Customer Reviews

Transcendent Sex: When Lovemaking Opens the Veil

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She's done it again! In Transcendent Sex, Dr. Jenny Wade relates the experiences of people just like you and me who have touched the divine, not by meditation or yoga or drugs, but simply by making love. Often these folks didn't even plan on having a transcendent experience, it just happened!

In her first book, Changes of Mind, Dr. Wade showed how consciousness develops over our lifetime and more importantly, how these discrete stages of development, she calls them MindSets, persist and shape our interactions at work and in other relationships. In effect we don't just have one `mind' inside our head, but several--each with it's own values, strengths and weaknesses--some more `evolved' than others. Gaining access to the higher states was thought to be a path reserved for the devoted practitioners of the mystic arts, but now she presents the stories of ordinary people having truly extraordinary experiences which transcend their day-to-day conscious minds. For some it reflects attainment of a higher state of awareness.

Why is this book important? I don't want to spoil the pleasure of your experience of sex, but if one of these invitations to glimpse a world beyond the limits of your bedroom comes unbidden, it will be comforting to know that you are not losing your mind, but in a way finding it. If these transcendent insights occur to one partner and not the other, you now have a basis for a deeper understanding of each other and the wonder of the universe by reflecting on the perhaps similar experiences of others.

As with Changes of Mind, Dr. Wade shows her uncanny ability to tease a taxonomy out of what some might leave as a collection of interesting but disparate tales. Using her familiar metrics of sense of self, sense of place and sense of time, she sifts the ninety or so interviews into groupings that not only enhance the reading, but also facilitate a quick reference should something troubling occur.

On that note, I should paraphrase Dr. Wade's admonition: not all transcendent experiences are welcome and some may be downright unsettling. While this is not a `How To' book, she does give some pointers on being open to the experience and also some advice on dealing with the darker aspects. Above all this is not a book about Sex or a guide to better orgasms: if pressed, I would say it's about the boundless spiritual energy that we all possess. It is a phenomenal book!

Jenny Wade interviewed 91 people (identified through personal acquaintance networks) who spontaneously experienced transcendent awarenesses during sexual encounters. They report these experiences were so profoundly moving that their sexual encounters paled by comparison. In fact, the sexual climax was often experienced as a distraction or even as an annoyance.

A variety of transcendent experiences were identified by her subjects, including transfiguration of the sexual partner, shape shifting, channeling of spirit awarenesses, totally being in the present moment, cosmic awareness, out of body experiences, and past life recall.

Wade writes clearly, providing the background for understanding these transcendent sexual experiences in the context of more commonly reported transcendent experiences. She illustrates each of these types of experience with fascinating quotes from her subjects.

"I was taken up beyond my body and the warmth of the sun on my skin and the clear blue sky until I went in that golden sunlight and cerulean blue. Then I shot out beyond it into the vastness of space where all was silence and the blackness lit by stars. Everything there looked clear and beautiful and cold, yet I could feel the life pulsating through it, the fierce fires of the distant suns and burning stars. It was beauty and it was love and there I was in the middle of this universe stretching forever. I wanted to stay there always. --Rachel" (p.111)

The only criticism I can muster about this book is a minor unclarity about whether these transcendent experiences as sexual encounters are ever shared by both partners. On page 141 Wade clarifies that past life awarenesses are the only transcendent experiences that couples regularly share.

While transcendent sex as a Tantric meditative practice has been well known and extensively described, Wade clearly expands the boundaries of these experiences in this groundbreaking book.

What Raymond Moody did for our understanding of death, Jenny Wade has done for sex -- namely, to show how sexual encounters between ordinary people can vault them into the realm of the transcendent, unleash powerful forces of spiritual transformation and ultimately lead to God-consciousness itself. "Transcendent Sex" is a superbly written work, with many fascinating stories of extraordinary experiences that can be spontaneously triggered by sex, and also demonstrates that many of these experiences are no different in form and content from those that are deliberately sought through a variety of spiritual practices. In addition, there are practical guides -- and warnings -- for those readers who would like to cultivate such episodes in their own sexual life. The author deserves a great deal of credit for bringing these experiences to light and showing how sex itself is not merely a hedonic delight that pleasures the senses, but can also become a means of spiritual awakening. A heaven-breaking book.

Just recently I've had a run of books which all exceeded my expectations, and this was one of the best. It's *not* another book on tantra/tao/alchemical techniques (although the author is well aware of those) -- it's a book about transcendent and mystical experiences that occur to people completely without premeditation. The author understands the experiences in proper context and is able to give them their due, and the experiences themselves are extraordinary. This is something that transpersonal psychology does sometimes do extremely well, the cataloguing of experiences, and thank goodness it is being done now -- we are otherwise, as Wade herself points out, very unlikely to know this kind of thing goes on. It is extremely common for experiencers not even to tell their own *sexual partners* about the experience, let alone anyone else, and if not for the fact that Wade herself had a very interesting episode of this kind and determined to put her considerable talents towards exploring the phenomenon, we might know nothing about it still.

As it stands, Wade's survey reveals that mystical experiences of every possible kind regularly accompany the sex act, and blows a number of preconceptions out of the water concerning who has them and how to get them. Naturally many of the experiencers turn to some sort of spiritual training after the experience, but of the 100-odd surveyed, none had *prior* training, any more than NDE experiencers have to. (I'm certainly not saying training isn't good, and am very into it myself -- but the free distribution of these occurrences amongst ordinary folks is to me a beautiful reminder of the way the universe doesn't play by human rules.) So these experiences had nothing to do with technique, belief or practices. Nor are they associated with any particular type of orgasm, whether multiple/extended/expanded or whatever other flavour -- or necessarily with orgasm at all, since that can actually be a *nuisance* that ends the experience. Wade also finds no correlation to abuse, nor to long-term fidelity or "true love", nor to high-intensity infatuation. Mystical experience has certainly happened when the sex involved felt doubtful or 'wrong' to the person concerned (adulterous or with the 'wrong'-gendered partner for their conscious morality). And although Wade does give some tips on how to at least try and align the stars for your own experience, that's not what the book is about.

The experiences themselves are just remarkable. Energy and kundalini and light experiences of course; encounters with angels and primordial nature deities that include an amazing homosexual encounter with a horned-god type being; unions with the earth, with strange presences, with the void, with the ulimate deity (and Wade sensitively demaracates ultimate-deity-union type culminations, seen as more western, from nothingness-type satoris that are seen as more eastern); a lover's face changing (not always comfortably); beast spirits joining in the lovemaking (not always comfortably); identity-flipping with the lover; past lives coming up and delivering perspectives on present-day stories; OBE sex and massive time distortions; and deep soul connections too of course (not always comfortably).

Neither does Wade tinsel out on the negative side of the experiences. Altered states can not only be difficult to integrate (no training remember), when they are sexual they can involve extreme emotions, predatoriness, promiscuity, disturbance and anguish -- even loneliness, because the partner often doesn't share or reach the same depth. Reality can totter on its throne, and the experiences themselves are far from always joyful, although the majority are certainly pretty positive, and even the negative ones can end up having positive results.

What else can I say about this book? This is really something I wanted from the new spiritual psychology. Like so much good science it is happy to make a nonsense of all our norms, and (although I'd like to hear more about transcendent practitioner experiences too sometime) the fact of there being no system involved, just descriptions of spontaneous events, removes any sense of dogma. These are certainly amongst the more important things we've been missing from the descriptions of our universe handed to us by western spiritual authorities! They cheerfully break down the borders of what is 'supposed to happen', just like spiritual things so often do, catching us on the hop and showing us what an extraordinary world we do live in. They are also warmly human in many beautiful ways. The fact that they are so sensitively and at the same time objectively and carefully categorized by this talented author makes this book a real joy. Don't miss.

Caught this book out of the corner of my eye in the store, read the back and took it home... Had never seen or heard anything like it, and I'd love to find more info in this area.

If you've never had an "Experience", you may not get the message, but for those that have, it'll change your understanding of it. I wish I could sit down with the author.

I purchased this book based on recommendations by both Ken Wilber and David Deida. I felt that if they suggested it, there would probably be significant benefits to be had. This assumption has proved correct.

First off, I like this book because it isn't a strict "How to" guide. Yes there is a section that presents those considerations, but primarily it is a book that presents the experiences (good and bad) of a number of different couples. In reading these stories one comes to the conclusion that there really is no concrete pattern that occurs...each couple's experience is unique. This, in my opinion, mirrors the spiritual realities that I have witnessed (modest as they are).

I also like that the downsides are not ignored. One chapter in particular (chapter 10, Why Didn't Anyone Tell Us This Before?) specifically address some of the painful side effects that can occur, and offers some important precautions that should be observed. I personally appreciate this responsibility on behalf of the author.

If you are interested in the spiritual aspects of sex, I heartily recommend this book.

I loved this book because of the way it validates my own personal experience in this area.It goes to prove that having sex is not just a physical thing but that there is something more, something sacred about it. Excellent reading.

This is an excellent survey of 91 subjects who reoported having transcendent sex. There is a great deal of scientific background in other fields of transcendental experiences. The chapters are grouped by the various types of trans. experiences.

I found the most revealing was "tresspaso". This is where a succession of heads appear on the face of the partner, some are non-human animals: bear, wolf and birds most common. This offers an explanation of the source of the animal headed figures found in ancient egypt, in the Northern Alutes, and in other "primitive" cultures around the world.