Sexual Transmutation

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All of creation comes from three forces: a masculine projective force, a feminine receptive force, and the union of those two forces, a neutralizing force, which is sex. Even this manifested universe in which we all live was created through the union of masculine and feminine principles.
 
In the beginning there was the परब्रह्मन् Parabrahman, a Sanskrit term for “the highest Brahman,” the Absolute or universal self, the deification of a masculine principle. That masculine principle interacted with the मूलप्रकृति Mulaprakriti, a Sanskrit term meaning “the root substance,” which is the abstract, deific, feminine principle, in order to create all levels of manifested reality.
 
Samael Aun Weor teaches us about the Mulaprakriti in his writings on Kundalini Yoga. He wrote:

Mulaprakriti is a Christonic semen from which the universe emerged. We have Mulaprakriti in our sexual organs, and from it springs up life. Therefore, we see that hermetic principle, “as above, so below.” ―Samael Aun Weor, Kundalini Yoga

​The power to create life is Mulaprakriti, Christonic semen. That force is also within us, within our sexual organs. That energy gives us the power to create life, and we see this in a common way that it is through sexual union that we can create a physical child. But that sexual energy has tremendous potential for our spiritual life. That sexual energy gives us the ability to give birth to the soul within, and that is why this energy is so important for understanding how we can do the Gnostic work.
 
It is only through the use of our sexual energy that we can achieve our highest spiritual potential.

​Division of Sexual Energy

Samael Aun Weor wrote that sexual energy can be divided into three distinct types.
 
The first, as was mentioned, is the energy having to do with the reproduction of the race and the health of the physical body in general. This is what gives us the ability to maintain our vitality and physical life, and also to give birth to children.
 
But many people do not realize that the sexual energy is also the energy that has to do with the spheres of thought, feeling, and will. It is through that creative energy that we think, that we feel, that we have willpower. We might have experienced this, that when we have a sexual attraction, we can develop an extremely strong will in order to pursue that other person. In fact, sexual energy is willpower, and if we learn to harness sexual energy in the correct way, we can have tremendous willpower, not just for chasing a temporary physical sensation of lust, but for developing our soul.
 
That is why the third division of sexual energy is the energy that is found related with the divine spirit of man. We need to be born again of water and spirit. In the beginning, the spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters (Genesis 1:2), and those waters were the Mulaprakriti, the sexual waters within the higher states of manifestation, but also within our own body.
 
When we are born again, it is from that same sexual water. There is an esoteric secret practice through which we can use that energy to be born again that was not taught publicly. It is something that is now taught publicly through the teachings of Samael Aun Weor as part of the Aquarian Era. For a long time, it was kept secret because of its potential to create harm as well as its potential to develop the soul.

​Creating Higher Bodies

​How can we use sexual energy to develop the soul? The esoteric teacher Gurdjieff wrote about the sexual substance, the semen, which is the sexual Mulaprakriti in both men and women, the sexual waters, the sexual humidity in a woman and the semen in a man.
 
Gurdjieff wrote:

This sacred substance arises in the presence of all beings […] in order that by its means they may consciously or automatically fulfill that part of their Being-duty which consists in the continuation of their species. ―G. I. Gurdjieff, Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson

​So, this, as we have mentioned before, relates to the role of sexual energy to perpetuate the human race, but Gurdjieff goes on to explain another purpose for this sexual energy:

But in the presence of three-brained beings (like us) it also arises in order that they may consciously transform it for coating their higher being-bodies for their own being. ―G. I. Gurdjieff, Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson

Those higher being-bodies are what we call in this tradition solar bodies. They are vehicles of the soul which have been consciously created through sexual transmutation. To mutate means “to change form,” “transmute,” to take the sexual energy from its raw form and to convert it into a higher form, to sublimate it, to take it out of a liminal state―where it is between its potentials―and to bring it up into a higher state, so it may become sublime or divine.
 
Many of us know that we can use the sexual energy to create a baby, but very few people, usually only people who have been esoterically initiated, are aware that it is that same sexual energy, used in a different way, which can give birth to the bodies of the soul. This is why we learn in Christianity, “With patience ye will possess your souls” (Luke 21:19).
 
We do not have solar bodies yet. Many of us are aware that we have an astral body of emotions and a mental body of intellect, but we are not aware that those bodies are created by nature. They are what are called lunar bodies, and unfortunately when the physical body dies, those bodies will be lost to nature.
 
If we want immortal bodies, bodies that are capable of transmitting the light of divinity―which is a very high potency energy―and also bodies which are capable of surviving after physical death, then we need to consciously create the solar bodies by transforming sexual energy.
 
This is not an automatic work. That means that not everyone will become a possessor of a soul. Only those who apply the science will be able to develop the soul.

​The Dangerous Power of Sex

​The Gnostic work has at its foundation sexual transmutation as the cornerstone, because that stone of sexuality is what is required to give birth to the soul. Our goal, our aim, is to develop our highest spiritual potential, but we should be careful because as Samael Aun Weor taught us:

…within sex is a major force that can liberate the human being, but also a major force that can enslave the human being. ―Samael Aun Weor, Tarot and Kabbalah ​

Sex has a dual potential. It can create, but it can also destroy. We can see that people who have abused sex can destroy their minds, their hearts, and their bodies very quickly. Unfortunately, sex is a very potent power, and because we have not been taught how to use it properly, it has caused a lot of pain, sexual crimes, sexual degeneration, on our planet.
 
But now we have the key, the sexual mysteries, the great arcanum (divine secret or law, from the Latin arcanus) in order to use sex to liberate us, to create the soul and to liberate us from our enslavement.

​When man is the master of sex, he is the upright pentagram. The head which is the top of the star is dominating the sexual organs, which are between the two legs of the star. That upright pentagram is a representation of the perfection of the human being. We need to have our mind, our own willpower, aligned with divine will, in domination of our sexual impulses. But for many people, it is that sexual force which enslaves the mind and the body.

We have talked before about the three brains. We have an intellectual brain and an emotional brain and a motor-instinctive-sexual brain. The intellect is the slowest brain, and the emotional brain is a little faster, but that motor-instinctive-sexual brain is the fastest of the three.
 
When you are in a life-threatening situation, your instincts will immediately come out to preserve your life. It will react without any thought, before you can even emotionally feel what kind of situation you are in. Your instincts will respond to the situation. The sexual energy is even faster and more powerful than that, because while our instinct urges us to preserve our life―we have an instinct for survival―our sexual energy can urge us to act in ways that are even contrary to our own survival.
 
A mother will risk her life to protect her children. A man may risk his life in order to woo a woman that he is in love with. We see that sexual energy has the power to dominate us, but precisely because of its tremendous power, if we learn how to harness it, to transmute and sublimate that force in accordance with our will and the law of divinity, it can become the greatest power, the power of a master. It can become the power which emanates the light of Christ into manifestation.

​We see here the 16th Arcanum, which we know in our tradition is the Fulminated Tower. When that pentagram of the upright, perfect human being falls, the two legs, the sexual organs, rise above the mind. The inverted pentagram is the fallen human, and just like that, we see in this tower that the fall of man comes when we have a sexual fall, when we are dominated by sexual passion rather than in control of sexuality.
 
Manly P. Hall wrote about this in relation to this card specifically, the 16th Arcanum: The Tower. He wrote:

The divine nature of humanity is depicted as a tower. When his crown is destroyed, man falls into the lower world and takes upon himself the illusion of materiality. Here also is a key to the mystery of sex. ―Manly P. Hall, The Secret Teachings of All Ages

​Why is Manly P. Hall associating sex with the divine nature of humanity? This tower? The tower is our spinal column upon which rests the crown, the crown chakra. At the base of that spinal column are our sexual organs. That sexual energy needs to flow upward, up the spinal column into the mind, into the crown chakra, in order to nourish the entire organism, as well as the internal bodies: the vital body, the astral body, the mental body. 

How Do We Use Our Sexual Energy?

​When that sexual energy is expelled out of us, specifically through orgasm, when we lose that vital force, that is when the tower becomes fulminated, and man falls to ruin. We become slaves to materiality. We begin to believe the illusions of egotistical desires, mundane ambitions, and we become trapped in this temporary world, unable to create our souls, because we have lost the very energy of the soul itself.
 
It is very, very important that we understand these two outcomes of sex, one which is liberation and birth and one which is destruction, enslavement. When we use sexual energy wisely, when we conserve it and transmute it, we can reach the highest states of human potential. When we lose that sexual seed in men and in women, when we orgasm, we lose that energy. We short circuit the organism, and through that process, we slowly or sometimes quickly destroy our bodies, our emotional center, our mental center, and we lose the potential to give birth to the soul.
 
Each of us has to ask ourselves, “How do we currently use our sexual energy?”
 
Throughout much of history, we were taught to repress the sexual energy, that sex was something dirty. We were not publicly taught this sacred and tremendous potential of sex to give birth to the soul. Unfortunately, through that kind of teaching, many people learn that they should repress all of their sexual instincts. But the sexual energy is a powerful current that cannot be dammed up like a river. If you try to hold it back without giving it the proper outlets for its expression, it can destroy the organism. It can destroy the mind, the heart, and even the body.
 
Those who only repress sex and do not understand how to use it in a divine way will unfortunately develop grave mental and emotional imbalances, and sometimes go on to commit horrible sexual crimes.
 
We understand that repression is not the proper use of sexual energy and can have very harmful outcomes.
 
Conversely, indulgence in sexuality can also result in the destruction of our organism. Those who abuse the sexual energy through fornication, masturbation, adultery, and other forms of sexual degeneration, will also destroy their minds, their hearts, their bodies over time. Through the loss of their vital force, that loss of sexual energy in orgasm, they are going to destroy the organism, because that energy has proper channels through which it should flow. Unfortunately, the orgasm short circuits all of those channels and creates a sort of depletion within the organism.
 
Since many of us have been orgasming for much of this lifetime and even in past lifetimes, unfortunately we have psychological and physical conditioning to feel like that behavior is needed, like that behavior is normal, although it is not. In fact, on this planet in particular, it is one of the outliers in which sexuality is abused in this way.

​Proper Spiritual Circuitry

​The natural functioning of the sexual energy is to be transmuted or sublimated up the spinal column and into the brain, so it can nourish the physical body and the energetic bodies, and so that it can coat those bodies and crystallize into a higher being-body, a solar body through which a high potency of divine energy can begin to express, and also a body, a solar body that can outlast the physical body, that can become immortal and survive after death.
 
We see here possibilities: the outcome of orgasm will create destruction, but the outcome of transmutation or sublimation of sexual energy will lead to the birth of the soul. This is the proper use of sexuality. When we feel that restlessness, that stimulation of our sexual energy, that sexual heat that feels the need to express, there are certain practices that we can work with, and I will talk about those in a moment.
 
We do need to use that energy, but in a divine way, in a sacred way, in order to preserve it and use it for spiritual purposes. Unfortunately, for many of us, we are accustomed to orgasm, to expelling the energy and to losing it.
 
Samael Aun Weor writes that:

Within the organism there are certain canals, nadis, through which this powerful energy must normally circulate. When this energy infiltrates the delicate mechanism of other functions, failure is the violent outcome. In this case, extremely delicate centers in the human organism are damaged, and in fact, the individual becomes an infrasexual. ―Samael Aun Weor

​Infra, meaning, “under, below,” those who are dominated by sex rather than those who dominate their sexual energy. Infrasexuals can engage in all those various forms of sexual perversion that we see abundantly on this planet and in these times, and while many people consider that to be normal behavior, it is unfortunately leading to the degeneration of our entire species.
 
We need to learn, relearn, the proper, natural channels through which we can raise that sexual energy.

​Practice for Sexual Transmutation 

Within this tradition, we teach a practice called pranayama. This is taught in many other traditions, and there are various forms of pranayama. However, we caution you to be careful when using pranayama as taught in other traditions because it may or may not be a helpful form of pranayama.
 
In fact, some pranayamas that are taught are actually taught in a way that expels the vital energy, that causes that harmful effect that we are trying to avoid. We encourage you to use pranayamas taught within this Gnostic tradition, especially in the beginning, because these are practices that we know and that we can endorse, that will transmute the sexual energy in the proper way.

​One such pranayama practice which is very simple, which I have used for many years, is the Ham-Sah pranayama. We can see in this image three channels that lie around and over the spinal column. The middle channel is the Shushumna and on the left and the right are the Ida and Pingala canals. Those are masculine and feminine channels.
 
Within us when we use pranayama, we are harnessing the vital force. That vital force is prana, and yama means, “to restrain.” We are using breath and this breathing technique in order to harness the vital force that is within our own sexual organs and to raise it up through these three channels into the brain into the crown chakra.
 
This practice is especially useful for single people who do not have a partner. When we feel a lot of sexual stimulation, we can use this practice to transmute that energy and to raise it up to nourish our bodies. Also, married people can use this practice if they feel that they have a lot of Chi, a lot of sexual energy, and they need some of this practice to cool themselves off and to bring that energy into harmony.
 
The first step of the practice is to inhale deeply and slowly through your nostrils while mentally pronouncing the mantra Ham:

​Of course, because we are breathing in through the nose, we have to mentally mantralize. While we are inhaling, we visualize the sexual energy rising up these two channels Ida and Pingala that wrap around the spinal column into the brain. That is the first step: breathing in and mantralizing Ham while visualizing energy rising from the sexual organs through these two canals into the brain.
 
The second step is to retain the breath as long as comfortable while we visualize that energy like a light saturating into the brain, the glands, the crown chakra, the third eye. We visualize that light nourishing and stimulating our consciousness, especially the pineal gland which is the root of the soul.
 
Then in the third step, after retaining the breath, we exhale quickly through the mouth vocalizing Sah, like a hiss. 

We visualize the energy moving from the brain into the heart chakra and nourishing the heart.
 
You can perform this as many times as needed, but I encourage you to do it at least ten to fifteen minutes every day.

​Women should not practice any transmutation or mantralization while they are on their menstrual cycle. During that one week per month of your period, you should not practice this transmutation, because it is a time of cleansing, of removing negative energies out of the body, and unfortunately, if you try to transmute your energy at that time, you will be retaining those unclean energies and raising them up into your body, which is counterproductive. Women should rest during that one week.
 
The rest of the time, every day, we can use this practice, and especially if we are accustomed to orgasm, we should should be using this practice in the beginning before we try any of the other more advanced sexual transmutation practices with a partner, because this allows us to work individually without that stimulation of a partner, in order to master our sexual force.
 
In ancient times, when monks and nuns were initiated, they would work with a practice like this, as a single person for many years, before they would be given a partner with whom they could practice the more advanced stages of sexual transmutation, and so, because we are not monks and nuns and because many of us have lived with bad sexual behaviors and misused our sexual energy, it is even more important that we work with a practice like this, to begin to get back in control of our body.
 
If you notice that you are losing energy, then you want to work with this practice longer and longer each day. There is no maximum limit through which we can work with pranayama. It is a great practice to use every day and as often as needed.
 
Pranayama will help us to awaken consciousness, because as I mentioned before, that vital force, that sexual energy, is very potent, and can give us the energy we need for those practices like self-observation throughout the day that can help us to maintain awakened consciousness.
 
Pranayama can also help us to harness sexual energy for disintegrating ego. If you remember a previous lecture, Consciousness, Ego, and Personality, we discovered that much of our free consciousness is within egotistical, false identities, desires that are repetitive, habitual, desires that are related with mundane satisfaction, sensation. Unfortunately, the only way that we can escape out of those desires is through disintegrating them, and we can only disintegrate them through this power of Mulaprakriti, our Divine Mother, the divine, feminine force of our sexuality.
 
This practice of pranayama is very powerful for awakening consciousness and also for disintegrating ego.

​Sexual Magic: The Science of Love

​However, if we do have a partner, if we are in a legitimately constituted marriage with our lifelong partner, we can practice sexual magic, which will have an even higher result, even greater effects.
 
Sexual magic is the practice that we use to create the solar bodies. All creation requires a masculine and feminine force, to unite through sex, and the creation of the solar bodies is no different. Unfortunately, single people alone can not create the solar bodies. We need a man and a woman, to unite sexually through love, through marriage, to retain that sexual seed, renounce orgasming in the sexual act, and through that process they can create the soul.
 
Samael Aun Weor wrote in The Perfect Matrimony:

The sexual act is the real consubstantiation of love in the tremendous psycho-physical reality of our nature. Something is created when a man and a woman unite sexually. ―Samael Aun Weor, The Perfect Matrimony

​As we mentioned earlier, what is created are those higher being-bodies, vehicles of the soul.
 
Manly P. Hall also wrote that marriage is what is needed for us to develop our highest potential. He wrote:

From this point of view, marriage is regarded as a companionship in which two complete individualities manifesting opposite polarities are brought into association that each may thereby awaken the qualities latent in the other and thus assist in the attainment of individual completeness. ―Manly P. Hall, The Secret Teachings of All Ages

Sexual magic is the great arcanum, the greatest secret of all of the esoteric mystery schools. This has the power to give birth to the soul. But unfortunately, if used unwisely, sexuality also has the power to destroy us and to convert us into demons, if that sexuality is used in the wrong way. If we engage in orgasm, we will become infrasexuals, we will become slaves of sex, instinctive desires, and we will never be able to develop the soul in alignment with divine will.
 
The orgasm is what breaks our connection to divinity within, and sexual transmutation can regenerate us and can restore the connection and the covenant with our inner divinity.
 
I will read a brief description of the practice of sexual magic from the esoteric teacher Dr. Arnold Krumm-Heller, in which he describes how the sexual act is performed between a husband and wife when we are working to retain and transmute that sexual energy. He wrote: 

Instead of the coitus which reaches the orgasm, sweet caresses, amorous phrases and delicate touching should be lavished reflectively, keeping the mind constantly separated from animal sexuality, sustaining the purest spirituality as if the act were a true religious ceremony.
 
Nevertheless, the man can and should introduce the penis and keep it inside the feminine sex to bring about a divine sensation upon both, full of joy, that can last for hours, withdrawing it at the moment the orgasm is near to avoid the ejaculation of semen. ―Dr. Arnold Krumm-Heller (Master Huiracocha)

​That is the practice between husband and wife that can give birth to the soul.
 
Sexual union―in which each partner represents those two polarized forces, masculine principle and feminine principle―magnetizes the couple so that a circuit is created, in which the sexual energy is fully charged, magnetizing with both polarities and giving birth to the soul.
 
Without that union, we can still perform transmutation within ourselves and achieve a certain degree of spiritual development. But it requires a partner to reach the highest levels of spiritual development and the birth of the immortal solar bodies.
 
That is why sexual transmutation is the foundation of the Gnostic work. The cornerstone, the sexual stone, is the foundation upon which our spiritual development depends. If we can not harness the sexual energy and use it for these kinds of purposes, unfortunately we do not have the necessary foundation for spiritual development. 

​Psychological Attitudes Towards Sex

​It is very important too that we begin to cultivate a different psychological response to sex. We have been extremely conditioned in our contemporary culture to view sex and the opposite sex in a very lustful way, all about stimulating more sensation, more physical desire, but sex is a sacrament. Sex itself is marriage, according to nature. The union of man and woman through sex is marriage, a natural law. It is a very, very sacred act. Unfortunately, when we go to engage in that sexual act, our minds are very polluted with lustful thoughts like animals.
 
It does take time for us to develop purity, psychological purity, in the sexual act. We begin as animals, but through transmuting that force and conserving that force, generally, over time, we can begin to change our psychology―regenerate―to bring that fallen inverted pentagram back into the upright position where the mind dominates sex, and the mind can become united with divinity.
 
I wanted to read a passage from Samael Aun Weor in the book Sexology where he describes how we should look at the opposite sex. He begins writing about the male sex, but then he goes on to describe for females as well. Here is what he wrote:

We males are fascinated by a beautiful painting, or are enchanted by a beautiful sunset, or are captivated when observing an eclipse through an observatory. But the woman immediately provokes in us the craving of possessing her, the urge of becoming one with her, the drive of integrating with her, in order to participate in the plentitude of the universe.
 
Nevertheless, we must not, in any way, look at love or at women in morbid manner, we must remember that love in itself is pure, holy, and noble.
 
When a male defiles a woman with his perverse gaze, indubitably he marches on the path of degeneration. 
 
We must learn to see woman purely, in all of her natural beauty. 
 
For us males, the woman, born for a holy destiny, is the only being that can liberate us from the chain of pain.
 
For women the male is something similar; she sees in the man all hope, all protection, she wants to be completed by the man, she sees in him precisely the masculine eternal principle, the force that has put into activity all that is, everything that has been, and all that will be. 
 
Indeed, man and woman are truly the two pillars of the temple. These two columns must not be overly close nor exorbitantly away from each other, there must be a space so that the light can pass between them. ―Samael Aun Weor, Sexology: The Basis of Endocrinology and Criminology

​We see depicted here the two pillars of the temple, which represent the masculine and feminine principles. That space between us is space for divinity, for light, for Christ. In the sexual act, if we become totally identified with sensation, we are no longer observing ourselves and remembering divinity. Each time we enter the sexual act to perform sexual magic or sexual alchemy, we need to remember that this is a sacrament. We need to leave the space for divinity to be present. Divinity is present when we feel true love, and love is distinct from lust.
 
As I mentioned, we do begin the sexual act in an animal way and lustful way, because that is our current state. But through transmutation over time, we can convert that lust into chastity, into purity, which is the substance of love.

​The Three Factors for Spiritual Revolution

We need sexual energy to perform the revolution of consciousness, and the sexual energy relates with the factor of birth. As I mentioned, birth of the soul depends on the proper use of sexual energy.
 
We also use the sexual energy in the process of death, death of the ego. Much of us is trapped in a false sense of self, in crystallized desires and patterns of behavior which are harmful. We are slaves to those desires, but we can become liberated from those desires through transmutation of sexual energy, and that process is a process of death. That is how sex can give birth in a positive way, birth of the soul, and can destroy also in a positive way, because it is destroying that which is false and giving birth to that which is true.
 
The third factor for the revolution of consciousness as taught to us by Samael Aun Weor is sacrifice―birth, death, and sacrifice. Sacrifice relates to sexual transmutation because especially in the beginning, it is very difficult for us to sacrifice our desires, and sexual desires are some of the most powerful desires we have.
 
Over time as the organism is renounced and the psychological person becomes accustomed to working with sexual transmutation, we experience the benefits of that practice. We experience the serenity and the joy and the vitality that is given to us by that practice. Most importantly, we experience how conserving and transmuting the sexual energy reconnects us to our inner divinity, granting us mystical experiences, and granting us the return of our conscience so we know how to act in difficult situations. That gift is so precious that no physical moment of bliss, no physical sensations, are worth sacrificing it.

​To Learn More

There is much more to sexual transmutation than we can discuss in one short lecture, and so I urge all of you to read the book The Perfect Matrimony by Samael Aun Weor, because this book contains many of the mysteries across religions throughout time in which the sexual teaching was hidden. It also describes various practices that you can work with, aside from the two that I have mentioned today, in order to transmute your sexual energy, whether as a single person or as a married couple.