by Dieter Duhm
To create equal sexual emancipation for both men and women, we need functioning communities of trust in which old taboos and prejudices can be overcome at depth.
It is really hard to maintain the old system of marriage and couple-love within community because there are so many potential sexual partners. The sexual desire of most women, like men, reaches far beyond their relationship with a single partner. They need the chance to reveal this desire to each other without fear or shame. Free sexuality is the sexual revelation of both men and women. One of our key phrases was and is, “You can only be faithful if you are also allowed to love others.”
The system of free sexuality develops organically from an intact community life. Free sexuality is neither an ideology nor a preconceived program, but a development which emerges on its own, leading toward truth and freedom if we are courageous enough to allow it. No couple living in Tamera for a longer stretch of time has been able to maintain strict monogamy. One slowly discovers that faithfulness stems from a soul connection and cannot be attained by the sexual exclusion of others.
One eventually discovers that free sexuality and partnership do not contradict, but mutually complement one another. This discovery changes lives. If this becomes prevalent it will morphogenetically relieve human civilization from immeasurable pain. Free sexuality and couple love are not mutually exclusive! One need not be jealous when one’s partner has an “adventure,” for one is allowed to do it oneself. One can experience that this actually does no harm to partnership and love, given it is genuine. The mess takes place only in the head, not in the nature of reality. Jealousy does not belong to love! If a couple manages to maintain their relationship in the environment of free sexuality then we can trust that two people have truly “found” each other. Once we no longer need to keep our wishes secret from each other, a new voyage in life can begin: truth in sexuality, truth in love, truth in partnership, truth instead of secrets, lies, and bad conscience. Thereby a gate in the cellular system of the human being opens, which had been sealed by thousands of vows over generations.
Free sexuality is not arbitrary promiscuity, it is not pornographic, nor is it indiscriminate group sex. Such fantasies emerge from the imaginations of people that do not have the possibility to fulfill their sexual wishes with dignity and solidarity.
Free sexuality is the encounter between people wanting to meet on the basis of contact and trust. Please reflect on this – contact and trust. It is not a matter of how many partners one has and is not about the savage survival of the fittest. It is about humanizing sex and love. It is appalling how the term “free sexuality” has been abused and falsified by the press. I know how difficult it is to bring this thought through. Actually it is no thought, but an offer from creation. It does not make much sense to argue about an experience one has not had.
Free sexuality can only fulfill its humane function when it follows social and ethical conditions given by a community of trust.
Most participants in our Love School courses realize within a few days how freely sexuality flows when they accept that they are actually “allowed.” Free sexuality is a prerequisite for a free civilization. It is as integral to the culture of the upcoming era as free thinking and free religion. It should not be relegated to brothels or swinger clubs, for it belongs to life. This story illustrates the practice of free sexuality, as it happens in Tamera over and again: Two friends realize they desire the same man. One of them is in a relationship with this man. As night approaches the woman involved with the man senses the secret wish of the other to spend the night with her boyfriend. Without hesitation she offers her friend and her boyfriend her room. This kind of event is almost normal in the love life of Tamera. Through the culture of free sexuality a new ethic of solidarity emerges. When people hate or avoid each other because they desire the same person there is always war in the air. So long as the people involved believe their behavior to be normal, war cannot be prevented. In fact most people still believe it is okay to defeat their competitor. Such thoughts perhaps belong to the museums of anthropology, but certainly not to the ethics a reasonable human culture.
We live in a war society. We recognize in these examples how closely the question of war and peace is linked with apparently banal matters. There is a point in the relationship between the genders that determines whether there will be war or peace on Earth.
Free sexuality is not an ideology, nor a decision for or against monogamy or other forms of sexual expression. Free sexuality is simply the fulfillment of sexual wishes without lies or deceit, without humiliation or violence. A couple might just as freely decide for polygamy or for monogamy. In the experience of our community, the decision for a monogamous relationship is usually a temporary choice taken in order to experience enhanced intimacy. It is clear to all that this decision is respected and supported by the community.
Free sexuality is and was an essential factor in the stability of our community. It leads to relief within the within members of the group, for sex loses the demonic power it had when it was hidden. Through the convention of sexual suppression, the subconscious is teeming with dammed up sexual energies and fantasies. It is normal for people to be “over-sexed,” chock full of covert or overt desires. When an average man encounters a beautiful woman he looks at her breasts and must make concerted efforts to disguise his thoughts. In a culture of free sexuality one acknowledges these things; one can laugh about them; no one has to hide their desire. Honesty in sexual matters allows for an historic cultural renewal. Through free sexuality the tide of trust and life joy rises.
The healing possibilities that would be accessible to the human being were the “orgonotic current” (see Glossary) of sexuality freely available to him has been described in the works of Wilhelm Reich.4 Reich was a great pioneer for sexual truth; he opened gates to a completely new perspective on the origin and healing of disease, particularly in relation to cancer.5 His vision can only find fulfillment in a life of liberated sexuality.
Sexuality is a superpower. Our attractions and repulsions, sexual signals and links, hopes and disappointments go through all of society like a nerve system, permeating every office, every shopping mall, every art exhibition, every conference, every group, every company, every political party. The healing of sexuality is perhaps the most revolutionary step in the present healing work after thousands of years of suppression and neglect. The sadomasochism that has spread in the underground of society signifies an attempt to break the borders and return to the body the freedom it lost in the narrow cage of bourgeois morality. For the sake of healing, this explosive inner power needs to be guided in a positive direction.
In the frame of free sexuality, the sexual powers that have thus far led to violence and destruction are no longer condemned, but transformed into the humane power of vital, sensual love. A new, humane culture is rooted in a new relation of the bodies.
The Mother from Auroville said that the revolution takes place in the body. What she referred to was the reception and integration of supramental energy into the cellular system. This also belongs to the vision of the new human being. We will see how these two directions of embodiment – the spiritual and the sexual – extend toward a common line of transformation.
Ethics of Free Sexuality
In order to live a humane and fulfilling life some guidelines to free sexuality need to be learned.
First: Sexual passion is not yet love. Sexual passion belongs to the stream of life and must therefore be freed from any hypocrisy. Sex is fully “allowed.” It must be protected from any malice and defamation. But we need to remain honest. If we want sex we should not speak of love. Partnership cannot be established on the basis of sexual enthusiasm alone, for partnership is a personal relation and soul connection.
Second: Free sexuality requires “contact.” Act only when contact and trust is established between you and the other. The thought that one can do anything within the context of free sexuality is a common misunderstanding. Yes,
anything is allowed – when it happens in contact. This means heart opening and perception. Only then will both people sexually unite in a good way. Without contact they follow their own fantasies and do not find a common rhythm. Sexuality without contact easily leads to violence, and secret violent fantasies often steer sexual activity, leaving both people unfulfilled. Those who want fulfilling sex must learn to establish contact, for the principles of sexual ethics arise out of contact. For most people stepping into community, the first task consists of learning about contact – contact instead of projection, contact instead of masquerades, contact with and unconcealed joy for one another. This is what allows the sensitivity to one another to arise, leading the sexual play to its magical climax.
Third: If you desire someone sexually, consider whether the time is right. Are you really available for it? Is your heart free? If you feel in your heart chakra and in the solar plexus that you are free, then go for it! If you feel fear, then wait. Only go if you are confident that you can remain centered within yourself; that you can maintain your self-respect and that you do not lose yourself as you surrender. We refer to this quality of centeredness as the “blue sphere.” (The term comes from the book Traumsteine [Dream Stones] by Sabine Lichtenfels. The teaching priestess tells her female students of the blue sphere and that it is important to always keep this sphere in one’s own center when one approaches men with erotic wishes. She advises…
It is important that you feel and get to know this sphere. It shows you when the time is right to carry out the sexual act. When you lose perception of it, your sexuality will become unbalanced. It will drive you into insatiable desire and neediness.6
Fourth: When you have had a beautiful experience, give thanks for it and do not demand continuation. There is no right to possession in love. The continuation will come on its own if it is meant to.
Fifth: The question of whether we want to live monogamously or in polygamy, heterosexually, homosexually, bisexually, or any other arrangement is answered on the basis of our inner truth. It is not a contradiction to long for a partner and at the same time for erotic adventures with others. It only becomes betrayal when we deny our own truth in front of the other.
Sixth: If you experience temporary impotence do not be ashamed, but consider this humorous advice:
When someone is impotent he believes that he must be able to do something, which in reality one does not need to be able to do – and what one is especially able to do naturally when one no longer thinks whether one can or not. The assumption of having to be able to do what one in reality does not need to be able to do, because one can automatically do it if one no longer thinks about being able to do it or not, in most cases leads to disturbances in one’s natural ability. Whoever is thus seriously unable, sees himself evermore affirmed in his wrong assumption of having to be able. This is how sex becomes a futile high-performance sport. If one is really unable and no longer has any land in sight, we want to ask him not to take it too seriously.7
There is always help when one lets go.
WORKS CITED
1. Arthur Schopenhauer and E. F. J. Payne, The World as Will and Representation (New York: Dover Publications, 1966). Back to reading
2. Pierre Teilhard De Chardin, Das Herz Der Materie (Olten: Walter Verlag, 1990). Back to reading
3. Douglas Carlton Abrams, The Lost Diary of Don Juan: An Account of the True Arts of Passion and the Perilous Adventure of Love (New York: Atria Books, 2007). Back to reading
4. Wilhelm Reich, Volume 1 of The Discovery of the Orgone: The Function of the Orgasm: Sex-Economic Problems of Biological Energy (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1973). Back to reading
5. Wilhelm Reich, The Cancer Biopathy (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1973). Back to reading
6. Sabine Lichtenfels, Traumsteine. Reise in Das Zeitalter Der Sinnlichen Erfüllung (Kreuzlingen: Hugendubel, 2000). Back to reading
7. Sabine Kleinhammes, Rettet Den Sex: Ein Manifest Von Frauen Für Einen Neuen Sexuellen Humanismus (Radolfzell: Verlag Meiga, 1988). Back to reading
Chapter 21: Objective Ethics
Back to the Table of Contents
How does trust arise among human beings? How does trust arise between man and woman, human being and animals, human being and nature, and between human being and the world at large? This question has been a central to our research since the very beginning of our project. Establishing trust is profoundly revolutionary in a society where disguises and lies have become necessary for survival. We need to thoroughly change our ways in order to be able to trust each other in the critical areas of sex, money, or power.
There is a universal objective ethic in the coexistence of the great family of life, the “legal code” of the Sacred Matrix. It is determined by the elementary interconnectedness and interdependence of all beings. Every thought that follows contains an ethical imperative: we human beings are the eye of evolution and we are entrusted to direct it peacefully. We live in a community of life with animals and plants. All creatures have the same right to life. All are all organs of the great organism of life; we therefore need to care for and support them all. Animals are our natural cooperation partners in the universal community of life. The fight between human being and animal thus comes to a definitive end. We do not torment animals; we support them in their development and joy of life.
Each nation, culture, and peoples, each tribe, group, and individual is an organ in the body of humankind. Organs must not hurt one another. We do not tolerate violence. We replace the thought of revenge with the thought of “grace” – mercy and forgiveness. We comply with the precepts of life, which we regard as non-negotiable. They apply to all places on our planet.
Establishing functioning projects and communities requires adherence to certain rules, without which no real trust can come into being. The founding canon of a nonviolent human culture certainly contains the following precepts of the objective ethics:
Truth
Mutual support
Responsible participation in the community
Transparency
Reliability
Care for the animal world
These words are easily read, but as soon as we look into them more closely we recognize that they are all keywords for a moral revolution. What does truth mean for example? What does it mean among love partners? Can man and woman tell the truth to one another without destroying their relationship? Do truth and couple relationship fit together? What does the woman do when she asks the man whether he also loves others and he says “yes”? And the other way around? Has not untruth for a long time been a condition for the survival of our love relationships? And furthermore what happens when a child speaks his fraction of the truth to his teacher, a student to his professor, an employee to his boss, or a member of parliament to his party? The society would explode. The lie has become a firm component of our culture, a prerequisite for its cohesion. This is why hardly anyone can any longer understand what is meant by truth. In a community of trust we speak of truth first and foremost in that way that a child speaks of it – that one simply does not lie. (Yet the issue of truth goes much deeper; see Chapter 24).
Let us take the next one: “mutual support.” This sounds good. But how is it enacted in relationships, in marriages, in alleged friendships? Do partners support one another? Or do they engage in petty competitions and secret power games? Without the basis of unreserved trust there will not be a single functioning community, no permanent love relationship, no functioning social order, no sustainable economy. What kind of economy would come to being if we conducted our financial processes with truth, trust, and mutual support? These are questions in the research labs of the new centers. The success of the great work will depend on how they are answered. We immediately see that we need a new basis for our human relationships order to fulfill the precepts of the objective ethics.
These objective ethics are a universal fact. They exist in the structure of creation and inside every human b
eing as our original conscience. Lusseyran, the French resistance fighter mentioned above, has described this in depth. This blind man had an inner screen which enabled him to correct his course. The screen showed to him the external world through the lens of his inner processes. In his book, Against the Pollution of the I, he writes…
When I was sad, when I was afraid, all shades became dark and all forms indistinct. When I was joyous and attentive, all pictures became light. Anger, remorse, plunged everything into darkness. A magnanimous resolution, a courageous decision, radiated a bright beam of light. By and by I learned to understand that love meant seeing and that hate was night. In this way I realized that morals (not social morals, but spiritual ones) were not merely a collection of abstract rules, but an ordered arrangement, an arrangement of facts as well as the ability to manage the light.1
While the objective ethics are the rules of a future human culture, they will not be perfectly adhered to anywhere immediately. We must take care that they do not become new grounds for moral censure or for generating bad conscience anew. Neither legislator nor judge will enforce them. It is rather that as people become autonomous they will understand and naturally abide by them.
Liberation from the Emotional Body
“Never act from emotional reactivity” is a principle of successful conflict resolution. We carry bulging emotional bodies. The smallest things, be it someone slightly clearing their throat or an ironic remark, can be the final straw. A society, which learned by necessity to suppress its emotions, generation after generation, lives under the threat of bursting, wherein the mass of suppressed collective emotion erupts into hate and violence. Our world is full of it. Most revolutions to date have derived more from the emotional body than from mental clarity. This is why they generated the historic perpetuum mobile of violence.
