SEXUAL HAPPINESS CONTRA MYSTICISM

The undermining of the church’s power over and above its immediate sphere of influence only meant that the church’s worst encroachments were done away with. This measure has no affected whatever on its ideological power, which rests upon the sympathetic feelings and superstitious structure of the average individual in the masses. For this reason the Soviets began to exercise scientific influence. However, natural scientific enlightenment and the unmasking of religion merely place an intellectual, though very powerful, force alongside religious feelings and leave the rest to the struggle between man’s intellect and mystical sentiments. This struggle succeeds in favour of science only in men and women who have already begun to mature on a different basis. That it can fail even in such persons is shown by the not infrequent cases in which clear-cut materialists yield to their religious sentiments in this or that form, i.e., are compelled to pray. From this a clever advocate of religion will seek to win an argument in his favour; he will assert that this is proof of the everlastingness and ineradicableness of religious feeling. He is nonetheless in the wrong, for this only proves that, while the power of the intellect is pitted against religious feelings, the source of religious feelings is not touched. One could rightfully conclude that the foundation of mystical sentiments would be completely undermined if the social hegemony of the church were not only eliminated and an intellectual force were pitted against them but over and above this the feelings that nourish mystical sentiments were made conscious and given free rein. Clinical experience shows incontestably that religious sentiments result from inhibited sexuality that the source of mystical excitation is to be sought in inhibited sexual excitation. The inescapable conclusion of all this is that a clear sexual consciousness and a natural regulation of sexual life must foredoom every form of mysticism; that, in other words, natural sexuality is the arch enemy of mystical religion. By carrying on an anti-sexual fight wherever it can, making it the core of its dogmas and putting it in the foreground of its mass propaganda, the church only attests to the correctness of this interpretation.

To begin with, I am only attempting to reduce very complicated facts to their simplest formula when I say that sexual consciousness is the end of mysticism. We will soon see that, as simple as this formula is, its actual basis and the conditions for its practical

implementation are extremely complicated, and that we shall need the entire scientific apparatus at our disposal and the deepest conviction of the necessity of carrying out an inexorable fight against mysticism, if we are to counter successfully the cunning apparatus of superstition. But the final result will one day repay all our efforts.

To form an accurate estimation of the difficulties to be encountered in the practical implementation of this simple formula, a number of fundamental facts in the psychic structure of people who have been subjected to a sexually repressive upbringing have to be thoroughly comprehended. When a number of cultural organizations in the western part of Germany, which is predominantly Catholic, rejected the sex-economic fight against mystical contagion because they had allegedly not had any success with it, this did not invalidate my contention, but only testified to the timidity, fear of sexuality, and sex-economic inexperience of those who undertook the fight. More than anything else it testified to a lack of patience and willingness to adapt to the complicated state of affairs, to understand and master it. If I were to tell a Christian woman who is sexually frustrated that her suffering is of a sexual nature and that only through sexual happiness can her psychic suffering be relieved, she would be right in throwing me out. We are faced with two difficulties: (i) Every individual bears contradictions in himself, which have to be individually understood; and (2) the practical aspects of the problem differ from locality to locality and country to country and therefore have to be solved in a different way. But surely, the more extensive our sex-economic experience becomes, the more easily we will be able to deal with the obstacles. However, it is solely through practice that these difficulties can be eliminated. Before any headway can be made, we must agree on the correctness of our basic formula, and we must comprehend the true nature of the difficulties. In view of the fact that mysticism has ruled humanity for thousands of years, the least it can ask of novices like us is that we do not underestimate it and that we grasp it correctly. It will be up to us to prove ourselves wiser, more subtle, and more knowledgeable than its advocates.