GODFREY TALKING WITH NATALIA, ARTIST, YOGA TEACHER AND SEX LOVER.
Hello Natalia we are going to have a conversation, just a relaxed friendly conversation, about two of your favorite subjects as I believe. One of them Consciousness, the other one sex.
Of course
I'm under the impression that these interest you a lot more than politics or philosophy
Much more.
OK . I just want to begin with why I would be interested in having such a conversation. I spent most of my life as a yoga teacher and I really enjoy it. I've had a very unusual adventurous journey as a yoga teacher in which I've had many amazing experiences. Not least really deeply investigating the nature of the body and how yoga can be made to work in the body. But over the last few years slowly, gradually I find that I'm less interested in yoga. Not completely, but it doesn't have quite the same pull that it used to have.
You mean the practice?
No the teaching.
OK
Of course this also coincides with me teaching tantra and meditation more. But I think that is symptomatic of the fact that i have gradually become more and more interested in Consciousness and sex than anything else: including yoga. So that's why I thought we should have this conversation because you are interested in both of those.
I am.
I am sure most people are interested in sex but I don't think that most people are interested in Consciousness. Which I think is a shame. But anyway as time takes me closer to death i find myself less able to be clear where the boundary is: not conceptually, but in experience.
The boundary between sex and consciousness?
Yes. I think the association of sex and consciousness all began a long time ago without my knowing quite what had begun. I was actually very slow getting to sex as a teenager, because i was busy with consciousness. I had spent plenty of my teenage years being mildly sexual, but never quite completing. Eventually i made myself complete, because i didn’t want to be left behind. It didn’t seem to grab me as much as it grabbed my friends, both male and female. But when finally i got there i was struck by how immediate and potent was the change in the quality of my consciousness that came with sexual penetration. It was like another world. Not just of delicious sensation, but a whole different frequency of perception. I couldn't explain why even now I couldn't even describe how but everything seemed to change.
At that time was your understanding of sex different to what it is now. I think for most people the word sex means fucking. What was it for you back then?
I lost my virginity at 19 or 20. I think even then I was more curious about sex than driven by sex. I remember very well why I finally said to myself "Godfrey you have to lose your virginity." I didn't have a girlfriend. I'd never really had a girlfriend by the time I was 19 and this surprised all my friends because I was very open, gregarious, uninhibited and at parties I would be the first to dance and do all those things. However I was actually otherwise occupied with God and Consciousness. Of course yoga was a big part of that. So to me sex was not about fucking. Sex was to me was just another thing to explore. "What is this really?" I remember where I was when I made the decision. I was in my bedroom which was actually a cupboard in somebody else's bedroom. I was coming down on LSD. I'd been having the LSD experience of everything melting and merging - the word that I used to use back then was fusion. Everything was fusing. I was coming down and becoming more normal. It occurred to me that sex was also a kind of fusion and therefore I wanted to know what it was like relative to tripping. So I went out and a few days later I found somebody open and lost my virginity. So it wasn't out of horniness or anything like that. It was out of my curiosity trying to understand "What's really going on in here". My wanting to understand what is going on here had already been focused on Consciousness for a while without me having read anything of Eastern or Western philosophy, but a lot of symbolist poetry. My curiosity had come from the fact that I started doing yoga just after I started taking psychedelic drugs. So they came together. The practice and experience of yoga totally coloured my psychedelic experiences. This wasn’t the case for all hippies. Some, yes: it is not unknown for psychedelic drugs to be profoundly spiritual with an Eastern twist
What was sex's part in your life back then?
Not much. It became a biological necessity once I had it. I didn't think it was a particularly great experience but I remember very well two days later I was knocking on her door.
Would you say that when we are children there is some curiosity about sexual pleasure?
I think it is there for everybody. Curiosity is another way of referring to how intelligence works. "What is that, what is this, is it really?" You know. For reasons I will never know my curiosity wasn't shut down really. In fact I think my curiosity was supported directly especially by mother. Also I can remember my grandmother had a neighbour who was a teacher who my mother said was fascinated by my curiosity. She was constantly feeding it by asking me questions and not giving the answers. I think I was very lucky in the sense that my curiosity, my natural intelligence was not hindered. I was also lucky that my education stopped when I was sixteen. Which is a long time before most people that I know. Because most people that I know have gone to university. You know they had twice the education as me and I'm not so sure if that is so good for your curiosity. So I think yes, there is natural curiosity about sensations and pleasure, but of course there is no sense of sex. I remember when I was 8 when I went to boarding school. An older boy was wanting to intimidate the new boys and told us there was a witch living in the attic and she was very, very, very sexy. I had no idea what that meant. Then when I was 17 I was visiting my parents and my father came home to lunch unexpectedly and as he was coming down the drive he passed this pretty girl who was leaving. So of course his curiosity was triggered. He knew I didn't have a girlfriend. And anyway I was just visiting. I told him she was my best friend’s girlfriend, who works in the hospital across the road. He didn’t understand why she was in his house at lunchtime. I told him she came to see me every day. He looked at me oddly and said; “It’s extraordinary Godfrey but females seem to find you irresistibly sexy”. I really didn’t understand what that meant. Not really. I knew that he meant women really liked me but I didn't know exactly what sexy meant. So I've been a little slow. My curiosity of course extended itself into anything, into everything including females and what were they like, why do they behave the way they behave. But it wasn't specifically focused on sex. It's only now in the last few years it's coming to a focus like "OK this is a unexplored territory." People think they understand sex
But they don't. That's why I say that for most people sex is the same word as fucking. Would you say that having sex is an expression of consciousness?
Yes. In a way it is not fair to say yes. You can change any word for sex and I would say yes. Because to me it is very clear consciousness is all there is and everything is an expression of that. Can you be more specific if you can?
What is it that has driven you to make this connection between consciousness and sex and why both have become two most interesting things for you?
My focusing of interest in sex and Consciousness is something that I notice. I notice it. I don't really know how I got here but I have seen things that can make sense of it perhaps. There is an apparent duality, almost an opposition between sex and consciousness. To me consciousness is not a serendipitous accident of evolution, of sophisticated biology. Which it is in the vocabulary of scientists and philosophers. They are using the word consciousness to refer to the conscious mind, to conscious awareness. The word for that, for the conscious mind, in sanskrit is “citta”. But when i have been using the word Consciousness in this conversation the sanskrit equivalent would be “cit”. Cit is the root or the source of citta. This root or source Consciousness precedes biology.
The apparent distinction between Consciousness and sex, or between biology and spirituality, or between matter and spirit is a distinction that exists only in the mind because of the way things happen. You slap me, I feel pain but then I think I better avoid you. I can distinguish between those two. There is a physical pain side and there is the OK I have learnt a lesson side. Mind and body. But the fact I learned it like that, verbalise it like that and think about it like that doesn't actually mean that there is a duality. It's an experiential one, a functional one, a linguistic one. So in that sense they are different. Within our experience they are different. This is the domain of yoga and meditation, the whole conundrum of that. So I'm not talking from a philosophical point of view of analysis. I am talking from the point of view intellectually analysing my experience which is not the same thing as pure analysis. I'm not familiar with the history of people analysing. I know a little but I am not a professional philosopher.
Life went on for a long time without sex. So sex is not the deepest expression of biology. But sex is at the heart of mammalian biology. For a human being sex is very deep. It is very very fundamental. We could be reductionist about what is going on within a human organism. The human organism exists so that genetic information can find a way forward. As it has gone forward from amoebas to human beings. The genetic information has found a way forward. At a certain point it found a sexual way forward. And that's where we are. Sexual transmitters of genetic information. Yet women don’t die when they reach menopause. Sometimes they really start to flourish. So there is more to life, to biology than the genetic imperative. It not then women would just die with the last egg. But that doesn't happen. So for me ...
And if they didn’t die they probably wouldn't have sex any more.
Yes. Except that it is enjoyable. Nevertheless the propagation of genetic information is driving sex and it's driving sex from very deep. It's driving sex before sex. So it's massively deep. Therefore it's very very powerful. You know it's almost ridiculously stupid that people should moralistically urge people to control their sex drive without understanding it. How do you control a stallion? Not by saying "Move over there", not by saying "Don't do that". It has to be more sophisticated than that. To me: Consciousness is all there is. So what that means is that Consciousness is the driving force behind evolution. To me the driving force behind evolution is not the propagation of genetic information. What is genetic information? It's intelligence compacted, compressed. And the fundamental nature of intelligence is consciousness in the sense that it is the ability to distinguish. Without the ability to distinguish an amoeba dies. So this ability to distinguish which is the fundamental property of intelligence is also the fundamental property of consciousness. "I am aware it's not this, I am aware it is that." "I am aware I am alive." "I am aware I am not asleep." So to me you can't get deeper than consciousness. So sex is very, very, very deep but Consciousness is deeper. So your question is how did I get to see this relationship between them.
Yes
And the answer is I don't really know. It's partly their depth. You know sex is not a superficial thing. Sex is a very, very, deep thing. But it is also that in my experience both sex and consciousness are inextricable from love. Not in everyone’s experience, and not in all of my experience. I have been sexually assaulted and i have been raped, a number of times. Nevertheless to me sex and love, Consciousness and love are intrinsically inextricable: they belong with one another.
They can't be separated and in both there is love.
What I mean is that neither sex nor Consciousness can be separated from love without losing touch with them somehow.
So it's all of them.
Yes, but I am giving that as a fundamental answer to your question. It is because both Consciousness and sex point in my experience directly to love that I am fascinated by the relationship between them.
Point directly to love. I would like you to talk a bit about sex and its deepness and how that relates to consciousness. I mean sex is so huge and I think there is a part of it that is unseen. I would like you to talk about how you can be overwhelmed by sex but without really knowing what is happening. We can't explain but there is something there. Do you know that I mean?
I don't know. Let's see. There are people out there: Fromm, Reich, Osho who see more to sex than fucking and genetic propagation. I do too, but i can only speak from my personal experience. So what i have to say may not yet be too coherent. My experience is of course that of a human being, so a sexual and a conscious being. But it is also filtered through my role as a teacher.
Nevertheless my functioning as a teacher is a natural, spontaneous expression of my character, of simply wanting to share what I love with people. It's not that I want even to help people, even though i understand that i have share what i want to share in a way that is not detrimental, that is helpful to those who momentarily play the student/teacher game with me. It’s not just that they won’t get it if i am not thoughtful about it, if i am not careful about what i do and say: which i am, even to an extreme perhaps. More to the point is that to be a sexual being is to be inherently vulnerable, fragile even. Human beings are extremely fragile especially when it comes to sexuality. Also even when it comes to Consciousness. A deeply frightening experience can predetermine the quality of your conscious experience for the rest of your life. Even it has nothing to do with sex. So the hugeness of sex reflects the hugeness of Consciousness.
I just want to drop in a story here. It comes from one of those Hindu books. One of those stories. Briefly the story is that things started to go seriously bad with the Universe. The planets were imploding and gravity was not functioning properly and all kinds of things weirdly going wrong. So the Gods were panicking. Indra, who is a king amongst gods insists that only Shiva can handle this shit. So one of them goes, in not a little trepidation, to find Shiva. Shiva after all is the Destroyer, so not an easy one to ask a favour of. So Shiva is approached but he is totally engrossed playing chess or whatever is the equivalent in India, with Parvati. Now this is my version of the story and he is losing and that's why he is engrossed. He does not want to loose to Parvati. So Indra comes and says "Hey excuse me Shiva my lord the universe is falling apart we need your help." No reply. And Parvati gets the point: she knows Shiva is beyond verbal communication. So she just pushes him over and starts to fuck him. And as they start to fuck gravity starts to return to normal and everything else goes back to normal.
The way I understand the point of this is that the universe is fundamentally sexual. That sex is the fundamental power of the universe, where consciousness is regarded as the source of that power. You know the power is normally called Shakti, while consciousness is referred to as Shiva.
I think it is so important what you just said. That sex is the fundamental power. I really do.
Well remember that story was made by humans.
Yes.
So to humans it's maybe the fundamental experienced power. Though maybe gravity is a little bit more fundamental.
Also I was thinking perhaps it's going a bit away from consciousness and sex but going back to this would you say this is intimacy?
Parvati fucking Shiva?
No. But intimacy is part of what you feel when you go deep through sex to consciousness.
Well let's just keep it going deep through sex. Because people can go really deep into sex and arrive at Consciousness but they don't know it. They don't think they want to go back into Consciousness. So I think that intimacy is a key for unlocking these mysteries a little bit in the sense that we are driven into sex by genetic imperative, by the biological imperative. Of course that's there. But what happens when a woman goes through menopause. It must be something else and it could just be pleasure. But it could be more. It could just be habit, it could just be insecurity. Yes, yes it could. It could, but what else it could be. Especially in the theme of where we are.
Taking this into my experience as somebody who came to sex late, yes i knocked on her door two days later but I didn't get involved with anybody. I didn't have a girlfriend for a while. I was busy doing yoga and taking LSD. When I was living in Ibiza I met this couple and the woman was French and a yoga teacher. And one day in the conversation I said something like "Ohh sex is overrated." And she looked at me in that French way and said "Yes Godfrey, but that is only because you have never had really good sex." What am I to say? It's a fair enough observation on her part. If there is somebody who thinks sex is overrated it's just because they didn't have good sex. That makes sense. But this seems to be in my character, in my make -up. Those things people really like about sex don't have the same appeal to me. Nevertheless there is something that I experience in sex that definitely appeals to me and that is intimacy. I think that where biology and consciousness meet in sex is in intimacy. Biology doesn't need intimacy, it just needs sex. You can rape somebody and pass your genes on. Yet that's not enough. Nobody is actually is satisfied by that. Not even the rapist. So I think that intimacy is the key to sex. But that key is actually an expression of Consciousness. That’s a way you experience Consciousness without recognising it, and without knowing anything about it: through the intimacy of sex. Of course there are other ways to enjoy, share intimacy with others. You can be intimate with yourself also. They are all satisfying. Now sex may have depths and subtleties to its frequency of intimacy, but for sure it has loads of overt, intense, even mind stopping pleasures.
Now I tend to be intimate with my body a few hours every day and from that experience of being intimate with my own body I derive a great deal of satisfaction. I experience pleasure too, but not the kind of pleasure that you get in sex. My experience is that sexual pleasure without intimacy isn't worth much. But when sexual pleasure comes with intimacy it's deeply nourishing.
Yes and why?
Consciousness. Because Consciousness is being accessed, even if not recognised, within that intimacy.
That's why I think it is so important to understand that sex is not only about fucking. It's much more. It’s also about intimacy
From the genetic point of view it is about about fucking. But from the consciousness point of view or the point of view of intimacy it's not. A woman not too long ago expressed her desire to be sexually intimate with me. I was completely open to this idea. She is also a teacher. Not a yoga teacher. She is a teacher of shamanic tantra. We got naked and we lay down. We looked into each others eyes. And that was it. We just lay and looked into each others eyes. You know on a certain level, on an intellectual level we were both surprised and disappointed so we tried again a few days later. Same thing. So we thought we would try a third time. Same thing. It was enough. There wasn't any need to do the other stuff.
Would you say that it was a sexual encounter?
Yes, totally. Absolutely and a very, very satisfying one, nicely and amusingly repeated three times.
So this is also why you are more and more interested in teaching tantra than yoga? Would you say this sharing your experience sharing your interest in consciousness and sex and all we are talking about here has led you to this tantra?
Well I don't know where the cause and effect is. You have witnessed the journey. It began when my wife Olivia insisted that we had to take more responsibility for the effect what we were teaching was having on our students. She was getting lots of clear feedback that many of our students were having their sexual energy awoken by the practice. Yet we weren’t offering any help with that. She said this was really irresponsible of us. I had a lot of resistance to bringing sex into out teaching conversation but she kept on at me. So I said "OK let's try."
I've had had some experiences in my past with tantric teachers but I've always kept it to myself. I haven't even shared it with my partners , because when I am with the person I love I just want to be with them. I don't want to be doing any kind of conceptualised practices. But anyway we started teaching tantra-yoga classes with overt references to sexual energy, desire and pleasure. We usually taught separately, but when we sometimes taught together I asked her to do the teaching and me do the assisting. That was part of my resistance, what you could call my conditioned sexual reluctance. My uptight middle class Englishness. I remember when you were translating you would say "Ohh Godfrey that was brilliant you should do more of this." And I would say "I don't really like it."
You told me once "This is so boring."
Well it was, it was, but it isn't anymore. That was because I hadn't let go into it. I was still functioning out of the erotophobic conditioning that there is something not spiritual about, that there is something wrong with, sex. That there is something dangerous about sex. Well of course there is, there are many things dangerous about sex and especially fucking. Now I wouldn't say I enjoy teaching tantra more than I enjoy teaching yoga but I feel that it is needed more. I enjoy teaching both of them and they are different. In a way teaching yoga is deeper because it's more directly about Consciousness.
When I practice and I'm alone on my mat a lot of what we are doing I can feel the sexual energy and also the practice is bringing to me to consciousness. It's also on my mat that I think sex is going on in another way.
Recently when i said something negative about tantra one of my students said to me "Yes Godfrey but when you are teaching yoga you may not be saying it but you are teaching tantra. The way you teach yoga, the things you are teaching put people in touch with their internal energies, and sexual energy is here to be felt."
Interestingly, at least to me, i can not say, like you just did, that i have ever felt sexual energy during my yoga practice. I know many people who say they have, they do. Not me. Maybe it's again a part of my resistance. Maybe i have an unconscious block that doesn’t allow me to acknowledge that this, or that thatfrequency of pleasure is sexual in nature, in origin. I have delicious experiences but they are experiences of softness and pleasure which I do not in my mind associate with sex. However I'm absolutely sure that they are sexual but I just don't get it like that. And I wonder how many other people don't. You know we are feeling it but we are not willing to recognise what it is.
If I think about how powerful is the sexual drive and how misunderstood it has been socially and culturally I really think it would be a revolution to understand sex the way you are talking about and if people could be conscious about this relationship between sex, consciousness, intimacy, love all this I really think it's revolutionary it will change so much cultures, societies.
Well you have to remember Natalia that you are talking to an old hippie. We thought that we were revolutionising the world back then, especially sexually. And it didn't happen. Therefore having been there I am not so inclined to look at it in that way. But I do understand what you mean. And of course if people could be as relaxed about their sexuality as I am now I'm sure the world would be a different, better place. But I have no relationship to that idea of revolution or of changing human culture or human society. My motivation as I said before is the sharing. But there is an extra element within that sharing. Of wanting some relaxed company who have similar values, what i take to be more sane values about sex than those imposed by our implicitly manipulative culture. When i was young i shared psychedelic drugs with one and all, for free. Now i would like to share an ease with human sexuality. Not in a Hugh Hefner Playboy way, but simply inviting people to become intimate with their own sexuality so that they can become more comfortable with themselves and therefore with others. And therefore less exploitative, less manipulative. You know that when I look at the protocols of human society I see manipulation everywhere. Everywhere. From the fact that somebody ask you a question they think that you have to answer. Or if they dialled your phone you are supposed to pick up. And again from my own experience I think that it is impossible to manipulate and exploit if you are satisfied. If you are happy and if you are satisfied you just can't, why would you anyway? You don't want anything, you don't need anything that needs to be extracted from someone against their will.
So being satisfied as a human being is not just having enough food, it's not just having enough water, it's not just having enough protection against the cold. And it's not just having enough sex. Those are the basics. Those are the things I would say are not so important including sex. To be satisfied we need intimacy, we need understanding and we need to love. And I think our need to love is actually deeper than our need to be loved. And we know we do need to be loved. We also need to love because love is our nature and you cannot be satisfied if you are not expressing your nature. Hermann Hess wrote a great story about it.
And actually that is etymologically the significance of the sanskrit word for suffering: dukkha. Because dukkha means the axle is stuck. It can’t revolve. Therefore it cannot express its nature, and that is the essence of suffering. The inability to express your nature. And if your nature is love then you need to love. But human nature is multi dimensional. We are sexual beings too. So sexuality is a part of our nature and it needs to be expressed. And if it is not expressed openly, which might just mean lying down and looking into somebody’s eyes, it’s going to come as criticism, anger, judgement, ideology, fundamentalism.
But all these are consciousness. Even that way of expressing is consciousness?
Yes, have you ever danced?
Yes
Consciousness too. That's how I see it. I know I'm being anthropomorphic. I know I'm being metaphorical but that's how the mind works, how my mind works. You know and sometimes it's like "Yes, but what's going on?" OK consciousness is all there is but "What is it up to? What's it all about?" and the closest I can get to make sense of it is just: consciousness is dancing. It's not trying to make anything, it's not trying to build anything, it's not trying to find anything, it's not trying to prove itself. It's just dancing. I’ve been told there’s a sanskrit text that begins: "Consciousness leaping in eternal delight". I totally get that. I think what comes next is the manifest Universe. Yes, I get that totally, consciousness leaping, dancing in delight. You know how it is though when you really go for it, when you let go into the dancing. Sometime you get dizzy. Sometimes you hurt yourself. Same for Consciousness.
So even just fucking is an expression of consciousness?
To me everything is an expression of Consciousness. Hey but let's not be mean here. There is nothing wrong with just fucking if both people want to be just fucking. Even if it doesn't have intimacy. Tennis doesn't have intimacy. There is nothing wrong with playing tennis. Well except for maybe for your shoulders and knees.
What I am trying to say is that sex with intimacy can bring you to the depts of consciousness but sex without intimacy would be an expression of consciousness but not really bring you to it.
Not in a conscious way where you clearly enjoy the fundamental properties of consciousness like love, peace and joy.
I think I understand.
Good, at least one of us does.
So I keep on thinking when we are children sex is so much wanting to express itself. This sexual drive is potent as I've experienced it, but you can't express it it. As a child we are more close to consciousness than what we are when we grow up. I feel there is something very authentic about children and their sexual curiosity, then it's like you get alienated from it.
I don't know again if it's my sexual resistance but I have no childhood memories of being sexually curious. I do remember discovering that I could get amazing pleasure from my cock when I was in the bath and at boarding school I would play with myself at night in bed and other boys would realise and we would talk about it. But it wasn't like a really big thing. I never touched anybody else, nobody ever touched me. I never showed my genitals to a girl. I never asked a girl to show me their genitals. I say i never did, but maybe I just don't have the memory. So I can't really say anything about what that is. But to me it's pretty clear that children to the extent that they haven't been too traumatised are in touch with Consciousness. And for me this resonates in my current experience as an adult. If you asked me to characterise what it is like to become familiar with, grounded in consciousness i would say that you become more like a child. Not absolving yourself of practical responsibilities and obligations that children don’t have, but in not thinking so much about things. Not constantly worrying about what to do and how to do it. Just doing more freely and spontaneously. Like a child. They are not using their minds to direct and determine their lives like we do. They just get up and just do what they feel like and of course some of them feel like being nasty to others. But I'm sure a lot of nastiness has come to them and they are just trying to get it out. But I think left to their own devices an un-traumatised child will just feel like exploring. That's all, just exploring anything and everything. So if they feel sensations on the genitals why not explore that? Which is what I explored in the bath. But I had no conceptual vocabulary for it. I don't remember masturbating being a particular feature of my childhood. But then again I might be blocking the memory.
I never lost the curiosity.
You mean the sexual curiosity?
The sexual curiosity yes.
I think my curiosity is more general and sex is just in there, but not as a major factor. At least until more recently. More recently it's its association with consciousness through love that intrigues me. But actually I'm still not particularly curious about sex what I'm curious about is its relationship to Consciousness. So my interest in sex is contained within part of my interest in Consciousness. I am not likely to sit around thinking about sex. I am likely to sit around thinking about Consciousness.
And experience sex?
What do you mean?
You say you don’t sit around thinking about sex, but you do about consciousness. But what about doing sex, having sex? You do that right?
Well I do experience sex, yes. But my sexual activity is not research, like my meditation and yoga are. Going to a yoga mat or meditation cushion has many elements and one of them is definitely research. But my sexual activity is motivated more by the call of Consciousness rather than researching into it. The call of Consciousness by way of intimacy. The story I told you about the woman with whom three times we just looked into each others eyes. I have no problem with stopping there. I don't need to go to any particular destination within the context of intimacy. It's not a problem. So the sexual side of it is secondary. Although, supposedly, my testicles are still wanting to propagate genetic information.
But then Godfrey why don't you give more importance into intimacy than sex?
Well I do.
But then you don't say "My interest in consciousness and intimacy" you say "My interest in consciousness and sex"
Yes but if I say my interest is in Consciousness and sex: what I mean is that my interest is actually in love or intimacy. But I use those words because they are polarised in people's moral vocabulary. Also, even though not everybody is interested in consciousness everybody is interested in sex one way or another.
At some point I can make the connection but it's like I smell something in a very naive way. Intimacy has given me another clue. I can understand what you said. The call of consciousness.
But let me tell you what I mean about the call of Consciousness. And I'll misquote my friend Juan whom I mentioned to you earlier. "Those enlightened people who've realised we have to dissolve at least once a day." By the call of consciousness I mean that. And it's the same thing that calls me to a yoga mat. The same thing that calls me to a meditation cushion. But of course it's calling in a different way. And the call to Consciousness is a call to intimacy. You could say it's a call to Love. You could also say it's a call to surrender. You could also say as Juan said, it's a call to dissolve. The dissolution of your social identity and armour and memories and even of attention. Sex doesn't do that. Intimacy does that. But sex can be a way to get very quickly into intimacy and stay there. Meditation has a lot of oscillation. And yoga is a little bit the same. Sex is like, if you open the door it's there until you are finished. It's there until you get up and go. And it doesn't oscillate. Not for me anyway.
Plus meditation is intimacy within yourself and sex is intimacy with another.
Yes but to me the call is still call of the Consciousness. And you are accessing the same property, qualities and nourishment of Consciousness. But the thing about sex or tantra as opposed to meditation or yoga is that the other person is a mirror. Not just a mirror but an amplifier: so it cranks up the juice. The juice of the love, the peace, the joy and the nourishment that comes from it. Again I'm not saying that sex is more nourishing than meditation. No, I'm saying intimate sex is deeply nourishing. I'm not making a comparison in nourishment but I am making a comparison in stability. The intimacy of sex in my experience is more stable. It's much more naturally stable. We don't have to learn. It's not stable through practice. Meditation becomes more and more stable over time. But with sex it falls on me and stays there as soon as penetration happens.It doesn’t waver or fluctuate. I remain in a deep state immersed in delight, love and peace being amplified in another.
So anything else?
I was just thinking that it's been perfect for me. The way we've been going through this conversation to arrive to this clarification of intimacy, intimacy with the other, intimacy with yourself, intimacy on the mat, in sex, consciousness. It has been super clarifying for me.
Great. I'm sure we are going to talk about it another time.
Yes please.
Hello Natalia we are going to have a conversation, just a relaxed friendly conversation, about two of your favorite subjects as I believe. One of them Consciousness, the other one sex.
Of course
I'm under the impression that these interest you a lot more than politics or philosophy
Much more.
OK . I just want to begin with why I would be interested in having such a conversation. I spent most of my life as a yoga teacher and I really enjoy it. I've had a very unusual adventurous journey as a yoga teacher in which I've had many amazing experiences. Not least really deeply investigating the nature of the body and how yoga can be made to work in the body. But over the last few years slowly, gradually I find that I'm less interested in yoga. Not completely, but it doesn't have quite the same pull that it used to have.
You mean the practice?
No the teaching.
OK
Of course this also coincides with me teaching tantra and meditation more. But I think that is symptomatic of the fact that i have gradually become more and more interested in Consciousness and sex than anything else: including yoga. So that's why I thought we should have this conversation because you are interested in both of those.
I am.
I am sure most people are interested in sex but I don't think that most people are interested in Consciousness. Which I think is a shame. But anyway as time takes me closer to death i find myself less able to be clear where the boundary is: not conceptually, but in experience.
The boundary between sex and consciousness?
Yes. I think the association of sex and consciousness all began a long time ago without my knowing quite what had begun. I was actually very slow getting to sex as a teenager, because i was busy with consciousness. I had spent plenty of my teenage years being mildly sexual, but never quite completing. Eventually i made myself complete, because i didn’t want to be left behind. It didn’t seem to grab me as much as it grabbed my friends, both male and female. But when finally i got there i was struck by how immediate and potent was the change in the quality of my consciousness that came with sexual penetration. It was like another world. Not just of delicious sensation, but a whole different frequency of perception. I couldn't explain why even now I couldn't even describe how but everything seemed to change.
At that time was your understanding of sex different to what it is now. I think for most people the word sex means fucking. What was it for you back then?
I lost my virginity at 19 or 20. I think even then I was more curious about sex than driven by sex. I remember very well why I finally said to myself "Godfrey you have to lose your virginity." I didn't have a girlfriend. I'd never really had a girlfriend by the time I was 19 and this surprised all my friends because I was very open, gregarious, uninhibited and at parties I would be the first to dance and do all those things. However I was actually otherwise occupied with God and Consciousness. Of course yoga was a big part of that. So to me sex was not about fucking. Sex was to me was just another thing to explore. "What is this really?" I remember where I was when I made the decision. I was in my bedroom which was actually a cupboard in somebody else's bedroom. I was coming down on LSD. I'd been having the LSD experience of everything melting and merging - the word that I used to use back then was fusion. Everything was fusing. I was coming down and becoming more normal. It occurred to me that sex was also a kind of fusion and therefore I wanted to know what it was like relative to tripping. So I went out and a few days later I found somebody open and lost my virginity. So it wasn't out of horniness or anything like that. It was out of my curiosity trying to understand "What's really going on in here". My wanting to understand what is going on here had already been focused on Consciousness for a while without me having read anything of Eastern or Western philosophy, but a lot of symbolist poetry. My curiosity had come from the fact that I started doing yoga just after I started taking psychedelic drugs. So they came together. The practice and experience of yoga totally coloured my psychedelic experiences. This wasn’t the case for all hippies. Some, yes: it is not unknown for psychedelic drugs to be profoundly spiritual with an Eastern twist
What was sex's part in your life back then?
Not much. It became a biological necessity once I had it. I didn't think it was a particularly great experience but I remember very well two days later I was knocking on her door.
Would you say that when we are children there is some curiosity about sexual pleasure?
I think it is there for everybody. Curiosity is another way of referring to how intelligence works. "What is that, what is this, is it really?" You know. For reasons I will never know my curiosity wasn't shut down really. In fact I think my curiosity was supported directly especially by mother. Also I can remember my grandmother had a neighbour who was a teacher who my mother said was fascinated by my curiosity. She was constantly feeding it by asking me questions and not giving the answers. I think I was very lucky in the sense that my curiosity, my natural intelligence was not hindered. I was also lucky that my education stopped when I was sixteen. Which is a long time before most people that I know. Because most people that I know have gone to university. You know they had twice the education as me and I'm not so sure if that is so good for your curiosity. So I think yes, there is natural curiosity about sensations and pleasure, but of course there is no sense of sex. I remember when I was 8 when I went to boarding school. An older boy was wanting to intimidate the new boys and told us there was a witch living in the attic and she was very, very, very sexy. I had no idea what that meant. Then when I was 17 I was visiting my parents and my father came home to lunch unexpectedly and as he was coming down the drive he passed this pretty girl who was leaving. So of course his curiosity was triggered. He knew I didn't have a girlfriend. And anyway I was just visiting. I told him she was my best friend’s girlfriend, who works in the hospital across the road. He didn’t understand why she was in his house at lunchtime. I told him she came to see me every day. He looked at me oddly and said; “It’s extraordinary Godfrey but females seem to find you irresistibly sexy”. I really didn’t understand what that meant. Not really. I knew that he meant women really liked me but I didn't know exactly what sexy meant. So I've been a little slow. My curiosity of course extended itself into anything, into everything including females and what were they like, why do they behave the way they behave. But it wasn't specifically focused on sex. It's only now in the last few years it's coming to a focus like "OK this is a unexplored territory." People think they understand sex
But they don't. That's why I say that for most people sex is the same word as fucking. Would you say that having sex is an expression of consciousness?
Yes. In a way it is not fair to say yes. You can change any word for sex and I would say yes. Because to me it is very clear consciousness is all there is and everything is an expression of that. Can you be more specific if you can?
What is it that has driven you to make this connection between consciousness and sex and why both have become two most interesting things for you?
My focusing of interest in sex and Consciousness is something that I notice. I notice it. I don't really know how I got here but I have seen things that can make sense of it perhaps. There is an apparent duality, almost an opposition between sex and consciousness. To me consciousness is not a serendipitous accident of evolution, of sophisticated biology. Which it is in the vocabulary of scientists and philosophers. They are using the word consciousness to refer to the conscious mind, to conscious awareness. The word for that, for the conscious mind, in sanskrit is “citta”. But when i have been using the word Consciousness in this conversation the sanskrit equivalent would be “cit”. Cit is the root or the source of citta. This root or source Consciousness precedes biology.
The apparent distinction between Consciousness and sex, or between biology and spirituality, or between matter and spirit is a distinction that exists only in the mind because of the way things happen. You slap me, I feel pain but then I think I better avoid you. I can distinguish between those two. There is a physical pain side and there is the OK I have learnt a lesson side. Mind and body. But the fact I learned it like that, verbalise it like that and think about it like that doesn't actually mean that there is a duality. It's an experiential one, a functional one, a linguistic one. So in that sense they are different. Within our experience they are different. This is the domain of yoga and meditation, the whole conundrum of that. So I'm not talking from a philosophical point of view of analysis. I am talking from the point of view intellectually analysing my experience which is not the same thing as pure analysis. I'm not familiar with the history of people analysing. I know a little but I am not a professional philosopher.
Life went on for a long time without sex. So sex is not the deepest expression of biology. But sex is at the heart of mammalian biology. For a human being sex is very deep. It is very very fundamental. We could be reductionist about what is going on within a human organism. The human organism exists so that genetic information can find a way forward. As it has gone forward from amoebas to human beings. The genetic information has found a way forward. At a certain point it found a sexual way forward. And that's where we are. Sexual transmitters of genetic information. Yet women don’t die when they reach menopause. Sometimes they really start to flourish. So there is more to life, to biology than the genetic imperative. It not then women would just die with the last egg. But that doesn't happen. So for me ...
And if they didn’t die they probably wouldn't have sex any more.
Yes. Except that it is enjoyable. Nevertheless the propagation of genetic information is driving sex and it's driving sex from very deep. It's driving sex before sex. So it's massively deep. Therefore it's very very powerful. You know it's almost ridiculously stupid that people should moralistically urge people to control their sex drive without understanding it. How do you control a stallion? Not by saying "Move over there", not by saying "Don't do that". It has to be more sophisticated than that. To me: Consciousness is all there is. So what that means is that Consciousness is the driving force behind evolution. To me the driving force behind evolution is not the propagation of genetic information. What is genetic information? It's intelligence compacted, compressed. And the fundamental nature of intelligence is consciousness in the sense that it is the ability to distinguish. Without the ability to distinguish an amoeba dies. So this ability to distinguish which is the fundamental property of intelligence is also the fundamental property of consciousness. "I am aware it's not this, I am aware it is that." "I am aware I am alive." "I am aware I am not asleep." So to me you can't get deeper than consciousness. So sex is very, very, very deep but Consciousness is deeper. So your question is how did I get to see this relationship between them.
Yes
And the answer is I don't really know. It's partly their depth. You know sex is not a superficial thing. Sex is a very, very, deep thing. But it is also that in my experience both sex and consciousness are inextricable from love. Not in everyone’s experience, and not in all of my experience. I have been sexually assaulted and i have been raped, a number of times. Nevertheless to me sex and love, Consciousness and love are intrinsically inextricable: they belong with one another.
They can't be separated and in both there is love.
What I mean is that neither sex nor Consciousness can be separated from love without losing touch with them somehow.
So it's all of them.
Yes, but I am giving that as a fundamental answer to your question. It is because both Consciousness and sex point in my experience directly to love that I am fascinated by the relationship between them.
Point directly to love. I would like you to talk a bit about sex and its deepness and how that relates to consciousness. I mean sex is so huge and I think there is a part of it that is unseen. I would like you to talk about how you can be overwhelmed by sex but without really knowing what is happening. We can't explain but there is something there. Do you know that I mean?
I don't know. Let's see. There are people out there: Fromm, Reich, Osho who see more to sex than fucking and genetic propagation. I do too, but i can only speak from my personal experience. So what i have to say may not yet be too coherent. My experience is of course that of a human being, so a sexual and a conscious being. But it is also filtered through my role as a teacher.
Nevertheless my functioning as a teacher is a natural, spontaneous expression of my character, of simply wanting to share what I love with people. It's not that I want even to help people, even though i understand that i have share what i want to share in a way that is not detrimental, that is helpful to those who momentarily play the student/teacher game with me. It’s not just that they won’t get it if i am not thoughtful about it, if i am not careful about what i do and say: which i am, even to an extreme perhaps. More to the point is that to be a sexual being is to be inherently vulnerable, fragile even. Human beings are extremely fragile especially when it comes to sexuality. Also even when it comes to Consciousness. A deeply frightening experience can predetermine the quality of your conscious experience for the rest of your life. Even it has nothing to do with sex. So the hugeness of sex reflects the hugeness of Consciousness.
I just want to drop in a story here. It comes from one of those Hindu books. One of those stories. Briefly the story is that things started to go seriously bad with the Universe. The planets were imploding and gravity was not functioning properly and all kinds of things weirdly going wrong. So the Gods were panicking. Indra, who is a king amongst gods insists that only Shiva can handle this shit. So one of them goes, in not a little trepidation, to find Shiva. Shiva after all is the Destroyer, so not an easy one to ask a favour of. So Shiva is approached but he is totally engrossed playing chess or whatever is the equivalent in India, with Parvati. Now this is my version of the story and he is losing and that's why he is engrossed. He does not want to loose to Parvati. So Indra comes and says "Hey excuse me Shiva my lord the universe is falling apart we need your help." No reply. And Parvati gets the point: she knows Shiva is beyond verbal communication. So she just pushes him over and starts to fuck him. And as they start to fuck gravity starts to return to normal and everything else goes back to normal.
The way I understand the point of this is that the universe is fundamentally sexual. That sex is the fundamental power of the universe, where consciousness is regarded as the source of that power. You know the power is normally called Shakti, while consciousness is referred to as Shiva.
I think it is so important what you just said. That sex is the fundamental power. I really do.
Well remember that story was made by humans.
Yes.
So to humans it's maybe the fundamental experienced power. Though maybe gravity is a little bit more fundamental.
Also I was thinking perhaps it's going a bit away from consciousness and sex but going back to this would you say this is intimacy?
Parvati fucking Shiva?
No. But intimacy is part of what you feel when you go deep through sex to consciousness.
Well let's just keep it going deep through sex. Because people can go really deep into sex and arrive at Consciousness but they don't know it. They don't think they want to go back into Consciousness. So I think that intimacy is a key for unlocking these mysteries a little bit in the sense that we are driven into sex by genetic imperative, by the biological imperative. Of course that's there. But what happens when a woman goes through menopause. It must be something else and it could just be pleasure. But it could be more. It could just be habit, it could just be insecurity. Yes, yes it could. It could, but what else it could be. Especially in the theme of where we are.
Taking this into my experience as somebody who came to sex late, yes i knocked on her door two days later but I didn't get involved with anybody. I didn't have a girlfriend for a while. I was busy doing yoga and taking LSD. When I was living in Ibiza I met this couple and the woman was French and a yoga teacher. And one day in the conversation I said something like "Ohh sex is overrated." And she looked at me in that French way and said "Yes Godfrey, but that is only because you have never had really good sex." What am I to say? It's a fair enough observation on her part. If there is somebody who thinks sex is overrated it's just because they didn't have good sex. That makes sense. But this seems to be in my character, in my make -up. Those things people really like about sex don't have the same appeal to me. Nevertheless there is something that I experience in sex that definitely appeals to me and that is intimacy. I think that where biology and consciousness meet in sex is in intimacy. Biology doesn't need intimacy, it just needs sex. You can rape somebody and pass your genes on. Yet that's not enough. Nobody is actually is satisfied by that. Not even the rapist. So I think that intimacy is the key to sex. But that key is actually an expression of Consciousness. That’s a way you experience Consciousness without recognising it, and without knowing anything about it: through the intimacy of sex. Of course there are other ways to enjoy, share intimacy with others. You can be intimate with yourself also. They are all satisfying. Now sex may have depths and subtleties to its frequency of intimacy, but for sure it has loads of overt, intense, even mind stopping pleasures.
Now I tend to be intimate with my body a few hours every day and from that experience of being intimate with my own body I derive a great deal of satisfaction. I experience pleasure too, but not the kind of pleasure that you get in sex. My experience is that sexual pleasure without intimacy isn't worth much. But when sexual pleasure comes with intimacy it's deeply nourishing.
Yes and why?
Consciousness. Because Consciousness is being accessed, even if not recognised, within that intimacy.
That's why I think it is so important to understand that sex is not only about fucking. It's much more. It’s also about intimacy
From the genetic point of view it is about about fucking. But from the consciousness point of view or the point of view of intimacy it's not. A woman not too long ago expressed her desire to be sexually intimate with me. I was completely open to this idea. She is also a teacher. Not a yoga teacher. She is a teacher of shamanic tantra. We got naked and we lay down. We looked into each others eyes. And that was it. We just lay and looked into each others eyes. You know on a certain level, on an intellectual level we were both surprised and disappointed so we tried again a few days later. Same thing. So we thought we would try a third time. Same thing. It was enough. There wasn't any need to do the other stuff.
Would you say that it was a sexual encounter?
Yes, totally. Absolutely and a very, very satisfying one, nicely and amusingly repeated three times.
So this is also why you are more and more interested in teaching tantra than yoga? Would you say this sharing your experience sharing your interest in consciousness and sex and all we are talking about here has led you to this tantra?
Well I don't know where the cause and effect is. You have witnessed the journey. It began when my wife Olivia insisted that we had to take more responsibility for the effect what we were teaching was having on our students. She was getting lots of clear feedback that many of our students were having their sexual energy awoken by the practice. Yet we weren’t offering any help with that. She said this was really irresponsible of us. I had a lot of resistance to bringing sex into out teaching conversation but she kept on at me. So I said "OK let's try."
I've had had some experiences in my past with tantric teachers but I've always kept it to myself. I haven't even shared it with my partners , because when I am with the person I love I just want to be with them. I don't want to be doing any kind of conceptualised practices. But anyway we started teaching tantra-yoga classes with overt references to sexual energy, desire and pleasure. We usually taught separately, but when we sometimes taught together I asked her to do the teaching and me do the assisting. That was part of my resistance, what you could call my conditioned sexual reluctance. My uptight middle class Englishness. I remember when you were translating you would say "Ohh Godfrey that was brilliant you should do more of this." And I would say "I don't really like it."
You told me once "This is so boring."
Well it was, it was, but it isn't anymore. That was because I hadn't let go into it. I was still functioning out of the erotophobic conditioning that there is something not spiritual about, that there is something wrong with, sex. That there is something dangerous about sex. Well of course there is, there are many things dangerous about sex and especially fucking. Now I wouldn't say I enjoy teaching tantra more than I enjoy teaching yoga but I feel that it is needed more. I enjoy teaching both of them and they are different. In a way teaching yoga is deeper because it's more directly about Consciousness.
When I practice and I'm alone on my mat a lot of what we are doing I can feel the sexual energy and also the practice is bringing to me to consciousness. It's also on my mat that I think sex is going on in another way.
Recently when i said something negative about tantra one of my students said to me "Yes Godfrey but when you are teaching yoga you may not be saying it but you are teaching tantra. The way you teach yoga, the things you are teaching put people in touch with their internal energies, and sexual energy is here to be felt."
Interestingly, at least to me, i can not say, like you just did, that i have ever felt sexual energy during my yoga practice. I know many people who say they have, they do. Not me. Maybe it's again a part of my resistance. Maybe i have an unconscious block that doesn’t allow me to acknowledge that this, or that thatfrequency of pleasure is sexual in nature, in origin. I have delicious experiences but they are experiences of softness and pleasure which I do not in my mind associate with sex. However I'm absolutely sure that they are sexual but I just don't get it like that. And I wonder how many other people don't. You know we are feeling it but we are not willing to recognise what it is.
If I think about how powerful is the sexual drive and how misunderstood it has been socially and culturally I really think it would be a revolution to understand sex the way you are talking about and if people could be conscious about this relationship between sex, consciousness, intimacy, love all this I really think it's revolutionary it will change so much cultures, societies.
Well you have to remember Natalia that you are talking to an old hippie. We thought that we were revolutionising the world back then, especially sexually. And it didn't happen. Therefore having been there I am not so inclined to look at it in that way. But I do understand what you mean. And of course if people could be as relaxed about their sexuality as I am now I'm sure the world would be a different, better place. But I have no relationship to that idea of revolution or of changing human culture or human society. My motivation as I said before is the sharing. But there is an extra element within that sharing. Of wanting some relaxed company who have similar values, what i take to be more sane values about sex than those imposed by our implicitly manipulative culture. When i was young i shared psychedelic drugs with one and all, for free. Now i would like to share an ease with human sexuality. Not in a Hugh Hefner Playboy way, but simply inviting people to become intimate with their own sexuality so that they can become more comfortable with themselves and therefore with others. And therefore less exploitative, less manipulative. You know that when I look at the protocols of human society I see manipulation everywhere. Everywhere. From the fact that somebody ask you a question they think that you have to answer. Or if they dialled your phone you are supposed to pick up. And again from my own experience I think that it is impossible to manipulate and exploit if you are satisfied. If you are happy and if you are satisfied you just can't, why would you anyway? You don't want anything, you don't need anything that needs to be extracted from someone against their will.
So being satisfied as a human being is not just having enough food, it's not just having enough water, it's not just having enough protection against the cold. And it's not just having enough sex. Those are the basics. Those are the things I would say are not so important including sex. To be satisfied we need intimacy, we need understanding and we need to love. And I think our need to love is actually deeper than our need to be loved. And we know we do need to be loved. We also need to love because love is our nature and you cannot be satisfied if you are not expressing your nature. Hermann Hess wrote a great story about it.
And actually that is etymologically the significance of the sanskrit word for suffering: dukkha. Because dukkha means the axle is stuck. It can’t revolve. Therefore it cannot express its nature, and that is the essence of suffering. The inability to express your nature. And if your nature is love then you need to love. But human nature is multi dimensional. We are sexual beings too. So sexuality is a part of our nature and it needs to be expressed. And if it is not expressed openly, which might just mean lying down and looking into somebody’s eyes, it’s going to come as criticism, anger, judgement, ideology, fundamentalism.
But all these are consciousness. Even that way of expressing is consciousness?
Yes, have you ever danced?
Yes
Consciousness too. That's how I see it. I know I'm being anthropomorphic. I know I'm being metaphorical but that's how the mind works, how my mind works. You know and sometimes it's like "Yes, but what's going on?" OK consciousness is all there is but "What is it up to? What's it all about?" and the closest I can get to make sense of it is just: consciousness is dancing. It's not trying to make anything, it's not trying to build anything, it's not trying to find anything, it's not trying to prove itself. It's just dancing. I’ve been told there’s a sanskrit text that begins: "Consciousness leaping in eternal delight". I totally get that. I think what comes next is the manifest Universe. Yes, I get that totally, consciousness leaping, dancing in delight. You know how it is though when you really go for it, when you let go into the dancing. Sometime you get dizzy. Sometimes you hurt yourself. Same for Consciousness.
So even just fucking is an expression of consciousness?
To me everything is an expression of Consciousness. Hey but let's not be mean here. There is nothing wrong with just fucking if both people want to be just fucking. Even if it doesn't have intimacy. Tennis doesn't have intimacy. There is nothing wrong with playing tennis. Well except for maybe for your shoulders and knees.
What I am trying to say is that sex with intimacy can bring you to the depts of consciousness but sex without intimacy would be an expression of consciousness but not really bring you to it.
Not in a conscious way where you clearly enjoy the fundamental properties of consciousness like love, peace and joy.
I think I understand.
Good, at least one of us does.
So I keep on thinking when we are children sex is so much wanting to express itself. This sexual drive is potent as I've experienced it, but you can't express it it. As a child we are more close to consciousness than what we are when we grow up. I feel there is something very authentic about children and their sexual curiosity, then it's like you get alienated from it.
I don't know again if it's my sexual resistance but I have no childhood memories of being sexually curious. I do remember discovering that I could get amazing pleasure from my cock when I was in the bath and at boarding school I would play with myself at night in bed and other boys would realise and we would talk about it. But it wasn't like a really big thing. I never touched anybody else, nobody ever touched me. I never showed my genitals to a girl. I never asked a girl to show me their genitals. I say i never did, but maybe I just don't have the memory. So I can't really say anything about what that is. But to me it's pretty clear that children to the extent that they haven't been too traumatised are in touch with Consciousness. And for me this resonates in my current experience as an adult. If you asked me to characterise what it is like to become familiar with, grounded in consciousness i would say that you become more like a child. Not absolving yourself of practical responsibilities and obligations that children don’t have, but in not thinking so much about things. Not constantly worrying about what to do and how to do it. Just doing more freely and spontaneously. Like a child. They are not using their minds to direct and determine their lives like we do. They just get up and just do what they feel like and of course some of them feel like being nasty to others. But I'm sure a lot of nastiness has come to them and they are just trying to get it out. But I think left to their own devices an un-traumatised child will just feel like exploring. That's all, just exploring anything and everything. So if they feel sensations on the genitals why not explore that? Which is what I explored in the bath. But I had no conceptual vocabulary for it. I don't remember masturbating being a particular feature of my childhood. But then again I might be blocking the memory.
I never lost the curiosity.
You mean the sexual curiosity?
The sexual curiosity yes.
I think my curiosity is more general and sex is just in there, but not as a major factor. At least until more recently. More recently it's its association with consciousness through love that intrigues me. But actually I'm still not particularly curious about sex what I'm curious about is its relationship to Consciousness. So my interest in sex is contained within part of my interest in Consciousness. I am not likely to sit around thinking about sex. I am likely to sit around thinking about Consciousness.
And experience sex?
What do you mean?
You say you don’t sit around thinking about sex, but you do about consciousness. But what about doing sex, having sex? You do that right?
Well I do experience sex, yes. But my sexual activity is not research, like my meditation and yoga are. Going to a yoga mat or meditation cushion has many elements and one of them is definitely research. But my sexual activity is motivated more by the call of Consciousness rather than researching into it. The call of Consciousness by way of intimacy. The story I told you about the woman with whom three times we just looked into each others eyes. I have no problem with stopping there. I don't need to go to any particular destination within the context of intimacy. It's not a problem. So the sexual side of it is secondary. Although, supposedly, my testicles are still wanting to propagate genetic information.
But then Godfrey why don't you give more importance into intimacy than sex?
Well I do.
But then you don't say "My interest in consciousness and intimacy" you say "My interest in consciousness and sex"
Yes but if I say my interest is in Consciousness and sex: what I mean is that my interest is actually in love or intimacy. But I use those words because they are polarised in people's moral vocabulary. Also, even though not everybody is interested in consciousness everybody is interested in sex one way or another.
At some point I can make the connection but it's like I smell something in a very naive way. Intimacy has given me another clue. I can understand what you said. The call of consciousness.
But let me tell you what I mean about the call of Consciousness. And I'll misquote my friend Juan whom I mentioned to you earlier. "Those enlightened people who've realised we have to dissolve at least once a day." By the call of consciousness I mean that. And it's the same thing that calls me to a yoga mat. The same thing that calls me to a meditation cushion. But of course it's calling in a different way. And the call to Consciousness is a call to intimacy. You could say it's a call to Love. You could also say it's a call to surrender. You could also say as Juan said, it's a call to dissolve. The dissolution of your social identity and armour and memories and even of attention. Sex doesn't do that. Intimacy does that. But sex can be a way to get very quickly into intimacy and stay there. Meditation has a lot of oscillation. And yoga is a little bit the same. Sex is like, if you open the door it's there until you are finished. It's there until you get up and go. And it doesn't oscillate. Not for me anyway.
Plus meditation is intimacy within yourself and sex is intimacy with another.
Yes but to me the call is still call of the Consciousness. And you are accessing the same property, qualities and nourishment of Consciousness. But the thing about sex or tantra as opposed to meditation or yoga is that the other person is a mirror. Not just a mirror but an amplifier: so it cranks up the juice. The juice of the love, the peace, the joy and the nourishment that comes from it. Again I'm not saying that sex is more nourishing than meditation. No, I'm saying intimate sex is deeply nourishing. I'm not making a comparison in nourishment but I am making a comparison in stability. The intimacy of sex in my experience is more stable. It's much more naturally stable. We don't have to learn. It's not stable through practice. Meditation becomes more and more stable over time. But with sex it falls on me and stays there as soon as penetration happens.It doesn’t waver or fluctuate. I remain in a deep state immersed in delight, love and peace being amplified in another.
So anything else?
I was just thinking that it's been perfect for me. The way we've been going through this conversation to arrive to this clarification of intimacy, intimacy with the other, intimacy with yourself, intimacy on the mat, in sex, consciousness. It has been super clarifying for me.
Great. I'm sure we are going to talk about it another time.
Yes please.