Sex + enlightenment

[riplo]

Anyone every had an enlightenment type experience from just sex (or some kind of sexual yoga) alone?

I'd be interested to hear your stories, or if this is even possible or a valid path.

[No-Thing]

Every experience is an enlightened experience. You are the light of the world! NEO wake uP!!!

[riplo]

That may be true, but it's not really answering the question

[Preetom]

@riplo Enlightenment is not an experience. Don't mix any experience with enlightenment. Yeah you can have crazy, wild, unbelievable experiences while blowing your load (I've had one) but it has nothing to do with permanent abiding non dual awareness aka Enlightenment.

[Prabhaker]

22 hours ago, riplo said:

if this is even possible or a valid path.

From Sex to Superconsciousness

https://www.oshorajneesh.com/download/osho-books/hindi-translations/From_Sex_to_Superconsciousness.pdf  (download in pdf)

[Guest Quanty]

Yes. The whole point of awakening is redirecting the sexual energy in oneself. 

Can be experienced with an opposite sex during tantra, but is not the same. 

[CreamCat]

On 7/5/2018 at 9:42 PM, Quanty said:

Yes. The whole point of awakening is redirecting the sexual energy in oneself. 

Can be experienced with an opposite sex during tantra, but is not the same. 

What does it mean to redirect the sexual energy in oneself? Is it like self fellatio or masturbation?

Edited July 7, 2018 by CreamCat

[Bill Eichman]

What is an "enlightenment type experience" as you mean those words in this context?

Classic moksha enlightenments are about leaving this world behind, dying permanently, no rebirths (assuming one believes in rebirths) no connections, gone, gone, all the way gone, never coming back.

(That's the mahayana heart sutra mantr -- gatey, gatey, paragatey, para samgatey, bodhi svaha -- "Gone, gone, all the way gone, gone all the way. I woke up! Boom!"

Now, sex is usually the opposite of liberation from rebirth. In fact, sex is what got us reborn in the first place. And one does not exactly become highly motivated to get going from this existence when one is pressed tightly to someone who turns you on and motivates you to engage in something which is indistinguishable from making pregnancy happen.

But, doing sex yoga is one of the fastest and strongest known methods for inducing trance visions and hypnogogic visionary states, for starting up the siddhis (powers), and a number of other things.

If you include non-moksha "enlightenments", then, sure, I have, and pretty much anyone will who does sex yoga, sex magic, and deep sexual self-development.

I think there is a lot to be said for the idea that a person who is not sexually completed, that is, who has not yet become sexually adult, known themselves through the eyes of their sexual partners,  and has become sexually wise and at peace, may have specific problems with moksha enlightenments.

They may regret and crave, seek to go back, and so on.

=====================

Then there is the question and topics of sex and kundalini. And the sexual alchemys, including the taoist longevity alchemy and the making of elixirs and amrita. 

Very powerful transformative experiences with sex yogas? Definitely.

 
 

[CreamCat]

44 minutes ago, Bill Eichman said:

Classic moksha enlightenments are about leaving this world behind, dying permanently, no rebirths (assuming one believes in rebirths) no connections, gone, gone, all the way gone, never coming back.

(That's the mahayana heart sutra mantr -- gatey, gatey, paragatey, para samgatey, bodhi svaha -- "Gone, gone, all the way gone, gone all the way. I woke up! Boom!"

Does Leo Gura preach Classic moksha enlightenments?

[Bill Eichman]

He teaches the advaita union with brahman, which is in the class of moksha enlightenments, yes.

He's using modern language and modern practices, I think. I have not yet studied this in detail. I want to remain in a state of unknowing for a bit longer, and directly experience what people are doing. 

From what I have gathered, he doesn't seem to emphasize the original language and theory, which is the realization that atman, the individual soul which survives death and is reborn, was always an illusion. there was always only brahman, ultimate self inhabiting ultimate reality, one and only one. 

Everything is already god, is a way of thinking about this. Always was, always will be, nothing but god. You are god, I am god. The appearance of not being god, and of being two seperate beings, is a mistake that god makes intentionally so that he/we can have the bliss of reunion. 

Advaita has a specific and interesting approach to the problem of liberation. It also has some specific problems, that sometimes are not noticed for quite a while.

We are in seamless unity. What is, all that is, is god.

If there is a million deaths from a war, that is god. If you have a friend who can't get laid and kills himself over a girl, that's god. If a country dumps nuclear waste into the ocean and kills all the life their, and the whole world eventually dies from the loss of the base of the food pyramid, that is god.

Everything that happens must happen, because it is brahman.

it was a perfect philosophy for seekers in Shankaras time. Maybe even in the bhagvhan's time - the person who renamed himself osho ended up teaching mostly a variant of advaita.

But. advaita is one school out of several dozen, each with a slightly different, or very different idea about how to attain moksha liberation. 

Now we are here, at this time in history, and we have the ability to know that there are competing models of enlightenment. Should we still make the choice to pick one as true, and declare the other's false?

Edited July 6, 2018 by Bill Eichman

[CreamCat]

Oh shit. What have I gotten myself into?

2 hours ago, Bill Eichman said:

The appearance of not being god, and of being two seperate beings, is a mistake that god makes intentionally so that he/we can have the bliss of reunion.

This god is weird. I can't imagine why god would really want to intentionally split its perception into infinitely many perspectives. This human experience feels unnecessary if I am really god. I want to regain godhood already. Does the bliss of reunion have some purpose? If I was god, why could I not fathom my own intentions? Is it intentional amnesia?

Leo is right. I am not ready for enlightenment, yet. I need 10 years of personal development and career development before even thinking about enlightenment.

Edited July 6, 2018 by CreamCat

[Bill Eichman]

Waiting is good advice.

There is a consistent message that you'll find all over the planet, in every system I have studied.

That message is, a person should be deeply experienced in life, and have developed themselves as a whole adult, before they seek liberation. Whole adults have the best chance of success, and the best chance of handling the results. 

People have the idea that "enlightenment" solves problems. It doesn't. You see problems differently, and you may be able to let some go, or use the minds that come along with the enlightenment package to more quickly deal with a problem. But real and inherent problems will still be real and inherent, and because you see and understand in a really astonishing new way, you will see that they are real and inherent, and must be borne.

People also have the idea that enlightenment will confer special benefits. It doesn't, not in the sense that they mean. It gives you responsibilities, not benefits.

Well, that's a big topic.

Anyway, Leo gave you what I would say was good advice. However, you can continue to so self-development and enhance your minds, explore many things, and improve yourself as a human and person , and improve the speed and effectiveness at which you can do anything you like, by continuing with training.

The training is valuable in a thousand ways.

 

10 hours ago, CreamCat said:

This god is weird. I can't imagine why god would really want to intentionally split its perception into infinitely many perspectives. This human experience feels unnecessary if I am really god. I want to regain godhood already. Does the bliss of reunion have some purpose? If I was god, why could I not fathom my own intentions? Is it intentional amnesia?

4

Those are all really good questions, the same ones I had.

You have to keep in mind that each school's ideas are the product of their times. every school was trying to resolve some paradox or problem that was a really big deal for the people of that era, who all collectively believed such-and-such an idea from earlier generations.

The way to resolve a troubling paradox is by telling a new story which includes a solution to the paradox in the structure of the story.

That's what Adi Shankara, the person who wrote the first clearly Advaita texts..('A' meaning not, and 'dvaita' meaning two) in the 600s was doing. India had a thousand years of seeking moksha as a cultural foundation at that point, and a lot of religious conflict and class warfare came along with that. His ideas were seen as a breath of simplicity and as a way to share the benefits of vedanta more widely. it's a little cheesey to make the reference, but you could think of it as being similar to Luther starting protestant christianity by saying that everyone should have equal access to god, to be able to read the bible.

Saying that there is really only brahman, you see, cuts out all the class and moral superiority thinking that was core to the vedas and upanishads, and to the idea of karma and rebirth that they taught as their foundation. 

That was the real benefit of advaita. It offers an escape from karma, as they understood karma at that time.

Having that escape from the karma story was such a powerful benefit, that questions like "Why this appearance of separateness, then? What's the fucking point?" did not come up except among its critics, who were all high rank authorities who benefitted from being high rank in the competing religions. And obviously, they were assholes who 'just didn't get it'.

As moderns I think we have a new obligation to look at the methods and ideas of the old systems with a much larger perspective than they had available to them, and we should take what looks like it works from anywhere we find it and then test it hard for practical usefullness. And we that should not be religious, and should carefully mark out the religious material, keep it around for art and culture, and watch in ourselves for signs of religious thinking.   

[CreamCat]

Can you give me some broad outline of various schools of sexual enlightenment and moksha enlightenment and who teach them?

Leo Gura seems legit and practical. But, I may need to study materials from people other than him to get a bigger perspective and recognize blind spots in Leo's approach.

In addition to Leo Gura, I tried Ryan Cropper's YouTube videos. I had two problems with his videos. First, he doesn't seem to give the big picture of self development. Second, his pronunciations are frustratingly difficult to recognize. Since my birth, I have lived in a country where nobody speaks english. While I watched Ryan Cropper's videos, I often had to rewind and rewatch a segment multiple times. Leo Gura's pronunciations are crisp and clear although Leo speaks significantly faster than Ryan Cropper. My listening comprehension for any language including my first language is not great, and I can't maintain intense focus required to hear Ryan Cropper's pronunciations for more than a few seconds at a time.

By the way, Ryan Cropper teaches astral projection. If astral projection is real, then it is an indication that a human mind can potentially exist without the human body. Ryan Cropper said he met an astral being called David who used to be a human before physical death. Perhaps, Ryan Cropper just made it up in his mind, and thus it was literally he who pretended to be David. The notion that we are the same god makes sense if solipsism is the truth. But, solipsism doesn't explain how my mind made up all the complex things in the world.

Edited July 7, 2018 by CreamCat

[student]

You will "get" that only if you have a sincere desire in knowing the other. Everything must be sincere. It is not about a "must", about "getting" something. It is about letting go and wanting to get closer to each other. How close? You don't know, but you just want something, but not something superficial, but something else. You want the other, the other that you don't know, and you want that, the not knowing what the other is. You want to immerse yourself in the not-knowing, because that's what feels good, not something else. 

Enlightenment experience? This is superficial, too many words. You are talking about spiritual "sex". That's not really sex, because you are not focusing on the body, but on the other, the unknown other, and then you. 

[Bill Eichman]

19 hours ago, CreamCat said:

By the way, Ryan Cropper teaches astral projection. If astral projection is real, then it is an indication that a human mind can potentially exist without the human body. Ryan Cropper said he met an astral being called David who used to be a human before physical death. Perhaps, Ryan Cropper just made it up in his mind, and thus it was literally he who pretended to be David. The notion that we are the same god makes sense if solipsism is the truth. But, solipsism doesn't explain how my mind made up all the complex things in the world.

1

It's a very good idea to try to absorb the ideas and the reported experiences of several to many teachers if you can. If one was learning something like how to program or how to practice surgery or how to manage a company, it would be unthinkable in modern times not to try to get as broad a base of experience possible. To learn from many teachers, even while you have one mentor or one favorite teacher. To try to learn the newest techniques and ideas, because they are very likely to be extremely important, and to contain ideas and models that have been taken from hard experience and past failures.

That's the modern model of learning. Learn from everything, combine teachings, keep what works, set aside what doesn't.

But, the model of learning that is still associated with "enlightenment" is based on the much older model of apprenticeship. Loyalty to one school and one teacher is still an ideal, with each school claiming it is the right way and all other ways are wrong, and teachers claiming that mixing ways and methods will result in disaster.

Yet none of them can point to examples of such disasters. Dire warnings without offering evidence. That is a sign of religion and politics, not a working system. If their system worked, its results would be clear and intensely attractive to seekers, and there would be no need for dire warnings not to mix systems.

I write the above both as general perspective, and as an intro to the topic of astral projection.

I suggest you make a point of studying astral projection as described by multiple teachers. There are several different types of projection, and different uses for it. And almost all modern talk of astral projection has its origins in one of just a few sources.

You would want to read the three Robert Monroe books, for example. They are the source of most modern projection ideas. It's especially important to read the third book after reading the first two. In the third book he says truly revolutionary things. Yet few people read it.

I think I should point out to you that astral projection does not disconnect consciousness from the body.  No one who has ever reported an astral projection experience did not have a body. When you have them, you will still have a body. You will return to that body and use it if you ever tell anyone the story of that experience.

Astral projection is not what people think. Oddly, when people experience that for themselves, they often stop exploring it and miss out on discovering what can be done with it. It's like throwing away a supercomputer because you expected a flying machine.

[stevegan928]

20 hours ago, CreamCat said:

But, solipsism doesn't explain how my mind made up all the complex things in the world.

all complexity is created in the mind actually

[Bill Eichman]

7 hours ago, stevegan928 said:

all complexity is created in the mind actually

How does this work? Where is the complexity? Where is the mind?

And how would you demonstrate this?

[Highest]

Sex is needed for production of mankind, for self-survival. But it will not produce spiritual experiences, all these yoga movements, all this sex yoga may give you better sex, but it will not  produce enlightenment. Most sages would probably tell you to refrain from sex if you are on the spiritual path, for countless reasons.

[riplo]

19 hours ago, Highest said:

Sex is needed for production of mankind, for self-survival. But it will not produce spiritual experiences, all these yoga movements, all this sex yoga may give you better sex, but it will not  produce enlightenment. Most sages would probably tell you to refrain from sex if you are on the spiritual path, for countless reasons.

It's presumptuous to rule something out completely because some sages advice against it. Sex has been demonised for a long time and seen as temptation but there are definitely people who have used sex for their spiritual development. 

Edited July 9, 2018 by riplo