Musings on Sperm Wars
February 21st, 2012No, this trick won’t work…How on earth are you ever going to explain in terms of chemistry and physics so important a biological phenomenon as first love?
A central thesis of Sperm Wars so far is that behavior which we believe to be driven by conscious decisions are actually motivated by our animal subconscious, drawing on instinct and patterns predicted by evolutionary biology. The conscious aspect of it all is simply the subsequent rationalization of our own behavior, like a shadow following the real object – which is the hidden intelligence and agenda of our sexual bodies. Is it so? If so, is it frightening to think that we are so base, that civility is such a thin veneer over our primal selves?
Perhaps this is why Osho talks about three levels of love. The first is physical. It treats the other as an object, simply a means to a selfish end. It is flat and materialistic. He says that the vast majority of humanity never rises above this. It sounds hard to believe, too pessimistic – it can’t be that bad, can it? But Sperm Wars says it is that bad. It’s bad, it’s bad, you know it. A comment on who the self is at this level: the self is the unconscious motivator; the conscious mind does not comprehend that it is really not in the driver’s seat. Jealousy, possessiveness, heartbreak … are only the manifestation of our genes’ stratagems.
The second kind of love is more holistic; it treats the other as an equal. Osho says few attain to this reality. This is to rise beyond Sperm Wars. Yes, the sexual attraction is there. Physical and chemical processes move unabated in the veins and loins. Yet, they are observed and understood by the conscious mind, and embraced. Perhaps reading the book is one avenue to achieve greater awareness.
I’m at this level. Maybe. I think I’m seeking a kind of synchronicity. A free ride up. One that doesn’t crest early and cave back into itself. A resonating presence that says my path has not been a mistake. That, failing to find such pools of refreshment, my aloneness too is beautiful. That I should not feel abandoned when no one clings to me. That freedom in place of comforting routine is worthwhile. Thank god there Osho is there for me when there is nobody else.
Also remind me of the importance of the middle road.
The third kind of love simply is. The other disappears, with the experience that the other and the self are one. Then there is only loving; there is no separate object to love.
How do the sperm of an enlightened man behave? Do they kill the sperm of other men? Do they wait in the cervical “crypts” to ambush invading armies? Can they levitate and teleport?
Far from being amorphous, cervical mucus is structured. Who knew? When the woman is fertile, it contains channels that the sperm navigate up. Our bodies are shockingly intelligent.
The transmigration of the soul is a fine analogy for Aspect-Oriented Programming. Genetic transmission is a more or less linear process. Genes branch, and branches either branch or die. But from whence does your consciousness come? It is a cross-cutting concern. From the deathbed of one nodule, it traverses a different continuum to the womb that begins another.
I was once one cell. I was once only a potential. Half-formed in my mother when she was in her mother’s womb. I was once part of a blazing sun. A motley array of atoms strewn across the universe, finally to coalesce into a victorious sperm that was one of 300 million, on my lucky day. Was there a fight inside my mother that day? I can’t imagine so, not with some other man’s sperm. But who knows – who has verified it? Even without a fight, what if another comrade had gotten to the egg and through its protective junkyard first? Would it have mattered? How would “I” have been different? Would it have just been a matter of a few differing genes – a bit taller, less prominent cheekbones, being female instead? But still “me”? Or would my consciousness have lost its chance – given up to some other entity waiting in the wings? I was once one cell, but now I am 100 trillion. I was once only a potential. Yet I remain only a potential, completion has never been in sight.
In the unborn child, the heart begins beating before it forms a link to the developing brain. It functions in a completely coordinated way, without the brain. It has its own intelligence. The heart has its own network of neurons. Does it have its own thoughts? Perhaps it is the seat of intuition. It is the joining point of the 7 chakras, said to be the the ideal, most balanced point of focus. It is where love energy is nurtured.
What leaves one with an empty heart? Or full of emptiness, if such a thing can be said? If it can … is it characterized by fullness, or emptiness? The evaporation of desire, leaving behind an uncomprehending mind which moments before had identified with it. Now it has nothing to attach to; the rug has been pulled out from underneath. It was tricked; now it is in a pickle. Maybe it feels like a pickle.
When our bodies are trying to tell us something which goes against our conscious beliefs, which voice is right? What if our beliefs are the result of deep past experience – what if those too are controverted? When we feel the tugging in both directions, when the path is not clear but action must be taken right now, when in Murakami-speak we feel ourselves being “split in two”, then what? Half of me loves you from above, and half from below. Some other fraction of me understands this is all a bawdy game.
Intelligence cannot be deterministic. Otherwise it would be inevitable. Computers would have been able to achieve it. Therefore, caprice and whimsy are the signposts of intelligence. Is it intelligent to play it safe, or to take a risk? The bigger the risk, the bigger the reward, so they say. Nothing risked, nothing gained. Be cat-like in your alertness.
