Desire for Fusion: The Door to Initiation – II

[This is Part II of a two-part item. Begin with Part I.]

Passages in A Compilation on Sex predicted that humanity’s future understanding of sex would be “medical” and “psychological,” and that “science” would shed light on the subject. Let’s shift gears and consider some of the relevant scientific evidence now coming to light.

As a matter of physiology, orgasm is the most intense high that humans can engineer without artificial means. The event of orgasm occurs in the brain, regardless of where we feel it happening. During intense sexual arousal a release of potent neurochemicals activates portions of our brain known as “the reward circuitry.” This experience has much in common with the neurochemical release of drugs of abuse. In fact, addictive activities and substances only “work” because they hijack this circuitry in our brain.

This “rewarding” brain mechanism impels all mammals, including us, toward activities that further survival and the passing on of genes. It is the biological impetus for recycling our collective soul (also known as the Planetary Logos) back into matter again and again. Yet if the goal is ultimately to awaken within matter, we need to learn to govern, rather than be governed by, this reward mechanism during sex.

Hidden costs

Biological sex has hidden costs, and a better understanding of them can increase the motivation to transmute desire. The high of orgasm is not an isolated event. Unlike blowing our noses climax initiates a neuroendocrine cycle. “What goes up must come down,” with implications for unwanted fluctuations in mood, clarity, energy levels, perceptions and priorities as the cycle plays out.

Just as alcohol can lead to a hangover after the initial buzz, orgasm produces its own aftermath. The neurochemical blast of climax sets in motion a complex series of neuroendocrine dominoes. These continue to fall until the brain returns to homeostasis. Some people notice their effects immediately. They may roll over and snore, feel unusually needy, or request “space.” In others the effects are delayed, or self-medicated with recreational substances, for example, such that the person affected doesn’t make the connection between cause and effect.

Regardless, the fluctuations in the cycle can go on for days. Already researchers know that testosterone spikes briefly 7 days after ejaculation. In women, prolactin surges are common at orgasm and the following day. Scientists will need years to map the neuroendocrine cycles after climax in humans. To date, most of the relevant work has been done on rats, often by experts in search of lucrative sexual enhancement drugs.

Insights from psychology

Meanwhile, a few psychology researchers have begun to ask lovers about post-coital distress. It turns out that it’s surprisingly frequent. “The most common symptoms in women were mood swings and sadness, whereas in men, it was unhappiness and low energy.”

Perhaps the worst aspect of these unpleasant biologically-induced emotions is that we tend to project them outward. So, for example, if a perfectly natural neuroendocrine drop-off after climax leaves us feeling irritable, impulsive or weepy, we may assume that something outside ourselves caused the unpleasant feelings – rather than our own neuroendocrine fluctuations.

This is how otherwise meaningless, perfectly natural neuroendocrine events after orgasm sow the seeds for feelings of defensiveness, lack, irritability, desire for emotional separation and rotten karma. Feeling a subconscious sense of uneasiness or lack, perhaps we snap at someone, pursue a reckless urge, or assign motives that don’t exist and cultivate destructive resentments. At the other end of the spectrum, loneliness, feelings of sexual frustration, stagnation and isolation produce their own unpleasant projections.

These feelings and the responses they naturally evoke in others can easily erode any feelings of trust, safety or desire for closer union. It becomes all but impossible to generate and sustain the deep feelings of oneness, wholeness and unity on which the sacred marriage ritual (and humankind’s future collective initiation) rest.

The ratchet

For better or worse, humanity’s escalating desire for fusion (which heightens both sexual urges and orgasm intensity) may be augmenting these uncomfortable post-orgasm cycles as lovers’ brains struggle to return to homeostasis after the fireworks of climax. If so, humanity is caught in a ratchet-like predicament. Attempts to scratch our itch with more orgasm risk driving us farther apart – especially after the temporary thrills of the initial “honeymoon” neurochemicals die down.

Will frustration eventually motivate some partners to protect their intimate relationships even if they have to master an unfamiliar approach to sex? Perhaps, especially if their desires to serve humanity and align with the divine are higher priorities than physical gratification. Keep in mind that alienation between lovers also augments the sense of being separate from the divine – because when we feel incomplete, duality seems irrefutable.

Science offers some good news too. Affectionate contact between committed couples increases levels of soothing, bonding oxytocin. It no doubt produces other shifts too, such as those associated with meditative bliss.

We then project these deeply satisfying and mind-expanding feelings of wholeness outward (just as we did the uncomfortable feelings discussed above). In this way the union between the sexes has the power to shift our perception toward oneness and unity.

The first initiation

Now that we have viewed the “problem of sex” from both esoteric and physiological points of view, let’s review some material about the first initiation. It is intertwined with the solution to the problem of sex (p.115) so it should sound familiar.

In essence, the first initiation is the outcome of transmuting our sacral-center energy, which governs physical creation, up into the throat center (via the heart) for the purpose of non-physical collective creation. As the energy moves upward, creation takes the form of divinely inspired achievements and communications that serve mankind, or “the good, the beautiful and the true” (p. 75).

Eventually,

When the energies of the sacral centre, focused hitherto on the work of physical creation and generation and therefore the source of physical sex life and interest, are sublimated, re-oriented and carried up to the throat centre, then the aspirant becomes a conscious creative force in the higher worlds. (p.67).

The transmutation proceeds gradually as the connections between the “points of light within the head” (pineal and pituitary) become strong and stable (pp.76-77).

Once again, the guiding principles can be summarised with the following “Cs”. Progress toward any of them furthers progress toward the others. This is not a recipe, but rather a process.

- Committed, Complementary relationship
- Controlled physical union
- Conscious non-physical Creation (via energised throat, or fifth, chakra)
- Cooperation for the purpose of furthering humankind’s awakening
- Conducted in accord with divine guidance

In short, as complementary partners learn to control “the physical reaction” and focus on purpose rather than desire, “A great transference can take place into the higher centre of creation, the throat centre.” (p. 63) Physical sex drives the process. Indeed, “there can be no fusion of the opposites of soul and personality apart from the physiological processes of sex” (p.57).

Yet physical mechanics alone will not achieve it. The transformation rests equally on bringing opposites together via at-one-ment, or deep feelings of oneness and wholeness. Learning to “love wisely” (p. 142) can give rise to the vital transformative feelings, upward energy movement, and fundamental perception shift to non-duality.

Thinking ahead

According to the Tibetan, the feelings of fusion or oneness that we generate during sexual exchanges both call forth, and reflect, the reunification of the fundamental dualities: the divine feminine and divine masculine.

This secret is the most vital. Our Planetary Logos is at the stage wherein He is consciously seeking the at-one-ment with his polar opposite, another Planetary Logos (p.147).

In achieving oneness, Their reunion ultimately gives rise to the non-physical, Son (p.24), thus freeing humanity to grasp its true circumstances (p.146). At this point, the Law of Sex (the force that brings together the two poles during the period of the duality of the sexes and their separation) will no longer be needed. As the polarised sexes restore a vibrant androgyny that has always existed between them (beyond matter), there will be a higher expression of the law (p.140).

But no need to get ahead of ourselves. “The first major proof that humanity…has undergone the first initiation will be the appearance of a cycle of entirely new creative art [which] will express the new incoming energies” (p.115).