INTENSITY. Nothing and pure pleasure are the same; divine ecstasy and extreme horror are the same.

“The Sin,” a painting by Heinrich Lossow, is mesmerizing because it captures the sexuality of divine ecstasy. And it’s not a sin—it’s how communion works. The work errs in its title and the invocation of an evil clergy behind bars. But this is how true prayer works. Christian mystic, Margery Kempe, wept and wept: She felt god.

“The Book of Margery Kempe” says, “This melody was so sweet that it passed all the melody that ever might be heard in this world and caused this creature … to have plenteous and abundant tears of high devotion with great sobbings and sighings after the bliss of heaven…”

The melody was in fact prolonged mutilation, precisely why it was sublime. Had Kempe become accustomed to the melody—had she lost the novelty, and thus the pleasure—any “mirth or melody” would not have caused those plenteous and abundant tears. It’s the same enjoyment found in cigarettes; more accurately: jouissance—morbid and compulsory.

The cigarette would be a revolutionary commodity if only it didn’t kill us. It allows us to consume Nothing, but we forget we are: One becomes quickly acclimated to the irritation of its smoke. If only it hurt more and we could sob like blessed Kempe. Perhaps chain smoking while staring at the anti-smoking ads could be productive. “Nietzche’s thought, which resulted in the sudden ecstatic vision of the eternal return, cannot be compared to the feelings habitually linked to what passes for profound reflection” (see “Visions of Excess” by George Bataille). It’s a feeling we need. Perhaps the vibrator is the alternative to the cigarette—the true weapon of the revolutionary!

Let’s examine: the vibrator as the commodity of pure pleasure. And not the phallic vibrator, but, let’s say, the rose toy. Rid of any patriarchal signification, the rose toy does not indicate actual sexual intercourse but rather sexual fantasy. Like the cigarette, there is no substantive need being filled but a prolongation of the fantasy. The orgasm is not based on intercourse but on external touch, caused by oneself and not another. This removes the fantasy from sexual intercourse in two ways: non-heteronormative (the non-phallic rose toy) and asexual (masturbation).

This orgasm negates a patriarchal sexuation—but more importantly—it rejects an Other. The “x” quality that when chased is no longer within my partner (nor within anything else) but within me. Whereas the “x” left me vulnerable to manipulation by an Other—fascism: kill “y” group and you will get the “x”—I am now complete.

This completion is the eclipse of Nothing with the self, and it takes me to my subjective limits, deforming and deranging all I see; ideological constraints break away. I am incomprehensibly free for a split second:

“For the object of the intellect here exceeds the categories in which it can be represented, to the point where as soon as it is represented it becomes an object of ecstasy—object of tears, object of laughter…” (See “Visions of Excess”). The rose toy can help you decolonize your mind.

People could contest whether the asexual aspect hinders the rose toy. Whether having someone use it on you is better. But, in “The Book of Margery Kempe,” Kempe cried alone: “after [hearing the melody] she had never desired to common fleshly with her husband, for the debt of matrimony was abominable to her that she had rather, she thought, eat or drink the ooze, the muck in the channel…”

The sexual locus was within her body and not within her husband. That’s the key. Kempe—perpetually in communion with god—did not operate under an Other partly because she didn’t vocalize him. She didn’t chase god through useless recitals and mass but felt it. Kempe dissolved god into a feeling, an intensity that made her inexplicably free. Who were the clergy to her when she bed god every night? What was the church to her when what they preached to have, Kempe already had?

And it’s not a euphoric orgasm, but a sorrowful one. Within this orgasm are “all things linked to deep sexuality, such as blood, suffocation, sudden terror, crime” (See “Story of the Eye” by George Bataille).

It remains enjoyment, not pleasure, since the chasing of the “x” is inherently morbid and compulsive. The cigarette is the ultimate commodity precisely because it allows us to consume Nothing. We want enjoyment.

But Kempe was not manipulated by an Other to achieve this orgasm. Her body was a productive force establishing her reality. Reminiscent of Nietzche, it was a will to orgasm—operating in an immanent field, where the phallic (patriarchal) signifier was not absent but overpowered. She had several interactions with clergy and often sought their advice. And the ones who didn’t reject her revered her. She functioned without the lack—or didn’t recognize the lack—that psychoanalysis posed as fundamental to all humans.

The phallic signifier is deprivileged—the king is beheaded. It’s a step toward immanence and away from hierarchy. Again, Kempe was incomprehensibly free.