The Miracle of the Penis

[Oluwatoyin Adepoju]

                

             The Miracle of the Penis

           

A Shiva Lingam, representing the Hindu deity Shiva.

From Wikipedia, "Lingam"

          Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju 

                        Compcros 

Biological and Social Complexity 

The relationship between a penis and its owner is one of the most significant demonstrations of the miracle of human biology, its physical, psychological, philosophical, spiritual, social and economic implications, values diversely harnessed by various schools of thought across history.

The Necessity of Ownership 

Similar, perhaps even more profound  considerations apply to the vagina, but since I don't have one, I can't respond to the significance of the vagina with the required sensitivity and understanding.

No degree of acquaintance with the vagina or the penis either experientially or second hand can replace the intimacy of ownership of either of these biological structures, an intimacy growing over the course of a lifetime as the person and the organ undergo changes in their character and inter-relationship, metaphoric of the changes within continuity shaping human personality across time.

A person who owns a vagina or a penis is best positioned to reflect on the intimacies of the experience  beyond observation of those who own the organ or  what others have to say, enabling that owner better situate their personal relationship within the broader context of experience and thought beyond themself.

A Biological Wonder 

An erection of the penis is one of the most straightforward and consequential events in human experience, yet, like the beating of the heart, the working of the brain and the inflow and outflow of breath, though not as consistent and impactful as those other glories of the human body and mind, its manner of working is significantly beyond the control of the person within whom it is working.

To better appreciate the wonder of existence, in general, and of human life, in particular, these biological facts and their implications should be reflected upon, and the expressions of similar reflections and engagements across time and space explored. 

Paradoxes of the Penis 

You are in church. The atmosphere is solemn. There is nothing erotically inspiring about the experience in a boys school in which there are no girls or women or erotic references or evocations in the sacred space. Your thoughts are fully focused on the church service. Yet, your penis chooses at that moment to stand at rigid attention.

Years later, far from that teenage experience, you are having sex. Your penis has been functioning perfectly. Then suddenly, your whole body is washed by a sense of supreme calm that suspends the excitement in which your penis had been rigid. Try as you can, the penis refuses to respond, choosing to remain limp. Against your will and that of your partner you cannot continue.

Waking from sleep, you find your penis turgid without provocation. 

In another situation, an attractive woman is trying to entice you. You don't want your penis to respond, but it chooses to respond, achieving rigidity that compels the woman's desired action to take place.

In yet another context, you are having sex. While inside the delicious space clasping the penis, the penis starts to go limp.

You have had beautiful sex multiple times, all day. The next morning, you have the opportunity for more,but your penis refuses to respond because it is tired.

You take enhancers, chemicals such  as tadalafil or something natural, such as the much storied bitter kola, and you are able to go all day and the next morning as well, with the same unrelenting vigour.

You take such a natural enhancer as tiger nut and your penis responds by expanding without provocation at various times of the day, as it could do when you were a teenager and with perhaps even greater frequency than then.

Biological Processes and Social Impacts 

What is happening?

The veins in the penis, engorged with blood, expand and stiffen the penis, enabling it engage in intercourse.

Why does blood flow into the penis?

Without any kind of stimulation or through stimulation of the penis, or of other parts of the body or simply the stimulation of the brain alone.

What a man sees and it's effect on the brain may be enough to cause an erection. 

Erotic images and film are therefore strategic to advertising and enable the huge economic imprint of the erotic creativity industry.

A man's thoughts alone, without any sensory stimulation, visual, tactile or more, can cause an erection.

Erotic literature, inspired partly by this principle, is one of the staples of world literature.

At other times, the penis can expand without any stimulation.

The capacity of the penis to so expand is critical for the production of sperm, without which there can be no new human life.

Pamela Sargent's science fiction novel The Shore of Women depicts a future Earth spanning civilization in which sex between men and women is outlawed to protect women from what is described as male aggression.

Sperm is harvested through enticing men into mechanical chambers where  their minds are fed with erotic images in virtual space, leading to sexual encounters with digitally constructed female figures, generating  erections and ejaculation from which the man's sperm is harvested and inseminated into women who then bear children of whom they have to give up the boys to exile in the wild so their latent masculine aggression will not eventually contribute to rupturing the civilization the women have created out of what remained from a nuclear holocaust engineered by men.

Evoking the inflammability of the erotic and amorous, the Greek poet Homer's Iliad and Odyssey tell a story of a ten year war inspired by the seduction and enticing away of a king's wife by her lover.

At the conclusion of the  war, Odysseus, one of the warriors who had sailed to Troy to avenge the insult against his king, spends another ten years on the return journey, two classics of world literature amazing for their sheer inventive force and insights into the human condition.

The erection of the penis is central to  amorous relationships between men and women, relationships  strategic to structuring human society and cultural creativity.

That fact is reflected in The Shore of Women by a man and a woman rediscovering the thrills and perils of sexual relationships between men and women.

Vulnerabilities of the Penis 

Yet, the penis is very vulnerable.

Issues of length, size, sexual staying power, the relationship between sexual excitement and activity and health and even the longevity of the capacity of blood vessels in the penis in expanding sufficiently to allow blood flow and penile expansion enabling sex may be issues faced by different people on account of unanticipatable biological development or lifestyle enabled changes, with the challenges rising in risk as a man grows older beyond middle age.

The study of the penis is still at an early stage.

There is no method to enable penile elongation or expansion, as can be done for other external muscles of the body.

Erectile dysfunction, in which the blood vessels of the penis have difficulty allowing and sustaining blood flow and consequent penile expansion adequate for intercourse, a challenge emerging with greater likelihood with age, might not have an absolute corrective.

The penis is intimately related to the prostate and its challenges, an organ that runs the high risk of enlarging over time, either benignly or malignantly, its negative form a possible cause of painful penile malfunction or even death.

Yet, on account of its strategic significance, the penis is central to some of the world 's most creative cultural productions.

Philosophies and Spiritualities of the Penis: Tantra

Climaxing such cultural creativity might be Asian arts and thought, particularly Hindu Tantra, in which the penis and the vagina, known as the lingam and the yoni, are objects of worship as embodiments of cosmic creativity, identified with particular deities embodying these values and processes.

Shiva is at times identified by the Shiva Lingam, a "pillar" of cosmos, representing cosmic creativity, being and becoming, at all levels, from the dynamism of consciousness to the proliferation of the universe.

The Shiva Lingam is often placed inside the vaginal shaped yoni, representing the vagina and womb as embodying cosmic creativity, associated with female divine cosmic power, Shakti, or individual female divine entities such as Kali and Tripurasundari, who, like Shiva, emanate the cosmos at the beginning of  a cosmic cycle and withdraw it into themselves at the conclusion of the cycle, only to give birth to it afresh at the commencement of another cycle, hence the yoni may be represented by a triangle, evoking the space of generation and birth and the tomb of withdrawal from manifestation, as well as qualities of consciousness enabled by life.

Such a cosmographic  form is known as a yantra, the geometric Identity of deity and a demonstration of cosmic structure and dynamism, a projection of cosmic essence rather than a symbol.

A triangle could also represent Shiva or Shakti. A structure of intersecting triangles could project the sexual union of Shiva and Shakti and its associated abstract values, the union of masculine and feminine divine power in generating, sustaining and withdrawing the cosmos.

My glance falling by chance on a such a visual structure,  on a particular day in my living room, I experienced an intense mental orgasm, the purest, thickest, honey flowing into the mind in the form of knowledge, a knowledge of cosmic structure and dynamism in the form of a reconstitution of Albert Einstein's theories in scientific cosmology.

It was later I knew what the diagram was. A Hindu structure called a Kamakala Yantra, it is an image of the union of Shiva, his lingam represented abstractly by triangles and Shakti, the yoni standing for her expressed as other triangles.

I had placed the strikingly colored image on my living room wall simply beceause I admired its intricate beauty. Could it's effect on me in spite of my ignorance of its meaning suggest it truly projected something real about the universe or something uniquely stimulating the human mind or both, as its cultural custodians claim?

Abhinavagupta on Biological and Spiritual Union

Let us conclude with the glorious words of the 11th century Kashmiri Hindu sage Abhinavagupta, slightly adapted by myself  from his Tantraloka, Light on the Tantras:

" Who are to be worshipped?

Women are to be worshipped.

What is the mode of worship?

Embraces and caresses.

What are the instruments of worship?

The mortar and the pestle.

What are the sacred words, the incantations?

Sighs and groans of pleasure.

What is the climax of worship, the Samadhi, the entry into the infinite?

The union of pleasure with pleasure, the rushing together of fire and fire, the conjoined explosion of minds and bodies as the world is lost, nothing existing beyond the unity of two as one, the point from which being and becoming emerged at the beginning of time."