Vira Chandra: Some songs don’t enter like guests — they seize the room the way a storm seizes the sea. Sick Like Me is one of those. This is not a human lover playing at cruelty; it is the Devi in Her fierce, left-hand mood. Here She speaks as the Bhairavī who will not let you keep a safe corner of yourself untouched. She names hunger, control, humiliation, beauty, and ugliness not to titillate, but to strip the mind of its moral cosmetics.
In Kaula vision, this is the Mother as destroyer of false sanctity — the one who tests whether your devotion can survive when She shows you Her teeth. She does not grant union by silencing desire, but by stoking it until the ego’s hold burns away. Every “sickness” here is the holy fever of unmāda — the divine madness where shame and propriety are turned inside out, and even ruin is a form of grace.
What unfolds in this song is the dance of Śiva and Śakti in the cremation ground: hunter and hunted, breaker and broken, each undoing the other until nothing remains but the shared pulse of the Absolute.
Verse 1
Is it sick of me, to need control of you?
Is it sick to make you beg the way I do?
Is it sick of me to want you crawling on your knees?
Is it sick to say I want you biting down on me?
Here the Bhairavī speaks without disguise. In the Kaula path, control and surrender are not moral categories but energies — currents to be harnessed, inverted, and dissolved. Her “need to control” is not the ego’s hunger for domination, but the Goddess’ uncompromising demand to pull you into the rite and keep you there until the work is done.
“Begging” and “crawling on your knees” are the body’s metaphors for praṇipāta — the collapse of self-will before the Absolute. They feel humiliating only as long as the ego still negotiates with Her; when surrender is complete, these are gestures of adoration, not degradation.
“Biting down on me” reveals the paradox of Kaula intimacy: union here is not sterile worship from a distance, but contact so raw it wounds. The wound is sacred — vraṇa-prasāda — a mark that grace has entered, and the old defenses are breaking.
When She asks “is it sick?” it is the voice of the examiner in an initiation, forcing you to name the taboo and step into it consciously. The sickness She offers is not pathology but unmāda — the divine fever that unmakes the world you knew.
Pre-Chorus
Are you sick like me?
This is the first turning of the blade. Until now, She has spoken in challenges — “is it sick of me…?” — testing whether you will recoil. Now She shifts the gaze: the question is no longer about Her, but about you.
In Kaula language, this is an invitation to āveśa — the state where the current of Śakti takes possession, altering perception until what the world calls “holy” looks pale and what the world calls “sick” shines with the radiance of truth.
“Are you sick like me?” is really: Can you bear to be remade in My image? Can you step into the same divine madness (unmāda) where shame becomes offering, and beauty is measured not by form but by the intensity of Presence?
If the answer is no, you will turn away here. If the answer is yes, you are already inside the circle, and the dismemberment can begin.
Chorus
Am I beautiful (am I beautiful)
As I tear you to pieces? (as I tear you to pieces)
Am I beautiful? (am I beautiful)
Even at my ugliest, you always sayI'm beautiful (am I beautiful)
As you tear me to pieces (as you tear me to pieces)
You are beautiful (you are beautiful)
Even at your ugliest, I always say
You're beautiful and sick like me
Here the Kaula paradox blooms fully. “Tear you to pieces” is not sadism but granthi-bheda — the cutting of inner knots that hold together the illusion of separateness. In fierce Śākta practice, this dismemberment can come through ecstasy, shock, or both; She is “beautiful” because even in destruction Her hand is the hand of liberation.
“Even at my ugliest” reveals the Sundarī–Kālī unity. In right-hand worship, beauty is linked to harmony and grace. In Kaula, the Mother’s ugliest faces — the skull garland, the blood-stained tongue — are still radiant. The vīra learns to see Her beauty precisely in the moments when She appears most terrifying.
The mirror exchange (“as you tear me to pieces”) is the secret truth: the devotee also strips the Goddess — not of Her divinity, but of Her masks. To meet Her beyond image, you must refuse to idolize even Her most cherished forms. Thus the destruction is mutual; each unravels the other until nothing is left but pure essence.
“You’re beautiful and sick like me” seals the initiation. Here sick is no longer accusation — it’s the badge of sāmya (oneness). The separation between breaker and broken dissolves; what remains is the shared pulse of Śiva–Śakti, naked and indivisible.
Verse 2
Is it sick of me to feed the animal in you?
Is it sick to say "I tease the hunter" like I do?
Is it sick of me to watch the wicked way you thrill?
Is it sick to say that I live to break your will?
Here the Devi shifts from breaking to provoking. “Feed the animal in you” is the Kaula principle of bringing paśu-nature — the instinctive, unrefined force — into the rite instead of repressing it. In ordinary morality, the “animal” is to be tamed; in Kaula, it is to be fed with awareness, so its energy can be cooked into ojas rather than leak as unconscious craving.
“I tease the hunter” is Bhairavī in the role of quarry. She lures the seeker’s predatory aspect — the drive to conquer, possess, and consume — out into the open. Once exposed, it can be reversed; the hunter becomes the hunted, and the drive to own becomes the drive to dissolve into the beloved.
“To watch the wicked way you thrill” points to the tantric paradox: even the rush of transgression becomes sacred when offered into the fire of awareness. Kaula does not pretend that thrill disappears in spiritual work; it is consecrated and allowed to reveal its root — the yearning for unboundedness.
“I live to break your will” is the culmination of fierce grace. Not breaking you into a slave, but breaking the ahaṁkāra — the knot of “I do, I decide, I control.” When that knot unravels, what remains is not passivity but svatantrya — the Goddess’ own freedom, now flowing as you.
Pre-Chorus (reprise)
Are you sick like me?
The question returns, but it now carries more weight. After hearing Her claim the right to feed the animal, tease the hunter, and break the will, you know what “sick” means in Her mouth: not mere perversity, but the divine inversion where vice becomes a doorway and taboo becomes a key.
This repetition is a checkpoint in the initiation. In Kaula sādhanā, āveśa (possession) often comes in waves, and at each crest the practitioner must silently affirm: Yes, I am willing to go further. Here She is asking whether you can still stand, unflinching, in the circle after the first burn — knowing that the deeper currents will tear more fiercely.
To be “sick like Her” is to let the Goddess reorder your inner cosmos so completely that even the most dangerous impulses are not suppressed but transfigured into Her play. If you say yes here, you are not dabbling — you are in.
Chorus (reprise)
Here the reciprocity is reaffirmed. After the descent into the “animal” and the breaking of will, the lines “as you tear me to pieces” and “you’re beautiful” take on a deeper symmetry: both Śakti and the sādhaka are undone. This is no longer the beauty of form, but the beauty of sāmya — the shared state where breaker and broken are the same essence.
Bridge
Sick, sick, sick
Sick, sick, sick
Sick
Am I beautiful as I tear you to pieces?
Am I beautiful?
Even at my ugliest, you always say
The repetition of sick is no longer accusation or question — it’s japa, a mantra hammered into the nervous system until ordinary perception cracks. In Kaula practice, such repetition can induce unmanā — the mindless state where thought ceases and only raw presence remains.
Reasserting “Am I beautiful as I tear you to pieces?” is the Goddess testing the depth of your vision: can you still see beauty in the act of unmaking? “Even at my ugliest” is the Sundarī–Kālī koan — the ugliest mask is still the Beloved’s face, and if you can meet Her there without flinching, the rite is nearly complete.
Final Chorus
I'm beautiful (am I beautiful)
As I tear you to pieces? (as I tear you to pieces)
Am I beautiful? (am I beautiful)
Even at my ugliest, you always say
I'm beautiful (I am I beautiful)
As you tear me to pieces (as you tear me to pieces)
You are beautiful (you are beautiful)
Even at your ugliest, I always say
You're beautiful and sick like me
Here the rite seals. What began as provocation ends in mutual recognition — not as roles (dominant/submissive, goddess/devotee), but as svarūpa: shared essence. The tearing-to-pieces is complete; the masks have fallen from both sides.
“Even at your ugliest” acknowledges that in true union, both parties expose their shadow without fear of losing the other’s gaze. In Kaula vision, this is abheda — the undivided state where beauty and ugliness, purity and impurity, sacred and profane dissolve into one taste (ekarasa).
“You’re beautiful and sick like me” is the final initiation formula: you are no longer separate from the current. The “sickness” is now the divine fever both carry — the unmāda that marks those who have passed through the cremation ground together and returned without turning away.
Conclusion
If you hear Sick Like Me only through the surface — as a game of domination and submission — it can sound like provocation for its own sake. But to the ear of a sādhaka, it is a liturgy in disguise. Every demand, every tearing, every repeated sick is the voice of the Mother testing whether your love can survive without the safety of sweetness.
In the Kaula path, She is not interested in polishing your virtues while leaving the roots of fear and shame intact. She will touch the places you guard the most — hunger, pride, control, desire — and instead of purging them, She will turn them toward the fire of awareness. The aim is not obedience but freedom, not piety but wholeness.
By the end of the song, “sick” no longer means corruption — it means possessed by the same current, marked by the same divine fever that makes ordinary life feel pale. Beauty is no longer a mask; ugliness is no longer a threat. Both are Her. And if you can look into Her ugliest face and still whisper “beautiful,” the circle has closed, and you have come home.
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