Art & Porn - The Thin Divide

Take Khajuraho for example. Ah visited Khajuraho sometime back. The vibes I received made even a art duffer like me wonder about the attraction of the place. The blatant display. It was beautiful. Made me wonder is there a dividing line between art and porn. Whether in Khajuraho or anywhere else in our daily lives. The innumerous paintings, movies, books etc being passed off as inspiration, epiphanies or acts of creativity. So I delved into Khajuraho deeper and deeper. Moi mind finally rested at this:

Superficially there is no difference. Khajuraho, Puri, Ajanta, Ellora -- they are full of erotic art, just like the contemporary erotic culture where the repressed sexuality of thousands of years has become such a burden that it has to be dropped. And suddenly a great erotic revolution has taken place. Pornography is nothing but erotic and obscene - in paintings, in films, in dances. They don’t create in you a longing for the beyond; they simply create in you more sensuality, more sexuality. But on the surface they look alike. And in India and in the outside world, they are being misunderstood.

After India became independent, Mahatma Gandhi proposed that all these sculptures, all these temples should be sunk into mud. They would not be destroyed, so if some foreign dignitary comes to see then you can clean it and show him -- just for special people. But for ordinary people they would be closed. Because Mahatma Gandhi thought in the same way as it is thought all over the world, that they are erotic, they are obscene. But there is a vast difference between the Eastern art in Ajanta, Ellora, Konark, Khajuraho and the modern erotic, pornographic photography, painting, music.

For e.g. there are thirty temples in Khajuraho. There were a hundred originally -- Muslims destroyed seventy temples, which are now ruins. One hundred temples must have been built in thousands of years by thousands of artists continuously working on stone - generation after generation may have died working on it. And they have created the most beautiful bodies in stone. In Khajuraho stone speaks, sings, dances; it is not dead. You can see that the artist has succeeded in transforming the stone into a living form. It looks so alive that any moment the statue may walk towards you and say," Hello". And hundreds of statues.. These statues were not to satisfy your repressed sexuality. On the contrary, they were used as a tantric method to release the suppressed sexuality just by meditating on these naked statues. The method was simply to sit there in silence - only a dim light reaches there, and hundreds of statues surround you. Just watching them, you will be surprised to find that many of these dreams have occurred to you, many are such that they have been condemned in every society -- sexual orgies, but they have happened in your dreams, they are part of your unconscious. And these places like Khajuraho were kinds of universities where people were coming to release, to cathart-repressed sexuality.

And all these statues are outside the temple. Inside the temple there is no erotic sculpture. In fact, inside most of the temples there is nothing- just silence, a cool peaceful milieu, with the vibes of thousands of years of people meditating there. The rule was that when you feel or your master feels that the erotic sculpture no longer affects you, that you are sitting there and nothing happens, it is as if the walls are empty- when you are absolutely sure that they don’t affect you - that is a signal: Now it is time, now you can go inside. Now the door for the inner is open. All that was rubbish has been dropped- cleanliness, weightlessness, and a silence, which is full of beauty and song... It is the greatest psychological method invented by the East.

What is happening today is simply pornographic, obscene. It does not help man to get rid of it, but simply gives a temporary relief. The pornographic literature, photography are all helping you stay normal, otherwise, you will go mad. So there is no harm done when one reads Playboy hidden inside a Bible or a Gita. What he is seeing in a porno magazine brings up his own unconscious. This was used as a meditation technique in Khajuraho. These days it is used to create more thirst for the same sexuality, which has been aroused by the porno magazine, by blue films, by naked dances and striptease. The same method was used to transform your energy into sexuality. These days, it is used to provoke more sexuality.

And then there is a kind of insatiation - almost all painting has gone pornographic, all the movies repeating almost the same stories, the same plot, the same triangle: two women, one man; or two men, one woman, a simple structure - the same story. What attracts people to it? It is not appreciation for literature. What attracts is that in the story - needed for the story or not needed - they go on putting your suppressed needs, desires. It is a kind of relief. But tomorrow you will be repressing again, and again you will need the same kind of photography, the same dance.This way you will never be able to enter into the temple.

Parting thought: I would definitely think of introducing kids with their untainted, unprejudiced and pure mind to the best forms of art and sculpture. Before adulteration and mindless manipulation hits their mind, they can learn to appreciate and approach beauty in its purest form. (I heard from the locals that a few tourists masturbate watching the statues. How grosse can the mind be?)

Khajuraho is well worth the trudge of the journey and the required organized effort. A place highly recommended to everyone. A must visit at least once in a lifetime.