Transcendent Sex: When Lovemaking Opens the Veil

342 Pages·2004·23.602 MB·English

by  Jenny Wade, Ken Wilber

Transcendent Sex, When Lovemaking Opens the Veil
by Jenny Wade, Ph.D.
Abstract: Sex can trigger states identical to those attained by spiritual adepts of all traditions: the animal
possession and otherworldly travels of shamans, the bodily fireworks of kundalini yoga, the past-life revelations
of reincarnation religions, the Void of Buddhism, and the unio mystica (One with God) described by Western
saints. These are real spiritual experiences, the kind that change people's lives (but not the kind that make people
take up celibacy or otherwise forgo the delights of the flesh). This book is based on the narratives of ninety-one
ordinary people who stumbled into extraordinary experiences during sex. (Reading time: 7-8 hrs.)

Transcendent
Sex

Transcendent
Sex
When Lovemaking Opens the Veil
Jenny Wade, Ph•D•
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Contents
Foreword by Ken Wilber vii
Introduction: Discovering Transcendent Sex 1
THE MAGICAL MYSTERY TOUR
1. Fireworks, Energy, and Light:
Experiencing the Body Electric 21
2. The Good Gods and Grace:
It Was a Religious Experience 40
3. The Spirit of Gaia:
Supernatural Connections with Earthly Life 59
LOOSENING THE BOUNDARIES OF REALITY
4. The Many Faces of Love:
The Partner in Transformation, Transfiguration,
and Transcendence 77
5. By Love Possessed:
Shapeshifting, Channeling, and Possession 93
6. Breaking Away:
Cosmic Journeys That Leave the Body Behind 111
vi · Contents
THE SHATTERING OF THE VESSELS
7. Time Travel and Revealed Truths:
Falling into Past Lives 131
8. Being in Nothingness:
Sex and N irvana 15 9
9. Divine Union:
One with God 180
USING THE KNOWLEDGE OF TRANSCENDENT SEX
10. Why Didn't Anyone Tell Us About This Before?
The Dark Side of Transcendent Sex 203
11. Grace and Practice:
Facilitating Transcendent Sex 235
12. Fruits of Transcendent Sex:
Lovemaking and the Spiritual Path 253
Appendix: The Research Study 263
Table 1: The Participants 285
Endnotes 289
References 305
Acknowledgments 311
Index 313
Foreword
WHY DO PEOPLE JOKE ABOUT SEX.7 IS it because sex is... what?
Too embarrassing? Too “dirty,” vulgar, raw? Anything that rab-
bits and weasels can do simply can't be that great, and hence is
worth at most a snicker or two? Is sex too intimate?—such that
public discussion is met with giggles? Or is sex too real, too
close to the truth, the hidden truth, of what we are?
When Jenny Wade first began her research on sexual experi-
ences, we happened to be having the first meetings of Integral
Institute (which is devoted to an “integral” or comprehensive
approach to reality), which Jenny and I attended. One of the
best things about all those meetings was that, at the end of
each, Jenny would make an announcement about her research,
something like, "1 am doing a phenomenological study of mysti-
cal, spiritual, or transcendent experiences during sex. Anybody
interested in being a part of this study, please contact me.”
Yes, the best thing about those meetings was listening to
what everybody said after that announcement. On bathroom
walls across the country, we could imagine what was being writ-
ten: “For a good time, call Heidi. For a really good time, call
Jenny.”
Still, why do we laugh at that? Surely the correct answer is
that it is really funny. But philosophers, of which I am one,
make a nonliving out of asking incredibly stupid questions, over
Vll
viii · Foreword
and over and over again, until we get an answer so obscure and
inherently ridiculous that the average person is forced to
assume that it is really profound and ... well, philosophical. So
here goes.
I think we laugh at sex because it can kill us.
Okay, that is not as completely ridiculous as, say, deconstruc-
tion, but bear with me. Almost all major psychologists (who are
people involved in a marginally less silly profession than philos-
ophy) have at some point examined the meaning and function
of laughter (perhaps most famously, Freud in “Wit and Its Rela-
tion to the Unconscious”). They all reached somewhat differ-
ent conclusions, except that all of them agreed that we only
laugh at something that is unnervingly significant. Even some-
thing as silly as, say, somebody slipping on a banana peel, is
funny because it touches on the fact that anybody can, without
warning and at any time, fall from the dignity of being an
upstanding human to being a pathetic and total klutz.
Which is funny if it happens to that guy, not me. Aristotle
(not known for his wit) once nevertheless managed to com-
ment, “Luck is what happens when the arrow hits the guy next
to you.” It's often the same with humor: a horrible experience is
really funny when it happens to the guy next to you. Somehow
we have to be removed from the incident in order for it to be
funny, which is why it is often said that “tragedy plus time is
humor.” Well, Woody Allen said that in Crimes and Misde-
meanors, but I think he knows more about the subject than, say,
Freud or Aristotle (ever seen a picture of either of them smil-
ing?).
Sex is unnervingly significant, so we laugh. What is so impor-
tant about Jenny's research, however, is that it shows that
whatever danger we thought sex held for us, it is even worse.
Sex really can kill you, if by “you” is meant the ordinary you, the
everyday you, the skin-encapsulated ego of your everyday per-