GOD

  
Traditional devotional systems define five general types of relationships one may establish with God. They are, in increasing order of intensity, shanta (peaceful adoration), daysa (servant, slave; or child to Master or Parent), sakha (friend to friend), vatsalya (parent to child), and madhura (lover to lover). Each successive relationship contains all the characteristics of the previous relationship(s), reaching culmination in the most intense and multidimensional relationship of all, the relationship of illicit lovers. Illicit lovers rather than spouses provide the model of the most intense devotion because the very illicitness of their relationship, including difficulty and danger in meeting, adds an intensity that may be lacking in partners who live together in socially sanctioned marriages. Gay relationships often partake of this kind of illicit quality, a fact that renders them more intense and also, sometimes as a consequence, more difficult to sustain. But it is just such intensity of devotion, the irresistible drive to seek out a romantic partner despite sometimes formidable societal prohibitions, that is most cherished when that devotion is directed to God.

-- William Schindler, Gay Tantra 


The Believer had better face himself and ask squarely: Do I literally believe “God” has a penis? If the answer is no, then it seems only logical to drop the ridiculous practice of referring to “God” as “He.”

-- Robert Anton Wilson, “The Semantics of God”