Spiritual sadomasochism : Western and Tantric perspectives

An Aghori renunciate sits naked in a funeral ground in Kashmir. After worshipping the goddess of the grave with an offering of his own excrement which he then proceeds to eat, he prepares to make a second offering: that of the most intense rituals in the entire Tantric tradition- Khanda Manda Yoga. Chanting his devotion to the fanged deity who wears a necklace of decapitated heads and a skirt of severed and bleeding arms, he will gradually dismember his own body, throwing limb upon limb into the sacrificial flames, reputedly at times culminating in a spectacular self-decapitation (Svoboda 1993, 114). What could possibly motivate an act of such calculated self-destruction? This is no mere self-mutilation or suicide, for the Aghori firmly believes that his goddess will return the offered body parts and, in the case of the full decapitation, restore the life of his body. The key word in the question I am posing here is precisely 'self-destruction', destruction of the self, of the ego, of that part of consciousness that is attached to the body. Aghori Tantra and Western sadomasochism share a fundamental philosophical premise: a subtle and historically unnamable appreciation of the impermanency of the body and of the ego that attaches us to it. Hindu Tantrics who stick skewers through their cheeks are not alike to piercing devotees of Western SM scenes simply because of the similarity in the act. They are alike in the primal drive behind their actions. It is upon this drive that I wish to shed some light. What I am not attempting to do is find matching acts or images taken out of vastly different cultural contexts, nor am I suggesting that sadomasochism and Tantra fulfil anything like the same social function within their respective contexts. What I will be doing is drawing a series of correlations between the two traditions that highlights their deeper spiritual relationship. The basis for this comparison lies in the way that both traditions relate to the question of the ego and its connection to the body, and to the use of the body, its energy and its fluids and products to construct what has become a complex and widely misunderstood spiritual journey.