The Sacred Symbolism Of Sex
Part II
by Lorena Loo
Part II
by Lorena Loo
Now Shakti is the prime mover and mother womb of the recurring cycles of the universe. It reflects the procreative power of eternal substance. The same principle is embodied in the Tao Te Ching. There are two lines in the first verse which expresses it simply:
Nameless indeed is the source of creation,
But things have a mother and she has a name.
But things have a mother and she has a name.
This is exactly how what we call primitive or indigenous cultures view the feminine principle to this very day. In Papua, New Guinea, the Trobianders maintain that the substance of a child owes itself solely to the mother and has nothing to do with the father. Anthropologists have misinterpreted this in a biological sense but the Trobianders are really referring to Shakti, the matrix (and matrix literally means womb) of creation. The Kogis of Columbia speak of the Mother as the source, the sea of consciousness from which all emerged. We are all children of that same Mother. The tribes of Siberian reindeer hunters to this day have a tradition of carving figures from larch or aspen wood. They believe these figures represent the ancestral point of origin of the whole people. These figures are always female. Here, as with the Trobianders and the Kogis, they mean the matrix of creation, Shakti.
On the transcendental plane Shiva-Shakti are one indivisible and inseparable whole. They also happen to be two polar aspects of one principle which have representations in the earthly incarnation of male and female. In tantra, the aim is to integrate the polarities to become the unified one of Shiva-Shakti. Sexual intercourse is one way of attaining such a union…But there is a catch and we'll see what that is very shortly.
Right now, we're to look at the intimate relationship between death, orgasm and sleep and other involuntary processes. And it's going to take us to some interesting and surprising connections. In Buddhism the supreme form of tantra is called Highest Yoga Tantra. The aim of the yogis who practice this type of tantra is to stop death, rebirth and all the intermediate states between these two, the so-called bardo states. The way they do this is through practicing a series of yogas that simulate death.
When you begin the actual process of physical death, there are 8 altered states of mind that unfold. They unfold in a very specific order and in two stages of 4 phases each. Each phase corresponds to a particular internal sign that is seen not through physical sight but rather the inner mind.
If you refer to your handout, you will see a list of what these internal signs are on page 3. The first four of these phases in the exact order they unfold are:
1. Appearance of mirages. (Like seeing water appear in a desert mirage.)
2. Appearance of billowing smoke or thin smoke spreading through a room.
3. Appearance of fireflies or sparks within smoke.
4. Appearance of a sputtering candle with little wax left and then it turns into a steady candle flame.
These initial four phases involve the withdrawal of the energies that drive usual states of consciousness or what the Buddhists refer to as gross states of consciousness. Once the last of these initial four phases culminates, there then unfolds four highly dramatic, profound states. These are the subtlest levels of mind that are at the core of all experience. In each of these phases, you actually see your consciousness and it assumes a certain appearance. In the exact order that they unfold, these are:
5. Radiant white sky. Your consciousness is seen as a vivid white vastness like a clear sky filled with moonlight (empty space filled with white light, not the moon shining in empty space).
6. Radiant red-orange sky. Your consciousness is seen as a vivid red or orange vastness described as like a clear sky filled with sunlight (space filled with red orange light).
7. Radiant black sky. Your consciousness is seen as a huge, black, thick darkness described as a moonless, very dark sky just after dusk when no stars are seen.
8. Radiant clear light. This is what the Buddhists call the mind of clear light. It is an extremely subtle level of mind and the most profound, powerful level of consciousness. This is a non conceptual mind and totally free of dualism. In stages 5, 6 and 7, there is still dualistic perception through increasingly less of it. Your consciousness appears as clear light, described as like the sky's own natural light at dawn before sunrise at a time during which the sky is devoid of moonlight, sunlight or darkness.
These 8 altered states of mind which occur during the process of death are also encountered by us whenever we faint, sneeze, go to sleep, end a dream or have an orgasm. The reason why we don't realize we are experiencing these phases is that we are unable to withdraw from the grosser levels of consciousness in order to actually experience these 8 deepest, most profound and powerful levels of mind that underlie all of reality.
It seems this knowledge has been known at various times throughout the world but its true understanding lost. For instance, in Islam they call sleep "the little death" and the French call orgasm "le petit mort." In Greek mythology, the God of Death was Thanatos. Thanatos had a brother, Hynpos, the God of sleep. Connecting Thanatos and Hypnos that way in the mythology was a way of codifying a shared principle, that levels of consciousness encountered in sleep are the same as those in death.
I also deeply suspect that this knowledge was known to our prehistoric people. As far back as 100,000 years ago or even more, paleolithic people ritually buried their dead in the sleeping position, typically in a fetal position either on their backs or lying on their sides. They also buried them with grave offerings which included red ochre (regarded as a symbol of the life giving blood of the mother in all cultures) and in some cases stone pillows. There would also be ritual placement of goat horns or mammoth skulls in a circle around the grave site. A circle symbolizes spirit and its center is the Bindu. These are indications of an understanding that death was akin to sleep and that with death came a rebirth.
If you think about it, each time you go to sleep, you are undergoing a little death. If you sleep 365 times a year and another 135 times in that same year, you faint, sneeze, end a dream or have an orgasm, then you will have undergone 500 little deaths without ever knowing it in a year. Over a period of 50 years, you will have undergone 25,000 little deaths. You will also have undergone 25,000 little rebirths because when you are born or reborn, those same 8 phases of death occur but in reverse order. So when you awake from sleep, begin a dream, awaken from fainting or end an orgasm, you experience those 8 phases again in reverse order.
The Highest Yoga Tantric texts speak of the grosser levels of consciousness which engage our minds so much that we are unable to attain these 8 deepest levels of consciousness. You have to be able to withdraw from those grosser levels of consciousness in order for these most profound and powerful states to manifest and the mind of clear light, stage 8, is considered the most effective in realizing the truth. One of the techniques to manifest the mind of clear light is orgasmic bliss. That is what the truth is about sexuality and sexual symbolism in spirituality, at least in terms of tantra. It is about sexual yoga to get to the mind of clear light.
Having said that, it would be irresponsible of me to leave you with the impression that what I just said means sex is a spiritual path. According to both the Buddhist and Hindu teachings, in order to effectively and successfully utilize sexual intercourse or orgasmic bliss as a means of attaining the mind of clear light, you already have to be highly spiritually evolved. It is not done for the gross pleasures of sex, it is a method of attaining sustained one-pointed concentration in a state of complete ecstasy wherein you are totally withdrawn from the external world and the grosser levels of consciousness. That then allows the subtler levels of mind to emerge. There also seems to be a direct correlation between how compassionate you are and how able you are to use sexual bliss in the path.
It is in the heart that you experience the mind of clear light. At the actual time of death, your consciousness exits through the heart. Where your consciousness actually exits the body depends upon what form your rebirth will take. If you are to be reborn as a human, you will exit the body through the head. The 8 altered states of mind in death then occur in reverse order as you are born into the bardo or intermediate state in a subtle body.
When you are ready to take rebirth, you will hover near your prospective parents who are in the act of sexual intercourse. At or near the time of conception, when the ovum has been fertilized, your consciousness begins its journey into the womb of your mother.
You die from the bardo or intermediate state, going through the 8 phases of altered mind in the order of 1-8. You then enter through the head or mouth of the male (your father) and proceed downwards to exit through the phallus into your mother's vagina. From there you move into the womb where you enter into the fertilized egg, the zygote or the first cell from which all other cells in the body of the fetus is derived.
If you think back to the vulva rocks and petroglyphs, you now have a new way at looking at them. When the sun's rays strikes or penetrates them, it can be thought of as consciousness as light entering the womb of Mother Earth. In fact, there are some caves in Arizona with vulva like entrances aligned such that the sun penetrates through the entrance, travels through a passageway and into the womb of the cave or the womb of Mother Earth.
Now let's return to your consciousness housed in that zygote, the first cell of the fertitlized ovum. That is where the physical heart forms and within that heart will be housed the Mind of Clear Light. The Buddhists call the chamber within which the Mind of Clear Light is housed the indestructible drop within the heart and it is the origin of life and consciousness within the body. Channels in the body form from this point. These channels are both physical such as arteries, veins, ducts and nerve pathways and non physical which are the subtle energy channels in the body. In fact, 8 of the channels that form correspond to the 8 compass points with east corresponding to the front of the heart. So a literal grid system of channels both physical and subtle radiate from the heart.
In the first month of connecting to new life in the womb, you assume the physical shape of a fish. It's shape is described in a tantra text as being thin at the top and bottom and bulbous in the middle like the shape of a fish. That's none other than ye olde vesica piscis, symbol of rebirth, symbol of the vulva and also a symbol of the fish.
In the second month in the womb, you develop 5 protuberances (2 thighs, 2 shoulders and a head) and your body resembles a turtle; in the third month, your physical shape resembles a wild boar; in the fourth month, you resemble a lion; and in the fifth month, you resemble a dwarf.
Now Hindu mythology speaks of the 10 incarnations of the deity Vishnu as an avatar. An avatar is a god who takes physical incarnation. The first five incarnations of Vishnu in their exact order are: fish, turtle, wild boar, lion and dwarf.
If you think about evolution, this is seemingly an eerie echo of it on the microcosmic scale. Life on earth began in the prebiotic ocean as single celled organisms and the first of the multi-celled organisms to evolve was that of fish. And there is a lot of sacred symbolism with regards to fish, including a phallus of mammoth ivory in which was carved the figure of a fish from paleolithic times. When life adapted to land, reptiles emerged and what is a turtle but a reptile. Then there was an evolution from reptiles to mammals and what are a boar and lion but mammals. It seems,though, that the lion lies at an evolutionary turning point between mammal and man or hu-man.
There is even a passage in the Gospel of Thomas, a Gnostic text, that states: Blessed is the lion which becomes man when consumed by man. And cursed is the man whom the lion consumes and the lion becomes man.
There has been a lot of lion symbolism throughout all cultures, most of which are associated with the goddess figure, the sun and rebirth. In ancient Egypt, lions were associated with the cycles of the sun, often in pairs back to back with one lion facing the west where the sun sets (death), the other facing the east where the sun rises (birth). And then there was a dwarf lion god of fortune and childbirth in the Egyptian pantheon and, of course, that enignamtic sphinx with the head of a human and body of a lion.
I want to leave you with this image of an archaeological site from paleolithic times. It is in a place called Mal'ta. Russia where 20 female statuettes of mammoth ivory were uncovered. All were nude except for one which was clothed in a cave-lion's skin. On the same site there was discovered a skeleton of a child believed to be about 3-4 years old. He was buried with a lot of red ochre, lying on his back and in the fetal position with his face turned to his left and facing east, the point of rising or rebirth of the sun.
The sacred symbolism of sex tells an age old story about the return to the point of origin. The original separation of the one principle into its two polar aspects began the recurring cycles of creation-death and rebirth played over and over again, even in the very fabric of our daily lives, unknown to us. It is not enough that the union of the polarities brings us back to the unity of the circle for there we merely continue on the endless merry-go-round of cyclic existence called samsara.
One of my teachers along the way was a yogi from the Hindu tradition. I once asked of him, "Suresh, what do you make of astrology? The notion that the motion and positions of celestial objects affects all phenomena?" He hesitated for ever a brief a moment and he replied in his typical robust, almost booming voice: When you are in the center, none of that happens. He was referring to the center of the circle, the place where the yogis practicing the Highest Yoga Tantra aspire to involute back to, the place of static equilibrium (some people call it zero point) where Purusha and Prakriti, Shiva and Shakti, Nut and Geb, feminine and masculine and all polarities are but one undifferentiated, indivisible, inseparable whole. It is the original face that is referred to in the Zen koan "Show me your original face." It is where you and I are but one and we celebrate that oneness. So I'll see you all there.
On the transcendental plane Shiva-Shakti are one indivisible and inseparable whole. They also happen to be two polar aspects of one principle which have representations in the earthly incarnation of male and female. In tantra, the aim is to integrate the polarities to become the unified one of Shiva-Shakti. Sexual intercourse is one way of attaining such a union…But there is a catch and we'll see what that is very shortly.
Right now, we're to look at the intimate relationship between death, orgasm and sleep and other involuntary processes. And it's going to take us to some interesting and surprising connections. In Buddhism the supreme form of tantra is called Highest Yoga Tantra. The aim of the yogis who practice this type of tantra is to stop death, rebirth and all the intermediate states between these two, the so-called bardo states. The way they do this is through practicing a series of yogas that simulate death.
When you begin the actual process of physical death, there are 8 altered states of mind that unfold. They unfold in a very specific order and in two stages of 4 phases each. Each phase corresponds to a particular internal sign that is seen not through physical sight but rather the inner mind.
If you refer to your handout, you will see a list of what these internal signs are on page 3. The first four of these phases in the exact order they unfold are:
1. Appearance of mirages. (Like seeing water appear in a desert mirage.)
2. Appearance of billowing smoke or thin smoke spreading through a room.
3. Appearance of fireflies or sparks within smoke.
4. Appearance of a sputtering candle with little wax left and then it turns into a steady candle flame.
These initial four phases involve the withdrawal of the energies that drive usual states of consciousness or what the Buddhists refer to as gross states of consciousness. Once the last of these initial four phases culminates, there then unfolds four highly dramatic, profound states. These are the subtlest levels of mind that are at the core of all experience. In each of these phases, you actually see your consciousness and it assumes a certain appearance. In the exact order that they unfold, these are:
5. Radiant white sky. Your consciousness is seen as a vivid white vastness like a clear sky filled with moonlight (empty space filled with white light, not the moon shining in empty space).
6. Radiant red-orange sky. Your consciousness is seen as a vivid red or orange vastness described as like a clear sky filled with sunlight (space filled with red orange light).
7. Radiant black sky. Your consciousness is seen as a huge, black, thick darkness described as a moonless, very dark sky just after dusk when no stars are seen.
8. Radiant clear light. This is what the Buddhists call the mind of clear light. It is an extremely subtle level of mind and the most profound, powerful level of consciousness. This is a non conceptual mind and totally free of dualism. In stages 5, 6 and 7, there is still dualistic perception through increasingly less of it. Your consciousness appears as clear light, described as like the sky's own natural light at dawn before sunrise at a time during which the sky is devoid of moonlight, sunlight or darkness.
These 8 altered states of mind which occur during the process of death are also encountered by us whenever we faint, sneeze, go to sleep, end a dream or have an orgasm. The reason why we don't realize we are experiencing these phases is that we are unable to withdraw from the grosser levels of consciousness in order to actually experience these 8 deepest, most profound and powerful levels of mind that underlie all of reality.
It seems this knowledge has been known at various times throughout the world but its true understanding lost. For instance, in Islam they call sleep "the little death" and the French call orgasm "le petit mort." In Greek mythology, the God of Death was Thanatos. Thanatos had a brother, Hynpos, the God of sleep. Connecting Thanatos and Hypnos that way in the mythology was a way of codifying a shared principle, that levels of consciousness encountered in sleep are the same as those in death.
I also deeply suspect that this knowledge was known to our prehistoric people. As far back as 100,000 years ago or even more, paleolithic people ritually buried their dead in the sleeping position, typically in a fetal position either on their backs or lying on their sides. They also buried them with grave offerings which included red ochre (regarded as a symbol of the life giving blood of the mother in all cultures) and in some cases stone pillows. There would also be ritual placement of goat horns or mammoth skulls in a circle around the grave site. A circle symbolizes spirit and its center is the Bindu. These are indications of an understanding that death was akin to sleep and that with death came a rebirth.
If you think about it, each time you go to sleep, you are undergoing a little death. If you sleep 365 times a year and another 135 times in that same year, you faint, sneeze, end a dream or have an orgasm, then you will have undergone 500 little deaths without ever knowing it in a year. Over a period of 50 years, you will have undergone 25,000 little deaths. You will also have undergone 25,000 little rebirths because when you are born or reborn, those same 8 phases of death occur but in reverse order. So when you awake from sleep, begin a dream, awaken from fainting or end an orgasm, you experience those 8 phases again in reverse order.
The Highest Yoga Tantric texts speak of the grosser levels of consciousness which engage our minds so much that we are unable to attain these 8 deepest levels of consciousness. You have to be able to withdraw from those grosser levels of consciousness in order for these most profound and powerful states to manifest and the mind of clear light, stage 8, is considered the most effective in realizing the truth. One of the techniques to manifest the mind of clear light is orgasmic bliss. That is what the truth is about sexuality and sexual symbolism in spirituality, at least in terms of tantra. It is about sexual yoga to get to the mind of clear light.
Having said that, it would be irresponsible of me to leave you with the impression that what I just said means sex is a spiritual path. According to both the Buddhist and Hindu teachings, in order to effectively and successfully utilize sexual intercourse or orgasmic bliss as a means of attaining the mind of clear light, you already have to be highly spiritually evolved. It is not done for the gross pleasures of sex, it is a method of attaining sustained one-pointed concentration in a state of complete ecstasy wherein you are totally withdrawn from the external world and the grosser levels of consciousness. That then allows the subtler levels of mind to emerge. There also seems to be a direct correlation between how compassionate you are and how able you are to use sexual bliss in the path.
It is in the heart that you experience the mind of clear light. At the actual time of death, your consciousness exits through the heart. Where your consciousness actually exits the body depends upon what form your rebirth will take. If you are to be reborn as a human, you will exit the body through the head. The 8 altered states of mind in death then occur in reverse order as you are born into the bardo or intermediate state in a subtle body.
When you are ready to take rebirth, you will hover near your prospective parents who are in the act of sexual intercourse. At or near the time of conception, when the ovum has been fertilized, your consciousness begins its journey into the womb of your mother.
You die from the bardo or intermediate state, going through the 8 phases of altered mind in the order of 1-8. You then enter through the head or mouth of the male (your father) and proceed downwards to exit through the phallus into your mother's vagina. From there you move into the womb where you enter into the fertilized egg, the zygote or the first cell from which all other cells in the body of the fetus is derived.
If you think back to the vulva rocks and petroglyphs, you now have a new way at looking at them. When the sun's rays strikes or penetrates them, it can be thought of as consciousness as light entering the womb of Mother Earth. In fact, there are some caves in Arizona with vulva like entrances aligned such that the sun penetrates through the entrance, travels through a passageway and into the womb of the cave or the womb of Mother Earth.
Now let's return to your consciousness housed in that zygote, the first cell of the fertitlized ovum. That is where the physical heart forms and within that heart will be housed the Mind of Clear Light. The Buddhists call the chamber within which the Mind of Clear Light is housed the indestructible drop within the heart and it is the origin of life and consciousness within the body. Channels in the body form from this point. These channels are both physical such as arteries, veins, ducts and nerve pathways and non physical which are the subtle energy channels in the body. In fact, 8 of the channels that form correspond to the 8 compass points with east corresponding to the front of the heart. So a literal grid system of channels both physical and subtle radiate from the heart.
In the first month of connecting to new life in the womb, you assume the physical shape of a fish. It's shape is described in a tantra text as being thin at the top and bottom and bulbous in the middle like the shape of a fish. That's none other than ye olde vesica piscis, symbol of rebirth, symbol of the vulva and also a symbol of the fish.
In the second month in the womb, you develop 5 protuberances (2 thighs, 2 shoulders and a head) and your body resembles a turtle; in the third month, your physical shape resembles a wild boar; in the fourth month, you resemble a lion; and in the fifth month, you resemble a dwarf.
Now Hindu mythology speaks of the 10 incarnations of the deity Vishnu as an avatar. An avatar is a god who takes physical incarnation. The first five incarnations of Vishnu in their exact order are: fish, turtle, wild boar, lion and dwarf.
If you think about evolution, this is seemingly an eerie echo of it on the microcosmic scale. Life on earth began in the prebiotic ocean as single celled organisms and the first of the multi-celled organisms to evolve was that of fish. And there is a lot of sacred symbolism with regards to fish, including a phallus of mammoth ivory in which was carved the figure of a fish from paleolithic times. When life adapted to land, reptiles emerged and what is a turtle but a reptile. Then there was an evolution from reptiles to mammals and what are a boar and lion but mammals. It seems,though, that the lion lies at an evolutionary turning point between mammal and man or hu-man.
There is even a passage in the Gospel of Thomas, a Gnostic text, that states: Blessed is the lion which becomes man when consumed by man. And cursed is the man whom the lion consumes and the lion becomes man.
There has been a lot of lion symbolism throughout all cultures, most of which are associated with the goddess figure, the sun and rebirth. In ancient Egypt, lions were associated with the cycles of the sun, often in pairs back to back with one lion facing the west where the sun sets (death), the other facing the east where the sun rises (birth). And then there was a dwarf lion god of fortune and childbirth in the Egyptian pantheon and, of course, that enignamtic sphinx with the head of a human and body of a lion.
I want to leave you with this image of an archaeological site from paleolithic times. It is in a place called Mal'ta. Russia where 20 female statuettes of mammoth ivory were uncovered. All were nude except for one which was clothed in a cave-lion's skin. On the same site there was discovered a skeleton of a child believed to be about 3-4 years old. He was buried with a lot of red ochre, lying on his back and in the fetal position with his face turned to his left and facing east, the point of rising or rebirth of the sun.
The sacred symbolism of sex tells an age old story about the return to the point of origin. The original separation of the one principle into its two polar aspects began the recurring cycles of creation-death and rebirth played over and over again, even in the very fabric of our daily lives, unknown to us. It is not enough that the union of the polarities brings us back to the unity of the circle for there we merely continue on the endless merry-go-round of cyclic existence called samsara.
One of my teachers along the way was a yogi from the Hindu tradition. I once asked of him, "Suresh, what do you make of astrology? The notion that the motion and positions of celestial objects affects all phenomena?" He hesitated for ever a brief a moment and he replied in his typical robust, almost booming voice: When you are in the center, none of that happens. He was referring to the center of the circle, the place where the yogis practicing the Highest Yoga Tantra aspire to involute back to, the place of static equilibrium (some people call it zero point) where Purusha and Prakriti, Shiva and Shakti, Nut and Geb, feminine and masculine and all polarities are but one undifferentiated, indivisible, inseparable whole. It is the original face that is referred to in the Zen koan "Show me your original face." It is where you and I are but one and we celebrate that oneness. So I'll see you all there.
THE END
© Copyright Lorena Loo
