John Maxwell Taylor’s new book, Eros Ascending: The Life Transforming Power of Sacred Sexuality is an impressive and comprehensive journey through many of the ideas that currently populate our culture's fascination with the spiritual side of humanity's most popular activity.

Taylor's own background is unusually eclectic. He has achieved success as a playwright, actor, author, and musician, and he brings something of that multifaceted creativity to his approach to the subject. His spiritual interests have been wide-ranging as well. Originally a practitioner in the tradition of Swami Paramahansa Yogananda’s Kriya Yoga, Taylor loved the energetic power of the practice, but he grew tired of the emphasis on celibacy and began to search for alternatives. This search eventually landed him right in the middle of the burgeoning movement to blend eastern Tantric and Taoist sexual approaches with the new sex-positive experimental and exploratory attitudes of the West. Taylor took to the "sacred sex" movement with all the zeal of a true convert, and Eros Ascending is a report from the trenches, so to speak, of several decades of his and others' work to ascertain the spiritual potential of the sexual force. It follows his interest and tracks his many influences-including Yogananda, Jung, Gurdjieff, and contemporary Taoist master Mantak Chia, with a little bit of Osho Rajneesh, Willhelm Reich and Tantric adept Margot Anand mixed in as well. Taylor explores it all - Jungian gender archetypes, male orgasm, ejaculation control, chakras, kundalini, female orgasm, the G spot, stories from the Indian Khumba Mehla, the science of sacred sex, and more. I found the book to be a treasure trove of information on sacred sexuality, and it's hard not to appreciate Taylor’s lively and personable mix of philosophy, storytelling and how to. He writes in a breezy, popular style that is accessible and easy to read.

Eros Ascending does have a few overarching themes, the primary one being that sexuality and romance, in their many forms of expression, represent humanity's definitive link to divinity. “What was once the province of ascetics, mystics, and saints is now the domain of ordinary men and women who are becoming extraordinary through ecstatic experiences of their own divinity," writes Taylor. “Whether or not they know it, in every case, without exception, sex energy connecting with the brain is the essential key to the transformation of consciousness,” Sprinkled throughout Eros Ascending are declarations like this about human sexuality and spiritual attainment that are sure to raise a few eyebrows (if not bright red flags). Is it really true that in every case that sex and higher consciousness are linked? For Taylor, the answer is an emphatic yes. In fact the only problem with romantic infatuation and sexual engagement, in his perspective, is that they eventually come to an end. The rapture they offer our nervous system is short lived. Traditionally, the realization that the pleasure of sex and romance are passing might provide a spur to look deeper forms of happiness and meaning. Not so in Eros Ascending. Here the brief pleasure they offer only reveals the spiritual and sexual work we must do to perfect our body-mind so that we are better able to sustain their God intoxicating power. “The bliss we can know during sex is continually present to us as atomically rooted substance in every cell of our bodies,” Taylor declares. “The true purpose of the spiritual life is a permanent return to that state.”

Who would want to deny that there may be important connections between the ecstasy of sexuality and the nature of spiritual awakening? After all, sexuality is related to the deepest evolutionary impulses of the cosmos, and the move in culture toward recognizing that any truly contemporary spirituality must include the body and sexuality in its embrace is surely a good thing. Taylor's enjoyable book convinced me that his vision of sacred sexuality may have real benefits: better physical and psychological health, better relationships, bigger and better orgasms, and even a genuine window into the spiritual dimension.

Carter Phipps