2 results for (book:notp AND session:774 AND stemmed:speci)
[... 7 paragraphs ...]
I am not saying here that any given sexual performance is “wrong,” or meaningless, or debased, if it is not accompanied by the sentiments of love and devotion. Over a period of time, however, the expression of sex will follow the inclinations of the heart. These inclinations will color sexual expression, then. To that degree, it is “unnatural” to have sexual desire for someone whom you dislike or look down upon. The sexual ideas of domination and submission have no part in the natural life of your species, or that of the animals. Again, you interpret animal behavior according to your own beliefs.
Dominance and submission have often been used in religious literature in periods when love and devotion were separated from sexuality. They became unified only through religious visions or experiences, for only God’s love was seen as “good enough” to justify a sexuality otherwise felt to be animalistic. Instead, the words “domination” and “submission” have to do with areas of consciousness and its development. Because of interpretations mentioned earlier in this book, you adopted a prominent line of consciousness that to a certain extent was bent upon dominating nature. You considered this male in essence. The female principle then became connected with the earth and all those elements of its life over which you as a species hoped to gain power.
[... 2 paragraphs ...]
Some people are naturally solitary. They want to live lone lives, and are content. Most, however, have a need for enduring, close relationships. These provide both a psychic and social framework for personal growth, understanding, and development. It is an easy enough matter to shout to the skies: “I love my fellow men,” when on the other hand you form no strong, enduring relationship with others. It is easy to claim an equal love for all members of the species, but love itself requires an understanding that at your level of activity is based upon intimate experience. You cannot love someone you do not know — not unless you water down the definition of love so much that it becomes meaningless.
[... 11 paragraphs ...]
[... 5 paragraphs ...]
All of this also applies to the animals to varying degrees. Even in animal groups, individuals are not only concerned with personal survival, but with the survival of “family” members. Each individual in an animal group is aware of the others’ situations. The expression of love is not confined to your own species, therefore, nor is tenderness, loyalty, or concern. Love indeed does have its own language — a basic nonverbal one with deep biological connotations. It is the initial basic language from which all others spring, for all languages’ purposes rise from those qualities natural to love’s expression — the desire to communicate, create, explore, and to join with the beloved.
[... 1 paragraph ...]
Physically and psychically the species is connected with all of nature. Man did not live in fear, as is now supposed, nor in some idealized natural heaven. He lived at an intense peak of psychic and biological experience, and enjoyed a sense of creative excitement that in those terms only existed when the species was new.
This is difficult to explain, for these concepts themselves exist beyond verbalization. Some seeming (underlined) contradictions are bound to occur. In comparison with those times, however, children are now born ancient, for even biologically they carry within themselves the memories of their ancestors. In those pristine eras, however, the species itself arose, in those terms, newly from the womb of timelessness into time.
(Long pause.) New paragraph: In deeper terms their existence still continues, with offshoots in all directions. The world that you know is one development in time, the one that you recognize. The species actually took many other routes unknown to you, unrecorded in your history. Fresh creativity still emerges at that “point.” (Long pause, one of many.) In the reckoning that you accept, the species in its infancy obviously experienced selfhood in different terms from your own. Because this experience is so alien to your present concepts, and because it predated language as you understand it, it is most difficult to describe.
[... 14 paragraphs ...]