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When it comes to sexuality in our lives, a purely materialistic understanding—its reduction—almost always leads to disaster. Ignoring its spiritual aspect is the cause of suffering, which—as a message—will inevitably arise sooner or later.
The primary motive for the urge toward the opposite sex is initially erotic attraction, the drive that, unlike in animals, is filled with lust in humans. This stage of the urge to unite often completely dominates human behavior. It is the animalistic stage of human love behavior. It then largely blocks out the aspects of the next higher stage of love and sex, such as sympathy, affection, friendship, loving respect, tenderness, and trust. This can be seen in the tens of thousands of visits to brothels every day, then in the so-called quickies, one-night stands, etc. Above all, they eliminate libidinal pressure. The Islamic wisdom teacher Rumi expresses this very bluntly and very aptly: “Our spouses only perform their bodily functions in our vaginas.” (The Matnavi V, 3392). It is then mainly about moments of pleasure; the general choice of words is “fun.” This level of human sexual love is based on egocentricity.
In everyday life, this instinctual sexuality, which has no spiritual connection, is often practiced as a “number” for the purpose of selfish gratification. The body is not revered, but used. The purely erotic sex of couples is basically mutual masturbation.
As far as the permanence of eroticism is concerned, there is no means, however sophisticated, of maintaining this selfish love and sex life. It withers because every effort to maintain sexual fulfillment remains on the earthly-horizontal level. For the level of earthly existence is generally characterized by becoming and passing away—in contrast to its spiritual components.
Fulfillment in purely human love life, i.e., without spiritual components, cannot exist in the long term, apart from short-term experiences such as the honeymoon period.
However, human sexuality is not just libido satisfaction, but an impulse for development and, in this respect, a cosmic event, a step in the search for more. Sex motivates us to find a partner and thus leads to its expansion into a way of life that goes beyond our own self-centeredness and usually leads to it.
The next stage of human love after libido (eros) is the level of sympathetic attraction between partners (philia). It is the emotional energy of union between two individuals who seek each other not only for support, complementarity, enrichment, and, if applicable, maturation, but also and above all for the satisfaction of sexual, intellectual, and emotional needs. The pursuit of connection with a suitable partner and its realization is the phenomenon that, together with sexuality, is commonly referred to as “love.”
But everyone who has been in a relationship knows the concrete consequences of this over time. They include numbness, insidiously disturbed sexual behavior, infidelity, jealousy, fear of abandonment, oppression, possessiveness, monopolization, mutual dependence, control issues, etc. (If only newlyweds still in love knew this.) The high divorce rates speak for themselves. But even in marriages or partnerships that still exist, sooner or later what everyone knows and almost everyone experiences prevails: sexual emptiness, the crumbling of intimacy, even of togetherness, epidemic infidelity, and then, of course, destructive separation wars. Cinematic masterpieces such as “American Beauty” or “Revolutionary Road” with key quotes in reviews such as “no obvious redemption” or “virus of failure” show, in a rather more moderate form, the “hopeless emptiness” of the stagnation of human love.
Another characteristic of this can be seen in the womanizer, who is not looking for a woman, but for love, which is giving, but which he cannot find because of his ego programs that only take. The same applies to women when they use sex instrumentally, wanting only to satisfy their partner through devotion or to bind him to themselves.
Human love is indeed hopeless, as the past millennia show, but only in relation to the material level. A major reason for this is that people do not recognize these existential crises as a message from the spiritual world to return to spirituality, even though the parable of the Prodigal Son makes this abundantly clear.
There is a reason for this widespread development: people love incompletely and with the wrong orientation. They do not want to give, but to have, in the words of Leo Tolstoy: Not “to seek the good of others, but only their own.” (Resurrection, Volume 1, Chapter 14)
With every touch, they do not primarily love their partner, but first and foremost their own feelings in the process. The Beatles sing about mutual self-gratification in an unabashedly egocentric way: “And when I (!) touch you, I (!) feel happy – inside.” And Georg Christoph Lichtenberg caustically remarks:
“We only feel for ourselves. … We love neither father nor mother, neither wife nor child, but the pleasant sensations they give us…” (On External Objects)
Even partnerships with good sex usually end in routine and desolation. For on the human level of love, the material ego level, the dominance of wanting to have leads to a reinforcement of the feeling of lack that led to wanting to have in the first place. Above all, however, this partner love cannot fulfill the unconscious search for perfection or unity, because there is a lack of awareness of one’s own spiritual core and that of one’s partner. To put it very clearly: there is no liberation from the pain of love through Eros and Philia love with earthly consciousness. For this does not allow one to seek one’s own well-being in the other. The millennia of Homo sapiens to date show this. But the texts of human wisdom, the Bible, the Koran, the Tanakh, the Dhammapada, the Bhagavad Gita, and the Tao Te Ching, also show that there is a solution, namely through the transformation of this earthly consciousness. That is why, for example, there is the Sermon on the Mount.
The stage that essentially transcends the earthly love and sex life with Eros and Philia is that of divine love, the upper spiritual half of human love: that is Agape.
While human Philia distinguishes between friend and foe, Agape refers to all people and makes no distinction between them. Jesus describes this situation with the term “love your enemies.” When they hear this word, people understandably shake their heads and ask, unable to comprehend, whether they should throw their arms around their enemies or even mortal enemies and perhaps even kiss them. That is not what is meant, and it even leads to total confusion. For the general choice of the word “love” immediately leads to the human understanding of emotional attraction. But that is not what it is about at all; it refers to something completely different. Jesus makes this clear in various places and even admonishes it as a commandment: “Love one another as I have loved you.” (John 13:34) His instruction is the divine perspective and refers to the spiritual insight (chapters 9 and 17) that he demands of every human being. He demonstrates this very concretely in his treatment of the torturers who nailed him to the cross: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” (Luke 23:34). He consciously leaves the material plane, reflects on his own spiritual essence, his likeness to God, his inner voice, the kingdom of God that is “within you” (Luke 17:21), and then applies this purely intellectual perspective to his enemies: “People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart. “ (1 Sam. 16:7) In this respect, this kind of ”love” has nothing to do with human emotional understanding, for it is an exclusively intellectual understanding of the all-unity of creation, namely in terms of its spiritual unity — like that of the fingers on the hand, whose unity consists in the common bloodstream that makes their existence possible in the first place. Therefore, “love of enemies” has nothing to do with its colloquial meaning, such as feelings on the emotional level. It is pure intellectual activity and knowledge of the unseen.
The consequences in practical everyday life are eminent. Those who see themselves as divine images and then accordingly also see their enemies as images, and behave accordingly with restraint and correctness, but also with unyieldingness, experience miracle after miracle in practice. (However, these do not always come immediately as desired and profoundly; rather, this shift in consciousness must be practiced with discipline and patience.)
In sexual encounters, of course, there is no question of enemies, and of course that is not the point here: but the principle of the person’s view of their own spiritual being and then that of their partner is the same, and that is what matters. The spiritual view of him or her leads to tremendous higher development, combined with eminently harmonious consequences.
Now the significance of the parable “Beauty and the Beast” (“La Belle et la Bête”) becomes clear: see the picture above. It is an apt representation of the alternative to the human catastrophe of sexuality; it shows the method of overcoming this disaster:
The Beauty first consciously decides to place herself in the hands of the monster in order to sacrifice herself for her father’s life. She thus decides against her self-preservation, against her ego.
She is led to the castle (the rich resources of planet Earth), where a monster reigns, a two-legged creature with an animal head and tusks (the human ego-animal soul, which is “more animal than any animal” (Faust I: Auerbach’s Cellar).
However, due to her modest and loving nature (influence of her spirit soul), she spends a joyful time there and falls in love with the monster: “enemy love.” For she recognizes the divine being behind the hideous surface (“within you”) and her own inner unity with it. (The depiction of the human ego as an external monster can also be found in Homer’s Odyssey as the cyclops Polyphemus or as the Minotaur in the Theseus saga.)
Through her spiritual radiance, the beast with its worldly monster exterior is dying. Her spiritual love destroys his material ego.
The beauty even “kisses” the monster: in this way, the fairy tale refers to Jesus’ demand in the Sermon on the Mount to “love your enemies.” Of course, earthly man would never in his life think of kissing his enemy because of his material life experiences. Jesus did not do that either (Luke 23:33). Rather, when the soldiers crucified him and mocked him, he “did not look at the person (Acts 10:34), but only at their divine nature, thus ‘loving’ them ”as I have loved you.” He recognized their instinctive behavior and therefore asked that they be forgiven.
The Beauty realizes the penetration or overcoming of the surface. As a result, the Beast is transformed back into the Prince who was inside him. Through this act of consciousness, the Beauty ennobles herself even more and enters into a fulfilled material future with this “enemy.” She is now a king’s daughter: “One sees well only with the heart.” This is the stage reached by all daring individuals who have embarked on the spiritual path.
This is also the spiritual level of sexuality: agape. It is characterized by the gradual replacement of the previous attitude of having or wanting to have with that of giving; amor ascendens. However, giving is not the goal, but the consequence of reaching the highest, spiritual level of material life and love, the recognition of the spiritual presence in both lovers:
– “God does not look at the person.” (Acts 10:34)
– “We are God’s children.” (1 John 3:1)
– “He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.” (1 John 4:4)
– “I in you.” (John 14:20)
Now it becomes clear how Jesus understands the matter with God: He does not mean the old man with the white beard on the cloud, but the Christ who is “in you”:
“You shall love God [in you] with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the ”first and greatest commandment“ (Matthew 22:37) and ”love your neighbor as yourself.” (..)
There is no alternative for any salvation from the fundamental suffering in sex and love as long as the upper half is missing: People always do a lot to “make the world a better place,” but they remain on the horizontal material level and, despite some temporary successes, ultimately achieve nothing. For the world can only be made “make the world a better place.
The secret of the earthly path to salvation lies in becoming aware of one’s own divine identity (see chapter 1) (”You are all gods.”; John 10:34) and then also that of other people. This work of consciousness naturally also applies to one’s partner and is directly transferable to sexual encounters: This upper half of love, its spiritual dimension, is characterized by the motive of giving, which stands in stark contrast to the usual way of life of sexual wanting.
This overcoming of material human love, its upper half, begins with the partner—usually one at first—becoming aware of their own divine core. Without this, it is not possible, and it takes time to achieve and maintain this level of consciousness against the massive challenges of the material world with its powerful erotic stimuli. But even then, miracles happen on the material level in terms of understanding, trust, emotional depth, and above all, the elimination of all negative elements from “below,” such as dissatisfaction, mistrust, perversion, egocentricity.
The next step is to extend this spiritual view to the divine core of one’s partner. This would be the crowning glory of liberation from all disharmony and disturbance.
However, there is also a massive barrier within the sexual encounter: it is based on the law of mutual exclusivity of matter and spirit: either/or.
Jesus expresses this principle in the Sermon on the Mount as follows: “No one can serve two masters.” (Matthew 6:24) In love and sex life, this means that divine insight largely excludes the phases of sexual arousal, lust, and passion, and conversely, moments of passion and sexual arousal exclude divine insight.
This principle cannot be abolished, but it can be dealt with:
How the two partners do this, for example through alternating phases of material and spiritual phases, or a continuously one-sided distribution of roles, or a situationally intuitive arrangement, is up to them. However, giving is always the guiding principle within the sexual encounter. In addition, it is important to pay attention to intuitive guidance from within (gut feeling), because “Thy will be done” is the yardstick for fulfilling (!), pain-free (!), and sustainable (!) shared experiences. This leads couples for the first time in their lives to the meaning of life, to the experience of unity as a concrete expression of the return of the prodigal son to his spiritual home (Luke 15:11 ff.).
Without spiritual awareness, it is not possible to ascend to this spiritual level (agape): as mentioned above, it is the one that “loves one another as I have loved you” (John 15:12). This highest level of consciousness is the spiritual love of human beings. It permeates the material presence of the partner and concentrates on their divine core.
However, the path to overcoming the barrier between human and divine love, and thus between earthly and divine sex, is usually begun involuntarily, because widespread life experience shows that it is always life crises that lead to the radical shift from the horizontal to the vertical, i.e., the return, the re-ascension of the prodigal son. Even for those couples who have started this change of course, it is often not quite enough and requires the next karmic stage.
As far as sexual union is concerned, it is not possible in the physical world for two bodies to be in one and the same place. Of course, all couples, at least unconsciously, take steps in this direction, which become increasingly closer: first there is mutual rapprochement through the eyes, voice, and gut feeling, then touch through holding hands, hugging, and kissing. This physical connection can then only be intensified through the body. This material union of two individuals through sexual intercourse also contains the only moment of spiritual experience in orgasm, i.e., outside of good and evil – even if it remains an individual experience.
For the completion of unity is only possible on the spiritual level. This begins to function when one of the partners focuses their consciousness on their own spiritual identity (image) during sexual encounter and then on that of their counterpart. They overcome the earthly view of one person on another: “God does not look at the person.” (Rom. 2:11). For now it is material sex, but with spiritual consciousness. This union of beings can be recognized by the partial suspension of feeling. This “sexual agape” means the phased loss of lust and is an important sign of spiritual ascension. This ascent from material consciousness to spiritual consciousness increasingly leads to liberation from earthly suffering – the parallels between Buddha’s Eightfold Path and the Sermon on the Mount, between Sura 2 of the Koran, around 150 ff. and verse 13 in the Tao Te Ching, or between the Ten Commandments and the Bhagavad Gita (including V, 25) are obvious.
Most people experience the failure of their purely human love, both in themselves and in others. However, in their search for a way out, they respond only by fleeing from one material state to another (see, for example, the cinematic masterpiece “Revolutionary Road”: Revolutionary Road), even though the spiritual path would be the obvious choice, as all the wisdom texts of all religions point to it. Even the everyday experience of orgasm actually suggests the search for more, because the orgiastic bliss that Christianity calls the “Kingdom of God” (Buddhism: Nirvana) lasts only this tiny moment with its comprehensive peace.
When asked “Do you want to give or have?”, having always wins in normal sexual practice. That is why our environment is so overcrowded with sexualized content such as advertising, films, dirty jokes, a string of one-night stands, increasingly abnormal pornography, etc. In this respect, the ego’s love for itself is the effective realization of anti-unity, which is the cause of all suffering on our planet. However, it can be overcome by complementing it with true – and above all sexual – love on the spiritual level. Then agape (see chapter 17) enters human consciousness and is on the path to the unity of God and man, as the parable of the prodigal son shows with unsurpassable clarity.
It is clearly visible that love among people regularly fails, and usually spectacularly, and therefore also sexual love. Even the path from eroticism to philia, from complete self-centeredness to at least shared self-centeredness, usually ends in disintegration; the original interpersonal attraction decays and its sexual aspect becomes impoverished. Then it is no wonder that the next higher level of human development, agape, is not even considered.
That is why people’s suffering under these manifestations is endless. Of course, they try to escape them or fight them bitterly. But it does not even occur to them to question the meaning and purpose of this widespread suffering in the war between the sexes (see chapter 13). Of course, there are plenty of examples of a man coming to the realization after his third divorce that he should refrain from doing this or that in his next relationship; presumably, the number of those who fail to see the light is higher. In any case, although all people are familiar with these dramas, they do not draw the slightest fundamental consequence from these problems, which naturally precludes the path to lasting liberation from suffering.
The transition to the higher rung of the ladder from animal eros and then from the purely human self-centered drive for satisfaction to the higher level of even more expanded and now divine devotion would be the application of the Golden Rule, that is, without distinction and seeing through to the “spark of the soul,” as Meister Eckhart calls the core of human existence.
But no one asks the question of why, first of all, these deeply painful manifestations of human life exist at all and, secondly, where the solution lies. Suffering is, in a sense, regarded as natural, although without exception every wisdom teaching wants to move people to take the path out of this suffering—and, moreover, describes it in more or less detail. While Jesus, for example, lists almost all the relevant conditions in the Sermon on the Mount, Buddha’s entire teaching consists solely of his great goal of achieving freedom from suffering.
In this respect, the ego’s love for itself is the surest way to prevent any solution. It is the cause of all suffering on our planet. However, it can be overcome through true love – including sexual love – on a spiritual level. Buddha also makes it very clear that only the consciously practiced loss of egocentricity leads to this increasing liberation from suffering.
The entire Gospel also shows nothing other than the overcoming of the qualities that serve the ego. This also applies to sexuality:
1.) Its first spiritual level is the sacrifice of wanting to have, of the ego. It is about reducing one’s own egoistic satisfaction of desires and first raising awareness for the material well-being of one’s sexual partner.
Many women in particular have long been able to do this, but since this direction of energy expenditure remains at the material level, this quality has its limits in terms of strength and time.
2.) That is why the second point is also important: in addition to the willingness to sacrifice one’s own ego well-being, which, on the contrary, leads to unimagined abundance (see chapter 12), there is the ability of spiritual vision (see chapter 6), i.e., the ability to see through the surface of the person (matter) to the divine core (spirit), to the spirit soul (see chapter 1).
The beautiful woman expressively brings out the essence of the human being, the hand in the glove. In addition, the two central parts of the human being are shown: on the one hand, his ego as a person with the animalistic characteristic of the survival instinct, and on the other hand, his spiritual essence as the “prince,” as the inner voice, as the “father within me,” as Jesus says. This spirit soul is the only fundamental difference between humans and animals.
Of course, there was no earthly unity between the crucified man and his torturers, nor between the Beauty and the Beast, but there was unity on the spiritual level, that is, between their spirit souls behind the surface of their personalities. The Beauty recognized the inner connection of the fingers of the hand, their common substance:
“Count a hundred apples or quinces: they do not remain a hundred, but become one when you make them into syrup [refined stage]. The essence knows no division.”
(Rumi: The Mesnevi, verse 685 f.)
The gagging of the animal ego behavior program is the central theme of the Gospel; it is the theme of ego surrender. This applies more or less to all wisdom writings: “Sacrifice is the law of the universe.” (Bhagavad Gita III, 15) This sacrifice (see Jesus) means gradually giving up the animal instinct of self-preservation and moving toward “Thy will be done” in favor of all-preservation. But people generally and comprehensively live according to the opposite principle of “My will be done!” The point is to reduce this survival software of egocentricity to a minimum—as far as is still necessary for health, career, family, etc.—and to direct all intellectual and intuitive powers toward the preservation of all people.
For people, the content of the formula “Thy will be done” is a foreign concept in practice because, even if they know the Sermon on the Mount, they unconsciously and in almost every case follow the principle: My will be done. That is why only a few come up with the idea of “seeking their good in that of others.” Promptly, all evil and all suffering in human life would come to an end. That is why there are the wisdom writings of all religions, whose teachings urge nothing other than precisely this reversal toward love of one’s enemies. Although it would be utopian to expect this collectively at present, it is very realistic individually. How difficult this is, because the ego is so deeply rooted in us, can be seen dramatically in disastrous sex, among other things.
The spiritually (!) conscious union with the beloved partner is growth and guidance “upward” to unity on the spiritual level (amor ascendens). The Islamic Sufi mystic Ibn Arabi puts it in concrete terms:
“When a man beholds God in a woman, then … he beholds Him in his own self … and from his own self, for one can never behold God detached from sensual matter. … The vision of God in women is the most effective and perfect … [because] the inner essence is God.“ (The Wisdom of the Prophets II. Chapter: Mohammed). Lao Tzu means the same thing when he speaks of ”affirming Tao in your neighbor” (Tao Te King II, 54).
Concept of spirituality, meditation, energy, friendship, love. istockphoto-492496430
As in all other areas of life and love, sex always involves a decision between a selfish, human (superficial) orientation or a spiritual, perceptive, and self-sacrificing orientation toward agape. The former serves primarily one’s own material satisfaction, whereas true (see chapter 17) love reduces egocentric self-preservation to the bare necessities and finds its true fulfillment in the well-being of others. This is partly at the expense of physical pleasure, but the proportions can be consciously altered.
As far as spiritual life is concerned, nothing comes for free. General liberation from suffering must be paid for dearly. When Goethe has the choir of angels sing in the final scene of Faust II (Mountain Gorges): “Whoever strives with effort, we can redeem!”, the emphasis is on “always” as well as on ‘strive’ and also on “effort.”
This striving consists of two parts.
(A.) On the one hand, it is the renunciation of self-preservation in the form of egocentricity. This is the main problem with sex. It is not surprising that this refers more to men.
(B.) Secondly, it is about “affirming Tao [the spirit soul] in your neighbor” during sexual encounters.
So, the instinctive dimension (Eros) is complemented by loving earthly love (Philia) and spiritual Agape. Those who can see at least a little beyond the surface of the material appearance, i.e., the person, during sex should realize that the first step is to start with themselves.
The catch with spiritual sex is that (A) cannot function without (B): sacrificing ego behavior cannot be switched off as easily as perhaps a lamp. It is exhausting, involves setbacks, and takes a long time to become stable. It would already be a success to bring this element of consciousness into the act of love at least once for a moment – ideally at the beginning (“Seek first the kingdom of God, and all these things will be added to you.” Mt. 6:33) This spiritual effort is extremely demanding, but it is richly rewarded, because it naturally means lasting sexual fulfillment for the first time.
The addition of the spiritual level of consciousness in sexual encounters severely damages egocentricity. Self-preservation cannot cope with the change of course to giving at the expense of wanting to have. There is no such thing as spiritual sex without sacrificing self-interest. However, those who surrender this during sex (amor descendens) and look through the surface of the person to their spirit soul – which is practiced in meditation – also set karma in motion, but this time the positive boomerang: “What you sow, you will reap!” In relation to the topic of sex, it means that those who give will be given to. In this respect, spiritual sex goes beyond the reduction of sexual self-centeredness (on the part of the man) and turns inward to one’s own spiritual guidance, to intuition, and further to that of one’s partner.
However, this shift has nothing to do with platonic, i.e., sexually abstinent love. Although there is no such thing as spiritual sex without the sacrifice of continuous physical pleasure, because the spiritual energy of pleasure takes away parts of it, this does not affect the intensity. Those who practice this spiritually induced sex are surprised to discover that their need for love could never be completely satisfied by their previous consumptive sex. And they learn that this love leads out of egocentricity and that the “highest happiness of the children of the earth” (Goethe: West-Eastern Divan) does not refer to one’s own personality at all, but consists of devotion to the other. Goethe continues to explain this as follows: “All earthly happiness is united / I find only in Suleika” (Suleika/Hatem).
The alternation between sexual pleasure and spiritual devotion can be practiced in various areas, such as eating.
Those who give thanks before a bite (preferably before the first one) and concentrate on the spiritual nourishment provided by the “Father within me” will find that the sensual aromatic pleasure is significantly reduced by the taste. But at the same time, a feeling of joy, albeit restrained, flows through you. It depends on devotion to one’s own intuition (“One sees well only with the heart!”) and also on communication with the inner voice, gut feeling, intuition. It also depends on the associated ability to observe and live by the principle “Thy will be done!” For the most important commandment in the Bible is “To love God with all your heart.” (Mt. 22:37) is the principle of all religions, although the term “love” is, as I said, misleading; for, as I said, it is not at all about the level of feelings: it is about recognizing God as an inner “spark of the soul” (Meister Eckhart); biblically formulated as the Son of God within oneself.
During sex, this can be achieved by thanking the two divine souls for their union during lovemaking. It means supplementing the foundations of instinctual eros and loving philia with the decisive element of penetrating agape, i.e., completing the ascent of love to the spiritual level; the latter consists of recognition and understanding. The physical experience of love, now completed with agape, is then a partially depersonalized completion of love, its essence: “It is God who is love ” (1 John 4:16).
The spiritually (!) conscious union with the beloved partner is growth and guidance “upward” to unity on the spiritual level (amor ascendens). Ibn Arabi formulates this concretely by saying that, as mentioned above, it is a matter of “recognizing God in the woman.” Lao Tzu means the same thing when he says, “Affirm Tao in your neighbor” (Tao Te Ching II, 54).
Spiritual unity consciousness in a relationship spreads and first affects the environment and then strangers. When I no longer recognize any enemies in my consciousness—because I recognize the instinctual control they are subject to—I no longer have any around me, nor can I have any. For they lose their hostility or, more often, disappear from my personal field of vision.
It is possible to try this out immediately in everyday life by following these two steps: Realize that even the nastiest neighbor or the worst boss is connected to the same spiritual bloodstream as I am, and that this bloodstream is nothing other than divine life energy. The proof of the pudding, i.e., practice, always decides what is true.
Translation by software