Sex and Love Without the Locomotive

Subject: sex & love without the locomotive
From: TomBuoyed@aol.com
Message-ID: <328.304.117@intuition.org>
Date: Thu, 05 Nov 1998 17:24:55 -0800

For the benefit of new subscribers--- two signed on yesterday besides Daniel Perez--- let me state that the "over arching" anthroposophical thread--- one that looms over Steiner98 and weaves through everything here is the critical distinction Rudolf Steiner makes between sex and love.

Now the most famous quote of Steiner on this issue is the "locomotive" quote, which is an excerpt from a lecture he gave in 1911 or 1912. (I don't have the date and GA reference for this one at hand.)

When talking about the subject of love and sex, Steiner said:

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"...the concept of love and the concept of sex go together like the concept of 'locomotive' and the concept of 'being run over.' It is true that, on occasion, locomotives do run over people, but that is no reason for putting these two concepts in such close juxtaposition. So it is for the concepts of sex and love."

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In other words, sex and love are mutually exclusive concepts, except when they occasionally "collide" with each other. (Sometimes it's unavoidable).

Today, I happened to find an even more direct quote about the subject as I was reading through (CC priest in Sacramento) Rev. Richard Lewis' compilation and translation called:

"Love, Marriage, Sex in the light of Spiritual Science" with Volume I called "Love and the separation of the Sexes."

Hence my subject title: "Sex and Love without the Locomotive."

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"Experiences of the Supersensible: the Paths of the Soul to Christ " May 8, 1912, Cologne, Germany. GA ??

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"In relation to compassion and love, I could even speak of a program--- if I were to speak in a primitive fashion--- that spiritual science must fulfill in the future. Materialism today--- which has never before happened on the earth--- has even arrived at a scandalous science in this field. The worst thing that is accomplished today is the throwing together of love and sexuality. That is the worst expression of materialism, the most devilish thing in the present time.

The things that are being accomplished in this field will eventually have to be very carefully peeled away, layer by layer.

SEXUALITY AND LOVE HAVE ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO DO WITH EACH OTHER!

Sexuality is something which has nothing at all to do with pure, innocent, original love. Science has brought all this into the realm of the scandalous, in that it has brought about a whole literature which is concerned with bringing both these things WHICH HAVE ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO DO WITH EACH OTHER, into connection with each other."

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Now I must address the most common "knee-jerk" reaction people have against Steiner when they read passages like this. They always accuse him of somehow being a prude, or of being an ascetic/celibate who fears/loathes sexuality. But that is not the case at all.

Let me pontificate. I myself have a Bachelors degree in Carnal Knowledge (B.C.K.), a Masters degree in Carnal Wisdom (M.C.W.) and am finishing up my Ph.D. dissertation on Scandalous Science, to become D.S.S. ( I passed my anals with flying colors but I still must take my orals before I get the DSS degree and then can hang out my shingle as the next Doctor Ruth). Therefore, I think I can say, with some level of lewd and lascivious authority, that Rudolf Steiner is NOT being prudish when he tells us to separate sex and love.

Two stories from my misspent youth in my native New York City will illustrate what I mean. I believe I read both these stories in magazines back in 1970-72.

The first story was that of a bourgeois woman who lived on Park Ave. in NYC. She was a very elegant high class "call girl" who made $250,000 a year (and only part-time, mind you!) She was also happily and faithfully married to the same man for 30 years, and had used her earnings to put three of her children through Ivy League colleges and one through the Sorbonne.

So I think we can safely say that this woman knew well the distinction between sex and love. Sex was her profession; she practiced it well and would never consider falling in love with any of her clients. On the other hand, she loved her husband and children dearly-- and of course must have had sex with her husband at least 3 times to produce the 3 children.

Then there was the story of the poor psychotic whore who was almost beaten to death by her pimp. I believe she was fresh from being a hippie girl or flower child, who ended up streetwalking in NYC. She did well for awhile apparently, but every so often she would go off on a psychotic episode, possibly from an LSD flashback, in which she believed herself to be Mother Theresa and that it was her duty to love all the men who picked her up for sex. (Remember "free love?" in the late 60's?")

So, in her psycho state, she would pick up her Johns and not charge them! Most times, her girlfriends on the street would go with her to make sure the Johns paid, but one evening, she was on her own and when she reported back to her pimp with no money, he, of course, beat the living shit out of her and left her for dead on the street. She was picked up by the police and taken to Bellevue Hospital where she raved about being Mother Theresa and then after her physical injuries healed, they put her in the psycho ward where the resident shrinks diagnosed her as a bona fide schizophrenic.

Clearly, this poor girl, in her psychotic state, did not distinguish between sex and love at all.

So the moral (as it were) of these two biographies, is that we can, at the very least, call neither of these two women prudish or anti-sex. All that Rudolf Steiner is telling us is to make the distinction between sex and love just like the high class call girl did; otherwise, if we don't, then we are liable to end up like the latter lady and live in some form of anthroposophical schizophrenia without realizing it.

And let us get down to the nitty-gritty of why.

We know that Lucifer's agenda is to make us into "moral automatons." Lucifer wants us to become goody-goody, well-behaved moral human beings, but moral in an unfree, mechanistic, automatic way.

But we read in the "Secrets of the Threshold," lecture 2 of 8, August 25, 1913 Munich, of another aspect of Lucifer's agenda, one which I feel is the flip side of the "moral automaton" coin.

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"... Lucifer wants to make physical [sexual] love similar to spiritual love. Then he can root it out of the physical or sense-world and lead it over into a special kingdom of his own." (pg. 24)

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Maybe we can now begin to understand the enormous power Lucifer wields in mechanizing our morality. It is the power of the sexual forces themselves. Think of how powerfully we as a culture moralize about sex! For example, we still kill people for being gay!

Can we not see this mechanized moralizing in the whole Clinton-Lewinsky matter? Why do we moralize so greatly about sexual behavior? Because that is literally where Lucifer has us all, men and women alike, "by the balls."

However, even though I did not vote last Tuesday, nonetheless I was heartened to see the results--- that more and more Americans are willing to let go of this insane Luciferic moralizing about sexual behavior that has crippled us for centuries--- even before the goddamned Puritans stepped on Plymouth Rock!

So why don't we anthroposophists start consciously attending to the distinction between sex and love so that it won't have to be unconsciously forced upon us by the "pecker-dillos," as it were, of Bill and Monica in the Oval Office? Shit! I mean, Bill and Hillary know the difference between sex and love, don't they? Unfortunately, Monica is still a bit young and naive. She fell in love with the creep!

Christ, if I were her pimp and read these Steiner lectures to her, we'd both be millionaires by now!

(Well, no, check that. Actually, we'd be found dead with multiple gunshot wounds in the backs of our heads with no powder burns and we'd be ruled suicides. But hey, that's a whole other political thread that Brother Bobby can wax poetic and politic about).

So, anyway, be careful at the next railroad crossing.

Father Tom, B.C.K, M.C.W., (D.S.S. to be)