I’ve posted below a “volley” between me and Daniel Pinchbeck. We’re both in the desert now, so I figured I’d share what happened before we left. You can read more at Reality Sandwich.

The set up: Daniel wrote to me about my sex toy review for Njoy’s Eleven. But it wasn’t really about the toy, more about the movement.

Daniel said:

Hi Jamye,

I wonder if you or others still feel there is anything liberating about these types of gadgets anymore, or is it more just feeding an empty craving for endless sensation?

I remember reading about the “God Realm,” one of the bardos in the Tibetan Book of the Dead. It was said that the Gods could have unbelievable pleasure - incredible orgasms that lasted millenia - but ultimately it didn’t really matter. Because of the fabulous comforts surrounding them, they would never attain enlightenment, and when they finally died, after so many hundreds of thousands of years, they would reincarnate back in a lower bardo, and have to go through the entire incarnational cycle again.

Eventually we will probably have the capacity to put electrodes in our brain and stimulate orgasms at great length upon demand. Will that be a good thing?

What’s beyond sexual liberation and its addiction or enslavement to the orgasm?

At some point, you might want to check out the book, “Pain, Sex, and Time” by Gerald Heard

And then I said…

For starters, Beverly Whipple (the woman credited with coining the term G-spot) has done lots of research on the biology of orgasm, and I don’t think that brain stimulation to orgasm is that far off for the rest of us.

That being said, will it be a good thing when the rest of the world can have an orgasm through brain stimulation alone? I suppose that’s a question that needs to be answered by each individual. It will be a good thing for those people who have never had an orgasm, for those who want to get to know the sensation so they can stop wondering about what it feels like to reach that peak. So for curious orgasm seekers, or for those who like orgasms so much that they have to have all different kinds of them (probably the people that you would call addicts), it will be a fix, one that they will view as a good thing. But it will be also be dangerous too, since as a society we will focus more and more on orgasm, and less and less on the pleasure one can experience before getting there. It can take the touch, the kissing, the human connection out of the experience. I guess with sex toys some may argue it already is.But that’s what I think our problem in society is already. That we have to achieve orgasm to have enjoyed ourselves and our body (or someone else’s body). Like burping after a good meal is a compliment in certain parts of the world, an orgasm is the only way we judge that we were loved well, or that we were a good lover. Why is that? Why do we have to have a definitive end to know that we experienced sexual gratification?

I think what’s beyond sexual liberation and it’s addiction/enslavement to orgasm - which sounds so dire to me - is the place where we get to where orgasm isn’t the measure of pleasure, and it’s a place where we seek pleasure as a part of the human experience, as a part of the evolution of our selves into higher beings. That’s what I like to think of sex toys as, instruments of pleasure. The liberating thing about these toys is that they can help us feel sensations that we can’t always achieve with our own two hands (or someone else’s). They are tools to teach us more about our bodies, and sometimes they help us achieve orgasm, whether it’s because we want the release, or simply because it happens. And so no, I don’t think it’s feeding an empty craving for endless sensation, I think toys can be tools for exploration. Like books and teachings that help us expand our mind, sex toys help us expand our bodies, and that’s good enough for me.

What do you say?