CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Sex beyond the Body

Sex and spirit—the two seem like such a strange combination. Mter all, the Roman Catholic Church has, for centuries, driven an immovable wedge between them in the interest of promoting “morality” and “holiness.” According to Catholic theology, we all suffer the effects of original sin precisely because all of us are born as a result of sexual union.

That's why Mary had to be a virgin and why she herself had to be the product of an immaculate conception. Otherwise, Jesus would have been born in sin just like the rest of us.

Godliness has become synonymous with being asexual. Priests are expected to have thoroughly harnessed their sexual energy and redirected it toward spiritual pursuits.

Protestant traditions, as well, have spent enormous amounts of time and energy in decrying unapproved styles of sexual activity, while limiting legitimate expressions to unions between husband and wife alone. There isn't a television preacher worth his or her salt who hasn't got the congregants frothed up over extramarital sex, homosexuality, and family values.

Sex has gotten such a bad name for so long from the pulpit that we take it for granted that holiness is to be equated with chastity. In many people's minds, to be sexual, especially in forms disapproved of by the church, is to be barred from genuine spirituality.

True saints are able to suppress their sexual urges so thoroughly that, after a while, they're apparently transformed into something less earthy and more palatable to God. Although he's the one who came up with it, God just doesn't like all that dirty sex stuff and, apparently, refuses to have anything to do with those who are so inclined.

But spirit and sex are not so easily separated.

A DELIGHTFUL SECRET

This point was brought home to me one day when I was visiting a woman in the hospital. She was in her early eighties and a staunch member of my church. Hardly a Sunday would go by without her sitting in the pews with her husband. A woman of immense compassion, she was tremendously supportive of the congregation and of me personally.

She had been undergoing chemotherapy and having a rather difficult time. We weren't sure how long she would live.

When I came into her room, her head was covered by a bandana to hide her hair loss. Her face was thin. I looked at her hands, holding a book. Her skin was almost transparent.

As soon as I sat down, she turned to a page in the book and asked me to read it. I wish now that I had written down the tide of the book, because what I read struck a chord. The main character was musing about her life and said that she had come closer to God during sex than she ever had by entering a church sanctuary.

Knowing how devout this member was, I fully expected that she would launch into a monologue about how our society was falling apart because there is far too much sexual freedom. This laxity was shredding our moral values. I expected her to say, “Books like this should be banned.”

Instead, when I handed the book back to her, she turned her head on the pillow in my direction.

“You know,” she said softly, “it's true.” She smiled with a twinkle in her eye, as if confessing to a delicious secret.

GUILT, SEX, AND THE CHURCH

Realizing that there was no chance of eliminating the sexual drive, the Christian Church mandated that its only legitimate expression be within marriage. This directive was enforced by a host of proscriptions against other forms of expression. These were buttressed by an endless well of shame and guilt that were proclaimed so frequently, and with such vehemence, that they became part of the human psyche. To be human, almost by definition, was to be guilty about sexuality.

It didn't help when the church looked at the story of the Garden of Eden and interpreted the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil as sexuality. It's the ultimate double bind to realize that the very thing that brought us into the world was the source of our downfall.

Sex is not something we do; it is who we are. Is it any wonder, then, that we find ourselves at war with our very essence? Is it any wonder that we live in a ruptured state, as our double mind puts sex in the evil category, making it something to be denied, while the body cries out for union?

I'm convinced that this rending is made even more intolerable because we carry within us a dim, but persistent, memory of some other form of glory. There is a part of us that knows differently, and it cannot be silenced.

Advertisers have known this for a long time. That's why products that are linked to sexual expression are almost irresistible. We fall in love with cars. We caress the soft silkiness of a fabric. We tune in to programs whose trailers flash a woman's bosom in front of us. Obviously, something within us is looking for a type of intimacy that is lacking in our daily lives. In the face of the sexual urge, the pious platitudes of the church can often be meaningless.

Despite all the guilt placed on us, something inside us remembers. Something inside us knows that sexual union is an entry into the sacred. It's not the sacred of a watered-down morality, but it is, instead, a memory of wholeness and freedom we once knew. There is something in us that knows we once lived with a heavenly body.

A RESURRECTION DEBATE

The apostle Paul seemed to have a strong sense of this other type of body when he wrote to the Corinthian church:

But some will ask, “How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?” Fool! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies…. But God gives it a body as he has chosen…. Not all flesh is alike, but there is one flesh for human beings, another for animals, another for birds, and another for fish. There are both heavenly bodies and earthly bodies.…So it is with the resurrection. What is sown is perishable, what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power. It is sown a physical body, it is raised a spiritual body.¹⁰⁰

According to this view, there are two bodies, one physical and one spiritual. For Paul, the first was apparently reserved for the physical world, whereas the enjoyment of the spiritual body had to wait for the resurrection.

In fact, it was the issue of the resurrection that sparked this entire discourse. It was the continuation of a debate that began decades earlier.

At the time of Jesus’ ministry, one of many areas of contention between the Sadducees and the Pharisees was the issue of the resurrection. The idea of physical resurrection had gained support during the Maccabean revolt. There was great concern that those who gave their lives for Israel's freedom should have some kind of reward in the afterlife. Speculation was rampant as to what that afterlife would be like.

For some, the idea of a physical resurrection was ghastly. And if you think about it, they had a point. If there was a physical resurrection, would it mean that those who were mangled in battle would come back to life in the same body? Would they continue with the same wounds and disabilities? If so, that hardly seemed an adequate compensation.

It was the Pharisees who advocated the idea of a bodily resurrection. In opposition to them, the Sadducees, ever prudent and concerned with this life, denied the idea altogether.

And so it was that a few Sadducees came to Jesus in order to see where he stood on this most crucial issue. They posed a question to him in such a way that the idea of a bodily resurrection would appear to be patently absurd:

Now there were seven brothers among us; the first married and died childless, leaving the widow to his brother. The second did the same, so also the third, down to the seventh. Last of all, the woman herself died. In the resurrection, then, whose wife of the seven will she be? For all of them had married her.¹⁰¹

It was a good question. Because having children who could carry on the family name was so crucial to the idea of immortality, Hebrew law had stipulated that if a man died without children, it was the duty of the brother of that man to marry the widow. The firstborn male child of this second marriage would be the son of the deceased man, not of his brother. In this way, both the first brother's name and his inheritance would be perpetuated.¹⁰² The tradition was called levirate marriage and was a well-known practice.

If an idea should run counter to the Mosaic law, as far as the Sadducees were concerned, it was a violation of God's sacred covenant and must, by definition, be false. Resurrection, when viewed through the lens of levirate marriage, did exactly that. For this reason, the concept of the resurrection must dearly be mistaken. The Sadducees were convinced they had an airtight case.

Jesus’ response was amazingly quick and forceful:

You are wrong, because you know neither the scriptures, nor the power of God. For in the resurrection, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like the angels in heaven. As for the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was said to you by God, “I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob?” He is not the God of the dead but of the living.¹⁰³

In making his second point, Jesus was emphasizing that God is still God of the patriarchs, even though, in our eyes, they have long since passed away. But if God is God of the living, then those whom we consider to be dead must still be alive. If they're still alive, there must indeed be some form of resurrection. It's very clever and intricate reasoning.

ECONOMICS AND MARRIAGE

But it's the first point Jesus makes that I would like to explore. The idea that there is a radical difference between earthly marriage and life beyond the physical is not something that Jesus could have learned through the study of the Mosaic law. On this point, the Bible is quite silent.

It could be that Jesus reasoned his way to this conclusion. After all, the institution of marriage had its beginning, not in the idea oflove, but rather in the concept of property. It came out of a culture that considered women to be owned by their fathers. Marriages were arranged, usually without consent of the bride, and were often contracted to gain political, economic, or social advantage for the father.

For a man, having a wife was an economic necessity. Only by having children could he be assured of enough hands to tend the farm. Children would ensure that there would be someone to care for the husband in old age. One's lineage could only be perpetuated if there was a male child to whom it could be passed.

If marriage, then, was based on economics, it would only stand to reason that things would be quite different when the physical body no longer existed. For it was the physical body that required an economic system to provide for its maintenance.

So maybe Jesus reached his conclusion via logic. However, the authority with which he spoke would seem to indicate some form of personal experience.

The same can be said with the manner in which Paul responded to the question regarding the resurrection and what form the body takes. There is a qualitative difference in tone when someone is arguing on the basis of rational speculation, as opposed to personal experience. Experience makes all the difference.

Could it be that these two had some direct perception of the form that relationships take on the other side? Could that same perception be available to us today?

A LATIN WOMAN

Such issues were far from my mind when the line was gathering for lunch in the dining room of the Nancy Penn Center. I found myself standing next to a woman from Argentina. She was perhaps in her sixties, and we began a brief conversation. It was the first time we had spoken to one another.

We had barely begun the conversation when she fixed me with a stare and asked pointedly, “Have you ever had a Latin woman?”

I was taken aback by her question. She was attending the program with her husband, and, at the time, I was naive enough to think that married people pretty much remained faithful—at least while their spouses were nearby.

“Why, no! I'm a happily married man!”

“Oh, come on,” she said, rolling her eyes. “You have no idea what you're missing. You wouldn't believe the passion!”

It was the first time a woman had so brazenly approached me, and I was flustered. They must do things differently in Argentina.

“No…ummm…thank you…I'm flattered…but really…thanks anyway, but I truly am happily married,” I said, backing up as fast as I could.

After lunch, we started the next tape, proceeding to Focus 21. Moving into Focus 10, the usual images were flitting past my field of vision. Suddenly, there was the Argentinean woman's face, directly in front of me! It was stable and vivid.

I guess I was in a playful mood, so I thought to myself, What the heck! I'm out of my body. Let's see what happens. Besides, I thought it would be fun to suddenly turn the tables on her.

Without any further thought, I reached out to grab her, saying, “Come here, you Latin lover!”

No sooner did I touch her than we came together, and there was an explosion of light. The next thing I knew, I was streaking off into space like a Roman candle, with sparks flying everywhere. All I could do was let out a scream of delight, “YAAAAHOOOOO!”

I had no idea that my playfulness would lead to such a profound and delightful meeting. It wasn't as if we had had intercourse. It was more like the kind of jolt you get when touching a bare electrical wire, only it was ten times more powerful and infinitely more pleasurable. It was an immediate exchange of energies that was far different from sexual encounter in the physical body.

After the tape ended, I went out into the hallway, heading toward the group gathering. As soon as I came through my door, the Argentinean woman emerged from her room directly across the hall.

She seemed staggered and dazed, even confused. Instinctively, I gave her a hug and we proceeded downstairs.

At dinner that evening, I was sitting at a table with some other people. To my surprise, the Argentinean woman made her way to where I was sitting. In a rather secretive tone, she asked, “Did…ahhh…anything happen for you during that last tape?”

Not quite sure how to respond and not wanting to lead her, I said after a long hesitation, “Why yes…I believe there was something.”

“And what was that?”

Again, searching for words, I said, “Well, we met during the tape.”

“And then what happened?”

How do you describe such a thing? I wasn't even sure of what had happened, and I certainly didn't want to jump to conclusions. I decided to purposely understate the experience.

“Well…we…sort of…uhmmm…we sort of came together…”

“I'll say we did! And then what happened?”

“Well, there was this flash oflight.”

“There sure was.” She smiled and walked away. I could only guess that it was to go smoke a cigarette.

A PRISTINE SEXUALITY

Even at that point, I had no sexual interest in the woman. But what floored me was that our experience had so closely paralleled one another's. Either we were both delusional, or a profound exchange of energies had taken place between us that was utterly unlike anything physical.

Just as importantly, it became apparent to me that the way of relating outside the body is radically different from relating in the physical. If, when we die, we're not married or given in marriage, but are like the angels, then, as far as I am concerned, the angels have a pretty good deal. It sure beats hanging around on a cloud all day, strumming on a harp.

If what happened to me is any indication, then it would seem that the drive for sexual intercourse is a pale imitation of a much deeper memory. Before we came into this life, our way of relating must have been far more complete. Unbounded by the skin, we become beings of light or energy. The “heavenly body,” as Paul calls it, apparently has a much greater capacity for merging.

The drive for sexual intimacy is immense. The church has long sought to regulate sexuality, because it recognizes that there is tremendous power within it. Endless taboos reinforce the news that sex is profoundly bad. The tragedy is that the glory of sexual union, which is a reflection of the potential for union we have at the spiritual level, has been so thoroughly debased that all we have left are endless debates. Rather than an experience of profound joy, sex has become the source of immense shame.

I don't pretend for a moment to have the answer for dealing with sexuality. But as long as we persist in looking at it only through the lens of morality, we'll be forever sidetracked. As long as we insist that sex has nothing to do with spirit, we will miss perhaps one of the greatest avenues for human expression available to us.

If, on the other hand, we were to look at sexuality from a larger perspective, we might find a way around the logjam of competing ideas. To conceive of humans as beings who simultaneously have both spiritual and physical bodies places the whole discussion in another context entirely. Rather than sex being something that must be strictly regulated as a dark force, it then has the potential for leading us into new forms of communion.

To live without a physical body must be profoundly different. Because such an energy body doesn't need to be cared for in the same way as the physical one, the entire social structure must be radically altered for nonphysical existence.

A FUTURE WORLD

In his second book, Far Journeys, ¹⁰⁴ Robert Monroe travels into the future. One of the odd things about this world to come is that, according to Monroe, people in it have finally begun to realize that we're spiritual beings first and physical beings second.

Instead of needing to remind themselves that they have a spiritual essence, future humans have the opposite problem: they have trouble remembering that they have a physical body. Visitations to this earth are done by picking up an available body lying around somewhere and putting it on, much like donning a space suit. It's then that the delights of this world can be experienced.

In this future world, the maintenance of this borrowed body is radically different, for it gains its energy not from eating but directly from sunlight. There is no need for the industry that is the basis of our economic system, nor for the pollution we bring to this planet. As a result, the earth has returned to its pristine state, with no signs of scarring by human intruders.

Is this just fanciful imagination? If it is, then the Bible is sadly mistaken in its depiction of just such a world.

The wolf shall live with the lamb,
the leopard shall lie down with
the kid,
the calf and the lion and the
fatling together,
and a little child shall lead them.
The cow and the bear shall graze,
their young shall lie down
together;
and the lion shall eat straw like
the ox.
The nursing child shall play over
the hole of the asp,
and the weaned child shall put
its hand on the adder's den.
They shall not hurt or destroy
on all my holy mountain,
for the earth will be full of the
knowledge of the Lord,
as the waters cover the sea.¹⁰⁵

See, the home of God is
among mortals,
He will dwell with them;
they will be his peoples,
and God himself will be
with them;
he will wipe away every tear from
their eyes.
Death will be no more;
mourning and crying and pain
will be no more,
for the first things have
passed away.¹⁰⁶

I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God; for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation would be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. We know that the whole of creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies.¹⁰⁷

The kind of creation described here is not something that we can attain by strengthening our moral resolve. It's not something we can educate ourselves toward. It's not a pristine world that will happen by eradicating evil outside us.

It can only be accomplished as we touch the spiritual domain and remember who we are. Only then can we move beyond the double mind and know firsthand the unity of all creation.