Sipping The Vast Spring: Potential Beyond Boundaries
Gopies demanding their clothes from Krishna, Kangra, c 1800
Sarah Currivan | 2 May 2025
I. Eros and Antinomian Behaviour
Eros and antinomian behaviour are fundamental to many branches of tantra. Eros is the indwelling energy of the feminine face of God in our bodies (also known as kundalini energy) that wants to unite us with the masculine face of God that resides above our head. Eros is the energy of soulful passion, driving you toward your highest and truest potential. Antinomian behaviour is behavior that transgresses rules and norms. When you break rules and challenge norms in the name of soulful passion, you are engaging the energy of eros. However, staying small for fear of the consequences you might suffer, essentially quells the potential of realizing your dreams.
Breaking rules because you have a deep, deep desire to be who you truly are, is profoundly sacred work. And this work can be as simple as marrying someone your family disapprove of; quitting your job even though it pays well and ticks many, but not all boxes; changing career path even though you don’t know if you’ll make a living from the one you truly want to pursue; refusing to people-please, and so on.
By transgressing rules and norms (antinomianism) in the name of love (eros), you manage to transcend frameworks, thereby filling you with a sense of empowerment not previously known. Going beyond these boundaries and structural limitations leads you to a realm of pure potential and freedom where everything that is in alignment with your highest potential can manifest. It is a path driven by uninhibited soulful passion and requires embracing the unpredictable and a feeling of unsafety.
Following soulful passion entails confronting structures that, by design, limit you. Overcoming the structurally imposed limits, while often uncomfortable, sends you deeper into fulfilment where you may witness limitations burning away. And just like that, you become the orchestrator of your own life.
Lady on a Swing in the Monsoon, India, Punjab Hills, 1750-75
II. Drawing on Theory from Georges Bataille
The dance between homogeneity and heterogeneity has been a recurring theme throughout my life. It depicts the contrast between the 'predictable' and 'everything that lies beyond it'. When we talk about homogeneity, we are talking about the rational, logical nature of the field in which we play physical reality. It is the arena of work, social norms and productivity. The heterogeneous, on the other hand, is all that which challenges frameworks and appears beyond logic. It is engaged through ecstatic, erotic, and overwhelming experiences i.e. sex, death/violence and spiritual experience. The heterogeneous denotes a ‘wasteful expenditure of energy’, as perceived from the logical, rational point-of-view. However, this expenditure of energy is a necessary component to challenge social structures and frameworks that keep human beings limited as cogs in a machine of social order, maintaining the status quo and in a contracted way of being.
Young Woman in Dressing Room, Y.G. Srimati, c1940
III. Real Life Integration of this Theory
Ecstatic and erotic experiences can be seen as profound moments of bliss. They aren't limited to sexual encounters or overtly spiritual experiences; rather, they arise whenever something captivates you so completely that you feel weightless, as if you could take off and fly. In other words, when your erotic energy (eros) is stimulated. This stimulation is what Bataille would describe as a ‘wasteful expenditure of energy’.
You have a dream, yet you live within a society built on frameworks—different institutions like family, education, law, religion, and the economy each impose their own sets of norms and expectations. Within this structure, your dream may either fit neatly into the mould, causing little disruption and disappointing no one, or it may create friction, stir chaos, and leave more than a few people in your life unsettled. To realize our truest dreams, we must learn to see beyond these socially constructed frameworks. This often requires a deep faith in the unseen—a belief that precedes sight. Sometimes we know exactly what our dream looks like; other times, we are simply following a feeling, drawn toward an unknown destination. Regardless, there is always a fire in our belly or a voice in our mind urging us forward, beyond what logic can explain. It is our internal guidance system leading us toward our highest timeline. When you notice that inner signal growing louder, it's a sign that you are closing in on your bliss.
Sarah Currivan
Sarah Currivan is a truth seeker, sex educator and tantra teacher from Dublin, Ireland. Absorb more of her ideas on Sipping The Vast Spring.