# The Fat Holy Man's Own Tantric Teaching Thread



## Obesus (Aug 5, 2006)

Oh heck....why on Earth would I want to try something so incredibly outlandish and absurd as trying to teach the Tantras to a group of folks more interested in fat men? Because I am Obesus, naturally, and the impossible is my own staked-out territory, natch! Ahem! The actual reason besides that one is to awaken some of the latent sense of lifeforce and philosophy in our little community here and finally to present the elements of practice in the Tantras which can be used by all either in or out of ritual context, to enhance sensuosity and in-touchness with one's own body. It really is a size acceptance technique since a number of fat men are not exactly in close touch with their bodies or spirits and that can be remedied and healed! Part of this was inspired by the fact that our mental health program currently has a PhD. candidate who also has a Master's in Somatic Psychology and has been working with some of our clients (who happen to be BHM!) to get in touch with their sense of body and presence..with great results! The techniques are not at all complex and while it is easier to teach them in person, they can be communicated for everyone to experiment with.
With that out of the way, we begin the Fat Holy Man's own Tantric Teaching Thread....folks of all sizes not only welcome, but diversity and tolerance practised and taught here! I now we have some other folks practicing various forms of pranayama and martial arts here...please bring insights where you can! Muchas Gracias! :bow:


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## Obesus (Aug 6, 2006)

....and coincidentally, my 1000th posting! Wa-hoooey!
Folks hear "Tantra" and a lot of cheesy Kama-Sutra type books from the 70's tend to pop into mind...the truth is that "Tantra" basically just means "Book." Hindu sacred literature is structured into very long epic poems called "Vedas." They are very old and don't always carry a lot of philosophical weight, since they are more mythic in structure. Many Centuries after they were first written down (they were in poetic/oral form for many centuries) more philosophical explanations were added to them, explaining parts of the stories or in some cases, entirely different ideas. These added books were called the Upanishads. Finally, somewhere around the 14th-15th Centuries AD, more practical books were pasted on the ends of the Upanishads to expound even further on some details in those books. This final layer comprises the Tantras and there are many of them, some more philosophical, some much more practical. Some of them treat of mundane topics, some teach astrology and cosmological concepts and some specialize in yogic practice and technical details of kundalini yoga and other arcane topics. Somewhere around the same time that the Tantras were being written down, definite schools of Tantric Philosophy and Practice began to emerge in several areas...the most famous of which were Kashmir, in Northern Inda, East Bengal, on the Pacific Ocean side of India and Tibet. There were both Hindu and Buddhist Tantric schools and allied schools as far away as the Middle East and possibly even influences in European culture, about which we shall speak later...the basic idea is that the Tantric Tradition is complex, multi-faceted and embraces every attitude from the most abstract Emptiness Yogas to the most sensual Kaula Tantra or sexual practice.....


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## Buffetbelly (Aug 9, 2006)

Doesn't it involve ejaculating into your bladder? Doesn't sound so great to me...


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## Obesus (Aug 10, 2006)

two totally disparate and often antithetical systems. What you are describing is a fairly arcane practice undertaken by Hatha Yoga adepts, and doesn't form any part of the Tantra. In point of fact, the reverse-ejaculation was basically a stunt done by the Fakirs and Sadhus to prove their incredible control over their bodies....it didn't really have much of a purpose beyond providing a cheap stunt and a bit of egotistical display.
The sexual practice in most Tantric systems can be either ejaculatory or non-ejaculatory and the latter version is essentially a form of simple coitus interruptus...that is actually the easy part and is well known in the West. The difficult part is the arousal of the Lifeforce in a particular way to achieve a state of spiritual and philosophical enlightenment. That part takes years of discipline and personal development to be prepared for the staggering vision of reality that ensues...so the short answer, BB, is no bladder involvement whatsoever at any point!



Buffetbelly said:


> Doesn't it involve ejaculating into your bladder? Doesn't sound so great to me...


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## Obesus (Aug 10, 2006)

COSMOLOGY! Yes, cosmology, That stuff they keep having in them NOVA specials with Brian Greene and Einstein stuff and physics and Superstring theory and Inflationary Cosmology and such...wha? What does that have to do with cosmically hot sex you might query! The answer is everything...absolutely everything. The Tantras (and there are many of them, both in book form and in the form of philosophical and technical systems) are all oriented to aswering the big cosmological questions. What is the Universe? Where did it come from? Is anyone in charge? Who am I in this huge place? It chooses to answer such vast questions not from the vantage point of mere logic, which is clearly not up to the task, nor from the vantage point of dogmatic faith, which doesn't really hit the mark for inquisitive minds...but rather, it answers these questions from the viewpoint of human experience...and the most basic experience of all...sex. The philosophy behind the Tantras chooses a gnostic viewpoint...which says "I am sceptical, therefore I need my answers to these questions to be direct, powerful and personal. The tantric belief is that this is not only possible, but a more direct way to personal truths and even universal truths than the roundabout ways of philosophy, myth or religion. Tantra therefore has some family similarlity with the more empirical side of the Western esoteric tradition...Hermeticism and Alchemy...more to follow! Last words for today, though...even fat men can contemplate the heavens! Eh?


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## Obesus (Aug 11, 2006)

....bunch of cheap cheesy Kama Sutra knock-offs? No, the concept of:
EMANATIONISM
Which is the idea that the Universe emanated out of nothingness. Gosh, kinda' sounds like the Big Bang cosmology in a sort of philosophical way. Now, emanationism has it's own problems...it tends to build a ladder-like structure from the Absolute to the Relative that ignores a lot of the complexity of our Universe in favor of a skeletonized model...no one has ever really come up with a better solution from the geometric perspective, but the tantric solution is to re- _experience_ the birth of the Universe in an experience of anamnesis. Huh? Anamnesis....the opposite of amnesia...as in, a total remembrance of everything that has ever existed, including the future. Wow...how do we do that? That will be one of the main core concepts of the teaching thread....how do we remember our Original Face...the one that we had before we were born? (Borrowed a Zen Koan there, but it just fit su purty!) Alrighty then...let's let this settle in a bit before we begin with the details of how the Universe happened to be born. :bow:


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## Obesus (Aug 17, 2006)

This last weekend, the SF Magickal Meetup group met to discuss the role of emanationism in the Babylonian creation myth of Tiamat and Apsu. (Ocean and Fresh Water...the primordial female/male, antithetical pair or syzygy out of which all else emerges.) I pulled out articles on emanationism from all over the place...everywhere from the Catholic Encyclopedia to wild and wacky Magical sites...and most agree that there is often the conception that the Cosmos is equivalent to a primordial personnage...Anthropos in Western Gnosticism and Hermeticism, Purusha in HIndu Tantra and the Primoridal or Adi-Buddha in Tantric Buddhism...out of the body of the Cosmic Person who is most often androgynous, emerges the first set of antithetical principles, usually male and female, which forms with the primordial personnage, the first sign of reality...the triangle...symbol of the Yoni of the Goddess....the trick is to remember (anamnesis) the unity out of which all opposites sprang...no mean feat, given that we are programmed from birth to recognize things strictly in terms of their oppositions and differences...to discriminate...to reverse this trend is one of the chief goals of the Tantra and the sexual symbolism of the Emanation is clearly echoed in the sexual rituals of the various sexually active Tantric schools...:bow:


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## Kimbo (Aug 17, 2006)

um wow...... and thankyou Obesus. I have learnt more about Tantra(s) in the last 20 mins than the whole of the rest of my life.

A fascinating thread my friend!!

I am now officially glued to this thread.


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## philosobear (Aug 27, 2006)

this is good, Obesus. It feels like you've completed a preamble, setting out some first principles that I have never heard before. What is next. I feel like the really interesting thing is how first principles relate to specific practices. Perhaps you could say how these ideas inform your practices...

and yes, having reread this more thouroughly, I understand better your reference to the spherical heamaphrodite in the other thread...

keep, going, we're listening!
J.


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## philosobear (Aug 27, 2006)

this is good, Obesus. It feels like you've completed a preamble, setting out some first principles that I have never heard before. What is next. I feel like the really interesting thing is how first principles relate to specific practices. Perhaps you could say how these ideas inform your practices...

and yes, having reread this more thouroughly, I understand better your reference to the spherical heamaphrodite in the other thread...

keep, going, we're listening!
J.


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## Obesus (Aug 27, 2006)

....of the Tantra is no mean feat, since it is wrapped up in so many layers of complexity....but the core system is surprisingly similar to the alchemical and hermetic traditions in the West. In a way, that is to be expected, since they both emanate out of the same Reality and that Reality may have hundreds of different road maps, but they all wind up at the same place. Geoffrey Ashe suggests in "The Ancient Wisdom" and "Dawn Before the Dawn", that all esoteric systems emerged out of a hypothetical shamanic tradition that reaches back way past the 2,500 BC point at which the first recognizable literary-evidenced mystical traditions crystallized. I tend to agree with him and find the origin of the Tantra back in shamanic systems that had mapped out the essential paths to the Absolute in the Neolithic era. I think after my hiatus that we will definitely continue with a foray into the idea of Anamnesis...the memory of Origins....we will be getting to practice soon after that, since Anamnesis is the essential "techne" of practice, as Jose Arguelles would call it. :bow: 



philosobear said:


> this is good, Obesus. It feels like you've completed a preamble, setting out some first principles that I have never heard before. What is next. I feel like the really interesting thing is how first principles relate to specific practices. Perhaps you could say how these ideas inform your practices...
> 
> and yes, having reread this more thouroughly, I understand better your reference to the spherical heamaphrodite in the other thread...
> 
> ...


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## Obesus (Dec 17, 2006)

The key to the practice of Tantric sexuality lies in the connections between Human Bodies, Earth and The Stars. It is not just a matter of Astrology in the commonly accepted format of the daily Horoscope, but rather a highly advanced and complex form of esoteric Astrology that involves more about the aetheric planes, the Earth's own serpentine Lifeforce currents and the individual magnetic fields of the practitioners. Tantra is, after all, a magnetic as well as aetheric practice that takes place in the Grand Lodge of the Cosmos on the surface of Planet Earth. It depends on individual circumstances and the Locus Solis, the place of the Sun where you are at. The SF Magick Meetup group has been walking the high places of San Francisco tracking the individual currents and fields of the City where we practice...with fascinating results...Mount Davidson has incredibly pure and high energies, with clearly defined "Gates", while Twin Peaks is dark, desperate, blocked and clouded with the dark energy of the Black Iron Prison. It all adds up to the complex field in which the Stars, the Underworld and the Body all meet...it is only when all coalesces in intuition and the wheels of the Stars return to the place where it all lines up that the ritual will be effective. If it is effective once in a lifetime, that is sufficient...hence the dictum that patience must last through lifetimes, if necessary...it is important to understand either the practice of Vedic Astrology or its' Western counterpart, the Horologius of the Rose-Croix.
It is not well known that all Alchemical practice depends entirely upon the position of the stars and the aetheric currents that link the stars to the key minerals and plants in their natural habitats for the Alchemist and his Soror Mystica to succeed in the Great Work of the Art. :bow: 
For reference, I would suggest Swami Sri Yuketeswar's classic "The Holy Science" and Thomas Vaughn's "Aqua Vitæ Non Vitis: Or, The radical Humiditie of Nature: Mechanically, and Magically dissected By the Conduct of Fire"


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## missaf (Dec 18, 2006)

Is that Hotei, Buddha, and every other charm in one painting?


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## Obesus (Dec 18, 2006)

The elephant headed son of Shiva and Parvati, is a plump lad who is the patron of Astrology, wisdom, travel, new enterprises and is the remover of obstacles. He is one of the most popular gods in the Hindu pantheon and the thing that always amuses me is that like most Indian gods, he has a "vehicle"...a pet animal on whom he rides around...in Ganesha's case, it is a mouse or rat named Mooshak! The picture of this big lad riding around on a mouse is just wonderfully paradoxical! :bow: 



missaf said:


> Is that Hotei, Buddha, and every other charm in one painting?


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## missaf (Dec 18, 2006)

Ah, cool! thanks for the lesson, Obe


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## Mr. 23 (Dec 18, 2006)

You've got my attention.

Have you ever written a book about this stuff? I've read (lightly) about tantra before, but never really felt enlightened afterwards. I really feel like I've got a notion about what I fnord need to understand before you go on. Way to put down the fundamentals.


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## Obesus (Jan 12, 2007)

The real key and the end of the road to the Tantra is the right understanding of voidness (Shunyata) as no-thing, nothing and everything, all at once. It is approachable through either an intellectual path (The "via negativa"..."neti-neti", where you simply pare away everything that is not real) in order to reach the final paradox, but the Tantra takes the experiental path and grabs the paradox of existence by the throat to discover it with the body and senses...the key is that you still have to be intellectually prepared for the absolute shock of what awaits you when you bring the stars, the flesh and the soul together in magnetic ecstasis! The only hope of describing it is in totally symbolic languages like the Sandhyabhasa or Twilight Language of the Kashmiri tantrics....I have written about this and the approach to the same place through the Hermetic tradition in my many articles for Gnosis magazine back in the late 80's and 90's, but I think the next step is to put it all together with the fat experience in the mighty "Obesonomicon"...but then that is just my own wacky metaphor! :bow: 



Mr. 23 said:


> You've got my attention.
> 
> Have you ever written a book about this stuff? I've read (lightly) about tantra before, but never really felt enlightened afterwards. I really feel like I've got a notion about what I fnord need to understand before you go on. Way to put down the fundamentals.


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## estrata (Jan 12, 2007)

This is all very fascinating, but I have one question.

Where do the kittens fit into all of this?!

Everyone needs to learn the peace and joy of worshiping the almighty feline, the painful happiness of ritual bloodlettings (i.e. playtime), and the pride in carrying the scratch marks of the true believer.


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## Obesus (Jan 12, 2007)

The correct answer would be that the pups have the Buddha-nature; the bunnies have the Avalokiteshvara-nature, but that the kittens have the Answers! My bunny, Cinder, loves to play with the kittens because they answer her deep and profound philosophical questions after they have fun!



estrata said:


> This is all very fascinating, but I have one question.
> 
> Where do the kittens fit into all of this?!
> 
> Everyone needs to learn the peace and joy of worshiping the almighty feline, the painful happiness of ritual bloodlettings (i.e. playtime), and the pride in carrying the scratch marks of the true believer.


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## Obesus (Jan 26, 2007)

The Great Secret of the Tantric tradition, if "secret" is what we might call it, is that the physical world is quite real, but not in an absolute way. There are a lot of ways to reach that conclusion, but the Tantra chooses to do so in an experiental way through the human body in a way linked to the stars and the Earth and the great magnetic currents of lifeforce that fill the Cosmos and its' neighbors in all directions for Infinity. The truth is that the reality of the physical world is dependent upon the Sunyata, the Voidness which is the root point of Reality. Now, when we hear the word "void", we tend to think "empty," but that is far from true, for this Voidness is unimaginably full...I use the metaphor of a "pregnant emptiness" to convey the paradox that characterizes the experience of the Voidness. Everything that we experience in the Suchness, the everyday world of matter and energy, is a arising that is dependent upon the Voidness for its' existence. This view tends to correct the idea that physical reality is either illusory or has its' own absolute sense of being. It also avoids the emanationist trap of having to explain just how everything emerges out of nothing. The key idea of the Tantra is taking opposites, such as male and female and actually experiencing the reality that there is no separation possible between them...they are rooted in a common dependency upon the Voidness. The actual experience of the Voidness is the most ego-shattering event possible, but one emerges from it with the assurance that nothing is ever lost or missed...it all rests in the Voidness with perfect poise and composure....:bow:


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## fatlane (Jan 27, 2007)

Everything contains its opposite.


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## Ned Sonntag (Jan 28, 2007)

fatlane said:


> Everything contains its opposite.


 Enantidromia! I was just reading a course offering featuring Herodotus' account of an Egyptian accountof the Trojan War. The Black Iron Prison! ROME on HBO last week purported to show the founding of the Mafia by Marc Antony and Lucius Vorenus... and I finally saw PKD speak in the SCANNER DARKLY DVD Thursday and that nite out of the blue Jay'GNOSIS'Kinney e-mailed me. It's all connected,:batting: if only by the Black Iron wire threaded thru the angel haloes that constitute matter in the Common Era.


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## fatlane (Jan 28, 2007)

Ned, seriously... we gotta do lunch sometime.


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## Ned Sonntag (Jan 28, 2007)

Of course that lunch invitation was Post#23... reminding me to google that new horror movie THE NUMBER 23. By the way I found out last nite only thru random surfing that Robert Anton Wilson the '23 man' departed to higher realms a couple weeks ago... he parties with Eris:kiss2: now...


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## Obesus (Jan 28, 2007)

....grasshopper in hand and the dang little bugger is making an ungodly racket with all that damn cricketing! OK...he went off into the tall grasses...sheesh! OK...now, let us suppose that both the "everything" and the "nothing" were both completely, absolutely full of voidness! Hence, you really wouldn't be able to tell them apart. No opposites necessary or involved....they are the same thing! Kewlest! Oooooh...my head hurts now. 
I think I will go point at the Moon to relax! :bow: 



fatlane said:


> Everything contains its opposite.


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## Obesus (Jan 28, 2007)

The synchronicities abound and refill....I have spent no small time in the last few months on the Black Iron Prison after a dream wherein I had a tangible experience of same...in the dream, the way out is deeper down into the realm of She Who Waits Below! Have you ever heard of the RPG "Kult" or seen the Japanese movie "Marebito"? Methinks they might be enlightening in a dark way. 
I just saw Jay on 16th street a couple of weeks ago, but he didn't recognize me in my nurses' scrubs....wild....Herman Slater and the Magickal Child bookstore in NYC back in the day, have been coming up a lot lately...things are just wiggly. Oh...and we have surmised that the "Simon" of Necronomicon fame is actually a team of writers probably including both James Wasserman and Peter Levenda...the mind boggles....:bow: 



Ned Sonntag said:


> Enantidromia! I was just reading a course offering featuring Herodotus' account of an Egyptian accountof the Trojan War. The Black Iron Prison! ROME on HBO last week purported to show the founding of the Mafia by Marc Antony and Lucius Vorenus... and I finally saw PKD speak in the SCANNER DARKLY DVD Thursday and that nite out of the blue Jay'GNOSIS'Kinney e-mailed me. It's all connected,:batting: if only by the Black Iron wire threaded thru the angel haloes that constitute matter in the Common Era.



The image is an intuitive map of the way "down and out" of the BIP...from my dream...


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## Buffetbelly (Feb 1, 2007)

I found some inspiration this past Sunday at brunch, as I often do. An awe-inspiring brunch buffet is like a religious experience for me as I whip myself into a feeding frenzy, :eat1: , until I reach a state of total blissful engorgement. In this spirit I offer The Glutton's Doxology.

***Parental Advisory: Offensive Lyrics!***

*The Glutton's Doxology*

*Praise salad bar from which all dressings flow.*
*Praise taco bar for beans and cilantro.*
*Praise breakfast bar with a chef host.*
*Praise omlette, bun and whole wheat toast.*


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## Obesus (Feb 2, 2007)

That rocks! Truly, there are deep matters involved in the depths of the gluttonage' and as we all know, a few of us have been plumbing those blissful depths for awhile...you have inspired us too! Gracias..:bow: 




Buffetbelly said:


> I found some inspiration this past Sunday at brunch, as I often do. An awe-inspiring brunch buffet is like a religious experience for me as I whip myself into a feeding frenzy, :eat1: , until I reach a state of total blissful engorgement.


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## lucyp (Feb 2, 2007)

Buffetbelly said:


> *Praise salad bar from which all dressings flow.*
> *Praise taco bar for beans and cilantro.*
> *Praise breakfast bar with a chef host.*
> *Praise omlette, bun and whole wheat toast.*



LOL!
Saw this and thought of you. =D
http://www.coasttocoastam.com/shows/2007/02/01.html#recap



> Experiments with Intention
> 
> Senior Scientist at the Institute of Noetic Sciences, Dr. Dean Radin, discussed various experiments related to consciousness including a new one on the power of intention as related to food. There are various types of mind-matter interactions in which intention can affect such things as living beings, energy, space, electric devices, and water, he outlined.
> 
> ...



I'm a sitting here, holding a chocolate, going 'ommmmmmm...'


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## Obesus (Feb 4, 2007)

Heart of the Madhayamika Philosophy of emptiness....the essentia is pretty simple, but the reasonings are designed to best even the best debater..as was the case in the olden days, Buddhist missionaries were equipped with awesome intellectual mechanics, including the infamous four-value logic and a subtlety fit to the subject of Sunyata, the Voidness. The Seventy Stanzas are based on the Buddhist structure of the Twelve Limbs...the twelve elements that stop human beings from perceiving the Universe as it truly is. I find this fascinating in the light of everyone from H.P. Lovecraft to Richard Sharpe Shaver, who has expressed a Western version of this Cosmic Terror and lack of trust in Reality as anything more than a convenient construct based on the neural wiring of the brain. This view is also at the core of the Necronomicon Magical system of Simon. The "Matrix" movies come to mind as a technologically based version of this. 
So, the upshot is that if you break the circle of the twelve Limbs (Astangas in Sanskrit), at any point along the circle, you not only break the misperception but you can finally see the Universe and yourself as they really are! So, this is the philosophical foundation necessary in order to equip oneself for the shattering experience of the Tantric Samadhi (Bliss)...it is not at all as one might expect and more than one practitioner has walked away with serious psychological problems because there was no preparation and restructuring of belief system before the "breaking" of the circle. I think, again, I need to emphasize that this system accords Reality as we commonly experience it, its' own due...there is no need to invoke "Illusion" or Maya to explain the split between perception and Reaility, since the World is real, it just doesn't have any inherent reality, just a dependent reality and we are not perceiving it as it really is. The Tantra basically just gets our perceptual and conceptual apparatus in good order to be able to see it as it really is. 
Next lesson...the Fat Holy Man's secrets of the belly!


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## Obesus (Aug 26, 2007)

I invariably do follow up on all I promise...it may just take a moment or two! So, I have been continuing my work with the sigils from "that book" which dare not to be named, and sigil #34, the sign of Mummu, the craftsman of the Universe has caught my attention. The story is that after Marduk defeated the Mother Dragon Tiamat, he asked Mummu to take the remains of Her Body, split it into two and to create Earth and Sky. OK, so Mummu is the god of Lifeforce and creation in the Babylonian mythos. Naturally, the Tantra revolves around the Lifeforce, so I have been invoking the spiritus of Mummu to help me to understand how the Lifeforce devolves from the Voidness. Well, what I have learned is that I can do my Tantric Practice, strictly IN MY BELLY and it produces a strong state of exstasis. I don't need to use the entire pentagonal form, the belly works just fine! Who knew? This does explain our long-standing understanding that the belly of the Fat Holy Man does act as both a battery and a generator of highly refined Lifeforce when circulated in the traditional manner.... 

View attachment marduknegative.jpg


View attachment greater sphere.JPG


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## Obesus (Sep 1, 2007)

...that the traditional point three fingers below the navel, where the Chi is traditionally centered in Martial Arts, is indeed the end point of an energy channel leading straight to the point between the eyebrows. Slight massage of the pannus whilst performing the circulations of the Lifeforce produces no small bit of exstasis! Handy to know for those moments when your favorite Tantrika/FFA is *not *2,500 miles away, but much closer!  

View attachment taoist yoga 2.jpg


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## Aeiry Stone (Sep 1, 2007)

Where do I sign up to be a padawan of Master Obesus?


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## Obesus (Sep 1, 2007)

Mountain of the Fire Philosophers, aka the Lovers of Sophia, aka The Master Masons with the Rosey Crosse Word...up on the northern side, about halfway, in the really big meadow with the big domed Temple of Sophia...use the Doorway of Scorpio Ascendant...there are 13, of course...I am in the Cubiculum with the humongous Clock out front and two mountain marmots standing guard! Once inside the dimensional gateway disguised as a nice Victorian oaken door, you will meet my good friend and Master, Shar-Pei Abacus...who will guide you within to the chambers and tunnels...maps are available for a small and reasonable donation! :bow: :smitten: Oh, Traditional Lodge nights for the Ordo Cerealia Obesi Magna are Thursdays, Midnight...PST We will save a plate of the Sacred Barley for you!



Aeiry Stone said:


> Where do I sign up to be a padawan of Master Obesus?



View attachment map restored.jpg


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## Jes (Sep 18, 2007)

you so crazy, Obie!


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## stefanie (Sep 26, 2007)

New here and catching up on this thread. I love Ganesha ... :wubu: 

I hope it's not OT to link to one of my favorite Ganesha pictures here. :bow:


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## Obesus (Sep 27, 2007)

As a son of Shiva, Lord of Yogis, Ganesh has clear Tantric wisdoms to share, much as my other totem, Hotei, signifies the Emptiness Yoga of the Madhayamika. Together, they complement perfectly, philosophically and practically through two different but equal-aimed yogas. My favorite note on Ganesh is his Mouse-mount, the long-suffering but faithful Mushika! Since I am also a rabbit and rodent fancier, I find this to be an utterly charming and a significant teaching tool for steadfastness on the Tantric path! :bow: Thank you for sharing that wonderful image of Lord Ganesh!! :smitten: 




stefanie said:


> New here and catching up on this thread. I love Ganesha ... :wubu:
> 
> I hope it's not OT to link to one of my favorite Ganesha pictures here. :bow:



View attachment dws_primer_symbol-mushika.jpg


View attachment ganesha_riding_his_rat_hf99sm.jpg


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## Obesus (Sep 27, 2007)

...did I ever mention my favorite little cute story to you? We all know that I manage a mental health program and a psychiatric clinic, so one day one of our wonderfully goofy therapists is coming out of the building at entirely the wrong time of day when I know that he should be seeing clients and he yells out to me: "Hey! Technically, you're not insane, but you are really really eccentric!" I yell back to him: "Comin' outta' you, I take that as a damn compliment....get back to work!" I just love moments like that!  



Jes said:


> you so crazy, Obie!


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## Obesus (Sep 27, 2007)

As we all know, as weight increases, the navel tends to sink with the pannus or fat-apron down until it is more situated between the legs. This is one of the secrets of fat-Tantra. As the center of gravity becomes lower and lower, the force of Baraka (aka Prana, Chi or Lifeforce) becomes more and more grounded to Earth and begins to pull up extemily powerful forces into the belly which then acts like a storage battery. By focusing the rotation of the Kriya yoga precisely in the point three finger widths below the lowered navel, extremily strong sensations of physical and spiritual exstasis begin to generate like electrical waves, after much practice. It gradually turns into a form of Samadhi which allows one to slip into the spaces between breaths... and thence into the space between the eyebrows where dwells the Astrum Argentum, the Silver Star of the Sea. There is clearly a strong link between the pannus and the third eye which is direct and no-nonsense! 

View attachment amcl_el01.jpg


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## stefanie (Oct 4, 2007)

Obesus: I remember reading once something interesting, related to what you just said. We say that a person has "heart" if they are intuitive and in-touch, etc., but the Japanese say that person has _hara_, or "belly." 

I wonder, do you think there's a relationship between (some, at least) people gaining weight with age - especially below-the-belt - and the accumulation of wisdom?


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## Obesus (Oct 6, 2007)

Written while he was studying in Japan between WWI and WWII, is an amazing study of the belly and the lifeforce...it has recently been republished by Inner Traditions in Vermont....he has a whole section on the vast differences in understanding of the belly in the West and in the East. The point three fingers below the navel is the real key to the alchemical and tantric processes, the fulcrum around which the circulation is achieved. It can arouse the alchemical fires to an amazing degree, quickly and with precision! :bow: 



stefanie said:


> Obesus: I remember reading once something interesting, related to what you just said. We say that a person has "heart" if they are intuitive and in-touch, etc., but the Japanese say that person has _hara_, or "belly."
> 
> I wonder, do you think there's a relationship between (some, at least) people gaining weight with age - especially below-the-belt - and the accumulation of wisdom?


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## Xenophon (Oct 7, 2007)

Obesus
correct me if I'm wrong, but I seem to remember reading in a book about tantra that the sexual act represents the union of opposites - the overcoming of dualities, if you like. 
Might this not relate to BHM/BBW, and their stereotypically skinny admirers ? When round and angular, large and small, soft and hard come together (no pun intended), there is an obvious potential for a symbolic reading. The lovers might be said to 'complete' each other.


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## Xenophon (Oct 7, 2007)

While pertaining to Taoism rather than tantra, yin and yang are useful metaphors for what I describe above. Wiki definition: "generalizations of the antithesis or mutual correlation between certain objects or phenomena in the natural world, combining to create a unity of opposites". Huzzah !


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## Obesus (Oct 7, 2007)

Yes, you are correct in all regards and I will amplify. Those of us who have experienced the Mother of All; the Pregnant Voidness; the Chapel Perilous; the Night-sea terror of which H.P.Lovecraft is the prophet for the Modern West, know beyond all that the Grand Mystery is the Scission of Voidness into the endless pairs of opposites. Those with experience, realize that the Voidness is anything but empty..it positively reeks with pregnant possibilities..any and all possibilities. How our Cosmos came to be generated in the form that it was, is the work of Mummu, the Grand Architect and Geometer of the Universe. So, yes, it is indeed the great Anamnesis when Opposites reunify into the Voidness, but the mechanism is Lifeforce magnetized, ala' Mesmer. It is, as you suspect, *the geometric forms * of the partners which create the magnetic fields and the skillful manipulation of those fields is the reason for the presence of the Guru during the Pancha or circle. Plato, in the Timaeus, essentially suggested very much the same thing when he opined that humans were originally spherical and completely andrgynous in form and only later came to be separated into genders; one soft and rounded, one hard and angular (which one is which, is besides the point!), but YES, it is in the coincidence of symbolic geometries that we find the foundation! Excellent point! Hurrah! :bow: I am on guard with the use of the word "completion" for it tends to signify to most something that doesn't really occur...each individual is complete, but by rejoining in the primordial Emptiness, both can realize the eg0-construct together...wouldn't want folks thinking that this is a sort of psychological "pudding"!  



Xenophon said:


> Obesus
> correct me if I'm wrong, but I seem to remember reading in a book about tantra that the sexual act represents the union of opposites - the overcoming of dualities, if you like.
> Might this not relate to BHM/BBW, and their stereotypically skinny admirers ? When round and angular, large and small, soft and hard come together (no pun intended), there is an obvious potential for a symbolic reading. The lovers might be said to 'complete' each other.


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## Obesus (Oct 7, 2007)

...is that the Unity was there all the time...we just forgot it by becoming tangled in the marshes and byways...the Gnostic "Hymn of the Pearl" in the Nag Hammadi Library hits it precisely and dead-center! It is impossible to ever be really separate, except in mental constructs and that is what the Tibetan Emptiness Yoga is all about! :bow: Nagarjuna hits it dead on! Visible reality is a dependent reality, but one worthy of respect! 



Xenophon said:


> While pertaining to Taoism rather than tantra, yin and yang are useful metaphors for what I describe above. Wiki definition: "generalizations of the antithesis or mutual correlation between certain objects or phenomena in the natural world, combining to create a unity of opposites". Huzzah !


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## stefanie (Oct 8, 2007)

Thanks for the heads-up about Durckheim's book. 

Also ... _humans were originally spherical and completely andrgynous in form and only later came to be separated into genders; one soft and rounded, one hard and angular (which one is which, is besides the point!), but YES, it is in the coincidence of symbolic geometries that we find the foundation!_

But what if both people are soft and rounded? ; )


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## Obesus (Oct 10, 2007)

....you would have a par-tay!  This does bring up an interesting question...if tantra is built on the reunification of opposites, what can those opposites consist of? In my experience, the states of the flesh, including gender are quite secondary...as long as the two lifeforce fields are *magnetically* opposite, lunar and solar, then everything is peachy! As we know from the Dims Fat Sexuality board, fat-fat sexuality is not only possible, but noticeably perky! Good point!



stefanie said:


> Thanks for the heads-up about Durckheim's book.
> 
> Also ... _humans were originally spherical and completely andrgynous in form and only later came to be separated into genders; one soft and rounded, one hard and angular (which one is which, is besides the point!), but YES, it is in the coincidence of symbolic geometries that we find the foundation!_
> 
> But what if both people are soft and rounded? ; )


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## stefanie (Oct 11, 2007)

Obesus said:


> ....you would have a par-tay!  This does bring up an interesting question...if tantra is built on the reunification of opposites, what can those opposites consist of? In my experience, the states of the flesh, including gender are quite secondary...as long as the two lifeforce fields are *magnetically* opposite, lunar and solar, then everything is peachy!



I never thought of it that way before. Cooool. It explains a lot...



> As we know from the Dims Fat Sexuality board, fat-fat sexuality is not only possible, but noticeably perky! Good point!



Oh, yeah... :blush:


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## Obesus (Oct 12, 2007)

...the great English mystic and esotericist of the 17th Century and his wife practised the Great Art, which was memorialized in a book called "The Aqua Vita: Non Vitis" which is a strangely paradoxical way of saying that the Water of Life is the Lifeforce, which flows through the body like water and which circulates and listeth where it will, as does water in a mountain stream. We also know from my friend Joseph Caezza's article in Magical Blend that the fat holy man (or woman) uses their belly as both a battery for the storage of highly circulated and refined energy, as well as a powerful furnace for literally heating the Lifeforce to the point where it moves to a higher level of its' own accord...very much like the experience of Hotei at the moment of his Satori or realization of Voidness...that Voidness, which is, of course, robustly pregnant with the possibilities of all things and all times and places! 



stefanie said:


> I never thought of it that way before. Cooool. It explains a lot...
> 
> 
> 
> Oh, yeah... :blush:


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