EROS ASCENDING Transforming Love & Sexuality in the 21st Century An interview with John Maxwell Taylor author of Eros Ascending by Frank Seifert of Matchmatrix.com Home-based in San Diego for many years John Maxwell Taylor is well-known in Southern California and internationally known in the world of theatre and transformation. A student of the teachings of Paramahansa Yogananda, Gurdjieff, C.G. Jung and Mantak Chia, he has spent 40 years gathering, practicing and experiencing esoteric understanding. In 1993, his first musical Faustorama, reached the semifinals of the American Musical Theater contest and enjoyed a seven-week extended run at the Hahn Cosmopolitan Theater in San Diego. Three years later he was portraying Carl Gustav Jung in a self-penned, award-winning 20-character one-man play Forever Jung , based on the life of the famed Swiss psychologist. He won the prestigious Gradiva Award for this work. His second musical, Crazy Wisdom based on the controversial life of Russian mystic George Gurdjieff, and has been released on CD.

Now living in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, with his bride Emily, he continues to lead workshops and lecture throughout the United States. The author of  The Power of I AM, his new book, Eros Ascending (Frog Books, 2009) , is subtitled The Life-Transforming Power of Sacred Sexuality . The book's Foreword was written by San Diegan Linda Savage, Ph.D., and this interview is by another San Diegan, Frank Seifert, who talks to John about his new book.

Do you feel it is possible in this day and age to find total romantic fulfillment?

Absolutely! But only if we know how to integrate body, mind, feeling, our souls and our sexuality. Otherwise the intensity of the energy being generated between lovers will make them unbalanced and they will burn out, loose the initial joy and fall into destructive patterns of over familiarity and unconscious behavior towards each other. When we fall in love, we experience an incredible six month high followed by slow decline of intensity as our bodies cease to produce less dopamine and other pleasure inducing substances that accompany the first phase.

By understanding the spiritual and biological/sexual dynamics behind falling in love, we can not only maintain the initial wonder, but keep building on it and rise to the heights of happiness and personal fulfillment. One of my intentions in writing Eros Ascending was to give the fullest possible spectrum of insight and tools to attract the right partner and then develop the gift of love with him/her through a blend of romantic love and enlightened sexuality.

I'm fascinated with the title… Eros Ascending ? What does it mean?

According to Carl Jung, the role of Eros as an archetype is to create relationship and interconnection between people. In contemporary society Eros has been pulled from the sky of higher possibilities and flung into the lower depths of unconscious libidinal madness. The media, entertainment and porn industries actively promote mass fascination with delusion driven patterns of sexual behavior that contract and imprison our souls. Our fascination with infra sex forces Eros to become Orpheus descending, taking us into the underworld of our collective and individual psyches to see the source of our compulsions. We need to find and follow the life-giving thread of truth about our sexuality that can take us to the light and restore Eros to its true role of uplifting humanity into Divine consciousness, personal joy and liberation through ultra sex.

Infra Sex and Ultra Sex are new terms to me. Can you elaborate?

The desires of the body and the spirit need to be in harmony in order for us to evolve. ultra sex takes into account the blending of essences. Infra sex serves the unconscious desires of false personality and egotism. Ultra sex is what happens when we orient ourselves towards the higher possibilities of sexuality and human love through connection with our essence and that of our partner. It turns the act of making love into something that produces not just extended sexual pleasure, but connection with divine love. When we align our libidinous desires and intentions with the super -conscious and make love from the soul, we become free from the limitations of unconscious forces over which we otherwise have no control. We engage in communion with not just another person's material form, but the power behind material forms and make love in alignment with cosmologically rooted principles of universal harmony and balance.

On the wings of Eros Ascending we rise above the common delusions about sex and love that enslave millions, all over the planet, and become magnificently empowered by higher creative forces that enable us to act within creation as agents of a higher purpose and intelligence.

This all sounds very grand. I thought sacred sexuality was about experiencing pleasure in a new way. You're saying that instead of just becoming better lovers, we have to become secret agents of the universe, sort of James Bond on stardust?

I hadn't quite thought of it that way. But I do feel that because of our recent political shift we are going to see an explosion of positivism in America that will quickly spread around the world. We are in the process of creating a new national identity and all spiritually oriented people are going to find themselves, their work and creativity in demand as never before.

However, to be effective, we will be required to embody the benefits of spiritual, emotional and psychological wholeness, plus personal maturity and this includes a healthy connection to our sexuality. Without any premeditated intention on my part, the book is making its debut as even mainstream religion in America is actively trying to put God and sex together in the same bed. I take this as a sign of the times that mirrors a shift to understand sexuality from a spiritual point of view. It represents an essential evolutionary need across the entire spectrum of society, not just the Christian, but also in the New Thought (New Age) and secular community.

Sex positive fundamentalists? Fill me in on that one. It's news to me.

Last fall, the New York Times and various national television news networks picked up on the announcement by Christian minister Rev. Ed Young, of the 20,000 member Dallas- based Fellowship Church, that he would deliver his November 16 th sermon, entitled “Seven Days of Sex”, while sitting in bed in front of his church. Putting God and sex together is apparently becoming the rage among evangelicals.

It is part of a movement to reclaim human sexuality from a culture Rev. Ed claims has “hijacked sex from the church” and he wants to “put God back in bed” because “we are the real sex-perts because we are made in God's image and He's the one who wants us to do it His way.” Now obviously, what these folks are pushing is church sanctioned marital sex, which leaves out singles, same sex lovers and all who have not been “saved” according to their principle agenda.

Nevertheless, you see this movement towards reconciling body and soul as a positive thing?

I do, mainly because it is bringing the possibility of open discussion about putting the sexual and the spiritual together in mainstream thought. When this topic hits the major news networks, newspapers and magazines and stirs up conversation, pro or con, we know things are changing.

The vision of a minister pontificating about sex in a bed outside his church is hilarious. What was the outcome of his sex positive program?

Rev. Ed challenged his married parishioners to commit to having seven days of sex in a row. Apparently practicing what he preaches, (he claims he and his wife make love every day) he promised his congregation that at the end of this marathon, they would belong to the “happiest church on planet earth.”

Online updates report that couples who participated in the experiment claim that their marriages have been strengthened, developing deeper intimacy and that they have grown closer, not just to each other, but to God and Jesus. One couple said that the first three nights were incredible, but then they quit because what they had experienced was so “off the charts exciting that we decided to stop on a high note.”

For those who kept going however, there were some challenges. One guy said that keeping to the agreement was harder than he thought and claimed “after five days I'm on the ropes man” He found himself “taking extra vitamins and supplements just to try and give me more stamina” adding “if I dose off in Church on Sunday you'll know why.”

If this spiritual wannabe sexual marathon man had known about Taoist or Tantric sexual practices for building up and conserving his vitality, he would have sailed through the seven nights of love with flying colors. If Rev. Ed's parishioners had undergone some prior training in Eastern esoteric techniques for the cultivation of their sexual energy, particularly the men, his experiment might have been a 100% success rather than a hit or miss affair.

Surely you are not saying that you expect fundamentalists to embrace Tantra?

I would like to see people all over the world, especially the young, receive an education in the principles of higher sexuality. This would free them from manipulation by the media, peer pressure and commercially driven sexploitation and being hypnotized into lifelong sexual dysfunction and emotional immaturity.

The need to look at sexuality from a sacred point of view remains one of our most pressing global needs, perhaps because it is the most powerful and primal force of energy available to the human race. When it is not channeled into the higher centers of intelligence and feeling in the brain and heart, sex energy can get diverted into our lower nature and manifest as violent impulses, such as the need to dominate, psychotic sexual fixation, fantasy and obsession, the lust for personal power and abuse of the feminine principle.

The prime biological directive of sexual intelligence is the survival of the human race. But it also serves the beautification of our human nature through contact with love, deep healing through ecstasy, the balancing of our yin and yang elements and our personal rebirth in the midst of life through the transmutation sexual vitality into food for the soul to give us entry into higher consciousness!

So you feel that your book addresses many issues regarding not just our own sexuality, but the needs of the world at large and arrives in perfect timing.

Let me share with you this quote from the back cover of the book by Michael Winn, who co-wrote the first classic books on Taoist sexuality with Master Mantak Chia, who was my original teacher in this arena. Michael writes…

  “Taylor is a visionary after my own heart. Eros Ascending is a fun, highly readable next-gen Bible for lovers of sacred sex. While Taoist sexual techniques supply the practical energetic methods, he rolls into one believable, continuous orgasm Kriya Yoga, Gurdjieff, tantric ecstasy, Jungian androgyny, Plato, and sexual communion with deep Earth Goddess. It's loaded with practical ‘how-to' tips and decades of amazing stories. He adroitly reverses Christianity's demonization of sex by revealing the inherently erotic nature of Christ-cum-Solar Logos. An enlightening and entertaining must read.”

That's a great endorsement! I enjoyed the chapter on “Finding Love with the Right Partner”. In my own work with Match Matrix we have a highly developed system for quickly knowing who is right for us. The infor-mation you gave on the work of Suzi Malin about the clues of “face matching” was fascinating too.

I was thrilled to stumble on her work of matching photographs of famous couples by putting their face halves together, because I had already noticed how many couples seem to resemble each other facially. Paul and Linda McCartney joined together looked like the same person… two halves of one whole. The same with John Lennon and Yoko Ono, Mikhael Gorbachev and his wife, the Emperor of Japan and his consort.

There are deep unconscious reasons why we are attracted to certain romantic partners. One such syndrome is what Suzi Malin call Prima Copulism … a Freudian term for falling in love with someone who reminds you of your first emotional attachment as a child. In her book, Love At First Sight, she has a photograph of Bill Clinton with his face half joined to that of Monica Lewinsky and it's the same person.

But even more startling is the image of Monica Lewinsky with her face half joined with that of Bill Clinton's mother! Amazingly, this combination also looks like the same person. If you have ever wondered why Prince Charles is attracted to Camilla Parker Bowles, when you see her face half joined with that of the nanny he had as a child, again you can see this uncanny perfect resemblance. Nanny was his first love and he was looking for her again throughout life.

As long as we are driven by unconscious forces into unions with people who are not compatible with us, we are going to waste precious time and energy seeking ultimate happiness where it cannot be found. The more information we have about the full-spectrum of not only what drives our attractions, but how to meet the right person and turn our union with them into lasting happiness, the greater our chances of success in the romantic arena.

I have been amazed by how much you cover in the book. It's full of information and insight, yet you've managed to make it so entertaining, and funny too. It reads like an adventure story. I couldn't put it down.

Gustav Mahler once said “my symphonies contain the world” and I feel the same way about a book, except that a writer on spiritual themes should try to reflect not just the world but universal truth. Then one creates with a sense of amazement and hopefully this passes into the reader and together you share the adventure of discovery.

I liked the way you threaded your personal story into the narrative, particularly in the last chapters where you covered your experiences in consciousness as a result of practicing the Taoist secrets of love for so many years.

Everything we need to experience the divine is encoded in the cellular fabric of our physical existence. Every human being has the full potential to have not only a marvelous life, but the ability to draw upon their innate creative powers to attract all the good we ­ that includes the right partner.

The secret force of magnetism that empowers success lies in the transmutation of sexual energy into the pure gold of high self awareness. Napoleon Hill devoted an entire chapter to this in his classic book Think and Grow Rich but he didn't really explain what that entails.

Now, through alignment with the universal principles in Eros Ascending, all sincere seekers who wish to feel the joy of being saturated with a love of life, love for other people and world service, can learn to tap the great life transforming powers of creation in their own bodies and the universe to reshape their world in the image of their hearts desire.

So are we going to find you sitting in a bed outside an evangelical church talking about putting God and sexuality together?

To borrow from Austin Powers “that's not my bag baby!” But you will find me inside forward thinking churches around the country sharing information on that subject, as I have been doing for the last twelve years.

Talking about the sacredness inherent in the biological power that gives us our life here on earth is not only an honor, it is a divine duty­—and I might add, a sign of spiritual maturity for all who host and attend such events. Did you hear the rush of wings when I said that? It was Eros, ascending!

John Maxwell Taylor is known internationally for his award winning play Forever Jung and The Power of I Am: Creating and New World of Enlightened Personal Interaction. Learn more at www.johnmaxwelltaylor.com & www.erosascending.com