SEXIS WRONG

Transcendent Sex
When More Than the Earth Moves
Jenny Wade, PhD
A funny thing happened on the way to orgasm. The bedroom
I was in began dissolving. Without having imbibed even a
glass of wine at lunch, I watched in amazement as the white
walls of the familiar room transformed into those of a round
pink chamber with a silver Greek key border near the ceiling.
Was this just some weird fantasy or daydream? My eyes
were open, and I knew intellectually that I was in the same
room, but visually I was seeing another place entirely.
I was suddenly no longer in any room with my lover at all, no
longer sheltered in his house from the snow blanketing the wintry
Northeast, but standing on the sun-bright shores of a sandy
beach, squinting at the glittering waves. I was surrounded by
vivid sea creatures, fish and octopi. Bemused, I wondered if
I had somehow been swept into the water from the beach,
but gradually I realized the sea creatures were not real, but
images. Images painted in the unmistakable style of frescoes
from the ancient civilization of Crete, a culture about which I
knew practically nothing. It didn’t matter. I was filled with the
most exquisite rapture and bliss I had ever experienced.
Eventually, I found myself back in the familiar bedroom, still
making love. My lover had apparently noticed nothing. Had I
lost my mind? How long had I been “away”? I had never inadvertently
slipped out of reality before. I didn’t say anything
about it, rather ashamed to let my lover know I had strayed
so far from his attentions and feeling pretty crazy about it, to
boot. But I never forgot it, either.
Later, on other occasions during sex, more strange things happened.
I was filled with ecstasies a thousand times larger and
more compelling than even the most intense orgasm. One day,
I couldn’t contain it anymore and began laughing; I embraced
my lover and excitedly told him what had happened.
He looked at me oddly, then confessed that he, too, after a
lifetime of sex, had been having some strange things happen
when he was in bed with me. His experiences were nothing
like mine. We both had been afraid we were crazy, but if so,
it was the most glorious experience in all the world, one that
opened each of us to ecstatic realms we had never dreamed
existed, experiences beyond those offered by psychedelics
or a meditation practice.
Both of us were experienced in other types of altered states,
and, in fact, we’re professional researchers of unusual states
of consciousness. I decided to investigate what was going on
in a more serious way, so I conducted a research study of 91
people who have had such experiences to learn more about
them (the results have been published as academic articles
and a popular book called Transcendent Sex: When Lovemaking
Opens the Veil).
The fact is, the ordinary act of lovemaking can be the most
widely available path to higher consciousness for most people.
People who have experienced a transcendent episode
during sex usually believe they have tapped into divine forces,
even if they are atheists or agnostics. These experiences are
so extreme, they change people’s views of sex and spirituality.
They have literally changed people’s lives.
This research provides an explanation for the sexual-spiritual
basis of most ancient religions by showing that mystical experiences
happen every day in the bedroom to a significant
portion of the population. Sacred sex is still going on. In fact,
it seems to be irrepressible. Most large studies of sex turn
up spiritual experiences, and most large studies of spirituality
turn up sex. But this linkage has been hidden from the public
eye, just as near-death experiences happened but were not
talked about until they were recently “discovered.”
TRANSCENDENT SEX 13