(Benjamin Teixeira de Aguiar) – Eugênia, this week, an internationally acclaimed author published a work where, at one point of the text, he seems to defend sadomasochism, trying to establish a philosophical and even spiritual base for it, by saying that it is part of the human nature to generate and suffer pain, as source of pleasure and vitality, although later in the same book, it seems that he also tries to undo such impression. Considering the terrible bloodshed we watch on the news and recurrent headlines, with millions of eager spectators, and considering what the martyrs and saints had told of good and divine about self-flagellation, what would you have to say to us?
(Spirit Eugênia) – If he really defended this thesis, the author has made an enormous and regrettable mistake, leading millions of people around the world to inadequate thoughts, feelings and attitudes. He was brave, no doubt, to present the subject so openly, but he did not understand the subject with the depth he assumed he had. People contemplate pain, and inflict suffering to each other, because they are desperately needy and insecure and not because this very behaviour generates pleasure. In the complex intricacies of human mind, magnificently capable of almost miraculous juggling to adapt to any circumstance, people end up associating pleasure to painful situations, as an ultimate tactic to endure and transcend unbearable situations. Thus, what sadomasochism reveals, not only in terms of the known sexual perversion, but in all its daily manifestations in the life of individuals and peoples, is what human mind and soul, brilliant in their divine ability to generate life amid unfavourable conditions, can get to do, to make life possible, when it becomes almost unviable.
Since suffering is a mechanism inseparable from the process of life, in more primitive levels of evolution, such as those on Earth, as a means to compel beings to transcendence, by the destruction of the old and the inadequate and the incitement of the new and appropriate, many decide to fall in love with the ways of oppression and destruction that characterize them, instead of focusing on their superior purposes of growth and evolution of the beings.
On the other hand, another profound cause exists, although indirect, in a false ideology of survival in the lowest levels of expression of consciousness, that we could call the win/lose paradigm, as named by some authors of the physical plane.
According to this way of reading reality, in order for somebody to survive and thrive, somebody else has to lose and fade. In this manner, the sadists find pleasure in destroying and oppressing, whereas masochists, anxious to win the love of others, surrender themselves to unnecessary tortures, trying to fulfil the others’ impulse of supremacy.
Both postures are highly unhealthy and misguided, since it is known, from the analysis of tendencies in international politics, as well as from the games of commercial relations, that the only lasting negotiations, and indeed effective in promoting success, are those based on the win/win paradigm. That is: the happiness and success of one is only viable with the success and happiness of the other. All parties must win or all lose, because in the dance of winning/losing, the oscillation is something fatal: those who win today will inexorably lose tomorrow. It is curious and ironic to realize that sadomasochists, speaking of those who devote themselves to the familiar and bizarre sexual mania, know this, and establish rules, so that, ultimately, no one suffers “for real” and everyone has pleasure in the rehearsed drama of submission and dominance.
I will deal with saints and martyrs later on, although still in this dialogue.
(BTA) – Fantastic, Eugenia. What do you propose, as a cure, for these processes, that, by your perspective, are really pathological -am I right?
(SE) – Yes, you are right. We are not saying they are sinful, but pathological, as a complex deviation of the vital force to self-destructive and destructive behaviours, since they cannot manage with balance the renovation force that permeates all processes of life. To keep sanity, before what is incomprehensible to them, or to not burst in pain, before the revolt against what is inappellable: suffering itself, some more hedonistic souls create the intricate mechanism of sadomasochist fantasy to survive their low degree of self-knowledge and wisdom before the great questions of life.
What I recommend to people, who experience or feel tempted to follow down the sickening field of sadomasochism, is to know themselves more, in depth, so that they can understand that the complexes of guilt, inferiority, inadequacy and existential anguish before life’s apparent lack of meaning, can be processed calmly, generating well-being and peace, with no need to appeal to such compensatory mechanisms which, besides being morbid, may become dangerous, without mentioning the fact of wasting an entire transformational force that should be applied to growth, to the evolution of the consciousness, in search of higher levels of happiness and bliss, and not to remain stationed in pain, as an inevitable destiny of the human species.
(BTA) – Now, I believe that it would be compatible with the point to which our conversation has reached, for you to say something about the martyrs and saints of the past, right?
(SE) – Yes. What used to happen in the past was a failure in the understanding of the relationship between matter and spirit, body and soul. Thus the great mystics were induced to torture their bodies in the name of the spirit, because of, I repeat, an incorrect understanding of what life is and its processes of self-transcendence. Gautama Buddha, well before Christ, had already pointed to the great misconception of the ascetics that followed the path of laceration of the body, sexual abstinence and starvation, as a means to attain enlightenment. The great enlightened of the 6th century BC also said that there was such a great imbalance in this conduct, as there was in the excessive preoccupation with the welfare of the physical body, with total disregard for the needs and aspirations of the spirit.
As for the ecstasy felt by these people, when subjected to long and cruel abuse, once again, we remind you of the exceptional power of human mind and body to generate compensations for extreme situations. Athletes, in a state of profound exhaustion, after a long period of exertion, speak of the great pleasure they enjoy, because of the high doses of endorphins poured out in the bloodstream by the body on the brink of collapsing, some of them, to the point of, in fact, suffering from a premature wear-out or even death, because of the abuses perpetrated against the soma, in an attempt to repeat the sensation of pleasure in a supra-normal situation.
The same can be said regarding the use of other drugs that not endorphins – which literally mean: internal drugs – but also drugs that are ingested. When people are under the influence of alcohol for example, they have a temporary sensation of pleasure and relaxation, or excitement and agility in the case of cocaine, but the damages left in the brain are terrible and irreversible, because both drugs have the power to shrink it by the devastation of the neuronal tissue (cocaine much more). Not only there is no permanent gains in the state of consciousness (the state of pleasure is always temporary), as they still can get irreparable losses in the central nervous system and in others departments of the body.
If we observe those who make regular use of marijuana, we will clearly see the loss of cognitive, mnemonic, creative and abstract abilities in exchange for a pseudo-serenity that represents a drain of the psyche, which is mutilated, gradually, until the individual’s complete imbecility. This reminds us of what used to happen in past centuries, when doctors, with the best intentions, used to carry out bleeding in their patients to stop fever. Everyone around would cheer up with the immediate reduction of the feverish state –and it could not be different: the blood was drained out of the organism, to the point of it not being able to generate the urgent healing mechanism that fever represents – but, in doing so, they were promoting the installation of the aggressive foreign elements that the body was trying to eliminate through the fever.
Thereby, the body’s defenses were ruined, and people assumed, with that, to be saving the patient.
(BTA) – Eugênia, how brilliantly exceptional and wise your words are… Is there still anything else that you would like to tell us about this matter?
(SE) – That everyone be cautious with the pseudo-learned and, especially, with all doctrines, ideologies and principles apparently well elaborated, but whose base is sophistic, exactly because it is devoid of common sense, denied by the best principles of ethics, moral and justice. Many good and intelligent people, educated and well intentioned, let themselves be led by siren song of ideas of “vanguard”, but that, in fact, reeks of madness and delusion, leading their proponents, and those who follow them, to unhappy lives of anguish and dissatisfaction. The loss of peace and joy of living must be a strong enough sign of warning to those who venture into these mental lands of quicksand. And when we speak of peace and happiness, we do not refer to the fleeting moment of excitement and relief that addicted of all kinds feel at the time they fulfill their compulsion, but to the deep and lasting feeling of wholeness and balance that those who are aligned with God and the Flows of life enjoy. This sensation is unique and it is an unmistakable sign of the “elected”, as per the evangelical language: those who elected themselves to follow the steps of truth, the steps of life.
Mediumistic dialogue held on April 06, 2003