Excerpts - Sex

Excerpt of a talk given by Dr. Robert R. Gibson (date, place unknown)

There was a request for a given subject to be discussed.  Being rather incompetent to discuss it, I will be like the doctor I was told about when I was going to school, said he was a "fit" specialist.  He was just perfect – he could handle anybody that had fits.  One day a man came in with pneumonia.  He said, "Well, I really don't know a thing in the world about pneumonia but if we can just drive it into fits, I'm just hell on fits."  This is the way of sex – if I can turn it into integration, I'm hell on integration.  Let's see if we can do it, okay?

Sex is the great symbol, for one thing.  It is the urge to union.  Without it no one would possibly ever be interested in putting themselves together, because there is this constant urge to union, is the symbol of the union of the human being.  What happens when we were talking about yesterday, where "will" is assigned to "function" all over the place?  Of course, there is an urge to union there.  That is sometimes referred to as the sexual urge.  Freud referred to it as the libido which is the constant urge for union.

If the person joins the union in man and woman, male and female, there is a great possibility of a new life coming.  Where there is a union of X and Awareness and one is together again, there is a new man, a new being.  The new man would never occur if it were not for this urge known as sex.

Like every other thing that man has available, he generally messes it up by turning it upside down.  One of the things that comes from the union of the person, when he is Oneness, is joy beyond all comprehension.  Sex, of course, brings about certain pleasurable sensations, which is a symbol again of the joy of being one within ourselves instead of being fragmented into separate aspects.

In the urge to union, man finds the sensation and (being a servant of the senses rather than allowing the senses to be a reporter) he becomes a slave in trying to have the sensation in ever increasing degree.  Consequently, having an ideal set up that the sensation should be some great something that it seldom is, most people feel that they are somewhat disappointed in sex.  They expected more of it than it was designed as its great symbol to perform and it was not the sensation they expected.  So they look for something to blame. 

When a person is disappointed, the first thing they do is feel hurt, put upon, or mistreated in one form or another.  Then of course they look for blame and when they find themselves to blame, they feel loaded down with guilt.  Or they find somebody else to be the blame and come up with fear.  So anger, fear, or guilt are the common states a person has when they recognize sex only as a way to have sensations.  They are a slave to the sensations and the greatest amount of the individuals that present themselves in a psychiatric practice or in a counseling practice or to any kind of an interview where they want to know about it, is concerned with these three aspects.  They are angry or they feel guilty or they are fearful concerning sex.  That turns it into everything except the symbol.

When any action is misunderstood, any function of the human being is misunderstood, there comes about stressful states.  If it is understood that it is a symbol of union, it is much like, possibly, a sacrament known as "Bread and Wine" which is to be done as a reminder.  If sex were a reminder that this is the urge to union, the union that really counts is the union within.  The person is ONE, WHOLE.  Of course, two people in an act of embrace can be one, for a little while.  That is not its only purpose.  It is the purpose of supplying the urge towards this inner union in which a new man comes about.  This is the new man, this can be the symbol of it and, of course, there is the possibility of a new life there.

Sex is a great symbol of integration, and performed can be considered to be such.  If one uses it as a reminder, then sex is a sacrament.  If it is misused, it is an urge to have some sensation, hoping to find the ideal.  Then it becomes a form of insanity and leads to every form of stressful situation.  People have the great expectation of more and when they don't get it they blame their mate and they are angry.  This winds up in fighting for years sometimes (or at least a good full solid resentment.)  Or they feel that some way or other they're deficient and wind up with a good solid state of guilt for years upon years.  Or they don't understand the whole situation and wind up with a fear of the whole idea of sex.

Sex is a very natural state of affairs.  I tell people I grew up on a farm.  We had hundreds of animals on the farm.  My father owned a considerable sized farm and he had a lot of saddle horses, a whole bunch of cattle, a whole bunch of sheep and hogs and dogs and cats and all these.  I never saw a one of them have a sex problem.  But human beings are continually making it important.  These animals out there, they don't make it important; they just used it for what it was – an urge to union and a new creature came into being from it.  That was all there was to it.  They didn't get any guilt feelings over it, they didn't have any embarrassment over it, and they didn't have any fear over it and they certainly didn't have any anger over it unless someone else started cutting in on the act.  Once in a while, one bull knocked another one down but they soon found who was the biggest and that ended that show.  There was no problem concerned with it.  Growing up in that state, I never saw that there was much of a problem with it. 

Of course, as I began to study things in a different world it was fairly easy to see what it all amounted to.  It is this urge to union.  When so recognized and so seen, it is a sacrament.  When it is not seen as such, it is perversion of a sacrament and that is called blasphemy, I believe.  Is that right?  There's another word for it too (not just blasphemy at any rate).  It is desecration – that's the word.  It becomes an act of desecration when it is used only for the idea to gain sensation and escape pain.

In the modern world, obviously, this gets to be very commonly known.  It is used with the attempt to prevent any possibility of a new life coming into being.  Every urge has prevented it.  Obviously, this is reflected in the inner state of every being that they are also using every device possible to prevent the new man from coming into being, because they want to prevent that union from forming any returns.  When one interferes with it on one level, one is pretty apt to be interfering with it on another level.  When one deliberately interferes with the reproductive function to prevent it from reproducing a new life, one is obviously only interested in the fact that it might produce pleasant sensations.  Such, of course, would result in all manner of frustration because it will never produce the ideal sensation one wants; or if it does, one wants more. 

Then we can begin to sell aphrodisiacs.  There is a great demand for those.  Most people don't know that, but I used to have, when I worked as a general practitioner, an average of 15 requests per week for aphrodisiacs.  That is something that will stimulate the sexual urge so that we could gain more and more pleasure.  So the whole idea is that sex is for pleasurable sensations only.  And if it doesn't produce the ideal one, “I have some tremendous problem and should be straightened out,” is rather erroneous.

When one sees it for what it is, one recognizes the beauty of a sacrament and it is so practiced as such – not as a perversion as a means to try to gain ever increasing stimuli of pleasant sensation.  As long as it does that, you will have nothing but problems over it, call them what you will.  As long as one sees it as a sacrament and is practiced as such, there is untold joy.  It is a definite aid then towards the person going toward oneness within oneself.  As long as it is used as a struggle towards an ideal (pleasant sensations) it is a disintegrating factor like anything else.

OK, I twisted that one into fits pretty good, I think.

When it is used for its purpose, it is sacred and beautiful. 
When it is used for any other, it is profane and a desecration.