In Beyond Human Knowledge: A Consideration of the Unexplained in Man and Nature Dr. von Urban discusses his views on the electromagnetic exchange during intercourse and its potential. He also describes his own Synergy-style experience. His self-report is reproduced at the bottom of this page, but was originally reported in his earlier book: Sex Perfection and Marital Happiness.
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[p.136] Recent experiments have shown that currents flow from human cells of sufficient strength to be measurable by a galvanometer. The currents from the nipples, lips and fingers are stronger than those from other parts of the body; but the highest deflection of the needle of the galvanometer is attained by the irritated [excited?] sex organs, including the ovaries at the time of ovulation. The tension in the body increases during sex development and sexual activity.
[p.137] During puberty many children exhibit excited behavior, oversensitiveness, antagonism and the compulsion to fight. Masturbation between the ages of twelve and fourteen is a means of attaining relaxation from tension. But ejaculation through masturbatory manipulations only brings a local relaxation in the testicles, while it otherwise tenses the whole organism. This is one of the reasons why masturbation is so often followed by feelings of guilt, remorse and the desire for self-punishment. Real relaxation is unobtainable by this means because the tension of the currents in the nerve cells is not diminished. On the contrary, every sex play increases the body currents and the metabolic rate in the cells, and therefore the tension in the whole body. Only a well-performed intercourse can bring full relaxation. …
The correct way to eliminate tension in adults, as I have made clear elsewhere, is by normal sex intercourse, lasting long enough to allow the currents to flow out from the body cells.
[p.138] Bodily tension can be relieved not only through the sex organs, but also through the palms of the hands, if not too dry, and even through the skin of the body. The feeling of happiness, of deep satisfaction and peacefulness, which follows such skin contact by two highly loaded partners, shows us that tension can find its relaxation also in this way.
Two partners who are suited to each other in their radiations but who are incapable of diminishing these radiations through normal sex acts (because the way to the sex organs is blocked by a neurosis, for example), can deliver the streams also through the skin of the body by lying undressed in close bodily contact. Sometimes two or three nights are required for full satisfaction in this manner. [Note: Von Urban’s wife had such a block due to attempted abuse as a child, so he discovered this bliss-without-intercourse firsthand.]
[p.237] On first reading Walt Whitman and Richard Bucke, I considered their declarations exaggerated, even, I must confess, somewhat hysterical. Then I myself had an experience which brought me back to their belief that man can come into direct communication with a Superior Power.
[238] Deeply in love, in close contact with the beloved one, I felt once with certainty that God was within me. My reunion with the Creative Force of the universe filled me with superhuman happiness which words are powerless to describe. Was this hallucination? Maybe! But such an experience cannot be altered or undone. It carries with it its own assurance of verity and brings us nearer to the divine truth than all philosophical or scientific thinking….
In analyzing my experiences, I became convinced that real love can open our soul to meet our Creator. If God is in us, blessing our love, we become kind, good, unselfish, and a feeling of holiness flows through us.
Sex union can play a part in this ecstasy. For the sexual organs have, besides the propagative function, another and most important one: the amative (full of love) function. They are conductors not only of the semen but also of social magnetism. …
To repeat: the amative function, that which makes “of twain one flesh” and offers a medium of magnetic and spiritual interchange, is a distinct and independent function, and superior to [p. 239] the task of reproduction. The more the two partners can devote their union to this spiritual interchange, the more they can experience profound love for each other, the more they can receive God in them….
It is experiences of this nature which also have convinced me that Platonic love was probably something of this kind rather than the purely spiritual relationship, without bodily contact, which it is commonly believed to be.
Urban, Rudolf von. 1958. Beyond human knowledge a consideration of the unexplained in man and nature. New York: Pageant Press.
Excerpt from Sex Perfection and Marital Happiness
Von Urban describes his own sacred sex experience, which he first reported as a case history in Sex Perfection and Marital Happiness, using the aliases “Mary” and “Fred.”
[This case begins with the story of a woman who had been terrorized as a twelve-year old by her stepfather’s rape attempt. As a result, Mary was extremely frightened of contact with men. In her mid-twenties, a young doctor fell in love with her. Fred promised that if she would marry him, he would not try to make love with her. Here the excerpt begins.]
After six weeks of unconsummated marriage Mary’s love for Fred was no less passionate than his for her. It was then that they spent their first night together in one bed, naked body to naked body. Fred’s was a superhuman task. … The best way to do this, he found, was to concentrate all his thoughts and feelings, all his awareness, on those parts of his body which touched Mary.
They lay close together, entirely relaxed, delighting in this bodily contact. And then, after about half an hour, Fred told me, something indescribable began to flow in them, making them feel that every single cell of their skin was alive and joyful. This produced in Fred rapture and delight such as he had never before experienced. (This delight was reduced if both had not taken a bath before lying down together.) And Mary, he said, felt the same.
He had the impression that all these million sources of delight merged into one and streamed to the skin of those parts of his body which were in contact with Mary. His body seemed to dissolve; space and time dropped away; and all thoughts disappeared, so consumed was he by a voluptuous rapture which he could find no words to describe. Mary’s words for it were “superhuman,” “divine.”
They both, he said, lost at that moment all fear of death. This, they felt, must be a prevision of the afterlife; they were already on the bridge between the material world and the spiritual universe. They had tasted heaven. This ecstatic experience endured throughout the night.
But, after seven hours, a feeling of suffocation set in. They had to separate immediately. If they attempted to ignore this feeling, they became antagonistic to each other. But if they took a shower, or a rubdown with a wet towel, they could go back to bed and re-enter their state of superhuman bliss without difficulty. …
The next day they were both extremely happy and relaxed, full of life and energy, strangers to all forms of anxiety, pettiness or anger.
In comparing the kind of satisfaction he had previously known in normal intercourse, with this new rapture experienced with Mary, Fred said that the difference was that between earthly and celestial love. Compared with the continuous, lasting and superhuman happiness induced by his new experience, the temporary delight, during spontaneous ejaculation, was hardly worth mentioning.
Ten years passed. Mary changed from a self-centered, anti-social, cold-hearted girl to a woman, warm, thoughtful and kind. They were both as deeply devoted to each other as they had been at the beginning. That was the story of Mary and Fred: fantastic, but I have no reason to doubt a word of it.
I have passed on to other couples what I learned from this one; and, when all the conditions have been fulfilled, the results have been the same.
It is this body of experience which has convinced me that Platonic love is, more probably, something of this kind than a purely spiritual relationship, or even Karezza. The words in The Symposium seem to indicate that the “something they know not what,” which the lovers are longing to obtain from each other, is that exchange of bioelectrical streams which enables their bodies to become entirely relaxed.
That means that their sublime feeling is induced, to use prosaic words, by nothing other than their full liberation from tension. The more a person can relax another from the tension induced in him by his bio-electrical streams, the more is that person desired by the other and the more passionate is their mutual love.
When I studied Indian philosophy I was never able to understand why Nirvana is regarded by the Hindu as so desirable. How can a state of Nothingness be the aim of Life? But the experience of Fred and Mary led me to see that the cessation of bodily tension can be so supreme an experience that no other pleasure on earth can be compared with it.
That means that when the tension in our body ceases, we reach a state of relaxation so absolute that it is as if we were bodiless. This form of “nothingness” may easily seem akin to that happiness which Easterners call Nirvana.
Since then a new chapter has been added to the story of Mary and Fred. Mary’s maternal instinct awoke. She was now thirty-seven years old and had been married for fourteen years. …
Then, for the first time in her life, Mary had normal intercourse with Fred. It was some time before they could learn to direct their streams to their sex organs. But, even though Fred at last secured a normal reaction, his potency was still weak and did not last long enough to bring Mary to full satisfaction.
Deeply disappointed they wanted to return to the beautiful sex life they had enjoyed before. They tried, but could not. The gate to that paradise was closed.
The delivered streams in their bodies now flowed automatically to the sex organs, instead of directly to each other. No amount of will power could stop them. Thus they repeated the story of Adam and Eve and their lost Paradise. When we read the third chapter of Genesis with this in mind, we find surprising, symbolical meanings…