Prompted by Al's brilliant, insightful comment below, I've been trying to think about sexual love, the sexual act as an altered state.
Some of the literature on this subject - a lot of it very hard to find - is among the weirdest esoteric literature I've read - and that makes it pretty weird! I might 'sample' some of it in my next post if i can find it amongst the mouldering piles of books and papers in my shed.
Along with dreaming, sexual ecstasy is a very common altered state, and its esoteric dimensions are commonly overlooked. Making love to someone you are deeply in love surely brings you very close to divinity.
Robert Wyatt evokes this in Sea Song, which is my favourite:
'..but I can't understand the different you in the morning when it's time to play at being human for a while....until your blood runs to meet the next full moon your madness fits in nicely with my own..'
I tried to show in my book how love of God and love of human for human kept leap frogging each other through history, but, as Al hints in his comment, there is a lot more to say.
When it comes to using physical sex as a tool for higher consciousness I highly recommend Osho's "From Sex to Superconsciousness." The following below is an excerpt from "Showering Without Clouds: Reflections on the Poetry of an Enlightened Woman, Sahajo" and gives a good insight on Sex, as an altered state, and path to an even higher state of consciousness:
"Sexual Desire is just the porch of love: one has to move on from there, one is not to live there.
There is nothing wrong with passing through the porch, remember. I am not condemning the porch. You will have to pass through the porch if you want to enter the palace, but don’t stop there, don’t make a home there, don’t get stuck there, don’t think that this is all that life is. Certainly, pass through sex — you will have to, it is an unavoidable part of life — but pass through it to go beyond it in the same way that you use stairs or pass over a bridge to go somewhere beyond it.
Wondrous possibilities are hidden inside you. You have known love as sex, as passion, as attachment. You are only acquainted with the hell of life. And think a little, sometimes even in this hell you are getting some glimpses of bliss. Then what to say about heaven? Even in sex you get a little glimpse of bliss, even while on the porch something about the palace is revealed. If there is incense burning inside the palace then some fragrance will be carried outside even on the porch. If peace prevails inside the palace then some coolness will descend even on the porch. If there is music inside the palace then some melody can certainly be heard even on the porch.
Even in sex there is some echo of enlightenment. Even in sex there is some reflection of the Divine, but this reflection is nothing more than the reflection of the moon on a lake. It is just a reflection: a little disturbance in the lake and the reflection is destroyed. It is nothing real, but still it is the reflection. In sex is the reflection of love itself that is formed on a lake. It is a reflection formed on the lake of the body and mind. Look upwards…if you have found that the reflection in the lake is so beautiful, then look up at the moon whose reflection it is."
— Osho
Posted by: Al | September 22, 2008 at 03:42 PM
Sexual love between man and woman is about a profound energetic exchange. It involves first of all the workings and physical exchange of the lower chakras. These are the chakras that give us our basic energy and motivation in life. They motivate us to move towards any goals, give us impetus.
But it is the heart chakra that experiences feelings of love. In the Secret History you mention the relationship between the organs and the planets according to Steiner and the Rosicrucians. Well then the heart represents the sun. A capacity for feeling and connecting with universal, brotherly and intimate love.
As it's the 4th chakra it's the energetic centre linking the first 3 base chakras to the higher ones.
Then there's the deeply looking into each others eyes while making love. The eyes are often likened as windows to the soul. So the "third eye" or "brow" chakra is also activated.
So insted of love making remaining a simple localised afair (only the lower energy centres are involved during intercourse) it can instead be experienced in all the energy centres up and down the spine.
Energetically the charge activated by this profound polarity exchange is much increased and the current racing through the whole body is also felt deep within the emotional, mental and spiritual bodies.
So again we are talking about levels, from simple physical to the highest spiritual which at the same time includes all others.
I can recommend Mantak Chia's "Taoist Secrets of Love" for men and Mantak Chia & Maneewan Chia's "Healing Love through the Tao".
There's also "The Esoteric Philosophy of Love and Marriage" by Dion Fortune representing the western secret society tradition.
By the way the relationship between organs and the planets is very interesting. In chinese medicine we have the 5 planets linked to the 5 (chinese)elements.
Here for example the heart is linked to Mars, or the kidneys to Mercury, the liver to Jupiter as in the western tradition. They have their own internal logic of course but the european tradition has a system of 7 planets including the sun and moon. The sun god as the heart and venus as the kidneys (the kidneys are very important in terms of libido and reproductive capacity,the chinese know this very well) speaks to me, I am european, much more than the chinese idea.
It is a great shame that westerners nowadays seem to know much more about eastern traditions, often only half digested, and have little knowledge of our own. Isn't it time for church and secret societies to come out or is some devil throwing a spanner in the works. I'm so happy you wrote your book Jonathan because we can't wait.
Posted by: Gerry Rixen | December 12, 2008 at 05:28 PM