02 March 2016

Guru-student love and sex

I have never studied with any teacher who was celibate, and most had sexual relations with their students. For the life of me, I cannot figure out why so many criticize such relationships as abusive, accusing the teacher of "humiliating abuses."  This is a kind of 1970s-style feminist position regarding the woman as being weak and vulnerable, taken advantage of by some lust-driven, power hungry male authority.

First, I object to looking at sex between a spiritual student and a teacher as being an abusive relationship, and that in consensual sex within such a relation that the woman is the victim of abuse. I experience that women  are well aware of their own sexuality and attractiveness such that they can beguile and manipulate even the strongest, self-assured male.  I see women as intelligent, very interpersonally aware, very centered, and quite manipulative in most relationships.

Secondly, no matter what your spiritual path, at some point you have to become aware of your energetic body, the so called Subtle Body, with its energies, flowing rivers of light, bliss and ecstasies, and totally alive with energies in order to bring joy to an otherwise barren practice of observing emptiness and loosening identification with the personal self.

Love and sex are a beautiful entryway into making the body come alive to its own Subtle Body underpinnings.  Not only sex, of course, but even moreso, romantic love.  One needs to awaken one's heart through love, whatever type it is, but nothing awakens the energetic body so much as romantic love and associated sex, especially when the love is so deep, and the sex so moving that one experiences orgasm in the brain and entire body, not just genital orgasms.  Most cannot imagine the energetic movement involved in such orgasms.

Then just ordinary conversations between such lovers leads to a completely open and surrendered heart such as one's own internal energies get intertwined "visibly" with those of your lover.  One actually "sees" rivers of light and energy flow between the couple in the most ecstatic wonder, such that both experience the presence of God, the divine existing separately from the couple, and to which both bow in abject surrender at the feet of the Life Force.

The Life Force, that energetic presence which is you deeper than the body, thrives in love, thrives in sexual union, demands unlimited sexual contact, loving touches, verbal touching, massage, etc.  Nothing is held back in the exploration of the other in divine union.

This is what spirituality has to awaken in you before their is a complete Self-Realization: a total awakening Shakti within you, and Shakti knows no boundaries, no rules of exclusion, no limits to her lust and desire, and in fact, generally it is the woman who carries the light of Shakti, and is the gatekeeper of Shakti, not the man, unless he is as open as is she.

Thus the ultimate awakening relationships are determined totally by how open each partner is to their own desires, lusts, energies and the life force, and finds someone as open as the other.  It is this openness that is important, not the presence of love, or sex.  The openness has to be total, allowing full access to all one's inner depths and even inner demons, and a full expression of those own's own depths to the other.

To me, someone who is that open should be that open to anyone else so capable.  If a teacher can give this grace, this opening to a student, so be it.  And if a student can bring this grace to a teacher, it is a great gift to both.

Only if you see and experience spirituality in this way can you possibly understand love and sexual relationships between a spiritual teacher and his or her students.

9 comments:

  1. Ed.........

    I'd agree with your position except where the sexual behavior devolves into emotionally abusive encounters based on the male guru needing to vilify or castigate the female student as a means of attempting to rid himself of his own self doubts or poor self esteem.

    Mark

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    1. Only someone who has been there can really know about this.

      I met her 12 years ago and my Heart Center was totally on FIRE, from day one for over a year...it was the most wonderful experience, and still is.

      I was so totally in LOVE with her that even strangers could see it. One friend commented that it was a sin to TOTALLY LOVE someone that much. Some days it was so powerful I thought my Heart Center would just Explode.

      I never knew what a real 'Soul Mate' was until this happened out of the blue.

      Edji, you are the only person that I ever met that had ever experienced such a deep love reaching into other dimensions that it is ALL CONSUMING.

      We have been married 10 years and it is everything you say above....and more. Honesty..wow!

      It was also the start of both of us studying with Robert Adams and you Edji. EVERYDAY TOGETHER!

      I have to laugh at how the outside world has fallen away and the inside flow has taken over.

      Thankfulness and Gratitude are of utmost importance on this path and we deeply thank our Teachers for calling us.

      I LOVE YOU EDJI.

      Edji your radiating light is reaching deeply into the Mind of this World and making many changes. You are lighting up untold areas with your blessings. steve

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  2. Steve, yes, this kind of awakening through romantic love is rare. Rarely do two people love each other to the depths that they are completely open to their own depths and another.

    The energy flows, the bliss, the sense of grace and surrender are so ecstatic that one sense of Self becomes rooted in the divine, in God for lack of ecstatic words of description.

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  3. I couldn't disagree more. Celibacy occurs in sages, not because they "control" desire, but because there is no longer any desire to control. They have absolutely no interest in sex. I believe it was Ramana Maharshi who said that when love for Brahman becomes intense, no desires of any kind can remain.

    I know this to be an ABSOLUTE fact. This is not mere "intellectual knowing." Much can be told about ones spiritual attainment by knowing whether they have overcome sexual desire.


    "Good and honest desire leads to end of desire."
    ~ Anandamayi Ma

    "Desires are just waves in the mind. You know a wave when you see one. A desire is just a thing among many. I feel no urge to satisfy it, no action needs to be taken on it. Freedom from desire means this: the compulsion to satisfy is absent."

    ~ Nisargadatta

    "Desire is poverty. Desire is the greatest impurity of the mind. Desire is the motive force for action. Desire in the mind is the real impurity. Even a spark of desire is a very great evil."
    ~ Swami Sivananda

    "Only a soul free of desire can taste eternity."
    ~ Lalleshwari

    "My mind is free of thoughts, for there are no desires to slave for."
    ~ Nisargadatta

    "The desire for God is a desire to destroy all desires."
    ~ Swami Krishnananda

    “He who, before he leaves his body, learns to surmount the promptings of desire and anger is a saint and is happy.”
    ~ Bhagavad Gita

    "‘No want’ is the greatest bliss. It can be realized only by experience. Even an emperor is no match for a man with no wants."
    ~ Ramana Maharshi

    "He whose intellect overcomes his desire is higher than the angels."
    ~ Rumi

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    1. To which I'd reply that it's not the case that they(the celibates) have absolutely no interest in sex. Instead, they simply don't have the compulsion to act on it, they don't identify with the desire so readily as perhaps they once did.

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    2. So, why Nisargadatta smoked if compulsion to satisfy this desire was absent?

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    3. Nicotine is physically addicting, I'm certain he started at an early age and he no doubt found it enjoyable so it was one pleasure he wasn't about to deny himself. So if anybody would have tried to "reason" with him about the hazards, he would have simply ignored them(or given his temperament told them to buzz off).

      Mark

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