The Lifestyle (17 page)

This singular misapprehension probably dates back at least ten thousand years to about the time of the domestication of herd animals at the dawn of civilization. Farmers would have noticed that the castrated animals in their herds grew up tamer, weaker, and smaller than the breeding males who were allowed to keep their testicles. Warriors, too, would have learned the same lesson: after they had castrated the male children of their conquered enemies to keep them from reproducing, they would have watched them mature into passive, stunted, beardless men. Since the castrated boys and animals produced no semen, the implication would have been clear: semen must be a fuel required for growth and development, and its loss had negative consequences. It was one of the great sexosophical discoveries of civilization, rediscovered again and again throughout the world.

But it was completely false. “The error in the folklore,” Money assessed in
The Destroying Angel
, “… stems from the centuries when absolutely nothing was known about hormones.” It was not known, for instance, that when a male is gelded, his body loses testosterone—the hormone testicles secrete into the bloodstream—without which males appear weak and unmanly. “The ancients knew that without testicles an animal is sterile and also unable to ejaculate semen. But they did not know that almost all the fluid of the semen is produced in the prostate gland and that only the sperm are made in the testicles. Thus, it was easy to arrive at the wrong conclusion that, because castration causes loss of semen, semen itself must be the vital fluid that should be conserved in order to be virile, strong, and healthy.”

If they had known about testosterone, and that it was not ejaculated with semen, we might have wound up with a
slightly different version of sexual morality. But by the time writing was developed in 3000 B.C., the sexosophy was already part of the fabric of society, and it was codified for the first time by the chaste Brahman priests of the Indus Valley, patriarchs of the world’s oldest living religion, Hinduism. Semen was declared
sukra dhatu
, “sacred white metal.” It was believed that by some mysterious process semen—the essence of the divine “life force” known in Sanskrit as
kundalini
—was converted into spiritual energy if retained, and would rise up the spine through the various “spiritual centers,” the chakras, lifting one’s mortal consciousness from the urge to expel semen to a superconscious godhead completely removed from sexuality. The spine became viewed as a sort of evolutionary thermometer, with the seven chakras its mystical scale markings and the transmuted semen, in the form of
kundalini
, its quicksilver.

The belief in this vertical “ladder to God” is pervasive across cultures. Indeed, the baroque sexual mythology of the Hindus (which arose a thousand years before the codification of the Eden myth) is so obviously an antecedent of many of the other traditions equating sexual self-control with Godly behavior, that the imagery is worthy of some scrutiny.

According to the Hindus, in most unevolved humans, that is, in those souls who had not evolved much over thousands of incarnations on earth, the hot fuel of
kundalini
sat coiled like a snake at the two lowest chakras—survival and sex. There they whispered seductive entreaties for expulsion, much like the Satanic serpent in Eden did as it lay coiled about the tree of knowledge of good and evil, which yogis to this day interpret as a metaphor for the spine, with the fruit representing orgasm. The expression of
kundalini
through the sex chakra, while reproducing life, tied one’s consciousness to the body and its “gross” perceptions and needs. By retaining one’s sexual energy, meditating on God, and practicing yogic breath techniques that helped remove the buildup of evil karma, one sped up
the reincarnational process and one’s k
undalini
began to rise through the various centers, expressing itself in ways commensurate with the higher states of more evolved beings.

When, for instance, the k
undalini
passed the third “power” center and reached the fourth center, opposite the heart, human love began to be expressed selflessly. When it reached the fifth center opposite the throat, Platonic ideals and the uniformities underlying all differences were perceived—taking one even further from earthbound emotions and desires. The divine vision center, the sixth chakra or “spiritual eye,” sat in the middle of the forehead: here the arrival of
kundalini
caused one to behold God as St. Paul reportedly beheld Jesus—which caused him ever after to denounce sex as a grievous sin that kept him from union with this infinite being. Had he held onto his semen, according to the lore, he would have found all separateness finally transcended when the
kundalini
reached the seventh,
samara
, center, situated on the crown of the head within the “thousand-petaled lotus of light”—the center of cosmic consciousness, the “self” of self-realization. At that moment the
sansara
blossomed open and one experienced a flood of bliss thousands of times more powerful than the expression of kun
dalini
in sexual orgasm. That is why the yogic goal of life was crucially dependent on the mastery of sex. Sex short-circuited the rise of k
undalini
and wasted the latent potential for eternal orgasm. By expelling semen in orgasm, one lost the spiritual fuel, leaving one stranded in earthly delusion and evil.

Thus, the true purpose of sex was revealed: it was not reproduction but God-realization. Sex, in the words of Elisabeth Haich, a modern proselytizer of this sexosophy, was “the only fuel absolutely indispensable for this purpose.” Since God-realization was the most important goal of life, the retention of semen became an obsession of the Brahman rulers. It was vile when emitted, holy when retained. And so they developed
their mystical beliefs into a science, the world’s oldest sexosophical practice,
kundalini yoga
—literally, “joining together with the life force”—which occupied one’s every hour with breath techniques, meditation, a “noninflammatory” diet, and a host of other ascetic practices to keep one’s mind off that fruity repository for semen offered by Eve.

There is an argument to be made that upon that mythological belief in the conservation and transmutation of sexual energy into spiritual energy rests almost all the religious, sexual, and moral laws man must follow if he is to live an ethical and spiritual life. Whatever encourages the excessive expulsion of semen is at the bottom of the scale; whatever encourages its retention is at the top. The belief may have arisen from sincere faith, but it was a faith that fit in nicely with the agenda of priests and kings who, as we have seen, are always anxious to keep the lustful masses guilt-ridden and beholden to their powers as intermediaries between a God who condemns those who indulge in sexual pleasure and loves those who strive for chastity. It led eventually to all the crackpot sexual-degeneracy-disease theories of the Victorian era, one of which claimed that sexual excess led to spermatorrhea—the uncontrollable “leaking” of vital essence. It led also to those equally crackpot notions purveyed to this day in the rafts of yogic texts in every New Age bookstore that explain the precious energies required by the body to produce semen. Such as the theory that the body “purifies” semen from “vital spirits in the blood.” Or that semen is made from “neurine” taken from the blood. Or that when semen is expelled it drains away brain fluids down the spinal cord—an old hammer used to keep nineteenth-century boys from masturbating.

Although you will find lots of testimonials in passionately written books with names like
Arousing the Goddess, Sexual Energy and Yoga
, and
Kundalini: The Evolutionary Energy in Man
, there is not a shred of scientific evidence that the retention of
semen accomplishes anything except egotistic pride in accomplishment. It does not increase a male athlete’s performance in sporting events or raise scores on IQ tests or increase concentration in any way that has ever been measured by external observation, the foundation of all scientific hypotheses. As for women, although most texts on k
undalini
and yoga “emphasize that everything said in this book about sexuality and the development of consciousness applies as much to the female as it does to the male,” as Elisabeth Haich has stated, I have not been able to discover a single volume that postulates the female equivalent of “sacred white metal” that is lost during sex. (Rare women do expel a clear fluid during “female ejaculation,” but no
kundalini
text—sacred or popular—has ever pointed to the need to
retain
this fluid; on the contrary, as we shall see below, that expulsion is
cultivated
by aspiring Tantrics.) Even if we are dealing only with a “psychic” loss that sidetracks the mind and ensnares one mentally in illusion, there is still no observable evidence that
kundalini
exists beyond the realm of metaphor, much less that it rises through the equally unobservable seven chakras, purifying the body and uplifting the consciousness as it goes. Lastly, while meditation demonstrably calms people and vastly increases their alpha brain waves and immediate powers of concentration, there is no evidence that the techniques advocated by
kundalini
yogis and yoginis cleanse the soul of “bad karma” or speed up one’s psychospiritual “reincarnational” development. We are dealing simply with a matter of faith.

And yet there is a swinging twist to this story of faith.
Kundalini
yoga has seen an amazing resurgence in the West. Some people follow the original tenets of the tyrannically ascetic Brahmans but others follow the rebel branch known as Tantra. Tantra emerged four thousand years ago to promote the same “conservationist” truth as the Brahmans—for men, that is. At the same time it radically affirmed that sexuality did
not have to be denied in order to obtain enlightenment. If semen retention was the goal of
kundalini
yoga, the Tantric masters decided, then they could offer another route to that goal. Their erotospiritual alternative accommodated human lust by actually encouraging the night-long pleasures of God-conscious lovemaking—including the sort of outrageous group sex pornographically pictured on Tantric temples all over India—but with one fabulous benefit: no loss of semen. The key was for males to delay their eight-second orgasm indefinitely so as to: 1) cater to the female’s endless capacity for orgasm even unto a G-spot-stimulated waterfall; and 2) save the precious fluids in their own bodies.

Needless to say, the lifestyle movement has seized upon the Tantric version of
kundalini
yoga to validate its philosophy that such a thing as high-minded, spiritual hedonism is possible. Susan Block considers herself a “bonobo Tantric” and every Lifestyles convention has a few Tantra seminars in which couples who belong to groups such as the Liberated Christians, the polyamorists, Loving More, and the Temple of the Goddess switch partners and have “sacred sexual” encounters with other ethical hedonists. In the words of Dr. Deborah M. Anapol, a clinical psychologist who has offered “Tantra and Sexual Pleasuring” workshops at Lifestyles conventions, and who is a cofounder of the polyamorist
Loving More
magazine as well as the author of
Love Without Limits
(and who, by the way, is on-record as being opposed to the “recreational sex” of fastlane swingers): “Any tool for increasing your flow of life force—variously called
chi, prana
, or
kundalini
—and opening your energy centers or chakras will help prepare you for multi-partner sex.” She recommends “yoga” and “meditation” as “very effective” means toward these ends. The goal is “to access heightened energy states and expanded consciousness through specific sexual practices.” Thus, couples having group sex should make italicized love
“to the god or goddess within your
partners
. This focus lifts us out of our usual overidentification with the ego or personal self, and makes it easier to see our-selves and our partners as different manifestations of a single universal male or female.” On the physical plane, Anapol asserts, “Tantra can provide effective techniques for the man who wants to satisfy more than one woman. By learning to
separate orgasm from ejaculation
, any man is able to match women’s innate capacity for multiple and continuous orgasm.” Anapol recommends that to properly experience a group-sex encounter—one in which “each partner experiences union with the cosmos and consequently with each other”—one must learn “to direct the flow of sexual energy.” She concludes by saying Tantric techniques “are useful skills for solo and coupled sex, but they are critical for an optimal group sexual experience.”

Strange as all of this sounds, the point is that lifestylers generally do not feel they have joined a culture in which all ethical values have been reversed. Far from feeling they are perverting the teachings of the masters, many believe they are correctly interpreting the truth of God that in both the West and the East has been misinterpreted, or mistranslated, or just hijacked for economic reasons. They have woven freely expressed sexuality “back” into the moral fabric of their religions, redefined the “erroneous” tenet of monogamy upon which the institution of marriage has been based for ages, and reconfigured the approved method for the worship of God to include the lifestyle’s forbidden hedonistic pleasures. Some have actually fully worked through the texts of their faiths to find evidence that multipartner sex within marriage is spiritually permissible for those who can handle it. Others who believe in Jesus Christ as the literal Son of God are just counting on forgiveness for what they see as a far less egregious transgression than has been proselytized. For many of them the ancient directional arrows that have always pointed
upward to spirituality and downward to sex are actually connected in a circle—and God is equally present at all points on that circle.