“Sexual energy is one of the most abundant gifts given to us by nature, yet most people casually toss it away without realizing the full value of its treasure.” Mantak Chia
Augustinian Sexuality
Sexual consciousness in the West since the 5th century has been heavily influenced by Augustine of Hippo’s idea of Original Sin and the concupiscence which, he believed, follows from it.
Original Sin is the idea that a pristine and innocent human nature was corrupted when Adam and Eve disobeyed God in the Garden of Paradise and ate the forbidden fruit, as depicted in the Old Testament story in Genesis. Now conscious of good and evil, according to Augustine’s account, the couple noticed their nakedness and were ashamed. They succumbed to sexual lust because they were no longer able to control their desire for sexual gratification since they had lost their original perfections, including immortality, and were now subject to lustful concupiscence.
Concupiscence is the vulnerability of the descendants of Adam and Eve to feel helplessly pulled or inclined toward deviancy and sin, especially sexual sins. Sin, most simply understood, is separation from God. Augustine tells us that he, himself, was torn by a concupiscence which he could not control rationally and willfully in his younger days. He felt driven by lust, as he describes in his mid-life spiritual autobiography, Confessions. But I don’t think concupiscence was the cause of his overwhelming and obsessive sexual desires, as he came to believe. He was a man of flesh and blood and his persistent and inordinate struggles with sex, insofar as they were over and beyond the norm for a young man his age, were more likely the psychological result of adverse conditioning from his parents and his dysfunctional family experience than the fantasized and projected outcome of Eve’s falling for the temptation of the evil serpent. And there certainly was dysfunction in Augustine’s family of origin.
Before his famous conversion that would lead to him becoming Bishop of Hippo, Augustine describes himself as a slave to sensuality and lust. He couldn’t understand why he was unable to control his sexual reactions. He couldn’t stop thinking about sex. Being a little obsessive about sex is normal for a male adolescent during puberty, certainly not unusual, even if it becomes somewhat obsessive and uncontrollable. For Augustine, however, such normal sexual desire seems clearly to have been exacerbated by other psycho-social, familial factors.
Psychologically, Augustine was emotionally stuck between his strong desire for the sensual fulfillment of sexual love and affection, on the one hand, and, on the other, his frustration about not being able to have control of and mastery over the arousal of sexual desire in himself. How did Augustine get into this neurotic condition of being a slave to sexual lust? Here is one possible explanation based on the evidence that Augustine himself shares with his readers.
Augustine’s mom and dad did not have the best love relationship. His dad, Patricius, was a worldly man who was supposedly abusive to his wife. His mom, Monica, eighteen years younger than her husband, was from a Christian family and was herself devoutly religious. Given these differences in age and religion, it is not surprising that there were contention and conflict between Patricius and Monica, conflict that Monica did her best to steer clear of, demonstrating her clever resourcefulness and her willfulness. Consequently, it is not hard to imagine that Augustine’s mom was not getting her emotional needs met by her husband. It would not be unusual or uncommon in such a situation for her to fall into a triangulated relationship with her son. Such a family diagnosis syncs well with Augustine’s own report of his early childhood and youth and his relation to his parents in his Confessions.
Augustine was Monica’s first child. He was highly intelligent, personable, and attractive. Augustine’s dad died when he was sixteen, leaving him more vulnerable to his mom’s emotional influence and leaving her more dependent on her eldest son. Not only would it be natural for Monica to focus on her son to meet some of her needs for love and affection, but also to ratify the rightness of her religious beliefs and her way of life over the pagan ways of Patricius. The unfortunate result for the child in this type of triangulated family situation is the deprivation of unconditional love that a child would normally get from his parents if they were truly in love with one another and fulfilled in that love. That was not Augustine’s situation. Thus, the marital conflict between Monica and Patricius undermined the possibility of Augustine experiencing unconditional parental love, an outcome consistent with family triangulation theory since you cannot love someone unconditionally while you are using them surreptitiously to fulfill your needs, laying the groundwork for an overvaluation of the sexual love relation that marked Augustine’s adolescence.
Monica’s particular and self-fulfilling love for her son was certainly not unconditional. Her actions had mixed motives, among which were her own emotional needs for love and affection, which, of course, is not an abnormal need in itself. She would necessarily have represented to herself that her devoted actions were all for the good of her son. But the genuine, caring do-gooder and the selfish manipulator can be hard to distinguish in practice, even within oneself.
But listen closely to what Augustine had to say about his meddling mother following him to Milan, after he tried to ditch her, and who, when she did catch up with him, promptly sent his deeply beloved mistress and mother of his son, Adeodatus, back to Africa because she was low-born and not good enough for her son:
“The woman with whom I was in the habit of sleeping was torn from my side on the grounds of being an impediment to my marriage, and my heart, which clung to her, was wounded and broken and dripping blood. She had returned to Africa after having made a vow to you [God] that she would never go to bed with another man, and she had left with me the natural son I had had by her. But I, in my misery, could not follow the example of a woman. I had two years to wait until I could have the girl to whom I was engaged [Monica had arranged a marriage for her son with a 13-year-old girl], and I could not bear the delay. So, since I was not so much a lover of marriage as a slave to lust, I found another woman for myself…. Nor was the wound healed which had been made by the cutting off of my previous mistress. It burned, it hurt intensely, and then it festered, and if the pain became duller, it became more desperate” (Confessions VI, 15).
It seems reasonable to at least consider the theory that Monica, perhaps unwittingly, used her son and manipulated him (lovingly, of course) to fulfill her own personal emotional and social needs. The net result of Monica’s positioning of herself in such a fashion in her son’s life is that Augustine was left desiring the unconditional love he didn’t get naturally from his parents. And perhaps that is why he became obsessively focused on love and the desire for love, the need for love that he felt so keenly but which he experienced as unbridled lust. It wasn’t only carnal pleasures that he was seeking in the fleshpots of Carthage. He was neurotically and unconsciously searching for the unconditional love he didn’t get from his parents. Naturally, he was not able to find what he was looking for in his contingent love conquests and mistresses from the lower classes. The love he found there, though physically satisfying, was never enough. Given his unquenchable obsession and frustration with sex, along with the persistent nagging of his mother, Augustine would finally find what he was looking for in a love relationship with a transcendent God and a lifelong celibate commitment to his beloved “Holy Mother” the Church. What he was unable to get from the woman he loved, he was able to get from this projection of mom onto the church. That alone, sealed with a vow of celibacy, gave him mastery and control over his obsessive sexual desires, a victory over concupiscence.
Finally, Augustine is able to resolve his obsessive-compulsive need for love by concluding that his inability to control his sexual desire and his sexual organ is not his personal fault. Rather, it is the fault of Original Sin and the consequent fall into sexual lust of Adam and Eve that Augustine labels “concupiscence”—a convenient, rather obvious, explanatory rationalization. Augustine comes to believe that concupiscence, the proclivity to sin, especially sexual sin, is passed on to all human beings through sexual intercourse, specifically, the sexual pleasure involved. The only realistic antidote to this situation for Augustine, the only force strong enough to control his unquenchable sexual desire, is complete abstinence, since, after his conversion, Augustine clings to the unnatural idea that all sex outside marriage and all sex that is not open to procreation is sinful and wrong because it cuts us off from God and must be avoided since there are many ways to go wrong sexually but only one narrow way to go right. Thus, Augustine converts to Christianity and embraces celibacy which, whatever else it may or may not represent, is certainly an effective compensation reaction for his sexual obsession and, simultaneously, the fulfillment of his desire for unconditional love. For Augustine, his ‘conversion’ to the priestly life is like hitting the jackpot.
But what, exactly, is wrong about sex that is not open to procreation? According to Augustine, it is a sin against nature because the natural and thus correct use of sex is exclusively for procreation, an idea that will be ratified and carried forward by Thomas Aquinas and his natural law perspective in the 13th century, and is still going strong today, affecting the lives of millions, maybe billions of Christians and which has influenced sexual mores and norms generally in the West. All other sex, other than sex that is open to procreation in marriage, is deviation and sin. Masturbation would be the quintessential unnatural vice since it is absolutely closed off to procreation, a sin that Aquinas thinks is more vicious than rape.
It is well-known that Augustine’s pessimistic views about sexuality, women, marriage, and the human condition have been and continue to be hugely influential for the development of Western sexual consciousness. Augustine’s neurotic ideas are still dominant factors in everyday conventional life. Sexual pessimism is the default conventional Western attitude about sex, despite the banal, superficial representation of sex in media, the arts, etc. The mainstay of Augustine’s orientation is that sexual energy and sexual practice must be constrained, repressed, and controlled because all sexuality, except for a very narrow range of permissible sex, is evil and will lead to the degradation of the person since human nature itself is rendered fundamentally corrupt by Original Sin. And that repression of sexuality in the Western tradition will have many negative consequences for individuals and for Western society as a whole, many victims and lots of collateral damage.
In her formidable and well-researched critique of Catholic Christian sexuality, Eunuchs for the Kingdom of Heaven, the theologian and Church scholar, Uta Ranke-Heinemann, asserts that“… for Augustine, the convert, procreation became the only goal and purpose of marriage, while he saw pleasure as an evil. ‘I am convinced,’ Augustine wrote, ‘that nothing turns the spirit of man away from the heights more than the caresses of woman and those movements of the body, without which a man cannot possess his wife.’” (Soliloquies I, 10)
Ranke-Heinemann continues to point to Augustine’s rather obvious pessimistic misogyny and naturalistic view of sexuality in his formulation of Original Sin and its concupiscent consequences for human nature:
“Augustine was the great creator of the Christian image of God, the world, and humanity that is still widely accepted today. He took the contempt for sex that saturates the work of the Church Fathers, both before him and in his own day, and to it he added a new factor: A personal and theological sexual anxiety. Augustine connected the transmission of original sin, which plays so great a role in his system of redemption, with the pleasure of sexual intercourse. For him original sin means eternal death, damnation for everyone who has not been redeemed by God’s grace….” (76)
Ranke-Heinemann thinks it is perfectly clear that Augustine saw the pleasure of sex as the very source of original sin. She says that “Augustine thought that when Adam and Eve disobeyed God and ate the forbidden fruit of Paradise, ‘they were ashamed and covered their sexual parts with fig leaves.’ He concludes from this that ‘this is where it comes from.” He means that what they were both trying to hide was the place whence the first sin is transmitted” (Sermons 151,8).
Regarding the fact that he is unable to control his lust or his sexual organ, Augustine places the blame for this squarely on the concupiscence which followed from the sin of Eve and Adam and thus distances himself from taking personal responsibility for this ‘fault’. Ranke-Heinemann points to a most revealing passage where Augustine asks: “But whence comes this unique situation of the sexual organs, that they are not ‘moved by the will,’ but ‘excited by lust’? And answers himself: ‘…the retribution for disobedience is simply disobedience itself….’ Punishment for the Fall was first exacted in the realm of sexuality. The attitude of the Church’s celibate hierarchy is that the locus par excellence of sin is sex, a view based on Augustine’s pleasure-hating fantasies.” (90) Unfortunately, Western sexual consciousness has been the victim of those “pleasure-hating” fantasies now for almost two centuries.
In sum and ratifying my previous family triangulation analysis, according to Ranke-Heinemann, “Augustine was the father of a fifteen-hundred-year-long anxiety about sex and an enduring hostility to it. He dramatizes the fear of sexual pleasure, equating pleasure with perdition in such a way that anyone who tries to follow his train of thought will have the sense of being trapped in a nightmare.” (78)
Wilhelm Reich: The Evil of Sexual Repression and How to Overcome it
In the The Function of the Orgasm, Wilhelm Reichgoes to the heart of the main thesis of the book when he claims that“the immediate cause of many devastating diseases can be traced to the fact that man is the sole species which does not fulfill the natural law of sexuality.” Sexual suppression causes disease. But what does Reich mean by the natural law of sexuality? This can be understood more clearly through the lens of what Reich calls “orgastic potency.” According to Reich, “psychic health depends upon orgastic potency, i.e., upon the degree to which one can surrender to and experience the climax of excitation in the natural sexual act. It is founded upon the healthy character attitude of the individual’s capacity for love. Psychic illnesses are the result of a disturbance of the natural ability to love. In the case of orgastic impotence, from which the overwhelming majority of people suffer, damming-up of biological energy occurs and becomes the source of irrational actions.”
According to Reich, “the essential requirement to cure psychic disturbances is the re-establishment of the natural capacity for love. It is dependent upon social as well as psychic conditions.” Reich’s idea regarding the failure of orgastic potency among the masses goes along with my belief that big government, big business, and big religion all seek to control the masses through the control and constraint of sexual energy in one way or another, an idea to which Reich points when he asserts that “compulsive morality and pathological sexuality go hand in hand.” That certainly seems to be the case with Augustine, and many after him, much to their detriment and ours, if Reich is correct.
Reich goes on to say that “it is banal and sounds rather hackneyed, but I maintain that every person who has succeeded in preserving a certain amount of naturalness knows this: those who are psychically ill need but one thing—complete and repeated genital gratification” (emphasis added).
Reich is very clear about the centrally important place of the surrendering aspect of “orgastic potency” for good health both psychically and physically, more important than mere erectile or ejaculative potency. He puts it this way: “Erective and ejaculative potency are merely indispensable preconditions for orgastic potency. Orgastic potency is the capacity to surrender to the flow of biological energy, free of any inhibitions; the capacity to discharge completely the dammed-up sexual excitation through involuntary, pleasurable convulsions of the body. Not a single neurotic is orgastically potent, and the character structures of the overwhelming majority of men and women are neurotic.” This claim is backed up by clinical experience, Reich asserts. He states that “clinical experience shows that, as a result of universal sexual suppression, men and women have lost the ability to experience complete surrender (“orgastic potency”) to the involuntary and and overwhelming immersion of sexual desire.” In short, Reich firmly believes, following Freud, that “every form of neurosis has a genital disturbance which corresponds to it.” And that disturbance is due to the imposition of socio-economical demands on the natural expression of sexual desires. “Sexual repression,” Reich claims, “is of a socio-economic and not of a biological origin.” This is a very clear outcome of the Industrial Revolution, how it has impacted the geography of the human body..
Sexual suppression has the function of making man amenable to authority, just as the castration of stallions and bulls has the function of producing willing draft animals. No one had thought about the devastating consequences of psychic castration, and no one can predict how human society will cope with them.
According to Reich’s analysis, there is ample evidence to support the contention that “the cultural upheavals of the twentieth century” are determined by mankind’s struggle to reclaim the natural laws of sexuality, as Reich makes clear in his analysis of the three layers of the human psyche:
The patriarchal, authoritarian era of human history has attempted to hold the asocial impulses in check by means of compulsive moralistic prohibitions. It is in this way that civilized man, if he can indeed be called civilized, developed a psychic structure consisting of three layers. On the surface, he wears an artificial mask of self-control, compulsive insincere politeness, and pseudo-sociality. This mask conceals the second layer, the Freudian ‘unconscious’, in which sadism, avarice, lasciviousness, envy, perversions of all kinds, etc., are held in check without, however, being deprived of the slightest amount of energy. This second layer is the artificial product of a sex-negating culture and is usually experienced consciously as a gaping inner emptiness and desolation. Beneath it, in the depth, natural sociality and sexuality, spontaneous joy in work, the capacity for love, exist and operate. This third and deepest layer…is feared. It is at variance with every aspect of authoritarian education and control. At the same time, it is the only real hope man has of one day mastering social misery.” (234)
Sex-negating cultures are carried along by sex-negating religions, aided and abetted by big business and big government “in the disruption of the unity of body feeling by sexual suppression, and in the continual longing to re-establish contact with oneself and with the world, lies the root of all sex-negating religions. ‘God’ is the mysticized idea of the vegetative harmony between self and nature. From this viewpoint, religion can be reconciled with natural science only if God personifies the natural laws and man is included in the natural process,” an idea with a hint of Spinozan pantheism coming to the surface and which thus implicates and characterizes some Eastern approaches to sexuality, such as can be found in the Taoist approach to human sexuality.
Taoist Sexuality
Reflections in this section are based primarily on two works by Mantak and Maneewan Chia: Taoist Secrets of Love: Cultivating Male Sexual Energy and Healing Love Through the Tao: Cultivating Female Sexual Energy
The Taoist understanding and practice of sexuality is substantially different than the prevailing Western model. Whereas Western consciousness, thanks to Augustine’s sexual pessimism, looks at sexuality as those actions that are rationally and mechanically necessary for procreation, Taoism views human sexuality as one of the most essential life energies, one that should be cultured and developed, refined and savored.
The Taoists call sexual energy jing or ching. Jing is infused with qi or chi. Chi is the most elemental and pervasive of all life energy and is in all human actions according to the harmonic principles of yin/yang. Chi and jing are especially concentrated in semen, so semen is not to be wasted meaninglessly, purposelessly. Seminal retention, sex without typical orgasmic ejaculation, especially for men, is a centrally important aspect of sexual practice in the Taoist tradition so that chi energy is amplified by jing energy during sex and is not lost through ejaculatory orgasm.
“The Tao or the ‘Way’ for every human being,” Chia asserts, “is to creatively transform their energy over the course of a lifetime back to its original state of harmonious balance.” The “refining of one’s awareness of sexual energy—with or without a partner—is one of the simplest ways for humans to return to pure consciousness and experience the deepest rhythms of life.”
Here is a summary of the three fundamental tenets of the Taoist approach to sex, according to Chia, an approach to sexual practice dating back 8000 years or more.
1. Conservation of sexual energy is the first principle. “Taoists accept sexual love as natural and healthy but know the momentary pleasure of genital orgasm with ejaculation is superficial compared to the profound ecstasy possible when love is enjoyed without the loss of the powerful male seed.”
2. Transformation of sexual energy is the second principle of cultivation. During sexual arousal, the “ching” or sexual essence stored in the testicles expands rapidly and causes some energy to naturally rise to higher centers in the heart, brain, glands, and nervous system. This upward movement is cut short by ejaculation outward, so most men never become aware of the full power of their sexuality. The Taoist method perfects this upward transformation of sex energy by opening subtle channels from the genitals up the spine to the head and back down the spine to the navel” in what Chia calls the Microcosmic Orbit.
3. Balancing the polarity of female-male (yin-yang) forces is the third principle. Balancing this core sexual polarity in a couple or within oneself is true depth psychology, as it nourishes man and woman and the solo practitioner at their innermost root.
* * * *
I first became aware of the Taoist publications of Mantak Chia in 1987 while studying for my doctorate in philosophy. Among his numerous works, I was particularly interested in Taoist Secrets of Love: Cultivating Male Sexual Energy, discussed briefly above, since I had long been interested in Eastern philosophy generally, and Taoist spiritual practice specifically. Chia details and illustrates esoteric but down-to-earth sexual practices based on ancient Chinese philosophy in the Taoist tradition in a clear and lucid style—one of the first English-language texts to make these Taoist sexual practices and concrete spiritual disciplines readily available to Western readers.
The basic idea of the sexual practice for men presented in the text, as noted above, involves the arousal of sexual energy (“ching Chi”), the withholding of this energy through seminal retention (non-ejaculation), and the assimilation and circulation of the aroused energy in the “microcosmic orbit”—a fundamental spiritual pathway of energy that circulates in and around the body, along with lesser ‘circuits’ radiating out from the primary orbit.
The aroused sexual energy can also be ‘stored’ for future ‘use’ and can be deployed in various ways for healing, spiritual growth and development, and to help yourself and others in various practical ways. The energy can also be used for accomplishing specific things in the world and for sexual ‘magik’—ends Chia dismisses as subordinate to the true purpose of the practice.
The benefits of this practice are claimed by Chia to be robust good health of mind, heart, and body; spiritual growth and development; peace and tranquility, happiness, longevity, and, ultimately, immortality. When I read about this sexual practice back in 1987, I was excited by the possibility of an alternative to the repressive, disease engendering Western representation and repression of sexuality inherited from Augustine’s pessimism, if even a fraction of the Taoist claims were true. I found the logic of seminal retention to be of special interest.
Intrigued by Chia’s clear presentation of the ancient Chinese ideas, I began the practice of working with the various exercises he describes for becoming a proficient and caring lover, including numerous meditative exercises geared to mastering the process of seminal Kung Fu, as well as physical and emotional exercises. There is a lot more to it than one might think at first glance since the sexual relation for humans engages every aspect of one’s life, involving many subtle energies with subordinate, connective energies. Human beings are essentially sexual. Sex is not something added on to a neutral human being. The repressive denial of sexuality is a denial and repression of our very humanity. To become proficient at the practice of seminal Kung Fu requires that one get his or her whole life in order, as effective engagement with the practice will demand this, a lifetime project. You can’t cheat the Way. No parts will function well unless they are integrated properly in the whole.
After more than thirty years of sometimes occasional and sometimes sustained practice, mostly without a partner, I believe I have made some progress, although in no way do I think I have mastered or am even close to mastering this ancient art and science of lovemaking in its manifold subtleties and connected, as it is, to the whole psycho-sexual-social domain.
For the most part, Chia describes the process from a practice-perspective that involves a loving and committed couple, which would be the ideal, I suppose, although the practice of seminal retention and contemplative circulation and deployment of aroused sexual energy can also be accomplished just as well alone, as Chia states. Okay, maybe not ‘just as well’ … anyway, what does that mean, as if the solo and dual practices can be effectively compared, which they cannot be and should not be. It is all one and the same practice. It is great if you can manage to have a partner in this practice, but dual practice is a very challenging part of the ideal, especially since romantic love relationships are already a challenge for Westerners due to reasons having nothing to do with the Taoist practice of seminal Kung Fu, as such, and a lot more to do with Augustinian pessimism. But it becomes very clear when engaging in the Taoist practice of seminal retention that you must get your relational life straight, as a whole, free from the value-laden depiction of sexuality proffered by the current conventional culture, eliminating all bias and pretense before you will be able to make any real progress with Taoist sexuality.
For example, how could spiritual development happen through sexual energy if you are lying to or attempting to manipulate or control or fake it in any way with your lover? Not possible. And the same is true for the whole of my life since it is the whole of me alone which engages the practice. I must be in harmony and sync in all areas of my life: personal, practical, emotional, social, spiritual, intellectual, etc., in accordance with the values I live by. The practice itself will require that of you if you are to progress in the practice to its higher possibilities.
One thing I have found about the practice of seminal Kung Fu is that it requires that I come out in the open about myself, no hiding in delusion and pretense. That would also be true for a couple. It is crucial that there be a relationship of genuine love, care, and respect between the partners who would engage in this love-generating practice, requiring openness, forthrightness, and a kind of rare transparency and harmony such that they become one in their life and lovemaking, generating and circulating the love energy through the exceptional experience of what Chia calls the Valley Orgasm rather than the typical ejaculatory orgasm that drives the Western approach.
In many ways, relationship is a fundamental part of the practice. Getting love relationships straight in your life is always a challenge. I know. I have found it exceedingly difficult to do and have consequently relied more on solo practice for my development over the years, which has its own challenges. This has led me into a prolonged, personal examination and exploration of romantic/sexual/love relationships in my life and in the society in which I live.
Partners engaging in this practice would have to be on the same wavelength regarding the central importance of the practice itself. For example, making love in this practice is done frequently and slowly and can necessitate a fair amount of time from the daily or weekly schedule, which should revolve around the practice and not the other way around. The practice becomes a major pathway to spiritual development. Partners would have to find time for the practice—while still dealing with all of the other time-demanding issues and interests of life. This can be more challenging than it sounds on a daily basis, long-term. Maintaining a vigorous sexual relationship for the purpose of spiritual development with a partner is difficult to accomplish in our society because of the widespread conventionality of sexual values and beliefs generated in a culture of materialism, consumerism, secularism, etc. and guided by beliefs stemming from the work of theologians like Augustine and Aquinas.
There are many ways to be led astray and go wrong in the Taoist practice of love, just as there are many ways for love relationships to go wrong under any circumstances. It has been hard enough trying to find and maintain a genuine love relationship, but on top of that, to find a partner who would be interested in and capable of engaging this esoteric practice and be able and willing to engage it effectively. To find such a partner would be a gift of great value. “Life is simple and natural if you keep it that way…. For example, to balance the sexual relationship you basically need to know that woman is water and has the power to regulate man, who is fire. On a deeper level, you would discover that man has both fire and water in his body and can achieve a perfect internal balance by harmonizing his fire (thinking mind) with his own water (sperm fluid, or sexual “waters”).”
Contemplatio 