Catherine Auman, LMFT

Great psychologists such as Sigmund Freud and Wilhelm Reich pointed out that the majority of people are starved for sexual fulfillment; causing all kinds of ills such as child abuse, rape, frigidity, compulsive sexuality, and obsessions of all sorts. This starvation, however, is not from lack of opportunity as it was in the past. The modern world offers plenty of images of sexuality, plenty of messages that to be sexually active is to be healthy, but little information about the connection between love, spirituality, and sex. Pornography has replaced nourishing sharing. The worship of lust has overshadowed the esoteric purpose of sex, which is to heal and purify and ultimately dissolve all into Love.

So on one hand, you have the yogic paths that condemn sex, and the tantric which elevate it to the level of a sacrament. Both roads have their dangers. The probable pitfall of the yogic path is an enormous inflation of ego. The yogi identifies with all that has been accomplished. The tantric path was forbidden because the danger is that one will become enthralled and addicted to the sensual circus. The pitfall with tantra is the fall into dissolution from which one may never emerge. Many paths today attempt to be a combination of the two. You will notice some tantric schools that are billed as “the yoga of sex.” These approaches are arduous and involve much training of the body and breath.

When sex is allowed and encouraged, one will eventually come to the point where they discover that the fulfillment one is seeking from sex is not to be found in sex. The search for Union with the Beloved can only be realized through union with the universal, not with another person, and not through the body. The body and the beloved can offer glimpses, but not the ultimate. That is for what we search. Sex leads to what we are seeking only in the transcendence of it. When one is complete, sex disappears on its own.

In tantra, we go deeply into sex in order to complete it. When there is no repression left, no desire because it has been seen through, no more interest, we see that there is nothing there. We go Beyond. We become Complete. Those of us on the tantric path prefer to go through sex to get there, that’s all. The purpose of tantra is to go beyond sex, but it seems difficult to interest anyone in this aspect of it. Most people would prefer not to develop to the point of transcending sex in this lifetime.