Meditation as Mental Masturbation

There is an old joke about meditation as mental masturbation. I realized recently that it's true in a way. I would add, it's not just mental; it's mental, spiritual, physical, magnetic, and cosmic masturbation.

Masturbation is defined as excitation of one's own nerves, by means other than sexual intercourse. Orgasm during meditation is rare, but stimulation, excitation, and delight are common, thank God. In meditation, the nerves fluctuate between restfulness and excitation. It's a wave phenomenon.

In meditation, all the levels of your being come into contact and very subtly rub together. The nerve endings that are used in sex are open to perceive pleasure, only the touch is very, very subtle and quiet. Since there is very little going on, the senses open way up and begin to perceive pleasure in the touch of breath, the touch of sunlight on the skin, the touch of quiet inner sound of the prayer or mantra, the delicate electric current of contacting the soul essence.

You need to have some physical experience to understand what I am talking about. Some ways of putting your body into a state where you can understand:

– go hiking, walk 8 or 10 miles, then jump into a cold stream. Lie down on the grass.
– work and get exhausted, then go and get a really good massage, a non-sexual massage. Then lie on the table and feel what it is to breathe.
– take a vacation to Hawaii or the Caribbean, and go for a long swim. Pull up on the beach and take a nap. Waking up, notice how your skin feels.
– Dance to your favorite music for an hour or so, until you are exhausted. Then turn the music off, lie down, and feel the energy pulsing through your body. Keep paying attention as the sensations fade away.
– Take a hot bath. Then take a cold shower. Rub lotion or oil all over your skin. Wrap up in a sheet and lie down and feel your body.
– Walk or run until your body is warm, then stand on a hill in the wind. Take off as many of your clothes as you can get away with, and feel the contact of the air on your skin.

In masturbation, we are exploring our own circuitry, our nerves, and just letting the currents of delight flow. There is no purpose to it other than our satisfaction, and perhaps the healthiness of release of tension. The sex is not for the purpose of procreation, or to please another person. But you definitely learn things about how to please yourself and how to please another person, both in masturbation and meditation.

In any kind of great sex, there is a strong meditative component. Even a breath feels erotic.

As the Buddha said, "He trains himself, 'I will breathe in sensitive to rapture.' He trains himself, 'I will breathe out sensitive to rapture.' He trains himself, 'I will breathe in sensitive to pleasure.' He trains himself, 'I will breathe out sensitive to pleasure.' "
- Anapanasati Sutta, Mindfulness of Breathing

A study published in 2004 found that about one percent of adults have absolutely no interest in sex. And some of them are proud of it. For the other 99% of the population, sitting and meditating for hours, being sensitive to rapture, is at least some of the time, an intense turn-on. Everything meditative becomes like foreplay. The sensations are like being tickled by subtle currents of sexual pleasure, not just in the genitals, but everywhere. And not just in the physical body - it is as if your electric body is also pulsating with erotic energy.

It is difficult to get information about this - monks and nuns are quite secretive about sex - but quite a few of the people I have interviewed on meditation retreats talk about sacred masturbation, a sense of the divine as intense as in partner sex. So you are really not just making love to yourself - it is the universe, Buddha, Jesus, God, nature that you are making love to.

While some people are having divine experiences of a sexual nature while meditating, others are, as usual, making themselves miserable.

Another phenomena that seems common, particularly among men, is to masturbate but not to orgasm, then savor the intense ache and go into meditation with it. Women seem much less ashamed of masturbating, maybe because it is less messy. Men on meditation retreats tend to develop obsessive ideas about conserving semen, but the main result of this is they feel guilty and ashamed and unspiritual, and get prostate infections.