Vishal Mangalwadi, the noted Indian philosopher and Christian thinker who straddles both East and West, suggests in an upcoming Hollywood Distinguished Lecture "Sexual Mysticism, The Da Vinci Code, and Beyond" that
Dan Brown's blockbuster novel, "The Da Vinci Code," has the potential to turn the eccentric fringe movement of sexual mysticism into a mainstream phenomenon. Brown condemns the biblical story of the fall of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, and in its place offers the "APPLE" of secret "knowledge" (Gnosis) to help men and women realize their divinity through sexual union. Many teachers and gurus in the last century have promoted sex as a path to mystical Enlightenment. But The Da Vinci Code teaches "sacred sex" not on the basis of Pagan, Hindu, or Buddhist philosophies but by invoking the authority of Jesus--albeit a Gnostic rather than Jewish Jesus. Many Christians have responded to The Da Vinci Code, but hardly any have addressed the book's central point -- the spirituality of the "Sacred Feminine".
This strikes me as a most serious omission. I have read many of Vishal Mangalwadi's books and consider him one of the most valuable commentators around. A preview of his full May 22nd lecture to be given at the Hollywood Presbyterian Church is available online here.
For those who will not take the time to read the lecture, here is more of the summary already linked to.
His talk will survey writers from Moses and Plato through Osho Rajneesh to Dan Brown. He will explain that when St. Paul embarked on his missionary journeys in the first century, some of the West’s pagan temples employed as many as one thousand prostitutes. Even aristocratic wives in Rome often registered themselves as temple prostitutes. Many of these goddess-worshipping women began flocking to Paul, who preached a gospel that liberated women from sexual exploitation in the name of religion. In a few centuries St Paul's movement sent Pagan “religious” sex into oblivion.
As a result of these teachings, the West for nearly two thousand years held that matrimony was holy, that the only sacred expression of sex was within marriage, and that the ministry of the Holy Spirit consisted in turning "the hearts of fathers to their children” ― away from a pursuit of selfish pleasure to building strong families.Dr. Mangalwadi proposes that this view started being attacked first about a century ago when Swami Vivekananda, a Hindu guru who founded the Ramakrishna Mission, brought a sanitized version of Tantra to America. However, another Indian guru, Osho Rajneesh, who became famous in the 1970s and 80s for his fleet of Rolls Royces and huge ranch in Oregon, felt no need to be secretive. He persistently communicated his view that Jesus taught sacred sex as the path to Super-consciousness (becoming divine). Rajneesh himself became notorious, but his followers remained on the fringes of American consciousness, although terms such as “chakras” and “tantra” became a part of the mainstream vocabulary.
Brown’s mysticism represents the latest incarnation of this movement. Beyond challenging the Nicene Creed, it undermines the West’s unique commitment to words: to the sanctity of creeds, covenants, contracts, and constitutions—i.e., the West's logocentric worldview. Brown replaces the idea that men and women are sinners with the idea that we are gods and goddesses. Accepting Brown's view would destroy not only the authority of the Bible, the Church and democracy, but re-establish the authority of (neo)pagan priests who lost to Christianity in the first place because they used the promise of salvation as a cover for sexual abuse.
DVD and CD copies of the lecture will be available through BOM International. Inquiries about media orders can be sent to [email protected]