Sex--The Unknown Quantity: The Spiritual Function of Sex

by Alexander J. McIvor-Tyndall

Thus everything in the busy commercial world, seemingly bent upon perpetuating external forms and systems, is in reality a symbolic language of which "unity" and "within" are the pivotal centers. These two words are really complementary, because it is only with the interior nature that unity can be established.

We may conjoin; combine; contact; cohere. We may form partnerships, corporations, combinations from the outside. These are external expressions of the interior desire for unity, but union is of the interior nature only.

With the more intimate knowledge of each other which intercommunication between nations makes general, each little segregated mass of human beings must sooner or later arrive at the conclusion that we are very much alike and that to "get together" on any proposition involving the welfare of all humanity is a much less costly and a far more satisfactory way of settling matters than by going to war over it. Not that this idea is yet fixed in the brains of the majority, but there is creeping into man's cranium a faint thought that perhaps the survival of the fittest will be best maintained by peaceful methods; an idea that honor can neither be maintained nor appeased by shedding blood. This knowledge will bring us to the wise observation that fundamentally, cosmically there is no place for enmity between nations and races and classes and the sexes; that the whole conglomerated mass of hatreds and inherited enmities and segregated interests; the absurd idea that one part of the world can permanently prosper by the enslavement of any part; the undeveloped and savage ideas that underlie our civilization; all these thought-concepts have no more reality in the cosmic scheme of things, than have the picture-blocks of the child in the adult life.

The world has been living through a nightmare. The warfare which belongs to the animal plane of Man's evolving consciousness has been carried into the mental world as well. Not only do men fight like tigers in the jungles, but they fight with tongue and pen as well, using food products, textile fabrics, inventions, mechanical devices and the creations of brains of men, for their weapons. But this type of warfare will not much longer survive. Mankind must choose between transmutation or annihilation. Hatred is self-destructive. Blind indeed must be those who can expect to escape this law. "They who use the sword shall perish by the sword." How else can it be? There is but one force. If we use it to construct, we are constructed. If we use it to destroy we are destroyed, since it is by the very nature of law that we become involved in that which we employ. It is a simple sum in arithmetic. We may either add or subtract. If we add, there is no limit. If we subtract we ultimately wipe off the slate.

The fact is dawning upon an increasing number of thinkers, that even as brain is superseding brawn in the marts of the world, so there is still a finer and higher and better force, so potential in its power that nothing can withstand its melting, merging, unifying motive. That power is love, without which though we have all else we are but as "sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal."

Even as the ferocious man-eating animals have disappeared from the earth; even as the giant gladiators, the mailed knights, the erotic pomp and regalia of Imperialism, with their captives chained to their chariot-wheels; the cruel despots, the tyrannical masters and scourged slaves; the bloody sacrifices, the horrible games of the amphitheatres, even as these one-time evidences of alleged "civilization" have passed away, so too will time see the dissolution of our own "false gods." Transmuted into pure and perfect love and peace and equality, the power now misapplied in the work of hate and destruction, will increase a thousand fold and be directed toward the maintenance of a balanced world—a world in which Love and Wisdom are united.

We are always fearful of changes. The bat-like eyes of the multitude are blinded by the light of the sun. Why cannot we trust the Cosmic Law which has always given us a better ideal in the place of the decadent one? If we prefer to use the word God, then let us say why cannot we trust God?

In the external world, then, the idea that a part of this sphere is inherently antagonistic to another; that men are born enemies; that the female and the male must forever struggle for supremacy—all these ideas are disappearing. "Unity" is the password to the coming civilization. If then we will accept this conclusion and apply it to our individual selves, we will conclude that no function of the human organism should merit disapproval; or be regarded as an enemy. Before we can arrive at a balanced and sane world without, we must come to a balanced and sane state within our own organism.

We must know that the sex function, the most vital of all the various expressions of life in the individual body as well as in the social body and the racial body, is not an enemy with whom we must maintain unceasing warfare, but a wise and trustworthy friend with whom we may safely co-operate, neither repressing this vital force until we have conquered it and dragged it like a bleeding captive behind our chariot-wheels, nor should we like the drug-slave become lost in the clutches of an abnormal appetite.

Indeed, as the forces of life become transmuted from the physical appetites to the finer, and interior desires of the soul, abnormalities and perversions of sex-force will be impossible.