tantra, the spiritual logic of late capitalism
the story goes like this, probably: an idea captures a person and they begin to believe that beneath the strict attitude of Stalinist ideology is a perverted subjectivity: “Pyotr follows the law so closely, i would not doubt that beyond such rigidity is a liberal fluidity, i’d wager they like to be fucked until they squeal.”
neo-America arrives from the future.
from this one can surmise the many ways rumors propagated regarding wild orgies at the top of the KGB during Comrade Stalin’s leadership of the USSR, and how even the personal characterization of various leaders became that of sexual perverts. “doubtless! i heard it from so-and-so that they have these secret parties where people fuck each other without boundaries.”
whether or not they are true, at the core of these rumors is an imagined site of extreme debauchery as the hidden truth of the Bolshevik asceticism. yet of course, in true Hegelian fashion, such a hidden truth is the inherent obverse of hegemonic ideology.
precisely here on this site is the gap between official ideology and its obscene complement, not only observed in the West but also in the East: opposing the Vedic corpus vaidika there is tantrika, the obscene complement of the hegemonic ideology of the Vedas, the fissure.
Capital commodifies Nature--and a consequence of the commodification by Capital is that even specific attitudes have been commodified. the specificity is decided on the relationship of the attitude with Capital: if it can be neutralized and coupled to the capital-machine, it will.
this is what has happened to Buddhism. the traditional Buddhism has been transformed into corporate “Western Buddhism” under the image of this commodifying function. indeed, this is a Buddhism that has been weaponized to serve Capital, and they work synergistically:
{capitalist-become-(buddhist}-become-capitalist)
why does it work? because everybody wants to be a fascist. after all, is it not a fascistic attitude, a microfascism, to relegate the specific history and the concrete conditions of life of a person (their “bad lucks,” their “bad decisions,” their “unfortunate situations”) to their past karma? i think it is.
outwardly, these New Age ideologists might defend a socially progressive agenda.
inwardly, they fundamentally accept whatever is happening in the socio/economic/political domain because it is meant to happen this way, and everyone alive today is simply reaping the material benefits of past karma.
how does it work? tantra marries beautifully to the material pragmatism of neoliberalism: by uniting spirituality with earthly pleasures, one is afforded the violent innocence of mistaking "good karma” and “manifestations” as signs of an “abundant” past life, instead of as the actualized oppressive system with its ruling ideology and layers of dividualized privileges that exist in a specific socio-economic context, conditioned by a specific history of economic domination, colonization, racism, queerphobia, and all other symptoms.
so they proclaim: find the healthy attitude where all you have is abundant, no matter how little, stop eating meat, practice yoga, meditate, accept life as it is, and suddenly you are afforded transcendence and material benefits, divine experience and unlimited shopping. never mind those harmed in the making of this commercial!
in this manner tantra propagates the continual transgression of all rules, the violation of all taboos, since instant gratification becomes the path to enlightenment. and it overcomes the dualism of mind and body as well as the resultant “binary thought” by claiming that the body at its most material (the site of sex and lust) is the noble path to spiritual awakening (kundalini).
say “yes” to life and you will achieve bliss, submit to bodily desires, don’t repress them: spiritual perfection comes from the insight that we already are divine and perfect, not that we have to achieve this through discipline. the body is not something to be cultivated into an expression of spiritual truths, rather, it is immediately the temple for expressing divinity.
here we can already observe the kernel of the modern corporatist attitude toward differences arising in bodies: identify yourself so you can embrace who you are, love your body as is, accept your consumption habits since there’s no ethical consumption under capitalism. do this so we may market you to you because you! are! worthy!
however, this all isn’t the problem. it is not a problem to love yourself as you appeared and developed. the problem here is, of course, the substitution of responsibility to other for responsibility of self only, since others are bound to their karma as you are bound to yours. yet this is only a responsibility of self in relation to the capital/machine, there is no real responsibility here: you are responsible for continuing to work, for receiving food through Doordash, for ordering from Amazon, for not questioning these affairs since it is what it is: a nonresponsibility given by the un/freedom we are marketed.
not only that, but keep your comforts and habits as is since you deserve it, after all, you are divinity experiencing life through a human body. “place that order! buy that commodity produced with child-labor! ignore worker strikes, buy those oreos, they’re vegan anyway! be gentle with yourself!” they’ll say as they wipe the blood of the economically exploited off their yoga mats.
this tendency reaches its apogee in cyberspace. it is true, Control has sent its agents into cyberspace long ago, and this inversion of spirit-as-divinity for material-as-divinity only made the imperialism of cyberspace more important from their perspective i.e. from the perspective of class war.
in cyberspace, the fusion of body and spirituality takes the form of the virtual incorporeal spiritual body experiencing extreme pleasures. our biological body becomes hardware that needs reprogramming through tantra, like a new software which can release or unblock its potential. phones become nadis of the virtual subtle body, computer terminals become chakras, the flow of vital prajna becomes the infinite stream of information.
in the end, which is the present, which is the beginning, these large masses, all those who earn, say, $200,000 all the way up to $10,000,000 a year, all these people, and others too, who live and die by the stock market, for Empire, who live like the planet was for them, like it was theirs, no matter their religion or nationality: in the material-made-spiritual, they live as gods with unlimited shopping, unlimited consumption, unlimited reach, unlimited expansion of an empire of vapidity.
this is the fantasy which we face: Be Here Now, the neighbor/mask one puts on to Live, Laugh, and Love in public, lest all we hide emanate from us.
all in all,
no thing but
commodified orgasmic secretions,
here and there, everywhere:
a cyborgasm of
nothing.
om.