Altered States (Featured in The Museum of Sex)

Photo by Double Being

(Essay featured in The Museum of Sex NYC— Higher Love: The Psychedelic Roots of Modern Sexuality)

The pursuit of altered consciousness runs through nature's blueprint. Though we humans view ourselves as the most conscious species, other sentient beings also seek our highest longings; one of them being transcendence. Off the coast of Australia, dolphins have developed a remarkably playful ritual—passing tetrodotoxin-laden pufferfish between them to enter trance states in azure waters. Across the arctic tundra, reindeer deliberately seek and consume Amanita muscaria mushrooms, where their behavior noticeably changes after ingestion. In rose-studded gardens and verdant orchards, bees drink fermented nectar until their flight patterns dissolve into wobbly spirals.

The gifts and elixirs of the external world can propel us into transcendence, but we don't need to seek the infinite outside. Inside our bodies are ancient codes that suspend reality and connect us to the beyond. Sex can take us there. When sex is spiritualized (not mechanical or overdone), it has a historical record of entering divine realms. Relationship with one another calls in a third entity.

In the ancient temples of India, masters of Tantra developed Maithuna, the sacred union, a sophisticated system of consciousness exploration. It was not a sexual practice for solely pleasure-seeking but to understand the higher self. The surviving texts describe specific practices: Khechari Mudra, where the tongue is trained to reach the upper palate; Bandha Traya, three energetic locks involving the pelvic floor, abdomen, and throat; and Vajroli Mudra, an advanced practice of energy control. Kashmir Shaivism preserved detailed records of Sambhogakrama, where sexual union becomes a gateway to expanded awareness. The texts describe approaches to transforming ordinary consciousness through breath, movement, and focused attention during sex. 

The Tantrikas who can separate orgasm from ejaculation turn their bodies into laboratories of sustained transcendence. Sexual energy is channeled up the spine instead of lingering in the lower chakras.Research at places like the Karolinska Institute confirms what psychonauts knew long ago: sexual ecstasy and meditative states light up the same brain regions as psychedelics. This isn't New Age fluff, but stated in texts thousands of years old, carved into temple walls, and passed down by mystics long before science's EEG machines and fMRI scanners.

When the curtain of ordinary consciousness parts, even for a moment, we find what Hafez or Rumi wrote poetry about; for whatever you call God. Reality is far stranger and more magnificent than our rational minds can perceive. The Tantrikas weren't running from reality; they were using the functions of the body and relationship to crack open the cosmic egg. When dolphins share their pufferfish medicine and couples enter meditative states through sex, they're exploring that same uncharted wilderness. It's the feeling of divinity, and the peace of oneness.

Altered states, whether through plant medicine or sacred sexuality, are another data point in the grand investigation of what it means to be aware of awareness itself. The Tantrikas know it. The dolphins know it. And somewhere in our neural circuitry, we know it too.