"Master [Sri Ramakrishna]: "God cannot be seen with these physical eyes. In the course of spiritual discipline one gets a 'love body', endowed with 'love eyes', 'love ears', and so on. One sees God with those 'love eyes'. One hears the voice of God with those 'love ears'. One even gets a sexual organ made of love."
At these words M. burst out laughing. The Master continued, unannoyed, "With this 'love body' the soul communes with God."
M. again became serious."1
An orgasm is in regular literature usually treated as a physiological phenomenon. As such it is considered as "the height of venereal excitement in coition"2 or the "climactic physiological state of heightened sexual excitement and gratification that is followed by relaxation of sexual tensions and the body's muscles",3 and described as "marked by a feeling of sudden and intense pleasure, an abrupt increase in pulse rate and blood pressure, and spasms of the pelvic muscles that cause contractions of the lower vagina in the female and contractions of the urethra and ejaculation by the male"4.
Now it should be cleared here that the aforementioned feeling of sudden and intense pleasure cannot be caused by an increase in pulse rate and blood pressure, spasms of the pelvic muscles and contractions in the genitals. If this would be the case then high blood pressure patients would enjoy their condition and people in general would delight in muscle cramps. And this is obviously not the case. Of course the soft caressing of the skin may result in a sense of physical pleasure, especially where the skin is thin and where many nerve ends are located, but where sexuality is concerned this sensation is only a path towards the regarded orgasm and not the orgasm itself.
So the pleasure that drives people to seek out orgasms does not originate from the gross physical body. But it does also not originate from the subtle physical body, which is also known as 'the etheric body' and 'the vital body'.5, 6, 7 For when an orgasm occurs vital force is poured out of the vital body,8, 9 and nobody enjoys loss of vitality.
Now since neither cramps nor vitality loss are enjoyable a third factor must be involved in an orgasm, and this factor is the lower psyche,10 consisting of emotion and the concrete mind.11 And what happens to the lower psyche during an orgasm is that it halts its activity.12 For the brief moment of an orgasm all lower psychic processes come to a rest and the personality experiences with that a small death.
Now a personal experience of death of course does not seem very pleasing. However when the personality ceases to exist it does not mean that its underlying individuality also ceases to exist. This individuality regards the higher psyche or the soul which transcends death.13, 14 So what actually happens during an orgasm is that the mortal personality comes to rest for one brief moment because of which a glimpse of the soul can be caught, even without laying aside the body. It is basically this what makes the experience of an orgasm so pleasing.
But of course it is not only through orgasms that soul glimpses can be caught while residing in the physical body. For the quieting down of the personality, the lower psyche, for the reception of the soul, the higher psyche, has always been the goal of all true spiritual disciplines.15 Practising their disciplines the regarded practitioners arrive at psychic experiences that not only are similar to the psychic experiences of orgasms, but which are much more intense and much more prolonged. It can be said that an orgasm is the mystic experience for ordinary man and that soul-personality fusion is the sexual climax for the mystic. For indeed is the sexual relation between a man and a woman only a reflection of the relation between the soul and the personality.16 And the advantage of the mystic climaxing experiences over that of the sexual climaxing experiences is that the former does not involve muscle cramps or loss of vitality. In the contrary; while keeping the body relaxed the inflow of soul light may even vitalize the personality.17, 18
So to conclude: The sexual orgasm is basically an easy accessible psychic orgasm, limited in intensity and duration and at the cost of vitality. More difficult this psychic orgasm is however also accessible in a much more intense and prolonged manner through mystic practises and with the bonus of gain of vitality. And the choice of strife is ours.