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   love that transforms
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Just as in earthly life lovers long for the moment when they are able to breathe forth their love for each other, to let their souls blend in a soft whisper, so the mystic longs for the moment when in prayer he can, as it were, creep into God.
-Søren Kierkegaard-

The roads to enlightenment and liberation are manifold and diverse, but they all fall into two main categories: mystical paths without and mystical paths together with a sexual partner. For most people these two different categories offer a dilemma. With them the dilemma boils down to the question ´can life be totally, spiritually fulfilling within a sexual relationship?´ For everyone has a yearning for enlightenment and liberation. All human beings feel that the solution to life´s riddle is somewhere down there in the bottom of their soul. But then they look up at the so called Masters, who claim to have realized this final happiness, and the first thing they notice is the fact that they are virtually all celibate. So they easily infer that celibacy must be a conditio sine qua non for enlightenment and spiritual liberation. The next logical step they make is concluding that they can never become enlightened as long as they remain married or otherwise engaged in sexual activities. When you look at the lives of the so called enlightened ones, it would seem that sexuality is our greatest stumbling block on our road to heaven.

The doubt most spiritual seekers feel about their sexual activities becomes even greater when they find the subject of sexuality and relationships rather poorly discussed in spiritual literature, if discussed at all. And when they do find some reference to sexuality and having an affair, it is most likely written in a condemnatory tone. Religion and sexuality do not seem to get along. From the beginning of time they are lying in opposite trenches shooting at each other. No small wonder that spiritual seekers feel at a loss, concerning their sexuality and their affairs. Is it human frailty? Should one overcome one´s sexual drives? Will I ever become enlightened if I keep up this affair and remain sexual active? These questions bother spiritual seekers the most. For they are the most existential. When they ask their guru or their teacher about sexuality being a help or a hindrance, they are beaten about the bush and get the answer ´you´ll have to find it out for yourself´.

So it is of the utmost importance to answer these questions. For doubt creates the deepest misery in our heart. When one is suffering, when the Kundalini snake is seizing us, then this doubt might as well prove fatal to our spirituality. So one of the most important tasks of a Master is to clear this doubt from the beginning. When the Master is serious and ripened with the experience of life she will begin by stating, like we did at the beginning, that there are two main roads to enlightenment. Let us begin by discussing the first road, though this might prove rather tantalizing in postponing the answers we are looking for. But for the sake of clarity is it better to begin with a discussion of  the mystical path without a sexual partner. Later on the other path, the mystical path together with a sexual partner, will then be more understandable, when compared to this first one.


The mystical path without a sexual partner

Enlightenment is becoming the Self. This simple definition has many implications. First and foremost it means that we can only find happiness in our Selves. We have to look inward to find the solution. Our happiness is anchored in our subjectivity and not as much in our objectivity. This means that we become unhappy and estranged when we loose the inner connection with what we essentially are. In the deepest layers of our being we are God. But somehow we have lost the connection. The wire is broken. The connection needs to be re-established.

In the course of our lives many of us have lost it. We are swallowed up by a frantic working life. The claims of our obligations and the needs of our loved ones have run so high that we cannot be ourselves anymore. We are being lived instead of living. We feel ourselves to be an object instead of a subject. We are being tossed around in time. De-essentialized we drag ourselves along, with a hollow and weary gaze in our eyes, fulfilling our obligations, but with no joy or satisfaction whatsoever in doing the things we need to do. We are like zombies walking the street, mere lifeless corpses in motion. Because we are totally estranged from our Self. And because the Self is happiness, we are not happy anymore.

When this is the state of our being, eventually two things might happen. We end up either diseased -the disease of the psyche eventually leads to physical discomfort- or death, or we may take the turn from objectivity to subjectivity. If we choose the latter, it will in most cases be a one hundred and eighty degree turn. We will do precisely the opposite of our former behavior, which means that we will now fall totally back on ourselves, to restore the balance. So many people -especially in mid-life- break all their suffocating ties, quit their jobs, divorce themselves from their love ones and retreat. Then the quest for the Self begins. They again want to regain the divine splendor of their childhood and simply be happy.

This can be a true, authentic road to enlightenment. For in the Self everything fulfilling is to be found. celibacyA person totally focused on the spiritual Self of her life will eventually find the liberation she is looking for. For in the godliness of the deepest Self all questions are finally answered and the riddle of the Sphinx is finally hushed. Such a person will regain her balance. Her prayers and her meditations will again make her calm, peaceful and full of love. This has happened to many monks. This has happened to many spiritual seekers who have stepped back from the routine of their daily life to find their God and their liberation. In the seclusion of their rooms, their studies and cells they have found what everyone is looking for in life: the final peace of the heart.

´But isn´t this a very selfish act, to break all bonds with our work, with our family, with our loved ones, with our total history?´ The answer is: no. For the Self is not personal and it cannot be a personal goal. To regain the experience of Self everything selfish in fact has to be conquered. It is the most unselfish act one can think of. For the whole is greatly benefited from this search. And there is much suffering in the spiritual path also. When one chooses to find the Self one takes the sufferings and sins of the world on his shoulders. This is no easy way out. There are some hellish moments to be found in this process. It is not an easy options for hedonists. They in fact would loath the Self.

`Ok, then this can be a true and fulfilling spiritual path. But is it not a lesser path? Is it not far more spiritual to share one´s life and one´s love with other people? Is not the second type, the seeking shared with a sexual partner, a far more better path? This is not love in theory, but more of an existential thing.` Again the answer is: no. Let us look at the monk or the celibate living in seclusion, devoting his life seriously and not halfheartedly to meditation and a spiritual life. His personality will slowly wither away, because it isn´t challenged anymore. It is no longer provoked by the claims of others. Slowly his ego will die, because who is there to have an ego for? He is living in seclusion. He has no one to compare himself with. There is no one to compete with. Is it possible to remain `someone` living in such a modus vivendi? Slowly, in the course of years, practicing his meditations, the monk or the celibate becomes `no one´. Who is there to be `someone` for?

The result of this hermitage and total seclusion is, in the end, humility and love. When the last rudiments of personality have died down, the celibate will find her self totally transformed in love for the divinity of existence. She is now totally centered in Self. She no longer has any needs. The force/Brahman now provides everything she ever needed. Such a person, male or female, is a joy to be with. For here we find a human being as it is supposed to be. This is not a lesser path. This is the ending of all paths. When this has happened to the celibate, there is no longer any need for sexual love. For all love in this world is meant to connect us with divine Love, which is the Self. What need is there when This has been found?

Love is not the an end in itself. Love is a consequence. Love is an attribute of Being, not its essence. Love and the Good are the first emanations of Being. So when we finally are reduced, by suffering and letting go, to mere Being, then love will emanate into the cup of our soul, sponte sua and in all its purity. Now we as celibates can go out into the world and share our love. Wondrous deeds will be the result. Enlightenment will be spread all around. The end of celibate mystical life is sheer eroticism. But it is not an eroticism of the carnal type. It is the spiritual orgasm of a love for the whole of our existence.

 
The mystical path together with a sexual partner

But, remember, this was only one of the two main roads to enlightenment. The other one is to be found in sharing our love with a sexual partner. For what happened to the hermit in his cell can also happen in sexual and amorous activity. To have a clear understanding why, we must study the psychologicaleroticism conditions that lead to enlightenment. For this conditions are the same in both the celibate and in the sexual active. Let´s return once again to the monk in his cell.

He may be praying and meditating for years on end, the whole day long, but all his efforts will be fruitless and in vain if he is not willing to give him self up. The only offering he can give to the divine, the only offering that has any meaning at all, is the offering of himself. He must cease to exist. His personality must be wiped out and annihilated. He alone can do it. It can only be done by an act of total surrender to the divine. It is the sine qua non for enlightenment to occur. His love for the divine must reach such heights that he will be no more. Then only God will be.

But this type of surrender can also occur when one falls in love with a sexual partner. This surrender is already a phenomenological essential of the way things are. It belongs already to the ´So-Sein´ of the world. Everyone who has ever fallen in love knows it: one wants to surrender to his loved one, when in love. All day long one thinks about nothing else than about this being in love and about coming together with one´s beloved. We want to merge with each other. Everything short of this fusion and surrender makes us unhappy.

Falling in love is pure mysticism. It is the blending of the Self of two individuals that are only seemingly apart and separate. In love we deeply feel that we are connected and one. If this oneness cannot be realized, because one of the sexual partners is not willing to give up his lower self in the caresses of the other, by remaining distant, separate and closed, then great misery will be the result, in both the sexual partners. Then the transcendence will not succeed. A higher, more fulfilled and happy holon will not be created. Frustration, fear and guilt will then be the result.

But when the two partners open up and are willing to lay aside their selfish tunnel vision of existence in a caring and compassionate love for each other, then mystical ecstasy will be the result. Such a love will surely be transformative, just like the meditations of the serious monk will be. For in both cases the rerum natura, the Tao is followed. In such a love one starts living according to the Self´s matrix. Then the deepest nature of the way things are is reached. Love is, remember, the first emanation of potential energy.

Both the monk and the sexual partners have great obstacles to surmount in their quest for the Self. The monk must prevail over his fear of isolation and loneliness. His fight is with the darkness of Emptiness and the utter annihilation that is besieging his personality. Sometimes he is panic stricken with that fear of being no more. Awful memories of his past sins and trauma´s haunt his sleep. He has no one to turn to for consolation and tenderness. He is utterly alone. His Dark Night is a night of loneliness: ´Father, Father, why hast thou forsaken me?´ The fight is with his self, by him self. At times such a mystical path is a deep suffering.

But the lover has fears also. Being in love is, besides being the most ecstatic, the most frightening thing fear and lovethat can happen to us. There is no longer any tranquility in our daily activity. We are haunted by the thought of our beloved. We become afraid that our love is not reciprocal and want to be with our beloved, to be reassured as much as possible. Our old feeling of self is shattered. We think about our beloved all the time. She is filling the gap where our old self used to be. At times this is very, very frightening. We are used to our old self. But this new self, with her in it, will this be as good as the old one? Can it be a center, can it be fundamental to all of my doings, my thoughts, my intentions? Is this new self not a deterioration of 'the beautiful me' that I used to be? So fear whispers to us in the dark hours of night.

Fear is in most cases resistance of ego. So it is with the fear that comes with being in love. It can become pathological to the degree that one cannot eat or sleep anymore. Even suicide can happen when one is in love. Such may be the fear of an ego that is assaulted by love. It makes the lover shake and tremble and cover his head in misery. These are the weapons of that little scoundrel Eros. His pangs make the lover sick and beside himself. For the road to Self is laden with all kinds of miseries. But if the lover is able to resists these fears assailing his ego, if he remains unperturbed like a rock in mid ocean, if he eventually manages to regain his calmness and equilibrium of mind, then the happiness of a higher fusion, a higher transcendence will be the result. Then he will have found his love. And with this love he will have found the Self.

But just like the love of the monk in his cell, this love between two serious lovers is not a sentimental thing. It surely has its romantic moments, but there are hard times also. There are moments when from both sides personality again tries to creep in, to obscure the luminance of the Self. This is to be resisted from both sides, by turning again towards the Self. The tendency for dominance, one of the characteristics of personality, can thus be avoided by both lovers remaining firmly rooted in Self. This means that both lovers must remain perfectly free in their love for one another. Never can one lover be possessed by the other. The Self, which is love, can only be realized in utter freedom. When there is no freedom, any love will soon die. 

Another condition for a sexual partnership to succeed is a gradual shift of attention from sexuality to spirituality. This does not mean that we have to quit being sexual active and start praying whole day long instead of hugging. In time this change from sexuality to a transcendence of sexuality will happen of itsfear and love12 own accord. In true love we will become less sexual and more spiritual. Sexuality itself will help us bring this about. Because sexuality arouses our Kundalini energies in our central nervous system. These higher energies will make the shift for us. All it takes is to help this natural and spontaneous tendency of our body-mind to transform bodily energies into spiritual energies. That way our sexuality can be of enormous support in finding true fulfillment in life.

So these are the requirements for mystical love: transcendence of ego, surrender, resistance of fear, remaining firmly rooted in Self, transformation of bodily energies into spiritual energies and... freedom. And what is most important of all: we have to let it go every moment of the day. Everything in our relative life is relative. This vairagya, this non-attachment, is the most important thing in our (love) life. We can never reach a state in which we feel completely certain about love. For love really is too mysterious to feel certain and assured about. In the face of love we can only close our eyes and remain passive and expectant. Life brings love if we open up and welcome her. But she can never be summoned.

These are the conditions for happiness in our lives, whether we choose to have a sexual partner or remain celibate. Both ways can lead to enlightenment.


Amsterdam,  November 8  2005



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