TK: You're right. It's kind of taken for granted. And as I said in the beginning, one of the things that you have rightly observed and, I gather, integrated into the life of your community is that celibacy is a very important commitment with enormous possibilities, and that as such it should be fully studied and understood by neophytes, and that their experiences of its difficulties should be shared within the group. And I'd bet that the reason this doesn't happen more often is in large part because almost all the religious traditions, and society in general, have been most unwilling, until thirty or forty years ago, to speak about sexual energy or sexual matters at all. Lots of people even arrived at marriage without having heard anything about—what are they?—the birds and the—

AC: The bees.

TK: Shows you how much I know!

AC: I've also noticed, even with my own students, that someone can practice celibacy for a couple of years and never really begin. It might take a few years before the individual really begins to find some energetic, enthusiastic, inspired interest. And then of course the practice comes alive and its liberating power is experienced and appreciated.

TK: That's the full experience.

AC: Yes, and then, of course, it's so fruitful. And it's interesting that in our community—this might sound strange to you, but the men and women who are celibate live together in separate houses from those who are not celibate—they report that their relationships with each other are tangibly different because of the vow they've taken, and that they experience a much greater freedom and intimacy in their association with each other than they do with other members of the community, who one would suppose are equally committed to liberation and purity and honesty and truth. Yet simply because they've taken this vow—and because they take it very seriously—they experience a much greater freedom of being when they're together with each other, principally because they all know that they don't want anything from each other. They were speaking with me about this a week or so ago, and it was very moving.

TK: That's wonderful, that experience of freedom. It makes all the other aspects of community life more accessible and valuable, this interior freedom that the celibate commitment makes possible. You told me that you've asked them to make a temporary vow, is that correct?

AC: Yes.

TK: So everybody knows that everybody else is committed to this, and immediately there's a great freedom from all the subtle ways that young people—and not-so-young people—interact for reasons of sensuality, flirtation, and that kind of thing. All of that falls away, and this allows people to be themselves: honest and straightforward and loving, without seeking any kind of return or reward, especially of a physical nature.

AC: Physical or even just emotional—wanting to be seen as special, this kind of thing. Because I've noticed, just in observing my own experience, that inherent in sexual desire is a kind of psychological and emotional compulsion to want to be seen in a certain way and also to want to have and to consume. Standing back from it, one recognizes this to be the very force or power of the ego itself.

TK: Yes, I think that's extremely right and true. It's always looking for its own satisfaction. Whereas the true Self is not engaged in that kind of melodrama.

AC: When I was teaching the other day I said: It's the ego that experiences the thrill of wanting, but the true Self experiences that very thrill as suffering.

TK: Yes, beautiful.

AC: Another thing I wanted to ask you about is the fact that many—or perhaps even most—of the greatest spiritual figures throughout history have chosen to lead a celibate life. Why do you think that is?

TK: Well, I think there's enough evidence from psychology today for us to be able to recognize that sexual energy is not only in the body, but it also has something to do with the unconscious. And the scope, extent and power of this energy are enormous and have to be respected. And when it's channeled, through devotion to God and service to others, this energy begins to emerge, especially during meditative practices, in a different form. Instead of just sort of blowing you away, it's channeled by the solid preparation of faith in God and love for other people; it's transformed or transmuted into higher possibilities of energy for use in seeking God's presence, which isn't an easy path. Cultivation of the ability to face up to that energy directly becomes a support for our pursuit of the highest and most difficult good, and especially the ultimate goal of surrendering absolutely to God. The great spiritual figures you mention no doubt understood that implicitly, but I think it's extremely important that those of us who are experiencing the growth or emergence of this energy within ourselves have the tools at hand to make use of it for good, because if one isn't well prepared for the emergence of the subtle energy of sexuality, then one can get blown away. As an example of what I'm talking about, I'm thinking of people a generation or two ago who wanted to experiment with psychedelic drugs and so on. What they didn't realize was that they were loosening things up in the psyche that they weren't ready to face—images or desires or fantasies that were emerging from that energy as it came to consciousness. There's a relation, it seems to me, between the growth of celibate consciousness, the fruits of which you've beautifully described as sweetness, and those dark forces in the psyche that can transform that very same energy into ego trips and sheer selfishness if it's released too soon, before the person is spiritually equipped to handle that kind of primal energy. Do you understand what I'm getting at?

AC: Yes, I do.

TK: And that's why I feel so strongly that celibacy should never be practiced in isolation from other practices that strengthen community relations, such as devotion, such as real friendship, and the kind of intimacy that seeks no reward but the happiness of the other person. And also I think that for many people, celibacy needs to be nourished by a more and more intimate relationship with God, so that the divine presence is experienced more and more as a vital force of one's own consciousness, and so that one is consenting to the presence and action of God both in one's meditation and in daily life.

AC: Everything you're saying is quite moving, and I deeply appreciate it. But of course in the process of exploring this issue very actively and in great depth, we've found that even in the spiritual world many people seem to view the practice of celibacy with fear and suspicion. Sometimes even just speaking about the practice makes people angry and upset.

TK: Yes, well, I think I know what you mean. And I think it's partly to do with their early education. Some religious groups have been so strict about sexual matters that many of the young people growing up in those traditions either became frightened to death of sex and developed repressive or neurotic symptoms of one kind or another, or they just turned their back on the whole idea of religion and ran headlong into experimentation and promiscuity. And so I suspect that this fear of celibacy is due to repression in early childhood and the obvious damage it has done to a lot of people. I've seen this happening to people in religious life whose motivation for entertaining celibacy was simply to avoid sexuality because, early in life, they'd had experiences that were so traumatic that emotionally they hadn't developed sufficiently to be able to handle them. Child abuse, for instance, is an enormous obstacle to human growth, and one really needs psychological help with that, especially before entering into a celibate commitment.

AC: But do you think part of this fear of celibacy might also be due to the fact that for many—or perhaps most—people in our society, the sexual force seems inherently to represent an imaginary promise of paradise, an illusory promise of completeness or wholeness? My own suspicion is that because most people have not discovered that the source of their true happiness really lies in a very different place, they're often too terrified even to question whether the one place they're convinced they'll find it can actually deliver.

TK: Yes, I'm sure that you're right. And it's also true that philosophically our Western culture has been heavily influenced by the Greek view of the body and the fear of sexuality that come down to us from some sources in early Christianity as it was influenced by neoplatonic philosophy. Oddly enough, Christianity emerged out of the Hebrew tradition, in which the unity of body and soul is very strongly affirmed. But unfortunately, the early fathers of the Church were more influenced, partly because they had consciously separated from the Jewish religion, by Greek philosophy, which is wonderful in some respects but extremely defective in others, particularly when it's applied to the interpretation of the Old Testament and its moral code. So it's only recently that in the Catholic Church, for instance, marriage has come to be regarded as a way to holiness that is equal with the celibate commitment. This is an enormous step in the direction of liberation from mind-sets that I think have been harmful both to marriage and to celibacy.