Religious Eroticism What Is "Religious Term Paper

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A pair of lovers might marry for physical attraction, and then discover one another's emotional attributes. But will this lead them to a higher form of affection, in the Platonic ideal of erotic progression? A monk would suggest that modern married life is too distracting to allow a full communion with the divine, in the presence of such worldly responsibilities, and thus religious eroticism is fundamentally incompatible with even the best of earthly, married affection.

Of course, there are those such as Bataille, who would suggest the idea of the connection between eroticism and death means that even in the original, first flush of passion, there is a parallel between the divine and the ordinary, bodily erotic. The loss of self sought by mystics and the loss of self more ordinary people seek in the distractions of love through the petite morte or little death of the orgasm are similar, although Bataille suggests that the momentary distraction of eroticism and the permanent loss of self and access to true understanding of the divine in romantic and erotic mystical language has a fundamentally different purpose, even if the experiences may be parallel in language -- they are not equally parallel in experience.

Bataille may seem equivocal in his use of the term "death," as he uses it to describe a death of the self in momentary erotic congress, and also death of secular identity when a mystic becomes erotically 'one' with God, a death that cannot be sustained in ordinary human experience. However, this parallel, like De Rougemont's is again useful to compare to the Greek mode of progression with the Christian contrast between the erotic physical and the erotic mystical/religious experiences of love and loss of identity.

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The problem with this fissure between romance and religion is that it highlights Alcibiades' objection to Socrates even more intensely, namely that we humans, bodily beings, cannot attain such a non-physical love of the divine, or even one another, in ordinary life. In fact, Lee Siegel would agree, in his characterization of the Krishna tradition that we humans are always striving to the transcendent, one could say, Platonic ideal in our mental constructions of bodily desire, but can never reach such an ideal of the fusing of the erotic and the religious unless one lets go of the desire of an ideal at all, either the ideal of religious enlightenment or of erotic and romantic love.

Segal reminds the reader that eroticism is only present in an absence -- hence Alcibiades only wants Socrates when he cannot have him, and Tristan longs for Iseult because she is unattainable, not because of a magic potion. Instead, one must cease such desiring at all, in both a religious and the erotic and physical sense, says Segal. Thus, although Segal may offer the least concrete expression of romantic passion, the idea of reaching satisfaction with what one has, rather than striving for something else may emerge as the most realistic and attainable ideal of religious eroticism of all. Segal stresses that true religion involves eroticism or pining at all -- rather than striving the world of the transcendent forms, we must understand the ideal is already hear, in mundane life, if viewed with the correct consciousness......

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