Sex, Reality, and Metaphysics

Jan Saudek, Zuzanka's Night Window, 1979.

The word ‘sex’ throughout the history of humanity has always summoned multiple meanings, manifestations, and images expressing the most primal instinct of the human species. For humans, sexuality is a mode of experiencing themselves as sexual beings biologically, emotionally, and in some cases, spiritually. The implications of human sexuality can cover nearly all aspects of the human condition, embracing issues of culture, society, politics, philosophy, and religion. Regarding human sexuality one must neglect how it is also influenced by superior mental activity and by social, cultural, educational, and normative characteristics of areas where individuals develop. However, apart from being the very essence of the birth of life, it can also mutate into a dimension of demise, degeneration, and even horror. The endless tale of sex is one of pleasure and obsession, invoking both beauty and sorrow. Some of the most wondrous achievements of humanity have been inspired by this primal instinct, and the unfolding of history has been guided by the urges of human sexuality. Its ambiguous nature can be seen in how it serves and unites the two fundamental human drives of reproduction and pleasure. So great is the effect of sexuality on the human psyche and body that it has urged some to manipulate its force either by suppressing it or celebrating it in the pursuit of spiritual paths and exercises endeavouring to transcend and partake in the spiritual dimension. Its power has also been used as the most dreadful weapon to destroy, humiliate, and enslave. Despite these differences and many more, our relationship with it is the one uniting feature of humanity that we all accept and recognise. Even the absence of it is a reaffirmation of its existence. On a final note, from an esotericist’s perspective one should always bear in mind that the beginning of orgasm, a change of state takes place… and in an extreme case, during the spasm, the individual undergoes a traumatic experience of the power that ‘kills’.