The Role of Sex in Consciousness | Eckhart Tolle

What is the role of sex in consciousness? How should it be approached as a way to be more awake? Are lust and casual sex a detriment to consciousness? Are they always detrimental? Well, let's see if I can remember. Now. Sex, of course, is a wonderful thing. We could call it an addiction that nature has built into the human so that they continue to survive as a species. Because if that addiction were not built in, it causes pleasure. If that were not built into the human body, who would engage in that absurd act? It does have a. Because it's such a pull, it does have a tendency of making humans unconscious. You may have observed it in yourself. When it takes over, it's a very strong pull that you go, or you may go into your mind. So it's either out there or you go. And of course it pulls you towards where it wants to go, which is the final orgasm. That's where it wants you to go. Tantra is an ancient Indian way of engaging in sexuality without losing consciousness, but growing in consciousness through it. Bringing consciousness into something that usually would make you unconscious. And the simple thing is to become the observer at any stage so that you. Let's say the sexual impulse arises for whatever reason. You see something or think of something or someone. Rather to bring awareness to it without needing to take it anywhere. To bring awareness to it and just feel it and sense it and be the awareness for it. And if you're with another person, not necessarily engage in the full act of sexuality. But even if it's just touching to be aware with that, bring awareness to that, to the sense perceptions. So that awareness arises even as the impulse is there. You meet it with awareness. And that's a beautiful spiritual practice. And then you don't always need to take it to the end. You can actually enjoy it more than when it takes you over and makes you unconscious. I called it an addiction. It really becomes a true addiction when it takes over your mind and then you compulsively seek sexual partners, in which case it really pulls you towards more and more unconsciousness and becomes. It's one of the ways in which the mind seeks fulfillment and never finds it. And that's where the song implies, I can't get no satisfaction. And then you need the next fix. It can become a true addiction in the conventional sense, like a drug. It can become that if you. If there's a sexual impulse, let's say you look at a man or a woman and you. There's a small, slight sexual impulse. Just. You can just be with that. And that's the beginning of Tantra. Don't need to go anywhere, don't need to go up to that person and say whatever your pickup line is, but just be allowed to watch the beauty of it. The male form, the female form, and be aware and at any stage bring awareness to it. This applies to anything that tends to make you unconscious. Any strong urge, like let's say, overeating, if that is your urge, if you can bring awareness to the impulse of wanting to eat before acting on it, that is tantra too. Anything that usually pulls you to unconsciousness. When you bring awareness into it, you actually use it in your growth of awareness. The very thing that before made you unconscious can then be used and make you more conscious. So if you. If your impulse is to overeat and in the middle of the night you find yourself, without you knowing it, you got up and your hand is on the refrigerator door. And at that moment you wake up, I mean truly wake up and feel the urge to open the door and take out the chocolate cake. Then you can observe the impulse inside you and you can sit down for a couple of minutes and feel this. This urge to indulge in the need to take something in and feel it fully. And you may find sometimes it subsides as you bring awareness to it. It begins to subside. If it doesn't subside, maybe you still have to eat the chocolate cake, but at least there was some awareness. And if you bring awareness into the eating, ah, because it's only you really overeat when you lose awareness. If you eat consciously. We have Deneen here, who wrote a book about it. She could talk to you much better, explain it much better than I can. So bring awareness to the act of eating then. I believe. I have never actually had the problem of overeating. I've had other addictions, but not all that wasn't one. If you bring awareness to it, the desire to overeat, I would say, would quickly subside if you eat consciously. So anything that would. That pulls you usually towards unconsciousness, use it as awareness. Practice. There could be any other addiction too. Drug, whatever drug, whatever substance you use, feel the need inside you, feel it arise, watch it, observe it, allow it to be there so that it doesn't take you over. It's only when you're unaware that these things can completely take you over. So you're not fighting it as such. Awareness never fights it. Awareness is really the space in which it arises. And because you're not fighting against it, you're not pushing it down don't do that with sex because they've tried that for hundreds of years. Ascetics, religious practices. Pushing it down, it makes it far worse because then it seeks channels that are actually quite destructive because sexuality is such an enormous urge, you can't push it down. Rather than pushing it down, it would be preferable to have different sexual partner every night. It's probably preferable to pushing it down. So that's not the answer, but to meet it in awareness. That's where whatever would usually be an addictive urge and makes you unconscious. Meet it in the space of awareness where then it comes in there and it goes. And maybe another wave comes and in that spaciousness that you are, it comes in and it's like a dark cloud. It comes into the space of the blue, expands and then it goes, then another one comes. So whatever the impulse is, awareness is the answer, not fighting against it. And of course cutting the link also between. In sexuality, especially the link between thinking and the sexual urge. Otherwise it can keep you awake at night, it.