CHAPTER IX. Mystical states and gendered bodies
B. The sex drive and Christian ideals
§ 1. The topic of sex in Christianity and other religious traditions According to Lear, love is a basic natural force. Hence, there is no perspective from which to look down at the sexual drives as something brute and impersonal.38 Christian theology and piety, though, have often treated sexual (and other) urges from just such a disembodied perspective. This has resulted in a fundamental distrust towards and “abhorrence” of romance and sexuality and the favoring of mortification rather than celebration of the bodily. However, as the material presented in this volume clearly shows, the mystical and the erotic cannot be separated. No wonder, then, that there is considerable confusion and discussion among Christians about issues of sexuality. John Portmann, in his characteristic ironical manner, summarizes this confusion: given the churches’
notable preoccupation with sex and gender, one could say that religious
37 Hefner 2003, 68–69.
38 Lear 1990, 181.
devotion today revolves around sex – whereas God once rested at the center of the spiritual universe, genitalia do today.39
This remark is certainly well-aimed. Among other things, it serves as a healthy and welcome arrow of critique towards the line of reseach pursued in this volume. However, its deeper imperative is that Christians finally quit squeamishly circling around the issue and start calling things by their right names. Several theological thinkers, Portmann himself included, have taken this challenge. Their insights on the issues of celibacy, homosexuality, carnal desire and the like in the relation of the latter to Christian core beliefs provide considerable support to the hypotheses and predictions in the analyses above.
They also help to further clarify the above insights on the fundamentality of embodiment – in ruthlessly exposing the religious confusion that ideals going against our biological “ticking” result in.
To get under way – Lene Sjørup, affirming that God was never separate and far from sexuality, lyrically reflects: “Be fruitful, multiply, enjoy! This red desire to unite: women and men, men and men, women and women, hum-mingbirds, giraffes, a lust for living and continuing to live.”40 This bold celeb-ration and affirmation of sexuality, while perhaps true of God’s attitude towards sexuality, is certainly not shared by most religious “offices”. Portmann points out that most religious authorities and governments around the globe and throughout religious history have tried to regulate and constrict sexual practices.
In this sense, he says, the coming of the Information Age has changed nothing.41 In coming to present his case on Christianity in this respect, Portmann takes an original and amusing route. He notes that, by definition, all Christians share a desire to get to heaven. At the same time, almost all human beings burn with sexual desire. This sets a stage for a drama where the two passions have been pitted against one another.42 The drama is a product of disembodied theological ideas and not of some inherent clash between the two desires themselves. As Portmann mockingly explains: Catholic theology holds that our cosmetically restored bodies will no longer be vulnerable to lust in heaven. Missing organs will be reinstated, meaning that men who have made themselves “eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven” will become anatomically correct again. Why bother, one might wonder, if there is to be no lust. Apparently, Portmann says, taking his irony further, the penis must have an important aesthetic role to play in the next world. Whether circumcised penises are more decorative than others remains open to debate, it seems safe to assume, though, that discarded foreskins will reunite with their members. Thus, Portmann concludes, there will be countless attractive bodies in paradise but no yearning to explore them. That
39 Portmann 2003, xii.
40 Sjørup 1998, 161.
41 Portmann 2003, 67.
42 Portmann 2003, 201.
we will all be naked in heaven makes the absence of lust all the more remarkable.43
Portmann’s irony is sharp but well aimed. Gay, approaching these issues from a different angle, comes to pointing at a very similar discrepancy. He draws his readers’ attention to the seminude illustrations of Christ: in a Catholic girl’s bedroom one finds a crucifix, on it a naked Christ stretched out on a cross, positioned so that Christ could see the girl and she could see him. Parents who arranged this no doubt wished to remind their daughter of Christ’s death – just before her eyes closed she could meditate on that event. However, Gay says, this does not change the fact that the crucifix represents a near-naked man.44 With all the resulting erotic connotations.
Gay’s observation is no longer just an amusing (or irritating) irony. It reflects a deep confusion in Christianity about bodiliness, the erotic and their relation to the Divine. The Muslim attitude, according to Portmann, is in these matters somewhat more unambiguous. In fact, many Muslim thinkers view the West’s sexual revolution as an inevitable reaction to the attempts by the Christian churches to suppress, demonize and make shameful a God-given urge.
Portmann points out that, according to Muhammad, marital sex is meant to be enjoyed – by the husband and wife alike (this is important – religious sexual regulations are often phallocentric and misogynistic). Muhammad especially encouraged foreplay and even referred to intercourse without foreplay as a form of cruelty to women. Nor does Islam set limits on the kind of sex married couples can enjoy. All kinds of intercourse, including oral sex, are permis-sible.45
As to Judaism, Melissa Raphael argues that it sacralizes sexual pleasure as a religious joy whose intimacy is both a symbol and enactment of the covenantal intimacy with God. Similarly to Islam, Judaism emphasizes that sexual pleasure is meant to be mutual. However, Raphael warns, the relevant discourse still usually issues from a masculine perspective. Also, the theological meaning of sex is exclusively and normatively heterosexual and marital. Moreover, Judaism seems to be suspicious of romantic love and the purpose of its discourse on sex is not primarily to enhance its pleasures but to prohibit illicit (that is, non-marital) sexual relationships.46
The last remark aside, Raphael affirms that in Judaism sexual love and affection within marriage are a means to human fulfillment. Judaism is largely free from asceticism and there is virtually no tradition of vocational celibacy.
Marital sexual relationships are a central element within the divine economy of the holy. This clearly demonstrates the rabbis’ appreciation of sexual pleasure
43 Portmann 2003, 6.
44 Gay 1992, 1–2.
45 Portmann 2003, 74.
46 Raphael, Melissa. “Refresh me with Apples for I am Faint with Love” (Song of Songs 2,5): Jewish Feminism, Mystical Theology and the Sexual Imaginary. – The Good News of the Body: Sexual Theology and Feminism. Edited by L. Isherwood. New York, New York University Press, 2000. P. 54.
as a human good and a holy mystery irrespective of its primary purpose as a means to procreation.47
In the light of Judaism and Islam the Christian confusion about the sexual and bodily becomes even more conspicuous. No wonder, then, that in our era of freedom of opinion, as Portmann notes, with few exceptions, believers no longer go to war or protest over transsubstantiation – they nowadays fight over issues of sex and gender. Sex bothers believers as differences in dogma no longer can.48
As Robert Goss aptly notes, emphasis on sexual shame has dominated Christianity nearly its whole history. Often to justify misogynistic and erotopho-bic theologies that failed to acknowledge the original blessings of both sexuality and human embodiment. Recent debates have led to several positive develop-ments. However, Goss argues, contemporary Christianity has still hardly achieved its cultural puberty around sexuality (this being attested to by its continuing attempts to put sexuality “back in the bottle”), especially over issues of sexual and gender diversity.49
Mark Jordan explicates this by pointing out that, typically, the official documents of Catholicism propose norms for human sexuality that are based on schematic, idealized views of both sexuality and marriage. They restrict sexual activity to marriage via an appeal to only marital love being exclusive, enduring and transcendent in its complementarity and fertility. What kind of a statement is that, Jordan asks? Certainly not a statement of statistical fact. It is, at best, the statement of a utopian norm, derived from selective readings of nature, the Scriptures, and Catholic traditions.50 What is needed to cure this situation, according to Goss, is a re-embodying of spirituality, a redefining of the divine to include the erotic dimensions of love and life, a liberation of God from erotophobia and a freeing of God from traditional antisexual theological constructions.51
§ 2. Robert Goss on celibacy: a preliminary interpretation of the mystico-erotic link
Now that I have briefly discussed the general Christian confusion about the erotic and sexual and pointed out that this results from ignoring the fundamental bodiliness of human perception of the world, intriguing questions arise as to the people who actively suppress their bodily “ticking” – ascetics. Ascetic practices usually involve giving up sexual expression, in the name of a “higher cause” as
47 Raphael 2000, 56.
48 Portmann 2003, 89.
49 Goss 2002, xiii.
50 Jordan, Mark D. The Silence of Sodom: Homosexuality in Modern Catholicism.
Chicago and London, The University of Chicago Press, 2000. P. 23.
51 Goss 2002, xiv.
Portmann puts it.52 This brings me back to the link between MSCs, erotic states and bodiliness – albeit in a “retrograde” manner. Because the “higher cause”
behind giving up sexual expression is enhanced spiritual contact with the Divine. If giving up sex should enhance one’s “spiritual perceptions”, then this would be another confirmation to the hypothesis that the two are fundamentally continuous.
Sexual asceticism, says Portmann, enjoys an exalted status in many spiritual traditions. It is honored in Hinduism and Buddhism. Various Greek thinkers (e.g., Pythagoras and Socrates) revered abstinence as well.53 Gay also notes that the wish to transform the power of sexuality into a “higher” kind of power is of ancient vintage. For example, semen has since times immemorial been identified as a magic fluid. It is a theme that permeates Indian thought: semen is a substance associated with life, procreation and ecstasy, yet is “expended” in orgasm. Hence, conserving it ought transfer those qualities of this “life force” to oneself.54
As it turns out, though, such self-serving “conservation of semen” may not, after all, be very effective in increasing one’s spiritual “receptivity” – precisely because it is self-serving. The evolutionary origin of spiritual states is in repro-ductive biology. Reprorepro-ductive behaviors are about communication and transcending the self (i.e., not coddling it). The link between the bodily
“ticking” and spirituality reflects this and is about much more than “conserving semen”. This is best explained via the confessions of Robert Goss. These con-fessions also provide a preliminary theological interpretation of the discussions above.
Goss begins his autobiographical reflections by noting that he really, truly loved Jesus and wanted to follow and be at one with him. Growing up as a Catholic, he had known from early on that he was not attracted to women and not interested in marriage. Religious life or celibate priesthood therefore seemed good options. He notes that his erotic desires for males contributed to but were not the sole reason for becoming a Jesuit priest.55
While already in celibacy, he says, he started to have visions of naked Jesus – a muscular, handsome bearded man – embracing him. This lead him to strong sexual arousal. He confesses envisioning burying his face in Jesus’ hair-matted chest, again finding himself fighting off sexual fantasies. Passionately (and in a somewhat frustrated manner), he exclaims – Catholic asceticism is aimed at repressing sexual impulses, maintaining flaccid penises and creating lifeless bodies. But at the same time, Catholic piety stimulates an erotic love for Jesus.
Catholic asceticism introduced a monastic discipline of the flaccid penis while Catholic piety transformed ascetic practices into an erotic stimulation of the
52 Portmann 2003, 67.
53 Portmann 2003, 66.
54 Gay 1992, 106–107.
55 Goss 2002, 7–8.
penis. Goss notes that it took him several years to sort out the contradiction between the asceticism of the flaccid penis and a piety stimulating the penis.56
Having made this statement, Goss then reveals, in plain English, to the layperson the background to which this contradiction and denial of the need for loving, real contact leads. He calls it the gee, I was drunk last night and don’t remember what I did syndrome. This denial mechanism, he reflects, allowed his Jesuit partners to deny their human need for sex and love, bodily affection and warmth. This denial mechanism, he says, distanced sexual partners from one until the next encounter. Then the cycle of human need for intimacy, covert sex and tremendous guilt and shame would repeat itself. As Goss notes, it offered the pretense of celibacy.57
Goss then comes to something that strongly supports my above ideas on the fundamentality of bodiliness – such sexual experiences, although institutionally frowned upon, countered the traditional dualist theologies and practices that opposed the body against the spirit. Later, Goss points out, some kind-hearted Jesuits mentored him to both sexual and spiritual maturity – by pointing out that the erotic can be a meditative gateway to the sacred. The body is not to be deadened but enlivened by its affectivity. The body is a sacramental locus of revelation and a site of spirit. He describes how these ideas helped him to experience the connection between body and spirit, sexuality and spirituality and the connection of the erotic with the Divine. As he notes, he came to know Christ in his intimate relationships and realized that orgasmic bliss had many of the subtle qualities of intense, sublime, nonconceptual contemplation of Christ.58
He concludes his autobiographical story by stating that the erotic is the embodiment of the spirit’s spontaneity. To eradicate sexuality would be, for us as bodily persons, to permanently block the spirit. Sexuality is neither destruc-tive nor peripheral to spirituality. It is a means of communication and com-munion, it expresses the human drive to connect, both physically and spiritually.59
This latter conclusion represents a living monument to the arguments developed in chapter VIII. It also forms a preliminary theological interpretation of the MSC-orgasm link.60 Also, the motivatory quality of erotic love emphasized in chapter VIII as crucial for spiritual-mystical states is quite clear from these confessions. Hence, I would say that Newberg and d’Aquili are on the right track as they note that theology has been too preoccupied with the notion that God is the primary cause of the universe. It is time to invest more
56 Goss 2002, 10.
57 Goss 2002, 14.
58 Goss 2002, 14–15.
59 Goss 2002, 15.
60 A more fully developed version of this rudimentary interpretation will be provided in chapter XI.
attention to the notion of God as the ultimate love and goodness of the universe.61
Given all of the above, it is not at all surprising that mystical texts contain erotic metaphors. Kripal writes: prurient imagination or no, sexual metaphors (e.g., mystical marriage, betrothal, wedding ring, union, consummation, kiss, embrace, piercing, wound of love, conception) appear in Christian mystical literature with a remarkable consistency. He points out that, in this relation, it is also significant that, with the exceptions of Genesis and Psalms, in the Middle Ages no book of the Old Testament was commented on more frequently than the Song of Songs.62 In a way, sexuality and the erotic are a constitutive, bodily determinant of religious experiences. Therefore, attempts to describe
“authentic” Christian experience exclusively in terms of “non-carnal”, agape-type love are ultimately doomed. God is both agape and eros. The evolutionary roots of Christian love are in reproductive behaviors. And a plant cut away from its roots will unavoidably wither and die. In this sense, it is fitting to conclude this chapter with a thoughtful point by Merlin Stone:
“In the worship of the female deity, sex was Her gift to humanity. It was sacred and holy. [---] But in the religions of today we find an almost totally reversed attitude. Sex, especially non-marital sex, is considered to be somewhat naughty, dirty, even sinful. [---] [R]ather than calling the earliest religions, which embraced [---] all human sexuality, “fertility cults,” we might consider the religions of today as strange in that they seem to associate shame and even sin with the very process of conceiving new human life. Perhaps centuries from now scholars and historians will be classifying them as “sterility cults.””63
61 WGA, 178.
62 Kripal 2001, 70 (with a further reference to: Turner, D. Eros and Allegory: Me-dieval Exegesis of the Song of Songs. Kalamazoo [Michigan], Cistercian Publications, 1995).
63 Stone, Merlin. When God was a Woman. New York and London, a Harvest / HBJ Book, 1978. Pp. 154–155.