever we can with it. We live inside the great life that is the life of the cosmos and the planets and we do whatever we can with our existence.

And we are products of the creativity of the universe which expresses in us through our hormonal and genital desires. Basically in the most raw and crude ways and paradoxically that fire because it’s connected with the element of fire in a lot of the at least Western [00:19:00] traditions has been seen as extremely, um, dangerous.

So one of the things I’d like to and I would like to finish with that because I think it’s already been a little bit long is to remind us that in the non medicinal shamanic traditions. Castaneda, The Way of the Eagle, Louis Ansa, et cetera, et cetera. Um, the connection between sexual energy and power is very much, um, stressed.

Most of the black magic works with the sexual centers and through the sexual centers and seduction and, you know, finding someone who’s going to be your lover in order to drag you into black magic. You’re laughing, but it’s actually very scary because it works. And so I would like to remind us of a wonderful exercise that I highly recommend that was passed on to us by Carlos Castaneda, who said that.

Um, a person who’s living in a traditional environment usually meets about three to four [00:20:00] hundred people in their lives. We as, uh, city people encounter so many more people and the most urgent recapitulation we need to do in order to get our energetic filaments back is to recapitulate the people we’ve been intimate with, emotionally or sexually.

So it’s a very simple process that I think all of you, most of you know. Where you first recapitulate, sometimes it’s not that easy when you’ve been sexually active in the 1980s, like I have before porn and the pill and AIDS. And then you just breathe your filaments back in and offer them back out and do that for as many days or months you need to with one person after another.

Yeah. I think the psychological and the energetic maintenance is as much as I have to speak for an opening and thank you so much for bearing with me. 

Giancarlo: Thank you, Marianne. Lots of food for thought there. [00:21:00] Jorge Ferrer. Jorge is a clinical psychologist, author and educator. He was a professor of psychology for more than 20 years at California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco, where he also served as chair of the Department of East West Psychology.

Jorge is the author of dozens of articles and several books on psychology, education, Religious studies and intimate relationship, including participation in the mystery, transpersonal essays in psychology, education and religion, and love and freedom, transcending monogamy and polyamory. Jorge was a member of the Esalen Institute Center for Theory and Research.

He also taught Workshop on Embodied Spirituality. Hoge received the Fester a Presidential award for his seminal work on consciousness studies and was selected as an advisor to the Religions for Peace organization at the United Station. Thank you, Jorge. Thank 

Jorge: you Yian Carlo. Uh, thank you Marianne for the positive tantric reframing of my hangover.

Uh, [00:22:00] that. That really helped.

I would like to start like, uh, three, like three hypotheses about eros and spirit. And the first one is that for me, eros and spirit or energy or consciousness or sexuality and spirituality are the same energy, but in different states of transformation. I experienced like erotic energy as kind of undifferentiated.

pregnant of potentials as more dense because it’s so compact, it’s full of potentials and also kind of, uh, uh, dark, not in a moralistic way or descriptive way, but in the sense that, uh, we cannot see directly with the light of our consciousness, those potentials, the need to undergo a process of transformation through ourselves, different centers, and then they come out into our lives.

So, uh, and then, uh, the second, um, hypothesis is that, uh, Those two energies, they lead to each other, and I have this Mobius strip, uh, you probably are familiar with the diagram. It’s like one [00:23:00] side, it’s the same side, but one side reaches the other side, and, uh, I don’t know if you want to pass it or not.

Ahem. What I mean by this is like, uh, um, whenever we plunge, uh, deeply into, uh, sexual, erotic energy, the sense of the numinous, the sense of the sacred emerges. And whenever we, uh, plunge deeply or highly, depending on what you prefer, the metaphor, uh, into the energies of consciousness, uh, the sense of the ecstatic and the erotic emerges.

Uh, remember like the, um, you know, the raptures of so many mystics east and west, from Santa Teresa to Hildegard, not to speak about the Hindu mystics,

And then the last hypothesis is that those two energies, they need each other. They need each other. It’s like a chemical marriage. For me, it’s not so much about sublimating one energy into the other, although that can have a function at certain moments moments, you know, and they need each other because like the energy of consciousness, like, uh, gives our vital energy, erotic [00:24:00] energy, uh, illuminates that world.

And also it gives us like an evolutionary direction beyond more evolutionary instinctive patterns towards procreation or narrow hedonism. Nothing wrong about hedonism, okay? Just narrow hedonism, kind of narcissistic one, okay? And then the, the energy, uh, the energy of life, eros, uh, uh, vitalizes our consciousness, makes even an erotic quality to our minds, uh, and it also grounds our consciousness, like, uh, uh, helps consciousness to get more fully embodied here, uh, and I believe that, like, this kind of alchemical marriage is, like, super important for a holistic spiritual life, and when those two energies meet in the heart, it’s a big party.

So, um, that said, like, uh, we can ask ourselves, like, uh, if this is so, why there is, uh, following your, some of your thoughts, why there is so many tensions, uh, in the culture, you know, between sexuality and spirituality. Why so many people experience, uh, that they are in, in conflict or, uh, [00:25:00] intention. And as Marianne mentioned, there is many reasons, there is evolutionary reasons, there is like historical reasons, religious reasons, patriarchal reasons, we’ll not go there.

But I would like to offer you some distinctions that I think are important to understand that tension. And it’s the distinction between a sexuality that is superficial. Uh, on a sexuality that is deep, a superficial sexuality is a sexuality that is disembodied, is hypergenitalized. It’s kind of mechanical.

It’s the kind of sexuality that so many younger generations are learning today while watching porn or mainstream porn. Okay. And then, uh, but the deeper sexuality, uh, it’s really, uh, like, uh, about like, uh, opening yourself, uh, into the mystery of errors and, uh, deeper sexuality is the art erotica. It’s an embodied holistic connected to the heart.

with consciousness and so forth. And the same with spirituality, you know, there is maybe like a more superficial or partial ways of spirituality that are [00:26:00] like what I call a more heart chakra spirituality that is like really about like cultivating the heart and consciousness in detriment or subjugating or repressing or sublimating the lower, so called lower chakras, right?

uh, at the service of, uh, the aims of a spiritualized consciousness. But there is also a deeper or more holistic spirituality that is a fully embodied spirituality. It’s an embodied spirituality that invites all of who we are, including our sexuality, including our instincts into the spiritual feast. And that’s what they call a more mystical, uh, spirituality.

And of course there is forms of dissociative mysticism as well, but we’ll not go there. So, uh, the tension is not between sexuality and spirituality. The tension is between the superficial forms and the deep forms. And, uh, the deep forms join hands together in their openness and surrendering to the mystery.

The mystery of life, the mystery of consciousness, two sides of the same mystery. Another, um, area that, uh, I think is connected to [00:27:00] this kind of tension, Is that we have, um, exile errors, uh, and probably not in this room. Uh, there’s, you know, practitioners were in Ibiza, but, um, you know, in terms of like the critical mass of culture, you know, we exiled errors from everyday life.

You know, we just keep errors for bed or for dancing, but we have dear ties live. And I believe that there is like one of those kind of unwritten laws of physics that is like the less the less erotic is your life, uh, the more sexual compulsion you will have. Okay. I think it’s like something almost mathematical.

Um, so, um, so, and then also we have also exiled. Errors, not only from our everyday life, but from sexuality itself, because of that kind of forms of like superficial or disembodied forms of sexuality, you know, and then sexuality becomes also de erotized. It’s like, uh, this search for like, kind of like a genital pleasure that is not like a full body [00:28:00] erotic experience of life.

So, um, I would like to I’d like to offer a few, um, keys to rescue errors, uh, but I’m going to drink water first, uh, for the reasons, tantric reasons that, uh,

Okay, so a few, a few keys to rescue errors, you know, and, uh, and the first for me is like, uh, To remember, to reaffirm the intimate connection between sexuality and life. All of us were brought into this world by a sexual act carried out by our progenitors. We came into this world of shape and sound and these amazing dialogues that we’re having and embodied love.

Thanks to that energy, right? And for me, of course, I think we all agree that there is something secret about life itself. Right. So, uh, I would sometimes in my classes at CIS at California, uh, I would tell the students like this kind of a little mantra, like sex is life and life is sacred. Therefore, sex is sacred as well.

[00:29:00] Uh, um, sexuality understood deeply beyond the cultural conditionings, beyond the The biographical wounding, uh, is tapping into, into the source of life, the origin of life. And I think that, uh, that’s part of what I do in my more practical work, helping people to really tap into the deeper dimension of that energy, uh, and, uh, and then allow your sexuality to emerge.

from that place versus from manuals or techniques or the ways that you have learned that is the right way to be sexual or and so forth. And some of them, some of them could be valuable, of course, at times. Um, the second key is like, um, to rescue in a not, not, not in a non narcissistic manner, uh, the spiritual dignity of physical pleasure.

And this is very important. If, uh, my friend Giancarlo Mariana comes now here. and with a needle and pinches me, right, my body is going to contract, pain contracts the body, but pleasure relaxes the [00:30:00] body. Pleasure relaxes the body and makes it more porous, more permeable to both that energy of life, arrows, and the energy of consciousness.

Ingredients of a fully holistic spirituality. So, um, sometimes also with my students, uh, they were, sometimes because some of them they were carrying like a, you know, uh, challenging baggage from, um, problematic forms of Christian tradition about pleasure and guilt and things like that. I’ll tell them very simple practice, like, you know, whenever you masturbate, whatever you do it, you know, whenever you reach the orgasm, uh, immediately tell to yourself, uh, I’m a creature of God and I deserve this pleasure, you know, and it helps some people in that direction.

And then, uh, the other one is like, uh, overcoming the, the, the duality, the dualism between, uh, sexual and spiritual intimacy. Uh, for many centuries, uh, it was believed that, uh, God, or the divine mystery, uh, Would love all human beings in a spiritual way through agape, [00:31:00] uh, but known not erotically. Who are we?

Who are we to strictly divine from its erotics powers? I mean, what an act of hub is, right? Uh, so in the same way that we participate, we can participate in divine consci. The divine also participates, uh, uh, in our experience, no? And this is why probably, uh, uh, more contemporary research in sexology, like, have shown some, some studies that, uh, even people who are super secular, who has no spiritual affiliation of any kind, like, uh, peak of their sexual experience or organs, they start saying like, Oh my God, Oh my God, Oh my God, right?

Or Jesus Christ or whatever, you know, like, uh, and there is something to it because that’s, that’s something that many of these people, they, it’s not that they are intentionally saying, it just emerges from their guts, so to speak. And, uh, I think there is a lot. To eat. And then the last one, the last key is like to, um, to [00:32:00] understand like, um, uh, errors.

The, as the dark womb, uh, the dark womb for all our vital spiritual potentials, uh, is where all of this is there, you know, want waiting to emerge. Uh, and therefore that is so important, uh, for me from my perspective that sexuality is an open soil. It’s an open soil. It’s not a soil contracted by spiritual, political, cultural, or personal ideologies.

It’s like a soil that is kind of open and emerges spontaneously from connection to that, uh, eros as a source of life that has its own codes, its own intelligence, its own ways to flow through us. So, um, I’m going to finish these reflections, uh, bringing back Eros, uh, uh, because, but not the child Eros, the adult Eros, of the ancient myth of Psyche and Eros, uh, is one of the most ancient myths of all.

How many of you are familiar with the myth? I’ll not go into the whole thing, uh, but basically, um, Eros [00:33:00] falls in love with Psyche. And, um, one of the things that we’re being told in the myth, and it’s very important, is that, uh, Psyche and Eros are destined to each other. It’s not that they are only madly in love, they are destined to be with each other, okay?

It’s like they used to say that, like, you know, Eros or sexuality without soul is vain. Right. And that soul without errors is, um, arid, cold and stress and depressed. And this is what happened a lot in our culture, right? Going to the mind is like, Hmm. So in this myth that is really beautiful and I encourage you to study it in depth, like, um, there’s many acts in the, in the, in the, in the myth, but at some point, like, um, psyche makes a transgressions because, uh, at first when they are together, like the consummate their love in the darkness.

Perhaps, like, not consciously, so to speak, and, uh, and some of her sisters, uh, who are devoured by envy, they say, you know, Eros must be like a horrible monster, you know, to hide himself in the darkness and not [00:34:00] showing his true face, no? So at some point, uh, uh, Psyche, you know, lights a candle, uh, and see Eros, and of course, it’s the opposite of a monster, it’s Eros, the god of love, the most beautiful, uh, god, uh, in the whole pantheon.

Um, and then anyway, like, um, Psyche needs to go through a series of ordeals, going into the underworld, getting also in touch with the instincts, like, getting help with the creatures of nature, you know, the rattlesnakes, and she needs to go through a rite of passage. passage, and this is also important, uh, key in the myth, you know, before encountering the creative matrix out of which it was originated, uh, errors, she needs to go through a transformation psyche to be able then later to get married again in a second nuptials that these second nuptials are in consciousness, you know.

Second, new shells that are celebrated in the Olympus. Zeus forgets, uh, uh, Psyche and blah, blah. And then they go into the Olympus and, uh, [00:35:00] and then they consummate their love. And two things happen, and with this I finish. One thing is that Psyche becomes divinized by this union. And Eros becomes humanized.

Okay? And, uh, I think that’s another, another key here. And guess what? They had a baby. I don’t know if you know, baby. It’s not a part of the myth that people sometimes know. And the name of the baby, who’s a girl, who’s a girl, is Voluptia, Voluptia. Uh, who is normally translated as pleasure or joy. But whose ancient meaning is plunging into life, plunging into life.

So plunging into life for me is a definition as good as any other of a mystical sense of life. So I think I’ll leave it here. I hope that was helpful or stimulating. 

Giancarlo: Beautiful, thank you. That was great considering the hangover. Raffaello, my fellow [00:36:00] Roman, north of Roman. Raffaello Manacorda is an international Tantra teacher and practitioner.

He has been practicing Tantra for more than 15 years and has undergone intensive training in several styles of yoga. After completing an MA in Philosophy, Raffaello decided to spend more than 12 years living in alternative communities And experimenting with radically alternative lifestyles. It was in these wild years that he first encountered Tantra, the rebel way to spirit.

This encounter developed into a lifelong practice, first on a solo journey, then studying Tantra and Yoga in some of the best worldwide schools. Raffaello serves as lead faculty in ISTA, the International School of Temple Art, and teaches and lectures worldwide. He’s currently enrolled in a PhD program in Wisdom Studies with Ubiquity University in California.

Rafael is the co creator of the ISTA Practitioner Training, PT, ISTA’s program for coaches and practitioners in the field of conscious sexuality. Thank you for being [00:37:00] here. 

Raffaello: Let’s take a breath. Ah, we are receiving so much depth of information through the channel of the word. So I kind of, you know, acknowledge that this is a lot and each and every word that has been spoken so far.

has multiple level of meaning and semantics. I’ll do my best to try and be simple as much as I can in the delivery because I do feel that we are addressing deep questions that however may also be put simply, um, or in a way at least that speaks to the to the whole of us and to our bodies as well to as to our intelligent minds.

So let’s see how I can do with that. There is always the question of definitions, which I both love and hate. You know, what, what is, what is What is spirit? And of course, we could spend hours on that. But I do want to [00:38:00] name that for this contribution, I’m going to support myself with the help of depth psychology, particularly the work of Jung that many of you surely are familiar with, whom, in my understanding, is actually one of the most tantric practitioners and.

Let’s say philosophers that the West has produced, uh, recently. And one of the things that Jung’s depth psychology gave us is a pretty workable definition of eros and spirit. Let’s start from eros. So eros would be that longing, that psychic longing that we humans have in more or less, uh, power to unite with, particularly with other sentient beings, whether that’s, you know, humans, but also animals, nature.

Trees, and it could also be, of course, translated to [00:39:00] stars and the earth, whatever you want, but it’s a longing to unite. So it’s a very, very deep pulsion inside of us that, as I will try to illustrate, has given rise to, you know, to a lot of things, but we all can relate to that, right? With this longing to unite, this longing to be, and why do we do that?

And the answer from depth psychology, which I feel is a very spiritual answer, would be because we desire wholeness. We desire unity. We desire totality. So this cannot be discarded. It’s a very basic human pulsion. It’s psychological, but as we’ll try to demonstrate, it’s also spiritual. And then we can decide what to do with it.

Okay, so that would be eros. That’s why, no matter what spiritual tradition you observe, they had to deal with the problem of eros. Because it is, you know, part of our human makeup, to desire to relate. And then about spirit, Of course, it’s very difficult to define spirit. But again, I would like us to [00:40:00] entertain the possibility that every spiritual journey is also an inner psychological journey.

Or an inner journey when I say psychological, I don’t mean only in the head. I mean, a journey that has to do with our inner world. As you know, psychological comes from the root of the word for soul. So it’s a deep field. And again, using young as an ally here, we could say that from that perspective on a functional level, there is basically no difference between God God, goddess and the psychological archetype of the self with a capital S, which simply means the psychic totality, like everything that I am in my inner world.

If I could touch that, I could touch God. Maybe one could say both of those things are impossible because we’re speaking about totality. And how can we embrace the totality? Okay, great. But the journey towards it is the spiritual [00:41:00] journey. Or as I more and more like to say, it’s our psycho spiritual journey.

So it’s a journey of knowing God and, you know, relating to God. But it’s also a journey of getting to know myself in my totality, which is a pretty big thing. So from that base, I think we can go into a workable, um, approach of this problem of ears and spirit. Because then Simplifying things a bit, but we see that as, as the previous speakers noted, um, spiritual traditions took one of two main approaches to this problem.

And we can call them the approach of perfection and the approach of wholeness. So the approach of perfection, sometimes we could also be, um, sort of seen as the more masculine approach, would be, okay, you know what? If I am going to try and know God, [00:42:00] this continuous longing that I have to relate in the horizontal plane, which means falling in love, sexual attraction, but even just the love for my child, the love for my pet, the love for my family, whatever, is a distraction.

It’s distracting me because it’s It’s taking my desire and longing for union into individual entities versus the totality. And I want to unite with the totality. So that’s why I need to find ways and communities where I can be protected by those distractions and redirect my erotic longing to God. And again, like Jorge was mentioning, some of the great mystics, even of the West, like Santa Teresa, et cetera, you will find extremely erotic.

Content in the writings is just that the heroes is directed to God, not to You know, a lover or even a child. And we also have, you know, the archetypal, maybe legendary, maybe historical story of the Buddha, [00:43:00] who as soon as, you know, he realizes that actually what I want is to know myself, maybe he wouldn’t have said God, but he leaves his family with a newborn child.

It’s like that love for the wife and for the child can’t, can’t stand a chance, right, compared with the love for God. So that’s one way. That humans have practiced to know God. And, to the best of my capacity, it works. You know, otherwise it wouldn’t have been around for so long. It has risks, it has costs, but it works.

And that, if we take it to the inner journey, would be the way of purity and perfection. So how can I perfect myself? How can I eliminate or polish the trace, the inner obstacles, the inner demons, the kleshas, however you want to call them, that are poisoning, that are in the way of my quest for God? And, of course, you can spend whole lifetimes doing that, [00:44:00] and it’s valuable and it’s sacred.

On the other side, there have been traditions and there still are today, we could even say there is a resurgence of that, that are seeing things differently, that are somehow embracing a different, some people have said more feminine way. But these are, you know, labels that we need to be careful with, uh, the way of wholeness, which means what if I embrace everything?

What if my horizontal longing for my friend, my lover, my cat, my baby, is actually allowing me to connect to the totality? Of course, I, you know, it’s ideal or perhaps. exaggerated to say that I could love everything because I will never have a chance to meet every human being on Earth, just to say that.

But through my loving of different humans, alive beings, trees and whatnot, I get a taste, I get a vehicle towards the love, which [00:45:00] means the expanding of my identity into the whole. That would be more the tantric approach to my understanding. And it’s also got its risks and its pitfalls and it works. Both work.

So what do we do and how do we choose? Well, first of all, there is a temperamental piece here, you know, Indian spirituality, which is not alone, but it’s definitely been a very, very prolific spiritual spirituality. For centuries has produced so many spiritual systems, right? You know, some of them, Tantra, yoga, many others.

And one of the practical reasons for that is because they recognize that we humans are different, temperamentally different. So for some of us, the way of perfection and purity will resonate for some of us, the way of inclusion and wholeness will resonate. So we will choose according to our temperaments, according to our makeup, according to our different conditions in life so that [00:46:00] we can do the best we can.

In terms of our spiritual and inner journey. And of course, nowadays in modern society where we have so many choices and also we may You know be considered perhaps a little feeble and changing of mind and changing of heart We oftentimes choose differently in different parts of our life And i’m sure that many of you sitting in in this beautiful place have been practicing Ascetic disciplines for a while and then try the tantric way and then you know What what do we do is a big piece of individual responsibility But both of them have risks and on some level we could say you cannot have it both ways.

You cannot have your cake and eat it too. You cannot be whole if you’re perfect, right? Because wholeness means including also the imperfection, including the parts that are broken, including the parts that are not polished. Even the [00:47:00] parts that are Dark, violent, in denial, la la la, selfish. So you cannot be whole if you’re perfect.

But you cannot be perfect if you’re whole. Because perfection, as in everything, you know, if you perfect, let’s say, uh, I don’t know, uh, A recipe that you’re going to cook and you want to get to the mastery of that you’re going to have to take things away, not just add so perfection also comes through elimination and polishing.

So therefore, this in her inherent paradox makes it so that we can be humble and we can kind of understand that whatever we choose, there is going to be a cost. There is going to be a price to pay and there is also going to be a risk. And I just want to elaborate on that shortly, because otherwise, one of the things that we’re seeing in a tantra world is that, is it is all too easy to say, you know what?

Here is a path of spirituality that actually allows you, not only allows you, encourages you to [00:48:00] eat delicious food, to enjoy nature, to make love and fall in love. Would you like it? People like, yes, please, of course, but what are the risks? So the risk, you could say, and I think Jorge pointed to that somewhat, the risk of perfection is always death and sterility and the coldness of perfection, you know, the, the, the staticness of perfection, the coldness of it.

And that means Not living, not life. And the risk of wholeness, the risk of the tantric path has always been different flavors of chaos, you know. When you embrace everything, then where do you stop? Where do you put your limits? Where do you put your boundaries? How do you work with the immense amount of pain and strife that can be generated by spiritual practice if you embrace all?

[00:49:00] So that’s the risk and that’s the pitfall and then we need to choose that we need to be prepared for a journey that One way or another will be risky will be dangerous and will be fraught with some Perils as well. So it’s not like Tantra, you know, is now the the solution to just have your cake and eat it too.

But rather it exchanges one risk with another and based on temperament and based on inclination for some people that’s actually the right way to go about it. Great. So I have another point that I would like to make and then I would like to share with you a couple of quotes and then I’m complete. So the other point is what happens when we take These two parts, not just to our individual spiritual journey, but to a community, to a collectivity, and then it becomes the question of ethics, you know, and the question of like having a, you know, a world where we can be with each other as, as humans while pursuing a spiritual journey individually and as a collectivity.

[00:50:00] And funnily enough, um, Erich Neumann, who, uh, Jorge was kind of pointing at, he’s, he’s written a lot about the, the myth of Eros and Psyche, but he also wrote, he was a disciple of Jung’s, he also wrote a beautiful book on what would happen, it’s, it’s an imagination because we don’t have that yet, what would happen if we had a society based on the ethics of wholeness.

It’s very different from where we live. Like, for example, from that standpoint, in a society that is based on the ethic of wholeness, psychic wholeness, then to be evil, sometimes, would be considered as ethically sound and good. It’s like, hey, you’re a whole human being, you know, you need to be an asshole every now and then.

That’s fine. Whereas to be pure and, and in sanctity and holy and in, you know, perpetual goodness and love would be, Mmm, what’s wrong with you? You know, like you are kind of [00:51:00] repressing something. There is a part of you that we cannot see. And so there is a whole different system of values that can be, that would be created.

Nowadays, we don’t have that. We are still living on the tail end of about 2, 000 years, at least in the West, of, um, religions and societies that have been strongly, strongly anchored in the idea of a god, because it starts from there, that is unendingly and infinitely and purely and only good. So therefore, when humans try to imitate that God.

Obviously, we create a different kind of society, one in which everybody’s trying to be a good boy or a good girl, and that’s fine. But the risk with that, the danger of a society based on perfection and purity, is that on a societal level, we create a scapegoat mentality. You know, a mentality of point holier than thou kind of thing of pointing out, you know, look at you, look at [00:52:00] you, look at you, you know, you seem to be pure, now I’ve seen you fall down.

Ah, I knew it. It’s happening very recently, and as you know, with very public spiritual characters, so I’m not, I’m trying, you know, not to enter into any judgment of that, but we need to be aware that Right now, we’re still living on a 2, 000 year, at least, uh, period of religion and society based on the quest for purity and holiness and sanctity and infinite goodness, because that’s the God that we have worshipped.

So therefore That’s the imitation that we have been born into, most of us. Of course, I’m generalizing here because I don’t know where each one of you grew up, but more or less. So there is this vision, there is this possibility that maybe in the future, there will be a time or an era where morals and ethics and spiritualities get oriented more to the principle of wholeness, to the principle of embracing it [00:53:00] all, which, of course, means fundamentally getting to know our shadow.

through different ways and getting to embrace it, getting to include it, getting to eat it and digest it, which is not for the faint of heart. But that to me is the real tantric path applied to today. And that’s the path that I’m striving to embody. So before I leave you, I would just like to read a couple of quotes that I found, um, in the red book, the red book by.

Again, by Jung. If you have a chance, I would really, really recommend that you get intimate with that book. It’s not just a book. It’s an object. It’s like a physical manifestation of an inner journey. And for me, it made me cry. It made me reflect. It made me, it made me, you know, pray and so many things. And some of the quotes from there are really powerful and short.

So the first one says, If the God is absolute beauty and goodness, [00:54:00] How should he encompass the fullness of life, which is beautiful and hateful, good and evil? Laughable and serious, human and inhuman. How can man live in the womb of the God if the Godhead himself attends only to one half of him? That was the deep contemplation that, that this human, of course, you know, the, forget the masculine pronouns, but, um, it’s a way of speech.

And then, on the same line, Jung spoke deeply about the ambiguity of God, which I would also rephrase as paradoxicality. Like, God is a paradox. And so he wrote, that is the ambiguity of the God. He is born from a dark ambiguity and rises to a bright ambiguity. Unequivocalness. which means [00:55:00] certainty, is simplicity, and leads to death.

But ambiguity is the way of life. So, for me, if I substitute ambiguity with paradox, if I substitute coming from a dark ambiguity into a bright ambiguity simply means infusing our paradoxical existence with consciousness, with awareness, looking at the paradox that we are looking at the paradox that God is expanding our heart.

It’s, it’s a stretch that’s going to tear us apart because the totality is very fucking big. But if we expand our heart so big that we strive to contain totality, we might just as well explode, forget who we are. And for a moment, no God or no ourselves, which is the same. Thank you.

Giancarlo: [00:56:00] Thank you. Thank you. Another very rich. Thank God we recorded. But Maria Teresa de Calcutta wrote erotic stuff. Santoshi.

Santosh Amore is a world renowned international tantra teacher, fully devoted to the path of self discovery and personal transformation for the last 25 years. Her presence and both her passion and spontaneity encourage participants to discover hidden aspects of themselves. Her work brings individuals into authenticity and love.

Ibiza Tantra Festival. The International Tantra Woman Training and the Tantra Woman Team. She let go of her career as an architect to follow her heart and live at the Osho community in India for 12 years, where she became a Tantra and meditation teacher. After leaving the community, she retreated to the Himalayas for over a year to [00:57:00] practice Tibetan Tantra.

Coming back to the West, she traveled and taught Tantra in more than 17 countries. She’s now based in Ibiza, fully devoted to support women to bloom. potential. The tantra woman training runs in different country and is becoming widely renowned. Thank you Santoshi.

Santoshi: So I don’t know how you are by now with all these awards. First of all, oh my god, really like, wow, we have amazing speakers here. And I have to move away from the microphone, from the speakers. And, um, I don’t know if you could hear what it says in my whatever description of myself, but, um, I’m not a speaker.

Yeah. Um, I never chose to teach Tantra and I don’t teach Tantra. I [00:58:00] just live or do my best to live Tantra. Since, uh, life puts me in,

in an ashram where tantra was lived 25 years ago. Yeah. Um, that was absolutely mind blowing. And for me, that’s tantra mind blowing. Yeah, so you can hear a lot of words, and my God, I could not add anything to these speakers, because everything they say I 100 percent agree, so I wonder how we are going to debate, but maybe, maybe it’s needed, maybe it’s not needed, because actually Tantra contains all, including the debate, we can even fight.

Yeah. But, uh, I don’t know if I need to speak anymore or just, um, like my aim, my longing. They talk about desire, they talk about longing. I connect with that longing. [00:59:00] My longing would be to give you one minute transmission, one minute of what Tantra is. And then I would go like, wow, yes, yes, yes. And then maybe you will have some thirst in you that you know is there.

That’s why you came here and that’s why you’re sitting here and it goes beyond sex and sex is great. I love sex. But it’s just once more what tantra teaches you is that you can meet God every moment here, sitting, listening, looking, ah, feeling my breath, feeling my nipples, caressing my dress. And this mic that when I took it, I thought, wow, it’s actually a nice red mic.

Ooh, very tantric. Thank you very much. I’m already getting, whoo, whoo, eros. Yes, eros. Errors happening [01:00:00] in my witnessing presence. That’s it. That’s it. Whether I’m walking, whether I’m talking, whether I’m looking in the eyes of a friend, anything, washing the dishes, making love with my lover, doesn’t matter what position I use, doesn’t matter what I do, but can I allow errors to be expressing itself in the Silence of this very moment, that’s Tantra, and that’s magic.

And when that happens for a single second, you know. Whether you are in a peak of orgasm, or you are just dropping into someone’s eyes in the middle of the jungle,

then you know, and that caught you. Yeah, and that, that, um, [01:01:00] vibrates with the longing that, uh, that Rafa expressed so well of becoming one, because this is what we are longing for. Because we come from oneness and I’m half body, sorry, what to say the new whatever I’m half. And I’m longing to merge with the other half because when we are merging with each other.

Suddenly we become one body. We are close, closer to that wholeness. And we are longing to go back to that. And in the meantime, we have all these fantastic circles. That every moment kind of reminds us where we are. And if you know who you are, then who cares? You can do anything. Anything. We can all get naked, throw our clothes off, and jump in this gorgeous lake now.

And play in the water like little kids. And then what? Then we will feel so alive. So much Eros. And [01:02:00] who cares whether I’m married or not married or, yeah, but it’s not what we do, but from where we do, I do it because, uh, I wonder, oh, it’s just because life is moving through me and, uh, It’s inviting me to move to the next, and I don’t know where I’m going.

I prepared nothing, sorry, sorry. I prepared nothing. I was supposed not to be here. A gorgeous, gorgeous woman. Uh, my sister was supposed to be here. Amazing Tantra teacher. Highly recommended. She couldn’t come, so I came in her place. I said, I’m not a speaker. Okay, let’s see what I can share. Yeah, so, okay, I will just share two words, but it’s again, the same that I said, and then actually I would invite you if you want to experience a little tantra with me.

But of course for that you need to want it. Yeah. It’s like we can talk right now, right now we talk about [01:03:00] how it would be if we all swim in the pool and what happens and you get out of the pool and you feel more alive and you feel wet and sorry, unless you jump in the pool. You are never going to experience Tantra, okay?

Relax, I’m not going to take your clothes off. Not yet, but you can come to, you can come to one of my gatherings, maybe, anyway, whatever. Um, I’m not here to make publicity of anything. Um, but I wanted to say two words, you see, two words. So yeah, for me Tantra is, uh, that. It’s energy and, and energy, and everything is energy.

Anything is energy. Energy and consciousness making love every single moment. Now, and now, and now, and now. And when you realize that you are that, now, doesn’t matter. Doesn’t matter that we are, I am crying, rolling in the floor. Okay, yes, pain is there, but I can’t even enjoy that. And [01:04:00] this is not because I read in a book or someone said, sorry, it’s my experience.

And it’s beautiful because it makes me alive. If you’ve been close to death, if you’ve been close to death, the moment you open your eyes and you feel fear, you feel so happy because you feel something. It means you are back from death. It means you are alive. Yeah, but we are so afraid to feel certain things that we keep ourselves half dead.

So Tantra invites you to be alive and to know who you really are. Once you know that, well, let’s play. But of course, in all the ways, shadow, light, everything is part of one. You cannot only take one side. Sorry. You want to be fully orgasmic? Great. Then you have to be daring to embrace the biggest pain. And that’s how it was because it’s all energy anyway running through you.

How much earning you want to, how much energy you want to allow to run? [01:05:00] So I think you want to practice a little bit of Tantra or you want me to talk more? It’s your choice, huh? Should I ask the audience who wants to practice? Hands up. Okay. Who wants more words? Hands up. I think you lost. Sorry, but I wanted to ask.

We are in Ibiza, you know, we love it. Okay.

Anyway, it’s going to be something super simple. Like really. Um, okay. So I’m already, actually, I may say I’m wet, sorry to say, but I am, you know, it’s just to feel, because I’m nervous, this is energy, this is fire running through my body right now, so I use this nervousness, because oh my god, can I, can I really give a transmission of Tantra to these people here and now?

Can I? I don’t know, blah, blah, blah, [01:06:00] that’s my mind. Okay, let’s go for it. Let’s see what happens. So, unfortunately, I need to ask you to allow your eyes to close for a moment. And this is just because if you allow your eyes to close, then you have much more capacity to feel because eyes and mind go directly together.

So just with your eyes closed for a moment, I’m going to invite you to really feel. There’s so much juice in your mouth. And now feel how your tongue is resting there. And I allow you to let your tongue become softer. And, uh, maybe dance a little bit inside your mouth. And maybe you need to open your mouth a little bit.

You know, when I was, I was in a nun [01:07:00] school when I was small, and they told me, shut up your mouth. You know, don’t get flies go in. Well, in Tantra we tell you, open your mouth. Like when you are making love, if you have your mouth closed, stop. Open your mouth. Yes. Oh, and bring a little bit more air in. Air is oxygen.

Yeah. And they teach us to breathe less and less because the less you breathe, the less you feel, the more you think to buy this and buy that to make you happy. So breathe. Okay. See, see, and feel your tongue.

for a moment and see if that’s okay for you to do this or your mind is already taking you to something else where is this crazy woman telling me to do i don’t want to do anything okay just bear with this me with me for a [01:08:00] second

and um maybe you can bring your tongue out a little bit and Feel your lips.

Feel your own juiciness. Because often we are hungry, looking for juiciness outside. But unless you own it, what do you have there to share? And juiciness is there, just waiting for you to be awakened. 

Speaker 7: Yum.

Santoshi: Mmm, yummy. Mmm. And, um, mmm. And then maybe you can just take your fingers and caress your lips too, or your face.

And notice if you can feel pleasure. [01:09:00] Of course you can go to other parts if you like. I mean, feel free. Everyone’s with their eyes closed anyway. But maybe it’s not even needed, you know?

There’s so many pleasure points in your face already. Or you can shampoo your head a little bit, you know, to take away all these thoughts, this mind that takes you away from life. And mind is not bad. It’s a great instrument. It’s just a stance on the way. It’s a busy secretary. Can you tell the busy secretary to take a holiday for a few minutes?

And just feel, feel pleasure. Are you able to give pleasure to yourself with your own fingers?[01:10:00] 

And as you caress your face, maybe you can take away that personality, that persona that is okay. It’s also tantra. It’s also a part of who we are. Sometimes we can take also a break and be a nobody, just energy expressing through this body.

And then maybe from there you can move to your own hands and feel the caress of your own hands. How does it feel? Often we want to be touched or we want to touch someone. But do we know how that feels? Do we know how do we want to be touched? Or [01:11:00] do we know how it feels when we touch someone? So can you have, can you find pleasure by touching your own hands?

Right now,

right now. Pleasure is the expression of God in you right now.

100 percent there, you are already one with all there is. Eros and consciousness expressing through the pleasure in your hands. And notice how fast you go. Because often we move very fast because this mind is so fast. Like in sex. Bam, bam, bing, boom, like in the movies. Oh my God. I didn’t even have time to breathe there already.

Can you go even a little bit [01:12:00] slower? And notice what happens if you slow down.

What happens? Tantra invites you to explore.

And then from where you are, letting go for a moment, and just notice, see how present you are, how big, how much is your mind interfering with the moment? Can you just let the touch go and just listen to this gorgeous nature that is surrendering us? Just for a minute,

let those birds penetrate you.[01:13:00] 

So if your mind is thinking, oh, let’s think something that’s boring, then you will, it’s okay. You are still here. You are still Tantra, but you miss. You miss a moment of wholeness and pleasure. There is a lot of pleasure in fully listening how the sound of nature penetrates you right now.[01:14:00] 

And then I invite you to open your arms and touch someone sitting next to you. You may not know who’s sitting there. It doesn’t matter if it’s someone from the same sex, man, woman, who cares? It’s another human being longing for the same than you. Just notice how it is during your presence there. Maybe just choose one, choose only one.

And bring, bring one hand or two hands there. And explore this other body,

and see if you can find pleasure there,[01:15:00] 

or if you can find peace there, or whatever is there, what is there.

And the last, and yet not the least, let go of the touch, and turn to one of those bodies you were touching, and just allow your eyes to open, [01:16:00] and

receive in other eyes, just receive. Like an ocean in front of you, full of mystery. You may know these eyes. You may have never seen them ever in your life and you don’t care.

Yes, because you are penetrating the mystery and you are being penetrated by the mystery. Just notice what’s easier for you to penetrate or just to open and be penetrated by the mystery in those eyes. Now, ah, and the breath can keep on flowing. Sometimes the breath stops because, oh my God, there is so much intimacy.

If you really want to receive, of [01:17:00] course, sometimes it’s like, ooh, this is too shaky, too shy, so the, the breath blocks and then there is separation again. That’s okay. That’s also Tantra. Maybe you can keep on breathing and expanding in the sensation of shyness and. And keep on opening, keep on penetrating deeper the mystery.

And when you realize the mystery is there, then magic is happening for you. And it can happen any moment in your life, no matter what you do. Of course, if you bring this to the moment where the tip of the penis is resting in the cervix of a woman, in total relaxation, many, many, many aspects of you are meeting in oneness.[01:18:00] 

Now, if you are not able to do what you are doing now, I think it will not be easy. Very, very difficult in sexual intercourse. So this is what I wanted to share with you. Thank you. I hope it served.

And it just came like that. I’ve never done this before. And it was not planned. Thank you for following. 

Giancarlo: Thank you, Santoshi. So where are we going from here? There’s not gonna be red team versus black team. I feel the talk was so Complementary right from a Jungian perspective to a tarot perspective to a mythological perspective to a very experiential perspective So I will ask you maybe just one round And I will ask the speakers [01:19:00] Is there anything that you think that came out in this hour and something you would like to underline to clarify as a takeaway for the audience?

You know, maybe something with some experiential value, any question, any clarification, any comment, any, any. You know, it’s not gonna be a debate. It’s not gonna be a disagreement, but anything you want to ask to each other. 

Jorge: I was really taken by all the presentations, but I want to come near your distinction.

There are file on the part of Path of wholeness, path of, um, perfection, oration in a way, you know, and, um, you know, like you have, uh, a study like mystical traditions for, for decades. Um, and um, and I really found like with a few notable exceptions, like historical traditions, the virtually all had like this kind of, uh, not very positive.

[01:20:00] Perspective on sexuality and sexual desire. I was demonized in Christian tradition, was a cliche in Buddhist tradition, um, in the Jewish tradition as well, that should perform the sexual act with no pleasure, uh, in certain tendencies. And then the, um, I always had this question, and also I bring this question for, for all of you and for everybody, it’s like, uh, Why, you know, why, you know, and, uh, you, you brought apart like the destruction, no, uh, or what it was perceived as a destruction and the focus on, uh, the connection with the divine in consciousness in your heart and so forth, you know, but, uh, I’ve always wondering, uh, um, if there is like an underlying, um, evolutionary reason, you know, because, uh, I mean, we could Perhaps hypothesize as another wild hypothesis, no, that, um, at the dawn of, uh, the emergence of human species as we know it, you know, um, at the dawn of the emergence of self consciousness of the values of the heart, you know, that are so important for us [01:21:00] now as a community of, um, Um, it’s could be likely that those energies and values were not very, not as strong as they are now, and that, uh, and that they could run the risk of being reabsorbed by instinctive energies, uh, that probably, For hundreds of thousands of years, we’re organizing human life with its light and its shadow.

Um, I mean, we can remember also there is a lot of, um, documentation about sexuality in the Middle Ages, and it’s not pretty. Um, the bestialism, the rapes, the, I mean, it was pretty bad from our standards, no? And, uh, so, No wonder, no? Many of these traditions, they would say like, you know, that that’s, that’s a path of perdition.

That’s a path you need to stay away. But it’s not anymore. It’s like, and this is where I think the two paths come together, I think, in our time. So they can come together in the sense that, uh, now our self consciousness [01:22:00] is very strong. Our values of the heart are very strong. And we can re engage those strong instinctive energies without getting lost, unless we participate consciously in a kind of Dionysian, Orgy, or something like this.

And then you just let it loose, you know. And, uh, I don’t know. It’s like a thought. It’s an hypothesis I’ve had for a long time. And I don’t know if anyone wants to comment. Or have a different view. Or from the audience as well. 

Raffaello: I could, uh, build on that and maybe bring a little bit of controversy, not on purpose, but just touching some controversial topics because one of the things that can happen, I feel, when we start looking at these different, um, spiritual traditions that have been so antagonistic to sexuality.

And we, we, we, we do one plus one, and we also recognize that we’re mostly founded or led by men. Mainly, you know, the spiritual practitioners were kind of all men. So, it’s kind of, there is an easy way out, [01:23:00] which is to say, Okay, let’s go back, you know, let’s undo, press undo on all of that, press undo on 2, 000 years, and let’s go back to a more, uh, if not matriarchal, but matrilinear form of transmission of spirituality and, indeed, um, an understanding of the world and the cosmos that was more embracing.

However, and this is very difficult territory because, I mean, even me speaking about this, I cannot have an objective perspective on it, because I’m inserted in this, uh, evolution. But oftentimes I think, look, there is another way to, to look at this, which is what happened, happened because it was a violent, painful way for consciousness to differentiate itself, which I think is what Jorge was pointing to, to, from a very primal, instinctual, totalitarian Way of being one with nature.

When I say totalitarian, [01:24:00] I’m, you know, playing with words here, but it also means, you know, in, again, in depth psychology, that would be said. In the words of Luke, the great mother is beautiful and welcoming and also completely devouring. And this is also the experience of a child, you know, the difficult experience of a child when, when you leave the maternal womb, not just by being born, but by growing up, it’s oftentimes through contrasts and through saying, I’m not you.

And I don’t like you and I want to go away, you know, and it’s, especially in teenager life, there can be quite a bit of antagonism there. So what I see right now, and it’s very, again, very difficult to speak about this from my limited individual consciousness, is that it’s not so much about going back, but how do we move forward?

And we have drank also the bitter cup of what it means to, to remove ourselves from nature so much. Which was maybe necessary, but so much [01:25:00] that actually, you know, to put it very simply, we almost drove our species and to extinction or to some kind of cataclysmic event. So, but what’s forward from my perspective cannot be just a return.

And that’s why all the, I think I have a little bit of personal controversy with all the language that sometimes we use in this circle of going back to, going back to this, going back to that. Actually, we don’t go back to anything. The future is so mysterious and so exciting because it’s unknown. It’s never happened before.

We have never been in this moment before where we could look at these phenomena and talk about them and embody them. And then. Manifest another way of being which have no idea about what that is. But in order to do that, we need to be willing to leave the temptation of the return back. Because in the life of an individual, you know, if you are 45 and you say, You know what?

I’ve seen the world. It’s very [01:26:00] dangerous. And let me go back to my mother. You’ll be, well, that’s not That’s not the way forward, you know, just, just thank her, deroll her and, and create a new relationship with the mother and with the father that’s exciting and new. So thank you for bringing that. 

Santoshi: Well, I think we are moving forward.

I think very clearly the past ages, we were kids as humanity. So it was us and God. So as we were the kids and God was the big father. Now what we are, humanity, we are fucking teenagers. What we like, traveling, sex, you know, adventure. We are in the teenage time. So we are moving forward. Of course, you know, there were levels we think, yeah, you can be a conscious teenager or less conscious.

Yeah, so that I wanted to say, and then about tantra being a dangerous path, of course, of course, [01:27:00] it’s, I think it’s much easier, nothing is easy, no, but when you don’t have any distractions, but to sit in silence, and meditate and realize, Consciousness happening. It’s a little bit less distractions that when you are going into all the telenovela of relationships, one after the other and heartbreaks.

And because, you know, sex with all the emotionality that we have pendant there, it’s, it’s a big elephant that, uh, we need to face in this. in this tantra world that includes everything. So when it’s so wide, there is, it’s very easy to get lost in the means and not to reach the essence. 

Marianne: I was very touched that we all basically agree.

And I think it’s the, the feeling of also the people who are here that We are, at least us right now, collectively interested by a kind of path that is an all encompassing or a path [01:28:00] where, instead of rejecting things, we go into opening up the sense of what is mine. And the one thing that occurs to me now, after Santoshi’s beautiful, um, Experimentation is that I don’t have any big ideas about where humanity goes or where it should go.

I kind of, the older I get, the less I understand that, but I’m very interested in practice and uh, as a writer, as a singer, I mean, you know, the things that you have to do, you have people who practice yoga, you get up in the morning, how do we practice? And so how do we practice this path? of opening up, you know, like the Sufis say, you will enter a hole in the paradise or you won’t.

So how do we practice this path? Well, like Pema Chodron could tell us, you know, go places you don’t like, love your enemies, etc. And I’m remembering a word from my teachers, teachers from Sri Swami Prajnapada, which maybe [01:29:00] will be relevant for some of you. Um, he was talking about bhoga. Bhoga in Sanskrit describes sexual enjoyment.

But it also talks about what you cannot avoid. So, you know, you wanted to go out and it rains. Are you going to argue with the rain? Are you, are you going to agree to have the Bhoga of the rain? So for me, it’s a really big, um, it’s something that helps me daily to make love. With whatever arises and I’ve started by trying to be interested in it, and then maybe try to, um, consider that it might be friendly and then try to love it.

And I think the ultimate, um, point is to be able to actually enjoy it. So let’s enjoy our lives.

Audience: Thank you very much, everybody. I’d like to, I’d like to [01:30:00] Raffaello, about Uh, you either aim for holiness, um, wholeness or holiness, or, you know, this kind of spiritual kind of, uh, impeccability. And recently, I think it’s, it’s something which comes up over and over is that you see spiritual leaders. Uh, gurus, masters, which aren’t impeccable, that they’re fallible, they’re human.

My question is, okay, going back to the thing of practice and how we make sense of this, should we expect the guru, the master, the sensei, to be impeccable, even though he is then amputating a part of his own being, his own spiritual experience on earth? Or do we expect them to hold themselves up to a higher standard?

And how we, how we console these two things, you know, because often we expect the shaman to be a holy man, to be a saint, but then he’s not, or she’s not fully in their own journey. So, so [01:31:00] do we expect them to make a change in adjustments? Do we expect us to make a change in adjustments? This is the question.

Santoshi: I want to say first of all that, for me, in the new paradigm, gurus and masters, they don’t exist anymore. That was past. Now it’s us, the sangha, who is here now. And the way we grow is that we reflect each other. We reflect each other’s shit, and we reflect each other’s light. And it’s karmic. If you come to me with your shit, of course your shit is going to affect me and I’m going to respond to that.

And there is nothing wrong with shit and light. We all, everyone has both. Yeah? And that’s from there that we grow. So this like, again, this is the little kid and the high, no? I look up and he looks like perfect, so I want to be like him. No! You are unique. There is no single person like you in this world.

And you have a gift. And if I see your gift, I’m seeing mine and we shine together [01:32:00] and we shine by reflecting each other, by polishing each other. So for me, it goes more from that perspective now. So then I, I don’t, I can, I don’t look up. I look in.

Jorge: It’s a great question, and there is so much that we could talk about that. But I think there is on the one hand, like, uh, those situations like to really approach them with both firmness but compassion as well, because many of these teachers and masters, and I’ve known some of them and shamans also, they got into this kind of sexual scandals and things like that.

There is sometimes cultural reasons. Uh, okay. I’m not justifying anything with cultural reasons, but ultimately also there is also, I think there are symptoms of what I call this kind of heart chakra spirituality in which some of these people are having awakening in their consciousness and they believe they’re fully enlightened, but other parts of themselves are alienated.

Uh, many of them developmentally are like. Pre adolescence or [01:33:00] adolescence, I feel like, uh, shamans, like, uh, psychic healers, venerated in their communities, behaving like pre adolescent boys around, um, attractive women, or women that they consider attractive. And, um, so there is, there is all these dimensions, and of course at the same time, you know, we need to, uh, you know, like, tell them as you are working in this culture, you need to also learn that there are certain things that are not, Cool because especially if you are hurting and the other thing I would say is that uh, Uh, it’s very tricky because um, we only hear about the bad stories We only hear about the stories that go wrong but uh, I I’ve heard stories of friends of mine who had And, uh, for her, she was a very strong practitioner, very powerful, and, uh, she has nothing negative to say.

There was a transmission that happened for her. There was like, uh, so I believe that, uh, we need to look at, uh, [01:34:00] critically, but also with discernment of each case individually, case by case, because otherwise, like, uh, what kind of, like, You know, just not making the distinctions that I think that could be helpful for, for our own guidance and for our own life.

Marianne: When we go back to a place where we are going to be taught how to grow in a way or another, we go back to a context that is akin to being inside our family. So when someone goes, even if it’s a therapist or music teacher, whatever, and it would be crazy to think that one person can be perfect. I don’t fully agree with you on the question of the teacher or not the teacher.

I was very much against the teacher question. I think spirituality is like sexuality. There has to be a lot of different configurations that fit a lot of different needs, but I think we can all agree that we need a context that [01:35:00] has integrity. So that if one person slips The context itself becomes the teacher force that holds one person’s incapacity.

I mean, we are all instructors here and we know that we can slip in many ways. And I mean, I think younger instructors, when I was younger, I thought I would never slip. And then I made a lot of mistakes. But I always seek to place myself in the context that had integrity. When the context doesn’t have integrity and the individual slip, might be time to seek support somewhere else.

Raffaello: I would also like to comment, great question. It’s very dear to my heart and it’s a very complex question. And so if anything I say sounds like a simple solution. It’s, it’s on me, there are no simple solutions with that, and there is pain, there is, you know, when these sleeps happen, obviously we’re dealing with people’s hurt and emotions.

So, but what I want to [01:36:00] add to what has been said is that one of the most profound cultural shifts that hasn’t happened, that might happen in spiritual communities and elsewhere, is how do we react psychologically when Someone’s shadow is exposed, you know, in a way that potentially harmed other people, because that will happen.

We can all agree, you know, it’s, it’s inevitable and imagine for a moment. What would it be if we came to a place where we can celebrate that? Of course, you know, care for the hurt and the hurt people. But regarding the person whose shadow was exposed, go like, Oh, look at that. That came up. Now here we have a compassionate but also clear process to deal with this, which is going to support you into looking at this, digesting it, if you’re willing.

If you’re not willing, [01:37:00] then we need to consider our relationship with you. You know, if someone is not willing To digest their own shadow. There may be a question. Well, do you even like we need to reframe the relationship? But supposing that the person is willing so they get invited into an exciting process That is beneficial to them, but also to the whole community, because this is one of the big points that psychologically whenever one person, especially a very visible person, is willing to meet piece of their shadow through a process and come out the other end, there is an element that’s transpersonal.

It’s not just them, you know, it’s partly them and then it’s a transpersonal piece that may have to do with a million things. So they’re actually somehow then making the community’s immune system and inner health stronger by doing that, by agreeing to do that, by being willing to do that. And therefore, If we come to such a [01:38:00] place, that will help also for those people whose shadow is coming up, not go into an immediate response of defensiveness and like, Oh my God, you’re talking about excommunicating me, that means death, that means starvation, this is very primal stuff in our brain.

And so this is just a vision, it’s not clear yet, but I know that one piece is, of course there is the person that has the slip, but also how do we as a community react to that? Can we say, oh, amazing, here we are, supporting you. And yes, you need to go through this process, but it’s all of us going through it together, through you.

And I think when we, when we envision that, or when we come that, and when we can create an example of that, we’re really supporting the move from a scapegoating culture, which we still pretty much live in, to a culture that is collectively willing to address and digest shadow. Thank you for your question, it’s great.

Any 

Giancarlo: more questions, comments? 

Audience 2: I was, uh, [01:39:00] thinking about this concept of spanda that Daniel O’Dea really loves, and I really love this concept too. That is more than a concept, that is a sensation. And sometimes I wonder if the psyche and eros, when they get in contact, maybe this spanda moment is this moment of, uh, when the skin creates this energy of erotism.

When there’s a erotism energy, it’s kind of uplifting in another energetical dimension, the whole inner and outer world. So, I feel that for me the spanda is like the meeting point between two, and I don’t know if, uh, you share this sensation or Or you want to debate on it?

In French we say 

Marianne: frémissement, 

Audience 2: but I don’t know how 

Marianne: to 

Audience 2: translate it. Spanda 

Marianne: is like the fluttering of a butterfly’s wing. And it can be, I mean, I’ve [01:40:00] experienced it more as the result. of going from stillness into movement back to stillness and being able, within stillness, to feel the movement. For me, it’s very close to the notion of suspension in dancing, in tango or other forms of dancing, and the function of silence in music.

It’s this idea that where we think there is, where the common mind thinks there is nothing, there is actually this essential rhythm pulsating, and that’s only the first step, but we shouldn’t go too deep into that. Thank you for bringing it up.

Audience 3: With, um, with regard to what was said, uh, about, uh, the tension between the philosophies of religions that seek spiritual advancement and the eros energy and sexuality in general, could it be that it’s related to the [01:41:00] patriarchal agricultural societies, um, attempt to control feminine sexuality. In my understanding, um, in mythology, the female represents life itself, and, uh, that will connect also with the ecological crisis cycle.

We’ve been living for years, for centuries, in an attempt to control both nature and woman. Woman sexuality, explicitly, because of the implications, uh, in terms of my genes or someone else’s genes inheriting my land. My kingdom, et cetera. Could it be that then the religions, the different religions or spiritual, uh, philosophies that, uh, have sort of, uh, repressed or, or, or, um, Hidden, that part of, uh, of life has, is a direct result of this sociological, historical [01:42:00] conditions that just happen upon humanity, uh, and maybe in the hunter gatherer societies where the females are having sex with everybody and the children are children of the tribe.

From those societies, it will never emerge a philosophical path, or a spiritual path, sorry, that, uh, repress sexuality, because sexuality will not be an obstacle. The moment you try to control something, you have to go to war for it, you have to, you have to use violence, you have to really, you, you get on a path that consumes a lot of your attention and resources, and that is very far away from God.

So, it does make sense. You’re either worrying your neighbors for the, for the woman and you’re, or you are going to God and doing away with all that. Could, could that make, uh, could that be? 

Jorge: Um, I would say that, uh, yes.

My sense is, like, the [01:43:00] um, you know, women, nature and body, has been in the patriarchal imagination, the unholy trinity basically. They have in fear, something that is uncontrollable and they need to be subjugated to control. And, uh, I think I think there is a lot of, uh, tragedy there, uh, historically, and it’s still in our contemporary times.

Uh, not long ago I was visiting, uh, Iran, and, uh, and there was, this is the culture, uh, political ecclesiastical that, uh, you know, forces women to cover themselves, as you all know, possibly. And, uh, the, the rational, the rational that is quite, uh, striking is the rational is that, Oh, no, we’re doing this to protect them because if men see their hairs, they will rape them.

And it’s like, wow. Right. And, but this, this is connects with what, what you’re saying is like this, like this, there’s this, uh, maybe in less, I don’t know how to put this like, uh, I think it may connect also with what we were talking before, evolutionarily, that there is [01:44:00] still in some places in which some men, they couldn’t control their instincts.

And of course, the tragedy is like, man, get your shit together and don’t force women to do things that they don’t want to do. Right. But, uh, it’s part, it’s one more sign of, of that kind of like, uh, holy trinity for, for the patriarchal imagination that has been prevalent in religious history for millennia.

Raffaello: Again, great question. A few comments on that. So yes, um, if we look at mythology, there is a relatively clear moment way before Greek mythology in Sumerian mythology, where you can see the emergence of very violent myths of male gods slaying female goddesses. One of them is Tiamat. But the interesting thing is that those male gods before, they were the sons of those female goddesses.

So this is really like, [01:45:00] uh, an archetypal story of the female divinity generating the male one, and the male one growing, growing, and then at some point rebelling violently. And Basically taking her place in a violent way, like, like a coup, you know, something like that. So that’s definitely true. However, again, I think there’s a few pointers here that are important.

First of all, those hunter gatherers, that’s us. You know, it’s not like the movement from hunter gatherer to agricultural which required a way of subjugation of nature because, you know, with, uh, agriculture and even more when humans started to subjugate animals and have livestock, right? So, but that’s, that’s still us, you know, it’s not, not some other person.

It’s just that for some reason that movement happened. And. As Jorge was saying, also, if you look at the history of mythology and [01:46:00] religion, there is a moment where there is this immense fear of the feminine, as in the body, the emotions, sexuality, but also the dark, fear of darkness, and that’s when the religions and mythologies become so entranced with light.

It wasn’t always like that, you know, it wasn’t always that. Religion was equated with light. Oh, sorry or spirituality or ascension. So what happened there? Of course we can Take it as a mistake that happened for some reason and like how can we turn back? But as I said before it may also be that two things first of all It was the struggling consciousness developing and having to like violently Extricate itself from itself if that makes sense.

It’s like it’s not an orderly and harmonious development It’s a bloody development that made a lot of damage, but [01:47:00] also and here i’m connecting to The transmission of a of a woman mystic modern mystic that I like a lot and her name her name is sabine lichtenfeld Some of you know her she’s one of the founders of tamera where she had these downloads in in In Europe, that the drama is much deeper than that, you know, the drama has also to do with the feminine archetype becoming tired of this male son, you know, wanting the male energy to grow and to meet her.

Not to be just like a good boy, you know, that, that stays in the maternal womb, you know, and adores the mother. It’s like, okay, this happened for a few thousand years, now grow up. But according to her transmission, as I interpreted it, as in her wisdom, as she sort of released the male energy to grow, she also knew that as part of this [01:48:00] growth, this male was going to become aggressive and violent.

That was a phase. And so she almost from a place of power, not from a place of subjugation said, okay, then if this is the way, let it be so, because this is the way. So the way that we can, it’s easy for us to cast the feminine archetype from a good hearted. place into a fragile, weak, you know, victimized place, actually.

And it’s easy for us to do the same with nature, by the way, poor nature and, you know, and, and at the same time, it’s easy for us to romanticize. Both of the feminine and nature. So for example our vision of nature right now is modern people that actually Nature is nourishing and we can’t wait to go back to nature.

That’s great But human beings for millions of years have had to face the wrath of nature how dangerous she is And how [01:49:00] annihilating she is? So the relationship is very complex and we should never forget. That’s at least my my feeling that the feminine in all of us Is mighty, you know, it’s powerful. Yes.

She may be hurting but she’s mighty and powerful and the masculine in all of us Has this complex relationships where he wants to meet her in power, but historically he hasn’t Known how to meet her in power except with taking power forcefully and violently. And is there another way forward? That’s what we are all sort of like looking at.

Marianne: So I think, yeah, we can talk about the mother and the son archetype. But the, um, the sedentary, uh, civilization has brought us Two other very interesting archetypes that might be [01:50:00] relevant for today, that’s the feminine as the lady, and the ethics of chivalry in the masculine. So for instance, at the miraculous Virgin Chapels, La Milagrosa, or Notre Dame de la rue du Bac in France, Joseph is holding the baby, and she’s free to have her hands, you know, emanating light.

She doesn’t have to be Magdalene to do that. Maria, the lady can do that. So I think that’s very interesting because on the one hand, of course, there’s everything you describe and they beautifully kind of recontextualized, but there is something in the middle age and Renaissance, um, mythologies that we can work with.

I always like the idea of working on an inner level where my masculine becomes. the knight that kind of like worships and protects the ladyship that kind of [01:51:00] holds the ground while the insane, wonderful, super powerful feminine dances in dimensions that I don’t even want to look at. So that’s kind of a little twist that I wanted to bring.

Audience 4: Thank you. I have a short little sharing, which comes to become a question to Able to answer it. So first it’s a lovely experience to sit here and observe also trying to define the same thing, which is indefinable in many ways, talking about divine arrows and how we can put words to something that is so deeply experiential and vast, infinite.

I like sometimes to use a word called true nature, true nature, a way to describe the emptiness and [01:52:00] infinites of all potential. We are all sitting here as children or teenagers trying to mentalize, conceptualize. That’s just the sharing. My question is, this is something I’m very curious about. I have a theory because in this true nature of manifestation, as I said, The complex chaotic origin of how things happen and evolve are too great for most minds to even be able to consider.

To understand what is the cause of effect of us ending up here, what is the patriarchal age, the feminine age. But a theory I have I would like to share is that So I look at the patriarchal driven by the fear of survival and I ask myself I suspect there are cosmic evolutionary reasons a cause for the effect of the party patriarchal age to come in and for those who you are aware of their Younger dryas age the the [01:53:00] potential emergency we had on this planet about 12, 000 years ago.

I have a theory that for Perhaps spiritual reasons. I cannot give that answer. There was a drastic change that caused humanity to go into a crisis of survival that invoked the patriarch, patriarchal age that we lived. So I like to share that theory and get a response from it with the ingredient that everything has been exactly as it has had to be by definition that it happened for us to evolve on a greater collective scale than.

I can and perhaps any of us can actually define. I think there’s a, I think there’s a question there. 

Jorge: What I would say is, is a huge, uh, philosophical question. Uh, and there is, has been a lot of answers to that. There’s two camps, but there’s some camps that actually they wouldn’t agree with that. As soon as it comes, they say, Well, [01:54:00] we, we did make some mistakes in the way we developed and evolved here in the West.

There is other indigenous people, for example, in the planet, you know, who develop and evolve in different ways, you know, less disconnected to nature, and so forth. So there was something about, uh, the, the whole concept. Cortical development, the cognitive development that also gave us so many fruits. So there is so many things that are valuable there, you know, but also the disconnect us in ways that, uh, and this is the question now, were they necessary or not, right?

And, uh, some people say they were necessary or people to say they were not necessary. No, it’s like, uh, it’s like, uh, let’s bring it to our personal development. No, like, uh, you know, as kids we are, as Freud would say, we’re polymorphously sensual. Right? Uh, you know, it’s it’s it seems developmentally, you know, there is when the development of, uh, of the mind, the cortical reason and stuff that is like a repression of all that, you know, latency.

And then adolescence opens up [01:55:00] again in a more genital and I’ll wait those energies, you know, Right? And, uh, there is like some kind of repression happening there. Is that really truly necessary? Is that really truly necessary? Is wouldn’t it be a way to raise children, uh, that they could still develop all these cognitive abilities without having to go through that kind of repression?

Like, more physical contact, massage? I mean Who knows? You know? So, um, uh, I don’t have a clear question. The answer to your question. But I like to play with all these ideas because, uh, yeah, there is. Yeah, there’s a lot of the points around that. So it’s really good. Good question. Thank you. 

Raffaello: What I will let that, um, again.

I want to bring it also to temperament. Some of us are more past oriented, and they’re able to look at the past and make sense of it and construct also an embodied lived experience of the past that allows us to move forward with a [01:56:00] baggage, you know, not making the same mistakes, etc. Some of us are more future oriented and they actually are bogged down by the past individual and collective and just need to feel free to, to vision and create.

And there’s more, more complexity. So I think there is a place for, for both, for reflecting on the past individual and collective and moving forward. One thing though that I would be careful with is the feeling how much space we can and want to give to the feeling of guilt, to the feeling of regret. Some of it is definitely healthy and important because otherwise, you know, we’re just like flying around and not.

leaving the embodied reality of the consequences of our actions, again, individual and collective. So, for example, the consequences of patriarchy, we can elaborate on that, and then the embodied sense of those consequences is important. Yet at the same time, [01:57:00] It’s, you know, from a tantric perspective, I, I would say it, it is as good.

It is good as long as it enlivens the body. It, it allows us to reflect and to act more with more integrity, which by that I mean with a more integral view, but the moment that guilt starts to contract the body to shut down to, to make us basically dwell in a place of like despair. Then from my perspective.

Some future orientedness is a good medicine there, because as you said so beautifully, by definition what happened is what needed to happen in order for us to be here now and look back at it. There is no other possibility right now. So therefore, while digesting it and feeling it, It’s also, in my feeling, this is personal because I’m a very future oriented person, it’s urgent [01:58:00] to devote our psychic energies and physical energies and erotic energies to the future that we want to dream and imagine.

And by future I don’t mean like in a thousand years from now, I mean, what’s the next step? You know, what can we do right now? So, that’s my contribution. 

Giancarlo: Yes, I think we are ready. Thank you for making the two hours the people left. Any, any question, anybody? So, you know, I’m a little bit, I’m a little bit puzzled because, you know, I, I had this vision of black team, red team, Tantra, Tantra is the right framework to, you know, combine God and, and, and, and, and, and, and eroticism and sex and And, but then we went such in a macro way into the past and the future and the teacher and ethics and, but it was great.

It was amazing to see you guys engaged and [01:59:00] we want to do more of this, right? We are, yes, we want more ideas, you know, of, of, of maybe a little bit more debate also. Um, so thank you. Thank you everybody. Now we can get naked and go into the pond. We can open some wine. Thank you. Thank you.

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