sex

• sex urge › normal urges not in conflict with highest spiritual attainment

34:7.7Those God-know­ing men and women who have been born of the Spirit ex­pe­ri­ence no more con­flict with their mor­tal na­tures than do the in­hab­i­tants of the most nor­mal of worlds, plan­ets which have never been tainted with sin nor touched by re­bel­lion. Faith sons work on in­tel­lec­tual lev­els and live on spir­i­tual planes far above the con­flicts pro­duced by un­re­strained or un­nat­u­ral phys­i­cal de­sires. The nor­mal urges of an­i­mal be­ings and the nat­u­ral ap­petites and im­pulses of the phys­i­cal na­ture are not in con­flict with even the high­est spir­i­tual at­tain­ment ex­cept in the minds of ig­no­rant, mis­taught, or un­for­tu­nately over­con­sci­en­tious per­sons.

• benefits derived from discipline of s. relationships

45:6.3On the seven man­sion worlds as­cend­ing mor­tals are af­forded am­ple op­por­tu­ni­ties for com­pen­sat­ing any and all ex­pe­ri­en­tial de­pri­va­tions suf­fered on their worlds of ori­gin, whether due to in­her­i­tance, en­vi­ron­ment, or un­for­tu­nate pre­ma­ture ter­mi­na­tion of the ca­reer in the flesh. This is in ev­ery sense true ex­cept in the mor­tal sex life and its at­ten­dant ad­just­ments. Thou­sands of mor­tals reach the man­sion worlds with­out hav­ing ben­e­fited par­tic­u­larly from the dis­ci­plines de­rived from fairly av­er­age sex re­la­tions on their na­tive spheres. The man­sion world ex­pe­ri­ence can pro­vide lit­tle op­por­tu­nity for com­pen­sat­ing these very per­sonal de­pri­va­tions. Sex ex­pe­ri­ence in a phys­i­cal sense is past for these as­cend­ers, but in close as­so­ci­a­tion with the Ma­te­rial Sons and Daugh­ters, both in­di­vid­u­ally and as mem­bers of their fam­i­lies, these sex-de­fi­cient mor­tals are en­abled to com­pen­sate the so­cial, in­tel­lec­tual, emo­tional, and spir­i­tual as­pects of their de­fi­ciency. Thus are all those hu­mans whom cir­cum­stances or bad judg­ment de­prived of the ben­e­fits of ad­van­ta­geous sex as­so­ci­a­tion on the evo­lu­tion­ary worlds, here on the sys­tem cap­i­tals af­forded full op­por­tu­nity to ac­quire these es­sen­tial mor­tal ex­pe­ri­ences in close and lov­ing as­so­ci­a­tion with the su­per­nal Adamic sex crea­tures of per­ma­nent res­i­dence on the sys­tem cap­i­tals.

• no mortal reproduction after life in flesh

45:6.7This pro­ba­tion nurs­ery of Sa­ta­nia is main­tained by cer­tain mor­ontia per­son­al­i­ties on the fi­nal­i­ters’ world, one half of the planet be­ing de­voted to this work of child rear­ing. Here are re­ceived and re­assem­bled cer­tain chil­dren of sur­viv­ing mor­tals, such as those off­spring who per­ished on the evo­lu­tion­ary worlds be­fore ac­quir­ing spir­i­tual sta­tus as in­di­vid­u­als. The as­cen­sion of ei­ther of its nat­u­ral par­ents in­sures that such a mor­tal child of the realms will be ac­corded reper­son­al­iza­tion on the sys­tem fi­nal­i­ter planet and there be per­mit­ted to demon­strate by sub­se­quent free­will choice whether or not it elects to fol­low the pa­ren­tal path of mor­tal as­cen­sion. Chil­dren here ap­pear as on the na­tiv­ity world ex­cept for the ab­sence of sex dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion. There is no re­pro­duc­tion of mor­tal kind af­ter the life ex­pe­ri­ence on the in­hab­ited worlds.

• differs somewhat on nonbreather worlds

49:3.4Life on the worlds of the non­breathers is rad­i­cally dif­fer­ent from what it is on Uran­tia. The non­breathers do not eat food or drink wa­ter as do the Uran­tia races. The re­ac­tions of the ner­vous sys­tem, the heat-reg­u­lat­ing mech­a­nism, and the metabolism of these spe­cial­ized peo­ples are rad­i­cally dif­fer­ent from such func­tions of Uran­tia mor­tals. Al­most ev­ery act of liv­ing, aside from re­pro­duc­tion, dif­fers, and even the meth­ods of pro­cre­ation are some­what dif­fer­ent.

• historically › primitives › hunting rewards improved Neanderthal skills

64:4.12Dur­ing these spir­i­tu­ally dark ages the cul­ture of su­per­sti­tious man­kind reached its low­est lev­els. The Ne­an­derthalers re­ally had no re­li­gion be­yond a shame­ful su­per­sti­tion. They were deathly afraid of clouds, more es­pe­cially of mists and fogs. A prim­i­tive re­li­gion of the fear of nat­u­ral forces grad­u­ally de­vel­oped, while an­i­mal wor­ship de­clined as im­prove­ment in tools, with abun­dance of game, en­abled these peo­ple to live with less­ened anx­i­ety about food; the sex re­wards of the chase tended greatly to im­prove hunt­ing skill. This new re­li­gion of fear led to at­tempts to pla­cate the in­vis­i­ble forces be­hind these nat­u­ral el­e­ments and cul­mi­nated, later on, in the sac­ri­fic­ing of hu­mans to ap­pease these in­vis­i­ble and un­known phys­i­cal forces. And this ter­ri­ble prac­tice of hu­man sac­ri­fice has been per­pet­u­ated by the more back­ward peo­ples of Uran­tia right on down to the twen­ti­eth cen­tury.

• sex urge › drove man into society

68:2.4The herd in­stinct in nat­u­ral man is hardly suf­fi­cient to ac­count for the de­vel­op­ment of such a so­cial or­ga­ni­za­tion as now ex­ists on Uran­tia. Though this in­nate gre­gar­i­ous propen­sity lies at the bot­tom of hu­man so­ci­ety, much of man’s so­cia­bil­ity is an ac­quire­ment. Two great in­flu­ences which con­tributed to the early as­so­ci­a­tion of hu­man be­ings were food hunger and sex love; these in­stinc­tive urges man shares with the an­i­mal world. Two other emo­tions which drove hu­man be­ings to­gether and held them to­gether were van­ity and fear, more par­tic­u­larly ghost fear.

• sex urge › drove man into society
• sex urge › gratification transient and spasmodic
• sex urge › males restlessness when deprived of frequent s. gratification

68:2.6Hunger, van­ity, and ghost fear were con­tin­u­ous in their so­cial pres­sure, but sex grat­i­fi­ca­tion was tran­sient and spas­modic. The sex urge alone did not im­pel prim­i­tive men and women to as­sume the heavy bur­dens of home main­te­nance. The early home was founded upon the sex rest­less­ness of the male when de­prived of fre­quent grat­i­fi­ca­tion and upon that de­voted mother love of the hu­man fe­male, which in mea­sure she shares with the fe­males of all the higher an­i­mals. The pres­ence of a help­less baby de­ter­mined the early dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion of male and fe­male ac­tiv­i­ties; the woman had to main­tain a set­tled res­i­dence where she could cul­ti­vate the soil. And from ear­li­est times, where woman was has al­ways been re­garded as the home.

• sex urge › s. appetite of ancients combated war urge

70:3.11The ear­li­est peace mis­sions con­sisted of del­e­ga­tions of men bring­ing their choice maid­ens for the sex grat­i­fi­ca­tion of their one­time en­e­mies, the sex ap­petite be­ing uti­lized in com­bat­ing the war urge. The tribe so hon­ored would pay a re­turn visit, with its of­fer­ing of maid­ens; where­upon peace would be firmly es­tab­lished. And soon in­ter­mar­riages be­tween the fam­i­lies of the chiefs were sanc­tioned.

• historically › primitives › taught s. control; were free from laxity

70:7.8Prim­i­tive peo­ple very early taught their ado­les­cent youths sex con­trol. It be­came the cus­tom to take boys away from par­ents from pu­berty to mar­riage, their ed­u­ca­tion and train­ing be­ing in­trusted to the men’s se­cret so­ci­eties. And one of the chief func­tions of these clubs was to keep con­trol of ado­les­cent young men, thus pre­vent­ing il­le­git­i­mate chil­dren.

70:7.9Com­mer­cial­ized pros­ti­tu­tion be­gan when these men’s clubs paid money for the use of women from other tribes. But the ear­lier groups were re­mark­ably free from sex lax­ity.

• historically › instruction at home in continental nation

72:3.5All sex in­struc­tion is ad­min­is­tered in the home by par­ents or by le­gal guard­i­ans. Moral in­struc­tion is of­fered by teach­ers dur­ing the rest pe­ri­ods in the school shops, but not so with re­li­gious train­ing, which is deemed to be the ex­clu­sive priv­i­lege of par­ents, re­li­gion be­ing looked upon as an in­te­gral part of home life. Purely re­li­gious in­struc­tion is given pub­licly only in the tem­ples of phi­los­o­phy, no such ex­clu­sively re­li­gious in­sti­tu­tions as the Uran­tia churches hav­ing de­vel­oped among this peo­ple. In their phi­los­o­phy, re­li­gion is the striv­ing to know God and to man­i­fest love for one’s fel­lows through ser­vice for them, but this is not typ­i­cal of the re­li­gious sta­tus of the other na­tions on this planet. Re­li­gion is so en­tirely a fam­ily mat­ter among these peo­ple that there are no pub­lic places de­voted ex­clu­sively to re­li­gious as­sem­bly. Po­lit­i­cally, church and state, as Uran­tians are wont to say, are en­tirely sep­a­rate, but there is a strange over­lap­ping of re­li­gion and phi­los­o­phy.

• historically › s. education duty of parents in Garden of Eden

74:7.2The en­tire pur­pose of the west­ern school sys­tem of the Gar­den was so­cial­iza­tion. The forenoon pe­ri­ods of re­cess were de­voted to prac­ti­cal hor­ti­cul­ture and agri­cul­ture, the af­ter­noon pe­ri­ods to com­pet­i­tive play. The evenings were em­ployed in so­cial in­ter­course and the cul­ti­va­tion of per­sonal friend­ships. Re­li­gious and sex­ual train­ing were re­garded as the prov­ince of the home, the duty of par­ents.

• social group entitled to regulate s.

81:5.6Might does not make right, but it does en­force the com­monly rec­og­nized rights of each suc­ceed­ing gen­er­a­tion. The prime mis­sion of gov­ern­ment is the def­i­ni­tion of the right, the just and fair reg­u­la­tion of class dif­fer­ences, and the en­force­ment of equal­ity of op­por­tu­nity un­der the rules of law. Ev­ery hu­man right is as­so­ci­ated with a so­cial duty; group priv­i­lege is an in­sur­ance mech­a­nism which un­fail­ingly de­mands the full pay­ment of the ex­act­ing pre­mi­ums of group ser­vice. And group rights, as well as those of the in­di­vid­ual, must be pro­tected, in­clud­ing the reg­u­la­tion of the sex propen­sity.

• sex urge › all-absorbing chiefly due to race mixtures, Andite inheritance

82:1.2Sex in­ter­est and de­sire were not dom­i­nat­ing pas­sions in prim­i­tive peo­ples; they sim­ply took them for granted. The en­tire re­pro­duc­tive ex­pe­ri­ence was free from imag­i­na­tive em­bel­lish­ment. The all-ab­sorb­ing sex pas­sion of the more highly civ­i­lized peo­ples is chiefly due to race mix­tures, es­pe­cially where the evo­lu­tion­ary na­ture has been stim­u­lated by the as­so­cia­tive imag­i­na­tion and beauty ap­pre­ci­a­tion of the Nod­ites and Adamites. But this And­ite in­her­i­tance was ab­sorbed by the evo­lu­tion­ary races in such lim­ited amounts as to fail to pro­vide suf­fi­cient self-con­trol for the an­i­mal pas­sions thus quick­ened and aroused by the en­dow­ment of keener sex con­scious­ness and stronger mat­ing urges. Of the evo­lu­tion­ary races, the red man had the high­est sex code.

• regulation in relation to marriage

82:1.3The reg­u­la­tion of sex in re­la­tion to mar­riage in­di­cates:

82:1.41. The rel­a­tive prog­ress of civ­i­liza­tion. Civ­i­liza­tion has in­creas­ingly de­manded that sex be grat­i­fied in use­ful chan­nels and in ac­cor­dance with the mores.

• sex urge › all-absorbing chiefly due to race mixtures, Andite inheritance

82:1.52. The amount of And­ite stock in any peo­ple. Among such groups sex has be­come ex­pres­sive of both the high­est and the low­est in both the phys­i­cal and emo­tional na­tures.

• historically › primitives › sex appeal virtually absent

82:1.6The San­gik races had nor­mal an­i­mal pas­sion, but they dis­played lit­tle imag­i­na­tion or ap­pre­ci­a­tion of the beauty and phys­i­cal at­trac­tive­ness of the op­po­site sex. What is called sex ap­peal is vir­tu­ally ab­sent even in pres­ent-day prim­i­tive races; these un­mixed peo­ples have a def­i­nite mat­ing in­stinct but in­suf­fi­cient sex at­trac­tion to cre­ate se­ri­ous prob­lems re­quir­ing so­cial con­trol.

• sex urge › lures selfish man into making something better out of himself

82:1.7The mat­ing in­stinct is one of the dom­i­nant phys­i­cal driv­ing forces of hu­man be­ings; it is the one emo­tion which, in the guise of in­di­vid­ual grat­i­fi­ca­tion, ef­fec­tively tricks self­ish man into putting race wel­fare and per­pet­u­a­tion high above in­di­vid­ual ease and per­sonal free­dom from re­spon­si­bil­ity.

• sex urge › dominant impulse after food hunger
• sex urge › society must control individuals’ s. urges

82:1.9With the sav­age, the food sup­ply was the im­pelling mo­ti­va­tion, but when civ­i­liza­tion in­sures plen­ti­ful food, the sex urge many times be­comes a dom­i­nant im­pulse and there­fore ever stands in need of so­cial reg­u­la­tion. In an­i­mals, in­stinc­tive pe­ri­od­ic­ity checks the mat­ing propen­sity, but since man is so largely a self-con­trolled be­ing, sex de­sire is not al­to­gether pe­ri­odic; there­fore does it be­come nec­es­sary for so­ci­ety to im­pose self-con­trol upon the in­di­vid­ual.

• sex urge › no human emotion, unbridled, produces so much harm and sorrow
• sex urge › secrecy, insincerity, and hypocrisy only obscure problems of

82:1.10No hu­man emo­tion or im­pulse, when un­bri­dled and over­in­dulged, can pro­duce so much harm and sor­row as this pow­er­ful sex urge. In­tel­li­gent sub­mis­sion of this im­pulse to the reg­u­la­tions of so­ci­ety is the su­preme test of the ac­tu­al­ity of any civ­i­liza­tion. Self-con­trol, more and more self-con­trol, is the ever-in­creas­ing de­mand of ad­vanc­ing man­kind. Se­crecy, in­sin­cer­ity, and hypocrisy may ob­scure sex prob­lems, but they do not pro­vide so­lu­tions, nor do they ad­vance ethics.

• free love never in good standing

82:2.3Free love, how­ever, has never been in good stand­ing above the scale of rank sav­agery. The mo­ment so­ci­etal groups be­gan to form, mar­riage codes and mar­i­tal re­stric­tions be­gan to de­velop. Mat­ing has thus pro­gressed through a mul­ti­tude of tran­si­tions from a state of al­most com­plete sex li­cense to the twen­ti­eth-cen­tury stan­dards of rel­a­tively com­plete sex re­stric­tion.

• historically › primitives › suspended s. regulations on May Day

82:2.4In the ear­li­est stages of tribal de­vel­op­ment the mores and re­stric­tive taboos were very crude, but they did keep the sexes apart—this fa­vored quiet, or­der, and in­dus­try—and the long evo­lu­tion of mar­riage and the home had be­gun. The sex cus­toms of dress, adorn­ment, and re­li­gious prac­tices had their ori­gin in these early taboos which de­fined the range of sex lib­er­ties and thus even­tu­ally cre­ated con­cepts of vice, crime, and sin. But it was long the prac­tice to sus­pend all sex reg­u­la­tions on high fes­ti­val days, es­pe­cially May Day.

• individuals always rebel against society’s regulations

82:3.2There al­ways have been and al­ways will be two dis­tinct realms of mar­riage: the mores, the laws reg­u­lat­ing the ex­ter­nal as­pects of mat­ing, and the oth­er­wise se­cret and per­sonal re­la­tions of men and women. Al­ways has the in­di­vid­ual been re­bel­lious against the sex reg­u­la­tions im­posed by so­ci­ety; and this is the rea­son for this age­long sex prob­lem: Self-main­te­nance is in­di­vid­ual but is car­ried on by the group; self-per­pet­u­a­tion is so­cial but is se­cured by in­di­vid­ual im­pulse.

• historically › primitives › rulers allowed s. relations with bride just before marriage; additional license

82:3.10Many tribes al­lowed mem­bers of the rul­ing group to have sex re­la­tions with the bride just be­fore she was to be given to her hus­band. Each of these men would give the girl a pres­ent, and this was the ori­gin of the cus­tom of giv­ing wed­ding pres­ents. Among some groups it was ex­pected that a young woman would earn her dowry, which con­sisted of the pres­ents re­ceived in re­ward for her sex ser­vice in the bride’s ex­hi­bi­tion hall.

• s. jealousy not innate

82:4.4Mod­ern sex jeal­ousy is not in­nate; it is a prod­uct of the evolv­ing mores. Prim­i­tive man was not jeal­ous of his wife; he was just guard­ing his prop­erty. The rea­son for hold­ing the wife to stricter sex ac­count than the hus­band was be­cause her mar­i­tal in­fi­delity in­volved de­scent and in­her­i­tance. Very early in the march of civ­i­liza­tion the il­le­git­i­mate child fell into dis­re­pute. At first only the woman was pun­ished for adul­tery; later on, the mores also de­creed the chas­tise­ment of her part­ner, and for long ages the of­fended hus­band or the pro­tec­tor fa­ther had the full right to kill the male tres­passer. Mod­ern peo­ples re­tain these mores, which al­low so-called crimes of honor un­der the un­writ­ten law.

• historically › primitives › rulers allowed s. relations with bride just before marriage; additional license

82:5.7Many tribes fi­nally for­bade mar­riages within the clan; oth­ers lim­ited mat­ing to cer­tain castes. The taboo against mar­riage with a woman of one’s own totem gave im­pe­tus to the cus­tom of steal­ing women from neigh­bor­ing tribes. Later on, mar­riages were reg­u­lated more in ac­cor­dance with ter­ri­to­rial res­i­dence than with kin­ship. There were many steps in the evo­lu­tion of in-mar­riage into the mod­ern prac­tice of out­mar­riage. Even af­ter the taboo rested upon in-mar­riages for the com­mon peo­ple, chiefs and kings were per­mit­ted to marry those of close kin in or­der to keep the royal blood con­cen­trated and pure. The mores have usu­ally per­mit­ted sov­er­eign rulers cer­tain li­censes in sex mat­ters.

• sex urge › compels man to think and leads him to love
• sex urge › lures selfish man into making something better out of himself

83:0.3It is be­cause of the sex urge that self­ish man is lured into mak­ing some­thing bet­ter than an an­i­mal out of him­self. The self-re­gard­ing and self-grat­i­fy­ing sex re­la­tion­ship en­tails the cer­tain con­se­quences of self-de­nial and in­sures the as­sump­tion of al­tru­is­tic du­ties and nu­mer­ous race-ben­e­fit­ing home re­spon­si­bil­i­ties. Herein has sex been the un­rec­og­nized and un­sus­pected civ­i­lizer of the sav­age; for this same sex im­pulse au­to­mat­i­cally and unerringly com­pels man to think and even­tu­ally leads him to love.

• historically › primitives › indulged s. appetites freely
• historically › primitives › s. only incidental to marriage among primitives

84:1.1Mar­riage was not founded on sex re­la­tions; they were in­ci­den­tal thereto. Mar­riage was not needed by prim­i­tive man, who in­dulged his sex ap­petite freely with­out en­cum­ber­ing him­self with the re­spon­si­bil­i­ties of wife, chil­dren, and home.

• historically › primitives › saw no connection of s. with childbirth

84:1.3Mar­riage was not even brought about by the con­scious re­al­iza­tion of the obli­ga­tions of sex re­la­tions. Prim­i­tive man com­pre­hended no con­nec­tion be­tween sex in­dul­gence and the sub­se­quent birth of a child. It was once uni­ver­sally be­lieved that a vir­gin could be­come preg­nant. The sav­age early con­ceived the idea that ba­bies were made in spir­it­land; preg­nancy was be­lieved to be the re­sult of a woman’s be­ing en­tered by a spirit, an evolv­ing ghost. Both diet and the evil eye were also be­lieved to be ca­pa­ble of caus­ing preg­nancy in a vir­gin or un­mar­ried woman, while later be­liefs con­nected the be­gin­nings of life with the breath and with sun­light.

• sex urge › stronger in men than women

84:4.2Woman’s sta­tus has al­ways been a so­cial para­dox; she has al­ways been a shrewd man­ager of men; she has al­ways cap­i­tal­ized man’s stronger sex urge for her own in­ter­ests and to her own ad­vance­ment. By trad­ing sub­tly upon her sex charms, she has of­ten been able to ex­er­cise dom­i­nant power over man, even when held by him in ab­ject slav­ery.

• always involved co-operation by woman

84:4.3Early woman was not to man a friend, sweet­heart, lover, and part­ner but rather a piece of prop­erty, a ser­vant or slave and, later on, an eco­nomic part­ner, play­thing, and child­bearer. Nonethe­less, proper and sat­is­fac­tory sex re­la­tions have al­ways in­volved the el­e­ment of choice and co-op­er­a­tion by woman, and this has al­ways given in­tel­li­gent women con­sid­er­able in­flu­ence over their im­me­di­ate and per­sonal stand­ing, re­gard­less of their so­cial po­si­tion as a sex. But man’s dis­trust and sus­pi­cion were not helped by the fact that women were all along com­pelled to re­sort to shrewd­ness in the ef­fort to al­le­vi­ate their bond­age.

• higher standards among women

84:5.2As so­ci­ety evolved, the sex stan­dards rose higher among women be­cause they suf­fered more from the con­se­quences of the trans­gres­sion of the sex mores. Man’s sex stan­dards are only tardily im­prov­ing as a re­sult of the sheer sense of that fair­ness which civ­i­liza­tion de­mands. Na­ture knows noth­ing of fair­ness—makes woman alone suf­fer the pangs of child­birth.

• sex urge › insures man and woman will come together

84:6.2Ev­ery suc­cess­ful hu­man in­sti­tu­tion em­braces an­tag­o­nisms of per­sonal in­ter­est which have been ad­justed to prac­ti­cal work­ing har­mony, and home­mak­ing is no ex­cep­tion. Mar­riage, the ba­sis of home build­ing, is the high­est man­i­fes­ta­tion of that an­tag­o­nis­tic co-op­er­a­tion which so of­ten char­ac­ter­izes the con­tacts of na­ture and so­ci­ety. The con­flict is in­ev­i­ta­ble. Mat­ing is in­her­ent; it is nat­u­ral. But mar­riage is not bi­o­logic; it is so­ci­o­logic. Pas­sion in­sures that man and woman will come to­gether, but the weaker pa­ren­tal in­stinct and the so­cial mores hold them to­gether.

• historically › primitives › did not make undue fetish of s.

88:1.7Prim­i­tive man did not make an un­due fe­tish out of sex; the re­pro­duc­tive func­tion re­ceived only a lim­ited amount of at­ten­tion. The sav­age was nat­u­ral minded, not ob­scene or pruri­ent.

• historically › continence cult among soldiers and saints

89:3.6It was only nat­u­ral that the cult of re­nun­ci­a­tion and hu­mil­i­a­tion should have paid at­ten­tion to sex­ual grat­i­fi­ca­tion. The con­ti­nence cult orig­i­nated as a rit­ual among sol­diers prior to en­gag­ing in bat­tle; in later days it be­came the prac­tice of “saints.” This cult tol­er­ated mar­riage only as an evil lesser than for­ni­ca­tion. Many of the world’s great re­li­gions have been ad­versely in­flu­enced by this an­cient cult, but none more markedly than Chris­tian­ity. The Apos­tle Paul was a devo­tee of this cult, and his per­sonal views are re­flected in the teach­ings which he fas­tened onto Chris­tian the­ol­ogy: “It is good for a man not to touch a woman.” “I would that all men were even as I my­self.” “I say, there­fore, to the un­mar­ried and wid­ows, it is good for them to abide even as I.” Paul well knew that such teach­ings were not a part of Je­sus’ gospel, and his ac­knowl­edg­ment of this is il­lus­trated by his state­ment, “I speak this by per­mis­sion and not by com­mand­ment.” But this cult led Paul to look down upon women. And the pity of it all is that his per­sonal opin­ions have long in­flu­enced the teach­ings of a great world re­li­gion. If the ad­vice of the tent­maker-teacher were to be lit­er­ally and uni­ver­sally obeyed, then would the hu­man race come to a sud­den and in­glo­ri­ous end. Fur­ther­more, the in­volve­ment of a re­li­gion with the an­cient con­ti­nence cult leads di­rectly to a war against mar­riage and the home, so­ci­ety’s ver­i­ta­ble foun­da­tion and the ba­sic in­sti­tu­tion of hu­man prog­ress. And it is not to be won­dered at that all such be­liefs fos­tered the for­ma­tion of celi­bate priest­hoods in the many re­li­gions of var­i­ous peo­ples.

• historically › primitives › regarded temple prostitution highly elevating

89:7.4Many of the pe­cu­liar as­so­ci­a­tions of sex lax­ity with prim­i­tive wor­ship had their ori­gin in con­nec­tion with hu­man sac­ri­fice. In olden times, if a woman met head-hunters, she could re­deem her life by sex­ual sur­ren­der. Later, a maiden con­se­crated to the gods as a sac­ri­fice might elect to re­deem her life by ded­i­cat­ing her body for life to the sa­cred sex ser­vice of the tem­ple; in this way she could earn her re­demp­tion money. The an­cients re­garded it as highly el­e­vat­ing to have sex re­la­tions with a woman thus en­gaged in ran­som­ing her life. It was a re­li­gious cer­e­mony to con­sort with these sa­cred maid­ens, and in ad­di­tion, this whole rit­ual af­forded an ac­cept­able ex­cuse for com­mon­place sex­ual grat­i­fi­ca­tion. This was a sub­tle species of self-de­cep­tion which both the maid­ens and their con­sorts de­lighted to prac­tice upon them­selves. The mores al­ways drag be­hind in the evo­lu­tion­ary ad­vance of civ­i­liza­tion, thus pro­vid­ing sanc­tion for the ear­lier and more sav­age­like sex prac­tices of the evolv­ing races.

89:7.5Tem­ple har­lotry even­tu­ally spread through­out south­ern Eu­rope and Asia. The money earned by the tem­ple pros­ti­tutes was held sa­cred among all peo­ples—a high gift to pre­sent to the gods. The high­est types of women thronged the tem­ple sex marts and de­voted their earn­ings to all kinds of sa­cred ser­vices and works of pub­lic good. Many of the bet­ter classes of women col­lected their dowries by tem­po­rary sex ser­vice in the tem­ples, and most men pre­ferred to have such women for wives.

• historically › Ishtar cult was disguised s. worship
• historically › one-time embrace of strangers required by Ishtar

95:1.5Never did the Salem teach­ers fully over­come the pop­u­lar­ity of Ishtar, the mother of gods and the spirit of sex fer­til­ity. They did much to re­fine the wor­ship of this god­dess, but the Baby­lo­ni­ans and their neigh­bors had never com­pletely out­grown their dis­guised forms of sex wor­ship. It had be­come a uni­ver­sal prac­tice through­out Mes­o­po­ta­mia for all women to sub­mit, at least once in early life, to the em­brace of strangers; this was thought to be a de­vo­tion re­quired by Ishtar, and it was be­lieved that fer­til­ity was largely de­pen­dent on this sex sac­ri­fice.

• s. impulses can induce mystic state

100:5.10The more health­ful at­ti­tude of spir­i­tual med­i­ta­tion is to be found in re­flec­tive wor­ship and in the prayer of thanks­giv­ing. The di­rect com­mu­nion with one’s Thought Ad­juster, such as oc­curred in the later years of Je­sus’ life in the flesh, should not be con­fused with these so-called mys­ti­cal ex­pe­ri­ences. The fac­tors which con­tribute to the ini­ti­a­tion of mys­tic com­mu­nion are in­dica­tive of the dan­ger of such psy­chic states. The mys­tic sta­tus is fa­vored by such things as: phys­i­cal fa­tigue, fast­ing, psy­chic dis­so­ci­a­tion, pro­found aes­thetic ex­pe­ri­ences, vivid sex im­pulses, fear, anx­i­ety, rage, and wild danc­ing. Much of the ma­te­rial aris­ing as a re­sult of such pre­lim­i­nary prepa­ra­tion has its ori­gin in the sub­con­scious mind.

• sex urge › do not commit adultery

131:2.12“Says God, the cre­ator of heaven and earth: ‘Great peace have they who love my law. My com­mand­ments are: You shall love me with all your heart; you shall have no gods be­fore me; you shall not take my name in vain; re­mem­ber the Sab­bath day to keep it holy; honor your fa­ther and mother; you shall not kill; you shall not com­mit adul­tery; you shall not steal; you shall not bear false wit­ness; you shall not covet.’

• historically › promiscuity in public baths

132:4.5He talked with a Ro­man sen­a­tor on pol­i­tics and states­man­ship, and this one con­tact with Je­sus made such an im­pres­sion on this leg­is­la­tor that he spent the rest of his life vainly try­ing to in­duce his col­leagues to change the course of the rul­ing pol­icy from the idea of the gov­ern­ment sup­port­ing and feed­ing the peo­ple to that of the peo­ple sup­port­ing the gov­ern­ment. Je­sus spent one evening with a wealthy slave­holder, talked about man as a son of God, and the next day this man, Claudius, gave free­dom to one hun­dred and sev­en­teen slaves. He vis­ited at din­ner with a Greek physi­cian, telling him that his pa­tients had minds and souls as well as bod­ies, and thus led this able doc­tor to at­tempt a more far-reach­ing min­istry to his fel­low men. He talked with all sorts of peo­ple in ev­ery walk of life. The only place in Rome he did not visit was the pub­lic baths. He re­fused to ac­com­pany his friends to the baths be­cause of the sex promis­cu­ity which there pre­vailed.

• historically › promiscuity in public baths

133:3.6When in Rome, Ga­nid ob­served that Je­sus re­fused to ac­com­pany them to the pub­lic baths. Sev­eral times af­ter­ward the young man sought to in­duce Je­sus fur­ther to ex­press him­self in re­gard to the re­la­tions of the sexes. Though he would an­swer the lad’s ques­tions, he never seemed dis­posed to dis­cuss these sub­jects at great length. One evening as they strolled about Corinth out near where the wall of the citadel ran down to the sea, they were ac­costed by two pub­lic women. Ga­nid had im­bibed the idea, and rightly, that Je­sus was a man of high ide­als, and that he ab­horred ev­ery­thing which par­took of un­clean­ness or sa­vored of evil; ac­cord­ingly he spoke sharply to these women and rudely mo­tioned them away. When Je­sus saw this, he said to Ga­nid: “You mean well, but you should not pre­sume thus to speak to the chil­dren of God, even though they chance to be his erring chil­dren. Who are we that we should sit in judg­ment on these women? Do you hap­pen to know all of the cir­cum­stances which led them to re­sort to such meth­ods of ob­tain­ing a liveli­hood? Stop here with me while we talk about these mat­ters.” The cour­te­sans were as­ton­ished at what he said even more than was Ga­nid.

• sex urge › natural tendency which serves individual, race

133:3.7As they stood there in the moon­light, Je­sus went on to say: “There lives within ev­ery hu­man mind a di­vine spirit, the gift of the Fa­ther in heaven. This good spirit ever strives to lead us to God, to help us to find God and to know God; but also within mor­tals there are many nat­u­ral phys­i­cal ten­den­cies which the Cre­ator put there to serve the well-be­ing of the in­di­vid­ual and the race. Now, of­ten­times, men and women be­come con­fused in their ef­forts to un­der­stand them­selves and to grap­ple with the man­i­fold dif­fi­cul­ties of mak­ing a liv­ing in a world so largely dom­i­nated by self­ish­ness and sin. I per­ceive, Ga­nid, that nei­ther of these women is will­fully wicked. I can tell by their faces that they have ex­pe­ri­enced much sor­row; they have suf­fered much at the hands of an ap­par­ently cruel fate; they have not in­ten­tion­ally cho­sen this sort of life; they have, in dis­cour­age­ment bor­der­ing on de­spair, sur­ren­dered to the pres­sure of the hour and ac­cepted this dis­taste­ful means of ob­tain­ing a liveli­hood as the best way out of a sit­u­a­tion that to them ap­peared hope­less. Ga­nid, some peo­ple are re­ally wicked at heart; they de­lib­er­ately choose to do mean things, but, tell me, as you look into these now tear-stained faces, do you see any­thing bad or wicked?” And as Je­sus paused for his re­ply, Ga­nid’s voice choked up as he stam­mered out his an­swer: “No, Teacher, I do not. And I apol­o­gize for my rude­ness to them—I crave their for­give­ness.” Then said Je­sus: “And I be­speak for them that they have for­given you as I speak for my Fa­ther in heaven that he has for­given them. Now all of you come with me to a friend’s house where we will seek re­fresh­ment and plan for the new and bet­ter life ahead.” Up to this time the amazed women had not ut­tered a word; they looked at each other and silently fol­lowed as the men led the way.

• sex urge › do not commit adultery

140:6.5“You have heard the teach­ers of the law say, ‘You shall not com­mit adul­tery.’ But I say to you that ev­ery man who looks upon a woman with in­tent to lust af­ter her has al­ready com­mit­ted adul­tery with her in his heart. You can only judge men by their acts, but my Fa­ther looks into the hearts of his chil­dren and in mercy ad­judges them in ac­cor­dance with their in­tents and real de­sires.”

• sex urge › fickleness of s. urge

160:2.10I re­peat, such in­spir­ing and en­nobling as­so­ci­a­tion finds its ideal pos­si­bil­i­ties in the hu­man mar­riage re­la­tion. True, much is at­tained out of mar­riage, and many, many mar­riages ut­terly fail to pro­duce these moral and spir­i­tual fruits. Too many times mar­riage is en­tered by those who seek other val­ues which are lower than these su­pe­rior ac­com­pa­ni­ments of hu­man ma­tu­rity. Ideal mar­riage must be founded on some­thing more sta­ble than the fluc­tu­a­tions of sen­ti­ment and the fick­le­ness of mere sex at­trac­tion; it must be based on gen­uine and mu­tual per­sonal de­vo­tion. And thus, if you can build up such trust­wor­thy and ef­fec­tive small units of hu­man as­so­ci­a­tion, when these are as­sem­bled in the ag­gre­gate, the world will be­hold a great and glo­ri­fied so­cial struc­ture, the civ­i­liza­tion of mor­tal ma­tu­rity. Such a race might be­gin to re­al­ize some­thing of your Mas­ter’s ideal of “peace on earth and good will among men.” While such a so­ci­ety would not be per­fect or en­tirely free from evil, it would at least ap­proach the sta­bi­liza­tion of ma­tu­rity.

• sex urge › bridle passions and be patient

195:5.10Do not try to sat­isfy the cu­rios­ity or grat­ify all the la­tent ad­ven­ture surg­ing within the soul in one short life in the flesh. Be pa­tient! be not tempted to in­dulge in a law­less plunge into cheap and sor­did ad­ven­ture. Har­ness your en­er­gies and bri­dle your pas­sions; be calm while you await the ma­jes­tic un­fold­ing of an end­less ca­reer of pro­gres­sive ad­ven­ture and thrilling dis­cov­ery.