Saints and mystics
Several men and women, deliberately refraining from physical lovemaking, managed to retain a partial ability to love divinely within themselves. These were the mystics, saints and ascetics of all nations. They turned their attention inward and loved the divine energies in their own bodies. Refusing to unite with other bodies, now filled with time and emotion in the form of discontent and restlessness, the mystics kept themselves relatively pure.
Yet relative to the fullness and richness of the original radiance, theirs was a pale, lopsided form of purity. Denying the earthly need for union with the opposite pole or sex, the mystical alternative was fundamentally exclusive, selfish and unnatural, for all its idealism and haughty devotion. As a consequence, it produced half-integrated and only partially divine human beings. Things were unequivocally worse. The result was reflected in the halos and orbs of these mystical men and women. Their halos had gradually shrunk in size and illumination to a small circle of light around her head. You will see it today represented in old paintings and icons, particularly of saints.
These shrunken, miniature halos only show how restricted man's idea of love on earth or earthly love had become over time. Excluding his or her entire body from divine union with the opposite sex on earth, and basing love solely on the abstraction of the mind, the halo was reduced to envelop only the head, or at most the upper part of the neck and body.
It could be argued that the mystics and saints, due to the irruption of time, had no choice but to follow the path of celibacy. At least that way they managed to keep something of the pure and divine love on earth, until the mystical holiness itself all but disappeared under the weight of time. But really the option they chose, not to make love, or their interpretation of that impulse, was a great tragedy for the human race. Mystics and saints would only have saved the day, or the world, if they had acted differently or more generously. Despite their divine love, celibate saints, like the rest of humanity, being swamped by time, had really forgotten how to make physical love and did not realize it. And they were very emotional about love. They had made a virtue of their oblivion.
Perplexed and guilt-ridden by the power of their own relentless passions, most saints ardently denounced the act of physical love, and with all sorts of the wrong reasons.
The truth is that it was they who did not love enough - they did not love remember how to make love on earth or give guidance or some kind of inspired example. That was too much self-sacrifice. Therefore, like the crowd that shouted, ‘crucify him!’ they too condemned the love they feared and did not understand. The saints remained apart from humanity. They were compassionate and careful with the superficial sufferings of humanity, poverty, disease and violence, but they always avoided the central problem of physical love, the cause of the greatest unhappiness on earth, including that of the saints themselves.
Even Jesus Christ, if the interpreters of him are to be believed, avoided the problem completely and left no word of true guidance for humanity, whose constant preoccupation, now and then, is trying to make physical love. The Messiah, for his glaring omission of sexuality in his teachings, has a lot to answer for, doesn't he? If you believe in the interpreters of him the saints kept their hands clean from the real filth of love where men and women ordinarily have to live. ‘God is enough!’ they were saying. Is that true if you are not a saint? Is that true for you? Or do you want to make love and maybe feel something divine and pure about it, that you know must be there and must be found?
The saints abandoned us; they left this blessed planet earth. They opted out of the reality of love on earth and made their love somewhere else where there is no need for love – love is needed here.
If you want to escape to God in your love and leave man and woman behind, then God helps you. You will have to return to make amends and see the error of your love as all the saints must do in time. Man and woman need this love, this God of love, in the densest part of here on earth and not in any other place.
And only you and I can make that love, that God, here. It is this lack of love, or lack of God among us that has brought the world today to l brink of annihilation by his own hands. In addition, these saints, men and women far from this world, charged humanity with their own horrible guilt, they thought that making love was sinful.
How many billions of innocent boys and girls, men and women have suffered hell on earth from sexual guilt, and are still suffering due to the lack of courage of all the saints to love? "God made me celibate" - St. Augustine prayed. Why didn't he ask God to show him why he loved the woman so much that he couldn't stay away from her? Where did he get the idea that he should be celibate anyway? No doubt from some other tortured saint or priest. That is why the saints, mystics and ascetics of all nations abandoned the poor struggling mass of human beings who were fighting against time, and still are, to make love or peace with each other. Has a saint ever told you how to make love, which is the origin of all love on earth, including the love of God? Were not all of us, including the saints, born from that act of love? Is it fair to ignore the sweetest and most natural physical feeling that two human beings can produce together on earth as a signifier of a possible reality?
Extract from Making Love
To love in a natural way