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My working assumption until recently had been that the pseudo-erotic services referred to in Brussels as “tantric massage” were merely a poor imitation of the real thing by people with no tantric training and frequently severe character armoring (typically psychopathic Mannenhass or extreme orality – leading to unpleasant transferences during the massage for those not themselves so armored as not to receive these transferences).

After this weekend’s experience in Prague, however, at the new Tantra Spa (www.tantraspa.cz) opened by my friends Denisa and Richard (of www.tantraworld.com), I am more inclined to see the difference as one of polar opposites.

In a city with possibly an even more extensive erotic industry than Brussels (though thankfully at least less of a tendency to misuse the word “tantric” to describe it), the Tantra Spa positions itself amongst legitimate massage services as a “life-changing experience”. From a marketing standpoint I have my doubts about this positioning for at least three reasons – firstly, however good it might be in reality it could only come across as hyperbole; secondly, it goes against the classic and wise admonition in services marketing to underpromise and overdeliver; and lastly do people really want to change their lives? I think this is frequently the last thing they want, and their sexuality would be the last place they would want to start even if they admitted this goal.

So even though I had had a truly amazing and unforgettable experience with Denisa herself a couple of years previously, which awoke parts of my body I didn’t even know existed, and probably could fairly be called life-changing, I was unsure what to expect this time.

It is difficult for me to describe the massage I received. It was tremendously attentive, full of presence and love, slower and gentler than one could imagine, as if all possible nuances of touch and presence somehow became infinitely more subtle still. Had it been only slightly slower, it would have been as if not only the massage but the whole universe had come to a place of standstill, just vibrating outside of time. Zuzana’s presence was also the perfect counterpoint to my own process during the massage and for this I also have a tremendous admiration – it was love without transference, a presence which, treasuring me, invited me into myself. She did not activate in my mind any erotic scripting or indeed any other interpersonal scripting, so I felt I was only in that moment, with her presence not reminiscent of anyone else. Because there was no erotic scripting, there was also no Todestrieb. This gave me access to an altered state of consciousness – one in which the limitations of my energetic body were transcended.

Freud coined the concept of Todestrieb (death drive) to explain the clinically observed departure from the earlier posited pleasure principle, the id-driven drive to gratify the senses. He noted that individuals had a tendency to replay traumatic experiences (which he called repetition compulsion), without however this repetition actually serving to heal the individual from the trauma: a bit like a record getting stuck (with apologies to those who may not remember this technology!).

In a later development of Freud’s thought, the death drive is Θανατος, opposed to Ερος, which represents the pleasure principle. This certainly distorts Freud’s thought as I’m sure he never connected the sexual drives with pure animalistic pleasure. On the contrary, he was all too aware of sexual perversion and its origins in early childhood experience, and probably never viewed natural sexuality as anything other than a teleological abstraction. The all-too-evident “impurities” of realexistierend eros lead Christian thinkers to substitute for it agape, courtly love, or caritas as it is rendered in the Vulgate.

In reality, of course, eroticism in our culture is profoundly intertwined with the death drive. And this brings us back to the point of departure. In Barthes’ ontology, la petite mort is identified not only with (male) sexual release, but elevated into an organising principle of aesthetics.

I beg to disagree. The ejaculatory drive – as the term petite mort implies – is thanatos, not eros. As a matter of descriptive fact, at least, it has a marked tendency to be nihilistic in character. As such, as I have argued previously, it tends to anchor rigidities in the body. Any release it affords is illusory in character – a fuite en avant which refuses to recognize – indeed relies on – the fundamental neurosis of the personality. The ejaculatory drive is thus employed in defense of the ego. It represents triumph, subjugation of the other, whatever, in fact, the neurotic character requires of it. The neuroses embedded in erotic scripting which serve the defense of the ego are what are activated by tantric massage, Brussels style. This drives the alienation of self from basis only deeper.

This is not what I experienced in Prague. And this is why I speak of a polar opposite.

The acceptance of self and nature is not, however, by any means without peril. On the contrary, as an affirmation of life, power and virility (or let us say, more gender-neutrally, Lebendigkeit) it violently confronts the embedded death drive which defends the ego. This led me in Prague, besides the most exquisite pleasure, to experience symptoms of bodily rejection which were frankly extreme in nature and, in such a context, not just unexpected but dramatic and somewhat frightening, notwithstanding even my intellectual understanding of them.

As always – and I cannot imagine how it would be otherwise – only the presence of the other could lead me through this turmoil. This too is part of the paradox of what tantra massage really is. It is a deep experience of the self, and at the same time it relies on the undifferentiated presence of the other. This is the union which dissolves the ego. It is eros in the true sense.

Afterwards I felt truly (even if only temporarily) transformed, flowing over with love, power, compassion and authenticity. I caught a glimpse, more consciously than ever before, of who it is that I really am. Freed of all the neuroses I have inherited. A strong, charming, compassionate and loving person. And, really curiously, not just a person I could have been, but actually the person that, notwithstanding the depth of the neuroses and the passage of time, I actually still remain. My authentic self. And this was a hugely self-liberating insight, more than justifying the apparent hyperbole of life-changing experience.

Tantra massage is perhaps this then: a magic mirror which also opens the eye of the beholder to the truth it reflects.

In the end, though, eros and thanatos, as all dualities, are reconciled. This goes to the heart of what it is we are talking about in tantra and why it is we do what we do. But this is a subject for another day.